Creating a Protagonist by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 4 Comments

When I was creating the protagonist for my Alvarez Family Murder Mystery Series, Lee Alvarez, I made some pretty radical decisions. Mainly, I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to have someone who was snarky, who didn’t get along with anybody, especially her family, and only had one black skirt tucked away in the back of her closet. I wanted her to be a more outgoing, positive person. Also, I wanted a definite ethnicity. Lee’s mother, a Palo Alto blueblood, fell in love with and married a Mexican immigrant. Thus their children, Lee, and her brother, Richard, are Mexican-American. I am Italian-American. Many of us are a blend. It’s the great American way and I love it.

I particularly wanted to have a central character that was identifiable but different, off-kilter, and likable. Lee Alvarez isn’t your typical protagonist. Yes, she’s in her mid-thirties and once divorced. But she’s now remarried to a handsome, retired Navy SEAL, because I am from the school of thought that believes a woman CAN have it all. At least, in my books. Lee’s smart, talented, and loves dancing, handbags, and a good joke. She knows her own worth but has her moments of self-doubts. They seem to hit her when least expected, often like they hit the rest of us. Every day, as she chases down a suspect, she strives to be a B&BP (bigger and better person), knowing full-well nobody’s perfect. Except maybe her mother, Lila Hamilton-Alvarez, who’s never had a bad hair day in her life. And try living in that designer-clad woman’s shadow.

Lee reads Dashiell Hammett detective stories and watches old black and white movies on TV while searching the web. She loves peanuts and a good, classic martini i.e., gin, vermouth, orange bitters and 3 olives served icy cold, straight up, please. I’ve created a real, today kind of PI, California-honed, who’s educated but has her moments of stupidity. I can absolutely relate to her.

Much to her mother’s horror, Lee likes to shop at consignment stores and wear sweat clothes around the house. She also has a bit of a crush on the late Humphrey Bogart because you may be dead, but you can still be great in Lee’s book. Her character traits are unique, her relationships with her family quirky, but real and, I hope, well-crafted. After all, a murder mystery should be a well-written novel that just happens to have a dead body or two in it done in by an unknown assailant.

Developing the plot is different for me. I have no idea where that will come from. For instance, the second book of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, A Wedding to Die For, came about after reading a story – so bazaar I could hardly believe it was true – in National Geographic. Sixty-plus members of an Egyptian Family were arrested for pilfering from a lesser known Egyptian king’s tomb and had been doing so for generations!

This extended family would take one article, sell it on the black market, and spread the wealth among themselves, leading to better education and opportunities. After several decades, many of them came into positions of importance, in museums and customs, thereby ensuring even greater success. They were caught after years of staying below the radar, when one of them got greedy and substituted a fake for a real antiquity in a museum at which he was the assistant curator. It blew the whole thing wide open. I was mesmerized by this story! I transferred this renegade family to Mexico, threw in a wedding gone awry, a falsely accused groom from the States, and was off and away! It was a lot of fun.

But at the heart of all the stories is my protagonist and her familial relationships. They are all in all. And thankfully, most of my readers like to see what’s going on between Lee and her kith and kin. They like the fact that nobody is deliberately mean, that they try to do right by one other, and they genuinely enjoy being in their own company. I like that, too. Let’s face it. Life’s too short for all this harboring of ill will. Even in fiction.

The Not-So-Distant Past

~ Janet Dawson ~ 3 Comments

Left Coast Crime 2022 is coming up in Albuquerque, and I’m on a panel called “20th Century Historicals.”

A historical novel is defined as one that has “its setting in a period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic detail and fidelity which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to historical fact.”

Another definition, from the Historical Novel Society, says a historical novel is one set fifty or more years in the past. I moderated a similar panel at an earlier LCC, and one of my panelists had written a mystery set in 1967. That was sobering. I graduated from high school in 1967.

I write a series of historical mysteries featuring Jill McLeod, who is a Zephyrette, or train hostess, working onboard the California Zephyr, a historic train that ran during the 1949-1970 time period. The first book, Death Rides the Zephyr, takes place in December 1952, with subsequent books set in 1953.

Since I’m old enough to have graduated from high school in the sixties, I was certainly alive in the early 1950s. But I was a kid. What I remember is a mixed bag—Captain Kangaroo and Miss Frances and the Ding Dong School on television. I figured out that the days were getting longer in the spring when I realized that it was still light outside when I tuned in to The Mickey Mouse Club.

Ike was president. I don’t remember much about the Red Scare, the McCarthy hearings, and the Rosenbergs. My school was segregated. So were the downtown department stores. I remember seeing signs for segregated rest rooms and water fountains.

In The Ghost in Roomette Four, there’s a scene where Jill and her sister are cleaning up the kitchen after a family dinner. Were they doing those dishes by hand? Or did the McLeod family have a dishwasher? When I was growing up, we did have a dishwasher. But that was later in the Fifties and my dad sold appliances.

That’s when I turn to the Internet. Off I went to my search engine, to find out when dishwasher hit the market. I was surprised to learn that the appliance was available in the Thirties.

An example of what happens when 21st century assumptions bump up against writing 20th century historicals? When I was researching Death Rides the Zephyr. I was fortunate to discover two retired Zephyrettes living near me. One evening, I bought them dinner and listened to them talk for over two hours. I asked what the onboard crew of the California Zephyr would have done if they’d found a dead body in a Pullman car, which is what happens to Jill, my Zephyrette protagonist. Would they radio ahead to the next station to contact the authorities?

The Zephyrette who had been riding the rails in the early Fifties shook her head. Back then they could radio from car to car, but not as far as a station or a town. No, the engineer would stop the train, the brakeman would climb a telegraph pole, and send a Morse code message to the next station.

That’s how it was done way back when. Of course, that went into the book. It made the telling more accurate and certainly added layers to the isolation of a train deep in a remote mountain canyon.

If you are attending Left Coast Crime in Albuquerque, check out my panel. It’s schedule on Thursday, April  7, at 1:15 PM on Thursday, April 7. The panel is moderated by Susan McDuffie, and fellow panelists are Michael Kurland and Rosemary Lord.

Guest Blogger – Judy Willmore

~ patyjag ~ 2 Comments

I am a history buff, and years ago I stumbled on the Affair of the Poisons: in the 17th century poison and witchcraft permeated the court of Louis XIV. I was fascinated: did Louis’ mistress have a black mass celebrated over her beautiful naked body? Historians have been arguing over that for years. The tempestuous marquise was certainly no angel, and she was competing with every pretty face at court for Louis’ wandering eye. When the King learned about poison and witchcraft at court, he appointed Lieutenant-General of Police Nicolas de La Reynie to investigate. Soon, suspects were pointing their grimy fingers at the marquise—but how do you arrest the King’s mistress?

My varied background helped me figure it all out: I have a MS in Clinical Psychology and a former career as a private investigator, plus I am a practicing astrologer. I devoured stacks of trial transcripts, diaries and letters, focusing on the marquise and La Reynie, the first modern police officer, who uncovered a massive ring of poisoners and con artists. These so-called “witches” were nothing like “wise women” or today’s Wicca: they lured in gullible clients with promises of love spells, then advised them how to get rid of a troublesome spouse—with poison. The suspects claimed the marquise was a client of the witch La Voisin, burned at the stake. Worse, she was linked to the infamous black mass.

But she wasn’t the only one. Several noblewomen also got caught up in the scandal, and like the desperate marquise, they were all trapped: prisoners of their fathers, brothers, husbands. Disobey, and you might find yourself locked up in a convent. The noblemen too could not leave Versailles and the King’s presence, or they would risk losing any chance of advancement. In my book, the courtiers compare their existence with the creatures trapped in the Versailles menagerie, with His Majesty as the gamekeeper dispensing both discipline and rewards. Desperate, they resorted to fortunetellers and purveyors of poison.

The suspects whispered of a criminal mastermind behind the poisons, and even a plot to kill the marquise. What really happened? To fill in the blanks I needed to create a fictional character, someone wide-eyed and innocent; so along came Sylvie, a young embroiderer. She went to work in the household of a prime suspect, and the gates of the Versailles menagerie clanged shut behind her.

I am now working on a sequel to The Menagerie set in Les Gobelins, the manufactory that made Versailles’ tapestries. The artisans were Huguenots, Protestants faced with either converting at sword point or leaving—and leaving was illegal.

FranÇoise-AthÉnaÏs de Rochechouart de Mortemart had to have Louis, King of France, but his other mistresses stood in the way. Then she meets the very helpful sorceress and AthÉnaÏs gets her wish. But soon Louis hears tales of witchcraft and poison, a conspiracy spreading through his court—like the beasts in the Versailles menagerie, courtesans are clawing their way to his favor, and his bed. He orders Lieutenant General of Police Gabriel-Nicolas de la Reynie to investigate. Mysterious deaths mount while La Reynie presses on, hauling in witches, charlatans, and the nobility alike. Grimy fingers point to AthÉnaÏs, the King’s mistress, with whispers of a black mass celebrated over her naked body. Then La Reynie discovers a plot to kill her.

Buy link: https://smile.amazon.com/Menagerie-Passion-Power-Poison-Court-ebook/dp/B08XQXMG6Q

Judy Willmore is a former journalist, then private investigator, and now a psychotherapist who practices in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her historical mystery The Menagerie was published in 2021 by Artemesia Press, and she is now working on a sequel.

https://www.facebook.com/JudyWillmoreAuthor

https://judywillmoreauthor.com/

SAYING GOODBYE TO ROCKY BLUFF

~ marilynm ~ 5 Comments

Rocky Bluff, California is not a real place, but it has been alive and active through sixteen Rocky Bluff P.D. mysteries with one more yet to come. The fictional beach town is much like the one I lived in many years ago although located a little farther up the coast. It seems quite real to me.

The decision to end the series came to me while I was writing the newest, now with my editor. My reasons to do this are many.

First, I’m up there in years, and much slower in so many ways.

Second, policing has changed so much since I first started writing this series. I’ve been fortunate to have many persons to call upon for research, starting with my now deceased police officer son-in-law, plus the wonderful members of the Public Safety Writers Association who’ve always answered my questions.

Third, though I’ve always had my police department be understaffed and underfunded and using the nearest big city for many of their needs such as the coroner, forensics etc., it limited much of what I could include in a plot.

Fourth, I’ve been reading some of the big name author’s police procedurals and I feel like I’m not up to addressing the modern day issues for police officers in the outstanding way they’re doing.

As I was writing this last RBPD, I decided to tie up some loose ends for some of my characters, part of why I came to my decision to end the series.

No, I’m not giving up writing. I love to write and I can’t imagine not having a writing project. I’ve got some ideas for a new Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery floating around in my imagination. (I truly thought I’d ended that series with End of the Trail but ended up writing The Trash Harem.)  I’m also considering writing a young adult mystery set during WWII—and yes, I will use a lot of my memories of what it was like to be growing up during that time period.

I’d like to hear from other authors who’ve decided to end a series, and how they felt about it.

Marilyn

Typos and the rest of it

~ susanoleksiw ~ 2 Comments

I’ve read several posts lately about the carelessness of authors and editors today, with typos and other errors missed, often to the point of driving the reader to dump the book for something else to read. I too notice the misspellings, confusion of names, missing words, and other slips in the text. And I too have learned to read right past them. No text is going to be perfect, and holding the writer to a strict standard of three or five errors misses the point of reading fiction or any other prose. I cringe just as much as any other writer when I come across a goof in what I’ve written, and for self-serving reasons I argue that it doesn’t hurt to be generous as a reader. That said, I have another perspective that hovers in the back of my mind.

The rate of error for any human endeavor is two percent. I first learned this in the library at the University of Pennsylvania when I occasionally thought I’d come across an error in the card catalogue (remember those?). A librarian, skeptical, mentioned that figure while examining the card in question one day, found it correct, and explained why I might have thought its location to be inaccurate. Two percent sounds minuscule, but in a collection of twenty-two million items, such as at the Boston Public Library, that means 440,000 could harbor an error. That’s not a negligible number even though it’s only two percent.

I think of this percentage when I come across an error in a printed book. In a novel of 80,000 words, the reader could expect to encounter 1,600 typos or other mistakes. That’s a lot of goofs in a typical book, and I’m guessing most of us would be too disgusted to continue reading past the first dozen.

There’s a reason we’ve come to expect a nearly perfect text. Over the decades, publishers have trained us to expect a clean page, and they achieved this with a battery of experts. Writers turned in a type-written, or sometimes a handwritten, manuscript, which then went to a content editor, next to a line editor, and finally to a copy editor. At each stage the writer reviewed the work. The text was then sent to a compositor who put words into type, and don’t think the compositor wasn’t also sometimes reading, noting what he was seeing. But once the text was set, it was printed, went into galleys, and was sent to at least one proofreader as well as the writer. Think of the number of trained people reading the novel, catching those 1,600 slips, saving the writer from embarrassment. (And consider this: many publishers charged for the correction of errors in proofs after the first ten or twenty. That may explain why some nonfiction books were riddled with errors in earlier decades.)

Most of those people don’t exist today, and if they do, they’re probably working in very specialized areas where accuracy counts more. Think of chemistry, mathematics, and other technical subjects.

I think of these things when I’m reading along and trip over a missing word or letter. Occasionally I think about writing the author so she or he can make a change in the next iteration, but I don’t do it. Instead I marvel at how proficient we’ve become at catching these little stumblers, and how clean our texts are now. We demand a lot of writers today, and for the most part we writers deliver a clean, readable narrative with few flaws to make a reader feel brilliant for catching the slip or smug that she or he never made that one. At least, we haven’t yet. Every time I catch an error in whatever I’m reading, I remember to be humble. That could be me next time.