Guest Blogger: Kaye George – Writing What I Know
Author Kaye George
Writing What I Know – by Kaye George
Writers are told to “write what we know,” right? This poses a problem for mystery writers because most of us haven’t killed anyone, or even been shot. My life contains so little violence, it’s practically G-rated. So mystery writers soldier on, imaging people shot, strangled, poisoned, and bludgeoned all over the place. Some of us enroll in Citizen Police Academies. I went through one in Austin, TX, and gained an enormous amount of knowledge from it.
But, as far as writing what I know, that’s how I came to create EINE KLEINE MURDER. I’ve played violin since I was 10. I’ll leave you to wonder how years that adds up to. I started piano at age 5 and still noodle away at that occasionally. I even pretend to sing. All that is to say that I have a background in music, mostly classical music. I love composing, which I started doing in high school. I didn’t get too far in taking music theory classes, though, since that wasn’t my major in college and, after freshman year, I dropped out of the Northwestern Orchestra due to time constraints. However, when I joined a string quartet in Dallas called Allegro Strings, we sometimes found ourselves wanting to play something that hadn’t been arranged for a string quartet. I seem to naturally think in four-part harmony, having played in quartets since junior high school, and also having sung in church choirs the same amount of time. I loved arranging for our quartet!
Fast forward a few years, after eons of frustrating short story submissions and rejections, to the point where I decided to take up novel writing. Since my favorite reading was mystery, I already knew the form and the conventions and I gravitated to the genre. The first mystery I wrote that isn’t forever shoved into the back of a drawer, was SONG OF DEATH. This is the novel that eventually became, after publication of several other mysteries, EINE KLEINE MURDER, and has been picked up by Barking Rain Press, much to my overflowing joy.
I have a passion for classical music and hope I can convey that to the reader. I think a lot of
people are afraid of classical, but only because they don’t know much about it. But it’s like art: you know what you like. You don’t have to know sonata trio form, or what allargando means. You just have to listen, accept and reject. You’ll know what you like when you hear it.
One of my favorite symphony goers was a guy who worked with my husband a few years ago. He loved going to the symphony, but knew absolutely nothing about music. He asked me what those funny long wooden things were (bassoons), why we shouldn’t clap every time they stopped playing (because you don’t clap between movements, just at the end of the whole piece) and other questions that made me chuckle. But he loved hearing the orchestra because he lived for the moments when all the strings were playing loudly. That’s what he liked and he knew he liked it. And I liked that about him!
I’d sincerely like to know if anyone learns anything about music from reading my mystery, although learning about music isn’t required! I’d also like to know if anyone completely unfamiliar with classical music gets enjoyment from the book. After all, there are deaths–and mystery!
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Kaye George is a short story writer and novelist who has been nominated for Agatha awards twice. She is the author of four mystery series: the Imogene Duckworthy humorous Texas series, the Cressa Carraway musical mystery series, the FAT CAT cozy series, and The People of the Wind Neanderthal series. EINE KLEINE MURDER, the first Cressa Carraway novel debuts in April from Barking Rain Press. DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, the first Neanderthal book, will be published later this year by Untreed Reads. The first FAT CAT book, from Berkley Prime Crime, will appear in 2014.
Her short stories can be found in her collection, A PATCHWORK OF STORIES, as well as in several anthologies, various online and print magazines. She reviews for “Suspense Magazine”, writes for several newsletters and blogs, and gives workshops on short story writing and promotion. Kaye is agented by Kim Lionetti at BookEnds Literary and lives in Knoxville, TN. Homepage: http://kayegeorge.com/
Kaye George, Guppy president, two-time Agatha Nominee/
Imogene Duckworthy Mystery series/
EINE KLEINE MURDER, April 2013/
FAT CAT cozy series, writing as Janet Cantrell, coming 2014/
DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE, coming soon from Untreed Reads/
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