Katy, Chaz, and the Dead Detective

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Katy Munger has been absent from the mystery world for several years, but she’s returned with two 2009 novels: Desolate Angel, the July debut of the Dead Detective series written under the pseudonym Chaz McGee, and Bad Moon on the Rise, a new mystery in the Casey Jones series that is due out in September. Katy is also the author of the Hubbert & Lil series, written as Gallagher Gray.

Katy was raised in Raleigh, NC, and describes her childhood as “a crazy, chaotic parade of odd people moving in and out of our house on their way to and from all corners of the world” that taught her to “appreciate the insane diversity of the human species.” She became the black sheep of her bohemian family when she moved to New York City to work on Wall Street. After 16 years, she returned to North Carolina, where she has lived for the last 11 years. She divides her time between her daughter Zuzu and their cats and dogs, fiction writing, business writing, political volunteer work, and fishing. Visit her website at www.katymunger.com for more information about her books and her appearance schedule.

Q. After keeping up a hectic schedule for years, you took a break from writing fiction. Did you have any qualms about letting some time go by without a new novel – or about jumping back into a demanding round of promotion with not just one but two new books?

A. I took a break for two reasons really: too many family responsibilities and disenchantment with the world of publishing. My family duties eased a lot as my daughter grew older so, for the last three or four years, I actually have been writing a number of different books and trying out new voices. I probably could have returned a few years earlier but still needed more of a break to re-align my attitude about writing as a business and find the joy in it again. So, by the time I did jump back in this year, no qualms were left! I am worried about the time needed to conduct enough promotion, though – it’s just not there. And self-promotion is really not effective unless you can put ALL of your time into it. So I have reconciled myself to building the Chaz McGee series by word of mouth, more slowly. And that’s okay with me!

Q. How did you come up with the concept of a dead detective who must solve the cases he mishandled in life before he can rest in peace? Did the character come to you fully formed, or did he develop as you wrote the story?

A. Kevin Fahey, the dead detective, came to me as my first and only “Aha!” moment of my writing career. All of my other books emerged as a sort of ensemble vision, i.e., envisioning how different characters would interact. But he came to me on the verge of sleep one morning, and I got my butt out of bed and wrote down the concept quick before I forgot it! I had been reading a lot about Buddhism at the time — a standing joke among my friends was that I had my own brand of “in your face Buddhism,” which is, of course, a contradiction — and somehow it intertwined with my love of more hardboiled novels and I came up with a hybrid! As I wrote the book, I found the core of him and he developed beyond a melancholy loner into someone with wisdom to impart.

Q. Desolate Angel is different from anything you’ve written before – a lyrical, melancholy style (although not without touches of humor), and a wrenchingly emotional story. Do you feel that you used a different set of writing muscles on this book and explored new territory?

A. I think I have become a totally different person over the past ten years, and developed a whole new set of writing muscles, and that is what long-time readers of mine will pick up on when reading Desolate Angel. First, having a child and confronting my own childhood memories deepened me emotionally and made me more forgiving. Secondly, I have faced a lot of lifelong patterns of mine squarely in the eye and worked through them in the past decade. It’s left me more thoughtful, less angry and more open to accepting the flaws in others but without blinding myself completely to them. All of that probably comes through. I still have a bawdy side, thank god, and my new Casey Jones, Bad Moon on the Rise, proves it. That comes out in September.

Q. The belief in ghosts is ancient, and there have been countless tales of restless spirits unable to leave the world behind and find peace. Do you believe the dead are still among us? Did you research various concepts of existence after death, or accounts of hauntings, before you wrote Desolate Angel?

A. Yes, I absolutely believe that parts of the dead linger among us. What parts I do not know, and I do not feel a need to pinpoint that beyond imagining. I am happy to accept that the essence of humans, some vestige of their being, can linger and that it is possible to learn from these vestiges if you are open to them. We have never been able to pinpoint what that indefinable spark of life is – how a bag of chemicals, essentially, which is what our bodies are, can be alive one moment and dead the next. What changed? I think there are planes of existence we aren’t meant to know about until we arrive in them. But I am quite content with this plane, so maybe that is why I don’t have the burning curiosity to prove life after death that others do. I don’t need to prove it; I just know it’s true. And other than being a hardcore X-Files fan and doing lots of reading about weird stuff since the time I could hold a book, I did not research other death accounts specifically for this book. Kevin Fahey came alive in my head and lives there still, and that’s really where this book comes from.

Q. When you began writing, you used the pen name Gallagher Gray. Now you’re writing the Dead Detective Mysteries under the name Chaz McGee. Why do you use pseudonyms? Where did these two names come from? Do they have any special meaning to you?

A. I use them to differentiate very different series from one another. I have always been a reader and I treasure my authors, but also expect very specific things from them: a certain tone, a certain dimension to their characters. I chose my author to fit my mood. I want my readers to always be able to do the same. The pen names do have significance to me. Gallagher Gray consists of the maiden names of my grandmothers put together and Chaz McGee was the name of an invisible friend my daughter had as a little girl. I thought that was fitting!

Q. You’ve had a long career, much of it during times of upheaval in the publishing business. What are the most striking changes you’ve seen in publishing? What changes have you welcomed, and what has saddened (or maddened!) you?

A. I’m welcoming the advent of small presses made possible by publishing on demand. I think that will allow more authors to find their readership niche without the pressures of diluting their books to fit all tastes. I’ve been active in publishing since 1990, and it seems to me that it has always been very, very cluttered with authors who do not have distinct voices and are not particularly original with either their characters or their plots. They are basically emulating other authors, which is why publishers are buying heir books, in hopes of emulating a bestselling author’s success. But you can’t chase someone else’s voice as a writer and expect to be either fulfilled or a good writer.

The sheer number of writers that has come from this marketing-first mindset has created such a crowded book landscape that it makes it harder for everyone to get noticed and reviewed. And, of course, the demise of book review sections and journalism in general is not gong to help! But if my history serves me, it’s never been easy for writers, it shouldn’t be easy for writers or the field would be even more overcrowded, and people have been bemoaning the loss of reader intelligence since at least 1895 when Arthur Conan Doyle bitched about it. So, I find myself blissfully unconcerned about the publishing landscape these days. I can’t do anything about it. I can only write the books I want to write and hope that readers who are kindred spirits find me. The most striking change has been in the average age of editors. They used to be women in their forties and fifties. Now I believe they are all about twelve.

Q. Do you plan to continue the Casey Jones series? What is it about Casey that makes you want to write about her life? If I remember correctly, she’s not fond of children – will that change now that you have a young daughter you adore, or will you let Casey hang on to her attitude toward kids?

A. I am continuing the Casey Jones series for sure! Bad Moon on the Rise will be out on September 1st from Thalia Press and I loved writing this book. Casey has always been an alter ego of mine, in part because she is physically strong and that’s such a factor in how confident women are. But I do love her humor and I love the side characters so much, I never want to leave them behind! As for children – hah! If I even let them in my Casey books, they’ll be lucky to survive. I’m joking a little, as one of the main characters in Bad Moon is fifteen years old. But Casey will continue to avoid small children on the grounds that they are uncooperative and sticky. Unless maybe she meets a tiny Casey one day – that might be pretty fun to write about! Hmm…

Q. You’ve promised that new editions of the Casey Jones books will contain “censored” scenes that were originally deleted to protect the tender sensibilities of some readers. Can you give us a hint about what’s in those scenes?

A. Sex, of course! The good kind, as in the kind left more to the imagination than detailed on paper so we can all fill in the blanks the way we want to! I’m adding in more sex not just because that’s an important part of her character but also because writing about sex is a huge untapped reservoir of humor for that series! Finally, I just thought it would be fun to rev up the books a little before I re-released them!

Q. Who are your favorite writers? Which crime fiction writers have you learned from by reading their work?

A. I love Joseph Wambaugh above all others: his characters, his humor, his intertwining plots, and his love of all creatures large and small. He is gentle but such black humor is at play. He never makes fun of his characters, no matter how down and out they are. He gives them dignity and a place on his fictional earth. After him, there is a huge tier of crime fiction writers I admire and learn from, too many to list, and then I have to get into the realm of forgetting to list friends, so I’ll just stop and say: I read. I read a lot. I have never lost the joy of reading crime fiction or any other genre. I think it is a huge mistake when writers do stop reading! You lose touch with words and how characters and plots can be played around with. Reading is essential to being good a writer!

Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers in this unusually tough market?

A. Moi, give advice? Oh, well, since you asked:

1) Read so you don’t inadvertently imitate someone else and go out there thinking you have a brilliant new idea only to be confronted with the fact it’s already been done.

2) Accept that you are not going to make a living at this and that it’s actually good for you to have another life or profession to draw on in addition to writing. It keeps your life larger and the character ideas coming. And if you ever manage to earn a living at it, then good for you – you are one of the lucky ones. But if you don’t – you still get the immeasurable reward of writing and creating worlds. Be glad for it!

3) Don’t make the mistake of promoting yourself so much you take time away from your writing. As mentioned before, self-promotion is only going to make a difference in your career if you are willing to eat, sleep and breathe it. The same goes for conventions – if all they are is a bunch of writers hoping to get more fans… from a bunch of other writers who are also hoping to get more fans… stay home and write instead. Often, your best strategy is to take that time and put it into another book, even better than the first one.

4) Listen carefully to criticism from agents and editors when you receive it. They know what they are doing. Don’t take it personally, mind you, but learn from it and, depending on what your goals are, adjust accordingly. Accept that agents and editors come in all stripes, just like actual human beings, and that some books and voices just aren’t going to resonate with them. Find new ones to approach and move on.

5) Never compare yourself to anyone else, ever. Not your sales, not your voice, not your success. Just hone in on what you want to say, how you can best say it and pour your energy into creating the book that is you and you alone. If you write it, they will come.

6) Stop accepting other people’s definitions of success as your own. If you don’t get a big fat contract from a huge publisher and become the next NY Times bestselling author, then so what? Some of the most miserable people I know have occupied that lofty position and it has not made them any happier. Find a smaller press. Publish it yourself. Concentrate on finding your readers, the ones you were speaking to when you wrote the book, and don’t worry if it’s twenty readers or twenty million.

7) Remember why you write: because you have to, because it makes you feel whole. Be careful what you compromise, because if you start writing books that aren’t you, you are going to destroy the very reason why you are doing it in the first place: so you can sit down and have the joy and privilege of writing, and give life to the characters inside your head, and touch the lives of other people, namely readers who recognize something in your writing they feel connected to… and vice versa.

Thanks for having me on your blog, Sandy, and for those of you who read to the very end of this interview and who decide to give my books a try — I hope you enjoy them!

Building a Bewitching World

By Juliet Blackwell

I was taken aback at a recent dinner party when an author friend referred to writing fiction as “world-building”. I had never really thought of it that way.

But she’s right.

Writing a novel is like constructing a whole new world; one that demands its own internal logic and myriad quirky inhabitants. And I can’t deny that it’s exhilarating, knowing that I’m in charge. Need a major art museum with a dictatorial director? Go for it. A sympathetic villain with a complex past? No problem. Great-looking, romantic men looking for committed relationships? Why not? It’s not fantasy, it’s fiction!

I can do this. After all, I was a whiz with Tinker Toy towns as a kid. In fact, a certain heady god-complex takes over when I’m on a writing roll… Bwah hah hah! (Evil laugh while rubbing hands…) This is MY world and it will do as I—and only I-- see fit!

Only it doesn’t. Just as in the real world, the universes I create in my mind somehow develop their own issues and problems, contradictions and convoluted situations that I then, as their author, am obligated to try to unravel.

For instance, I’m launching a new Witchcraft Mystery Series this summer (Secondhand Spirits will be released July 7, 2009). My protagonist, Lily Ivory, is a bona fide witch….So now I’m dealing not only with creating a whole new world, but one that includes several dimensions of reality, as well as ghosts, demons, and phantoms.

Talk about your world-building exercises… How do I create a universe that includes witchcraft –and makes that magical craft an integral part of the mystery and its solution--without crossing the line from “fascinating” to “cheesy”? In my humble opinion the last thing the world needs is another Bewitched redux.

First, I did my homework: I interviewed self-proclaimed witches, went to coven meetings, and researched the history of witchcraft not only in Europe, but around the globe. I learned many fascinating things: If a child is heard to cry while still in the womb, it is assumed by many cultures to be a witch; the Wicca religion is as flexible and variable as those who choose to follow it; and according to the Malleus Maleficarum, known as the Witch Hunter’s Handbook, it was a crime punishable by death NOT to believe in the power of witches.

Above all, I learned that witchcraft –and the accusation of said powers—is not to be taken lightly. Still, specific problems arise with regard to writing a paranormal mystery. For instance, couldn’t a powerful witch just read tarot cards or tea leaves or a crystal ball and figure out Whodunnit? A lot of supernatural thrillers contend that the messages from beyond are vague and often misleading, but through my research I came up with a simpler, more elegant solution: Witches are good at different things. Some are root-workers (brewing potions and salves) while others are brilliant at reading the future, and still others are gifted at focusing their intentions in order to influence the normal course of life.

My protagonist is rotten at seeing into the future, and frankly she’s a little touchy about the subject. Her life would be much easier –but the mysteries so much less interesting—if only she could look into her crystal ball and figure out what’s what. In the world I created for her, Lily’s powers put her in the unique position to help discover the truth, but she has to work for it just like your average human detective. That’s what makes her struggle to solve the crime compelling; and, I hope, what makes readers empathize with her. She’s powerful, but she’s not all-powerful.

Mystery fiction allows us to spend time in worlds where the good guys always triumph and the murderer’s always caught…sort of. I suppose there are some true noir novels that go a different way. But by and large these are worlds in which even amateur detectives blunder into situations that any sane person would avoid like the plague, and eventually, inevitably, everything turns out for the best. In most mysteries, a good heart, a sharp brain, and sheer determination can lead a person to become their best selves, and to triumph over adversity.

Now that’s a world worth building.

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Juliet Blackwell, aka Hailey Lind, is the pseudonym for a mystery author who, together with her sister, wrote the Art Lover’s Mystery Series--including the Agatha-nominated Feint of Art and the IMBA bestsellers Shooting Gallery and Brush with Death. The fourth in the series, Arsenic and Old Paint, will be released in fall, 2010. Juliet’s new paranormal Witchcraft Mystery series begins with Secondhand Spirits (July, 2009), about a witch with a vintage clothing store in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.

A former anthropologist and social worker, Juliet has worked in Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Italy, the Philippines, and France. She currently resides in a happily haunted house in Oakland, California, where she is a muralist, portrait painter, and recipient of the overly zealous attentions of her neighbor’s black cat, who seems to imagine himself her new familiar. Juliet/Hailey is two-term president of Northern California Sisters in Crime. For more information and to read an excerpt from her new novel, please visit www.julietblackwell.net.

Judi McCoy Finds the Mystery in Dog-walking

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

The winner of a free copy of Judi's book is Annette. Send your snail mail address to me at sandraparshall@yahoo.com and I'll put it into the mail. Congratulations!

Judi McCoy has been a successful romance novelist for more than fifteen years, garnering many four-star reviews for her work. Now she’s turning her talents to mystery with a humorous series featuring New York City dog-walker Ellie Engleman, who has a telepathic connection with her canine charges. The first in the series is Hounding the Pavement, published this week. A starred review in Publishers Weekly said, “Somehow managing to avoid every talking animal mystery cliche, McCoy fills this delightful story with humor, quirky characters, and delicious hints of romance.”

Judi is also a veteran women’s gymnastics judge and enjoys gardening and raising orchids in her spare time. She lives on Virginia’s eastern shore with her husband and three dogs. Visit her web site at www.judimccoy.com.

Everyone who leaves a comment today will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of Hounding the Pavement. Check back tomorrow to find out if you won – the winner’s name will be posted at the top of this blog entry.


Q. You’ve written a number of romances. Why did you cross over to the dark side and start writing mysteries? What is it about mysteries that appeals to you?

A. The crossover seemed natural. I’d run out of ideas for a ‘straight’ romance and came up with a character. My agent liked the idea and so did my sister, and they both encouraged me to take the idea and run. I liked the idea of getting the reader involved in the story (who did it, why, how?). Writing the books just seemed the next step in my career.

Q. Are you writing a series?

A. Yes, it’s a series (I’d like to do 12 books). My heroine is a New York City dog walker. If you don’t know about the dog walker business in NY, you’re in for a surprise. Most of them make $100,000+ every year, not counting tips and money for pet sitting. They also have keys to all the apartments they visit. (They’re bonded and insured.) The accessability to mystery was huge.

Q. What was the inspiration for your mystery protagonist and her adventures?

A. I love dogs and always wanted to be a dog walker. Unfortunately, I never lived anywhere I could do it. The idea for a romance about the profession had simmered in the back of my mind for a long time. When I had the chance to do a story, I decided to make the series work.

Q. Have you found that you have to do more research for a mystery than for a romance?

A. I certainly did for this one. I spent several days in NY, sitting on a bench on Fifth Avenue and Central Park just soaking up the atmosphere. Then I got brave and talked to dog walkers, doormen, anyone who was walking a single dog, too. I also called the Central Park East precinct and spoke to a CRM. He allowed me to come in and spend a couple of hours with a detective, an invaluable opportunity.

Q. Was this the first time you’d tried writing mysteries? Was selling the first one easier than you expected, or harder?

A. Avon, my romance publisher, rejected the book(s) without even reading them. That made my agent determined. She knew they were great and she planned to show them how foolish they were to refuse them. It only took her a month to sell the first three books.

Q. Why did you decide to give your profit from the first mystery to a humane organization? How important are animals in your life?

A. Best Friends is an amazing animal rescue charity. I’ve admired them for years, but I never realized how much they did until I watched their series, Dogtown, on the National Geographic channel. Once I saw the show, I was hooked. I also knew I had to do some crazy promoting to get my name and the books ‘out there’ so I came up with the royalty giveaway. Once I thought up the idea, there was never a doubt in my mind that I had to see it through. Even my husband agreed. I’ve had several wonderful discussions with people at Best Friends and they’re thrilled.

Q. Do you write full-time? Do you outline and stick to a writing routine, or do you wing it?

A. I write full-time, every day. I’m up at 6:30, walk my three small dogs, have breakfast and plan my day. I usually get to my computer by 8:30
and I’m there until 1. Then I take my lunch break and it’s back to my office until 5:30. My husband also works from home, so we’re together yet separate all day. If I have errands (groceries, hair cut, etc) I plan my time to do it all in one trip on one day.

Q. What do you believe are your greatest strengths as a writer? What aspects of craft are you still trying to master?

A. My greatest strength? I had to think hard about that one, because I’m not sure I have one. How about my sense of humor? I try to impart joy and fun into every book I write. No one gets murdered [onstage] in my books. Ellie finds the body, and along with her dog Rudy, solves the mystery, much to the dismay of her love interest, Sam, a detective. The hook is: Ellie talks to her dog and those she walks and they talk back to her. She hears them clearly in her mind, and oftentimes gets caught holding a conversation with them. That adds to the fun.

Q. What writers have inspired you and taught you by example? Whose books do you rush to read as soon as they’re published?

A. I love the Stephanie Plum series and I’ve used it as the basis for 12 books and no more. People have complained lately that the series is dragging on too long. Stephanie needs to make a choice between Joe and Ranger and decide if the bounty hunting business is really for her. I never want that said about Ellie and Sam. I’ll wrap up all the loose ends and make it work in 12 books. I also love Cleo Coyle and her coffee mysteries and Joanna Carl and the chocolate mysteries.

Q. What’s in the future for you? Will you continue writing mysteries exclusively, or do you plan to divide your time between mystery and romance?

A. The books/characters have been optioned for a weekly television series already, so I’d like to try my hand at script writing, or working with a writer to transfer some of the books to shows. Unless I get a great romance idea, I doubt I’ll go back to that genre. In reality, the dog walker books are very romantic. Ellie and Sam go to bed in book one, and there’s a regular romantic sex scene, just like I’ve written in my earlier books.

Q. Where can readers can meet you?

A. I plan to travel to quite a few states. I’ll be in the East Brunswick area for a signing, and probably the DC area later. In the beginning of April, I’ll be in Charlotte, NC, for a conference and signing, middle of the month in the Dallas area, and at the end I’ll be at Romantic Times in Orlando signing.
The first weekend in May is Malice Domestic, and I hope to travel to Pittsburgh to do the big mystery signing there [the Oakmont Mystery Festival on the Monday following Malice]. I’m out of breath just thinking about it, but that’s as far as I’ve planned.

Q. In parting, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

A. I teach a two-day aspiring author course every year at RT (this year in Orlando) and the first thing I tell the newbies is, “Writers write. They don’t talk about writing or tell everyone they want to write. They put their butt in a chair EVERY day and they write.” That’s probably the most important thing a new author will ever hear.

Mystery with a Little Something Extra

Sandra Parshall

Starting to feel a little Scroogelike because every blog you click on has a holiday theme? Feel like you’re drowning in sentimental good cheer?

Me too.

Let’s talk about vampires instead. And werewolves, ghosts, demons, psychics, and mindreaders.

In case you’ve been languishing on a desert island and missed the news, let me tell you that mysteries with paranormal and supernatural elements are hot right now. Publishing professionals are generally cautious people who would rather follow a strong trend than try to start one that might fizzle quickly, and that seems to be the case with other-worldly mysteries, as more and more publishers jump on the bandwagon. But somebody had to get the bandwagon rolling in the first place by recognizing that this type of story would appeal to mystery readers. Looking back, it seems to me that the romance genre embraced the paranormal first, and the lines between romance, mystery, and horror have grown fuzzier ever since.

The influence of horror on the mystery genre is nothing new, though. Edgar Allan Poe, considered the father of the modern detective story because of his 1841 tale Murders in the Rue Morgue, spent most of his creative energy on work drenched in horror and the supernatural. Vampires in crime novels, however, are a relatively recent phenomenon, and some mystery writers have borrowed from their colleagues in romance by making their bloodthirsty characters more sexy than terrifying.

For most of us, Bram Stoker’s Dracula comes to mind instantly when we think of vampires, but the world’s first vampire thriller (the term thriller being used in its broadest sense) was Carmilla, a Vampyre Tale, published in 1872 by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. Dracula wasn’t published until 1897. Both are grim stories about humans desperately trying to escape the clutches of powerful predators. Not until Anne Rice came along did readers begin to see the human side, so to speak, of fictional vampires. Her characters retain the sensibilities they possessed when they were fully human, and some feel deep regret over what they’ve become. Rice managed to make the undead sympathetic -- and, in some cases, sexy.

These days, vampires can be the good guys, and drop dead gorgeous (sorry) into the bargain. In her groundbreaking Southern Vampires Mysteries, Charlaine Harris writes about the romance between Sookie Stackhouse, a normal young woman except for her ability to read everybody else’s mind, and Bill, a sexy vampire. Harris’s quirky series is a huge hit, and it’s not surprising that other vampire mysteries have popped up in their wake.

Ghosts have crossed over into mystery from horror and romance fiction, and psychics and mind-readers also abound. Victoria Laurie writes about “psychic eye” Amy Cooper. In Madelyn Alt’s Bewitching Mysteries series, heroine Maggie O’Neill hunts ghosts and solves paranormal mysteries. Kay Hooper has built a dark romantic thriller series around a super-secret FBI unit made up of agents with paranormal powers.

In paranormal fiction, getting hit on the head can lead to trouble for a character and a series for the author. L.L. Bartlett writes about an ordinary, likable guy named Jeff Resnick who was knocked unconscious by muggers and woke up with psychic talents that keep dragging him into murder cases. Kat Richardson’s Harper Blaine also got clobbered, and she woke up with a tendency to shift between the normal world and the realm of vampires and ghosts. Since cemetery tour guide Pepper Martin, in the series by Casey Daniels, struck her head on a tombstone, she’s been besieged by ghosts who need her help.


Some series blend the paranormal with a longtime favorite cozy setting, as Alice Kimberly does in her haunted bookshop mysteries. Her heroine, bookseller Penelope Thornton-McClure, didn’t believe in ghosts until she met the spirit of hardboiled 1940s PI Jack Shepard. Now they have a crime-solving partnership.

New paranormal series come along regularly. Annette Blair, author of paranormal romances, ventures into mystery in January with A Veiled Deception: A Vintage Magic Mystery, about a vintage clothing store owner who solves crimes based on the visions she receives from used duds.

The success of a genre-blending book depends entirely on a writer’s ability to create a believable alternate world. Of course, every fiction writer has to do that, but most of us can use familiar points of reference to draw the reader in and persuade him or her to believe in our characters and story. When the characters are vampires, ghosts, werewolves, psychics, and mindreaders, authors must be especially inventive and convincing. The remarkable thing is that so many have succeeded.

A few years ago, a lot of crime fiction authors scoffed at paranormal mysteries and predicted the trend would die quickly because real mystery fans wouldn’t go for them. I don’t think anybody’s saying that now.

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P.S. Happy holidays, everyone!

Using the Occult in Crime Fiction

Patrick Hyde (Guest blogger)

I am not a woo woo kind of guy. I’ve made my living as a full-time lawyer or in legal-related employment since June of 1979. My wife and I are fortunate to own our home in a nice Maryland suburb. Our wonderful daughter is a sixth grader with braces. Despite these and other accoutrements of bourgeois normalcy, I have written a novel in which one of the main characters is a Voodoo Priestess. Library Journal’s reviewer wrote that I “turn[ed] the legal thriller genre upside down when what looks like a clear-cut case becomes a trip into the realm of voodoo[.]” In view of this, a reader might ask that most profound of all inquiries: What gives?

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the noun “occult” as something that includes “matters regarded as involving the action or influence of supernatural or supernormal powers or some secret knowledge of them.” This definition is functional enough for discussion purposes, though not precise. Perhaps one of the issues with use of the occult is that we can’t precisely define it. Even so, I write about the occult. Moreover, I have plans for many, many future works that involve the occult. My reasons for this are briefly listed below.

As Part of a Story

What do people believe and what do people do based on what they believe? Truth is, people believe that their everyday lives are influenced by actions which originate in another world. Every day people pray and look for answers to prayer. For country people from Louisiana or natives in an African jungle, the prayer may be more demonstrative. It may involve a ritual with snapping beans, or markings with paint, or dancing with a just-beheaded chicken. Whatever the form, prayers appeal to forces in another world to alter outcomes in this world.

Belief in prayer leads to countless opportunities for good story telling. Consider, for example, a counterintuitive story possibility based in the west side of Columbus, Ohio. This section of Columbus has become an aging industrial center with generations of migrants from Appalachia and elsewhere. For years, I’ve heard stories about Appalachian migrants being bitten during religious services in which poisonous snakes are handled. Such an image belies images that many people might have of Columbus as a quiet middle-American city. The migrants are part of the texture of that city and could be part of a great story.

Many classic and contemporary works draw on the occult to give depth to the story. Zora Neale Hurston used black folklore, Caribbean mysticism, and African spirituality to illustrate the rich folklore of black culture in Johah’s Gourd Vine, which begins with the words “God was grumbling his thunder and playing the zig-zag lightning through his fingers.” Her travelogue Tell My Horse is a study of Haitian sorcery and Jamaican folklore. Trained under the famed Franz Boas, Hurston used her analytical acumen to research groups that practiced voodoo, then transmuted it into high art in her many fine novels. It is no wonder that her books are selling better now than they were at the time of her death. She demonstrated an understanding that was far more sophisticated than many contemporaries understood.

Other examples from contemporary crime writing are beyond counting, from those who use a Tarot card to mark a crime to those whose story is founded around an entire occult system. One of my favorites is Fallen Angel by William Hjortsberg, later made into the movie Angel Heart. I also find that James Lee Burke’s detective, Dave Robicheaux, takes me to the same place. As he tries to solve a 35 year-old homicide, Robicheaux has repeated sightings of confederate soldiers on patrol in the novel In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. It could be the booze-soaked brain, still sailing on the “S.S. Delirium Tremens” as he muses in another novel, Crusader’s Cross. But I see something deeper in Burke’s writing. Robicheaux is the archetypal fallen hero who takes us through the poetry of redemption in motion. This leads to the second reason that I find occult to be useful.

Use of Archetypal Images

In his work Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Carl Jung wrote about pre-existing forms and motifs in the human mind which are universal symbols that all people carry around even though we have no particular knowledge that such forms exist. Depending on what one believes, these motifs may be one of three things. First, they may be based on stories that we have heard from childhood, story-forms that are deeply imbedded in our experience. Or they may be part of our genetic inheritance, instinctive and chemical as the urge to suck or the urge to protect one’s homeland. Or the archetype may be a real image of something magical, something from God.

Use of Jungian archetypes in the “myth of the hero” motif is beautifully described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The story of the hero and the arc of the hero’s journey is one that is repeated time and again in crime writing. I particularly applaud the recognition of the “hero’s journey” in a book titled Myth and Ritual in Women's Detective Fiction by Christine Jackson. In a way, her discussion shows that all people are confronted with the hero’s journey. Who is to say that a hair salon full of women chatting about their lives cannot be the center of a hero’s archetypal journey? Isn’t it prejudiced to assume otherwise?

The hard-boiled crime venue in which I have written uses the arraignment court as an archetypal place of reckoning. When a tired mother grabs my protagonist and tries to persuade him to smuggle a pack of Newport cigarettes to her imprisoned son, my protagonist sees the pain of the ages in her face. She is the archetype of the powerless parent, the mournful priest looking at the African sunrise in Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country. And felony presentment in my novel, The Only Pure Thing, is the repetition of a archetypal cycle of tragedy: “Row after row they came—mostly sullen young men with blank stares, pawns in a war against civilization, guilty or innocent, now bystanders to a debate on their own liberty.” (Quoting page 39.) I am talking about the presentment of the accused in D.C. Superior Court, but also about the motif of the cycle of tragedy, about the pain of slavery that still infects us, about Nietzsche’s “eternal return” that might enslave our souls.

One may think that the use of archetypes or motifs is an intellectual event that has nothing to do with the occult. I don’t agree. I believe that these images are imbedded in our experience and to my way of thinking in our psychic existence. I believe that we are part of a collective unconscious, an inherited psychic system of pre-existent forms. I believe that these forms have independent power and an independent existence. This is mostly the subject for another article! I’ll try and briefly explain a few aspects of this belief below.

Occult Phenomena in Everyday Life

Both of my parents were from Appalachian coal towns, Verda in Harlan County, Kentucky, on my father’s side and Matewan in Mingo County, West Virginia, and various other small towns, on my mother’s side. For whatever reason, many of the hill folk in Appalachia seem to accept the presence of the occult in everyday life. Maybe it is because of all the Irish people who inhabited this area during the nineteenth century. Maybe it is because poor people the world over are more likely to believe in magic. Maybe it is because the hills have a mystical aura that soaks into the blood of its inhabitants. Whatever the reason, I grew up with a mother who implicitly believed in mystical phenomena and the occult in everyday life. To me, this was natural and believable. I believe to this day that sometimes our Western rationale minds are just too fouled up with false consciousness to accept simple truths.

One story from my childhood simply illustrates what I am discussing here. My mother woke up screaming at her parents’ house, then in southern Virginia, on Christmas Eve in 1944. She believed that her husband, my father, was in grave danger. Thousands of miles away, my father’s transport ship, the S.S. Leopoldville, had just been torpedoed by a German submarine and was sinking in the English Channel. By the end of the night, 763 of the 2,235 Americans aboard the ship had drowned. Fortunately, my father made it to the shores of France and lived for another 27 years.

I grew up hearing about the sinking of the Leopoldville and my mother’s awakening that night. The story was relayed several times by my father and my mother and her family. Maybe it happened the way they discussed it and maybe it didn’t, but I knew a lot of people who believed the version of events relayed above. And I’ve seen this type of thing happen again and again, to such an extent that I have decided it is a factor in everyday life that deserves to be written about.

There are things we know and we don’t know how we know them. They come from an invisible force that Carl Jung called “a-causal connective phenomena,” or “synchronicity.” This is part of what I want to write about. It is part of the rich tapestry that is life and is in my human experience.

The above discussion and three parts could be expanded, even made into a book. Probably I’m just preaching to the choir of those who believe and giving context and fodder for rebuttal for those who do not. No matter. My goal as a writer is to tell a story. I try to use occult phenomena in a way that a reader can notice it and appreciate it, or just get on with the story. Life is, after all, a multitude of layers, and a story can be told without reference to these matters. I’ll leave it to my colleagues and to the marketplace to decide whether the occult is worth writing about. I’ve made my choice.

Visit the author's web site at www.patrickhyde.com