Columbia Star

1963        Celebrating 60 Years      2023

Local mystery writer publishes The Fifth Stone, fourth novel in the Enid Blackwell series



Raegan Teller

Raegan Teller

Raegan Teller says all her books are inspired by actual events in her life. The Fifth Stone, the fourth book in her Enid Blackwell series, involves the mistreatment of the elderly and their vulnerability to crime when individuals prey upon their loneliness and loss of immediate family.

The Fifth Stone will bring the reader to tears in sympathy for the elderly. Teller says she cried often as she wrote the novel. However, her protagonist, Enid Blackwell, is the heroine of the town of Madden once again as she stands committed to her roles as an investigative reporter and friend.

In the Enid Blackwell series, Teller has created a set of characters whose relationships develop and grow as they face the challenges of murder, kidnapping, and abuse in their fictional town of Madden. Teller has created Madden to resemble a small town on the outskirts of Columbia such as Blythewood, Ridgeway, or Winnsboro, where everyone knows each other and their lives are centered around locations such as the Madden Historical Society, the restaurant at the Glitter Lake Inn, the local newspaper, and the local police department.

 

 

Teller’s protagonist is Enid Blackwell, a small town newspaper journalist who develops from a shy newcomer at the Madden Gazette to a reliable investigative reporter who takes on the mysteries and crime that occur in her town. Teller says she feels she lives her dreams vicariously through Enid Blackwell; she is fond of her protagonist. Yet, because she is a mystery writer, Teller must allow Enid to face extreme challenges and pain as the people she cares about in her town are the victims of terrible crimes.

The small town atmosphere of the series helps readers feel a connection and familiarity with all Teller’s characters. Teller weaves a tale that keeps readers spellbound and sometimes reacting in fear of man’s inhumanity to man. Readers also follow closely Enid Blackwell’s love life which is restrained by conflicts of interest, career moves, and her own ambition as a newspaper reporter. Teller says she receives calls and emails often from readers, male and female, giving her advice on how Enid Blackwell’s love life should proceed.

Teller’s writing process is unusual. She does not write a novel from beginning to end. Instead, she writes isolated descriptions of scenes which she will carefully place in the novel. Using a software program called “Scrivener,” she is able to compose her descriptive and often intense scenes, and then add them into the narrative of the novel as they fit into the unfolding narrative. She says this writing process works best for her. However, every author is different.

Teller says writing is never an easy process. It takes years of work and includes hours of research to provide accuracy of subject matter in her work. She says, “Mystery writing is one of the hardest genres to write. Conflict is what drives a novel.”

When writing a mystery, there are clues placed to bring readers into the process themselves of striving to solve the mystery.

Murder In Madden was Teller’s first book in the Enid Blackwell series, published in 2016. The Last Sale in 2018, and Secrets Never Told in 2019. Teller founded her own publishing company Pondhawk Press LLC. Her novels can be purchased online in eBook form on amazon.com or in any major bookstore or bookstore website. Raegan Teller can be contacted on her website, www.reaganteller.com.

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