My first novel, Buried, is a murder mystery which was inspired by a challenge (story starter) at a Tisdale Writers’ Group meeting: The prisons are filled with innocent people , said Chorney. I wrote a few paragraphs, a conversation between a reporter and a woman in prison for killing her husband. One of the group members commented, I want to hear the rest of that. I think you’ve just started a novel. I started thinking about my character: Who was she? How did she end up in prison? Did she actually kill her husband? If so, why? How? And soon the short exercise grew into a debut novel.