What do Emma and Gone Girl have in common? Suspense is what makes a reader turn a page, let supper burn, and stay up too late, so there are ideas in this workshop for all fiction writers. It will be of special interest to writers focusing on mysteries and novels identified as suspense.

Nora Gaskin is a lifelong resident of the Durham-Chapel Hill area. She has a bachelor’s degree in English with Honors in Creative Writing from UNC, and a Masters in English from the University of Washington in Seattle. She spent more than 24 years as a stockbroker and financial advisor with a major investment firm, working in the Durham office. She retired in 2005 to focus on writing. Her first published novel, UNTIL PROVEN: A MYSTERY IN 2 PARTS, appeared in October 2012. While the book is entirely fiction, the seed for it was a real murder that happened in Chapel Hill on Christmas Eve, 1963. In 2013, Nora published a nonfiction book about that Christmas Eve murder, TIME OF DEATH, to further explore the questions it raised. Her second novel, THE WORST THING, appeared in May 2018. Her small, non-traditional publishing company, Lystra Books launched in 2013. In early 2020, she published her 30thbook for other writers. She lives and writes in Chatham County, inspired by her native landscape, her husband, and dogs. Her favorite expression is “y’all means all.” Her favorite word is gratitude.