An Interview With Gretchen Archer

by Grace Topping

When Janet Evanovich writes that Gretchen Archer’s book is “Outrageous, outlandish, and impossible to put down,” I have high expectations for that book. Not only did the books in Gretchen Archer’s A Davis Way Crime Caper series deliver on those expectations, they surpassed them. With the very first one I read, I was captivated and happy there were more in the series to enjoy. Often agents and publishers talk about an author having “voice.” It’s one of those things no one is able to describe, but you recognize it when you read or hear it. Gretchen has a terrific voice—one you immediately fall in love with. Her books are quite humorous, but don’t let the humor lead you to expect a lightweight story. According to Publishers Weekly, Gretchen’s stories are “… interspersed with moments of surprising emotional depth.” The ninth book in the Davis Way Crime Caper series, Double Trouble, comes out on June 9, and legions of Gretchen Archer’s fans are anxiously awaiting it, including me. 

Double Trouble

Back Cover Copy

Davis Way Cole smells T-R-O-U-B-L-E when she’s fired from half of her part-time job at the Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. The quarter-time job she’s left with is lulling her to sleep, exactly what she’s doing when Birdy James, centenarian director of the casino’s Lost and Found department, disappears. With five million dollars. Davis just can’t help believing Birdy didn’t do it, if for no other reason, she’s too old to spend it. If Davis doesn’t find the little old lady and the money fast, she’ll lose what’s left of her job, at which point, there goes her Bellissimo everything. What she needs is a good luck charm. What she gets is her home invaded by hard-headed women, a soft-hearted little man, and major carpet troubles, the combination of which sends Davis’s already suspicious mind into overdrive, landing her between a jailhouse rock and a very hard place. A little less conversation and a lot more action are called for if Davis has any chance of saving herself, her family, her marriage, her job, and the heartbreak hotel she calls home. Thank you. Thank you very much.

                                                                                                                                     www.Amazon.com

Welcome to Writers Who Kill, Gretchen. 

What inspired the Davis Way Crime Caper series and the setting of a gambling resort and casino?

Gretchen Archer

 For my fortieth birthday, my husband took me to the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was my first casino vacation, and not much of one, because he told our teenagers they could both invite a friend. And our son was in a stroller. (Yep. Baby at forty.) My husband went straight to the casino, leaving me with four teenagers and a baby. Happy Birthday to me. Fast forward two days. I was past ready to go home. My husband tracked me down at the kiddie arcade, passed me $200, and said, “Go to the casino. Relax. I’ll help with the kids.” (What a prince.) I won $40,000. It made quite the impression. Enough of an impression for me to choose a glitzy glamorous casino setting for my series.

Readers learn a lot about casinos, gambling, and gambling equipment through your books. Dare I ask how you gained your knowledge about those things?

Do I not have the best research EVER? I appreciate that readers might find the casino details of my stories credible, but one thing I can tell you without hesitation is that it’s not the result of direct knowledge. Casinos do not spill their secrets. So what I can’t learn by observation, Internet research, or casino gossip (everyone has a jackpot story to tell), I totally fabricate. 

Using the term caper immediately gives a clue that the books will be humorous. Did you set out to write humorous books?

Not at all! The very first words of editorial feedback I received on Double Whammy were, “You’re funny.” It surprised me. I didn’t feel funny. I never set out to write humor. It was Kendel Lynn at Henery Press who suggested attaching the term caper to the series. I remember my agent, Stephany Evans, saying, “If you’re going to call it a caper, it’d better be funny.” (Oh, the pressure.)

With nine books in the Davis Way series and some short stories, how do you keep the characters and the storylines fresh?

Keeping the storylines fresh isn’t a problem because casinos lend themselves to endless shenanigans. With 1,700 hotel rooms, a dozen restaurants, Olympic-sized pools, and a huge casino to write around, I can always find somewhere to stash a body. Keeping the characters fresh, for me, means moving on with their lives. Davis has gone from single to engaged, then married, and now she has twin daughters. What’s next for Davis? I can’t wait to see. 

Throughout the series, Davis faces a number of crises, including a hurricane. She even went through a short period in prison and a hunger strike. Where does she get the strength to survive all that she faces?

I'm a panster. I totally buy into the benefits of outlining beforehand, and I've tried it several times, but by Chapter Two, my outline is out the window. What I do instead is forever ask myself what could possibly happen next. The answers are usually nothing short of calamitous. Which puts me in the position of having to write Davis out of the predicaments I've written her into. Davis is strong because it takes strength to survive catastrophes.

I hope to always write Davis as a woman who knows how to pick herself up, dust herself off, and keep going.

With Davis facing so many serious challenges, how do you manage to keep the stories humorous?

I let the characters around Davis carry the humor. Davis is never the funny or the target of the funny. The funny comes from the outrageous cast around her.

Through each book, Davis is left hanging onto the Bellissimo. Does the Bellissimo represent something more in her life besides employment? 

Davis landed her job at the Bellissimo after a long stint of unemployment, and that after having been fired by her own father. She met her husband there. She lives and works there. She’s raising her children there. She’s very attached.

Writers talk about a setting that is so important to the story that it becomes another character, which is the case with the Bellissimo. Is the Bellissimo based on a resort/casino that you are familiar with, or did you create it?

The Bellissimo is absolutely based on a real casino, and Gulf locals who read me know exactly which one, the Beau Rivage.

How much were you involved in the audio production of your books? Did you get to select the narrator? The narrator, Amber Benson, does a fabulous job bringing your characters to life.

In the beginning I wasn’t involved at all. As a new author, I had very little say. The studio hired a wonderful and accomplished narrator who was, unfortunately for my Southern caper, born and bred on the Jersey Shore. It…didn’t work out. With Book Two, Double Dip, we landed Amber. Hail to the QUEEN, my agent Stephany, who negotiated the second edition of Double Whammy’s audio, and it was re-recorded by Amber. Five years after the fact, my series audio is solid Amber. (Who is from Birmingham, Alabama. And gets Davis.)

Have you written anything in addition to your Davis Way series?

I write grocery lists often. I'd say bi-weekly. 

What’s next for Davis Way? Any plans for a new series?

As we speak, Davis is trapped under a crazy golfer’s tour bus, so my immediate plan is to get her out. Some days I think I’d like to write a new series, but then I think of Joanne Fluke. Janet Evanovich. Nancy Drew. Surely I have more Davis in me.

Thank you, Gretchen. 

To learn more about bestselling author Gretchen Archer and her Davis Way series, visit her at www.gretchenarcher.com or follow her on Facebook. And be on the lookout for Double Trouble, which is being released in hardback, paperback, digital, and audio on June 9. 

The Agatha Nominees for Best Short Story

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be hosting this interview with the Agatha nominees for best short story. They all are accomplished writers and kind, humble human beings. During their blog tour, they have been dispensing wisdom and supporting each other as well as the mystery writing community. Reading what they have to say is like getting a mini-course in writing shorts. More importantly, read their brilliant stories, listed with links below.

Best Short Story

“Double Deck the Halls“ by Gretchen Archer (Henery Press)
“Whose Wine is it Anyway“ by Barb Goffman in 50 Shades of Cabernet (Koehler Books)
“The Night They Burned Miss Dixie’s Place“ by Debra Goldstein in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (May/June 2017)
“The Library Ghost of Tanglewood Inn“ by Gigi Pandian (Henery Press)
“A Necessary Ingredient“ by Art Taylor in Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Seat (Down & Out Books)

 

Best wishes to Gretchen, Barb, Debra, Gigi, and Art. You all are phenomenally talented.—PGB

Is it more difficult to develop a protagonist or antagonist in a short story?

 

Gretchen Archer: For me, writing the antagonist is more difficult. I tend to avoid adversarial characters and put them off until the last minute.

 

Barb Goffman

Barb Goffman: I haven't really thought about this before. I'm interested in what everyone else says. My gut answer is that neither is more difficult. Each character needs to be properly motivated and his or her actions need to make sense. Creating characters that meet these requirements involves the same amount of work, whether they're the protagonist or antagonist. A protagonist might seem to be more difficult (i.e., take more work) because you see his or her thoughts, but those thoughts spring from who the character is. So if the character isn't well developed, he or she will fall flat on the page, no matter if she's a protagonist or an antagonist, and no matter if you see the character's thoughts or not.

 

Debra Goldstein: I believe developing an antagonist in a short story is more difficult because the story’s limited structure means every word dedicated to the antagonist must advance his/her character, motivation, behavior, and sympathetic element. The flow of the story and interaction with other characters automatically allows a greater opportunity to illustrate these things respecting the protagonist. Because “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place” incorporates psychological interaction between the two primary characters, I only had limited space to develop the antagonist. This required painting the character by using very broad strokes.

 

Gigi Pandian

Gigi Pandian: Antagonists can be tricky for me, because I usually write only from the point of view of the protagonist. The motivation of an antagonist needs to be believable, though, even when we’re not in their heads seeing their inner thoughts. The explanation of their motive at the end of a story needs to ring true. To achieve that, I plant clues related to motivation throughout the story, so it’s easily—and believably—clear at the end. I had a lot of fun with the antagonist in “The Library Ghost of Tanglewood Inn.” The clues are there if you read carefully…

 

Art Taylor: As others have said here, I think that the goal is to have each character as fully fleshed as you can—each with his or her own desires and concerns and challenges, really each with his/her own storyline maybe, and the main story’s conflicts emerging at the collision of these competing and interweaving storylines. In “A Necessary Ingredient,” detective Ambrose Thornton, his client Esmé (a new chef in town), and the antagonist (won’t say who here!) are working toward their own ends—and the plot and its resolution wouldn’t have much weight if each character weren’t developed pretty clearly, as humans first and foremost, and as protagonists or antagonists only secondarily. 

 

How can dialogue help with the action and pacing in a short story?

 

Gretchen Archer

Gretchen Archer: When words count, delivering information quickly is important. Dialogue does that faster than narrative generally allows.

 

Barb Goffman: People love reading dialogue. When done well, it makes a story move. It's the epitome of showing (versus telling). Instead of having a character explain in narrative what bad thing happened to her, you show it happening. In many cases, that will involve dialogue. 

If you want to include humor in your story, dialogue will usually help with that too. Humor can be shown through the interaction of two or more people, or the internal monologue of one person reacting to what's happening. Or both.  And humor is good because it can speed up the pace. 

 

Debra Goldstein: Dialogue is how people communicate. In “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” Southern phrases and the language of a nine year old are juxtaposed with that of a weary adult to establish the time, place, and feel of the story. Quick bursts of dialogue from other characters underscore important changes and decisions facing the main characters. Dialogue is also used to evoke associated memories in readers’ minds that negate the need to slow the story’s pace with information dumps.

 

Gigi Pandian: After working on my twist, dialogue is my favorite part of writing short stories. I love putting contrasting characters together and letting the story unfold through their banter. It’s a great way to plant clues without them being obvious, and it’s a fun way to drive the action.

 

Art Taylor

Art Taylor: Short stories are short, of course, and in the ideal story, every element should ideally serve two or three purposes. Dialogue is a key example of how this might work. What do a person’s words reveal about him or her? not just in terms of what’s said but also diction (elevated? conversational? slangy?) and rhythm (full, forceful sentences? short, fumbling ones?) and other aspects of language. How does a bit of dialogue put the speaker in conflict with other characters? (One wants something the other doesn’t want to give, for example.) And how might dialogue reveal something about the larger plot in motion—some bit of information revealed or hidden or misconstrued? Good dialogue can, in one swoop, do all that.

 

What details are important when creating setting in a short story?

 

Gretchen Archer: Finding an easily identifiable setting is important when word count is a consideration. For example, readers are more familiar with the interior of a hotel than they are the interior of an abandoned oil rig. The hotel requires less space devoted to description. That said, the setting needs to be compelling. In “Double Deck the Halls,” most of the action takes place in an all-white bedroom suite. Snow white. Icy white. That room says something about the woman who puts her head on the pillow each night.

 

Barb Goffman: I provide just enough details to bring the setting to life and to enhance the plot. Sometimes you don't realize something about the setting will be important until you get into the story. For instance, when writing my story “Whose Wine Is It Anyway?” I didn't plan in advance to mention how, on her last day of work before retiring from her job as a law firm secretary, my main character, Myra, gets melancholy about typing up her last time sheet, shelving books in the law firm library for the final time, doing little things she'd done for years without much thought. But they turned out to be useful details. By showing these details of law firm life, I brought not only the setting to life, but Myra too. That's really the best way to use setting--letting it come to life by eliciting an emotional response from a character.

 

Debra H. Goldstein

Debra Goldstein: When creating setting in a short story, the writer only needs to provide sufficient details to awaken the five senses and trigger associated personal memories for the reader. For example, in “The Night They Burned Ms. Dixie’s Place,” the reader quickly understands that it is a house, but a house that changes the sheets repeatedly during the night. References to the linoleum floor, catching a breeze through the screen door, and grabbing a glass from the drainboard, establish that the main setting is a 1960’s non-airconditioned kitchen. Using trigger details, like these, means the limited words of the story aren’t wasted on long descriptions.

 

Gigi Pandian: Since the key word is “short,” extraneous details need to go. Unique details can make a story stay with you, even if the descriptions aren’t as long as in a novel. It doesn’t take much to plant a vivid detail that sets the scene, especially if it’s a description of the setting told through a strong point of view. To simultaneously describe the remote inn where Jaya Jones is stranded during a snowstorm, and to foreshadow the ghost story she hears in front of the hearth later that night, I used this description:

The snow was still blowing sideways, but outside the car I was able to see the outlines of a hotel. It looked more like a Victorian mansion than a modern hotel. Two turrets flanked the sides of the three-story building. A curtain fluttered in the high window of the left turret. Was someone watching our arrival?

Art Taylor: Setting was one of the key components of “A Necessary Ingredient”—in keeping with the “Sea to Shining Sea” aspect of the anthology, each writer setting a story in a specific region. A small North Carolina city (large town really) was the setting for my story, and so you’ve got specific physical components (a struggling-to-gentrify downtown, a farmer’s market, a roadside vegetable stand) and larger social and political markers as well: a class system, for example, and the expectations the inform characters within/outside of that class, as well as a political backdrop, a looming election, that seems backdrop but ultimately factors into the storyline.  To me, setting should never be just backdrop; instead, it should ideally inform plot and characters both—and I strived to make that the case here.

An Interview with the 2016 Agatha Best Short Story Author Nominees

The annual Malice Domestic conference, which takes place this year in Bethesda, Maryland, the last weekend in April, celebrates the best in the “traditional mystery.” Its Agatha awards (for Agatha Christie) recognize excellence in novels and stories that focus on crime resolution. This year’s short story author nominees are talented, versatile, and extremely creative, as their nominated stories clearly demonstrate.

Best Short Story:
“Double Jinx: A Bellissimo Casino Crime Caper Short Story” by Gretchen Archer (Henery Press)
“The Best-Laid Plans” by Barb Goffman in Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional (Wildside Press)
“The Mayor and the Midwife” by Edith Maxwell in Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016 (Down & Out Books)
“The Last Blue Glass” by B.K. Stevens in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
“Parallel Play” by Art Taylor in Chesapeake Crimes: Storm Warning (Wildside Press)

We welcome Gretchen, Barb, Edith, B.K. (Bonnie), and Art to WRITERS WHO KILL to answer a couple of questions about how they weave their magic. Enjoy their answers, then take the opportunity to read their nominated stories (just click on the links above). You’ll be delighted by their inventiveness and skill. Thanks so much and best wishes to you all! -- Paula Gail Benson

TELL US ABOUT YOUR STORY’S PROTAGONIST. IS THIS PROTAGONIST A NEW OR CONTINUING CHARACTER IN YOUR WRITING? 

Gretchen Archer

I wrote “Double Jinx,” featuring July Jackson, to introduce her into the core cast of characters in my Davis Way Crime Capers (Henery Press). July is brand spanking new and here to stay. She goes on to fill the nanny position for my main character Davis Way’s toddler twins in the sixth full-length installment of my series, just released, Double Up.

Barb Goffman

My main character is named Eloise Nickel. If that name somehow sounds familiar, it’s supposed to. Nearly every character in “The Best-Laid Plans” is named after someone associated with the Malice Domestic convention (including the convention in the story: Malice International). Sometimes a character’s name rhymes with the real person the character is named in honor of. Sometimes the character’s name associates with the real person’s name. (For instance, a character in the book named Cherub is in honor of a real-life woman named Angel.) Eloise is a new character for me.

Eloise writes a long-established cozy mystery series. She’s considered a grande dame in the field, and she is being honored this year by Malice International for her lifetime achievement. She’s in her sixties and has a nice grandmotherly persona. This plays to her advantage because when Malice’s guest of honor--Eloise’s nemesis--crosses her (insinuating in Mystery Queen Magazine that Eloise is elderly and her books are boring), Eloise is able to craft a revenge plan that no one would attribute to her since everyone thinks she’s so nice. And indeed her plan is cozy. Eloise aims to inflict pain but not death. And she aims for it to all go down at the Malice convention.

Edith Maxwell

My story’s protagonist is Rose Carroll, an unmarried Quaker midwife and amateur sleuth in an 1888 Massachusetts mill town. She is also the protagonist of my Quaker Midwife novels - the first of which, Delivering the Truth, is nominated this year for Best Historical Mystery! Called to Justice, book two, releases on April 8, and I am under contract for at least five books in the series (so far). Rose is a good listener and cares about her pregnant and birthing women. She experiences ongoing tension between her love for a non-Quaker doctor and the strictures of her faith, but her faith also conflicts with mainstream culture.

B.K. Stevens

“The Last Blue Glass” is a stand-alone story, so Cathy Morrell is a new character. Cathy’s not a glamorous, exciting protagonist. She’s quiet and unpretentious, the sort of person others tend to discount and take for granted. Her most striking characteristic is her devotion to her husband, Frank. She considers him more talented and sensitive than she is, and she does all she can to protect him and make him happy—accepting his decisions even when she thinks he’s making a mistake, putting her own hopes on hold, working hard to help him live his dreams. Almost anyone looking at their marriage, including Cathy, would see Frank as its dynamic center, see Cathy as playing a supporting role at most. But in the end, Cathy discovers that she can be stronger and more determined than she’d ever imagined, and that someone who discounted her may have made a deadly mistake.

Art Taylor

Maggie, the young mother in “Parallel Play,” is a new character, and while I don’t anticipate returning to her story beyond this, I feel she’s maybe as sharply focused a character as I’ve yet been able to create: a woman still trying to navigate new parenthood—her relationships and responsibilities both to her son and to her husband, the whole dynamic—and suddenly finding herself having to defend so much that’s near and dear to her. I wrote this story while a new dad myself, and while none of the parents here are my wife or me (a necessary disclaimer, as you’ll see!), channeling the concerns and pressures of parenthood into the story introduced what seemed to me some greater depth of character and tautness of tension that I’ve sensed in my earlier work.

HOW HAS YOUR SETTING CONTRIBUTED TO YOUR CHARACTERIZATION AND PLOT DEVELOPMENT?

Gretchen Archer

My series is set in a casino, my main characters are the staff of a covert security team, so setting plays a huge role in characterization and plot development. By its very nature, the casino setting lends itself to endless plots centered around cons, scams, and the occasional dead body, giving my characters ongoing opportunities to shine.

Barb Goffman

I wrote the story with the actual setting of Malice Domestic in mind, and it plays into the plot of every scene. The long hallways outside the hotel rooms, the atrium signing area, the bar in the lobby, the bathroom by the bar, the two restaurants attached to the hotel, the three-flight-long staircase connecting the lowest level of the hotel to the penultimate level. I also made use of typical Malice programming, including The You’ve Got Fan Mail panel, the timing of signings, and the honoree interviews. I served as Malice program chair for six years and know the convention inside out. I figured I’d make use of my knowledge.

The setting also affects the characterization of the protagonist and the antagonist, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. Happy reading!

Edith Maxwell

My physical setting is the town I live in—Amesbury, Massachusetts—but in the late 1880s. The time setting governs certain crime-solving techniques, of course. Fingerprinting and blood typing were not in use at the time. And it contributes to the characters acting in a manner consistent with the era—mostly. Rose Carroll is a bit of an outsider: she’s a Quaker, didn’t grow up in the town, and is a forthright independent businesswoman of 24. These mattered a lot more back then than they might in contemporary times. Her outsider status also makes her a good amateur sleuth, as does working as a midwife, where she goes places and hears secrets the detectives aren’t able to.

B.K. Stevens

I had fun with the settings in “The Last Blue Glass.” The story begins and ends in Boston, where my husband and I went to graduate school right after we got married. The middle scenes take place at a bar called Taps, located on the road between Lynchburg, Virginia, and Charlottesville. We lived in Lynchburg for several years, often drove to Charlottesville, and once stopped at a coffee house that served, very loosely, as the inspiration for Taps. So I enjoyed the personal connections. Beyond that, the different settings reflect different stages in Cathy and Frank’s marriage. In Boston, when they’re newlyweds, their lives are dominated by Frank’s family and friends. Virginia represents an attempt to break free, as Cathy and Frank try to carve out a radically different sort of life for themselves. But Frank buckles, they return to Boston, and Frank’s family and friends again wield a decisive influence in their lives, bringing conflicts to a crisis. I certainly don’t mean to demonize Boston and idealize Virginia—far from it! I love Boston, and I treasure our years there. But I wanted to have the story come full circle, and the changes in setting helped underscore that structure.

Art Taylor

“Parallel Play” appeared in the latest volume of the Chesapeake Crimes anthology series, subtitled Storm Warning and with weather as the theme. The weather does indeed play a role here—a torrential downpour that helps set the plot in motion and maybe echoes the characters’ emotional storminess as well. But two specific places served as inspiration here as much as the weather. The story’s opening takes place in Teeter Toddlers, a fictionalized version of something like The Little Gym or Gymboree, where parents bring their young children for playtime and socializing. I took my own son to these classes every week for a long while, and I found it fascinating to watch both how the children interacted with one another (or didn’t) and how the parents formed friendships (or, of course, didn’t); thinking about the dynamics of that small community first sparked the idea for these characters and how they become entwined. The other place is a curvy road that leads from a major highway near our house in Northern Virginia to the small town of Clifton nearby. It’s a twisty road with lots of hills, which I hope might match the story’s own plot twists and emotional ups and downs, but the road has also struck me as a lonely stretch, and it’s that loneliness and sense of isolation, not just geographic but psychological, that ultimately proved the driving force for so much of these characters and their journeys.