Guest Post - Allison Montclair

Please welcome Allison Montclair to M&MM.  She grew up devouring hand-me-down Agatha Christie paperbacks and James Bond movies. As a result of this deplorable upbringing, she became addicted to tales of crime, intrigue, and espionage. She now spends her spare time poking through the corners, nooks, and crannies of history, searching for the odd mysterious bits and transforming them into novels of her own.

The Marriage Bureau Idea
For the past two and a half years, I have been living in 1946. I am the author of The Right Sort of Man, the first of a new mystery series set in post-war London, featuring Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, the proprietors of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau.

This came about when Keith Kahla, my editor at St. Martin’s Minotaur, alerted me to the existence of a real-life marriage bureau that was set up and run by women beginning in 1939. The idea of a marriage bureau was a novelty, and a business founded by women was even more so. It was not a time and place with which I was overly familiar, but I am someone who likes diving headlong into eras in search of the odd and the obscure, so the prospect of tackling this was intriguing.

I knew immediately that I wanted to shift the time to the period after the war. I didn’t want to have a war-time setting, with our intrepid heroines sneaking around after curfew, tiptoeing through the Blitz and so forth. The post-war period was a fascinating time, particularly for women in England. Many had taken over for the men in a variety of settings, and while some would cede their new lives to the lads returning from demobilization, enough did not or resented the prospect so as to mark another step in the long march to women’s equality. There was also a shift in the political climate of the country, which brought in Clement Atlee and a Labour Party government, and of European politics in general with the Cold War picking up where the shooting war had left off.

I wanted both of my ladies to have come through the war damaged. Not much is written about the aftermath on the women of WWII. Many British women died for their country, and many more lost loved ones. I wanted Iris and Gwen to find each other as friends, and for their fledgling business to be a source of strength and healing. And when it is threatened by the murder of one of their clients, allegedly by the man they had set her up with, for them to draw on hitherto unsuspected resources in finding the truth.

The research has been great fun. Rationing, a fact of life back then, played a major role in this first book, and the myriad ways it affected daily life were fascinating. I have also enjoyed learning about the fashions of the period, and how designers worked within the limitations placed on the amount and types of fabric used, the ornamentations, and so forth. I also learned that no man knows the meaning of the word “peplum,” but all women do!

The second book is written and turned in. The writing of the third has commenced, and I have been signed for a fourth. I look forward to see what happens to Iris and Gwen next.

And I look forward to 1947!
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THANK You Allison.  I will have a review coming shortly to this unique new mystery series, so stay tuned.

Author Guest Post - Julia Buckley

Julia Buckley is a Chicago mystery author. She writes the Writer's Apprentice Series and the Undercover Dish mysteries, and is soon to launch a new series with Berkley Prime Crime. A DARK AND STORMY MURDER was recently named "a noteworthy traditional mystery" by WRITER'S DIGEST, and her novels THE BIG CHILI and CHEDDAR OFF DEAD have both been translated into Japanese.   She lives near Chicago with her husband,  four cats, and a mischievous Labrador named Digby. She has two grown sons. She is a lifelong reader and a writer since around age six, when she started a notebook of poems.  Please welcome her to the M&MM.

The Story of Wally
We’ve all visited those lovely little resort towns that sit on lakes or rivers and make wonderful escapes when we’ve had too much of urban life. In my Writer’s Apprentice novels, Blue Lake is just such a town, and like any real vacation escape, its streets are lined with storefronts. Every one of these doors leads to new stories, fascinating lore, interesting people.

One of the first places Lena London discovered when she came to town in Book One (A Dark and Stormy Murder) was a hardware store called Bick’s. In the slightly musty lobby of this eccentric and whimsical place stands a giant Grizzly bear who holds a sign that says “Bick’s is Best.” For a year, Lena walks in and out of Bick’s to pursue various purchases or to mail letters in the ancient post office at the back of the store, but only in Book Four (Death Waits in the Dark), does Lena learn the story of the Grizzly. His name was Wally.

Wally, in life, had been a fixture at the Riverton Zoo, a couple hours from Blue Lake. Beloved by all of Riverton and by zoo visitors from far and wide, Wally enjoyed a long life and formed a loving bond with his caretaker. When the bear died of old age, his keeper asked to have Wally preserved in the hopes of keeping some part of his majestic bear alive for posterity. The man received permission and Wally became a work of taxidermy, similar to the fellow pictured here (from Wikimedia Commons). Through a series of events that are made clear in the book, Wally makes his way to Mr. Bick, and for years he has stood guard in the lobby of Bick’s Hardware. Lena learns this information and feels neglectful—she has passed Wally so many times, but she had never learned his story.

With each door she enters in Blue Lake, Lena learns more about the people—and the animals—who populate her town.

In the latest installment, she also learns a great deal about the past. Her employer, the suspense novelist Camilla Graham, is confronted by a woman who threatens to reveal “Graham family secrets” if Camilla does not come clean. Unfortunately, Camilla has no idea what the woman means, and everyone in the Graham family is dead. She and Lena must come together to find out secrets from the past before someone sullies the family name of Camilla’s dear deceased husband, James.

As they search, they find dark secrets—and death.

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THANK You Ms. Buckley for joining us.  This is her second guest post with us, check out her prior post about Mary Stewart (click here).
Here is a short interview with Ms. Buckley:  https://youtu.be/blp2GSCGHV0

Part 2 of the interview
https://youtu.be/RE_dVxDfaI8

Part 3 of the interview
https://youtu.be/d3WzMaudX4s

Author Guest Post - Laura Childs

Welcome Ms. Laura Childs to our blog today.  Laura Childs is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Tea Shop Mysteries, Scrapbooking Mysteries, and Cackleberry Club Mysteries. Pekoe Most Poison is her just-released Tea Shop Mystery. 

In Laura’s previous life she was CEO of her own marketing firm, authored several screenplays, and produced a reality TV show. She is married to Dr. Bob, a professor of Chinese art history, enjoys travel, and has two Chinese Shar-Pei dogs.

Watch Out, I’m Watching You!

That’s right, I’m the little blond lady who’s scrunched in the corner of the coffee shop. I’m watching you carefully and jotting notes. I see what you’re wearing – I like that paisley scarf, by the way – and I’m scrutinizing the way you sip your coffee and nibble your scone.

No, I don’t work for the CIA, FBI, or IRS. I’m an author who writes three different mystery series and I get ideas for my characters by watching all the fascinating real-life characters around me. From the folks who cross my path at the driver’s license bureau to the ones who are picking through bins of organic oranges at the grocery store or kicking tires at the local garage.

You all fascinate me and give me such wonderful ideas because you’re all real, highly individual, and (this is a good thing) a little bit quirky. You see, creating literary characters is a tricky thing for an author. You want them to be loved, reviled, understood, amusing, or even feared. But characters also need to be larger than life. They need to transcend the pages, worm their way into your hearts and memories, and stick like a proverbial burr. That way you’ll look forward to reading my next book.

The interesting thing is that we all tend to respond well to characters who are a little bit like us – that are relatable. We want a book that tells a rollicking new story, but we also want that story to reflect some of who we are and what we’ve experienced in life.

In a mystery, questions drive the plot and narrative. In Pekoe Most Poison the reader will want to know – who are these crazy waiters and why are they wearing rat heads? Who put deadly poison in the tea? Who stashed a box of X-Terminate Rat Poison in the kitchen cupboard? The same elements that draw us into a story are the same things that propel characters and story lines. Most important of all, we

are as anxious to solve the murder mystery as Theodosia, the main character in Pekoe Most Poison.

So next time someone watches you surreptitiously, please don’t worry. You might end up the perfect character in someone’s best-selling novel!

All my very best,

Laura Childs

Find out more at www.laurachilds.com

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Thank you Ms. Childs for that post.