Kindness, Community – and Murder?

 By Cindy Brown

Kindness is my criteria, for well, almost, everything. It’s a “must” in my friends. It’s how I found my husband after a string of short-lived relationships. And my favorite books, TV, or movies all have kindness at their core. Oh, I don’t mind evil characters—I do love mysteries, after all. But I want good to triumph over evil, or at least give it a good kick in the pants.

Community is also really important to me. I love waving to neighbors on the street, being greeted by name when I walk into a place, or hanging out with groups of people with a shared goal or interest. I’m lucky to get this feeling of community from my neighbors, art class friends, fellow volunteers, church members, community gardeners, and my writer friends (more about that later).

What does all this have to do with mystery and murder, you ask? If you read cozy mysteries, you’ve probably noticed the kindness and community inherent in their small towns, knitting circles, and coffeeshops. But more serious mystery authors—like Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, and William Kent Krueger— imbue their stories and characters with those qualities, too. In all their books, the murders are a way to explore human connections: to think about why people do the things they do, why some are bent on destruction, why some are victimized, and why others come to their aid.

That’s what I explore, too, and you’ll find that kindness and community connect all my books, including my new serious mystery, Echoes of the Lost (May 12^th from Ooligan Press), which explores the need for community and connection, and the consequences that follow their loss. I’m thrilled that early reviews acknowledge my focus, like this one from Booklist: “Brown’s latest, set amidst the houseless community in Portland, Oregon, features heartbreak, tragedy, and violence juxtaposed against heartwarming generosity, bravery, and humor…A superbly written story that highlights the massive social issue of houselessness and that will appeal to those who enjoy twisty mysteries combined with feel-good stories that deliver a strong social message.”

I can’t write about kindness and community without talking about my Hen friends (former Henery Press authors) at Writers Who Kill. Thanks, Kait, Annette, and Grace for your support and kindness. I feel lucky to be a part of your community. 

If readers would like to be a part of my community, they can find me at cindybrownwriter.com, or sign up for The Slightly Silly Newsletter on Substack.

When the Dead Guy Talks Back: Characters Who Refuse to Follow the Outline

 By Eloise Corvo

I am a plotter, or at least I intend to be when I start a new novel draft. When I sat down with my handy-dandy outline for Off the Beaten Path, red herrings and murder mechanics galore, I planned to diligently stick to that outline. As I started writing and digging deeper into these characters; however, the dead guy talked back and took the story in a new direction.

I’m not the only writer who experiences this. As we explore our characters, delving into their personality quirks and motivations, they often surprise us and take us to places we weren’t anticipating. Let’s look more closely at what this means, why it’s a part of our creative magic, and how to handle it.

How he talks back

When I say that the dead guy in my story talked back to me, I don’t mean that literally. My fingers were not possessed by some outside influence that took over his storyline. What I mean is that I found myself surprised by where I took his storyline. I deviated from my plan and now had plot holes to reconcile.

In Off the Beaten Path, the body of a tourist is found in a massive state park by Maudy Lorso, the head park ranger. Without giving too much away, I had the relationship between the tourist and my killer clear in my outline. As I spent time in his head while drafting, working on the nuances of what motivated him and how he treated his relationships, a brand new facet of his relationship to the killer formed on the page. This new element was BIG. I’m not talking about a little side quest or fun detail. This changed the entire motive behind the murder and the clues that needed to allude to it.

Whether or not to listen to him

Once you start veering one of your characters away from your plan, you have to decide whether to stick to your original outline, or follow this detour into uncharted waters. You are in full control, but it can feel like your characters are just pulling you along for the ride.

Here’s what to ask yourself when you’re in this dilemma:

1. Will this new element complement, or be a distraction from my core plot?
2. Do I have time to weave this in cohesively through edits, or am I on a tight deadline? Do I have future books in the series to play with this new idea?
3. Do I simply like this new idea, independent of this particular story? Would it be better suited for its own story rather than this one?
4. What does my gut tell me?

If your gut is screaming at you to follow this idea and you have the time, you should go for it. If you’re working on tight deadlines or unsure about its place in this particular story, perhaps keep it in your back pocket and proceed as originally planned.

You can always add it in later if you just can’t let it go. Writing is a process after all. In my experience, the book is only done when my editor forces me to stop tinkering with it.

 I won’t always choose to follow these detours as I’m drafting, but I’ve become more flexible in entertaining them and trusting my own creative process.

In the instance of Off the Beaten Path’s dead guy, I listened to him. I reworked the plot, reconciled the holes, and spent countless extra hours weaving this element in. It’s a better story because of it.

While working on a separate book (a speculative fiction work-in-progress), this happened to me again. I veered off track, fixated on the thought that my villain should, with technology, open every door in the country, never to be shut again. I became fixated on this, and possible consequences of this simple problem. In the end though, I decided that I was pigeonholing this into this novel, and it distracted from the plot. Instead, I made it its own short story (“The Myriad Consequences of Unhinged Doors and Women”). It’s a much better fit here than in that other novel, even though that's where the idea originated.

 What he’s taught me

Listening to my imagination, as heard through my characters, has undoubtedly made me a better writer. It helps deepen motivation, create more realistic and flawed characters, and let emotional truth shine. These books aren’t just about solving murders; they’re about believable, empathetic characters that compel readers. The way we get to know our characters is the same way we get to know real people—by listening to them.

Author Eloise Corvo finds inspiration and peace of mind while skulking around her home library which her husband affectionately (?) says embodies an "Edgar Allan Poe meets Applebee's" aesthetic. Eloise has short fiction published in literary magazines like The Corner Bar, and her debut novel, Off the Beaten Path, just released in April through Level Best Books. She loves mint chocolate chip ice cream, appreciates a good puzzle, and is terrified of clowns. To learn more and purchase signed copies, visit EloiseCorvo.com.

When the killer gets away with it

By S. Lee Manning

I discovered mysteries when I was at the University of Chicago, finishing an M.A. in English literature. Bored with literary novels and wondering why I thought I loved novels or thought I wanted to write one, I picked up an Agatha Christie mystery--and that was it. I loved reading novels again. I soon expanded to other mystery authors, then to suspense and thrillers, knowing that these weren't just what I wanted to read, but what I wanted to write.

I could even explain my fascination in literary terms to fellow students at UC. Mysteries and thrillers, like many great Shakespearean plays, portray a world that has descended into chaos that has to be returned to order. Example--Macbeth. He kills the kind old king, and Scotland is plunged into darkness, until Macbeth is killed and the proper world is restored. This is also the pattern I found reading mysteries.

Of course, what restoring order meant in Shakespeare's time and what it means in ours are two different things. Shakespeare believed in a natural, God-given order, where everyone had their place. In our world, restoring order means a reality where things are understandable, reasonably predictable, and where a certain level of fair play and respect for other people exists.

In our world, when a murder occurs, it indicates a loss of that reality. The detective, private or police or experienced knitter, arrives on the scene, to analyze the clues and find the murderer. The killer is uncovered and stopped. Justice prevails and order restored. There's a similar pattern in thrillers. The villain threatens to destroy the world, the hero or heroes prevent the evil, and the villain is stopped—killed or imprisoned.

Except when it doesn't happen. Because sometimes the killer gets away with it.

I'm not thinking of noir mysteries and thrillers, where the view of the world is bleak and pessimistic. In noir, chaos is the rule, not the exception. Killers often get away with it in noir, but then, it's not unexpected. The world of noir is depressing and dark, nothing is fair or just, and that bleak reality exists at the end of the story. Noir was never my cup of tea.

I've always liked thrillers, suspense novels, and mysteries when the good guys prevail and the bad guys don't. There is a satisfaction, a feeling of completion that I enjoy, and that I don't get from reading noir.

That doesn't mean that there isn't some darkness or some sadness at what has been lost.

It's what I usually have in my spy thrillers. The good guys win the day, and the bad guys are vanquished. But some of the good guys may have died. And even those who survive have suffered losses. But (hopefully) the reader still has that feeling of satisfaction and restoration; it's just bittersweet.

However, sometimes, even in those good-prevailing-over-evil-kind of books that I love, the killer doesn't wind up in jail or dead. Sometimes the killer gets away. And that upsets the world order. Or does it?

 Characters can kill with impunity and not disturb the world order—if they kill the right people for the right reason. Reacher in Lee Child's novels leaves a trail of bodies in every book, but the readers still finish with the feeling of all being right with the world. So whether the world remains in chaos or not when the book ends depends on who is doing the killing and why. And whether there actually is a world order to be restored before the killing takes place.

 In my last thriller, Bloody Soil, Lisette beheads a man in the beginning of the novel, poisons a man, tries to poison the protagonist, and shoots several people. Yet, at the end, she walks away. And, everyone is pleased that she gets away with it. She's a sympathetic character who witnessed her father's murder, and the people she kills are neo-Nazis who've killed others and plan to overthrow the German government. Moreover, the order of the world was already disrupted. Her killings, rather than creating disorder, restored the world that should exist.

 My latest thriller, Deadly Choice, also starts off with a murder. A doctor is held prisoner by Patricia in a chilling chapter where she describes her daughter and describes what she's going to do to the doctor. And then she kills him. The dead man is a good doctor with a wife and a son, and his murder leaves them bereft. Patricia has her sights on new targets, while being hunted by an investigator who hopes to catch her.

 The usual expectation would be that Patricia needs to be caught—for the restoration of order, even though she's a sympathetic character—her daughter died needlessly and she's acting out of grief. But as the story continues, the reader discovers that the good doctor sent Patricia's daughter home when she was bleeding from a miscarriage instead of providing the care that would have saved her life. And Patricia's other targets were complicit in her daughter's death.  

 So is the world of the novel in chaos because Patricia committed a murder, or was she acting against a reality where chaos existed? Would catching her restore order? Or further the disorder?   

 You'll have to read the book to find out.

 A retired attorney, S. Lee Manning is the award-winning author of the Kolya Petrov espionage series: Trojan Horse, Nerve Attack, and Bloody Soil. Her latest release, Deadly Choice, is a stand-alone (or maybe the first in a new series). She and her writer husband J.B. Manning have started a YouTube channel that they're calling A Killing Couple where they investigate intriguing people and places that have connections to books and writing. She and J.B. live in Vermont with their two talky cats, Xiao and Dmitri.