Author R&R: Carolyn Hart

 

Author Carolyn G. Hart was born in Oklahoma City "where the sun almost always shines and the wind almost always blows." She first used Oklahoma as a background in "Spooked," published in the anthology Murder on Route 66, which tells the story of a 12-year-old girl in a northeastern Oklahoma town during World War II. Carolyn has always been inspired by strong, courageous women and often features such characters in her writing. Fellow author Nancy Pickard named Carolyn the heir apparent to the Grand Dame of the traditional mystery novel, Agatha Christie.

Carolyn has authored 46 published novels, including a series featuring one of the literary world's only ghost detectives, Bailey Ruth Raeburn, and another with retired newswoman Henrie O. Collins. But her most popular continues to be the Death on Demand series, so named because the protagonist, Annie Laurance, sells books in her small town bookstore named Death on Demand. Annie also "solves murders with equal flair," says Library Journal, which called the first installment in the series a "library essential." Carolyn's mystery awards include the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity, and a standalone WWII novel was nominated for the Putlitzer Prize by the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers at Oklahoma State University.

Next week (April 3), the 22nd Death on Demand book, Death Comes Silently, is being released by Berkley, in which Annie and her husband Max try to piece together a puzzle involving an overturned kayak, a stolen motorboat, a troubled love affair and a reckless teenager, and how they all tie in to the murder of Annie's friend, Gretchen Burkholt.

In celebration of her new release, Carolyn stopped by In Reference to Murder to discuss her thoughts on "Author R&R" (Reference and Research) in writing novels:

Research is just another word for the excitement of learning facts I didn’t know. Sometimes the facts are exciting, sometimes amazing, sometimes chilling. Books can require everything from intensive investigation to simple fact checking.

In Death Comes Silently, the 22nd in the Death on Demand series, I needed to know about Personal Flotation Devices, hypothermia, and alternative energy sources. I discovered that the support of a PFDs isn’t sufficient if the swimmer is in cold water that causes hypothermia. When the swimmer loses consciousness, the head falls forward and the swimmer drowns despite remaining buoyant. I can’t say more about alternative energy because it would tip a canny reader (and there are no readers cannier than mystery readers) to the solution.

Because I have been writing for so many years about a sea island off the coast of South Carolina in the Death on Demand series, I have an extensive collection of books about the South Carolina Low Country. In past titles I have shared these (to me) fascinating facts:

• Alligators can outrun a fast man for fifty yards.
• The Golden Silk spider can spin a thirty-foot wide web in a tree. 
• Spanish moss is not a parasite, but an air plant which simply hangs from live oaks but causes them no damage.
• Poisonous cottonmouth snakes can drape themselves in trees to surprise the unwary.
• That thrashing in the underbrush may be a wild boar.
• To survive a riptide, swim with current until the force eases and the swimmer can turn back toward shore. 
• Palmettos are the state tree of South Carolina.
• The breeze is onshore during daytime, off shore at night.

When writing, I try to give readers a sense of the island’s essence, the smell of saltwater or marsh, the humidity in summer, the forest inhabitants including cougars, bobcats, wild boars, alligators, and snakes, and the magnificent live oaks, longleaf pines, and cypress.

In the past, I have written books prompted by my interest in World War II. I was a child during the war years and as a young adult read extensively about the war. That reading provided the basis for two of my early suspense novels, Escape from Paris and Brave Hearts.

The complete and original manuscript of Escape from Paris was published in fall 2011. It is the story of two American sisters who help British RAF fliers escape from the Nazis after the fall of France. The Gestapo sets a trap and on the bleak Christmas Eve of 1940, death is only a step behind. The research entailed reading books published after the war that gave personal accounts of Paris during the Occupation.

I was also very interested in the experiences of Americans in the Philippines. I did extensive research about the nurses on Corregidor. I wanted to write a non-fiction book but the papers of the nurses weren’t open then for public inspection. (Since then, a superb non-fiction book has been published about American nurses captured by the Japanese: We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M. Norman.) Instead, I used the material to write Brave Hearts, which is scheduled to be reprinted. Brave Hearts recounts the desperate efforts of a band of Americans who escape from Corregidor.

Just as readers learn from the novels they enjoy, writers explore present and past to create characters who become for a while a part of particular worlds. Sometimes it’s fun as in my Death on Demand and Bailey Ruth books.

The Death on Demand books are set in a mystery bookstore and afford a happy reason to read lots and lots of mysteries.

Bailey Ruth is a redheaded ghost who returns to earth to help someone in trouble. When I finished the first book, Ghost at Work, I asked my favorite priest to read it to be sure I hadn’t made some egregious error about the Episcopal Church. His response: "Well, Carolyn, until Edward R. Murrow returns with a first-hand account, your version of Heaven is as valid as anyone's." I thought that was very generous of him.

So writers are always looking for information. Sometimes the knowledge is simply intriguing or interesting. Sometimes research is sad and gripping as in the WWII novels. Whatever we learn adds depth and resonance to what we write and makes our own world larger.

More Forensics and Fiction

 D.P. Lyle was born and raised in Alabama, attended medical school in Texas, and for the past 30 years has practiced cardiology in Orange County, California. Along the way, Dr. Lyle became an expert on forensics in fiction.

Lyle has advised many novelists and consuled on television shows such as Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Cold Case, House, Women's Murder Club and The Glades. He's also an in-demand speaker, giving talks on "Plotting the Perfect Murder" and "Understanding the Science of Crime."

His talks and consulting gigs prompted him to write several nonfiction books, including Howdunit: Forensics (part of the Writer's Digest series for authors) and Forensics for Dummies, an Edgar-nominee and Macavity winner in 2005. He also started a book series using questions from writers along with his answers. The first was Murder and Mayhem in 2003, followed by Forensics and Fiction in 2007. These two books were so well-received, it spawned a third book in the series, More Forensics and Fiction, due in bookstores on April 1st.

The latest book (subtitled "Crime Writers Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered") is a collection of 180 new questions from novelists and screenwriters. As Dr. Lyle notes, "The hope with each of these books is that writers will find them educational and inspirational. I hope some of the questions and answers spark that little question What If? and from that new stories emerge. I think seeing what other writers are doing and what they are thinking and how they are going about constructing their stories sometimes offers that spark."

The questions are those you'd expect from a crime fiction writer, but not for the squeamish, such as "What does the victim of an arrow to the heart look like, and how would he die?", "What injuries can result from depleted uranium bullets?", "Will snake venom injected into fruit cause death?", and "What happens when someone swallows razor blades?" (We crime writers are a morbid lot...)

As author P. J. Parrish says in his praise of the book, it's a "must-have for any crime writer struggling to come up with an original and exciting way to commit murder."  I would add that it's a micro-forensics class in a book, with the author revealing such helpful tidbits as the 12-12-12 rigor mortis rule (i.e., rigor develops over 12 hours, stays 12 hours, then resolves over 12 hours).

Questions are divided into broad sections, beginning with Part I, Traumatic Injuries, Illnesses, Doctors and Hospitals. Part II includes Poisons, Toxins, Medications and Drugs; Part III covers The Police, the Crime Scene and the Crime Lab; Part IV involves questions about The Coroner, the Body and the Autopsy; and the final Part V covers Odds and Ends, Mostly Odds (quite a few vampires in this one).

The book and its predecessors are terrific reference books to have on hand if you're planning out and/or in the midst of writing a mystery or thriller. Dr. Lyle also has a Writer's Forensics Blog every writer should have bookmarked. If you have a question of your own you'd like answered (that could even appear in a future book), there's a contact form on Dr. Lyle's website.

Lyle is also the author of stories and novels on his own, including the Dub Walker Thriller series and Royal Pains media tie-in novels. Also due out this year is his book from the American Bar Association titled ABA Fundamentals: Understanding Forensic Science, a book written specifically for attorneys.

Author R&R with Tina Whittle

 

This week, In Reference to Murder's "Author R&R" (Reference and Research) welcomes Georgia writer Tina Whittle. Tina's book The Dangerous Edge of Things was the first in her series featuring Atlanta gun shop owner Tai Randolph and debuted in February 2011 to starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal. The second installment, Darker Than Any Shadow, was just released by Poisoned Pen Press.

In the sequel, Tai's best friend Rico is competing for a national slam poetry title, and Atlanta is overrun with hundreds of fame-hungry performance poets clogging all the good bars. Everything goes according to plan until one of Rico's fellow poets is murdered and Rico becomes the prime suspect. Tai's love interest, the SWAT-trained corporate security agent Trey Seaver, doesn't want her anywhere near the case, but someone apparently does, sending anonymous clues and clandestine tip-offs her way. But is the mysterious someone wanting to help Tai or lure her into a deadly trap?

The novel also has an unusual element that Tina had to research while writing this book, as she explains:

 

There's an old piece of writing advice that goes something like this — if the tension in your novel starts to sag, bring in a man with a gun. But trust me on this — if you really need to liven things up, bring in a giant snake.

I know this because I took my own advice for my second Tai Randolph novel, Darker Than Any Shadow, which has a ten-foot reticulated python in a key cameo. I auditioned several menacing serpents for this walk-on role, including boa constrictors and Burmese pythons. However, I decided on the retic (as reticulated pythons are sometimes called), the big daddy of the snake world. Here are a few snaky tidbits about this amazing creature:

1. You don't tackle this much snake alone. One rule of thumb for snake handling is one person for every three feet of snake. For an average python — about fifteen feet long — you’ll need four really brave friends. For the largest python on record — 33 feet long and 300+ pounds — you'd need a NASCAR pit crew.

 2. Captive-bred specimens are remarkably even-tempered. Wild caught pythons, however, are extremely nervous and will bite. They may not be venomous, but their teeth point backwards (the better to hold onto you as you squirm, my dear).

 3. As a rule of thumb, these snakes seem able to swallow prey up to ¼ their own length, and up to their own weight.

 4. A python doesn't kill by strangling — it constricts its victim's rib cage slowly and inexorably with every exhale, leaving each subsequent inhale shallower and shallower until there's literally no room to breathe.

 5. Like all snakes, pythons aren't slimy — they're dry and cool and silky. They're also dense with hard-packed spongy muscle, like a scale-covered gummy bear.

 6.  Pythons are ambush predators; they lunge from the shrubbery, sneak up on you in the water and — in the case of the green tree python — tumble from the branches right on top of you.

 7. Pythons normally snack on small mammals, though they occasionally snag deer and gazelle. Swallowing such large prey makes a python slow and clunky and vulnerable to predators. If necessary, however, it can instantly upchuck the whole business right back in its attacker's face and make a speedy getaway. Take that, crocodile!

 8. Pythons use their supersensitive tongues to "taste" where you are . . . and find out which end is your head, for easier swallowing.

 9. They're extremely valuable creatures, selling anywhere from $500 to $5000. A lavender albino ball python was once listed as the most expensive pet in the world— $40,000. Before you decide to adopt one, however, know it's a long-term arrangement; they live 20-30 years in captivity.

 10. Best estimates are that anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 Burmese pythons now call the Florida Everglades home. Right now the only way to deal with the problem is to hunt them down one at a time and drag them out, which the State of Florida hires people to do. New career, anyone?

The world is divided into two camps, it seems — those who fear snakes, and those who find them utterly fascinating. I'm firmly in the latter category. But even if you're in the former, don’t fear. The python in my book is only ten feet long, and you can handle that, right?

 

If you'd like to see how Tina incorporated those tidbits into her story, Darker Than Any Shadow is now available via Poisoned Pen Press and Amazon, and you can also read an excerpt on Tina's website.