This one happened right across the river.

The whole murder and what happened is bizarre. You can read all the details here:

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/27/magazine/the-case-of-the-lady-and-the-killer.html?pagewanted=all

To tell the story quickly, Hope Masters, a rich young woman from a prominent Beverly Hills family, with two marriages behind her, traveled to her family’s ranch in Springville with her live-in boyfriend, Bill Ashlock. They stayed in the guest house.

A new acquaintance of Bill’s, Taylor Wright (real name G. Daniel Walker) came to visit. He spent the night and murdered Bill. He raped and threatened Hope, but for some strange reason they stayed together at the ranch for several days, even after her folks arrived to stay at the ranch’s main home.

Hope’s father is the one who ultimately reported the murder, Hope and Taylor/G. Daniel were arrested. As it turned out, G. Daniel Walker was a fugitive.

Though I doubt anyone will ever know exactly what happened, you can read the whole story in the book, “A Death in California”, and watch the TV movie starring Cheryl Ladd and Sam Elliott.

Hope and Bill on the ranch.

Hope Masters

G. Daniel Walker

This happened before we moved to Springville–but I’d seen the TV movie and when I learned how close the ranch was to where I lived, you can see it across the river, of course I read the book. A most bizarre case. No one would believe it if you wrote a fiction mystery with similar content.

Marilyn

There is a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., called Kalorama. I lived not too far from there for a few years, just down the street in Dupont Circle. Dupont Circle was a fabulous place to live, particularly as a young, single adult — lots of restaurants, bars, clubs, bookstores (what, aren’t all young people looking for a good bookstore?).

Kalorama, on the other hand, is an upscale neighborhood. Imagine big houses with thick walls surrounding large gardens. Black limousines wait in the tree-lined streets more often than taxis. So close, yet a world away.

One house in particular in Kalorama caught my attention. I must have driven past it once while living in D.C. and lodged the memory away somewhere in the back of my brain, because as soon as I got to work on developing the characters for my second book, A Thin Veil, knew that one of them lived in that house. And it didn’t take long to realize he must be the French ambassador to the United States.

I had only seen the house once, several years before, so I did what all diligent researchers do: I googled it. Google maps is a wonderful tool — absolutely no replacement for the real thing, don’t get me wrong, but the details you can find online can be astounding (if not a little frightening).

I spent hours “walking” up and down the street in front of that house, stopping at different angles to see the way the light hit it, to get a glimpse over the wall into the back garden. I also found a variety of photographs of the house, from the inside and outside (mostly from the outside).

By the time I went back to D.C. for another in-person visit, I felt like I knew the house intimately!

It’s a beautiful house. No wonder it proved to be such an inspiration to me. Ambassador Saint-Amand is one of my favorite characters now. Writing the scene in which I first introduce the reader to the house — and the ambassador — was a true joy.

Of course, not all of my characters are inspired by the house in which they live. But it’s fun to think how much anything — a house, a boat, a church, even a city park — can serve as an inspiration.

Meet Ambassador Saint-Amand and get to know the neighborhoods of D.C. in book 2 in the Adam Kaminski mystery series, A Thin Veil.

Learn more about Jane Gorman at janegorman.com or visit her pages on Amazon or Bookbub.

I’m nearly done with my latest book, the third in the series set on the Treasure Coast in Florida, and now I’m thinking about the title. The first two books in the series referred to one another: A REASON TO KILL and SO MANY REASONS TO DIE. I’m wondering if I should stick with that idea.

Since the book is about the disappearance of Captain Lawrence Bradley, Andi Battaglia and Greg Lamont’s boss. perhaps I should go with a title that refers to the other two books in the series, such as REASONS TO DISAPPEAR. That’s pretty accurate because the story involves Andi and Greg trying to find Bradley and learning the reasons for his disappearance. But the title seems a bit boring to me, not something that will get my readers to buy the book. I was thinking of a title like G…O…N…E, perhaps slanting off down the cover page. What do you think?

Do books sell because they’ve got good titles? GONE GIRL certainly established a trend and since its publication there have been lots of books with girl in the title: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN; THE GIRL BEFORE; and others. But Anthony Doerr’s ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE conveys nothing about the setting or the story, i.e., a blind girl and a young German boy in World War II Germany and France, so if you picked it up thinking it was about electricity, you’d be disappointed. But apparently the title found an audience.

Many writers of series link their books by using titles that refer to one another. Connie Archer writes books set in a small New England town called “Soup Lovers Mysteries.” She uses titles like A CLUE IN THE STEW and A SPOONFUL OF MURDER. Sheila Lowe, a handwriting expert, writes mysteries using that milieu. Her books have titles such as DEAD WRITE and POISON PEN. Rochelle Staab, who writes the MIND FOR MURDER, uses such titles as WHO DO, VOODOO? and HEX ON THE EX.

Agatha Christie, the queen of mystery writers, used lots of different titles without reference to one another, even if they featured one of her classic characters like Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple. And other early female mystery writers like Ngaio March and Margery Allingham used titles that referred to murder or death without ties to previous books.

What are your thoughts about titles. Lawrence Block in his essay about titles says that TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY was the original title of Margaret Mitchell’s GONE WITH THE WIND, a change that certainly did it no harm. Did Tolstoy have a different title in mind for WAR AND PEACE? We’ll never know, but the title he chose seems to fit the book. And when Thomas Wolfe brought his manuscript O LOST to Max Perkins in the late twenties, Perkins not only helped Wolfe edit the book, he suggested the title LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. Better? I think so.

So, titles do attract or discourage potential readers. I’m inclined to go with something like DISAPPEARING REASONS for book three of the series, thus linking them together. What do you think?