Jennifer Moorhead graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Geaux Tigers! She has written and produced three indie short films that each made Top 20 at the Louisiana Film Prize and were awarded at festivals around the world. She lives in Louisiana with her husband, two needy golden doodles, one very un-needy shelter kitty, and a plethora of farm animals. Her grown daughters are off creating their own life stories. When she’s not writing, she’s photographing the swamps and winding trails in her backyard or she’s on a tennis court laughing and providing job security for her coach.
Her debut thriller, Broken Bayou, follows Dr. Willa Watters, a prominent child psychologist at the height of her career. But when a viral video of a disastrous television interview puts her reputation on the line, Willa retreats to Broken Bayou, the town where she spent most of her childhood summers. There she visits her aunts’ old house and discovers some of her unstable mother’s belongings still languishing in the attic—dusty mementos harboring secrets of her harrowing past. Willa’s hopes for a respite are quickly crushed, not only by what she finds in that attic but also by what’s been found in the bayou. With waters dropping due to drought, mysterious barrels containing human remains have surfaced, alongside something else from Willa’s past, something she never thought she’d see again. Divers, police, and media flood the area, including a news reporter gunning for Willa, and Travis Arceneaux—a local deputy and old flame.
Jennifer stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching her book:
When it comes to writing and researching, I work backward. I don’t do a lot of research before writing the first draft. Research can turn into quicksand for me so I like to get that first draft down the way I want it to happen first Then, in the next drafts, I change it to what should happen, according to my research.
With Broken Bayou, I started my research online and with the actual town. I printed out a map of southern Louisiana and marked where my made-up town would be on it.
Then I hand-drew a map of the town. I named the streets and added in the stores mentioned in the first draft. One of those stores is a place called Taylor’s Marketplace and Bait Shop. I fashioned it after a real store from my past, the halfway mark between my house and my grandparents’ house called Taylortown Store.
I also downloaded a floorplan to use as a reference for the house my protagonist returns to, Shadow Bluff.
Google Street View helped me look at police stations in small Louisiana towns and I watched several police press conferences on YouTube. I studied the details, the questions, the phrases used. And I compiled a folder with newspaper articles about the story that first gave me the idea for Broken Bayou. The articles were about a missing schoolteacher in New Orleans who accidentally drove her car into a bayou and when divers went in to fish it out, they discovered more than they bargained for. This quote from one of the articles stayed with me:
"Waterways are good dumping grounds…”
Once I was done with setting, I moved on to the delightfully gruesome task (yes, I’m one of those people) of interviewing a forensic pathologist and someone in Louisiana law enforcement. These interviews were over the phone and via email. The men I spoke with told me stories ranging from the strangely high numbers of serial killers in south Louisiana to a body farm in Tennessee to the rate of decomposition once a body is in water. More than once I asked for them to pause during a story so I could take a minute to shake off the images in my head. But that’s where I needed to go to get those pesky details right.
I also had the pleasure of visiting the North Louisiana Crime Lab where I took a tour of the morgue, the DNA sample room, and my favorite, the firearms room where they fired guns recovered from crime scenes to get the markings from the bullets. The room contained something called a firing tank which allowed a tech to fire a weapon into a long rectangular tank of water because water preserves the markings.
Guns are another area I wanted to research. In the past, I’ve taken gun safety classes and growing up in the Sportsman’s Paradise, I’ve had ample opportunities to shoot a gun. I know what one feels like in my hand, how it kicks, what it smells like. All important things to understand if any character at any time uses a gun.
In addition, I took an online class taught by a detective about gun myths and things that can happen on TV shows but not in books. Books are held to a different standard. Did you know that a car door will not block a bullet? I see characters hiding behind them all the time on TV. This is a no-no for a book though. Even in a fictitious town with made-up characters, the details still need to be factual.
Great YouTube video on these myths here: https://youtu.be/U6T0Za3aRI4?si=0ptF2Yu4z5dMyaeC
The most fun I had with my research though were the visits with a friend of mine who is a child psychologist, the profession of my protagonist. In the summer of 2020, we sat on her back porch and talked for hours. She led me through everything it takes to get a Ph.D. in her field - from college to grad school to dissertations and clinicals – all information I would only use as backstory. But I had to know what it took for my character to accomplish what she did. I learned phrases and tricks of the trade as well as a deeper understanding of children who have suffered trauma, are neurodiverse, or both. It was fascinating and heartbreaking and gave me such a deep respect for the profession.
I love to learn so research is something I look forward to. I also know if I start with it, I may never write the novel. I can get lost online or listening to stories or watching YouTube clips. That’s why I put it off until after the first draft. And a lot of what I researched for Broken Bayou never made it into the novel. As writers, we must pick and choose not only our words but also what research is important to include in those words. Too much research will bog down the pace, too little will fail to set up the moment. It’s quite the fine line. I treat research like a giant buffet. I spread it all out on the table, but I only put my favorites on the plate.
You can learn more about Jennifer Moorhead and her books via her website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook. Broken Bayou was just released via Thomas & Mercer and is available from all major booksellers.
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