Tag Archive for: Julia Spencer-Fleming

Through the Evil Days – Julia Spencer-Fleming

The Stiletto Gang is delighted to welcome Julia Spencer-Fleming!  We are huge fans so this guest appearance has us all a-twitter…if you haven’t checked out Julia’s books featuring minister Clare Fergusson and police chief Russ Van Alstyne, now’s the time. Through the Evil Days, the seventh in this fantastic series, is on sale this November.


Dos and Don’ts of blending Mystery and Romance
I clearly remember the moment when I realized that the
romance subplot/second story of my mysteries had
become the plot/primary story: I had just given a talk to an enthusiastic group
at a bookstore,  detailing how I work out
the twists and turns of the murder, how I use the harsh weather and rural
landscape to echo conflicts within the book, how the crimes highlights social
issues I feel strongly about. The it was time for questions. A well-dressed
woman’s hand shot up. “What I want to know is,” she stood up for emphasis,
“when are they going to Do It?”
Well, then.
The tradition of including a romance within a mystery goes
way back – who among us hasn’t swooned when Peter Whimsey finally got his
proposal to Harriet Vane right: “Placetne, magistra?” “Placet.” Or when
Deborah Knott finally realizes Dwight Bryant has been waiting for her
for years. Or when art thief John Smythe, battered and bruised, admits his love
for art historian Vicky Bliss? Can you recall the crimes in Gaudy Night, Rituals
of the Season
and Trojan
Gold
? I can’t. But, boy, I remember those scenes.
So what have I learned in seven – soon
to be eight
– books about the tortured, tempestuous relationship between
Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and chief of police Russ Van Alstyne? Glad you
asked. Let me share with you my dos and don’ts of blending the genres:
DO take advantage of the long story arc. In a straight-up
romance, the hero and heroine need to find their “Happy Ever After” by the end
of the book (in the same way that the mystery has to be solved at the end in
crime fiction.) But in a series, readers get to follow the couple, sometimes
for years, as they get to know and love each other. When Russ and Clare meet in
In
the Bleak Midwinter
, he’s contentedly married and she’s a brand-new cleric
in a brand-new parish. How they struggle and resist and succumb to their
feelings becomes a story that spreads out over seven books (and counting!)
DON’T play it safe. There’s a lot of crime fiction where the
amateur sleuth meets the detective in book one, dates him in books two through
four, is engaged in book five and married by book six. Their big conflict is
usually that she’s nosy and he’s overprotective. Nice enough, but it doesn’t
tend to make the heart race. A good romance has complications and obstacles and
hurdles galore for the lovers. In Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Jane
Ryland books
, her eponymous heroine and Detective Jake Brogan are
passionately in love right from the start. But if he’s dating a reporter, he’ll
be suspected by the department anytime anyone leaks a story to the press. And
if she’s dating a cop, her hard-won career as a crime reporter becomes tainted
be perceptions of favoritism. They literally can’t be seen together. But they
yearn to be together! What to do? Obviously, you have to keep reading to find
out.
DO use danger as an aphrodisiac. In Out of the Deep I Cry,
Russ and Clare are locked in the pitch-black 
cellar of a derelict building. They have no weapons, no phone and the
place is flooding with freezing cold water. (It sounds a little bit like the Perils
of Pauline
as I describe the scene, but trust me, it works.) Isolation and
the fear of imminent death break down their barriers and they kiss. Who
wouldn’t? If the hero and heroine are going to be rubbing shoulders with bad
guys and putting themselves in harm’s way, take advantage of it!
DON’T mess with reader expectations. When someone picks up a
mystery, she has a reasonable expectation that there’s going to be a crime
(usually a murder) a series of clues, and a solution. When someone reads a
romance, she has a reasonable expectation that there will be a couple, they
will change and be changed by each other, and they will reach a Happily Ever
After (or at least a Happy-For-Now, with an option to upgrade.) There’s not
much more disappointing than getting to the end of a mystery and not learning
Whodunnit. Or how. It’s equally infuriating to root and cheer for a couple only
to have one of them die or leave town at the end. Elizabeth George, I’m looking
at you, here.
DO It. When readers have anguished and yearned and hoped
along with a couple for two, four, six books, they want to experience the
payoff. You don’t have to have a play-by-play book with diagrams, but let’s see
a few fireworks! Readers want to experience the big emotions in the other parts
of the characters’ lives – anger, frustration, triumph – so it’s natural to
want to be there for one of the biggest emotional events of all. And, after
all, unlike killing someone, it’s something most of us have actual experience
with…
Julia
Spencer-Fleming
‘s New York Times bestselling books have won multiple
awards, including the Anthony and Agatha, and have been Edgar and RT Reader’s
Choice nominees.  The next Clare
Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne novel, Through
the Evil Days
, comes out on November 5th. You can find Julia at
her website, her readerSpace, on Facebook
and on Twitter as @jspencerfleming. She also blogs
with the Jungle Red Writers.

Sheldon’s a Nerd, but Now with 50% More Nuance

By Evelyn David

I’m invariably late to the party when it comes to discovering television shows. Generally I watch the news and cooking shows. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been catching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. The basic premise revolves around four geeky, brilliant science nerds, who love Star Trek, video games, and physics. A beautiful blonde moves in across the hall, a wannabe actress who’s paying the rent by being a waitress at The Cheesecake Factory. Hilarity ensues as the two worlds collide, intersect, and eventually mesh.

I started with reruns of the fourth season and it wasn’t until the last few days that I caught the pilot episode. I was astonished at the differences in each of the main characters. In the first episode, they were drawn so broadly, with each one representing a different stereotype, that I almost wondered if I were watching a different show.

What has happened is that over the last five years the caricatures have morphed into characters. As a writer, I understand that sometimes an author uses shorthand to describe in broad strokes the essentials of a character. Sex and the City, another show I caught after it had ended, also had four characters. In this case, the writers used costumes from the very first scene to telegraph who each character was: Miranda, the lawyer, in grey tailored suits, white blouses, and faux ties; Samantha, the sexpot, in outfits designed to tell you all about her without saying a word; Charlotte, the preppy pretty girl, in traditional designer wear; Carrie, the offbeat writer, in tutu and mile-high Manolo Blahniks.

Julia Spencer-Fleming, the award-winning mystery author of the Rev. Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne series, said, “Ultimately what’s important about the books I write and the books I read are that they create a recognizable, believable world with characters I want to spend time with.”

Rhonda and I have had fun creating the characters and worlds of our two series. In Washington, DC, you’ve met private detective Mac Sullivan, his furry sidekick, Whiskey, his maybe-sort of girlfriend Rachel Brenner, makeup artist in a funeral home, and the supporting cast of Jeff, Edgar, and others. They’ve each got their quirks, but hopefully they’re all grounded in enough reality that you can recognize them as the folks that you know in your real life. In a world, far, far away, but also grounded in reality, is the small town of Lottawatah, Oklahoma, where psychic Brianna Sullivan, flatulent bulldog Leon, and hunky Deputy Cooper Jackson, live and solve murders and resolve ghostly disturbances. Despite the woo-woo stuff, Brianna still has the same boyfriend problems that beset all women, still needs to do laundry, pick up after her dog – no matter how strange the circumstances, our hope is that you can identify with and enjoy the cast of characters we’ve created.

Next month we’re introducing a brand new group of memorable characters in Zoned for Murder, the first book of the Sound Shore Times mysteries. We’ll be talking about this nonstop in the weeks ahead, but our hope is to make the town of Milford, NY, and the character of reporter Maggie Brooks, welcome guests in your home.
Enjoy!

Marian, the Northern half of Evelyn David

————

Brianna Sullivan Mysteries – e-book series
I Try Not to Drive Past Cemeteries- Kindle (Exclusive at Amazon this month)
The Dog Days of Summer in Lottawatah- KindleNookSmashwords
The Holiday Spirit(s) of Lottawatah- KindleNookSmashwords
Undying Love in Lottawatah- KindleNookSmashwords
A Haunting in Lottawatah – KindleNookSmashwords
Lottawatah Twister – KindleNookSmashwords
Missing in Lottawatah – KindleNookSmashwords
Good Grief in Lottawatah – KindleNookSmashwords

Sullivan Investigations Mystery – e-book series
Murder Off the Books Kindle (Exclusive at Amazon this month)
Murder Takes the Cake KindleNookSmashwords
Riley Come Home (short story)- KindleNookSmashwords
Moonlighting at the Mall (short story) – KindleNookSmashwords

Romances
Love Lessons – KindleNookSmashwords