Sixteen Minutes to Midnight

Closing

Sixteen Minutes to Midnight was largely inspired by my first experience in the medium of visual novels: Umineko no Naku Koro ni: a murder mystery with witches, logic battles and a whole lot of shenanigans. And it's very well written. In fact, it's what encouraged me to pick up writing - to see whether I, too, could pull off a mystery that surprises you at every turn. As well as that, various other visual novels like G-Senjou no Maou and Ever17 - other, just as superbly written visual novels, helped contribute to that desire to explore the mystery genre, and make one of my own.

So I did. My first book was Strictly Business, and after one scrapped novel (A Grimm Heist) which I felt wasn't working, I started to really get down into making a bona-fide mystery. A good mystery, see,  relies on several aspects after all: the mystery, the players, and the execution. And a whole bag of other techniques, like misdirection and deflection. I went through what made a good mystery and planned it out - modifying a few bits along the way while trying to ensure that the twist was concealed well enough, but still decipherable if you really sat down and thought about it. After all, isn't that what a mystery's really about? A fiendish puzzle just waiting to be solved. A writer just lays out the pieces of the game and slowly puts them together.

And here we are. We solved it.

16M2M has been a joy to write. The little devious part of me that squeals when thinking up new, outrageous ways to die was overjoyed and a little over-excited, and the Sherlock fan in me that wanted a good mystery was content. But perhaps the most satisfying part was being the writer - reading what everybody had to say, watching as the read count slowly rose, finishing a book and heaving a great big sigh - this was exciting to write, and a foray into a genre I've always wanted to delve into. it's as Craig mentioned in the very beginning: life is a tunnel, and we can't ever go back.

But we can keep moving forward.