By Maria DeBlassie
Daily Lobo
Crime novelist Pari Noskin Taichert uses Small New Mexican towns as backdrops for mystery and mayhem.
Born and raised in Albuquerque, Taichert said she's lived a lot of others places, none of which can compare to the Land of Enchantment.
"A lot of people spend their lives searching for home," she said. "I'm one of the few people that was fortunate enough to be born home."
Taichert is one of many native writers and part of the Voices of the Southwest lecture series that celebrates authors who live in and write about the Southwest.
She will be speaking on June 21 at along with Professor of Anthropology David E. Stuart. Taichert said she will also be reading excerpts from various novels, including The Clovis Incident: A Mystery, which was nominated for the Agatha Award, named for Agatha Christy, for best first novel.
"I write witty, fun mysteries," Taichert said. "They have a deeper level if you want to find it, but my mysteries first and foremost are meant to bring readers pleasure."
Taichert said she wrote her first novel 10 years ago, but has been writing in various forms all her life. The Clovis Incident is her third novel and the first to be published. Her latest novel, The Belen Hitch, will be out this fall. She said she deliberately decided to write about small New Mexican towns because she wanted to celebrate their uniqueness as well as represent a more realistic view of New Mexico.
"People have this attitude about New Mexico being all cowboys and Indians or like snooty artsy-fartsy Santa Fe," she said.
Taichert said she writes mysteries because she likes the idea of seeing a protagonist grow and change with the series.
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When asked if she shares any similar traits with her protagonist Sasha Solomon, Taichert said other than their New Mexican backgrounds, they have little in common.
"Sasha is reality-challenged and whip cream dependent," she said. "I lead a much more normal life and well adjusted life than she does."
Taichert said all protagonists start out as autobiographical characters.
"Then if you're a good writer you get rid of all those parts that really aren't interesting to anybody else but you," Taichert said. "Frankly, most of us are more interesting to ourselves than other people."
She said she writes whenever she can and has an active life outside of it.
Taichert writes and edits a lot, finding the first draft painful to write because it will never be good, she said. She also said she dislikes the stereotype that genre fiction isn't literary or that commercial writing doesn't' take as much effort to create as craft-oriented fiction.
"I don't like exclusionary fiction in any genre," Taichert said. "My purpose in writing is to be accessible."
As advice for aspiring writers, Taichert said to write and read as much as possible and, if they want to publish, never ever give up. Although it takes hard work, Taichert said that urge to write becomes a biological compulsion.
"Physically, emotionally, I have to write," she said. "I get really mean when I don't. It's not magical, it's not beautiful, it's not pretty. It is simply that I have to do it."
