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Published in the Miramichi Reader February 21, 2026

https://miramichireader.ca/2026/02/why-i-wrote-this-book-issue-57/

Barbara Emodi, author of Crafting a Cold Case (C&T Publishing, October 2025)

I write cozy mysteries set in Nova Scotia. I try hard to make the characters and setting real and representative. The best compliment any local reader can give me is “Oh your book made me laugh. So true.”

The funny thing though is that most of my readers live outside the country. Europe, the U.S.,...

The first rule of writing is not to try to sound like a writer. Sound like yourself. I learned this from teaching creative non-fiction at a university. The students who dashed off a quick couple of paragraphs to get an assignment done produced far more authentic work than those who tried hard to do "real writing."

What does that look like?

If you don't use a word in your speech, maybe it is not a natural, and therefore the best choice, for your text.