Tree of Knowledge © Storm Thurgerson

I’m a guest today of fellow mystery writer Marja McGraw on her new website, writing about a twist on an old mantra. Here’s the lead-in:

The Golden Rule of “write what you know” is embedded in my DNA. That’s my only explanation for how I came to write “Three Little Bears Visit New York City” before I hit kindergarten. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me; after all, if people go to the woods on vacation, why wouldn’t a bear go to town?

And New York City was a place I knew something about. My maternal grandfather had been a photographer in New York, and my father talked about how different “the big city” was from upstate New York where he’d been born.  I used to watch my dad doing the New York Times crossword puzzle (in ink!).  So the name, the place, was embedded in my consciousness early on.

(Does Marja’s name seems familiar? It should! I’ve featured her work here on my site recently. Read the first here and more recently, here.) I hope you’ll stop by http://marjamcgraw.blogspot.com/ and read the rest. I’ll be back here in a few days with a new post.

p.s. For the curious: “taleidoscope” is not a typo! Unlike a kaleidoscope (which has brightly colored images), a taleidoscope uses mirrors and a lens to reflect the world around us.