Tag Archive for: Posed for Murder

High Heels & Me

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Meredith Cole

I have a confession to make. I can’t wear stilettos. Hmm. I hope this admission won’t get kicked off the blog today. Perhaps it will help if I say that my sleuth in POSED FOR MURDER and DEAD IN THE WATER wears heels? I’ve tried to wear high heels, but I always feel like I’m walking on stilts. I’ve seen women who strut around in their heels looking sexy and strong. Unfortunately I just wobble along, and fifteen minutes into the evening ache all over.

Living in New York, an uncomfortable pair of shoes could absolutely ruin my entire day (or week, if they ripped up my feet enough). Walking absolutely everywhere on hard and unforgiving pavement, it was comfortable shoes all the way. Stilettos were, my friends and I fondly liked to say, “taking a taxi shoes.” I don’t think the women in Sex in the City ever tried to run for an N train in their sexy stilettos. They would have ended up with one of those shoes stuck in a grate and a sprained ankle – or worse.

My contentious relationship with heels began when I grew to be five foot four in the 5th grade. All the boys were six inches shorter. So my first pair of heels was just ½” high. I still felt like I was towering over everyone. I grew to be 5’8” but I frequently have people ask (or assume) that I’m taller. Good posture, I guess. It’s certainly not because I wear heels.

Occasionally when I go to speak to a group that’s read my book, I get a funny look. I usually have a good idea why. They’re expecting me to be a twenty-something, funkily dressed artist—just like my sleuth. But Lydia McKenzie and I are pretty different people. She’s young and single, and I’m married and have a child. She lives in Brooklyn, and I’ve moved back home to Virginia. She’s a photographer, and I’m a filmmaker turned novelist. And Lydia always wears crazy vintage clothes.

I’m not a dull dresser at all. I enjoy clothes, and love to shop at second hand stores. I love fabrics and color, and putting on outfits in the morning. But I like to be comfortable, too. There has to be an inner beauty that shines through when your toes can breathe, your arches are supported, and you don’t feel like you’re going to sprain your ankle when you take a step. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

So will Lydia ever learn to tone down her clothes? She’s a fictional sleuth, so she can walk on the wild side. She’s looking for murderers with her camera, stumbling over dead bodies, and running for her life, so wearing heels seems pretty safe in comparison. Besides, she can always kick them off now and then and give her feet a rest. That’s what I would do.

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Meredith Cole started her career as a screenwriter and filmmaker. She was the winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic competition, and her book POSED FOR MURDER, was published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in 2009. She was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel in 2010. Her second book, DEAD IN THE WATER, continues the adventures of photographer and amateur sleuth Lydia McKenzie in Brooklyn. She teaches writing at the University of Virginia. Visit her website here

Finding My Way Home

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Meredith Cole directed feature films and wrote screenplays before writing mysteries. She won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery competition. Her book POSED FOR MURDER,set in Williamsburg Brooklyn, was published by St. Martin’s Minotaur in February 2009. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of NY board, and blogs at www.thedebutanteball.com .

Where are you from? Where is home? They’re such simple questions, but too complex for me to answer easily. Some people say “home is where the heart is” or “it’s where you rest your head,” but I guess my heart (and my head) has always felt differently.

When I shut my eyes and think about “home,” I see first my mother’s house in the rolling hills of Virginia near Charlottesville. Right now I live in Brooklyn, New York. I love New York, and appreciate the diversity, the flavors, and the excitement. I like taking the subway (except when it’s delayed), and walking everywhere. But I dislike the noise, the crowded streets, the trash, and the lack of trees—but that’s a discussion for another day.

In POSED FOR MURDER, Lydia McKenzie has left Ohio behind and gone off to New York City to be an artist. She embraces everything about the city and dreams of hitting it big. Her parents have sold their house and taken to the road in an RV, and she tells herself she doesn’t mind. But Lydia is still haunted by the past, a girl she knew as a child who was kidnapped and murdered. The girl’s experience infuses her work and leads her to try to find some sort of closure for other murdered women and their families. But instead it leads her deep into trouble, and makes her the center of a murder investigation.

My own story mirrors that of lots of Americans who because of jobs and families end up somewhere different then where they started out. My parents moved to rural Virginia from Chicago when I was two. Simple enough, but then things got complicated. My parents got divorced when I was three, and my father moved to Northern Virginia when I was six. I split my time between both places until college. I went to college in Massachusetts (Smith), lived after college in Washington, DC for five years, and then moved to Brooklyn, NY (after a few stops in Paris and Pittsburgh). So I move a lot. So do a lot of other people. So what’s the problem?

I probably agonize over the question of where I’m from because I’m a writer. I want to get my own story straight and figure out my motivation. But I’m not easy to decipher. I’m both hugely sentimental and very callous. I hate to give up my memories, my friends, and certain things that remind me of good times and people that I love—but at the same time I’m anti-stuff. I’ve never been a collector, and when I’m ready to move I throw lots of things out.

And I’m the same way when I write. The way I approach a story and the structure of a book can change a million times throughout the process. But the goal remains the same. Tell the story. Finish what I start. And then return home–wherever that might be.

Meredith Cole