Falling in Love

It is not unknown for a writer to fall in love with one or more of her characters – possibly the most notorious was Dorothy Sayers' passion for Lord Peter Wimsey. I know that I become fond of many of my characters, possibly because early in my writing career I read that the afterlife of an author consists of spending eternity in a small room with the characters she has invented. There’s a warning to make them at least interesting if not actually likable.

But sometimes I develop an equally keen pleasure in spending time in a setting I have invented. When I set out to write my first mystery series, I chose to set it at a horse farm. I chose the Arabian horse because the first time I saw one in person, lost my heart to the breed. But the most fun with the setting I had was the beautiful Queen Anne house my heroine lived in. I found a photograph of one I really liked, and drew up a floor plan. A rather clumsy one – floor plans are harder than they look! – but I explained that by saying the original owner had a wife with a whim of iron who kept making demands for changes as the house went up. I subscribed to a house and garden magazine, perused Architectural Digest in doctor's and dentist's offices, and visited high-end furniture stores to interview decorators. I even started a scrapbook with clippings of furniture and architectural details.

Because the nearby town was terribly corrupt, I invented it, too; even drew a city map.

For the Dame Frevisse medieval series, I mostly used two books as sources: Eileen Powers’ Medieval English Nunneries, and Dorothy Hartley’s Lost Country Life, though there was a great deal of secondary reading, too. Having spent two years in England helped as well. Gail had her own sources (down to the names of sheriffs and weather reports from the fifteenth century!). She and I immersed ourselves so deeply in medieval customs and attitudes that I, at least, found coming back to the twentieth century at the end of a book a bit of a shock.

Now I’m writing about an actual small town, Excelsior, Minnesota, with an imaginary needlework shop in it. I have based the layout of the shop on an actual one, unfortunately now closed, and I frequent needlework shops in the area for ideas and methods. One of the pleasure of using a real town is that when I go out there for lunch or shopping, it’s a tax-deductible expense! One small problem is that, because it’s a real town, changes occur that I don’t always like. I have decided, for example, that there is a micro-brewery where the Waterfront Cafe used to stand, when actually it turned into a sushi restaurant. And I’ve kept the hardware store where actually an Irish pub now occupies
the building. But Leipold’s is still there, and Antiquity Rose, and Jim Penberthy still has his law office on Water Street.

Whenever I want to send Betsy out of town, my editor objects on the grounds that Excelsior is another of the running characters in the books. Are there books you read as much for the settings as the plot?

Hardcover Vs. Paperback - And A CONTEST

My first published novel came out in hardcover, from St. Martin’s Press. It had an unusual but perfect cover and, because it took dead aim at a particular set of people who are enthusiastic readers -- members of the Society for Creative Anachronism -- it did well. It had a peculiar title: Murder at the War. The paperback version, from Walker, had a better title, Knight Fall. It did well, too.

I was surprised when MATW came out in hardcover, because what I thought I was writing was a book you buy at the airport or at a bus depot, read on your trip, and leave behind on the seat when you arrive. I meant it to be light but highly-entertaining, full of interesting characters, with a clever plot, and having a satisfying ending, but nothing deeply literary -- just the sort of thing to make the enforced inactivity of travel bearable. But I didn’t think it was the sort of book you buy to treasure and re-read over and over.

It was an honor as well as a pleasure to discover I was wrong, that people liked the books in the Peter Brichter series enough to buy them in hardcover.

There is a certain amount of prestige to having a book come out in hardcover; my current Betsy Devonshire series began as paperback originals, but has now graduated to hardcovers followed, about a year later, by paperback versions. Both versions, unlike my first series, come out from the same publisher, Berkley/Prime Crime.

Speaking of romance, which we seem to be doing this week, Murder at the War featured a happily married couple; the prequel, The Unforgiving Minutes, told the strange and exciting way they met and fell in love. (Sort of like the lines from a song in the musical “Fiorello!” “You remember her, she detested you; you remember him, he arrested you.”) The Dame Frevisse series featured a medieval nun who was above such nonsense as falling in love. My current series has Betsy being pretty much of a dud at finding and holding onto a good man -- though she is currently doing a lot better with Connor Sullivan, who is introduced in my novel Blackwork, and will be prominent in the forthcoming Buttons and Bones.

A CONTEST: You can win a copy of the just-released paperback version of the thirteenth Betsy Devonshire mystery, Blackwork! Suitably autographed, of course. Just answer this question Yes or No by five p.m. Friday, October 9: Are the terms “Counted Cross Stitch” and “Needlepoint” describing the same kind of needlework? In case of multiple correct answers (and I anticipate lots of them, this is an easier question than in my last contest), I will draw the winner at random.