One cool thing about writing mysteries is that sometimes they’re real! In ND 17, Nancy solves a few mysteries that co-writer Stefan Petrucha and I made up. But the biggest puzzle in the plot, the one that Nancy almost pays the ultimate price to solve has to do with an ancient technological wonder, called the Antikythera device. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in the speculation about what kind of brilliant mind could create what was touted “the first computer ” 2000 years ago. Nancy and I were hooked.

Figuring out exactly how to end this story was kind of the opposite of a deus ex machina in which a convenient device arrives at the end to explain all kinds of loose plot ends. Instead, time consuming research and even math (!) was needed to come up with a plot that brought Nancy to a very specific ending. It was sometimes necessary to do a little writing backwards (which I don’t recommend!!). For those of you who aren’t caught up on your reading and haven’t gotten to Nancy Drew, issue 17, I won’t give away the ending. But the denouement, thanks to the art of Sho Murase, was spectacular. Thanks, Sho!

Newsflash! We just got news that the Antikythera device is even older than we thought.

Here’s the link so you can stay up-to-date on the discovery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/jul/29/archaeology-astronomy

Tags: Nancy Drew, Sarah Kinney, Sho Murase, Stefan Petrucha

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 1:50 pm and is filed under New releases, Papercutz Blog, author appearances, events, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.