recovered by Toni L.P. Kelner / Leigh Perry
As I mentioned in a pair of posts in September, the Femmes started out with a very different roster of members. It's not even the same roster as our debut—Mignon Ballard stepped out after that first issue and Teri Holbrook joined us. (Of the Founding Femmes, only Charlaine and I are left.) That's not the only difference between past and present. Back then a blog was a word I only used when I had a cold, as in "my nose is all blogged up." Instead our awesome editor, Megan Bladen-Blinkoff, who would come up with a question which all of us would answer, and we would print and mail the resulting newsletter. This is the second issue of the Femmes, from Spring 1996. I have truncated it because some of the information we included is literally old news. I will mention that it was in this issue that we proudly announced that we could be found on the World Wide Web. (Yeah, that's how we put it.) Unfortunately, AOL site is now defunct.
Welcome to the Second Issue of Femmes Fatales
by Megan Bladen-Blinkoff, Editor
Recently I ran into a friend and her thirteen-year-old daughter at the library as the daughter worked on her first school research paper. It reminded me of my first research paper and the time I spent looking for new mysteries to read instead of researching the assigned topic. This train of thought lead to another: the Femmes Fatales and the importance of research for fiction. Just how much research is necessary for them to commit mayhem and murder?
The Femmes Fatales are Deborah Adams, Susan Rogers Cooper, Charlaine Harris, Teri Holbrook, Toni L.P. Kelner, D.R. Meredith, Marlys Millhiser and Elizabeth Daniels Squire. I hope you enjoy their responses as much as I did.
Elizabeth Daniels Squire
Ex-reporter Elizabeth Daniels Squire has covered murders and horrifying murder trials. Yet her mysteries about an absent-minded sleuth—from Who Killed What's-Her-Name? to Memory Can Be Murder—have an element of humor. When we talked, she reminded me that tragedy and humor come mixed. “Shakespeare included a lot of black humor in Hamlet,” she said, but finished, “Comparisons are odious, particularly between Shakespeare and me.”
God bless librarians, pharmacists, police, lawyers, zoo-keepers, financiers, memory experts and such who help with facts. Nevertheless, my most valuable research on murder comes from life.
For example, my sleuth has to react realistically to death. Recently I came upon a man lying by the side of the road, his face covered with blood. I called 911 on the car phone. While I prayed for the man to live, I did research. I monitored myself. I was three parts curious, one part upset, though the man died as I waited for help. “You are more heartless,” I told myself, “than I would have expected.” Then I talked to a woman I know who found a man murdered in a parked car. “That’s how I reacted,” she said. “Without immediate emotion. It can take a while for horror to sink in.” The next scene where my sleuth finds a body will reflect this insight.
As a fiction writer, I’m two people. One living an experience and another, the researcher, watching. I watch others to see how they react when the same thing happens. I monitor myself in a half-experience, like feeling so mad I could practically kill, and fictionalize that into the whole experience: say, murder with an ax.
No, no, your honor, it wasn’t me. I’m just a writer.
Susan Rogers Cooper
Susan Rogers Cooper, author of nine mystery novels, is a semi-native Texan living in Austin. Recently, I discovered that Susan and her husband of twenty-three years first met one Sunday morning at 4 a.m. What kind of wild life did she have? Both Don and she volunteered at the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift at Houston’s Crisis Hotline. Good deeds can pay off!
Although some people may find this hard to believe, I’m a shy person at heart. I find it difficult to go up to strangers and ask them for information. So, for the first several books, I got my husband, who is by nature anything but shy, to do it for me. Then one fateful day I went to Port Arthur on the Texas coast to do location searches for my book Funny as a Dead Relative. My mother-in-law, from whom my husband gets his shyless ways, was taking me around the perfect location for Paw-Paw’s fishing cabin when she spied a shrimp boat with the captain on board. She yelled, “Hey, there! Can my daughter-in-law talk to you? She's a writer!” and pushed me aboard the boat. That’s when I discovered that people really do like to talk about themselves and what they do. They are more than willing to share information; especially, with someone who’s going to use it in a book.
Since then, I’ve made contact with doctors, lawyers, police personnel, and have even toured the city morgue. Seeing and hearing these things have added depth to my writing; they have given me the edge I need to create more believable characters and places. But, sorry, I can’t talk long on this subject, I have research to do.
Charlaine Harris
Charlaine Harris is responsible for five Aurora Teagarden mysteries. A new series, featuring Lily Bard, will debut in July. Due to the stress of an impending move, she has temporarily turned to writing sword-and-sorcery fantasy. “I needed something that didn't have anything to do with reality—or realty—as I know it,” she confessed to me. As soon as the move is completed, she expects to turn back to mystery writing.
I go at research backwards. (As my friends can testify, this is the way I do most things.) Instead of picking a topic for a book and delving into it so every detail is authentic, I tend to drift into a new enthusiasm, and then work that subject into a book. As a mother of three pre-teens with very little time to spare, this is definitely the approach that works for me. When I wanted to resume my writing career after a five-year hiatus, I decided to work my fascination with true crime into a contemporary mystery. The result was Real Murders, my first Aurora Teagarden mystery, about a basically conservative young Georgia woman with a flair for the bizarre; hence, her membership in a club that studies famous murder cases.
For four tortuous years, I’ve been studying goju karate. For two of those years, I’ve been lifting weights as well. There is no way Aurora would subject herself to such a regimen, so I invented Lily Bard, a woman with a dark past who is only too ready to demonstrate her karate expertise.
Maybe someday I’ll get this procedure turned in the right direction. I’ll tell my publisher my next book simply must be set in the most expensive hotel in France.
Teri Holbrook
Teri Holbrook comes from a long line of Southern women, which explains why she writes murder mysteries. “Actually,” she told me, “I do it for the looks on my aunts’ faces when I tell them I can’t make the UMW meeting—I have to tour the morgue.” Her first novel, A Far and Deadly Cry, was released in August. Teri titled her piece “That Sinking Feeling—Or Why I’m Paranoid About Research!”
I learned the importance of research while writing my first mystery. Since the book was set in an English village, research involved travel, which was unpredictable and costly. Once I was to meet a Hampshire detective, only to arrive in London and find he was on sabbatical in France.
After that, I decided not to return to England until I had sold the book, figuring the nitty-gritty of British police procedure could wait. Ha! A year later, the book was completed with its actions centering around the victim’s funeral. In England for final research, I met with the detective and asked, “How long do you keep the body before releasing it to the family?” He shrugged. “Could be a month, could be a year. Depends on when we make an arrest.” In England, they don’t release the body until the suspect’s legal team conducts its own autopsy—not real convenient for a who-dun-it.
I spent the night on the bathroom floor, preparing to tell my editor the entire novel needed restructuring. Actually, it proved a godsend because I was able to explore a community not allowed to bury its dead. Nevertheless, it’s a painful way to realize the importance of solid, early research. And to discover there are stupider things than setting your first book in a foreign country, but not many.
Marlys Millhiser
Marlys Millhiser is the author of four mysteries featuring Charlie Greene. Life is quite hectic for Marlys these days. Left Coast Crime met on her “turf” (Boulder) in March and she volunteered to help. Plus, she is moving from the house where she has raised two children and written twelve books. According to Marlys, the new house has a wonderful view of Boulder and a special room for writing murder!
Two degrees in history and 20 hours toward a doctorate tell me the importance of research. Reading tells me you can have too much expertise—not every lawyer is a good storyteller. The fourth Charlie Greene mystery is set in Boulder where I’ve lived most of my adult life. For the earlier books, I walked Oregon’s beaches, drove California’s freeways, and endured rigorous camping trips to Utah’s Canyonlands. The results met with astonishment from writers and readers who lived there and from editors who never had. These places were so fresh; I noted the most telling details in my on-site research. But when I wrote about Boulder, I knew too many details too well and some so intimately that I no longer even noticed them.
I subscribe to newspapers and go places before Charlie gets there. Forensic specialists and police are eager to share their experiences. There are always the gory technical books with photographs. There are the internet and the telephone. But the best research comes from listening and watching people. The biggest mystery to me has always been how anyone could be so desperate or so cold as to commit the act of murder. And that’s where the story is.
Deborah Adams
Deborah Adams’ latest Jesus Creek mystery is All The Deadly Beloved, in which police chief Reb Gassler is the featured protagonist. Deborah said she enjoyed writing from the male perspective, but it has caused problems at home. She can no longer sit through an entire television program, as she feels an overwhelming urge to take command of the remote control and channel surf! Unfortunately, her son and husband are unwilling to relinquish it to her.
You know, I once tossed a book across the room because a character was supposed to be Southern and she kept calling individuals “y’all.” We’re writers and can’t possibly become experts in every field we write about, but wouldn’t you think this author could have researched something as basic as the word y’all? I took this lesson to heart, and have tried very hard to get all the facts straight in my stories. I frightened my attorney’s secretary when I called and asked, “Is it okay to pull the murder weapon out of the body before the coroner gets there?” My office shelves contain trial transcripts, Officer on the Scene reports, autopsy records (color photos included!), and the requisite library of gruesome tomes about the sickest most disgusting murders on record. Once my small son asked me, “Mom, why do you read this stuff?”
Good question. And the answer is: If I can’t be bothered to put that extra effort into getting the facts straight, why should anyone bother to read my books? However much I embarrass myself while doing research, it’s worth it to know that some people enjoy my work.
Toni L.P. Kelner
Toni L.P. Kelner, creator of the Laura Fleming mysteries, started by writing computer software documentation. She says this was excellent training for mystery writing. The products were always mysterious, the programmers she went to for clues gave evasive and incorrect answers, and the resulting manuals were frequently fiction. When she quit technical writing to write mysteries, she hoped to leave research chores behind. Instead she found herself needing a new style of research.
I used to think I didn’t need research for an amateur sleuth. My protagonist Laura Fleming comes from a fictional small town near Hickory, NC—my folks are in a real one. Wasn’t that enough?
Not hardly. In Down Home Murder, Laura flies into the Hickory airport. Does Hickory have an airport? Then she goes to the hospital. It’d been a coon’s age since I’d been to that hospital—was it the same as I remembered? Come to think of it, was “coon’s age” the right expression? I thought that Laura’s Southernisms would be easy because I've been told my own speech is right colorful. But I hadn’t heard some expressions in years. Was it “coon’s age” or “goon’s age?” “Bust a gullet” or “bust a gusset?” Was I using genuine Southernisms at all, or did my mama make them up, like my husband suspected? Fortunately, there are resources to answer such questions. Now I’ve got books like Having It Y’all, The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and Whistlin’ Dixie. But I only use them if I have to. Just like Laura goes to an aunt or cousin for clues, I’d rather ask somebody. And my best source is my big sister Robin Schnabel.
Robin knew about the airport and the hospital, and that it’s “coon’s age” and “bust a gusset.” That’s research Southern style: using my family!
D.R. Meredith
D.R. Meredith admits to living two lives—one as an ordinary wife and mother of two college students, and the other as a paid killer. After routine domestic chores are done Doris sits down at her computer and commits murder. She has done a good job at this murder business—her “Sheriff” series has won two Oppie Awards and her John Lloyd Branson series has received two Anthony nominations.
I have never murdered anybody. I’ve never even seriously considered murdering anyone despite knowing a number of potential victims I wouldn’t mourn if I read their names the obituaries. But not being a murderer has not been a disadvantage to me as a mystery writer. There are ways around lack of experience if one knows the right people—and I do. My husband is a felony prosecutor who reads my manuscripts and corrects errors in criminal investigation and legal procedure. The members of the Special Crimes Unit share stories of Texas Panhandle murder and mayhem. Evidence technicians tell me exactly how Schoder and Jenner or Sheriff Matthews might gather physical evidence or reconstruct a crime scene. Vice cops shared war stories when I was researching Murder by Masquerade and needed to learn about prostitution on Amarillo Boulevard. (I learned twenty-seven different names for a prostitute before I stopped counting.) I write fiction—but it’s believable fiction, at least to the cops, lawyers, and judges who are among my fans. And no courtroom scene I ever wrote, including the one in Murder by Deception, is as fantastic as real life. If I had written the O.J. Simpson trial, would you have believed me?