An Interview with Toni L. P. Kelner--Leigh Perry by E. B. Davis

Dr. Georgia Thackery is back at home with her parents after finding a new adjunct position at Bostock College. Everyone is excited for their first family Christmas with nothing to hide. Why? Because Georgia’s daughter Madison is now in the know about Sid, their walking, talking family skeleton.

But their Christmas cheer is interrupted when the Thackerys' dog Byron goes missing on a cold December night. When he’s finally found, he has a femur clutched between his jaws, and Georgia and Madison race to apologize to Sid for letting the dog gnaw on him yet again.

Except that all of Sid’s bones are present and accounted for.

This bone is from somebody else, and when they trace Byron’s trail to an overgrown lot nearby, they find the rest of the skeleton. It’s the normal kind, not moving or telling jokes, and when the police come to take charge, they’re sure it was murder.

And one of Georgia’s adjunct friends could be implicated.

With tensions stirring at the college and everyone hiding a secret or two, Sid and Georgia must uncover the truth before the ghost of a Christmas past strikes again.

Amazon.com

Leigh Perry is a pseudonym for Toni L. P. Kelner, who wrote the “Where Are They Now” and Laura Fleming Southern mystery series. She’s won many awards and co-authored numerous anthologies with Charlaine Harris. No wonder she’s now writing a cozy paranormal series, The Family Skeleton mysteries. I’m a big fan of this subgenre.

Georgia Thackery is an adjunct college professor whose best friend is a living skeleton, Sid. The mysteries Georgia and Sid solve often occur at the colleges where Georgia teaches. Because she’s an adjunct professor, she often moves each new semester to a different college, and with a few exceptions, her colleagues change. The recurring secondary characters are Georgia’s family—her high-school-age daughter, Madison, Madison’s dog, Byron, Georgia’s sister, Deborah, and their parents, tenured college professors.

   

The series is well-crafted, fun to read, and gives insight into the Thackery’s lives in academia. The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking is the sixth book in this series and ends with what I consider a Christmas gift to readers. I’ll say no more.

Please welcome, Toni/Leigh to WWK.                            ____           _________                                                    E. B. Davis

Did you start your career as a college professor? On the tenure track or adjunct? I’m so flattered that you asked this, but no, I’ve never been a college professor of any description. I know a lot of academics, and the background in these books comes from a combination of speaking to those friends and online research.  

I didn’t know that college professors had unions, like public school teachers do. I’ve never heard of strikes on college campuses. Is this more common than I know? Are the unions only at public colleges? It varies a lot. Some schools have them, some don’t. There was a recent strike to allow a union of grad students, and there are adjunct unions in some places, but not all. In other words, it’s a perfect situation for a mystery writer because I can make the internal reality match my plot.

Sid’s vitality and life itself hinges on how others need him, his interests, and if he fulfills a function, especially in Georgia’s life. Is this unique to living skeletons or are regular people dependent on the same things? I think so. I’m reminded of all those people who retire, and don’t feel they have reason to get up in the morning. Or, in my case, an empty-nester whose day is suddenly much emptier. (Don’t worry—I’m managing to fill in the gaps.)

Even though Georgia considers Sid her best friend, what sacrifices has she made to keep Sid in her life? It was probably harder when she was a young girl, when she had to keep Sid’s existence a secret. Secrecy is wearing on a person, and she probably hated that she couldn’t take her bestie out shopping or to parties with her. (She had other more typical friends, but they haven’t been mentioned in the books yet.) As an adult, she has to be a little more careful about people she lets into her life, but I don’t think she considers it a sacrifice. The way I think of it is this. I’m hard of hearing, and because of that, my husband has to make adaptations when speaking, and he’s used to repeating things I might not have heard. It can be annoying, but it’s worth it for the benefits of the relationship. (Since we’ve been married 31 years, I think I’m safe in saying that he doesn’t mind too much.)

Sid lives in the same house with Georgia’s professor parents and they’re aware of Sid, but they don’t seem to have a relationship with him. Why not? Phil and Dab are busy academics, and have grad students coming in and out of the house. While Georgia could sneak off to spend time with Sid, her parents just didn’t have the time. Then Madison came along, and Sid sequestered himself, and when Georgia moved out, he got used to being alone in the attic. It was complicated by the fact that Deborah, Georgia’s sister, didn’t want to interact with Sid for a long time. Families fall into odd habits sometimes.

Do Sid and Georgia fight? Not often, but sure they get cranky at one another in the books now and then. You spend enough time with anybody, you’re going to snap sometimes.

I’m surprised that Georgia kept Sid a secret from her daughter, Madison, until she was in high school. Georgia met Sid when she was a child. Why and how did she hide Sid from Madison? That was Sid’s decision, not Georgia’s. Part of the reason is a plot reveal in the first book, so I won’t go into details, but part of it was the worry that a small child wouldn’t be able to keep the secret of Sid’s existence. The how was easy. Georgia and Madison moved out of the Thackery house when Madison was very young, so Sid only had to make himself scarce during visits. Why would Madison go into the Thackery attic? 

I’m also surprised that Sid has no recollections of his life as a person. Did he have a rebirth? Why isn’t he more curious about who he was? His first memory is of waking up as a skeleton, and even if he had been curious, he wouldn’t have known where to start looking for more information. There’s also some denial going on. If he thinks about his past existence, he’ll start thinking about how he went from living-breathing person to semi-living-skeleton. That’s an uncomfortable thing to think about. It just didn’t come up, and by the time the books start, Sid had been dead longer than he was alive.

How does Sid contribute to cases when he can’t be known by others? Sid is great at brain-storming, despite the lack of a brain, and he usually handles the computer stuff and paperwork as needed. Plus, he can make phone calls and send emails. Where he excels is surveillance, because he only needs his skull and a hand to watch and report suspicious activities. There have even been rare times when he’s supplied the muscle. So to speak.

In The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking, Sid doesn’t seem interested in the case when a skeleton is found in the neighborhood even after Georgia finds out it is a case of murder. Is he sandbagging Georgia or is he absorbed in Christmas? A little of both. He doesn’t see a way for them to get into the case at first, and he is excited about Christmas. But he’s also making the point that Georgia always defers to him in getting involved—he wants to make sure she enjoys their investigations as much as he does.

Charles, a fellow adjunct and friend, confesses that he knows the identity of the victim. Wasn’t he aware of the missing-person investigation into her disappearance? The missing-person investigation took place in a different town, and for reasons explained in the book, weren’t particularly vigorous. So no, he never knew.

Do you think there are as many helicopter parents as there are those who neglect their kids? I think helicopter parents are more obvious—they’re louder. Neglect can be silent and harder to detect.

Georgia is an English professor. Her sister, Deborah, is a locksmith. How can they be so different? I’m a former tech writer who writes mysteries. One of my sisters is a fulltime home caregiver, and another is a retired teacher’s aid. The third’s last job was a cashier at a package store. I’m used to sisters being wildly different.

Why does Deborah only tolerate Sid? Was she jealous? Deborah has always been more rooted in what she considered the real world rather than her parent’s ivory tower or her little sister’s imaginary adventures. Sid just didn’t fit into her worldview. Plus, as a child, she probably was a little jealous. As she got older, she was worried Sid was holding Georgia back in life.

Who is Art Taylor? Did the real Art Taylor, the award-winning mystery writer, lend his name to the book? Yes, I shamelessly borrowed Art’s name. It was late and I couldn’t come up with a name when I needed one. I did ask him, and if he hadn’t approved, I’d have changed it.

When a connection is found between the victim and the Fenton’s circus where Georgia found Sid, it necessitates a visit to the owners of the circus, who happen to be the parents of her old flame, Brownie. Why did Georgia and Brownie stop dating? To be technical, it’s a carnival, not a circus. (Many circuses have a few carnival rides, and many carnivals include a performance or two, so it can be confusing.) The reason Georgia and Brownie quit dating is a little bit of a spoiler, but basically it came down to a miscommunication.

Do carnies have their own vocabulary? Absolutely! I’ve read that modern carnies don’t use as much of the slang as they did in years past, but it’s still fun stuff. So I created a character who is a longtime carnie and who likes trolling on people to give me a reason to use it.

What’s next for Georgia and Sid? I should start thinking about that. A wedding? Another mystery from Sid’s past? Something involving Deborah? A live-action role-playing camp with Madison taking part? Plenty of ideas, but I’m just not sure yet. I can pretty much guarantee there will be bone puns.

Delving into the Minds of Writers

This post is a repeat, having run in October of last year. Please enjoy the reflections and, if you haven't already, check out these authors!

by Paula Gail Benson

I’m so pleased to have been asked to participate as a panel moderator for the Atlanta Chapter of Sisters in Crime’s workshop on The Psychology of Writing. (Hurray to Debra H. Goldstein, the event coordinator!) The event also was sponsored by the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

I learned a great deal from the keynote speakers, Toni L.P. Kelner (who has written the Laura Fleming and Where Are They Now? series, numerous short stories, and as Leigh Perry writes the Family Skeleton series) and her husband Dr. Stephen P. Kelner, Jr. (author of Motivate Your Writing!: Using Motivational Psychology to Energize Your Writing Life). For more about their presentations, please see my post on yesterday’s The Stiletto Gang blog.

Banner designed by Karen McCullough

Writers' Minds and Killer Characters

All the panels had wonderful writers who provided excellent information. Debra H. Goldstein moderated “Pros by Day, Deadly Scribes by Night” with Dr. Shirley Garrett, Rick Helms, Holly Sullivan McClure, Sasscer Hill, Lynn Hesse, and Dr. Stephen Kelner, all of whom balanced specialized professions with their writing lives. “Writers’ Minds and Killer Characters” was moderated by Lisa Malice and featured Maggie Toussaint, Linda Sands, Fran Stewart, Susan Crawford, and Jane Suen, who talked about how they developed the characters in their books. Every one of these authors was articulate and delightful. Please check out their work.

I had the opportunity to meet some amazing authors on the panel I moderated. All of them are now on my to-be-read list. Our topic was “Real Life Bleeding Onto the Page.”

Real Life Bleeding Onto the Page Panel

Each panelist had an amazing life story that had become a part of her work, either as fiction or nonfiction. Following is some information about them:

Sid, Paula, and Toni/Leigh

Toni L.P. Kelner had already participated in a session about motivation with her husband and a presentation about habits to make a successful writing career before joining our panel. Her own life is reflected in her Laura Fleming series, where the protagonist from the South has been transplanted to the Northeast, and in her paranormal short stories and Family Skeleton mysteries which include fantasy and scenes about cosplay (where people attending science fiction or fantasy conferences create their own costumes and dress as favorite characters). Toni brought her skeletal protagonist, Sid (who travels extensively with her), and introduced him to me!

Claire Count, the current President of Atlanta Chapter, writes mystery, fantasy, and poetry. Her theatre background (she has an MFA) is an obvious advantage in her work. Recently, her British manor house mystery short story “Fleeting Victory” was included in Georgia’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Fiction. During the panel, she pointed out a theme that was picked up and resonated throughout our discussion: only from deeply felt emotions and experiences can a writer accurately portray the human condition and, in doing so, make it meaningful to others.

Kathleen Delaney, while being a caretaker, a real estate agent, and extensive traveler, not to mention dealing with her own physical difficulties, made an amazing writing career. Currently, she has five Ellen McKenzie mysteries and three Mary McGill Canine mysteries published. Blood Red White and Blue was a finalist for best canine book of the year in the Dog Writers of America annual writing contest. Her work-in-progress is Boo, You're Dead. She spoke about translating her daughter’s experience with domestic violence into fiction.

Angela K. Durden has written nonfiction, memoir, children’s books, and songs. Once, in an interview, she gave G. Gordon Liddy advice about sprucing up his resume, particularly concerning his prison sentence. Her style is direct, compelling, and immediately involving. She spoke about her choices in not identifying family members in her personal account about abuse she had experienced as a child. She writes fiction (featuring a male protagonist) under the name Durden Kell and brings the same immediacy to it as she conveys in her nonfiction.

Sharon Marchisello has an amazing amount of life experience to draw upon, having written travel articles, short stories, book reviews, and an e-book about personal finance, not to mention being retired after a 27-year career with Delta Air Lines and doing volunteer work for the Fayette Humane Society and the Fayette County Master Gardener Extension Office. Her murder mystery, Going Home, was inspired by her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Sharon’s novel examines not only the difficulty in resolve a mystery when you cannot rely upon a witness’ memory, but also deals with themes of role reversal, when adult children must make changes in their lives to care for elderly parents.

Julia McDermott is the author of domestic psychological suspense novels Daddy’s Girl and Underwater; a French travel/young adult romance Make That Deux; and the creative nonfiction book, All the Above: My Son’s Battle with Brain Cancer. In an article written for The Atlanta Journal Constitution, she said, “Fear is no longer my daily companion; it’s been replaced by gratitude.” The story of how her family and son faced the unexpected challenges is truly inspirational.

If you haven’t already had the pleasure of reading these authors, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to learn more about their work. Many thanks to everyone involved in this wonderful workshop!

What have you been reading lately and what events from real life have found a way into your own writing?

Fictional Journeys

by Paula Gail Benson

I’m a great admirer of Charlaine Harris, Toni L.P. Kelner, and Dana Cameron, who all have seamlessly shifted between traditional mysteries and paranormal mysteries (as well as novels and short stories for each genre). I find it fascinating to delve into the worlds of creatures who coexist with humans, yet have their own infrastructure.

Maybe dipping back into mythology earlier this summer with Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and Circe was a good precursor for some paranormal reading. Also, I have to admit being intrigued when a work colleague read a recent short story I’d written and said it reminded her of Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City (2013). My colleague was kind to share her copy and I found myself immersed in a familiar, yet very unique Big Apple.

Looking at the cover of the Shambling Guide gives you a flavor of what you’ll be encountering. It shows a young woman walking along a city street and passing by a man with a tail, a monster perched on the hood of a cab, and a skyscraper with a dragon at the uppermost tower. The book’s structure intersperses segments from a city guidebook with episodes in the young woman’s life.

Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty’s protagonist, Zoe, shares some of the author’s own background. Mur, from Durham, NC, is both a podcaster (I Should Be Writing) and award winning and nominated science fiction writer. Zoe has left a great job in a Raleigh, NC, travel publishing company (after a horrendous affair with her boss) and is trying to re-establish herself in NYC. When Zoe sees a description of an editorial position that seems tailor-made for her, she wonders why the people involved with the company encourage her not to apply. Stubbornly, she submits a proposal and is given the opportunity, which means she’ll be writing a guidebook to New York aimed at “coterie,” or vampires, zombies, dragons, sprites, fairies, death goddesses, succubi and incubi, and similar creatures. The primary reason Zoe has been warned against applying for the position is that the office is staffed with vampires, zombies, and an incubus, who consider her food. Also, the new CR (Coterie Resources) employee is a “construct” (golem or created monster, like the one in Frankenstein) who has the head of one of Zoe’s ex-boyfriends.

Zoe’s story begins as adventure, very much like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole, but it quickly becomes a thriller where Zoe, with her blunt approach to all things coterie, has to save the city itself from a rogue “zoetist” (a person who gives life to inanimate objects, like Dr. Frankenstein). In explaining zoetists and their constructs, Mur brings many different folklore traditions to the narrative, meshing them together in a manner that is both believable and informative.

At first, I wondered if the excerpts from the guidebook would be distracting from Zoe’s story. Instead, I found they enhanced and broadened it, introducing background in a manner that did not intrude upon and sometimes foreshadowed the action. Reading the Amazon reader comments, I noticed one person expressed a desire for the entire guidebook. Another commenter suggested that Mur’s book was about tolerance. I agree. The characters in the book all had many fundamental differences, but found ways to work together for the greater good.

I have to admit I've ordered the second book in the series, Ghost Train to New Orleans (2014), maybe as much from hearing about Shari Randall’s journey there as well as anticipating what Zoe and her staff will encounter as they write a supernatural tour guide for the Big Easy. The vicarious travel to both the cities and the paranormal world makes for some delightful vacation reading.

What fictional trips have you taken lately?

WRITING THE MYSTERY SHORT STORY: TONI KELNER’S ANSWERS TO OUR SURVEY

In preparing this series, I solicited answers to ten survey questions from members of the Writers Who Kill blog and authors who are well-known for their wonderful mystery short stories. These authors have been so generous, detailed, and insightful in sharing their views and providing excellent information that I wanted the WWK readers to have the full benefit of their replies.

Today, Toni Kelner (also known as Leigh Perry) offers her perspective.

Previously, Toni has been with us on WWK in an interview about her new novel, written as Leigh Perry, A Skeleton in the Family, and also with her own blog message about her new endeavors. Her Leigh Perry website is: http://leighperryauthor.com/

As an author of short stories, Toni has been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Macavity awards, and has won the Agatha award for “Sleeping With the Plush” published in May 2006 in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Charlaine Harris is her co-editor on five anthologies, featuring both the mysterious and paranormal. They have a sixth anthology due out next year.

In addition to her short story anthologies, Toni L.P. Kelner has written the Laura Fleming mysteries and “Where are they now?” novels. She has been nominated for RT BookClub awards and received an RT BookClub Career Achievement Award. Toni has a B.A. in English. Her website is http://www.tonilpkelner.com/

Toni, thank you for being with us and taking the time to answer the survey questions.

How has being part of a short story writing community influenced your writing?

If you mean the Short Mystery Fiction Society, I don't think it's affected my writing per se, but it sure has made me aware of the challenges facing short story writers.

It's funny, back when I first started writing, all the writing books I read said to start with short stories to build a reputation, then move on to novels. (Advice that did not work for me, by the way.) Now I think it's easier to sell short stories when you've published a novel first! 

What is your thought process when you submit or select stories for a themed anthology?

When writing for a themed anthology, I always try to do something that nobody else would. So when I was trying to sell to Midnight Louie's Pet Detectives, edited by Carole Nelson Douglas, I wrote an elephant story. When I was writing a story for Jeffrey Marks's Criminal Appetites, which required a recipe, I wrote about marijuana brownies. And when I was trying to write for an MWA courtroom drama anthology, I tried two stories: a trial aboard a pirate ship and a mock trial at a high school. (For what it's worth, I sold the stories to Carole and Jeff, but didn't make it into the MWA anthology, though I sold those stories elsewhere.)

As for selecting, the anthologies I've co-edited with Charlaine Harris have all been invitation only. So we're selecting writers we know can write good stories. We aren't terribly systematic in how we put together a list of people to invite. We just invite people whose work we like and who we think we can work with. Our contract does say that we need a certain number of big-name authors per book, but otherwise, it's our choice. We pull from mystery, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, even comics. Charlaine is extremely well-read in all those genres, and that really helps.

When do you know an idea is suited for a short story instead of a longer work?

It's a matter of scope: an instant in a person's life, not a year; one locked room, not a town; a few characters, not an extended family; a gimmick that makes a great "gotcha" moment for a story, which wouldn't carry a whole novel. And often, I get an idea that could be a novel and melt it down to the best part to make a short story. Plus if it's a historical or anything that would require tons of research, I'll do it as short fiction so I don't have to do that much work. I'm kind of lazy.

Have you written “flash fiction”? What do you think of flash fiction as a literary form?

If you'd asked me a month ago, I'd have said no, but I saw that a publisher I admire was looking for flash fiction. So I got an idea one night and wrote one. Then I checked with the publisher and found out one discouraging fact and one deal-breaker. It was to be online only, which I didn't love but would have accepted, and they weren't paying, which was the deal-breaker. I still have the story, and a market in mind, but I need to read it over a couple of more times to polish it.

How many characters can be in a short story?

For fully realized characters? Maybe three or four. You can mention a lot more, of course, but they're going to be background characters.

How long have you been writing short stories?

Since high school. I have this gimmicky short story I wrote and submitted to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine back when George Scithers was the editor. It came back with my very first rejection slip, but it was a good one--he really encouraged me. And yes, I still have that slip somewhere around here.

What is good/bad about the current short story market?

The good part is that with electronic publishing, there are some interesting markets out there. Also short stories, though not the entree into the field my old writing books promised, are excellent for promotion. I've had stories reviewed by readers who add, "I can't wait to check out her books," and I was approached by an Italian publisher purely because of a short story in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. (In fact, it was one of the ones rejected for the MWA anthology I mentioned in Question #2.)

The bad are (1) readers who flat out refuse to read a short story because it's short, (2) so many markets that expect me to write for free, (3) so few markets that pay decently.

Should an unpublished author self-publish short stories?

I wouldn't. 

The reason I write short stories is:

They are so much FUN! I can try things I'd never try in a novel. Pirates, elephants, noir, PI, male POV, carney lingo... I can run wild.

The most important aspect of writing a mystery short story is:

The ending. Please, give your story one. I read short stories for a contest a few years back, and despaired at how many stories just stopped or dwindled. Something has to happen. In best cases, the main character affects change or changes himself or herself, but I'll settle for a bad joke if I have to. I need a payoff, darn it!  

Again, thanks for joining us and providing us with such terrific insight, Toni. Best wishes for your continuing success.

An Interview with Toni (Leigh Perry) Kelner

Toni L.P. Kelner is a delightful woman; nurturing wife, mother, and family member; shrewd editor; and savvy writer. Her own background as a displaced Southerner with an academic spouse living near Boston made her a natural for penning the eight Laura Fleming mysteries, about a North Carolina-born computer programer who lives in Boston with her Shakespearian professor husband. Toni says, “My husband was in academia when I started the series, but he left that world long, long ago. For which our bank account is very grateful.” Toni also was a natural for writing the "Where are they now?" books because she’s a popular culture addict. Toni’s novels have been nominated for RT BookClub awards, and she has received an RT BookClub Career Achievement Award.

As an author of short stories, Toni has been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Macavity awards, and has won the Agatha award for “Sleeping With the Plush” published in May 2006 in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Charlaine Harris is her co-editor on five anthologies, featuring both the mysterious and paranormal. They have a sixth anthology due out next year.
In the midst of all her myriad activities, Toni has taken on a new challenge, and a new nom de plume. Welcome, Toni. Thanks for visiting with Writers Who Kill.

Now, who is Leigh Perry, and what has she done with Toni Kelner?

When I started a new mystery series, Ginjer Buchanan, my editor at Berkley Prime Crime, delicately broached the subject of a pen name since the new stuff isn't much like my Laura Fleming or "Where are they now?" books. Well, they're all traditional mysteries, but there's a paranormal element in the Family Skeleton series that wasn't in those other books. Anyway, I think Ginjer thought I'd hate the idea, but it didn't bother me. If it'll help the sales for it to be a "new" author, that's fine. And my dual identity isn't exactly a big secret.

As far as the name itself, we tried a few variations, but this one is my middle name and my maiden name. In other words, now you know what the L.P. of Toni L.P. Kelner stands for.

Your new series, beginning with A Skeleton in the Family, to be released in September, has a number of unique characters. Its protagonist, Georgia Thackery, is an adjunct instructor who has traveled from one college to the next to maintain employment, before landing her latest position in the town where she spent her childhood and where her parents are tenured professors. How would you characterize Georgia’s approach to life and her life experiences?

 
Georgia, bless her heart, has always had to scrape by. She's a single mother, and had her daughter Madison before finishing her doctorate. Her intention had always been to work in academia, but having a new baby made it harder for her to find a tenure track job, so she took adjunct faculty positions instead. Later, when she was ready to try for something more permanent, she'd been typecast as adjunct and she's been stuck there ever since.

She's not bitter about it though. She wanted Madison more than she wanted tenure. She enjoys teaching, too, but she's still hoping she might get tenure some day. She'd like the bigger paycheck, but mostly she wants to make sure Madison gets the home she deserves.

Georgia’s unique companion is a skeleton named Sid who was found in a carnival, and followed the family home. Most people would think of a skeleton as having a left-over personhood, but that’s not the case with Sid. Tell us about Sid. How did he come to be, and how did you determine his “creature” characteristics (including his sense of humor)?

Sid remembers nothing about his former life before "waking" as a skeleton. Georgia really has no idea why he's alive and kicking, and since he's been part of her family for so long, she doesn't worry about his existence, any more than I wondered why I had two great-aunts who were no relation to me. (They later decided they weren't my aunts after all, but that's another story.) Anyway, Sid is Sid. He's been Georgia's best friend since she was a little girl.

Georgia's parents did speculate when Sid first showed up, and their best guesses were that he's a ghost haunting his own skeleton or a very skinny zombie. Or perhaps he was bitten by a radioactive spider skeleton. Wait, do spiders have skeletons?

As for his being humerus... I mean humorous, that was part of him from the day he appeared in my brain as a character. Skeletons smile all the time because of that whole no lips issue, so why wouldn't he make jokes?

A Skeleton in the Family is a novel that is very much about coping with family issues in a modern world. It spans generations and disciplines. How did you learn what you needed to know about such diverse subjects as anime, forensics,  detection, and adjunct faculty members?

I steal from other people.

My daughters are anime and manga fans, and we've attended a huge convention called Anime Boston for the past few years. I'm not overly conversant with the field, but the girls are, and it was Maggie who suggested using Lord Shinigami from Soul Eater for Sid's cosplay. 

Forensics is something I've picked up over twenty years plus of writing mysteries, and some people I've met via Facebook and web hunting. I doubt I'd be able to do the research I need without the web. Also, Dana Cameron helped me with some of the background about how bones are treated and handled in academic settings -- she's a recovering archeologist herself.

As for adjunct faculty, a friend of mine was a perennially untenured psychology professor for years. She'd get a job, teach a slew of intro courses, but after a certain point the colleges would say, "Hey, we can't keep you unless we give you tenure and we can't afford to do that, so...bye!" (I'm happy to report she did eventually get tenure.) I thought it would be a good background because I could keep Georgia in place for a book or two, and then change settings. I've been in touch with a few other adjuncts and I'm trying to show that it's really a tough life -- low pay, skimpy benefits, and very little chance of making tenure. I was worried I'd get it wrong, but was reassured when I found out my copy editor's wife is an adjunct. He corrected a few minor points for me, but overall, said I did them justice.

When we were at the Malice Domestic convention, you told me an interesting progression of how Georgia’s dog kept “evolving” from one type to another. Could you tell our readers a little about that process?

Poor Byron. Early on, my editor Ginjer suggested I put a dog into the books for humor value. Dog, bones... I do love dogs, though I haven't had one for years, so I liked the idea. My first thought was to have a poodle because I grew up with a house full of poodles, but Laurien Berenson does an excellent poodle series. Besides, I couldn't see Georgia and Madison with a poodle. So I decided on a Keeshond, because a friend of mine had an adorable Keeshond named Byron who had passed away. I thought it would be an homage to a sweet dog. Ginjer was fine with that, and the cover people at Berkley Prime Crime made up several versions of the cover with a Keeshond -- Prime Crime readers seem to like dogs and cats on their covers. But they couldn't get a Keeshond that looked cute enough. So Ginjer and I went back and forth on other breeds, and we finally settled on a Shiba Inu. They're cute and kind of trendy, and the personality seemed right for Georgia and Madison. But when I got the cover, It was an Akita. Apparently the Shiba was too small to look right on the cover. So Byron is an Akita now.

I know this sounds insane, but honestly, I'm okay with it The breed of the dog didn't make a huge difference in the story, and if the people at Berkley think a cuter, bigger dog will make a better illustration, I'm happy to trust them. People really do judge a book by its cover, and having a skeleton on mine might scare people off. That cute Akita will lure them right in.

You have excelled in writing both short stories and novels. How do you approach writing each discipline?

Thank you, but please, never use the D word. I'm not a disciplined writer at all. I procrastinate, I miss deadlines, I'm awful.

That being said, I'm pickier with novels. You see my novels have been series, so I need a protagonist I can live with for a long time. (At least, I hope it's a long time.) That means I have to like her, but there still has to be room for character growth and change. Plus I need a milieu in which I'll be happy: lots of characters to play with, different settings I can use, stuff thrown in to use later. I want growing room, and that's tough to set up.

On the other hand, I'm more experimental with short fiction. I'll write about anybody: obnoxious, snarky, male, alien, vampire, werewolf, witch, zombie raiser. I'll try settings like carnivals or circuses. I'll go noir, or historical, or erotic. I'll try just about anything in a short story.

Do you have a writing routine or schedule?

Um. Not a good one. I gravitate toward writing into the wee hours, which is a terrible way to work. 

Oh, if I lived alone it would be fine. Work late, sleep late, repeat as necessary. But I've got a husband with a real job, and we have to coordinate schedules. Plus I've got two daughters to get to school, drama class, art club, summer camp, and back again. So I end up with short nights and daily naps to try to get the right amount of sleep. 

Your writing has spanned genres. What advice do you give to people who want to write mysteries and does it differ from advice you offer to authors of paranormal stories?

Actually, both my mysteries and my paranormal stuff rely heavily on the same kind of world-building. I always start with the real world. Admittedly, I might be writing about worlds less familiar to people: Southern mill towns, entertainment reporting, adjunct faculty life, carnivals, juke joints. Or I might add paranormal stuff -- vampires and werewolves exist, or people can raise the dead, or witches have specific powers, or there's a skeleton walking around. No matter what, the setting includes something that's going to be unfamiliar to most readers. So my advice is to sneak the needed exposition in as you go, with dialog or very short explanations. Don't stop the story for big expository lumps.

The one piece of advice I would particularly impress upon paranormal writers is to be consistent. If your witch can't cast spells during the full moon in one book, don't have her doing it in the next. Readers want to accept the world you're creating -- make it easy for them!

What’s the subject of the new anthology that you’re editing with Charlaine Harris? How do you select your anthology topics and what is your process in soliciting and selecting stories?

Up next is sports and games! The title is Games Creatures Play, and it'll be out in April 2014. We've got a great team, too: Jan Burke, Dana Cameron, Adam-Troy Castro, Brendan DuBois, Caitlin Kittredge, William Kent Krueger, Ellen Kushner, Mercedes Lackey, Joe R. Lansdale, Laura Lippman, Seanan McGuire, and Brandon Sanderson. And Charlaine and I both have stories in the book too.
When we start an anthology project, we brainstorm a bunch of ideas, and narrow it down to two to four we really like. We run these past our agent, Joshua Bilmes, and he may make suggestions or may just pass them all on to Ginjer. (She edits my novels and the anthologies.) The idea that makes Ginjer snicker is the one we go with. 

Once we've got the theme and a working title, we make up a list of the people we want to invite, pulling from mystery, science fiction, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and thriller writers. We want people we know will write good stories and who we can work with. Often this is somebody we know, but sometimes it's somebody we've never met but whose work we like. On a practical level, we try for several bestselling authors per book. I know that sounds mercenary, but anthologies can be a tough sell, and it's easier if you have recognizable names on the cover. 

Once Ginjer approves the list, we start sending notes to those people. If we get any turn-downs, we come up with more names until we get the whole book filled up. Soliciting and selecting stories is pretty much the same process. We very rarely reject a story we have solicited.
I never expected to be an anthologist, and I had no idea how much fun it would be. Charlaine and I have been honored by the people who have trusted us with their stories.

How do you enjoy attending conferences for different genres and what is some of the best information that you’ve learned at a conference?

I have been to a wide variety of conferences -- conventions for romance, science fiction and fantasy, anime, comic books, even one for circus fans -- and enjoy all of them, but I feel most at home at mystery conventions. Funny how a group so devoted to murder can be so friendly.

One of the best pieces of advice I got was at the science fiction convention Readercon. My husband and I were talking to the writer Barry Longyear and his wife Regina, and though I was unpublished, they both knew I was writing. Regina asked what I was working on, and I told her and followed it with the admission that I really should have been working instead of attending a convention. And Barry said, "Don't shit on yourself!" In other words, he explained, don't attach guilt and negative feelings to the writing. You don't have to slave away every second of every day to be a successful writer. You have to have a life.

But honestly, though various bits of information have been invaluable, it's the networking that has really made conventions continue to be worthwhile. I met my co-editor Charlaine at a Bouchercon in Seattle, never guessing that we'd be working together someday. I also met my agent and my editor at conventions, and plenty of booksellers and librarians and forensic experts and other writers and just fascinating people. I don't go in with the idea of  meeting somebody useful -- I just want to meet other fans. It's always great fun.

E.B. Davis always likes to ask our guests if they prefer the mountains or the beach. Do you have a preference?

Beach! Without hesitation. I was born in northern Florida, and lived in Gulf Breeze, where I could get to beaches in every direction. Nothing soothes me like listening to waves at the beach.

Toni, thank you so much for being with us. Best wishes to you, Leigh Perry, and Sid!