A time-honored tradition for most book writers is the twist. No, I’m not talking about the dance sensation. I’m talking about how a reader is just jetting along the story with the cruise control on, and then something happens that turns the free flow on its ear, and the reader is left to wonder what happened.

Mysteries are notorious for them. You’re lead to believe by the main detective that one person is the deranged killer, but then you’re thrown for a loop when the key suspect is suddenly found dead. Also, you think that one character is sweet and as pure as the driven snow, and then she’s pointing a bazooka at somebody.

Let’s face it. Books would be boring if they just followed along a predictable path, using the same tropes and stereotypes, following the same themes and all taking place in the same place. That’s why you always see those book reviews eviscerating writers who recycle the same material over and over again—a rugged man in search of redemption, a Southern belle with virtue who secretly wishes to be a bimbo, a villain who wears a black hat, and/or someone having an affair behind their lover’s back.

You have to add some spice to it to make it different. Make the Southern belle the one who needs redemption, give the villain an honest face, and give the adulterer a revolving door to reflect how many people he’s banging while his sweetheart is away. That’s how you expand the imagination.

Another tool writers use is giving a character a name that matches what they do or what they have. For example, giving the name Barrett to a stripper, having Rose or Lily tend the world’s biggest flower garden, calling a gunslinger Pistol Pete or giving an African-American man the moniker Dark Chocolate. They provide something familiar for those readers who don’t like everything being constantly turned on its ear.

So what happens when you take the familiar names and pull off the twist at the same time?

I decided to do that with the current novel that I’m working on, “The Tragic Tale of Tabby and Henny,” the latest installment in the Zachary Gagewood Mysteries. If you look at the title, you know that it’s going end badly for the titular characters, and you suspect that cats and chickens will be a theme in the book.

You’re right—and yet it’s not what you think.

The assumption about reading the title is that Tabby is going to be the cat lover and Henny is going to be the one out in the chicken coop scooping up eggs. However, you’ve got to remember that there are twists in mysteries, and so I decided to have Tabby be the one that tells the hens to get laying and Henny is the one operating a cat sanctuary.

So why do it? Because the way to really good writing is to upend expectations. Those expectations are continuously changing in life, and if you don’t adapt and you stick to the same old thing, then you wind up with 1950s television, where the husband always wears a suit, the wife always makes sure dinner is on the table and the kids are well-groomed.

Boring.

Continuously changing things up has been a continuous factor in my journey as a writer. I started out writing romances with gay characters, adding an occasional supernatural tale with some. Once I got the romance I so desperately yearned for in real life, I turned to mysteries and wrote ten of them, but I occasionally had a side story of fantasy and continued romance just to keep me sharp.

When I got to the 10^th mystery, I’d been in a common cycle of coming out with books every eight, nine or 10 months, but at that point, it started to feel common, which is why I walked away for a bit and tried focusing on other genres, which is how “White Christmas in the Desert” and “Night of the Hodag” came into being. The former focused on a single dad making his son happy, something I hadn’t written before, while the latter had three men in a relationship chasing monsters.

In essence, I don’t want to end up staying on the same old path. I don’t want to be known only for my mysteries, although they are a lot of fun. Twisting my journey so that I’m not on the same road makes me a better writer and helps to keep my imagination on a steady flow. I worked on a couple of different projects, and it helped to reenergize my fascination for mysteries and my love for Zachary Gagewood and the beautiful characters of Gresham, Wisconsin.

When you sit down with a book, be sure to buckle up, because if it’s a good one, you’re going to feel like you’ve been on a roller coaster by the time you set it down again.