Defining Features of a Series

A successful mystery series is a package of several features: recurring characters, vivid setting, titles,

and types of stories. We followed Miss Jane Marple through a number of villages and stately homes while she chatted with the vicar, a spinster, a young married couple, a colonel back from the colonies, and more of the same. Christie’s titles for all her books varied but she did have a series of nursery rhyme titles, most of which featured Poirot.

Peter Lovesey introduced Sergeant Cribb in a series of historical mysteries that introduced the reader to fads and facts of the late nineteenth century, such as indoor pedestrian races, bare-knuckle fighting, and music halls. The world of the contemporary sleuth Superintendent Peter Diamond is different. Lovesey sets the series in and around Bath, and draws in references to Jane Austen and other literary figures, in contrast to his detective Diamond, who alienates just about everybody, drinks too much, and dislikes the way technology is taking over old-fashioned police work.

These are the kinds of mysteries I read avidly and the ones that come to mind when I wanted to start a new series, after the Mellingham series set in New England. I already had some of this material published in short stories and thought a lot about setting, titles, and plots.

I had a recurring character, Anita Ray, an Indian American photographer living in India at her aunt’s hotel, who had already appeared in a number of short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Level Best Books anthologies. The setting would remain South India, along the coast, and the tone would be mostly light with examination of some serious issues along the way.

The setting, in and around Auntie Meena’s hotel, meant some of the recurring characters would be hotel workers with problems of their own, conveniently, and other workers at the resort. But setting also becomes a character in that it becomes a place the readers know well. To help with this part of the series I have two maps, one of the hotel and the rooms on each floor and a second one of the resort area, with lanes and other hotels indicated briefly.

One way to reinforce the boundaries of the series is through titles. The Sherlock Holmes short stories often begin with “The Adventure of . . . ” and the Inspector Ghote mysteries by H.R.F. Keating often have the detective’s name in the title, such as Inspector Ghote Hunts the Peacock.

For the Anita Ray series I decided to use a phrase with a Hindu name, either of a deity or figure from mythology, in every title.  The first in the series is Under the Eye of Kali, followed by The Wrath of Shiva and For the Love of Parvati. Each title indicates setting and something of the nature of the story. My work in progress is titled When Krishna Calls.

The setting of a hotel and Anita’s photography gallery ensure that a wide variety of people will walk into the series—foreigners and Indians alike. And Anita’s membership in an Indian family means she has a large number of relatives spread throughout the state and the country, if necessary, for the story line.

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine March 2015

I began this year, 2015, with good intentions of posting a blog every Monday and writing and publishing four short stories. I wish I could say that I’m on track, with the arrival last week of the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. This issue contains an Anita Ray story, “Perfect in Every Way,” but the story was written and accepted some time ago. Still, the issue arrived, with my name on the cover, which is always a thrill. As always, I settled in to read the issue through. So, while I can’t say I’ve achieved one of my goals in relation to short fiction, I have achieved another one—posting every Monday (or perhaps Tuesday).

I love AHMM for the variety of work I find here. The March 2015 issue opens with “Pill Bug,” by Joseph S. Walker, a story about two soldiers discharged after Korea looking for work. They get jobs as extras in a low-budget science fiction movie. Nelson is glad to have the work, and Kellner follows along because Nelson keeps him stable, taking his pills and staying out of trouble. This story had so many twists I had to read the last few pages three times—worth it every time.

In “A Joy Forever” by B.K. Stevens, the story switches from the wife’s fantasy of a happy marriage to her husband’s when he marries a woman who, under pressure, finally learns to cook. In “The Woman in Brown” by Tony Richards, a young man in 1959 encounters an apparition or a real person—he can’t be certain—crossing an empty park in the fog. She seems to be imploring him for help. The image haunts him but he can find no answer to the riddle, and moves on.

In “The Color of Gold,” Donald Moffitt takes us to the seas around Borneo and other parts of Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century, letting us sail with all the marginal characters of that time and life. People rise and fall very fast. In “Blueprint,” J.A. Moser gives us a writer with a diabolical turn of mind.

The mystery classic is “Red Dot,” by Samuel Hopkins Adams, featuring Average Jones, and originally published in 1911. The writer is new to me, and I’m glad to come across the story.

Jones is intrigued by the announcement of a reward, posted in a newspaper. That got me thinking about the role newspapers played in mysteries in the years up to World War II. One title that comes immediately to mind is A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie. Somehow I don’t see an announcement on FB as having quite the same impact as one in a newspaper read by thousands.

Bad Manners for Good Stories

Long before I was married my parents and I were having dinner in a cafe in Geneva. Across the room from us was a young couple. The husband had pushed his chair back from the table and held a newspaper opened in his lap. The woman with him gazed around the small room at the other diners. My mother leaned over to me and said, "They're married."

I supposed then she was commenting on how married people stop having a lot to say to each other over meals though they continue to love and support each other. But as I look back on that scene, still vivid, I wonder if the woman at the other table was a writer or an artist, someone who collected images for her artwork.

The advent of the cell phone and the consequent change in manners that allow people to stare at their phones while ignoring the person or persons sitting opposite them at a dining table has been a god-send for artists and writers, at least for this writer. Until recently it was considered rude to stare at strangers. It may still be considered rude, but the strangers don't know I'm staring at them because they're staring at their phones.

At a recent lunch in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, my husband contemplated his meal and his cell and I contemplated the other diners. Sometimes I go through the day collecting images of one item or another--rust spots on cards, trash blowing in a street, dog leashes, and the like. This time I collected images of men carrying trays. There are numerous ways to carry a tray--one-handed at an angle; two-handed at waist level; with arms extended and the tray at mid chest; two handed along the long side; two-handed almost at chin level, with the chin thrust forward; and tray held tight against the waist with the shoulders forward.

Equally interesting, to me, were three young women friends eating together. They might have been related because they had similar bone structures but I was caught by their hair. Some writers leave out physical description, or describe their characters in such similar, vague terms that no character is distinct from another. But these three women belonged in a story together. One had long, light brown wavy hair; the next had curly darker hair a little shorter; and the third had almost black hair with tight curls lying flat to her head. I could study each one because all three were staring at their cells.

Near me sat two women of a certain age with similar reddish hair but very different bone structures. One wore a great deal of makeup and the other wore none, and both women were doting on a little girl who must have been someone's granddaughter. A third woman, apparently the girl's mother, also had reddish hair but looked nothing like the other three. They all had cells.

Instead of bemoaning the creeping tendency of technology to disrupt personal interaction, I welcome cell phones in restaurants and other places for liberating me to stare at people to gather what I need for my characters and stories. I no longer have to stare surreptitiously, apologize, or pretend I didn't realize what I was doing. And on top of all that, I can write it down and no one notices.

A little nostalgia--very little

I buy a lot of books second hand, on the Internet or at yard sales or library sales. I don’t worry about the condition as long as all the pages are there. I was about to add “and as long as they are clean,” but that’s not entirely true.

Recently I was riveted by the entries in The Best American Crime Reporting 2007, edited by Linda Fairstein. After the first entry, by Tom Junod, about the deaths in nursing homes and hospitals after flooding from Hurricane Katrina, I told everyone about the injustice being done to the only two people indicted in the deaths of the elderly or disabled during the flood. As I read on, my respect and admiration grew. That’s when I noted that the dirt on the front cover probably could be washed off. I applied a warm sponge, and washed the cover. I did this a couple of times.

I’m not a clean freak, but I do love books. Once upon a time writing and reading meant not only holding an object in your hands but also caring for it. We taped a small tear in a dust jacket, glued in pages that had fallen out from repeated use, washed covers of paperbacks or hard covers of dictionaries. Now we just read a forever perfect copy on the computer.

For those of a certain age, learning how to iron the pages of your manuscript so you could send it out repeatedly without retyping it was an important step in your career. If a mss was typed perfectly, without a single typo, misaligned page, or missing header, you wanted to keep it and use it as many times as possible. Ironing pages was a necessary skill.

I once received in the mail the return of a mss I was confident would be accepted for publication. All the pages curled up in the lower right-hand corner, a sure sign that several people had read it. But the thumb prints left on the paper meant I couldn’t reuse the front page. No amount of ironing could save the mss unless I could erase the prints.

Yes, those days are gone, and I’m just as glad as anyone else. But I wonder if we have lost something in not having to exercise special care with a book or manuscript.

When a story comes alive

One of the favorite discussions among writers on a mystery panel is the question of how we write. Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you work out the details of the story beforehand, sketching out the details scene by scene, or do you begin writing and discover the story as you go along? We compare notes, laugh at each other's stumbling ways, and talk about revising and editing. This question seems to get at the core of how writers view creativity but for me there is another question, one that is equally if not more important. When does the story feel alive?

I don't know how to explain this question, or even the answer. Some writers will not even recognize it as a relevant question because the story is alive to them when they begin writing. By this question, however, I don't mean the coherence, atmosphere, or flow of the story. These are merely qualities of the "aliveness," and can exist independently of it.

The Mellingham mysteries featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva are traditional stories of small-town crime and detection. The first novel took several chapters and rewrites to cohere, but the third mystery came alive before I even started writing. I could barely keep up with it.

It took me several tries of mysteries set in India, and half a short story, before Anita Ray came alive to me. And since that short story she has been unfailingly consistent as a character, as has her Auntie Meena and their environment.

At present I'm working on a mystery about a woman living in a farm community. She is something of a mystic though she would never call herself that. The world she lives in, a rural backwater populated by people whose incomes are dependent on two or three jobs and small farms passed down through generations, is familiar to me. As I wrote, the story moved along as I wanted it to. But halfway through the first major revision, I found something more happening, and the story was alive. Felicity Obrien is real, and her world is real. In ways I don't quite understand this changes how the novel will develop. Felicity has taken over, and now I have to follow her.

This is an exciting moment for a writer. The development of the story seems less mechanical, the characters less created and more discovered. I've read and enjoyed plenty of stories that are competent, clever, and satisfying, but I also recognize that they are throughout only stories. And then there are those in which something more is happening. That's what I hope to achieve in my stories. Sometimes I think I do achieve it, and others I know I don't. Nevertheless, this quality of aliveness remains a clear if elusive goal for all of us who write, and a remarkable feeling when it is met.

 The setting of the mystery is a town I've called West Woodbury, where I set another, non-criminous story. "Love Takes a Detour" tells the story of a woman named Zellie who lives on a remote farm, an isolated life that satisfies her until an unexpected event reminds her of the world she left behind. Zellie is a swamp Yankee, a character that has all but faded from New England and current life. This story was alive and vivid from the moment I conceived it. As I write now about Felicity Obrien I feel the same quality of the richness of a real life, and I hope I will capture all of that for readers to enjoy.

Why I Will Never Be a Food Writer

A few years ago I had the pleasure of listening to Madhur Jaffrey speak. Jaffrey is the well-known writer of Indian cookbooks, and her first, from 1973, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, is considered a classic among those of us who love Indian food. She had recently published her memoir, Climbing the

Mango Trees, and I was eager to hear her speak. Her talk covered stories from her book but one thing stood out. When she described her first taste of something, I could taste it too. Her descriptions of meals in her childhood home covered every aspect, from the smallest arrangement of eggs on a plate to the proper presentation of salt and jams. After reading her memoir I scurried to the kitchen to make one of her recipes. She is popular as a cookbook author partly because she understands how a western kitchen works, and what constitutes a meal in the West.

In my most recent Anita Ray mystery novel I thought about including a description of a favorite taste, or an experience of discovering a delicious food, but when I began to write I knew I would never be a food writer or critic. When I was a teenager I took a tour to Europe and one day, famished from walking all over Copenhagen alone and impatient for a dinner that was yet several hours away, I stopped at a small cafe and ordered a cup of tea and read the menu. The waiter brought bread and butter, and I took a piece, something akin to a baguette, and slathered on the butter. I had homemade butter as a child on a farm but this taste was entirely new. I can't describe it but I can describe the amusement the waiter exhibited when I showed up the next day, with a friend, and we ordered bread and butter. The taste has faded but the scene is vivid.

A few years ago I traveled to Kanya Kumari, at the southern tip of India, to be blessed by water where three oceans meet. This is a tourist site of long standing, with little glamour to be found anywhere. My two friends, both elderly Indian women who spoke little or no English, and I stopped at a cafe for lunch. Without them I wouldn't have dared eat anything prepared there, but Lakshmee insisted and we sat down. The waiter ignored me, gave menus to my friends, and proceeded to ask them for their order. Lakshmee was furious at my being ignored but I understood this was the silent protest of the Tamil sick of foreigners invading his land. He brought our dosas and chutney and to this day that is the best coconut chutney I have ever had. No other version has ever come close. The memory is almost--almost--overwhelmed by the story of the waiter.

As a writer I'm alert to the world around me, always ready to see an image that will enrich a story setting, or a line of dialogue that will nail a character perfectly. Fragrances capture me easily and immediately, but I cannot write of any of these without also telling the story of how they came to me. In her memoir, it's clear that the experience of the meals and food is the story of Madhur Jaffrey's life, as it can never be of mine. I will never be a food writer or critic but I will certainly have experiences around food that will enrich my fiction.

Perseverance, with an Example

Every writer, myself included, has given others some of the standard advice. Write what you know (or some version of that statement), and never give up. Keep going no matter the obstacles. Persevere, persevere, persevere. And every writer who has ever published anything will nod her head knowingly. On this wet and windy Monday morning I offer an example of that advice.

Dorothy Stephens is a freelance writer who published her first novel, for the YA audience, at the age of ninety. Someone who knows her has to tell you she's ninety because otherwise you wouldn't believe it. That aside, her novel, A Door Just Opened, is set in rural America in 1910. The story takes us into the life of thirteen-year-old Anna, who longs to escape the world of the farm and attend high school. But there is no money to send her to school, her mother needs her on the farm, and soon her older sister, Mary Ellen, brings a complication that threatens to sink the family. Based on a family story, the book was published by Fire and Ice, a young adult imprint of Melange Books, LLC.

I first met Dorothy through a friend, another writer, who steered me to Dorothy's memoir, Kwa Heri Means Goodbye: Memories of Kenya 1957-1959. The memoir was a finalist for the 1996 Bakeless Prize in Nonfiction, 1993, given by Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Dorothy's memoir is a reminder of how much the world has changed as well as how free we Americans once were when traveling abroad.

I'm writing about this here, today, not only because I admire Dorothy and enjoy her work but also as a reminder to me to look beyond immediate circumstances.

Over the last several weeks I have been dealing with a family illness, and as focused as I have been on this my mind has occasionally wandered into more selfish terrain, where I have the shocking, nearly debilitating thought that I will never write again, that I've lost my place in the pantheon of midlist writers, and, yes, that I'm drowning in melodrama.

I'm not terribly good at selfless acts, and I never fully ascribed to the idea that you "go where life takes you," as though I were in a canoe without a paddle--and without hands. But those moments pass, and at the end of it all, as things start to improve, I forget the selfish thoughts, congratulate the patient on such a strong recovery, and sit down at my desk, once again trying to figure out how to solve a murder I set up before I had a solution. Very short sighted of me, I know, but apparently typical.

Dorothy Stephens is a delightful person and an accomplished writer, and, at the very least, a sobering reminder of the importance of taking the long view and persevering all the way.