A Small Boast

If I may be permitted a brief mention, last week I published a new ebook, Relatively Dead, wherein my heroine suddenly starts seeing people who aren't there.  I think Edgar Allen Poe would be proud.  

You can find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Peggy Webb on Switching Genres

by Peggy Webb (guest blogger)

When writers gather, we always end up talking about writing. The liveliest discussion I’ve had on the topic occurred at Malice Domestic (2009) when I shared a banquet table with Sandy Parshall. Both of us are published novelists. The difference is that Sandy’s background is mystery, and I came to mystery from a background of romance (more than sixty romance novels).

I think I surprised the unflappable Sandy when I said, “Writing mystery is easier for me than writing romance.” She wanted to know more, and so this guest blog was born.

For me, the foundation of any good story, no matter what the genre, is believable, well-developed characters. I fell in love with all my heroes and heroines in romance, and I fell in love with the zany Valentine gang in my Southern Cousins Mystery Series. It was easy to switch from romance to mystery with the same lovable characters who could be your next door neighbors.

The same was true of pacing, voice, conflict, story arc, and resolution. All those elements I had used with such ease in romance followed me like obedient children into mystery.

So what’s the major difference between writing mystery and romance, and why is mystery easier for me? Romance novels are character driven and mysteries are plot driven.

In a strict category romance (this does not include romantic suspense, romantic thrillers, block-buster women’s fiction, etc.) the focus must be kept tightly on the developing relationship between the two major protagonists. Secondary characters and secondary plot lines must be kept to a minimum. It’s up to the author to write a page-turning story built on the slender premise of two people meeting, falling in love, getting ripped apart because of internal and external conflicts, and eventually finding their way back together again. Creating a story that won’t veer away from the central theme while holding readers’ attention as the romance plays out is a very tricky business.

On the other hand, a good mystery requires a dense, complex plot. After I had plotted my first mystery – Elvis and the Dearly Departed – I was astonished to discover that instead of working from a three-page synopsis as I had in romance, I would be working from an eighteen-page, carefully plotted story line. Before I wrote the first word, I knew the victim(s), the major suspects, the identity of the killer, motives and back-story of everybody involved, and how the murder tied into the lives of the Valentine gang (my series characters). All I had to do was hang the meat of my story on my lovely skeleton, who didn’t have a single bone missing. What fun! At all times during the mystery writing process, I knew what was going to happen next. In romance, I didn’t always know. Because I wrote from such brief synopses, I trusted my characters to inspire and surprise me along the way.

And they did!

Does the Valentine gang, plus Elvis, do the same thing? You bet! I’m having so much fun writing about them I can’t possibly call it work.

Writing in any genre requires talent, commitment and discipline. My experience in two genres is simply one writer’s journey.

How about you? What are your writing experiences? Your reading habits? Are you strictly a mystery buff or do you like to read other genres such as romance, romantic suspense, paranormal? I’d love to know!

The second book in Peggy's Southern Cousins mystery series, Elvis and the Grateful Dead, will be published in September. Visit her web site at www.peggywebb.com.

Reading for Romance

Elizabeth Zelvin

I don’t write romance, but I read for it. No, I’m not confessing to a secret taste for bodice rippers. I read mostly mystery and some carefully chosen fantasy, SF, and historical novels. But what most of my favorites have in common, regardless of genre, is fully realized, endearing characters and meaningful relationships, especially though not exclusively romantic ones.

Looking first at my favorite mystery series, let’s take Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone books. I love Sharon, but I’ve never fully bought her relationship, now marriage, with Hy Ripinsky. My pick among those books is Broken Promise Land, when Sharon’s assistant, Rae Kelleher, falls in love with Sharon’s brother-in-law, country star Ricky Savage. Some of it is told from Rae’s point of view, and for me it evokes that achingly emotional phenomenon, falling in love. Now let’s take Margaret Maron’s Judge Deborah Knott series. Like Sharon, Deborah makes a series of wrong choices before she finds a keeper. In her case, it’s a guy she’s known her whole life, Deputy Sheriff Dwight Bryant. And what a delicious twist it is that she lets her inner pragmatist insist she’s settling for a marriage of convenience, while Dwight conceals the fact that he’s been in love with her for years.

Sometimes an author fails to allow romance to triumph or draws the suspense out to my increasing frustration. I don’t think I’ve ever quite forgiven P.D. James for not letting Adam Dalgliesh get together with Cordelia Gray. And I wanted to shake Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, or perhaps her protagonist, Detective Inspector Bill Slider, for several books in a row as he shirked breaking with his irritating wife and committing to his delightful girlfriend.

Several years on the mystery lovers’ e-list DorothyL have taught me that I share my tastes across genres with quite a few other mystery readers. Even the ever-vigilant list moderators will allow members to post about Dorothy Dunnett and Diana Gabaldon. Both write mysteries, but it’s their more popular series, in both cases historicals with just a touch of woo-woo, that are so darn good. Dunnett’s Francis Crawford of Lymond and Gabaldon’s Jamie Fraser both figured prominently in a hugely enjoyable discussion on the list of which fictional characters DLers would happily go to bed with.

Tellingly, the list included Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan, who’s a terrific character and as much of a superhero as Lymond and Jamie, but not sexy and gorgeous like them. Miles is only four feet tall with a big head and a condition something like brittle bone disease—but he’s such a great guy that readers were ready to jump his bones. Virtually, of course. And it probably helps that we know how good he is in bed. The Vorkosigan books are science fiction by genre, though they often contain a mystery. My favorite, A Civil Campaign, does not. It doesn’t need one to carry the story: it’s the perfect cross between space opera and comedy of manners. And the romance between Miles and Ekaterin is very satisfying indeed. Bujold dedicates the book to Jane (Austen), Charlotte (Bronte), Dorothy (Sayers), and Georgette (Heyer), and I think she does her sources of inspiration proud.

Considering my tastes, you’d think I’d have a romance in my mystery, Death Will Get You Sober. But I don’t. My protagonist Bruce is too busy getting sober to fall in love, though he goes to bed once each with his ex-wife (whom readers will learn more about in a future book) and a witness. And if he did, both his sponsor and his best friend Jimmy would remind him that AA wisdom suggests no new relationships in the first year of sobriety. Bruce is one of those characters whose perch on the author’s shoulder is the driver’s seat. He won’t be hurried, and I can’t force him. In the second book, he has a romantic interlude, but it’s transitional for both partners. In the third, he’s attracted to a suspect, but it doesn’t work out. In book four, he meets someone who might become a girlfriend and a recurring character. But I don’t know for sure. He hasn’t told me yet.

So for now, I read for romance, but I don’t write it—yet.