by Ann Parker, guest blogger
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First, I’d like to thank Poe’s Deadly Daughters for the opportunity to post here as part of my virtual tour for Mercury's Rise, the latest in my Silver Rush historical mystery series, which is based in 1880s Colorado.
Second, I’d like to sing the praises of reference librarians and subject matter experts! Many’s the time I’ve hunted for specific information on a subject, only to be left howling in the vastness of the internet. Well, maybe not many times, but often enough to become very frustrated with certain topics.
Such as divorce.
Particularly, divorce in the nineteenth century U.S.
Specifically, divorce in 1880 in Colorado.
I have collected plenty of books that touch on or deal directly with the general topic, including Robert L. Griwsold’s Family and Divorce in California, 1850–1890; Thomas J. Schlereth’s Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life; Ellen K. Rothman’s Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in America; Glenda Riley’s Divorce: An American Tradition and her Building and Breaking Families in the American West; as well as Ruth Rymer Miller’s PhD thesis Alimony and Divorce: An Historical-Comparative Study of Gender Conflict. I even haunted the law library in Denver some years ago and made copies of things like the Code of Civil Procedure and Session Laws of Colorado, 1879 (when there were changes to codes) and… and…
What the heck was I doing?? I’m no lawyer! Not even close! How do I interpret this stuff?
Plus, I was getting nervous about the particulars of "my case," that is, the case of my protagonist, Inez Stannert. Inez’s husband has been missing for well over a year. During this time, she remakes her life. She takes a lover. She runs a saloon with her husband’s business partner, and she runs it very well, and begins making other business deals "on the side." She sends her young son, not quite two, back East to live with her sister. Inez decides to divorce her vanished husband, grounds of desertion. In Mercury's Rise, her carefully laid plans are swept aside, as if no more substantial than as a house of cards, when her husband, Mark Stannert, returns.
I sat, surrounded by my books and references, staring at my computer, wondering: What now?
What would Inez’s lawyer advise? What would Inez think, feel? What would Mark do? What would happen to their child, their business, her reputation, her relationship with her lover, Reverend Sands.
It was at this point, while at the Malice Domestic conference, that I bid on (and won) a few hours of research assistance from research librarian Jeanne Munn Bracken (http://www.jeannemunnbracken.com/). I confessed my concerns about Inez and her future, and Jeanne put me in touch with Hendrik Hartog, Bicentennial Professor of the History of American Law and Liberty at Princeton University, and Michael Grossberg, Sally M. Reahard Professor of History and Professor of Law at Indiana University. I was so relieved to find experts… experts at last!... who were willing to listen to and answer my questions. They agreed that the key issue was "fault," which would have to be central in any depiction of a couple going through a divorce during this time. Professor Grossberg added that, by the 1880s or so, maternal preference dominated the law and thus there would be a legal presumption in favor of giving custody to a mother. But that also meant that attacks on a woman’s character, virtue, parenting skills, and the like could be part of a bitter divorce.
Attacks on the wife’s virtue, you say? Her character? Parenting skills? Hmmmmm. The wheels in my mind began to turn….
Professor Hartog agreed with his colleague, adding, "In general most mothers of young children would get custody, but the claim had to be framed in terms of the misbehavior/abandonment of the husband. And misbehavior (which might be little more than having a job or choosing a different or no church to go to) by the wife might be enough to ensure her loss of custody, even of a child/infant of tender years."
As for Inez’s financial situation and business dealings, now that Mark has returned… I won’t say too much except to report Professor Hartog’s summation: "A tangled mess."
All in all, I owe much to researcher Jeanne and professors Hartog and Grossberg. The professors gave me some wonderful fodder for fiction, plus I added their excellent books to my tower of references: Hartog’s Man and Wife in America: A History, and Grossberg’s Governing the Hearth: Law and the Family in Nineteenth-Century America.
Thus fortified, I was able to move forward at last, to plot and scheme poor Inez’s situation for Mercury's Rise and look into her future with something more certain than a crystal ball!
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Ann Parker is a California-based science/corporate writer by day and an historical mystery writer by night. Her award-winning Silver Rush series, featuring saloon-owner Inez Stannert, is set in 1880s Colorado, primarily in the silver-mining boomtown of Leadville. The latest in her series, Mercury's Rise, was released November 1. Publishers Weekly says, "Parker smoothly mixes the personal dramas and the detection in an installment that’s an easy jumping-on point for newcomers." Library Journal adds, "Parker’s depth of knowledge coupled with an all-too-human cast leaves us eager to see what Inez will do next. Encore!
Learn more about Ann and her books at http://www.annparker.net.
Leave a comment on this post to be eligible to win a Silver Rush mystery prize! Winner will be announced later this week. To see the rest of Ann’s blog tour, check out her News page.
Nancy Means Wright, guest blogger
Anglo-Irish feminist and writer Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for her 1792 work "Vindication of the Rights of Women," which advocated equality of the sexes – and for being the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein. In her new mystery novel, Midnight Fires, Nancy Means Wright turns to an earlier time in Wollstonecraft’s life.
In 1786, a 27-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft crossed the Irish sea in a packet boat to join that most humiliating and ambiguous of professions: governess. It was an inferior sort of position, neither lady nor servant. Like most governesses, Mary had been brought up in a respectable middle class family that had suffered financial failures; and since by definition a lady did not work for a living, she was now less than a lady.
According to the advice manuals, an 18th century governess was not to socialize with members of the family unless invited (although Mary was occasionally allowed a quarter of an hour with company in the drawing room before a poke with a fan sent her back into the schoolroom). And not being a maid or laundress, she was unwelcome in the servants’ quarters, and hence had no social life at all. She was provided with food and a pleasant (if chilly) chamber—though in a remote part of the manse, where she was vulnerable to the advances of the master of the house. And though there was little money for clothing left over from her paltry annual salary of forty pounds, she was, like a lady, to look presentable at all times.
Mary’s boots were shabby, and on the boat she was wearing one of the three poplin gowns she owned, along with a homemade greatcoat—she had paid dearly for the silk lining. The wind nearly took the new blue hat made by a friend “to dazzle the Irish.” But who would be there, she wondered, to dazzle? Was it a prison she was heading for? And what would happen when her employers discovered her poor French and Italian, her lack of skill with the needle? The application from the aristocratic Anglo-Irish Kingsboroughs (few middle class families employed governesses before the 19th century) had called for a woman proficient in all those skills, along with history, geography, drawing, and a mouthful of moral values. Self taught and impecunious, she applied. Already the Kingsboroughs had exploited her: she had been summoned to Eton College to meet the three girls who would be in her charge—only to find the family already departed for Ireland. She was left to their adolescent son George, who handed her the crossing fare as if she were some beggar girl.
When she arrived at Michelstown Castle, a tribe of giggling children and dogs raced out to look her over (wild Irish, she described them in a letter). And the three girls in her charge did all they could to test and best her in every way. Lady Kingsborough was civil, even kind at times, but she apparently favored her dozen lapdogs over her twelve unruly children. “A fine lady,” Mary wrote, “is a new
species to me of animal…I cannot help fearing her.”
She found the castle and its army of servants and children to be more than a Bedlam; it was a Bastille, and she was confined in it. Nights in her chamber, she could hear the servants dancing below—“I only am melancholy and alone.”
Mary was to be with her pupils all day and into the evening, she discovered; she was to care for them, but not to expect or arouse any affection in return—she must not to take any love or loyalty away from the mother. For a lucky few like 18th century governess Agnes Porter, whose caring mistress became a virtual friend (until a mean-spirited stepmother supplanted her), jealousy was not usually a problem. But if an emotionally insecure mother came to see the governess as a rival, an unbearable conflict might arise. And in Mary’s case—did. Mary was a brilliant, creative teacher, and Lady K felt threatened. A temperamental woman, she increasingly interfered. Not that Mary wasn’t aware of the growing divide—she was. “I am anxiously solicitous for their (the children’s) welfare,” Mary wrote, “and mortified…when counteracted in my endeavours to improve them.” And when Mary presented her debut book, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, just (anonymously) off a London press, the mistress was appalled at the author’s insistence that girls be taught—not to embroider or play the pianoforte—but “to think for themselves.”
“Unthinkable!” cried Milady, and stamped her foot.
But the girls grew closer and closer to their governess, and ultimately driven into an emotional corner—an insupportable social situation for the aristocratic employer—Lady K dismissed her. According to London gossip, Mary’s departure was the result of scandal—a supposed affair with Lord Robert Kingsborough (false), and some said Mary had turned her pupils into revolutionaries (partly true). But a brave-hearted Mary returned with an autobiographical novel to her sympathetic publisher in London, and vowed to put an end to governessing. “I shall live independent,” she vowed, “or not at all.” For years, though, she kept up a correspondence with her elder pupil Margaret. The latter called Mary’s mind “more noble and her understanding more cultivated than any other I had known.”
Mary was luckier than most to emerge unscathed—and perhaps inadvertently even helped Lady K find her own way to independence, for two years later Milady demanded a separation from her womanizing husband. Mary’s sisters, on the other hand, whom she constantly helped with gifts of money and lodging, were governesses all their lives. After Mary’s untimely death shortly after childbirth, Everina Wollstonecraft wrote her sister Eliza, “Dependence is ever an evil, but different situations under it…less or more evil.”
Yet without employment the Wollstonecraft sisters knew they were lost, and so like an army of other governesses, and like Mary in her nine agonizing (and adventurous—see my new mystery, Midnight Fires) months at Michelstown Castle, they endured.
For more information, visit Nancy Means Wright’s website and her Facebook page “Becoming Mary Wollstonecraft”.
Interviewed by Sandra Parshall
Kerry Greenwood, a major crime fiction writer in her native Australia, has also gained an enthusiastic following in the U.S. for her mysteries set in the 1920s and starring the fabulously wealthy, always fashionable Phryne Fisher. After a false start with another U.S. publisher, the Phryne (pronounced Fry-knee, rhymes with briny) novels have been published in quick succession by Poisoned Pen Press, complete with the dazzling original covers from the Allan & Unwin editions in Australia. The latest is Murder in the Dark, released this month. Next is Murder on a Midsummer Night, out this summer. PPP also publishes Kerry’s new contemporary series featuring Corinna Chapman.
Kerry was born in Footscray, a suburb of Melbourne, and lives there today. Although she had always aspired to be a writer, she earned a law degree from Melbourne University and continues to work one day a week for Victorian Legal Aid. She lives with three cats (Attilla, Belladonna, and Ashe), a collection of 7,000 books, and a registered wizard. In her spare time she has jumped out of planes in an attempt to cure her fear of heights, but only succeeded in giving herself a fear of jumping out of planes. She says she can detect bookshops from blocks away, and the size of her book collection lends credence to the claim.
Q. How did your arrangement with Poisoned Pen Press come about? Had you ever been published in the US before PPP picked up your books?
A. In the dim and distant past, i.e. 1991, Ballantine picked up the first two Phryne books, renamed Cocaine Blues [to] Death by Misadventure and they failed to sell. Then PPP contacted my Aus publisher and this time I caught the public taste, it appears. Thank you, public!
Q. Your covers are gorgeous – and so are the gowns Phryne wears. Who designs the gowns and who creates the covers?
A. My mother and I design the gowns and the amazing Beth Norling does the pictures. She sketches first then does a pastel. They are wonderful and so very actually 1928.
Q. Phryne seems ideally suited to her time. Why did you choose the 1920s? Could you write a character like Phryne in a 21st century setting?
A. Not really. Phryne is the product of the losses of the Great War, the sudden elevation of women because there were few men, and she is bold but not impossible for that period. It's not as easy as it used to be to be bold in the 21st century...
I picked 1928 initially because I did a thesis length essay on the 1928 strike for Legal History, and I over-researched it, interviewed all the old men who were on the wharf, read all the newspapers, fell in love with original research. My father was a wharfie so I could and did get into the Waterside Workers Federation archives. So when I was looking for a historical period I naturally thought of 1928.
Q. Does Phryne have qualities, or attitudes, that you consider distinctly Australian? Or would she be equally at home in 1920s America or Britain?
A. That is a really good question. I suppose her Aus qualities are a certain contempt for authority and perhaps her appetite for a good time. But she would fit in wherever she was - or rather, stand out. In England at the time she would be a Bright Young Thing and considered outrageous enough not to be invited to certain events - she would not get to meet the King, for example. In the USA at the time she would be overbold - and no one then would accept a Chinese lover, though it would have been worse if Lin was black. In fact, it would be illegal.
Q. Like many mystery heroines, Phryne is larger than life, an idealized woman. Is she someone you’d like to have as a friend? Other than lots of money, does she have anything that you wish you had?
A. Oh, that total uninterest in what anyone else thinks - I would love to have that. Her style. Her taste. Her hats! I would be delighted if she was my friend. In fact, she is. She sits on the corner of my desk and tells me stories.
Q. Tell us about the life of a writer in Australia. Are literary agents vital there, as they are in the US? Is it possible to find a publisher and have a writing career without an agent? I also wonder if you feel the same pressure American writers feel to get out in public, do bookstore signings, interviews, everything you possibly can to sell books. How much promotion do you do for your books?
A. I had an agent when I began, and I think an agent is a good thing, but not essential, in Australia. I used to do a great deal of publicity, tours, signings, radio and TV etc. When I was younger I thought it was great fun. Then I got older and menopause ran over me like a big black truck and I got too sick and exhausted to do any but the main interviews. My publisher does not press me to do more than I think is wise, because they want me to continue to write books...
Q. What attracted you to the mystery genre? What can you do in a mystery that you couldn’t do in mainstream fiction?
A. You can provide a story which everyone wants to read right through to the end. The trouble with lit fiction is that post-modernism has disjuncted (is that a word? It ought to be) or perhaps I mean dislocated the narrative, so you can't read it in bed. Mysteries are one of the few forms of fiction left that demand a story, and I am a story teller. I am in good company. Dickens, for a start.
Q. Have you ever studied writing, or have you learned on the job, so to speak? Do you believe formal instruction in writing gives an author an advantage?
A. Never studied writing, just wrote a lot of books, and when I was a child I used to read dictionaries and cornflakes packets and everything I could get my hands on. I did do a university degree in arts, though, including English, which sharpens the mind and broadens the horizons. I read, for example, Mrs. Gaskell, whom otherwise I might not have met. A writing class can teach grammar and spelling and sentence construction and they are all good things, because without them the story is not told in its most effective form. Depends on the person...
Q. You’re incredibly prolific. How long does it take you to write a book? Are you already thinking about the next one as you write? Do you take a break between books or just dive into a new one right away? Do you write every day?
A. I can only think of one book at a time and I think and research for about three months and then I write the book when it demands to be written. In its extreme form, a novel takes three weeks with no time out for sleep and a staggering intake of coffee. Now that I am supervised firmly by my cat Belladonna, who hits the caps lock when I have been typing for more than three hours, a novel takes a couple of months. And what you see is what you get. I have no drafts. I just describe what I can see in front of my eyes, like a film. Insane, I know, but it works and now, after fifty novels, I trust it.
Q. Would you tell us a bit about your new series? This doesn’t mean the end of Phryne, does it?
A. No, Phryne continues. The new series is a cosy set in the present about Corinna Chapman, who is the same size as me (fat) and is a baker in the city of Melbourne. She has several cats, a lover called Daniel, and she lives in an eccentric apartment house called Insula. Unlike Phyrne, Corinna is not a hero. She makes mistakes. She gets things wrong. She's refreshing to write about...
Q. What current crime fiction writers do you admire?
A. Love that Janet Ivanovich. Read Kathy Reichs (though I prefer the character in Bones, perhaps because she gets to work with David Boreanz). Admire Susan Wittig Albert, Donna Leon, Tony Hillerman.
Q. I read somewhere that you have a collection of more than 7,000 books. I’m unspeakably envious, but at the same time I want to ask the same question people asked the woman who gave birth to octuplets: Did you plan this, or did it just happen? What’s in your collection? Have you read all of them? If you wanted a particular book, could you find it easily?
A. They accreted, like a coral reef. Gradually. I haven't moved house for a long time, which may explain it. I know where everything is because the poetry is all in one place, as is the history, the male and female biogs, the detective stories, the science fiction, the research books. I have certainly read all of them, the collection is the books I read and decided I wanted to read again. Every now and again I have a huge purge, give away armloads, and when I look back I still have just as many books and no space in the shelves... there may be something magical in this.
Q. You have many fans in the United States. Do you think you’ll ever come over for a visit and meet some of them?
A. At the moment I have an affliction of the middle ear which makes it impossible for me to fly long distances. If this gets better or someone offers me a cruise, I would love to come to America.
Visit the author's website at www.phrynefisher.com
By Donis Casey, guest blogger
Did you ever wonder how an author comes up with story ideas? Sometimes the stars align...I’m sitting in Pastimes Cafe in Enid, Oklahoma, with my husband Don and his sister Dolores.
It is October of 2006, and I’m on a book tour for Hornswoggled, the second novel in my Alafair Tucker historical mystery series. Enid is my husband’s home town, and I have been able to combine an event at the Garfield County Library with a visit to the relatives. Pastimes Cafe, one of Dolores’s favorites, is located in a refurbished old brick industrial building from the 1920s, and the walls are decorated with reproductions of historic photos of the town.
After a nice meal, the waitress brings the check, and Don and Dolores begin their time-honored fight over who is going to pay for our grilled cheeses. Dolores is the eldest of that brood of seven children, and Don is the youngest. In the decades that Don and I have been married, Dolores has never allowed her mother’s baby to drive all the way home for a visit just to pay for her lunch. Over the last several years, though, Don has decided that it is incumbent upon him to do the manly thing and pick up the check for his widowed sister.
I keep my mouth shut. During this particular check-wrestling episode, just about the time it begins to look like two Social Security recipients are going to end up rolling around in a tangle on the floor, I employ a technique I learned long ago. I detach from reality and enter a pleasant altered state until negotiations are completed.
I’m facing the wall, upon which is a large framed historic photograph of the Enid town square, taken in the middle of the 1910s. Still in my very special happy state, I’m drawn into the photo, and find myself standing on the sidewalk in the fall of 1915, looking down West Randolph Street. All of the shops along the street are covered with striped awnings, which provide a cooling shade for shoppers during pre-air-conditioned Oklahoma summers. An electrified trolley is paused forever in its tracks at the bottom of the picture. A young man in a straw boater stands on the corner, waiting to cross the street, as a woman with her arms full of packages emerges from Klein’s Department Store. Rather like a movie in which the opening scene dissolves from a static to a moving picture, the young woman begins to walk, and I realize that it’s Martha Tucker, Alafair’s eldest daughter. And right behind her comes Alafair herself, with her youngest, Grace, in her arms.
What is Alafair doing in Enid, I wonder? She and her husband and their ten children live on a farm outside of Boynton, Oklahoma, which is some 150 miles southeast of Enid. Perhaps she, too, is visiting relatives, and Martha and Grace have come with her. It’s early autumn, though, a bad time for a farmer’s wife to go gallivanting around. Something important must have brought her to town.
It could only be an imminent death in the family. Apparently a relative of Alafair’s lives here - her sister Ruth Ann, of course, since in my experience, people’s sisters live in Enid. People’s widowed sisters, so it must be her sister’s husband Lester who is dying. Yes, I believe Alafair is visiting her wealthy sister and her husband, who live in the huge 1905 Victorian mansion that Don and I walked by over on Elm Street that morning.
He must be an important businessman in town, this brother-in-law - a founding father, who made the Cherokee Strip Land Run in 1893. He must have quite a history, and some powerful enemies, like Buck Collins, who would love to do him harm even as he lay dying. And even rich and important and ruthless men love their wives and children, and might do shocking things to protect them.
There’s a murder here, I can smell it, and some deeply buried family secrets.
Don’s persistence has prevailed. He will pay the check, and Dolores will leave the tip. Another family ritual has been honored, and I have the germ of a new book.
It’s January of 2009, and I’m holding in my hand the hardcover first edition of The Sky Took Him. It’s a good thing that Alafair and her daughters happened to go to Enid. If they hadn’t, no one might have discovered what really happened to Ruth Ann’s son-in-law Kenneth, or why Martha won’t marry the man she loves, or why Lester has hated Buck Collins for more than twenty years.
Visit Donis's website at www.doniscasey.com for more information about the author and her books.
Interviewed by Sandra Parshall
Jeri Westerson developed a taste for noir while growing up on the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles, at the same time she was absorbing the history of England in the Middle Ages from her Anglophile parents. When she began writing mysteries, combining the two interests to create what she calls “Medieval noir” seemed only natural.
Jeri worked as a graphic artist in L.A. and Pasadena in the mid 1980s and early '90s. After becoming a mother, she poured her creative energies into writing, but success eluded her. She continued to write while holding a variety of jobs – luggage salesperson, wine-tasting host and tour guide for a winery, choir director, travel insurance agent, secretary, ceramic studio manager, journalist. At last she found a publishing home with St. Martin’s Press, and her debut novel, Veil of Lies, came out on October 28.
Jeri and her husband, a commercial photographer, have a son in college and share their southern California home with two cats and a tortoise.
Q. Tell us about Veil of Lies and your protagonist, Crispin.
A. First off, thanks, Sandy, for allowing me to be here on Poe’s Deadly Daughters.
Veil of Lies is my own little subgenre, what I call a “medieval noir,” a darker storyline than you might find in medieval mysteries, with a hard-boiled detective. Crispin is an ex-knight, having lost his wealth, his title, his status—in short, he’s lost himself and now has to redefine his role on the mean streets of 14th century London. He found his niche by becoming the “Tracker,” my take on a 14th century private eye. He’s an interesting man; dark, brooding, a bit intense but very sharp. Likes to quote Aristotle. He’s much smarter than I am!
In this first in the series, Crispin is hired by a rich merchant to spy on his wife to see if she is unfaithful. When Crispin discovers that she is, indeed, up to something, he returns to the merchant to tell him the bad news, but the man is found dead in the proverbial locked room. What follows is a nest of lies and dangerous secrets involving international intrigue, a beautiful femme fatale, and a mysterious religious relic.
Q. Why is a modern woman like you hanging out in the 14th century? Why did you choose this particular era to write about?
A. Because it’s really hard these days to hang out in the 14th century. But seriously, it’s an era I have enjoyed researching and reading about for a very long time, really since I was a kid. My parents were both rabid Anglophiles and my father was even studying to teach medieval history. We had medieval history books on our shelves as well as the big names in historical fiction. I devoured those books as well as absorbed the odd discussion at the dinner table about some point of British history. Honestly, if I hadn’t picked up something I wasn’t trying very hard.
The fourteenth century in particular interested me because this was an era buttressed by the Plague in the early 1300’s and the forced abdication and murder of Richard II by century’s end. In between are the intrigues of court life, a nobility that now considers English its language rather then Norman French, tournaments, wars, a peasant revolt, Geoffrey Chaucer—you name it, it’s got it.
Q. Why did you choose mystery rather than straight historical fiction?
A. Ah, confession time. Actually, I was trying to get published in historical fiction for about ten, eleven years. But it’s an awfully tough market to crack. A former agent of mine recommended I try switching to historical mystery as an easier market to break into. My response: I don’t know how to write a mystery; I don’t want to write a mystery; I’m not going to write a mystery. But when a few more years passed with more rejections, I bloody well learned to write a mystery! But I didn’t want to write the run-of-the-mill medieval mystery. I wanted my own twist to it. So I combined my love for hard-boiled/noir fiction into this cross-pollination and came up with “medieval noir.”
Q. Why did you create a male protagonist? Does writing about a man of that period give you more freedom than you might have writing about a woman?
A. The thing of it is, I really never have written from the female point of view. Not in any satisfying way. I’ve always been a bit male-centric. There’s nothing misogynistic about that, I’ve just always had my mind geared that way, from my childhood as a tomboy to my writing as an adult. If I had wanted to write from the female POV, I would have found a way to give my character the freedom she needed to succeed. There are plenty of such role models in medieval mysteries. I just like getting into the mindset of a man. Particularly in this instance of a man with a strong code of honor. I’ve always been attracted to this “band of brothers” idea of men in battle and cleaving together in these intense relationships. In my experience and observation, women just don’t do that. With men, it’s very different. Maybe it stems from Neanderthal days of banding tightly together to hunt and defend, but it seems to be uniquely male. I like to explore that aspect of male personality with my character.
Q. Your characters have none of the tools used by modern detectives, professional and amateur – no telephones or computers, no databases, no forensics, no network of police departments. They don’t even have electricity. Does this allow you to be more imaginative and make up your own rules? Has the time period created any obstacles you’ve had to work around?
A. I don’t really find these to be obstacles. Getting into the mindset of the period is the fun part. I don’t really “make up my own rules.” I allow my characters to work within the rules of the society in which they lived. After sunset, a curfew is enforced and so now the only ones out on the streets are usually up to no good. It’s dark inside one’s lodgings except for a small fire in your hearth—your light and heat. You light a candle or oil lamp to chase the dark, but it’s still pretty shadowy. These are things I can use rather than having them be an obstacle in the story.
That being said, it must be explained that there were no private eyes in medieval England. The conceit of the character is in the “what if” factor: What if a man with his intelligence and skills were set adrift from all that he had ever known? What might he do for a living that would satisfy his intense sense of honor and justice? How could he do this and atone for his own sins at the same time? The fact of the matter is, such a person is possible. That’s what makes it interesting and challenging.
And as far as “medieval forensics”, you’ll have to scoot on over to Lee Lofland’s blog The Graveyard Shift at http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/ where I will be a guest blogger the first week of November, talking about what tools Crispin could have had at his disposal.
Q. Tell us about your road to publication. Was it harder or easier than you expected?
A. Let’s see. It took me 14 years and 19 novels to get a publishing contract, so yes, this was a lot harder than I expected. When I first decided to turn this long-time hobby into a career (I had already written three novels “just for fun” before I decided to write “for real”), I researched the situation. What was the industry like? What did I have to do to get published? Did I need an agent, etc. I worked hard to discover all these things on my own and just began writing.
Three years in, I got an agent and we worked together for three more years trying to place two of my manuscripts. To be fair, she did place one of them (an historical novel about Shakespeare and the earl of Oxford) with a small publisher, but they went out of business before it went to press. We finally parted ways. More manuscripts and two awful agents passed.
When I finally took the advice to switch to mysteries I had given up on agents and planned on going it alone to small presses. But has it ever happened to you? When you weren’t looking for it, it falls into your lap. Love, the perfect house, agents. I stumbled upon this agency and the junior partner had a degree in medieval literature. I courted him for about a year. We exchanged emails and he helped me revise my manuscript, all without a contract. After a year we signed. Though the first Crispin Guest medieval noir got rejected everywhere, the second and third did not. He placed Veil of Lies and the next in the series, Serpent in the Thorns, with St. Martin’s Minotaur. I’m still with that agency (you better believe it!).
Q. What do you enjoy most about fiction writing? What aspect of craft has been most difficult for you to master?
A. I really enjoy the research. You find the best turns of plot when you are researching something. I can’t tell you how many times I have been led in an entirely different direction from a footnote!
What’s the most difficult? The other things you have to do: writing a blog, maintaining a website, getting yourself out there to promote, the day job. I’d rather just write!
Q. Although you’re knowledgeable about life in the Middle Ages, do you still find that you need to research certain things?
A. There’s always some specialty you need to research or something that never occurred to you to look up. Each novel concerns a religious relic—it’s my McGuffin—and so what is known about that relic must be researched. Real people show up, so they need to be researched. I had to research the wool market in this novel, archery in the second, things like that.
Q. Do you have a strict writing schedule? How do you balance writing with your day job?
A. It’s not strict, but I like to write at least three to four pages a day. Doesn’t always come out that way right now, but I try. I work at a day job three days a week (the same place my husband works, so we carpool). He works late, so when I’m done at 5:30, I whip out my laptop and work for about two hours and write while he finishes up. On my days off I write and research all day.
Q. With your first book coming out, you’ll have to add promotion to your schedule. Where do you plan to aim most of your promotional efforts? Signings, conferences, online activity?
A. As a new kid on the block, signings at bookstores aren’t the best use of my time since no one knows me and may not make the effort to come out. But I am going to be at a few bookstores in southern California where I live. I will be in San Diego, Orange County, Riverside County, Los Angeles, and the Valley. Check my website for my appearance schedule if you’ll be in the area. There are two large mystery fan/writers conferences I go to – Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime -- and I will be starting to go to the Historical Novel Society’s North American Conference. These are expensive for me so I’m keeping that down to a low roar.
I also blog. You have to blog these days. I have a popular one called “Getting Medieval” at www.jeriwesterson.typepad.com and my character Crispin has his own blog at www.CrispinGuest.com. The website — www.JeriWesterson.com — is fairly static. I just add news and my appearance schedule to it. And, of course, I’m doing a blog tour by posting as a guest blogger on various blogs or doing interviews like this one and advertising the heck out of it. (You can view my blog tour schedule on my website.)
I’ll also be appearing on various panels around the southland and doing presentations at libraries and women’s organizations. Any place that will have me, really. I love giving presentations like: “The Challenges of Researching 14th Century London from 21st Century California,” “Top Ten Myths About the Middle Ages,” and “Medieval Forensics.”
Q. You had a blog before you sold your first book. How do you think that will pay off now that you’re published?
A. The blog helped me get recognized. I pushed myself out there with a variety of interviews of not only authors but librarians and small publishers. By advertising those to the mystery and history community I got noticed. At the first Bouchercon conference I went to back in 2006, I was shocked to discover that people recognized my name from my blog. It’s all about networking, really. My posts got linked by a few big bloggers, I linked back, chatted with them, met some of them in person at various book festivals and found myself suddenly with important contacts.
I figure readers will find my blogs to be good spots to get to know me and get to know Crispin. It will be a nice bridge for them between book releases.
Q. How long does it take you to write a book? Do you outline first or just plunge in?
A. I take about a month or two of just thinking about it (yes, I’m really working when I’m staring into space, at least that’s what I tell my husband when the laundry isn’t done), doing some preliminary research, taking notes and writing some scenes of dialogue that occur to me. And then I loosely outline, but I never seem to follow it once I start writing (but it’s good to have a starting point). And then I write, rewrite while I’m writing, and continue researching. In nine months, I have a novel ready to be critiqued. My husband reads it first—always. He’s my solid rock, by the way, the one who encouraged me to keep going for all those years of rejection. And then my critique partners—my Vicious Circle—get ahold of it and rip it a new one. And then I rewrite again and send it off to my agent, who also makes suggestions for changes. And then it goes to my editor, who will make even more changes. I’m actually pretty grateful that I started out life as a graphic artist. Having to create something for a client is good exercise for this sort of thing. You learn not to take these suggestions personally, thinking of it as just more clients you have to satisfy with your “product.”
Q. What mystery writers do you read? What have you learned from the writers you admire?
A. My biggest heroes are those writers of the past. I’m a huge fan of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Dorothy Hughes. Dorothy Sayers and Ellis Peters are also faves. I’m also a big fan of current writers Julia Spencer-Fleming and Laurie King. But my tastes are quite eclectic, from J.K. Rowling to Arturo Perez-Reverte.
When I set out to create my own kind of medieval mystery, I started literally tearing apart the works of Chandler and Hammett to see what made a good hard-boiled detective. Dorothy Hughes lent me her noir strokes. Her sense of place is amazing. I wanted to use the spare style of Chandler but still give it enough of a lush feel of another place and time. It’s a tough act to follow, to be sure.
Q. Have you found writers’ organizations helpful? Would you advise aspiring writers to become active in mystery writers’ groups before they’re published?
A. Oh my God! Yes! When I switched to mysteries, I found a whole new world of opportunities. Not only are there numerous small presses devoted solely to mysteries, but there are also independent booksellers who pride themselves on just stocking mysteries. All over the country you can find these bookstores. Conferences. Panels. What a market! When I joined Sisters in Crime, I got the answers to the many questions I had. I found like-minded writers, support, critique partners. Really, everything you need to get a leg up. I don’t think I could have done it without organizations like Sisters in Crime. They are duly thanked in my acknowledgements. And yes, I would definitely recommend to start out in a local or online chapter. I belong to a “local” chapter, but it is quite far from where I live and a bit of a drive. I have found the online chapter to be most helpful (and saves on gas!).
Q. What do you see in your future? Where would you like to be as a writer in five years?
A. I would like to be well along in the series and with another medieval mystery series on its way. I’m already in the thinking stages of that one. I hope to be in a position to write a novel in each series every other year. I don’t think many of us can really devote the proper time to two novels a year. I don’t think I could do either justice, but we’ll see. I’m already a little ahead with the Crispin series because three are already written.
Q. What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
A. Don’t do it! Naw, just kidding. Well, don’t do it until you’ve done your homework and really know what you are getting into. It’s not easy. But if you are obsessed with writing and can’t not do it, then you’d better give it a go. And join writer’s organizations like Sisters in Crime. Get yourself a good critique group and—here’s the tough part—listen to what they have to say! You’ll save yourself a world of hurt if you can learn to take advice from other writers. You’ll learn to drop bad habits and begin to see your work more objectively. And when you finish your manuscript, don’t sit back on your laurels. Write the next one right away. You might find that the second one is better than the first.
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