The Secret Behind my “Shadows” Mysteries

First, a confession. Most mystery writers, when asked, “When did you know you loved mysteries?” answer with a smile and the names, “Nancy Drew” or “The Hardy Boys” or  “Agatha Christie” or maybe “Elmore Leonard.” They explain that they’ve always loved mysteries.

But not me. Sure, I read a few mysteries when I was a library “page,” re-shelving books at my local library when I was in high school. I sampled books from almost every section in the library. My favorites were classic books for children, like The Wind in the Willows, which I’d missed when I was younger, and books and magazines on writing and publishing. After all — I was certain that someday I’d be a writer, and someone else would be shelving my books. I never read one Nancy Drew book.[image error]

In college and after, my favorite books were, yes, classics (often nineteenth century classics,) contemporary books for young people, and modern books now called “literary fiction.”

When, in my forties, I started to write fiction myself, I journaled and wrote “literary fiction” short stories, a few of which were published. But when I tried to write a novel, I  failed.  I never managed to write more than 50-100 pages. I was fine creating characters and settings. But — plot? I’d stumble, and then stop.

A friend who was also trying to change from writing nonfiction to fiction glibly suggested, “Why not write a mystery? That would force you to focus on plot.”[image error]

Desperate, and not having read a mystery for twenty-five years, I asked her to suggest one. She suggested several. And my love of research kicked in. Over the next nine months I read more than two hundred mysteries, fascinated by a genre that included so many different subgenres, from noir detectives and police procedurals to cats who solved crimes.

Intrigued, I decided to write an amateur sleuth mystery set in a field I already knew: Maggie Summer would be an antique print dealer, since (in my non-corporate hours) I’d been an antique print dealer for twenty years. I didn’t plan to become a serious mystery writer: I just wanted to prove to myself that I could write a full book: maybe three hundred pages.[image error]

Six months later, on a hot New Jersey night, I typed “THE END” and drank an entire bottle of champagne to celebrate. I’d done it. I’d proved to myself I could write a book.

During the next year that book was rejected by over forty agents. But I had other things on my mind. I’d been offered a corporate buy-out and, thrilled, I prepared to sell my home in New Jersey and do something else I’d wanted to do for most of my life: move to Maine. I  stuck my manuscript in a drawer. All those books on writing had said authors had unpublished first novels. Now I had mine. I focused on my new life.[image error]

In Maine I began writing historical novels for young people, and was thrilled when Simon & Schuster accepted my first one (Stopping to Home.).

Several years later my editor casually asked if I’d ever written anything for adults, and I told her (a bit reluctantly) about that mystery in my bottom drawer. She asked me to send it to her. And a year later Scribner called to accept the mystery they’d re-named Shadows at the Fair, and asked when the next book in the series would be finished.

[image error]Now, here’s the secret. That first book (which the following year was a finalist for a “best first mystery” Agatha Award,) was very loosely based on a classic British mystery scenario: a group of people isolated in the country, a murder or two, and only hours to solve the mystery.  My “country” was a weekend antique show in New York State.[image error]

So, when I was asked to write another “Shadows Antique Print Mystery” I thought about other classic plots.

Shadows on the Coast of Maine, set in my own home in Maine, became my version of a Gothic mystery set in an old house.

Shadows on the Ivy? Maggie Summer had a day job as a New Jersey community college professor, so the third in the series became my academic mystery.

By the time I wrote Shadows at the Spring Show September eleventh had changed the way we looked at the world. I added suspense to the mystery. [image error]

Shadows of a Down East Summer? With Winslow Homer and two women who’d posed for him in 1890 as major characters, it was my art world mystery.

Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding?  Of course – a wedding mystery.

Shadows on a Maine Christmas?  A holiday mystery.

And Shadows on a Morning in Maine? A family problems mystery.

Did anyone ever notice my tongue-in-cheek tributes to classic mystery themes? Not that I know of.[image error]

I now write two other mystery series (The Mainely Needlepoint Series and the Maine Murder Series,) and (although I have written another Christmas mystery and a mystery about an old, deserted, house,) none of them fall into the pattern I used for the Shadows series.

But I’ve written 18 mysteries so far — and definitely proved I can finish a book with a plot, as well as characters and settings.

And now I’ve even shared the secret as to how.