Maxine Nunes On Tour With Dazzled

I’m delighted today to welcome author Maxine Nunes, a newcomer to the mystery scene but no novice at writing for the LA Times, television or books.


Maxine joins us to talk about her new release, DAZZLED (ISBN-10: 1432827308, ISBN-13: 978-1432827304, Five Star, Hardcover: 256 pages, November 13, 2013, $25).

Here’s a brief description of DAZZLED:

      During a brutal L.A. heat wave, four people are murdered in the Hollywood Hills and Nikki Easton's best friend Darla Ward has disappeared. The police think she might be one of the victims.
      No stranger to life's rough side, Nikki survived the streets as a teenage runaway and now brings that edge to her acting roles. But she has never seen anything like the battered girl on the gurney. Could this really be Darla, her beautiful face so damaged it looks barely human, her path to stardom ended in the county coroner's morgue?
      In her relentless search for the truth, Nikki discovers the hidden side of her friend's life, laying bare secrets buried before Darla was born, and uncovering widening layers of corruption that reach far beyond Hollywood to the highest levels of government.

Maxine has graciously answered some questions for me. 

Mason – Welcome ,Maxine. In what order do you create your characters — name, physical description, personality…

Maxine:
Nikki — and the idea that her best friend had gone missing — came to me all in one piece, and the original first chapter (which eventually became the somewhat different second chapter) just poured out in about an hour. Her voice and personality were pretty much all there, and her first name too. The details of what she looked like became clear a little bit later. And as a character, I think facets of her kept evolving until the last draft.
 
Mason - Which is the most fun to work with?

Maxine:
For me it’s seeing the other characters in the book — and Los Angeles — through Nikki’s eyes. But when I first started writing DAZZLED, my mother, who in life and reading liked to get to the action, told me, “Just don’t put in a lot of description. People don’t read it.” I definitely took her advice and tried to use it sparingly, and I think it kept things tight.
 
Mason - When you finished your book what surprised you the most about its development?

Maxine:
Oh, gosh. More than you’d think. You have an idea from your outline what’s needed to move the story forward. But how it actually plays out is almost always a surprise. It’s what keeps writing interesting. And hopefully, what keeps the reader interested. I had an idea how it might end — but I wasn’t sure until the words were actually on paper. And it came so naturally, I knew it was right.

Mason - If you could collaborate on a book with any author (living or dead), who would it be and what would the book be about?

Maxine:
Wow. What a tough question! Because I think one of the reasons people still read novels when it’s so much easier to turn on the TV is the narrator’s voice and the intimacy of the experience. And the writers I most admire, from Philip Roth to Megan Abbott — have such strong voices, you can’t even conceive of collaborating. 

But okay — if only because Double Indemnity has the most exquisitely engineered plot I’ve ever seen — I’d love to collaborate with James M. Cain. And it would be about how we all see ourselves as innocent, yet pushed to a certain point, would be capable of treachery, even murder.

Mason - What lead you to writing and to this genre in particular?

Maxine:
I’ve been addicted to reading since I was a child, and I think the desire to write fiction had its origins almost that early. As for why the mystery genre, what book is more fun than one you can’t put down? The compulsion to turn the page is built into the genre. Murder is always a high-stakes game. And the motives for murder can take us as deep into human experience as a writer cares to venture — without putting the reader to sleep (one hopes!).

Mason - Anything about your protagonist you'd like for us to know about that we wouldn't learn reading this book?

Maxine:
In the book you learn that Nikki’s parents were both orphans who married the same week they met. As the series progresses, there will be some surprising revelations about them. Nikki also mentions that at 19 she was briefly married to a man from another country. He will resurface in her life and draw her into another mystery.

Mason - What can readers look forward to next from you?

Maxine:
Nikki’s acting career will take her “on location,” and we’ll go along. The next two books are set in Paris and New York respectively. I’m also playing with a standalone mystery that takes place in the world of TV and publishing in Manhattan around 1968, one of the strangest and most interesting times in our history.

Maxine, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing a look at how Nikki came to be. I agree, mysteries are a page-turner.

Now for some background on Maxine. 

Like her heroine Nikki Easton, Maxine grew up in New York did a bit of wandering and some fascinating odd-jobs before the allure of glamour drew her to Los Angeles with the idea of launching an acting career. Instead of waitressing like most of her peers, though, she lucked into a gig writing romance novels — quickie potboilers, which she wrote at the rate of one a month to make her rent. 

While Maxine did have a role in one feature film, Seasons in the Sun with Terry Jacks (alas, it went straight to video), she found herself much more interested writing. And writing seemed much more interested in her. She wrote game shows, produced programming for Game Show Network, co-authored What’s Really Wrong With You, a book on muscles and health, and currently writes for several publications, including the L.A. Times. Her satiric parody of a White House scandal won the Pen USA West International Imitation Hemingway Competition. 

For more on Maxine and her writing, visit her online at maxinenunes.com.

Here is what one reviewer had to say about DAZZLED:

      "Maxine Nunes crafts an outstanding tale of friendship, murder, love, and betrayal in her impressive debut, Dazzled....Nunes' writing is top-notch from start to finish, and the increasingly suspenseful plot comes together with meticulous precision." - ForeWord Reviews, Fall 2013

Thanks so much for stopping by today. If you’re a mystery writer, what complies you to write in that genre? As a reader, why do you know reading mysteries?

Author Eleanor Sullivan: Turning Ideas Into Stories

It’s always a pleasure when I get to meet ‘new-to-me’ authors and share their works with you. Today I’m happy to welcome author Eleanor Sullivan to Thoughts in Progress to talk about writing and GRAVEN IMAGES, the second book in her Singular Village Mystery series.

I’d like to thank PJ Nunn from BreakThrough Promotions for introducing me to the lovely Eleanor and her intriguing stories.

Here’s a brief synopsis of GRAVEN IMAGES:

      When unruly vagabonds face rigid religiosity, anything can happen. Even murder.

      After an itinerant artist is found hanging in a barn, local villagers are quick to blame an Irish traveller conveniently passing through town. Only his broken leg keeps him from being delivered to the authorities immediately.
      Adelaide, a young midwife in the 1830s settlement, suspects the killer is one of their own. At the same time, she’s struggling with her own secrets and fears she’ll be caught violating the society’s strict religious rules.
      Unbeknownst to Adelaide, her husband, Benjamin, is facing threats of his own. Then suspicion falls on Adelaide’s sister for the murder, and Adelaide must risk her own life to find the killer before the traveller is delivered to the authorities where he’ll surely be hanged. 

Eleanor offered up two motivating topics to discuss today. Since I thought you’d find both of interest, she agreed to talk about both. First, she’ll talk about ‘Turning Ideas into Stories: The First Steps” and then ‘How to Write a Historical Mystery.’ Welcome Eleanor.

Turning Ideas into Stories: The First Steps

“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question fiction writers are often asked. 

Contrary to what most civilians (non-writers) believe, ideas are plentiful. They are all around us. The Law & Order TV series, for example, says that their stories are “ripped from the headlines.” News, past and present, offers an infinite source of story ideas. History, too, provides ideas too numerous to name. Finding ideas isn’t the problem. Turning those ideas into stories, that’s the challenge.

Doing my family genealogy gave me the idea (!) to turn my ancestors’ lives into fiction. How, you ask, could some boring family history provide story fodder? I wondered the same until I’d uncovered the truth behind my ancestors’ lives. 

I learned that in the early 19th century, my ancestors, for refusing to follow the state religion, were beaten, imprisoned, their property was confiscated, and their children sent to orphanages before they escaped to Ohio in 1817. Out of the Ohio wilderness they carved a village, named Zoar for the town where the Biblical Lot had found refuge much as they had in America. To survive, they became communal, sharing all alike. So that the women could work without the burden of child bearing, they practiced celibacy until they could pay off their mortgage in 1829. By 1833 their community, known as the Society of Separatists and led by my distant grandfather, was prospering. 

Imagine a thriving 19th century village in Ohio filled with hard-working, courageous German immigrants. All would be well, wouldn’t it? History says otherwise. Petty jealousies emerged. Families moved about to avoid contact with their sworn enemies. Arguments over who worked harder and who received more food or blankets or clothing plagued the town, no matter how pious they intended to be. Ideal setting for a murder! 

For me, characters are the centerpiece of any story. I started with my ancestor, the town’s leader. Traveling to Zoar, I learned that he was revered among the historians and interpreters populating the museums and shops there. Well, I thought, that’s not good. He has to have some undesirable characteristics! And he did. Among other artifacts, I found a letter from a Quaker woman in Philadelphia disparaging him. “He has them so fooled,” she said, “They think he’s another Moses.” Additionally, I learned that he’d kept the title to the entire town’s property (more than 10,000 acres) in his own name until he was on his deathbed. 

Here’s what we now know about him. A natural leader, he bravely faced persecution, steering a group of believers to freedom. On the other hand, he was domineering and ruled with an iron hand. A perfect foil for my protagonist. Time to create her.

Adelaide (an old-fashioned German name) is a midwife and herbalist. Unusual for the times, Adelaide is an independent woman, chafing at the town’s rigid rules and regulations. Her husband, Benjamin, on the other hand, hopes to quell her independent ways so that they’ll not be banished from the town, a town they’d worked so hard to create. 

See how the background and the characters begin to take shape? Now all I need is a murder or two, several suspects, and a reason for Adelaide to try to solve the murders!

The two books published so far in the Singular Village Mystery series show Adelaide as a courageous, but flawed human being. In the first, COVER HER BODY, Adelaide is the only person in her village who believes that the dairy maid found in the river didn’t drown, and her efforts to solve her murder bring an invasion of outside authorities to town before she faces down the killer. The second book, GRAVEN IMAGES, was released in September. After an itinerant artist is found murdered, the townspeople are quick to blame an Irish traveller conveniently passing through town. Adelaide, certain he hadn’t killed the artist, must find the real killer before the man is hanged. The third book, TREE OF HEAVEN, due out in 2015, challenges Adelaide to defend her leader against a charge of murder. With their leader in jail, the village plunges into disarray. Surprisingly, Adelaide’s mild-mannered husband, Benjamin, emerges to quell the confusion. But can he help Adelaide save their leader’s life? 

These are only the first steps of story building. In the New Year, I will be writing a series of blogs (www.EleanorSullivan.com/blog) about turning ideas into stories. Included will be how I create a story world, populate it with supporters and antagonists, construct the murder scene, reveal the culprit in the climax and much more. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into using history to turn ideas into stories.

How to Write an Historical Mystery

Writing an historical mystery is easy. Just start with a time and place, add a few interesting characters and culprits, inject a murder, toss in a few clues, and add a twist at the end. Voilà, you have an historical mystery!

How hard could it be?

Answer: Very. Not only must you create a compelling, tension-filled mystery, you must build an accurate story world.

Contemporary mysteries require research, too, of course. Murder details must be accurate. The weapon’s action must correspond with the victim’s wounds, for example. So you need to know about firearms–how far does a bullet from a nine-millimeter or a revolver go? Can a bullet hit someone under water? (The answer is no.) How long would it take to die from a drug overdose? And how would you know if it was accidental or murder? From TV we know that COD is cause of death and TOD is time of death. Neither expressions would be used in historicals in the 19th century.

How do you build an accurate story world?

Here are some suggestions:

Begin with primary sources such as letters, diaries, and photographs. Here’s an example of a letter I found in the Ohio Memory Project, a division of the Ohio Historical Society. Fortunately, the letters were transcribed. See some photos in the Ohio Historical Society collection. Next search for legitimate research sources. I found a dissertation by an Ohio State doctoral student chronicling the life of the Separatists, beginning with their experiences in Germany in the early 1800s. Then I found a book by Kathleen Fernandez titled “A Singular People: Images of Zoar”. Finally, I met a German historian whose area of expertise was the Separatists’ lives in Germany, and he shared his dissertation with me. Priceless, all of this!

Travel to the site, if possible. I made several trips to Zoar, Ohio, discovering a research library where I was allowed to copy materials including several masters’ thesis on the community. Take lots of photos. You can see a few of these in the photo album on my website. My files contain 500+ images from the Ohio Historical Society as well as my own. I use them constantly as I write-what did the stove look like? How did a woman dress? Where’s the door into Adelaide’s cabin?
 
Planning a future book with parallel stories that take place in 1800 Germany and 1830 America, I traveled to Germany last year. There I traced the Separatists’ lives, visiting the prison where they were incarcerated, the lake they dug when sentenced to hard labor, and their small hometowns, where their descendants still live today. I even met some distant cousins! Unfortunately, they didn’t speak English and I can’t speak German, but we smiled and gestured a lot.

Create a map of the location if you can. Then, as you write, you’ll be able to imagine your characters as they move about. 

Eleanor, thanks so much for joining us and sharing both of these wonderful topics. You’ve answered a lot of questions here.

Now, here’s a bit of background on Eleanor.

She is the award-winning author of books for nurses, the Monika Everhart medical mystery series, and now a historical mystery series set in Zoar, Ohio, the 19th century religious settlement of her ancestors.

For more on Eleanor and her writing, connect with her at EleanorSullivan.com and read her blog about 19th century lore at EleanorSullivan.com/blog. You can also connect with her on Facebook.

Thanks everyone for stopping by today. If you’re a writer, do you use any of these tips already? If you’re a reader, have you ever considered becoming a writer to tell about a story from your family’s history?

Happy Easter and Asking For Your Help

HAPPY EASTER to those celebrating today.

Easter Sunday holds different meanings to different people. Some think of the religious aspects, some think of the fun and games of Easter egg hunts, and some think of the gatherings of family and friends for food and fellowship.

While Easter holds many meanings for me, the fellowship of family and friends is especially important. I think all of us in blogdom have had our share of ups and downs lately, but I’m always in awe of how everyone gives support to each other.

Y’all have shown wonderful support to me by continuing to visit here even though I’ve been absent from visiting with you for the past few weeks. I hope you’ll show the same support to a friend of mine - a fellow member of the publishing community whose son has had a difficult time recently. A few minutes of your time today and for a few days to come could help make life much easier for her disabled son. Let me tell you a little about my friend, her son’s situation, and how easy it is for you to help make a difference.

I became acquainted with P.J. Nunn several years ago through her public relations company, BreakThrough Promotions, when I was working for a local newspaper and began doing book reviews. P.J. introduced me to a number of great authors long before I knew anything about blogs and blogdom.

P.J.’s son, Dave Jr., has had a long fight with a staph infection. Last January his kidneys failed and his right leg had to be amputated above the knee. Now that he is finally getting better and wants to get out and about, the family has no transportation that can carry him and his motorized wheelchair.  

However, the family has learned of a contest that can help and Dave has been nominated as a possible winner of a wheelchair equipped van. To help him reach this goal, all you have to do is go to http://www.nmeda.com/mobility-awareness-month/local-hero-contest and enter the last name Nunn in the search box. The site will direct you to Dave’s information where you can learn more about his condition and then cast your vote. Each person can vote once every 24 hours between now and when voting ends May 13. If you use Promo Code 994 one time, it changes your single vote to 5 votes. The voting process is simple and quick.

In my correspondence with P.J., she made an interesting point. This is what she had to say:

Probably the thing most people don't fully realize is how much we take for granted the ability to hop in the car and run to Wal-Mart or get a hair cut. I think that's been as hard for Dave as anything once he got past all the physical pain and medication in recovery. Now he thinks clearly and feels like himself even though he can't yet stand up and isn't quite ready to start the process of getting a prosthetic leg, he's hoping to have one by the end of the year. 
  
The thing that's hard is being so limited in where he can go. Medicaid transport takes him to and from dialysis 3 days a week and to his doctor appointments. There's a Community Transit he can ride during weekdays to get around town but you have to schedule appointments sometimes as much as a week ahead, then they drop you off. You call when you're ready for pickup but often have to wait as much as 2 hours for them to come get you and take you home. They don't run evenings or weekends so he's missed many birthday parties and outings because he has no transportation. 

To get to the place nearby where he gets his haircut, or to get to church on Sunday he has to navigate the highway in his motorized wheelchair because a long stretch of the road between here and there has no sidewalk. Of course that depends on the weather, too. Usually my husband walks along with him to be sure he makes it without incident. Nothing is simple. Fortunately, we live near a Sonic and a convenience store so he can just ride his chair there when he wants a soda or a snack. He never complains. 
  
We rented a wheelchair van from United Access (which is where we learned about this contest) to go to Arkansas for my dad's funeral last month and Dave said the van was like a whole new world opened up again. It really was wonderful not to have to time things exactly for a bus pickup, and to be able to just load up and go to my brother's house or out to dinner and not have to leave Dave behind or decline the invitation. I want that for him always. I want to see him able to do things with his brothers and his friends again. To go back to college and have a life. 

P.J. is right. We do sometimes forget how easy it is for us just to get in a car and go when we want to or need to. So on this Easter Sunday I’m asking that you take a few minutes today and each day until May 13 to vote for Dave and help him in his effort to win this wheelchair van so he can do the same. And if you feel inclined, please share this with your friends and encourage them to vote as well.

I thank you for stopping by today. I hope this day brings good health, great food and wonderful fellowship for you and your family. Have a fun day and if you’re Easter egg hunting, may you find the golden egg.