A CLOSED CIRCLE OF SUSPECTS by Maria Hudgins

One of the most popular schemes employed by mystery writers can be described as "A Closed Circle of Suspects." This fairly well describes the story I'm working on right now. The setting for my story is a Health Spa Resort in a foreign country. But this isn't a truly closed circle because the characters can come and go if they want to. They aren't captives. I'm fully expecting someone to level this charge at me at some point. But I've learned something important about this business of categorizing fiction, especially mystery fiction. It doesn't matter! There are no rules that can't be broken; this isn't a matter of rules anyway. At most this is simply a way of looking at a story and seeing its possibilities and limitations before you start writing. 

The "Closed Circle of Suspects" category is surprisingly flexible, and successful stories certainly number in the hundreds, if not thousands. All you need is a setting that encloses a definite group of people so that, when a crime (usually murder) occurs, you know the perpetrator has to be one of that group. It would be cheating, I think, to bring in a long-lost heir to the victim's fortune in the last chapter. "Hi! I'm Malaria von Hatchet. Am I too late for Grandfather's funeral?" The suspects are well defined and don't usually number more than about eight. That's another reason my story is not a true closed circle. There are more than a hundred residents at the resort at any one time. They can't all be suspects.

A common Closed Circle mystery is the English Country House Mystery. Examples include The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Mousetrap, both by Agatha Christie, and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. But it doesn't have to be English. How about Knives Out? It's in a country house, but it's set in the USA

A Closed Circle mystery can also be set in many places other than a country house.

    A ship- Death on the Nile, The Woman in Cabin 10.

    An Island - And then there were None, The Lost Island

    A Plane - Death in the Clouds, The 12:30 from Croydon.

    A Train - Murder on the Orient Express, Strangers on a Train

You get the idea. The advantage of mystery stories with closed circles is that the list of possible perps is limited. This gets one variable under control and simplifies things a bit. So the story is usually concerned with opportunity, (Who had access to the gun cabinet? Who left the dining room before dessert?) or motive (money, jealousy, fear, etc.)

The kind of mystery I most like to read is the police procedural. I enjoy reading them because they are so different from what I write, I don't connect them with my own work. If I did, I would be constantly comparing the book with my own. In police procedurals you almost always have a a huge area, like a city, in which to find and trap your killer. It takes the skill and training of a professional sleuth to deal with the possibilities.

Many cozies are, to some extent, Closed Circle stories, like the village of St. Mary Mead. Donna Andrews's bird-themed books are set in Yorktown, VA.  Rita Mae Brown's Mrs.Murphy books are set in Crozet, VA. Crozet is such a small town, it almost qualifies as a Closed Circle. 

So. Whereas my current WIP is not strictly a Closed Circle, the story does concentrate on one particular group of guests at the spa resort. I guess that makes it An Almost Closed Circle of Suspects.

MYSTERY AUTHORS’ PETS by Catty Doggens, Guest Blogger

 

James Patterson's cat

Many of our favorite mysteries include pets, and in homage to May being National Pet Month, here are some mystery authors' pets!

I can't say whether it helps James Patterson crank out yet another bestseller, but his cat Redboy sits on his head. Patterson says "He's a head cat, not a lap cat."

Janet Evanovich has a Havanese named Ollie and also has a "Readers' Pets" column on her website.

We know that long walks in nature can inspire writers, but David Baldacci quipped that "our dogs hid their leashes because we were walking them too much."

Val McDermid was adopted by a cat who followed her home one night and yowled at her door until she opened it. The cat strode right in and soon became a fat, curry-loving member of the family.

IS TRUTH REALLY STRANGER THAN FICTION? by Penny Hutson

 

On a recent sojourn to one of my favorite places, Barnes and Noble, I found the most unusual book. While searching for anything I could find on Joan of Arc, the history of France and the Hundred Years War, I stumbled upon Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year by Michael Farquhar. The cover depicted a cartoon drawing of a wooden Trojan Horse and an ancient Greek soldier tentatively holding an apple up to its mouth. It made me smile, so I added it to my other finds and headed to the on-site Starbucks. With a cappuccino in one hand and a stack of paperbacks and hardcovers cradled in my other arm, I commandeered a table to peruse my treasures.

In the Bad Days in History, the author chronicles the epic misfortunes and terrible bad luck of some of the most absurd and often little-known occurrences of our time with a touch of light-hearted humor. Plucked from the ancient days of yore to the 2000s, this tome consists of 365 uproarious blunders and catastrophes from around the world.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT APRIL? by Michael Rigg

Remember the soothsayer’s warning about the Ides of March? Well, history teaches us that we should be more wary about the Ides (and other days) of April, notwithstanding that old saw about April showers bringing May flowers. Consider this list: Abraham Lincoln murdered by John Wilkes Booth, the Titanic’s unplanned meeting with an iceberg, the 1927 Great Mississippi River Flood (the worst flood in U.S. history), the San Franciso earthquake, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and Columbine High School—which happened on April 20^th, the birthday of that little Austrian Corporal who caused such death and destruction in the Second World War. Each of these horrific events, and likely many others, occurred in April.

And you don’t need to take my word that April is a Disaster-O-Rama. For a more comprehensive listing of events and a comparison of April with other months, see the post: Does More Tragedy Happen In April? - GeekDad. I suspect that you might need a bit of bourbon as the spark of recognition, and perhaps fear, makes the hair on the back of your neck stand at attention.

But we can’t just stay under the covers for an entire month, can we? We have lives to lead. Books to write. Families to raise. So, despite what challenges April may bring, we must do our best to cope, to deal with each hurdle that presents itself. Right?

So, you think your April has been rough? This blog highlights a book one of the most challenging months of April ever to face us as Americans, a month that could have brought about the destruction of our nation—and of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

In April 1865: The Month That Saved America, Jay Winik delivers a compelling narrative detailing the last days of the American Civil War and our first steps toward national reconciliation. Our experiment with disunion didn’t happen overnight. The cannonade against Fort Sumter in 1861—another April event—might have been the final spark, but, as Winik painstakingly details, threats of secession—from every geographic quarter, not just the South—haunted our nation almost immediately after John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence.

However we got there, four wars of civil war took their toll. Over 600,000 Americans—nearly one-twelfth of the Northern states’ population and one-fifth of the Southern states’ population—lay dead. Southern cities smoldered in ruin. An attempt to behead the government, including President Lincoln’s assassination and attacks on the Vice President and Secretary of State, had nearly succeeded. Bitterness from the brother-versus-brother conflict could have easily plunged our country into an ongoing Hatfield-McCoy nightmare. But that future didn’t come to pass. Why?

According to Winik:

April 1865 was incontestably one of America’s finest hours: for it was not the deranged spirit of an assassin that defined the country at the war’s end, but the conciliatory spirit of the leaders who led as much as in peace as in war, warriors and politicians who, by their example, their exhortation, and their deeds, overcame their personal rancor, their heartache, and spoke as citizens of not two lands but one, thereby bringing the country together. True, much hard work remained. But much, too, had already been accomplished.

As is often the case, books like April 1865: The Month That Saved America, provide perspective and lessons beyond the historical situation discussed. Some might argue that we, today, face another crisis of national identity and unity. I’ll let you reach your own judgment on that point. But I’ll leave you with this disturbing question: One-hundred years hence, will a college history professor write a book called April 2024: The Month that Doomed America?

I hope not. Mirroring Winik’s basic premise, I pray that our current batch of leaders and politicians may “. . . by their example, their exhortation, and their deeds, overcame their personal rancor, [and] their heartache,” to recall that we are citizens of a single nation, with a single flag, and a common commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Oh my! This is supposed to be a blog about mystery writing by the sea. Why are we even thinking about the calamities of April and the potential destruction of our way of life? It’s the story. April 1865: The Month That Saved America is both great history and a great story. And, April 1865 unfolded, no one knew how it would end. Once you read this book, I think you will agree that it reads like a novel, full of twists-and-turns and cliff hangers. Fiction or non-fiction, a great narrative is a thing to behold. Fiction speculates about what characters—people invented in the writer’s imagination—will do in response to circumstances. Non-fiction tells us how real people reacted.

Here's wishing you a happy and uneventful remainder of April. Those May flowers will be with us soon, I hope.  

 

CREATIVITY FOR THE LOVE OF IT, PART 2: FANWORKS by Max Jason Peterson

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

This is the second post in my series about art for art’s sake. Part One focuses on poetry. Today I’m going to talk about another form of creativity for the love of it that enriches my life: fanworks.

Fanworks are art forms dreamed up by fans for other fans to enjoy, sharing their love of the original creator’s characters and world. The fans who make them often introduce as many people as they can—friends, family, total strangers—to the original works that provide the foundation of their own. Though some people who create fanworks also have professional lives or ambitions as artists or writers, the majority are only interested in making art for their fandoms. Many are amazingly talented, designing things of great power and beauty. And the love shines through, touching other fans. There’s a great spirit of generosity and community here, which is important: for fanworks are paid only in appreciation and the joy of playing in a beloved universe.

Indeed, “joyful play” is the name of the game: this apt description for fanfiction comes from Naomi Novik, author of the Temeraire series of fantasy novels and cofounder of Archive of Our Own, a nonprofit and inclusive repository of fanworks that received a Hugo Award in 2019 for Best Related Work. A fanfic author herself, she’s among those interviewed for “The Boy Who Lived Forever,” an insightful article about fanfic by Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians series of fantasy novels—whose characters and world I celebrate in my own fanworks.

DETECTABLE by Judy Fowler

 

It’s spring—a time when reminders of my annual medical appointments pop up in my text feed like the daffodils outside my writing room window.    

Doctors’ offices remind me of police stations, which remind me of crime fiction. I don’t want to play the protagonist in a real-life thriller if I can help it. Since achieving a certain unmentionable age, when I hear myself say, “Uh-huh. Dr. Smith, Thursday the sixth, 11:45 a.m. Got it,” I know there’s a chance I’ll end up in a specialist’s office.

I recall when my retired inlaws put up a large calendar reserved for medical appointments in their kitchen. Now that I've started highlighting my doctors’ appointments in bright orange, I see why they did that. If I see the appointment coming, I've got a few days to get my story straight before the gumshoe in the white lab coat starts asking questions. 

Despite that preparation time, I always confess to something I meant to keep secret. Maybe it’s the way they send out an informant to put me on the scale just before my interview. It puts me on my back foot so that I feel guilty when I’m left alone in the cold interview room waiting for the lead detective to arrive.

Armed with evidence of my weight, it’s not hard for the investigator to get me to cop to other things, like how much coffee I drink or how little I exercise on the days I write. Unlike a tag team of trenchcoat-wearing detectives with little brown notebooks, the lone medic in white plays both good and bad cop while typing out everything I say.

The detection rate for murders is 90%, but the detection rate for cholesterol must be higher. That’s according to an informal survey of friends my age now. At seven years old, I feared the word “shot” the way I now fear the word “statin.”

My instinct as a writer to say whatever I'm thinking often leads to a specialist referral. For example, a few years back, after an eventless annual physical, I noticed aloud that my previously shapely legs seemed to be “looking more and more like my grandmother’s legs.” Out came the referral pad. As the song goes, the leg thing's connected to a neck thing. Now I’m serving two to five with a specialist whose prescription—after getting a blood sample and checking me for neck polyps twice every year—is for me to drink more water.

Before a friend's primary care physician died a few years back, all the patients received invitations to reminisce at a gathering in a downtown bar. Their final prescription? Get good and drunk. That sounds like a detective to me.

I don't know how these Sherlocks--criminal or medical--feel after another day of uncovering humanity's foibles and weaknesses. They deserve to tie one on at happy hour. It’s nice to know that one practitioner of the art of detection thought his patients deserved that, too.

 

  

FUN CREATING GREAT VIVID CHARACTERS by Sheryl Jordan

When I read stories or watch movies and TV shows of any genre, my attention is immediately drawn to the characters. I want to relate to them in some way. From my perspective, characters can make or break the story. Many articles and opinions exist on what   makes great characters and how to build them for stories.

Some common themes are that characters must be believable, have conflict, flaws, and quirks, and must grab and hold the audience’s attention throughout the story. This can be through understanding their goals, conflicts, and needs, or they may have traits the audience sees in people they know or wish they had. They desire to feel connected to the characters.

One of my favorite novel series is The Women’s Murder Club by James Patterson (and his team of co-authors). The novels feature an ensemble of lead women characters who are best friends and work in professions that bring them together to solve crimes they face. Lindsey Boxer is a detective, Cindy Thomas is a reporter, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, and Yuki Castellano is a district attorney. Each woman has conflicts in her life, which she works through as she solves cases. They are all engaging, fun, intelligent, strong women with flaws and quirks.

Readers who have enjoyed my stories often tell me they love my characters and how they interact with one another. More than a few times I have been asked how I came up with my characters. I use various methods depending on the story or my level of motivation at the time. Sometimes, I think about my current and past relationships with family and friends. For example, if siblings in my story have healthy, strong bonds, I reflect on my relationship with my siblings and use some traits from our interactions. I draw from the love we have for each other. We are supportive and encouraging of each other’s goals and ambitions.

Other times, I use traits, personalities, and conflicts of people I have met or seen. I once met a man and his dog at one of my first book signings. The man shared his story of traveling cross country after he sold everything he owned, which I think about often. Through this brief encounter, I saw traits in him and his dog that would make beautiful characters in a future story!

At times, I just start writing. As I write, I develop characters as the story progresses. I do end up jotting notes of the traits and struggles the character may need to possess to add color and dynamics to the story. I then break the lists into what works or does not work for the storyline. I then build the character from there.

I also generate pictures of what I envision my characters look like and make an outline of their personalities, flaws, conflicts, quirks, and struggles. This provides a visual to refer to as I write. It is easier to show and build the characters throughout the story. Several AI programs are now available to create characters (for a fee). You only need to type a few descriptive traits you want your character to have, or you can even upload a photo. I have not utilized these yet, but they seem interesting and fun.

I find creating characters to be one of the enjoyable steps in writing stories because you can use your imagination and draw from people you may know, hear of, or even see in passing. Whatever method I use for stories, I always enjoy creating, getting to know, and understanding my characters!

What are some of your favorite characters in stories? What makes characters memorable for you?

 

Creating Characters Links:

https://www.bbcmaestro.com/blog/how-to-create-story-characters

https://prowritingaid.com/art/2363/character-development.aspx

https://writingcooperative.com/creatingvividcharacters-44ef5690e266

 

James Patterson Women’s Murder Club Link:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/p/james-patterson/womens-murder-club/

AI Character Generator Links:

https://perchance.org/ai-character-generator

https://www.canva.com/ai-character-generator/

https://app.artflow.ai/

https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-AI-character-generators