I am married to a retired English teacher. Which is a good thing on a lot of levels. Not only is he a sweetheart but he takes out the trash and loads the dishwasher. Okay, not the way I would load it, but I need to let that go. Moving on, hubby is my go-to guy for all the parts of speech, which sometimes I don’t know. It’s not for want of trying. I do try. It’s just that it gets away from me. Maybe I’m so busy writing the words I don’t always know why I compile them the way I do. When I write a sentence it either feels right or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, I move everything around until it does.

Now, I do know a noun when I fall over it. A person, place, or thing. Tom is a noun. Good old Tom. I also know a verb. Whatever Tom is doing is a verb. Tom runs. Because I’m doing so well, we will move on to an adverb. Tom runs swiftly. Noun, verb, adverb. It helps that most adverbs end in “ly.” I like that. Also, I have just described Tom’s running ability. Adjective to follow. Tubby Tom runs swiftly. We have just described Tom. Although, how he can run swiftly being tubby is questionable. I’m tubby and can’t. Of course, I sit on my derriere all day writing parts of speech. It’s a wonder I can move at all.

But back to the parts of speech. While I am fairly clear on the four above, the remaining sometimes throw me. For instance, a preposition. Those are the teeny, little words, often no more than one to three letters long like “in,” “at,” “on,” “of,” and “to.” Remember good old Tom? Well, he’s stopped running and now he’s arrived at his destination, the friendly neighborhood bar. But is Tom in the bar or at the bar? Got me. I don’t always know and usually fudge it. Then when I reread it, I either keep it the way it is or change it to what feels better. And good grief, here’s another side of prepositions, the time frame stuff, such as “since,” “for,” “by,” “during,” “from…to,” “from…until,” “with,” and “within.” Well, Tom is going to stay at the bar until his wife comes to pick him up because he’s had it with running.

Conjunctions. These are  “and,” “since,” “for,” “by,” “during,” “from…to,” “from…until,” “with,” and “within.” Conjunctions allow me to make my run-on sentences. You know, the ones that never end. But I am a piker. The longest sentence award goes to: Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club, 13,955-word sentence. You can bet Mr. Coe used a lot of the above to accomplish that. I am not including Tom in any of this because he is tired from his run, imbibing, and listening to his wife tell him off about his imbibing, and wants to take a well-deserved nap. Conjunctions. You gotta love ’em.

Pronouns. I used to get these until the current move to make every “she” and “he” “her” and “him” into “they” and “them.” I understand and appreciate it all in theory, but I still don’t know how to speak it. When you’re talking about one person doing something or going somewhere but have to use the plural form is hard for me to do. Where is Tom going? They are going to the bar. Okay, I’m working on it.

Interjections. Wow! I do that a lot. Golly, gee, do I. For instance: Fer cryin’ out loud! Tom, put down that bottle. You’ve had enough.

Then we have past participles, predicates, and stuff like that. That’s when I need retired English professor hubby standing over my shoulder. Preferably with a martini in his hand. Tom and I have a few things in common.

I have a pet peeve. Sometimes authors don’t complete parts of a storyline, no matter how small or inconsequential, and a character, situation, or animal is left hanging out to dry. I hate that.

There is a well-known mystery writer who wrote a well-known novel. In the novel, a woman the detective-protagonist becomes involved with has a cat. The cat is in several scenes and then becomes poisoned. The poison was meant for his new lady friend, who is upset about what happened to her cat. She doesn’t know what to do with the body and he takes over. He puts the body of the cat into a pillowcase and then in the trunk of his car. That’s the last we hear of the cat.

As the story progresses day after day and week after week, nothing more is said about the cat in the pillowcase. I became increasingly disturbed. This was a beloved pet. Doesn’t the woman want to know what happened? Isn’t our protagonist a humane man? We’re led to believe so. Did he bring it to a vet for proper disposal, helping to send it over the rainbow bridge? Did our hero toss it into a trash bin? Or heaven forfend, is the cat’s body still in the trunk of the car?

I have a writer pal who asked me to read her final draft. In the story, the heroine hears the beginnings of a storm. Her dog is barking his head off outside the house. How did he get out she wonders? She opens the front door and goes out to look for her dog. Whammo! She gets hit over the head by the villain. Neighbors save her. Police arrive. A report is written. Her best friend comes to stay with her. This best friend is not the dog, so I began to wonder what happened to Fido? Not one more word was written about the dog. As I was a beta reader, I asked the writer what happened to the dog. Answer? She simply forgot about it once it had achieved its purpose, that of being the catalyst for getting the heroine outside to be struck on the head. No, no, no, no, no.

And this doesn’t happen just to animals or in books. I watched a popular television series where a one-episode, secondary character, a teenager, saved the life of the protagonist. Now that’s a big deal, right? This character saved her life. However, when the police and paramedics show up, we see short scenes of the police marching the bad guy off, and the protagonist being hauled off in the ambulance, but the character who made everything right in the end is nowhere to be found. I kept looking for him. Where did this kid go?

Not only does this kind of stuff throw me out of a story, but it makes me crazy. We’re not talking about a lengthy explanation or mind-boggling follow-through. We’re talking about a phrase or a sentence. With the detective, he could have handed the pillowcase off to his secretary with some instructions, kind or not. With my writer pal, it could be one phrase about the heroine reaching down to pet her dog who lay at her side. Or being upset the dog is missing. Or maybe he’s in the kitchen eating kibble. Something. This kid in the television story decided to do the right thing. It changed his life. Why not give the reader/viewer a split-second of follow-through? A look of satisfaction on the character’s face or one of having grown up a little.

A good follow-through can enhance our work and deepen the facets of our characters. It can also make the reader/viewer feel more grounded. That things are not floating off into the ether, disappearing, never to be heard of again. Even if the outcome is not necessarily the one we want to read about or have happen.

Although, I was glad my writer pal added a line that the heroine was petting the dog by her side. Small mercies.

Unlike the past, today’s mystery fiction has a lot more chit-chat between characters. There was a time when an author would write pages and pages of narrative describing the contents of a room, clothing, or the physicality of a character down to nose hairs. Oftentimes the narrator would describe how the characters were feeling rather than having them say the words for themselves. I’m thinking of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, which may not be the first detective novel ever written, chronologically, but it certainly is one of the earliest. I can remember reading most of a chapter with nothing but descriptions of a room or an entering character before anyone actually spoke a word.

But even writing has its trends, and today the style for the most part, is to keep narrative to a minimum. It’s often described by instructors as, “Show. Don’t tell.” Speaking of trends, it has become incumbent upon the writer to use the word “that” only when absolutely necessary. No writing “I wish that I could go.” No, no. Today we write, “I wish I could go.” It may be cleaner, it may be neater, but sometimes I miss my “that.” 

But back to narrative writing. Today a description of something might go on for a paragraph or two, maybe three, and then it’s time to have somebody talk. Rarely are there rambling, run-on sentences about an overhead chandelier, unless, of course, it’s about to drop on somebody’s head and start our mystery going. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule (and YOU may be one of them). P.D. James, for instance, will turn over two, three, or four pages of a chapter to the victim’s study, even describing furniture in great detail. Carolyn Hart starts out the majority of her novels with elaborate details on the wants, needs, and secrets of every character who may be a potential suspect. And these ladies write one dang, fine mystery.

But for many of us, we like to keep the dialog rolling. That means we are extra careful with the words we choose for our characters to say. Every character speaks differently, has different word choices, and a unique rhythm or cadence. The dialog sets up who and what they are. It also helps to separate one character from another, without having to add “she said, he said.” The words in the sentence tell the reader who’s speaking. I have two distinctively different protagonists and the fact they are both women, roughly the same age, and private detectives means little. These two women are as different as a Schlitz Beer and a shaken, not stirred, extra-dry martini.

At 5’11” tall and 185 pounds, Persephone “Percy” Cole lives in lower Manhattan during the 1940s, is divorced, and has an eight-year-old son. World War II looms overhead. Percy is one of the groundbreaking women detectives of the time, lives in a man’s world, and faces that challenge readily. Whoops! Used the word “that.” Dang. Back to Percy. She is a savvy, street-smart woman, who takes boxing lessons and will sometimes punch out a criminal if they ask for it. And maybe if they don’t. She not only uses the colorful language of New York’s 1940s, she is a woman of few words and a lot of action. She uses phrases like, “Oh, yeah? Sez you.”

Enter Liana “Lee” Alvarez, the other protagonist. Lee sparkles in today’s  Palo Alto, California. She is 5’8″ with a dancer’s body, and a face reminiscent of Elizabeth Taylor in her glory days, should anyone be old enough to remember dear Liz. Lee’s now deceased father was a Mexican immigrant who made good, and her mother a blueblood from one of Palo Alto’s first families. Lee’s often torn between who she is, who she should be, and who she wants to be. But she is above all an ace private investigator, albeit in designer clothes, and a credit to the family-owned, Silicon Valley detective agency. Recently married, she has a blackbelt in Karate and can take care of herself. Lee utters things like, “Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but if you’re going to wave a gun in my face, I’m going to take it personally.”

And then, of course, all the family members, side characters, and people I throw in and out, all have their own way of speaking and their own choice of words. From a one-liner to a major character. I can hear them in my head. Like an earworm.

I’ve lost my mind. Again. I have begun a new novel on a subject about which I know absolutely nothing. Zip. Nada. I did it again. Did I not learn my lesson from the last Alvarez Family Mystery, The Drop-Dead Temple of Doom? Apparently not. But that’s a writer for ya. Or at least, that’s me for ya. I get an idea, I embrace it, I love it, it becomes mine, and I’m off and away.

It’s only when I plop myself down at the keyboard and have no idea how to start the first sentence do I realize I am in deep doo-doo. That’s what happened with Drop-Dead. My fingers hovered over the keyboard waiting for words to come to me. They didn’t. I had no idea what a Guatemalan jungle was like. I didn’t know the first thing about archeology. And, truth be told, an ancient Mayan could have risen from the dead, bit me on the knee, and I wouldn’t have had the first clue as to who, what, or why. I left my office and dove headfirst into a martini, the first of many. Ernest Hemingway may have said, “Write drunk, edit sober,” but you gotta know SOMETHING about a subject before you can write about it.

I have to do a little research for all my novels, but I had pushed the limits on this. A Guatemalan jungle? Even though I was born and raised in South Florida and have been to Parrot Jungle, it’s not the same. Archeology? Simply because I’ve streamed “Lost Cities With Albert Lin,” that didn’t mean I knew the first thing about digging anything up other than weeds. And the ancient Mayans? Ditto, ditto, and ditto.

But I had a fire in the belly. I wanted to tap into the real-life story of a young woman who is an Indiana Jones of today. I’ll call her Indiana Josie. She tromps around the jungles of Guatemala uncovering all kinds of wondrous things. And thanks to the development of LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), the exploration of ancient Mayan cultures has exploded. This is truly the golden age of discovery for this remarkable culture.

So began a crash course in not one, not two, but three subjects. As the world was in lockdown from Covid, even if I’d wanted to fly to the jungles of Guatemala for firsthand experience, I couldn’t have. Instead, I bled Indiana Josie dry of any knowledge she could give me. I watched every documentary on archeology, not merely as a spectator, but as a student. I read anything I could find on the ancient Mayan culture, gasping at pictures of their paintings, jewelry, and tombs. I marveled at what they had created, believing as many do, they rival the Egyptians in many ways. Eight months later, while not an expert on any of these subjects, I was able to sit down at the computer and write.

After completing the latest novel in my other series, Hotshot Shamus, Book 4 of the Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries, I now return to the Alvarez series, with Bewitched, Bothered, and Beheaded as the next project. For whatever reason, I decided to write about a magic trick gone wrong, a dead magician, and the protagonist, Lee Alvarez, as the chief suspect. Belly fire returning. No antacids working.

Of course, I find I am in deep doo-doo again. I know nothing about the subject, nothing about magicians or their tricks. Leave it to me to have a misadventure with a guillotine trick front and center, basically starting the story off. Naturally, I can’t write a word until I investigate this. So it’s off to Vegas for a crash course in magic. I recently contacted David Copperfield for an interview. Start at the top, right? Maybe he’ll give me a few tips. If not, I’ll work my way down. I hear there’s a magician, Melvin the Magnificent, performing in a San Jose parking lot. Maybe he’ll talk to me.

Meanwhile, I need to face it. I just never learn.