A View from the Loft: Loft Literary Center newsletter

By Britt Aamodt

Seventeen years ago, Susan Runholt was in a place a lot of writers find themselves. She had a desire to write and an idea for a novel, but didn’t have the first clue how to get started. So, investing what little disposable income she possessed, which having a growing daughter meant little enough, Runholt went out and bought a word processor and got down to work.

Eventually, she decided she needed to signed up for a class at the Loft. The class was on mystery writing and was taught by author Mary Logue. “By that time, I’d already finished a novel and had an agent,” says Runholt. “I received wonderful editorial feedback, but the book never sold. So, I took the Loft class to find out, am I any good as a writer? Also, I just wanted to become a better writer.”

The first day of class, Logue had the students go around and introduce themselves. Little did Runholt suspect that later she and several of these unfamiliar faces would form a writers’ group, Crème de la Crime, and that two of them, William Kent Krueger and Carl Brookins, would publish their first novels in the next few years.

Runholt’s journey to publication took a little longer.

“My daughter, Annalisa, was the perfect child. Always sweet and kind,” says Runholt. “Well, then she hit 14 and decided she was over that. I had been writing adult mysteries, but at some point it occurred to me that maybe Annalisa and I could write a book together. It would at least give us something to talk about.”

That was in 1994. A year and a half later, Runholt confidently shopped her young adult mystery to publishers. She knew it was the best book she’d ever written. Her writer’s group gave it thumbs up. Her coconspirator, Annalisa, loved it. But the publishers didn’t.

“This was in the days before Harry Potter when editors didn’t understand that kids were into really good stories that didn’t talk down to them and weren’t the deadly serious ‘My mom has cancer’ books.” Runholt shelved her YA mystery, only to dust it off in 2004 at the urging of her writers’ group.

Good thing she did. In 2005, The Mystery of the Third Lucretia won the Debut Dagger Award, and in 2008 was published by Viking Children’s. The sequel, Rescuing Seneca Crane, is slated for a 2009 publication. Please join Susan at her publication reading on Saturday, October 25, at 2 pm. Photo © Ann Marsden.

Britt is a freelance writer. Currently, she working on a history of Minnesota cartoonists for the Minnesota Historical Society Press. www.mnartists.org/Britt_Aamodt

Journalist

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