How to write a mystery

 

Now available in paperback, digital, and audio editions
You're bound to love Henny and laugh at Irene

The other night I started a blog on how to write a mystery, because I’d discovered a new and unorthodox method. Since it seems to be going well, I’ll try again and hope I don’t erase it. I well know that a whole bookstore could be stocked with nothing but “How to write books.” Too many would-be novelists read book after book as a way to dodge getting to the actual writing. But they need to search no more: I have come up with the formula.

The backstory: way before pandemic and quarantine, I idly started a mystery about a second-tier TV chef in Chicago. Just playing with ideas, I told the story from the viewpoint of her assistant or “gofer,” a young transplant from Texas. Chicago is my hometown, and Henny, the narrator, settled in the Hyde Park neighborhood, where I grew up. Lots of fun to revisit the scenes of my childhood, but also fun to research the many changes in the long years since. But after about twenty thousand words, I was distracted by nonfiction assignments that actually came with advance money. I labeled the fragment “Saving Irene,” and put it aside.

Fast forward a year to the middle of quarantine. I had finished my nonfiction assignments and was at loose ends, so I reread “Saving Irene.” To my surprise I liked the tone, the story, the way it was headed. Long story short, it was an indie publication in September 2020 and got really good reader comments.

More nonfiction and then loose ends again. Several people wanted more of Henny and Irene, and I had committed to name a character for someone who contributed to MysteryLovesGeorgia. So I started, “Irene in Danger.” This time, I quit at sixteen thousand words. An early reader liked it, but I wasn’t sure.

During all this for at least a year, I was delving into the life and cooking of Helen Corbitt, leading light of food service at Neiman Marcus stores. Her fascinates me because she came to prominence in the late fifties—after Poppy Cannon advocated for convenience foods but before both Julia Child and Betty Freidan who exerted polar opposite influences on American cooks. I had hoped my nonfiction publisher would be equally enthralled, but the new editor wrote that she didn’t think a cook in an upscale department store was worth a book. Her loss. I have now sent a formal proposal to an academic publisher and been assured they would give it careful consideration. Which means I’m back at loose ends until I hear from them, which may be a while.

I wrote profiles for the Handbook of Texas Online, the most recent of a husband-and-wife team who were instrumental in saving the history of Fort Worth’s Stockyards district from Disney-like commercialization. A light dawned: I could bring Kelly O’Connell, heroine of eight mysteries, back in a Stockyards setting. The first ten pages went well and after that, crickets. Sound familiar?

I went back to “Irene in Danger,” decided l like the tone, the story, the characters. And this time around the dialog flowed naturally. I’m back to writing it. I make no promises, because as you can see I’ve abandoned manuscripts before. But I’m trying my old formula of a thousand words a day. Slow but steady going. Still not quite to twenty thousand. We’ll see what happens.

I have once again been distracted, this time for page proofs of The Most Land, the Best Cattle: The Waggoners of Texas. Due in September.

Retirement is such fun!