Category Archives: Mystery writing

More Adventures in Writing: Dusty’s Christmas Surprise

1940s mystery, 1948, Barbara Struna, cats, Christmas, Christmas Noir, Cloisters, fashion 1940s, Holiday Noir, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, mystery, Mystery writing, Natasha, New York City, New York films, Sharon Healy Yang, Skating in Central Park, The House Across the Bay, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

Previously, I blogged on the complexity and hard work behind developing Memories of You.  Well, now that draft #2 of Memories is marinating on my D drive, I’ve plunged into turning the outline for my fifth Jessica Minton mystery into an actual book.  However, Dusty’s Christmas surprise has not flown easily from my pen, despite the detailed outline crammed into a stack of variously sized, lined pages, all written down at multiple points over the past two years.

First, there was the background research for 1948, and not just December of the year when the story unfurls.  My general research started with an interesting little tome called Live It Again 1948. Lots on politics, the economy, home life, and domestic and international events.  Harry Truman’s hard-fought presidential victory, the Soviet Blockade and resultant Berlin Airlift, and Citation winning the Triple Crown were just a few important events. Did you know that Kitty Litter and Scrabble as  we now know it both came on the market that same year?  Dusty will certainly delight in the former. With Liz’s penchant for mangling the English language, I’m sure she’ll make some intriguing contributions to the latter.

You can see the notes I’ve been taking from this book above. Also observe that the picture to the right shows how I made up a calendar for December 1948 with room on the squares for each day to write in events occurring in the story – but written in pencil!  Once you start actually writing, you find that events may notconnect in the ways you’d expected or fit the order you’d originally planned.  Hence, a little erasing and a little rewriting, in pencil, enables you to make adjustments, so that you are always looking at the big picture over the weeks the story covers. It helps me to see the plot in a linear layout.

Another big help was a stack of movie magazines from 1948 that my fellow author Barbara Struna graciously donated to me.  They gave me the lowdown on what 1948 people were experiencing – directly, by reporting on films, gossip, music; indirectly, by showing advertisements for films, consumer goods, and photos of hair and clothing fashions.   Primary texts give you a nice picture of people’s everyday life in the time period of your choice.  Closer to creating a final draft, I’ll be looking at the New York Times for December 1948, to get more depth on world, national, and city concerns – as well as on entertainment, what people are buying and the costs, and personal interest stories.

Now, I also needed help with some nitty-gritty details.  Only three chapters in and I had to figure out how one character could check whether a thirty-eight was loaded, without getting fingerprints on the gun. God bless the Internet (sometimes).  Here you can see that I retrieved and printed instructions on how to check for bullets, while also getting a picture of the gun itself to see all the parts described.  So, I was able to describe how to handle the weapon without getting pesky fingerprints all over it.

Many people tell me that they love my descriptions of my era’s clothes,  often asking how I can create those images so vividly and accurately.  Here’s my “secret.”  I draw on photos of the actual styles of the era.  As I’ve mentioned in other of my blogs, I’m inspired by classic-era actors when I create my characters.  With Joan Bennett as an inspiration for Jessica, I often turn to images of her to inspire both scenes and descriptions of what she’s wearing in those scenes.  For a Saturday morning visit to The Cloisters, I selected this number from House Across the Bay.  Now, House was released in 1940, but the longer plaid skirt and nip-waisted jacket turned out also to suit (if you pardon the pun) 1948 fashions.

You can also see in the picture at the beginning of the previous paragraph that I have a layout of The Cloisters on my writing easel.  I had planned to take a trip there to refresh my memory for recreating that setting; however, I was unable to do so before writing this passage.  After checking online articles about the layout and exhibitions of The Cloisters in 1948, I blended that map with images and descriptions from those articles to create the setting of two dangerous encounters for Jessica.  Can you guess where Jess was hiding when she overheard a telling conversation?

Before things get dicey, this faithful dog memorialized beneath his nobleman owner’s feet leads Jessica to ponder if Dusty would do her similar honors, in stone, What do you think?

Additionally, I’d planned a scene where Jessica is pursued across a skating pond in Central Park by a mysterious predator. However, Yang claimed that the skating ring in the park was an open arena that wouldn’t allow any surreptitious, threatening chases.  Again, a little research confirmed that Yang’s rink only opened in 1950, but there was, indeed, a frozen skating area called The Pond fitting my needs exactly.  Its memory had haunted me from the 1948 film Portrait of Jenny.  The hair-raising chase was back on! So, enjoy these images that I discovered.  The article that particularly helped me was “NYC in film Portrait of Jennie 1948.”

Of course these photos were all taken during the day.  Jessica’s adventure had the added threat of taking place at night by lantern light.

Lastly, I needed an expert to certify that Dusty’s catlines is fully accurate.  Here’s Natasha, exhausted after her thorough vetting of what I’ve written so far.  Yup, ’Tasha Yang gives me two paws up – but she has to lean on something when she does it or she’ll fall over.

 

Scrabble Image: https://connecticuthistory.org/scrabble-copyrighted-today-in-history/
Truman image:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dewey_Defeats_Truman.jpg
Images from The Cloisters:
-Author’s collection:  dog resting beneath owner’s feet.
– Image of the Gothic Chapel: “The Cloisters,” Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloisters
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloisters_Chapel_(3220524245).jpg
original sources:  This image was originally posted to Flickr by Sharon Mollerus at https://flickr.com/photos/38315261@N00/3220524245 (archive). It was reviewed on 29 July 2018 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.
Images from Central Park
Aerial shot:Golden Age of Travel, Associated Press –
https://www.facebook.com/groups/811703519221774/posts/2113878869004226/
Skaters on Ice (2 images):
“Portrait of Jennie on Film” NYC in Film, Finding Movie Locations in the Big Apple
https://nycinfilm.com/2022/05/07/portrait-of-jennie-1948/

 

Mystery Making: sisters in Crime Style

Barbara Struna, Cape Cod, mystery, Mystery writing, Mystery Writing Workshop, Nicole Asselin, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, , , , , , , , ,
Last month, January, I joined two of my Sisters in Crime (NE) authors (Nicole Asselin and Barbara Struna)  at the Centerville Library on the Cape for a fun presentation:  “Mystery Making .”  The Speakers Bureau of Sisters in Crime New England offers loads of exciting, informative, and enjoyable programs, but this is one of the most popular.  The audience gets to help us create a mystery  right before their eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

How is this mutual creation accomplished?  I’ve seen slight variations of this method, but here’s what usually happens on the presentations in which I’ve been involved. We, the writers, collect anonymous suggestions from the audience in bags marked “names,” weapons,” “motives,” and “setting.” Then we pull suggestions from the bags without looking – well, we look enough to see that we actually get our hands in the bag – reveal what we see, then post it on a white board at the front of the room.  We really get the ball rolling by each making  suggestions and cooperatively shaping characters to go with names, shaping those characters’ lives in terms of setting.  Pulling together how setting and character relationships create motive and how all three are reflexively related to the weapon(s) used.  Of course, the order of the discussion might change at different events, but our joking interplay always brings out how all the elements in creating a mystery are interlinked.
Especially fun is the audience’s participation, as they help create the mystery novel, not just by their suggestions on the anonymous paper slips, but as we gradually invite them in for more and more participation in drawing the elements of writing a mystery into a final form.  It’s a blast to hear people arguing over what weapons are plausible and which are not (big argument over the efficacy of spatulas), or helping us weave a plot in a setting where weapons like a surf board, a yoga mat, an awl, a kazoo, and, (yes) even a spatula can be elements of doom. Really neat, a member of the audience suggested that if the yoga mat would be involved in the murder, we should call the book Savasana:  The Corpse Pose.
Click on the photo above to read the suggestions.
And then, along the way, as we talk with the audience about how we might integrate all the different elements into a tale, we get to talk about how people write (e.g. pantsers vs. plotters) and how the type of mystery you write shapes what elements you will use and how you will use them.  Nicole writes baseball-centered tales in something of a cosy mode, I write historicals in a 1940s noir mode, and Barbara writes tales set on the Cape where the mystery arises from questions of the past.  So, the audience gets to see how and why the mystery genre is so richly varied.
The beautiful thing is that getting a program like this is so easy for your library or other organization.  You can also get your pick of authors (according to availability) from the various members of Sisters in Crime New England.  Just as wonderful, the Speaker’s Bureau has other programs, as well, that focus on writing, publishing, promotion, mystery genres, etc.  Just contact Leslie Wheeler at speakersbureau@sincne.org or go to the Sisters in Crime New England web site, Speakers Bureau.  Hope to see you at an event in the future!
By the way, here I am proving that a spatula can be a deadly weapon.  so there!

Photos courtesy of Judith Marshall at Centerville Library, and De-Ping Yang

Research Follies

1940s mystery, Amberoid, Boston, Boston Public Library, Great Fire of 1947, Joyce Butler, massachusetts, Memories of You, mystery, Mystery writing, Surprise!, Vicki Westlake, Wildfire Loose, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
I recently saw this meme in my feed on FaceBook and said to myself, “Oh, how painfully true!”
You may plot out the most deliciously intricate and logical outline for your masterpiece.  Every piece may seem to interconnect beautifully in your initial set up; but, darn it, not only the devil is in the details but Belial, Beelzebub, Moloch, Asmodeous, Lucifer, and the whole gang are too!
Case in point, my current project, a sequel to Surprise! with the ironic working title Memories of You.  I knew where I wanted to move my main characters, scene to scene, but creating those scenes, developing them, dealing with new and tempting possibilities once I got started, that was another kettle of guppies – sometimes sharks, hammerheads!
For example, I knew Vicki Westlake would clue in to some important information about a dangerous man from her veteran husband’s past while she was doing research in the Boston Public Library for a new mystery novel that she was planning.  Simple, then, kind of.  If I plunk her down in the library, I have to describe the library to create a genuine sense of place – except I hadn’t been doing research at the BPL for many years.  Field trip!
Off Yang and I went to that gorgeous receptacle of knowledge to take pictures and just drink in the impressive architecture as we explored the layout – part of which led me to a side room that would help me develop a new part of the story.  Problem solved.

Um, not exactly.  I was visiting the library in 2025; my story takes place in 1947.  Things change over the years.  So, off to the internet to find architectural plans and photos of the library that would work for the time period of Memories.  I even found a floor plan of the first and second floors! Side note:  I’m now really enjoying the FB group Boston Mass. Vintage.  It’s a great site to help me with future mid-century writing projects.

 

Another vital part of my outline hit a little bit of a “roadblock” as I moved to the end of “Memories,” where the two main characters journey to Maine in October 1947 in order to learn vital answers about the husband’s past in the war from his retired commanding officer.  Did you know that 1947 was known as the fall Maine burned, as massive wildfires swept through much of southern Maine, as well as other parts?  Can you get any more exciting than having your denouement occur in the midst of devastating, inexorable flames?
Piece of cake to write?  Um, no!  My heroine and spouse have to travel to a more northern part of Maine, so I have to figure out how they can get through southern Maine without being caught by fire but end up at their destination just as another blaze is heading for them, then be able to get out without being incinerated.  Fortunately, I have Joyce Butler’s Wildfire Loose, The Week Maine Burned, a brilliantly thorough and exciting recounting of when and where the fires started, how they progressed with speed and almost omnipotence, how they were fought, and how people escaped by the skin of their teeth (sometimes not).  So, in order to time my main characters’ journey from Boston to Maine, I created a chart of where the fire was each day, as well as whipping out a road map of Maine and blocking off in pen the areas where the fires blazed through, based on Butler’s citing the towns affected.  I also had to factor in the time their trip would take considering the lower travel speeds of the 1940s, as well the routes available.  Fortunately, I passed fourth grade math.
Of course, I also had to use a roadmap to chart my characters’ route from Boston to their destination in Maine, which creates problems of its own.  Today, we can shoot straight up Interstate 95 and save scads of time.  Unfortunately, no  95 in 1947.  I had to look over the routes listed on the map, determine if they were state roads, and find out if they existed in 1947.  Joyce Butler’s book provides plenty of helpful references to routes in existence, as well as does  the internet on history of specific routes.  The internet was surprisingly unhelpful in providing road maps from the time period – unless I wanted to shell out to ebay or some other source.  Thanks to Yang for looking over routes, sharing research, and discussing driving.
So, all I need to do now is pick a town near a fire and away we go – um, not quite.  For reasons related to the plot, the town couldn’t be southern Maine – not isolated enough.  Some further north or west?  Well, the time frame wouldn’t work.  When those fires got going my characters would have been stalled  by the big blazes across the southern part of the state.  Anson almost made it as guest star town.  My solution?  The same  that many other authors choose:  make up your own town and date for its threatening forest fire.  Just make it fit the general setting where you locate it.  So, Amberoid, Maine was born.  How do you like the name?  An amberoid is actually synthesized gemstone containing crushed amber.  It’s also the name of the first horse I picked in the Triple Crown races.  He did not run in 1947.  I’m not that old.
So, anytime you think all a writer has to do is sit down and write – Ho boy, have you got another thing coming!
Intrigued?  Well, first, you should read Surprised!  Check it out here.

Images: Every effort has been made to ensure there is no copyright infringement in the use of images.  These images are for education and entertainment only.  If you feel your copy right has been infringed, let me know and I will remove the image.  syang@worcester.edu

Hammerhead shark:  Hammerhead Shark (28776238172).jpg:  Wikki Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scalloped_Hammerhead_Shark_Sphyrna_Lewini_%28226845659%29.jpeg

Modern Photos of BPL: author’s collection

Floor Plan of BPL: The Urban Imagination https://hum54-15.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/show/672

Older photos of  Bates-Mckim Reading Hall in BPL  https://lostnewengland.com/2016/07/bates-hall-boston-public-library/

Image of Maine 1947 fire from https://www.maine.gov/dacf/mfs/forest_protection/1947_fire.html (origin Guy P. Gannett Newsletters in Maine)