My Books for kids
Midnight at the Barclay Hotel really started with my love for mysteries, a love that was born long ago when I was about JJ, Penny and Emma’s age. I was a very avid reader, but without a YA section (there wasn’t one at the time), I moved from kids books to the grown-up section pretty quickly. At the recommendation of a librarian, I read The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie, and I was hooked.
I may have lost my love for reading for a while, but it was my love for mysteries that eventually brought me back. So I wanted to write a mystery, for kids who (like JJ in Midnight at the Barclay Hotel) maybe don't like reading so much...
I set out to write a mystery for kids that has some of the same ingredients of Agatha Christie’s books: a good mystery, several suspects, and an interesting, closed-off setting. After visiting the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park (of the famous The Shining movie), I knew I had all the ingredients for a fun—and spooky—mystery for kids.
For Writers
After writing lots of mysteries for kids and teens, writers would often ask me: how do you write a mystery for kids or teens? What tricks do you have for picking the right crime to solve, or how to place the clues in the right spots...?
I love teaching fellow writers and decided to collect all my advice into a book: Get a Clue: How to Plot, Write, and Sell Your MG or YA Mystery. If you're working on your own mystery, I hope you'll let me know how it's going...! I love to connect with fellow writers.
More scary mystery fun! Daybreak on Raven Island is out in paperback NOW...
I'm so excited to share this new, Alcatraz-inspired story with readers. It's scary, has a murder mystery, and lots of real history folklore as its inspiration. There are even some very Hitchcock-y ravens... I hope you'll order Daybreak on Raven Island so you can start reading the book and let me know what you think.
As for me, I now live in a small town in Colorado that's just perfect for a mystery... My family and foster cats keep me grounded and inspired.
About Fleur
I grew up in the Netherlands (you can look up where that is on the map), where I spent my childhood riding my bike, catching tadpoles, and reading Pippi Longstocking and Roald Dahl books. I loved to read, and I loved to draw, too. My very favorite book was The BFG by Roald Dahl. I would read under the covers well past my bedtime, secretly hoping for the BFG to knock on my window.
But somewhere along the way (around my high school years), I sort of lost the passion for reading. It wasn’t until I was given a paperback thriller many years later that I caught the reading bug again. After reading many, many mysteries and thrillers, I decided to try my hand at writing (I was pretty bad at it at first, to be honest). It took a long time before some of my short mysteries started appearing in small press magazines, which encouraged me to keep writing.
If you have writing aspirations, don’t give up!