On Keeping a Series Fresh – and Real
I wrote The Garden Club Gang in 2011, thinking that a ‘funny mystery’ about women who rob a New England fair might find an appreciative audience. It did. The characters – four women aged 51 to 71 – resonated with everyone who read the book. I have been shown copies of the book that are dog-eared and taped together from being passed from hand to hand. Other copies are filled with exclamation marks and underlines; products of readers identifying with things characters say or marking favorite passages.
Cancer survivors admire and root for Paula. It is her existential crisis after being diagnosed with a recurrence of her breast cancer that is the instigation for everything that follows. Eleanor appeals to those who live or have lived in the twilight world of a loved one in the grip of dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. Jean is the favorite of those who suffered abuse in their marriage (upon finding her husband dead, Jean felt only release). And Alice is every widow’s nightmare of slipping into poverty by outliving their savings.
The premise of the story is one of coming together to help a friend, but instead finding unintended consequences. The ‘perfect crime’ is intricately plotted and executed, only to come a cropper when ‘the Ladies’ find they have nearly half a million dollars while fair officials say just a third of that amount was stolen. It takes a young insurance investigator, Samantha Ayers, to piece together what has happened. It takes all five to create a satisfying conclusion.
Within a month of publication, I had dozens of readers imploring me to send the Ladies on another adventure. It took four years to think up a plot worthy of them, which became Deadly Deeds. Instead of stealing, they’re atoning for their past sins. They help Samantha catch an auto dealer in the process of torching his unsaleable inventory. Flush with that success, they go undercover into an upscale nursing home to determine whether a 94-year-old friend died of old age of was ‘helped’ by person or persons unknown.
By the time the story is over, the Ladies will have become well acquainted with asset protection schemes, nursing home economics, and a few other things that would represent plot spoilers. They’ll also find they’ve incurred the murderous wrath of the nominally retired patriarch of the car dealership chain they brought down in the book’s opening pages. As in the first book, the four women plus Samantha Ayers must save themselves. No one is coming to their rescue.
When a set of characters have built a loyal following among readers, a writer faces the agonizing choice of moving on to fresh faces and story lines or inventing new plots for those beloved characters. I wrote and published four mysteries between The Garden Club Gang and Deadly Deeds, and I would write four more before I was confident I could do justice to Paula, Eleanor, Jean, Alice, and Samantha.
Like people, characters need to learn from their experiences. They need to grow. By the end of Deadly Deeds, Eleanor has said her last goodbye to her incapacitated husband and Jean had begun the process of extricating herself from the financial shackles imposed by her late husband’s will. There may be a man in Paula’s life and Alice has regained her confidence. Samantha has collected a group of allies who can help in the future.
I pondered all those things before starting Fatal Equity. Most of my books have what I call ‘Aha!’ moments when seeing or hearing something crystallizes into a plot. The subject of this book was instigated by seeing a large number of superannuated actors and celebrities on cable channels saying I ought to think about securing my financial future with a reverse mortgage.
The premise, once again, is straightforward: a friend of Alice’s, a recent widow named Rebecca, finds herself on the verge of becoming homeless. By adding her daughter’s name to her home’s deed, she has violated the terms of her reverse mortgage. Unless she can repay the mortgage company, her home will be sold out from underneath her. Samantha’s research shows Senior Equity Lending Solutions has every right to foreclose.
But what prompted Rebecca to do such a thing? It was suggested by a woman she met at Senior Equity’s offices. She kept running into the woman, each time urged to take the action to ensure the home stayed in the family. It turns out Rebecca’s predicament is not isolated: an appalling percentage of Senior Equity’s reverse mortgages end in foreclosure. But because the paperwork is always in order, the firm continues to operate.
The Ladies decide it’s time to go undercover again. They can’t go to work for Senior Equity, so they do the next best thing: set up a phony business next door fulfilling non-existent web orders for fancy French table linens. They’ll just keep refilling boxes with the same placemat and napkins while they keep watch over their neighbor. Better yet, Eleanor will apply for a mortgage.
Good stories never move in straight lines. Mine zig and zag more that most. Those non-existent web orders quickly turn into real ones because one of those allies the Ladies gained in Deadly Deeds does far too good a job of creating a realistic website. The Provençal linens subplot keeps the all-too-serious subject of elder financial abuse from overwhelming the story.
Does it work? Readers so far are enthusiastic in their approval. But fair warning: the Ladies’ lives continue to evolve. Coming up with a fourth installment won’t be easy.
Cancer survivors admire and root for Paula. It is her existential crisis after being diagnosed with a recurrence of her breast cancer that is the instigation for everything that follows. Eleanor appeals to those who live or have lived in the twilight world of a loved one in the grip of dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. Jean is the favorite of those who suffered abuse in their marriage (upon finding her husband dead, Jean felt only release). And Alice is every widow’s nightmare of slipping into poverty by outliving their savings.
The premise of the story is one of coming together to help a friend, but instead finding unintended consequences. The ‘perfect crime’ is intricately plotted and executed, only to come a cropper when ‘the Ladies’ find they have nearly half a million dollars while fair officials say just a third of that amount was stolen. It takes a young insurance investigator, Samantha Ayers, to piece together what has happened. It takes all five to create a satisfying conclusion.
Within a month of publication, I had dozens of readers imploring me to send the Ladies on another adventure. It took four years to think up a plot worthy of them, which became Deadly Deeds. Instead of stealing, they’re atoning for their past sins. They help Samantha catch an auto dealer in the process of torching his unsaleable inventory. Flush with that success, they go undercover into an upscale nursing home to determine whether a 94-year-old friend died of old age of was ‘helped’ by person or persons unknown.
By the time the story is over, the Ladies will have become well acquainted with asset protection schemes, nursing home economics, and a few other things that would represent plot spoilers. They’ll also find they’ve incurred the murderous wrath of the nominally retired patriarch of the car dealership chain they brought down in the book’s opening pages. As in the first book, the four women plus Samantha Ayers must save themselves. No one is coming to their rescue.
When a set of characters have built a loyal following among readers, a writer faces the agonizing choice of moving on to fresh faces and story lines or inventing new plots for those beloved characters. I wrote and published four mysteries between The Garden Club Gang and Deadly Deeds, and I would write four more before I was confident I could do justice to Paula, Eleanor, Jean, Alice, and Samantha.
Like people, characters need to learn from their experiences. They need to grow. By the end of Deadly Deeds, Eleanor has said her last goodbye to her incapacitated husband and Jean had begun the process of extricating herself from the financial shackles imposed by her late husband’s will. There may be a man in Paula’s life and Alice has regained her confidence. Samantha has collected a group of allies who can help in the future.
I pondered all those things before starting Fatal Equity. Most of my books have what I call ‘Aha!’ moments when seeing or hearing something crystallizes into a plot. The subject of this book was instigated by seeing a large number of superannuated actors and celebrities on cable channels saying I ought to think about securing my financial future with a reverse mortgage.
The premise, once again, is straightforward: a friend of Alice’s, a recent widow named Rebecca, finds herself on the verge of becoming homeless. By adding her daughter’s name to her home’s deed, she has violated the terms of her reverse mortgage. Unless she can repay the mortgage company, her home will be sold out from underneath her. Samantha’s research shows Senior Equity Lending Solutions has every right to foreclose.
But what prompted Rebecca to do such a thing? It was suggested by a woman she met at Senior Equity’s offices. She kept running into the woman, each time urged to take the action to ensure the home stayed in the family. It turns out Rebecca’s predicament is not isolated: an appalling percentage of Senior Equity’s reverse mortgages end in foreclosure. But because the paperwork is always in order, the firm continues to operate.
The Ladies decide it’s time to go undercover again. They can’t go to work for Senior Equity, so they do the next best thing: set up a phony business next door fulfilling non-existent web orders for fancy French table linens. They’ll just keep refilling boxes with the same placemat and napkins while they keep watch over their neighbor. Better yet, Eleanor will apply for a mortgage.
Good stories never move in straight lines. Mine zig and zag more that most. Those non-existent web orders quickly turn into real ones because one of those allies the Ladies gained in Deadly Deeds does far too good a job of creating a realistic website. The Provençal linens subplot keeps the all-too-serious subject of elder financial abuse from overwhelming the story.
Does it work? Readers so far are enthusiastic in their approval. But fair warning: the Ladies’ lives continue to evolve. Coming up with a fourth installment won’t be easy.
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