Interviewing Myself
One web site that I approached to review my book, “One Little Lie”, said that they were too busy to perform a review but they did offer to have me post an announcement blurb on their webpage. Omnimystery News suggested different types of approaches for the blurb and I selected one which I thought would be fun. This technique is to have one of the characters of the book interview me, the author, regarding the creation of “One Little Lie.” Naturally, I selected the protagonist, Luna Susan George, as my interviewer.
It was fun to have this mythical person ask me questions regarding the creation of “One Little Lie” but it was also spooky. I felt uneasy. It took me a while to figure out what I was feeling and the best way to describe it is to say that I felt a little like Dr. Frankenstein. I had assembled a creature. My creation taken from bits and pieces of this and that.
I used the Bob Hope movie “My Favorite Brunette” as the vehicle to set the wheels in motion. The technique applied from that movie is for the protagonist to be mistaken as the private detective because he/she is standing in the detective’s office, when the P. I. is out of town, and a woman wonders in seeking a Shamus.
The ending was right out of The Thin Man series of movies. My Shamus gathers all the suspects into one room and goes down the line, one-by-one detailing how each of the suspects had motive and opportunity to commit the crime before disclosing to all who is the guilty culprit.
I won’t be crass and say that it felt like God when Susan asked me, “Will I be returning in any other adventures?” What I felt was sadness. Sad because I’m not intending any further Luna Susan George mysteries at the moment. It felt like speaking with a person who wasn’t going to exist any more. Sort of like saying goodbye to an astronaut about to leave on a mission to explore the universe never to return.
Susan will be back as a minor character in my third book, “Searching for my Soul.” She reacted hesitantly when I told her that, that story was about ghosts. I guess Susan’s not a big fan of phantasms. I guess–I don’t know–because characters you create take on their own lives sort of like the Monster Dr. Frankenstein created.
They say characters in books live on forever. I hope so. Susan’s a nice person and it’s sad to think she would cease to be because I have other stories to write. That would be a ghostly tale of its own.
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