Showing posts with label Lena Jones Mysteries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lena Jones Mysteries. Show all posts

Thursday, April 28, 2022

From Real Life

 For the past several months I've been hosting authors on my own website in a feature called Tell Me Your Story. I ask my guests to let us in on how events in their lives led them to become authors or influenced their writing. I've had some wonderful guests who've told wonderful stories, and as a bonus I've learned that my sources of inspiration are no different from even the most prolific and successful writers out there.

My guest this month is Betty Webb, author of dozens of wonderful novels, including ten Lena Jones noir mysteries and six Gunn Zoo humorous cozies. Betty lets us in on why her characters are so realistic and relatable. She says  "I get my ideas from my exceedingly weird family, who are weird enough to give me tips for character-driven mysteries, but not so weird that they ruined my childhood." She also admits that she bases her characters on her friends and enemies, too. (You can read about her tips and tricks here.)

This has made me consider my own characters. Mine are fashioned after and inspired by real people in my life, as well. You can't make up people in all their glorious inconsistencies and peccadilloes with anywhere near the imagination that God uses.

Of course, after writing several books featuring the same recurring characters, it seems to me that my characters have developed lives of their own, and they drive the action in my stories rather than the action driving them, just like real life.They may have started out as fictional characters, but they don't stay that way.

The great mystery novelist Graham Greene once said, "There comes a time when your character does something you would never have thought of. When that happens, he's alive, and you leave him to it."(I may have used this quote several times before, but what good is it to know a pithy quote unless you can use it fifteen or twenty times?)

Saturday, February 06, 2016

Guest Author Betty Webb

Type M 4 Murder is happy to host our wonderful weekend guest Betty Webb, author of two popular series of mysteries, one dark and one light and funny. Have you ever wondered how on earth authors manage two series at once, especially two that are polar opposites? Sit down and let Betty tell you all about it.

It Ain’t Easy
    By Betty Webb

Now that my poor grammar has captured your attention…

Any writer who keeps two or more different series going knows how difficult it can be, but it is doubly so when those series are dissimilar in tone. Two of Anne Perry’s series have differing police detectives as protagonists – William Monk and Thomas Pitt. Both series are dark, and both are set in Victorian-era London.

J.A. Jance went a little farther afield with her Seattle-based detective J.P. Beaumont, as well as her Arizona-based sheriff Joanna Brady, but again, both are professional crime-solvers, and the tone of both series fall well into the traditional mystery category.

Then along comes Rhys Bowen, with her early 1900s New York-set mystery series featuring Molly Murphy, who fights against social injustice. But Bowen also writes a much more light-hearted series set in 1930s England, featuring the misadventures of Lady Georgie, a scrappy heir to the British throne who is down on her financial luck. Lady Georgie considers it a life achievement that she has finally learned how to dress herself without a maid.

Of the three writers, my writing challenges most closely echo Bowen’s, but without the travails of historical research.

Like Bowen’s Lady Georgie series, my Gunn Zoo books are often laugh-out-loud funny, such as the rescue scene in the Iceland-set “The Puffin of Death,” where my California zookeeper/amateur sleuth confronts a killer after stumbling through movies sets featuring astronauts, samurais, and Viking berserkers. Also written for laughs was “The Llama of Death,” where poor Teddy has to wear a lion costume while pretending to “escape” from the zoo where she works.

In contrast, my “Desert” series more resembles Bowen’s Molly Murphy books, which see my Scottsdale-based P.I. protagonist Lena Jones struggling against social injustice. These range from the death penalty in “Desert Rage,” polygamy in “Desert Wives,” female genital mutilation in “Desert Cut,” government-caused cancer clusters in “Desert Wind,” and the misuse of eminent domain in “Desert Noir.” As such, this series can be quite dark.

The writing difficulty in each of my series is about the same. Once I’m well into a book – say, around ten chapters in – it’s pretty much smooth sailing. The plot is coming along nicely, the characters are not fussing at me too much, and sometimes I may have even figured out whodunit and why. But those first six chapters…

Here’s the true difficulty with writing two vastly different series: settling into the right tone when you switch protagonists.

Let’s say I’ve just finished writing “The Puffin of Death,” with one hilarious scene after another. Teddy, my uncomplicated zookeeper sleuth, remained optimistic as she rode through Iceland on a shaggy horse, evading erupting volcanoes and murderers. She cracked jokes all the while. The months spent writing “Puffin” were a blast for me, too, and I’d been giggling over my computer keys for months. But now that the book had been sent to my editor, it’s time to start on “Desert Vengeance,” the next “Desert” mystery.

“Vengeance” (which I’m currently working on) is about the problems in Arizona’s foster care system, as illustrated by PI Lena Jones’ own history as a child being shifted from foster home to foster home. Starved. Beaten. Raped. A truly miserable life. But wait. As I read the first few chapters in the rough draft, the now-grown Lena is cracking jokes and having a high old time as she remembers her early travails. What?! What in the world is so funny about starvation, beatings, and rapes?
Nothing, of course.

What has happened is that I’ve let the tone of the Gunn Zoo series – which I’d just spent months writing – leak into the opening chapters of a much darker book. It happened unconsciously because I was still on a giggly high after finishing “Puffin,” and I was still writing in Teddy’s optimistic voice. But Teddy trusts the world; Lena Jones doesn’t.

So what I, as a writer, have to do now is bring my own mind and emotions back into Lena’s dangerous world and edge away from the cheery glow of my California zookeeper. It isn’t easy. In fact, it usually takes me six or eight chapters – sometimes as many as ten – before I hit the right note and begin seeing the world through Lena’s suspicious eyes. I have to keep slogging away until the miracle finally happens. Once it does, and I’m finished with the first draft, I have go back and rewrite those funny – and very wrong – first chapters.

The opposite problem happens when I finish a Lena Jones book and start the next Gunn Zoo mystery. Lena’s fierceness leaks into the beginning chapters of a zoo book, making my bubbly Teddy resemble a stern Valkyrie much more than she does the happy-go-lucky zookeeper I want to create. But that, too, always works itself out. Somewhere between chapters eight and ten, my happy girl comes skipping back, with her beloved anteaters, koalas, llamas, and puffins trotting (or flying) behind her.

Let me reiterate. Writing two vastly different series with two vastly different protagonists ain’t easy. But this is where trust – and patience -- come in. The writer must trust that her characters, although absent for a while, will eventually return in full voice. And then have the patience to give it time to happen.
Because it will.

Betty Webb is the author of 9 Lena Jones mysteries (DESERT RAGE, DESERT WIVES, etc.) and 3 Gunn Zoo mysteries (THE PUFFIN OF DEATH, THE LLAMA OF DEATH, etc.). Betty worked as a journalist, interviewing everyone from U.S. presidents, astronauts who walked on the moon, and polygamy runaways. A nationally-syndicated literary critic for more than 30 years, she currently reviews for Mystery Scene Magazine. She is a member of the National Federation of Press Women, Mystery Writers of America, and the National Association of Zoo Keepers. Her websites are bettywebb-mystery.com and bettywebb-zoomystery.com