But Where’s the Dead Body?

Today we have a very special guest at Maine Crime Writers. I’m especially pleased to have Shelley Burbank visit us because, way back in the dark ages before there was an Internet, she was a student in a section of Freshman Composition I was teaching as adjunct faculty at the University of Maine at Farmington. Shelley didn’t really need me to teach her how to write an essay. She was already a terrific writer and she still is. She’s here to tell you about her first novel, which will be available tomorrow! Please welcome this native Mainer, currently living in California, to the blog.

 

BUT WHERE’S THE DEAD BODY?
Or why my debut private detective crime novel isn’t a murder mystery

Much has been made of Raymond Chandler’s rules for crime writing. Google “Raymond Chandler’s rules for writing mysteries,” and you’ll be presented with a list of links to blog posts and Reddit discussions–all citing the rules (sometimes called the Ten Commandments) culled from an essay entitled, “Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story.” This essay by Chad Nevett was published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler. I haven’t read the essay yet, but from what I gather, there were also 13 addenda, which means he really gave 25 rules for the eager new mystery writer to follow.

The  rule that gives me the most angst at this point in my nascent career as a mystery writer is #2, written as follows: “It must be technically sound as to the methods of murder and detection.” It’s actually the only one of the major rules that implies a mystery story must include a murder–which my debut private detective novel, FINAL DRAFT: An Olivia Lively Mystery, does not.

I can’t say I’ve successfully checked all of Chandler’s other boxes. I do my best. As one of my father’s fifth-grade students once blurted out to him, “That’s the best a horse can do, is try.” But for some reason the lack of a dead body in my crime novel about plagiarism (and to a lesser degree, mortgage fraud and cyber crime) seems to cause some people a bit of consternation, especially when considering that bugaboo of the bookselling world–categorization.

“What kind of mystery is this, exactly?” one might ask. “It’s not a cozy because the main character’s not an amateur sleuth. It’s not a police procedural because the main character’s a private eye. But it’s not a hardboiled detective story, because there’s romance and… well…brunching.”

Honestly, if I could go back and change it, maybe throw a fatal stabbing or a nice choking or a toss off a tall building or a sly sip of poison into a champagne glass, I would. But the origin story of my story sheds some light on how I happened to write a mystery without a murder. And how I wrote it without knowing the rules. And how I didn’t plan on writing a mystery novel to begin with.

It was 2014. I’d successfully sold four or five stories to the confession magazines: True Love, True Story. These venerable pulp classics folded after ninety-plus years just as I’d broken into a paid market, and when I thought about what I should do next, I decided I would find something on the cutting edge, something new peeking over the horizon. This time I’d get in at the beginning rather than the end. I discovered an online writing platform called Wattpad.

Now the funny thing about Wattpad in 2014 was that fan fiction ruled, specifically fanfic based on the teen band One Direction. Yes, Harry Styles’s band. That guy. Read about Anna Todd, sometime, and her four After movies based on her One Direction fanfic series written on

Teenage readers and amateur writers abounded on the platform, but there were some older writers posting stories as well. I jumped on board having little idea how it worked. I figured I’d put something up as an experiment and learn as I went along.

I’d been a Nancy Drew fan as a kid, and I read a smattering of crime fiction every year. A few cozies. A thriller or two. Romantic suspense. Why not offer a chick lit short story with a vaguely criminal vibe? I’d already written “Disguised,” a flash fic that featured a feisty female P.I. hot on the trail of her cheating boyfriend. In combat boots and a blond wig. It was 500 words or so. I didn’t expect much of a response.

Shortly after I posted, the weirdest thing happened. I started to get all these comments from readers. “I love this! When is the next chapter?” “Olivia Lively’s great! I can’t wait to see what happens next!” “Hurry up and post!”

I blinked at the screen. What next chapter? 

I soon  figured out that readers thought this was just the opening pages of what would be a full-length mystery novel. I decided to give it a shot. I needed to create a case for Olivia to solve, and I turned to Wattpad itself for inspiration. So many young writers added wording to their book descriptions along the lines of, “Don’t steal my story! This story is copyrighted!”

They were worried about plagiarism. I thought, So why not write a story about a struggling young writer claiming his mentor/professor stole his manuscript? That should interest these young readers.  And that’s how the book came to be. I posted one or two chapters per week. I made online friends from around the world. I gained a respectable number of followers and over 400,000 reads with the story. It never occurred to me to murder anyone in this particular story—or to look up “the rules.”

My bad. I know I’ve been naughty. Please forgive my brazen nerve.

Eventually, I decided to take the book, originally entitled Disguised, off the platform. I sent it to Encircle Publications figuring if they didn’t want it, I’d put it away and work on something new. Happily for me, they liked it. It’s coming out March 8, this female private detective/chick lit mash-up set in Portland, Maine. There’s an academic-type mystery, suspense, and a cast of slightly-odd characters: Quirky college employees, competitive MFA students, a sleazy ex-boyfriend, a manipulative mother, a hot heart doctor, and of course, feisty and fashionable Olivia Lively, P.I.

But no dead body. Not a single one.

Shelley Burbank is a mystery and women’s fiction author and journalist based in Maine and San Diego, California. Her short fiction has been published in True Story Magazine, San Diego Woman Magazine, and The Maine Review and will be included in the Partners In Crime Anthology, Crime Under the Sun, due out this summer. Her debut novel, FINAL DRAFT: An Olivia Lively Mystery will be published by Encircle Publications on March 8, 2023. Shelley’s currently hard at work on the next Olivia Lively mystery, NIGHT MOVES. PS: There’s a dead body in this next one.