Category Archives: Tess Gerritsen

It starts off as a labor of love, but labor it truly is — a fact that becomes more and more apparent as you pound out your twentieth, fiftieth, hundredth blog post. As novelists, we use words as our tools of trade, and we struggle to choose the right ones to tell our stories. Like the carpenter who’s been swinging a hammer all day, at the end of the workday, many of us are weary and ready to put down our tools.

But no — for some of us, it’s time to write another blog post. A task that started as a pleasure becomes just another responsibility. Week after week, we struggle to come up with some fresh topic that we haven’t yet addressed. After you’ve shared everything you know about writing and publishing and marketing, what next? Do you write about kittens? Can you make it funny and engaging and thoughtful? At the same time, can you avoid being too controversial, so that your site won’t be flooded with angry comments by dog lovers?

There is a natural life cycle to blogs. I’ve seen it with my own site. I’ve watched other writers leap into the blogosphere, bursting with a thousand things to say. Or they’re lured into it with the promise of greater exposure and better book sales. Over time, though, the entries become less and less frequent. Or they start to repeat themselves. Or they touch on a sensitive subject that launches a flame war of comments, forcing the blogger to go silent, just to maintain her sanity.

For years, the wonderful exception has been Murderati. With its rotating panel of contributors, it’s been able to draw on multiple voices, and over the years the insights have been funny, moving, and thought-provoking — sometimes all at once. Through these writers, we’ve watched the industry evolve, lives change, and careers thrive … or not. We’ve had an inside look at what it really means to be a writer, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thanks to visionaries JT Ellison and Pari Noskin Taichert, Murderati, has seemed like the party that would never end.

Only now it is ending. I am truly sad about it, because it’s one of the best writers’ blogs around. I also understand why it’s folding up its tents: because writers get tired. Because everyone’s lives are demanding. And because, sometimes, it’s just the right moment to move on.

Thank you, JT and Pari for launching Murderati and for so lovingly keeping it alive all these years. Thank you to all the writers who’ve contributed; I’ve learned something from each and every one of you. Since everything is saved to the archives, not a single word here will vanish.

Murderati may no longer be active, but it will be immortal.