Channeling imaginary people

By Gayle Carline

Holy Carp, I've got a blog post to write!

Okay that's what this feels like. I meant to write my post early Wednesday afternoon, then became absorbed in editing the latest manuscript. Amazingly, after having it edited it myself, then paying a professional, then having beta readers, I downloaded it onto my Kindle and guess what? I'm finding more stuff to change. Stuff like, did I really use good twice in the same sentence?

Yeah. Like that.

So later in the evening, I was sitting at the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney with the hubster, eating a turker burger and watching the Lakers lose, when I said, "Holy carp! I forgot my CFC post!"

Good thing I knew what I was going to write about, especially since I'd already had two glasses of wine. (BTW, how's my spelling look?)

For me, a good story is about its characters. If I can't get into a character, can't live vicariously through them, can't at least step into their shoes for a while, then the plot has to be so incredibly clever or the writing so intensely magnificent, or...

No, forget it. I gotta have real people.

This means I need to know my characters in order to weave my mysteries around them. Michele Scott, author extraordinaire, taught me some tricks to getting acquainted with my real-yet-imaginary people. The big one, for me, has been journaling. By giving each of them a "diary entry" or two, I find out where they were born, how they were raised, and how they've each gotten to this place in their lives. I don't always reveal all this information in the story. But this is how I know each person's boundaries, what they are and are not capable of doing, and why.

I thought I'd share one of my character's journals. My new protagonist, Willie (Wilhemina) Adams is a short, curvaceous brunette in her late 30s. She is a Libra. When I sat down and imagined her, here's what she told me:
 
I thought I'd have the normal life. Married with children. A job, maybe a career. They say we plan and God laughs.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. We were very middle class average people. Dad was Irish, Mom was German. I could have been a tall, fetching redhead. Instead I got the wrong side of both tracks. Dad's shortness, mom's curves, dad's freckles, mom's dark hair. We did normal family stuff. Went to church on Sundays after bbq'ing with friends on Saturday nights.

Maybe it started to go awry when I went to college. I was the baby although not by much. I have a sister one year older and a brother 3 years older. We didn't give Mom much time to do anything but raise us.

When I moved into the dorms at U of Illinois and began taking classes for a teaching career, I started to see how my mom sacrificed for us and how I didn't want to spend my life taking care of kids.

I changed my major after a trip to the counseling office, to engineering. Mom thought I was pissing away money on a degree I'd toss once I got married. Dad didn't say anything, but kept paying the tuition. I got my BS in CS and was recruited to work at a big aerospace company on the west coast. I had just moved into my new apartment when Trina, my sis, called.

Dad had a heart attack and died. Trina and my brother Stefan still lived in Chicago, but somehow Mom thought I should be the one to move home with her. I wasn’t married, didn’t have a family, etc. I gave up the new job and apartment and moved back. It’s what dutiful children do, right?

The first year was rough. We were both grieving our loss, and acting out as people do, by being alternately angry and clingy with each other. It slowly started to get better. We each found our own niche in the household and worked together instead of battling over territories. One year after Dad was gone, the light switched back on in Mom’s spirit.

Actually, it was less of a light and more of a disco ball. It seems Mom woke up one morning and realized all she had sacrificed as a wife and mother, and set out to reclaim her freedom. Suddenly she was never home. She found a group of single women her age and they were always out to have as much frivolous fun as possible. There was a lot of shopping, a lot of drinking and dancing, and a lot of money running out of the house.

I had gotten a job at a bookstore back home, the only thing I could find that at least kept my mind active. There were no engineering jobs in the Chicago vicinity for me. But I had money coming in. Dad had left Mom comfortable, had she continued with the lifestyle they once shared. I could see this new way of living was going to drain every bit of money he had left her. She was in her fifties and in fine health. She’d also never worked outside the home.

I tried not to butt in, but finally I had to speak up. I had seen her latest bank statement and it was a train wreck. I sat her down and showed her the statement and pointed out the increase in her expenses. I even extrapolated a few numbers, to show her how soon her money would run out if she kept spending this way. The house was paid for, but she still had taxes and insurance and utilities. She could sell the house and get some money from that, but it would not solve the problem of her out of control spending.

She said the most amazing thing to me: “We’ll pay the household expenses out of your pay. You may have to get another job to support us both.”

I met Trina and Stefan for lunch that day, and explained the entire situation to them. Then I packed my bags and bought a one-way fare to southern California. There was only so much duty a dutiful daughter would perform. Enabling my mom’s second childhood was not on the menu.

Mom stopped speaking to me. I heard via my sibs that she refused to cut back or slow down, despite their protests. Stefan even explored legal action, but when a person is sane there’s not much you can do. You can’t fix stupid.

I quickly found a job at a video game company. It’d be fun to say I write all these great games, but they wanted my services in the administrative end, so I work on their employee database, payroll software, game catalogs, processes, etc.

That’s where I met Tom Adams. He was exactly the kind of guy I was attracted to — not too tall, the kind of strikingly awkward looks that made him adorable, and a sense of humor. We hit it off like peas in a pod. Although we both knew from the start that we were completely compatible, we took our time with courtship. Neither of us was in a hurry to run off and marry. I enjoyed being in the relationship, and so did he. After a year, we moved in together.

Two years later, we married. It wasn’t a huge affair, but my sibs came out to celebrate with us. Mom returned the invitation. “Recipient Unknown.”

Life was so much fun. We went to concerts and plays, saw the latest movies, had friends over for dinner, did the big fat social scene. Tom wanted kids, and so did I, but we weren’t in a hurry. We had plenty of time.

Then one day Tom woke with a stomach pain that kept hurting the next day and the next. After a week, he went to the doctor. There were tests and tests and more tests, and painkillers because the pain was increasing. I drove him everywhere. He used up a lot of his sick days. It took two weeks to diagnose him. Pancreatic cancer.

Two months later he was dead.

Trina and Stefan were out in sunny SoCal again, except it wasn’t so sunny anymore. They helped me with everything, along with my friends. Quite frankly, it was all a blur. I thought I knew what grief felt like, after Dad died. I had no idea what it was like to lose someone who was beyond family, more than close, intimate in ways that you don’t discuss in polite society. When my eyes weren’t weeping, my soul was.

Mom was still a no-show, which was doubly painful. I thought that, being a sudden widow herself, she might have reached out to me. Stefan reported that she had finally opened her bank statement one day and realized she had a thousand dollars left. Dad had left her $250,000 and she had one thousand left. She called my brother in a panic. Taxes were due, what was she to do?

He got out the newspaper and turned to the Help Wanted section. Then he got out his checkbook. “This is the only money I’m going to give you. Your children tried to warn you and you wouldn’t listen. We are not going to pay for your mistakes. You will have to get a job now and re-learn how to live on a budget.”

She’s not speaking to him now, either. Oh, she cashed the check, but she’s not speaking.

Eventually, he and Trina had to go back to Chicago, and I had to re-learn how to live as a single gal. My friends helped me a little, for awhile. I tried not to burden them with my recovery, and they tried to include me in everything they were doing. The problem was that they were couples and I was not. After a few months, I started to feel the awkwardness instead of the comfort. It was not their fault. They were always inviting, warm, friendly. Maybe they just made me miss Tom too much.

I took the advice of every columnist on the planet. I got a dog for company, a schnauzer I named Hansel. He kept me from spending my days in bed. I signed up for classes, did volunteer work, tried new things to keep busy. Most of it didn’t fit, until I tried horse riding lessons.

I had wanted to ride as a child, but Mom always said no.“Too expensive. We can’t afford things like that.” Maybe that was in the back of my mind when I called the local stables looking for lessons. Ha ha, Mom.

I’ve tried skiing, scuba diving, and all kinds of sports. None of them seemed a good fit for me. Being short and curvy does not translate to athletic grace. But from the first time I gave the lesson horse a deep massage with the curry and saw him stretch his neck out in pleasure, to the satisfaction of controlling his movements through my own riding, I knew this was it. There was no other activity I had experienced where I loved the prep work as much as the action.

Soon I was riding my trainer’s horse and competing in horse shows in the area. It’s becoming a consuming passion with me. Now I’m looking to buy a horse. It’s been two years since Tom’s death, and I finally feel like the fog is lifting.

As a writer, I sit back at these words and wonder where this came from.

Writers, how many times does this happen to you - that you realize you've created a character that almost seems more real than you are? And readers, how deep, how fleshed out, how three-dimensional do you need your characters to be?

Book Review: The Grey Tier

I know I'm supposed to be posting about how I write my mysteries, but sometimes I get tired of hearing about me and want to talk about something else. Marlyn gets all the fun of reviewing books, so I thought I'd take a day off from my stuff and tell you about a mystery I just read.

The Grey Tier (A Dead Celeb Mystery) is Michele Scott's millionth book (okay, I might be exaggerating, but the woman is prolific), and I loved it. Devoured it, actually, in a couple of sittings, although I admit I'm a fast reader.

The story is a typical whodunit but the circumstances and characters are unique, as well as the paranormal world Michele has created. You can tell that she had fun putting this together, figuring out where we go when we die (according to the story) and making the rules that govern the otherworld.

She also had a lot of fun with the characters. It usually takes a while for me to warm up to the main character, but I liked Evie Preston almost from the start. I'll talk about her later, though. It's the supporting cast I loved from the get-go. From Evie's mentor, Betty LaRue, to the mysterious Mumbles, these were all real people with real hopes and problems… even the dead people.

There are several dead folks wandering about, some good and some evil, some famous and some not. Michele made them all interesting, mostly by making their appearances "full-fleshed" as opposed to vapory apparitions. Of course, only Evie can see them, even if they do seem real to her, in all of her senses. There's always a sense of humor in the scenes where she walks into her (haunted) house and smells marijuana because Bob Marley has come to pay a visit.

As far as the secondary characters, I was particularly surprised by Evie's boss, a pop-star named Simone. She begins the book as a typical diva - demanding attention, tossing a fit if she's unhappy, and behaving badly in general. Over the course of the story, she shows actual growth. Not in a huge, Ebeneezer-on-Christmas-morning way, but in a realistic way that made me think she might become human some day.

Now, back to Evie - main characters can make or break a book. I might find a plot or cast of characters engaging and fun, but I've got to not only like the protagonist, but believe in them. Evie struck the right balance with me of young but not stupid-young. She has the qualities that you like to see in a friend: empathy, respect, resourcefulness. She also has the qualities we need in a sleuth: curiosity, stubbornness, courage.

It's a hard balancing act for a writer. Your sleuth must be likeable, but not a pushover. They must poke their noses into places they have no business, places you and I would not go. But they can't be stupid about it either. Although I am far from Evie in age, it was easy to identify with her, and even do a little vicarious walking in her shoes.

My only problem with this book was there were unanswered questions - questions to obviously be answered in the next book. Michele reports that she's writing as fast as she can.

If you're interested in The Grey Tier, click here to get it.

This is the blurb, in case I didn't convince you to buy it:

What happens when a small town girl moves to Hollywood to pursue her dreams and winds up smack dab in the middle of a murder investigation, haunted by famous dead celebs, and working for the biggest pop star in the music industry?

Introducing Evie Preston: Small-town girl and under-the-radar healer, currently trapped in a po-dunk Texas town but yearning for something more. When fate gives her the opportunity to move to Hollywood to follow her dreams, Evie finds herself navigating through the land of glitz and glamour, and the realm of (dead) celebrities…

Raised in Brady, Texas by her minister father and her beauty shop-owner mother, Evie has been trying to get out of town for years. When an old family friend gives her an unexpected gift on her birthday, Evie finally gets the chance to start fresh out west. Against her father’s wishes, she packs up her guitar, her dog, Mama Cass, and heads for California.
Once in L.A., Evie finds a singing gig at a local dive bar where she meets a slew of interesting characters including the owner himself, a former child star with a hidden past. She also scores a day job doing make-up for a famous and foul-mouthed pop diva. One of the job perks includes house sitting at a Hollywood Hills mansion. But what Evie doesn’t know is the house is also home to some famous celebrity spirits, including that of former Grunge rocker, Lucas Minx.

As if things weren’t complicated enough, Evie finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery and discovers she’s being targeted by some nasty spirits. And to top things off, she’s developed a Texas-sized crush on her hot, but very dead, roommate, Lucas.

Maybe her dad was right and the City of Angels really is the City of Devils—all of them after her.

WARNING: Strong language, sexual content, and mild violence.

Bought it yet? What are you waiting for?

On the Horizon: What We're Excited to Read

As avid readers, we’d thought we’d share some upcoming titles we’re looking forward to.

Marlyn is eager for a little poison:

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (William Morrow, 21 February 2012): This will be Robinson’s first standalone since 1995’s No Cure For Love, although he has published several short-story collections. His plots are complex without being arcane, and his characters are well-depicted.

The publisher’s summary of the novel reads as follows: Through the years of success in Hollywood composing film scores, Chris always promised his wife they'd return to the Yorkshire Dales one day. Now a widower, Chris feels he must not forget his promise. Back in the Dales, he rents an isolated house that will allow him the space to grieve and the peace to compose his piano sonata. But when he finds that the house was the scene of a murder in the 1950s, and the convicted murderer was one of the last women hanged in England, he finds himself increasingly distracted by the events of sixty years before . . .

Poison Flower by Thomas Perry, Jane Whitefield #7 (Grove/Atlantic, 6 March 2012): Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Actually, she’s the non-government version of the Witness Protection Program. Her clients aren’t necessarily witnesses, but they are usually innocent of any crime.

Poison Flower is the first Jane Whitefield book since Runner in 2010, and is summarized here: Jane is spiriting James Shelby, a man unjustly convicted of his wife’s murder, out of the heavily guarded criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles. But within minutes, men posing as police officers kidnap Jane and, when she tries to escape, shoot her. Jane’s captors are employees of the man who really killed Shelby’s wife, who believes he won’t be safe until Shelby is dead, and his men will do anything to force Jane to reveal Shelby’s hiding place. She manages to escape but she is alone, wounded, thousands of miles from home with no money and no identification, hunted by the police as well as her captors.

On a lighter note, Gayle is looking forward to:

Michele Scott's next, as yet untitled book. It's about a young girl who comes to L.A. to break into the music scene. She moves into a house that's littered with the spirits of dead rock stars who all talk to her (yes, I think Elvis shows up). Of course, there's a murder to be solved.

Also, Dancing at the Chance, which is NOT a mystery, but historical romance by DeAnna Cameron. Says Gayle: I don't usually read romance, but I read her book, The Belly Dancer, and loved it. Dancing at the Chance takes place in the vaudeville era, in New York City. DeAnna did such a fine job taking me to turn-of-the-century Chicago with The Belly Dancer (at the World's Fair), I can't wait to go back to old NYC.

And L.J. has plans to read The Litigators, by John Grisham, which just came out. Not only does she enjoy Grisham’s legal thrillers, but this one involves a drug company, another favorite subject of hers, after seven years on a pharmaceutical magazine.

What books are you looking forward to? Share your reading excitement. 

Getting a Grip on My Heroine

by Gayle Carline
My mysteries are character driven, because that's important for me when I'm reading a book, or watching a TV show or movie. I'll forgive a Plain Jane story as long as there's an interesting person taking me along for the ride.  

That being said, I had a hard time developing my main character. I knew I wanted her to be a 50-year old woman who used to be a housecleaner and has recently gotten her private investigator's license. But I needed her to be real in my head so I could make her real to my readers. Who was she?  

I attended a workshop by Michele Scott, who suggested interviewing or journaling your characters in order to understand them. So, I called Peri and set up an appointment. If you're a writer, you understand that.  

(I'm not crazy. I'm not I'm not I'm not.) 

* * * * *

Due to our hectic schedules, Peri and I decided to meet in her office on Sunday morning. She rents a small space on the first floor of the Founders Plaza. It's sparsely furnished and decorated, but the back wall is a floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking the atrium. Peri stands up from behind her desk to greet me. She's about half a foot taller than me, with cornsilk blonde hair, and she's wearing khaki shorts and a Hawaiian shirt over a blue tank top that matches her eyes. She offers her hand to shake and I put a cup of coffee in it. 

Peri: (laughing) How did you know? 

GC: It's seven in the morning. Who doesn't need coffee? 

(We both sit down.) GC: Why don't you tell me a little about yourself? 

Peri: Well, I was born in Spreckles, California, which is next door to Salinas. My parents moved to California from Minnesota when they got married.  

GC: Why? 

Peri: My folks were kind of beatniks, I guess. Early hippies. They had this idea of moving to a farm community to "get back to the land." So we lived in this rented farm house on about ten acres where my dad was always trying to raise things. 

GC: What did he raise? 

Peri: My mom's blood pressure, mostly. You know that joke about the new farmer who can't raise chickens? "Either I'm burying 'em too deep or watering 'em too much." That was Dad. Good thing he figured out he couldn't do it for a living – he got a job as a banker so he could play farmer on the weekends. 

GC: And your mom? 

Peri: She was probably the true hippie. Dyed her own cloth, made clothes and sold them at the farmer's market. Rescued animals, that kind of thing. 

GC: Tell us how you got into housecleaning as a career? 

Peri: Well, it all started because my parents wanted me to go to UC Berkley and I wanted to go to UCLA, which meant I went to UCLA on my own dime. I had some scholarships, but I earned the rest of the way working for a housecleaning company. Once I got my Bachelors in English Lit, I worked for a couple of years writing ad copy, then went back to cleaning. 

GC: I heard there was a pretty interesting story about your transition back to housecleaning. 

Peri: Yeah, well, I was working for a pig of a boss for this ad agency, and I really hated it. The ad men thought grammatical errors and misspelled words are really great gimmicks for selling a product, so I had to write the accompanying copy for some really stupid slogans. One day, Pig Boss came to my desk and threw my latest write-up at me, yelling because I had tried to write something meaningful about some snack food with the slogan, "It Tastes Gooder." (Lowers her voice) "I don't want your damned two-dollar words. Write it like a five-year old with learning disabilities." 

I stood up – I was much taller than him – and said, "You want a five-year old?" I took my cup of orange juice, poured it on his head and told him, "I quit, ya big butthead." Then I stuck my tongue out at him and left. 

GC: So why the career change, to private investigation? 

Peri: I was a successful housecleaner for years. I did private residences, offices, you name it. Didn't make me rich, but I could afford to buy a little house, put food on the table. When I turned 45, I started thinking about how long I'd have to work before I could retire, and I pictured myself at 60, on my knees several times a day, scrubbing bathtubs. I'm in good health, but what if I had back or joint problems? 

My friend, Blanche, always teased me about figuring out everyone's secrets just from emptying their trash. It made me think I could make a living doing something that didn't involve bleach and rubber gloves – as a rule. 

GC: Should we talk about your love life? 

Peri: If we don't who will? (laughs) I've been dating Skip Carlton for, um, about 6 years now. He's a detective for the Placentia Police Department. 

GC: Wow, six years is a long time. 

Peri: I know what you're thinking. It's what everyone else is thinking. Six years and no marriage? Skip wants to, but I don't. I've been married three times, so for me, it's kinda "been there, done that, got the t-shirt."  

GC: So, it doesn't sound like marriage is for you?  

Peri: Not really. My first husband was in the Navy, a nice guy but we were both too young and it was probably more about the physical attraction than anything else. I tried to pick the second husband based more on what we had in common. We both liked Eric Clapton and old movies, but he also liked being a sociopath.  

GC: And the third?

Peri: Brilliant, funny, gorgeous, kind, generous. Unfortunately, a year into the marriage he figured out he's gay.  

GC: Whoa, that would have been nice to know earlier. 

Peri: Ya think? Anyway, I like the way things are now. Skip and I spend a lot of time together, but we both have our own places, so when things get too tense, we can go to our corners and cool off. 

GC: How's Skip taking this change of careers? 

Peri: Ha, speaking of things getting tense. He tries to act nonchalant, but I know it makes him nervous. Now he knows how it feels. 

GC: Now that you've been doing it for awhile, how do you like being a private eye? 

Peri: Sitting in my car with a camera sure beats schlepping garbage, although I wish people would stop beating me up and trying to shoot me. Nobody did that when I scrubbed their grout. 

* * * * *

After I had "interviewed" Peri, I wouldn't say I knew her inside and out, but I had enough of her history to be able to get inside her head and see how she handles situations. Sometimes she still surprises me, though. She acts like she doesn't like walking down dark alleys, but I suspect she enjoys the adrenaline rush.

What about you? As a writer, how do you get to know your characters? As a reader, what bugs you more - cardboard characters or too-simple plots?