All The Mysteries

A blog about mystery novels, games, shows, and movies.

Ellen Byron discusses her cozy mystery novel “Murder in the Bayou Boneyard” – (Crooked Lane Books, 2020)

Cozy Mystery – An interview with Ellen Byron about her new book Murder in the Bayou Boneyard published by Crooked lane Books. Check out the book here   https://amzn.to/2ErBjLe

Of all the creative ideas you have, how did this one idea rise about the rest and get written?

I realized that I hadn’t written a Cajun Country Mystery that revolved around Halloween. Considering that Louisiana proudly bills itself as the most haunted state in the country, it seemed like a gimme – although my storyline doesn’t really revolve around a haunting. Still, it incorporates some legends and superstitions specific to Louisiana.

What is the book about – protagonist, setting, and conflict?

To fight back against a home-share app that’s stealing guests from the local B&B’s, protagonist Maggie Crozat comes up with a marketing scheme that will attract Halloween-loving visitors. The “Pelican’s Spooky Past” packages feature uniquely regional activities like Resurrection of the Spirit, a play that will be presented in a derelict Louisiana cemetery. The Crozat family also times the opening of their long-awaited spa to the kick-off of the “Spooky Past” weekends at their Crozat Plantation B&B. Maggie has hired Susannah Crozat MacDowell, a long-lost Canadian cousin as the spa’s masseuse. But relations between the opposing Crozats take a dangerous turn when Susannah claims rights to some of Crozat Plantation B&B’s land. Meanwhile, guests at all the B&Bs are being scared off by sightings of a rougarou, the legendary Cajun Country creature who is a cross between a werewolf and vampire. When the play theatrics turn deadly, Maggie Crozat begins to fear that “Pelican’s Spooky Past” is nothing compared to its scary present.

What sort of aesthetic does the book have?

It’s got humor and heart, with a touch of the spooky!

If the book had a soundtrack, what might it be like?

A combination of silly music – like “Monster Mash” – fun music – the entire soundtrack from “Rocky Horror Picture Show” – and some genuinely ominous music, such as Camille Saint-Saens’ “La Danse Macabre.”

Did you have to do any research for the book?

Yes. I really delved into the Cajun legend of the rougarou. I also did the St. Joseph Plantation Creole Mourning Tour, where I learned a ton about 19th century funereal customs and superstitions that I wrote into the book. I actually wrote a blog post about the tour that the site liked so much, they put it on their website. https://www.stjosephplantation.com/2017/11/mourning-tour-review/

What were some of the strangest things you learned on the St. Joseph Plantation Creole Mourning Tour?

I think everything that had to do with superstitions about the spirits looking for ways to mark the next soul for death. For example, the deceased were loaded into the horse-drawn hearse feet-first so that the spirits couldn’t make eye contact with the mourners – thus dooming them – and every mirror was covered with black cloth because shiny surfaces attracted spirits. I always thought mirrors were covered in black out of respect for the dead. I had no idea it was to “protect” the living from being dragged into the next world!

Do you recall any abandoned places that you’ve seen in person or in pictures that gave you the most intense chills?

When I was in high school, I cut class – shh, don’t tell – to go explore a “haunted house” with some classmates. It was a gorgeous old estate located on the Westchester County side of the Long Island Sound, straight out of F. Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I was terrified wandering through its abandoned rooms, made spookier by the fact that its last incarnation had been as a religious retreat, so there were little ceramic fonts and crosses everywhere. I was both fascinated and utterly terrified. A few years later, still obsessed by the place, I went to see it again, but it had been torn down and replaced by ugly McMansions. I was so sad because my hope was that someone with deep pockets had bought the stunning home and restored it to its former glory.

What are some of the genre works that inspire you – books, movies, tv, music, etc.

I love historical mysteries. They might be my favorite general genre. I’m inspired by the Brontes and Dame Agatha, of course. When it comes to TV, great comedy or drama inspire me. Recent examples include Mad Men (my dad was a genuine Mad Man, so it’s very personal to me) and Succession, as well as Veep. All three of these shows are just spectacularly written. With movies, my favorite three are a diverse lot: The Producers, The Haunting, and Amarcord. Seriously, could there be three more different films?!

When it comes to music, what inspires me is also an odd mix. I adore disco – I think KC and the Sunshine Band is the best band on the planet, and no one will ever convince me otherwise! And I also love Zydeco, Cajun music… and Bollywood. Like I said, an odd mix. For me, music is what you dance to, so I love music that makes me want to leap to my feet.

What other things inspire your creativity?

I’m obviously fascinated with Cajun Country and can’t read enough about it. I’m also obsessed with abandoned places. I can scroll through those photos for hours. And I collect vintage cookbooks. I love the look of them, and also learning what constitutes popular food in a given decade. Sometimes an old recipe will inspire a new one for either of my series. (I also write The Catering Hall Mysteries under the pen name, Maria DiRico.)

What is your writing and editing process like?  Anything different from other authors?

I outline as much as I can. I call it a fluid outline because entire new characters or chapters or even subplots may pop up as I write the actual job. I attribute my predilection to outline to my career as a TV writer. I think that’s what makes me different from other authors. Not many come to writing books from a twenty-plus year career as a TV writer-producer.

How has your approach to writing changed over time?

It’s become more articulated in that I can break my process down into steps. I actually created a workshop on how to outline that I have yet to teach, thanks to the pandemic.

Have you done any non-writing work that has influenced how you write or what you write about?

Yes! I spent ten years as a member of two improvisation troops that performed a form of improv known as Theatresports. I learned to say “yes and” to ideas. Much of what I learned through Theatresports finds it way into my writing, like asking the question “What Happens Next?” and applying it to my work moment to moment.

Do you ever act out scenes in your books as you’re writing a draft to see if they work in the story?

I sometimes read a scene aloud but even though my background is in acting – I did comedy improv for years – I’m not one of those people who reads their entire book out loud. I find my focus is too divided to do this successfully. My acting and playwriting background allow me to hear my book in my head well enough to determine whether or not something is working.

When you were younger was there a power, technology, or fictional setting you yearned for or to be a part of?

It’s a real setting applied to a fictional book – ever since I first read Wuthering Heights as a teenager, I’ve dreamt of visiting the Bronte Parsonage and walking the moors the Bronte sisters once walked.

Have you ever visited any moors especially haunted ones?

Not yet, but the number one item on my bucket list is to visit the Bronte parsonage and walk the moors where Emily, Charlotte and Anne once walked. I dream of running into the ghost of any of them!

Did you have any difficulties finishing this book?

Only the usual trouble a writer has of preventing themselves from wandering over to social media instead of writing!

What’s your current or next writing project?

LONG ISLAND ICED TINA, the next book in my Catering Hall Mystery series, releases on February 25, 2021. And I’m working on my seventh Cajun Country Mystery, which doesn’t have a definite title yet.

Where can people find you online?

Newsletter: https://www.ellenbyron.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/ellenbyronauthor/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/ellenbyronmariadirico/

Bookbub:

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/ellen-byron

Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/23234.Ellen_Byron?from_search=true&from_srp=true

Links of interest

Check out the book here   https://amzn.to/2ErBjLe

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/647531/murder-in-the-bayou-boneyard-by-ellen-byron/

https://www.ellenbyron.com/

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

 

Peter Colt interview – Mystery novel – Back Bay Blues (Kensington, 2020)

Mystery novel – An interview with Peter Colt about his new book Back Bay Blues published by Kensington. Check out the book here https://amzn.to/3cbmDfs

Of all the creative ideas you have, how did this one idea rise about the rest and get written?

I had this very specific vision of Andy hiding in water near an old ship. I couldn’t get that idea out of my head. Then everything was an outgrowth of one idea in my mind. Why was he hiding? Who was he hiding from?  The answers started to come together when I saw two documentaries on PBS. One was about a group of former South Vietnamese Army officers in America who were still trying to overthrow the current Vietnamese government. The other was about the last days Saigon and the fall of Saigon. Suddenly scenes started popping into my head and the novel took hold and I wanted to write it to see how it ended.

What is the book about – protagonist, setting, and conflict?

Back Bay Blues is about Vietnam Veteran and now Private Investigator Andy Roark. Roark has felt lost since the end of the war because the Army gave him the only sense of family he has really had and the only sense of purpose he has known. It is March of 1985 and he is hired to investigate the murders of two Vietnamese men in and around Boston, Mass.  He has also been quasi adopted by a Vietnamese family and is forced to realize that others lost much more in the war than he did.

His investigation brings him into direct conflict with the sinister Colonel Tran who belongs to a group dedicated to overthrowing the Communist Vietnamese government. Roark feels they are extorting money from the Vietnamese community. The murder investigation and the conflict with Colonel Tran bring to light the events of April 29, 1975 on the eve of the fall of Saigon.

Does Boston have a large Vietnamese community?  I assume many were displaced there by the Vietnam War.  Did the Boston community tend to come from any specific part of Vietnam?

As of 2018, the greater Boston Metro area had 28,000 Vietnamese  people making up about .06% of the population (Migration Police Institute report, September 13, 2018). Yes, most were displaced by the war, but now much of the growth  is due those who were displaced starting families and raising children. I can’t say for certain what regions they were from, but the former South Vietnam would be my guess.

What sort of aesthetic does the book have?

The book falls into the formula of the first-person gumshoe narrative. It takes place in the dying industrial New England, sunny Virginia and the San Francisco bay area. There is a lot of description except that it is in the 1980’s and my protagonist pokes a lot of fun at himself. He isn’t a very good detective and he’s a screw up.

If the book had a soundtrack, what might it be like?

Back Bay Blues actually does have a soundtrack! I make playlists for the books and I listen to them while I write. They are eclectic. My first book, The Off-Islander,  had a lot of Steely Dan. This time there is more Doobie Brothers, Rolling Stones, Spencer Davis Group, a lot of Blues and some Jazz. There is also some electronica and or other things. I listen to put me in the time or the mood. There is a fair amount of classic Willie Nelson and similar Country music.

Did you have to do any research for the book?

Yes,. I do a lot. I was twelve in 1985 and lived on Nantucket Island. Andy Roark’s world is much broader than mine was. I had to research Saigon, the Fall of Saigon and then I spent a lot of time on Google Earth/Maps researching the area around Suisun Bay. I have read a lot about Army Special Forces in Vietnam and especially MACV-SOG. I work really hard to make the books as authentic as I can. I know I won’t get everything right, but I try. One of my recurring nightmares involves getting hate mail from angry Vietnam Veterans for not getting the Army stuff right.

Have you noticed any difference in community attitudes to Vietnam vets and Iraqi war vets in your community and perhaps attitudes the vets hold about their service?

I think that attitudes toward service changed after Vietnam for the better. After 9/11,  attitudes toward veterans in general were definitely more positive. The Vietnam vets I knew when I was a kid didn’t talk much about their experience and I never saw anyone thanking them for their service. Now, there seems to be much more attention paid to Vietnam vets and vets in general.

The town of Bangor, Maine, is awesome! The Airport in Bangor is one of the layovers for troops going to and from Iraq and Afghanistan. The good people of Bangor, no matter the weather, no matter what time, day or night, have people there to meet every planeload of troops. When you walk down the Jetway to the terminal there are people on both sides clapping and cheering, reaching out to shake hands with soldiers. It is a fantastic feeling. They offer cell phones for troops to call loved ones and hand out snacks. That is a very different from how the Vietnam era veterans were treated.

What are some of the genre works that inspire you – books, movies, tv, music, etc.

I am a huge fan of Detective fiction. Raymond Chandler of course is an influence; you can’t write this type of book and not be a fan. I also like Science Fiction both books and film. Blade Runner is the perfect meld of detective fiction and Sci-Fi, and yes I am one of the few Philistines who loves the original release with the voice over narration that everyone else hates. I make a lot of Magnum P.I. references, to poke fun at Andy and me. That is obviously an inspiration. Musically I am all over the road, but I have to have music when I write. In terms of other books and movies I love spy genre and John Le Care is unparalleled. As a kid I loved Comic books and still like a good graphic novel.

What other things inspire your creativity?

I have a lot of diverse friends, cops, veterans, engineers, aging punk rockers and talking to them inspires me. I bounce ideas off them and a lot of them offer up things that get worked into my books. I hope to write a novel that has Andy Roark investigating something in the world of the 1980’s Boston Punk scene.

Do police deal a lot with private investigators? In books and movies it seems like the PI always has a police connection to help with certain problems.  Is that true in real life?

Yes and no. A lot of cops retire and become investigators so they have connections on the job and could use those. The reality of it is that a lot of the information that fictional Private Investigators ask for, like running license plates etc., is usually tightly controlled and officers can get in real trouble for providing it. Much of that information is now available online, either as a public record (such as adult court records) or through a pay service like White pages. But reality doesn’t make for a good plot device.

What would you say are the big tone and style differences about having a PI as a main character versus having a police detective as the main character of a novel?

The PI is a more singular character. They usually don’t have a boss and/or an organization to answer to. As a writer, that can give you a lot more freedom to develop a plot. If the main character is a police detective they are saddled with a boss, rules, etc. there are things that they can’t do practically and still keep their jobs. There are stylistic expectations of the PI; they are loners, they usually are single with no family or divorced, they tend to drink too much. Because they don’t have to worry about getting their kids to the orthodontist ,or going to PTA meetings, or worrying about the mortgage, or taking the cat to the vet, the writer can more freely focus on the case itself. The police detective has a boss and rules. His breaking the rules can be a major plot line, think The Shield. Also he has more resources and can tackle bigger cases, like a serial killer or organized crime.

What is your writing and editing process like?  Anything different from other authors?

I usually know how the story ends and have a couple scenes in my head when I start. It is all about getting to the end. In my mind the story is like a pond with lily pads and my protagonist is a frog jumping from lily pad to lily pad until we reach the end of the story. I write, go back the next day and tweak what I wrote the night before, then the next day write new material. I will write, read, reread and rewrite numerous times before I let someone else look at it.

How has your approach to writing changed over time?

My first book, The Off-Islander took ten years to write, lots of interruptions as life happened. Back Bay Blues took me about nine or ten months to write. I had an idea of what my editor was looking for and the story was much clearer in my mind start to finish. That helped a lot. I have started to approach writing not as a fun hobby that might work out but rather something that I am doing and have to do well. Books aren’t cheap and if someone is spending money on something I wrote, I don’t want them to feel like they wasted their money or time.

Have you done any non-writing work that has influenced how you write or what you write about?

I was in the Army Reserve and deployed to Kosovo and Iraq and those experiences certainly bring a flavor to what I write. I am a police officer in a city of around 175,000 people and that has influenced my writing as well. It helps to describe dead bodies or crime scenes if you have been to a few.  It may also have something to do with why I don’t writer Romance novels..

When you were younger was there a power, technology, or fictional setting you yearned for or to be a part of?

Space. I wanted to be Captain Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard or Han Solo. I grew up on an island, which was great…but it is also like living in a small town that you can’t drive out of easily. A close second were the Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler. Pitt was always in some exciting location, diving on some cool wreck.

Did you have any difficulties finishing this book?

Oddly no, this book went smoothly. It must have been the positive power of having a deadline. The first book though…that took ten years, a lot of fits and starts.

What’s your current or next writing project?

I am working on a third Andy Roark book which will be set a few months after Back Bay Blues.

Where can people find you online?

On Facebook I am Peter Colt Author. I am on Twitter and Instagram but FB is the easiest way to find me. I also have a website www.peter-colt.com. One of the cool things is that I am so new at this that I have the luxury of interacting directly with people who contact me.

Biographical information

Name: Peter Colt, author of The Andy Roark Mystery Series

Book Title: BACK BAY BLUES (Book 2 in The Andy Roark Mysteries – available in hardcover Sept. 29, 2020) and THE OFF-ISLANDER (Book 1 in The Andy Roark Mysteries – now available in paperback)

Bio: Peter Colt is an Iraq War veteran, a New England law enforcement officer and an FBI certified Crisis Negotiator. He spent over twenty years in the Army reserve and was deployed to Kosovo in 2000, where he was attached to the Russian Army. He was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and again in 2008, and has had the fortune of knowing many Vietnam vets and U.S. Army Special forces soldiers. Born in Boston, he grew up on Nantucket and lived there in the 1970s and 80s, when the distinction between off-islanders and on-islanders was very real. Visit Peter Colt online at Peter-Colt.com.

Links of interest

Check out the book here https://amzn.to/3cbmDfs

https://www.kensingtonbooks.com/9781496723420/back-bay-blues/

https://www.peter-colt.com/

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.