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Date: 5/18/2023
LONGMEADOW — Longmeadow resident John Sjoberg recently penned his second novel, a murder mystery set on the Gulf Coast. In “A Killer Weekend on the Beach,” Sjoberg explores the idea of how coincidences can change lives.
Sjoberg wrote his first book, “Murder in the Meadows, a New England Mystery,” in 2013. Adhering to the maxim of “write what you know,” he set that story in a small Massachusetts town. While “A Killer Weekend on the Beach” is set on the Gulf Coast, it is the same genre, Sjoberg said, describing it as “a murder mystery with lots of little twists.”
The idea for “A Killer Weekend on the Beach” began with a comment from Sjoberg’s brother-in-law, who told Sjoberg, “Never underestimate the fundamental randomness of life.” From this nugget, Sjoberg developed a story of four people from different parts of the world and both coasts who become entangled when they decide they need a change in life.
“It could happen to any one of us,” Sjoberg said of the plot. “You could meet someone on a train, and what if you’d left a moment earlier or later?”
Sjoberg is passionate about mystery stories. He said he enjoys watching the TV show “Dateline” and he read Hardy Boys mystery books as a child. “I just like murder mysteries. Sometimes people just need an escape,” he said.
Sjoberg said a mystery does not require a twist, but he enjoys the extra layer it adds to the story. “In a lot of good books, there are clues, and the author leads you in the direction they want to go. But then [the climax of the book] can come from a different direction,” he said.
Despite this being Sjoberg’s second novel, he does not consider himself a writer. “You just need a real good imagination,” he said. “I encourage people to try their hand at the creative side.”
Sjoberg said he “gets a kick out of” taking something that exists in the world and “recreating it in a different form.” While Sjoberg works with locations with which he is familiar so that he can describe the sights and sounds and feels of a place, the characters are not based on anyone he knows. He said readers can use their own experiences to build the characters based on the frame he has given them.
His first book took one year to write, but this one was written in less than three months. “I just got a lot of joy out of it,” he said. “There’s something really neat about having someone read something that you created out of your mind.”
“A Killer Weekend on the Beach” can be purchased on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/54ux6zhh.