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Years ago, my then agent suggested I try writing a new protagonist. My best friend at the time was interning as a film editor. I'd visit her and I was struck by the gentle, shy film editors I met, all women. They were far from the perceived glitz of Hollywood. I liked the idea of a reserved, rather shy person finding herself in problematic situations. A film editor protagonist. Perfect for a mystery. Now my Margot needed someone who would pull her into the glare of reality and day-to-day life. Enter Max, a talented, energetic director, also her lover and they do get along beautifully! Since that time ten years ago, I've been lucky and found three different independent publishers who have taken on the series. (The publishing business is not for the faint of heart and it has a cruel attrition rate.) My stories are heavy on background and characterization. I admire the British tradition that claims background as yet another character. And the backgrounds of my stories can be logically set anywhere in the world due to the nature of the film industry. Margot and Max have been to Guatemala, to a vacation-from-hell in the wine country, to Panama on location, and to Cambridge, England, not to mention frequenting intriguing locations in their own Los Angeles. I especially want my characters to come across as believable. Even the bad ones. I generally find those spooky prototypes in the problematic personalities we all have come across, at one time or another. The people we meet that we instinctively know we wont be inviting over for dinner! I think my books feel real because we think the events actually could happen. And, perhaps they have! So what's to become of Margot & Max? At this point they're living together in a house they've purchased above Silverlake reservoir in Los Angeles and still working at what they love, making movies. And my favorite story? Each one is different, both in setting and introducing new characters, and they were, each, a joy to write. What does the future hold for my intrepid duo? I hope you'll want to keep reading and find out!
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::Inspiration for Murder::
There is no question that there is an
unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is
it open? Reality TV. Love it or not. I decided to get Margot to agree to participate in a reality TV show for the sake of her friend, Loretta Rose. What a mistake! Max is on location in Hawaii and Margot is eager to join him there. But wait. She's got to fulfill her promise to act as a friend in the taping. More unfortunately, bizarre and fatal circumstances arise and she is stuck in a strange old house, staying on the top floor that was never meant to be an apartment, while the TV crew gets ready for the reality taping down below. And extremely odd things are happening to them all. There are microphones everywhere. Cameras are recording everyone's every move. To escape, Margot will have to make a dramatic exit, but can she and if she actually succeeds, will she have truly escaped? Stay tuned!
~ ~ * ~ ~
Virtue is rewarded only in musical
theatrical performances. I have always been a fan of the operettas of Gilbert & Sullivan. They are witty, satirical, and, of course, filled with wonderful music. What better way for me to celebrate them than with a mystery that allows Margot to direct (yes, direct!) a production and take it to Cambridge England to a G&S festival. Of course, that's too easy, so we have threats of terrorism, insider's sabotage, and Margot is saddled with Max who seems to have developed a chronic case of writers block. I even found a police detective who bursts into song at the drop of a hat, and a vaguely threatening makeup artist who doesn't seem to be what he seems, or does he? I am a devoted anglophile and it was so much fun to write about Cambridge and revisit the place where I had a wonderful booksigning event in 2005. As the lads would have us say, "Oh, rapture!" and in the midst of several despicable crimes, too. Such is the life of a mystery buff! ~ ~ * ~ ~
"I don't like money actually, but it quiets
my nerves." We were on vacation on Maui with my daughter Annie, my cover artist and an art director in Hollywood, and her longtime partner, Marc Greville, a production designer. Driving to Hana (which is not the terrible drive the tours like to promote. It doesn't hold a candle to Hwy. 1 along the Pacific Coast for sheer terror!), Marc and I began comparing our two professions. Believe it or not, there are many similarities between publishing and filmmaking. Marc said that for a movie, first, you've got to have the money. Without the investors, there's no movie. We then got onto some of the cults that famous movie stars are involved with.... I put the two ideas together and wrote Location Location. We love Panama and have family there, so I took Margot and Max there, too. What fun to write about a place you enjoy! Mystery, missing persons, bizarre characters and, worst of all, missing money! Oh, and of course a spiritual cult that's determined to save the lead actor from himself. Fun and games!
~ ~ * ~ ~
Cloquet hated reality but
realized it was still the only place to get a good steak. Well, we all love to eat, right? And we Californians pride ourselves on the great food we get to eat. After all, the Central Valley isn't called the salad bowl of the world for nothing! Fresh and local is our mantra and we may laugh at our conceit, but we generally mean it. We have a favorite local restaurant that serves great food and has two charming and talented chefs, Suzette and Frank, who are also the owners. Suzette loves mysteries and often regales us with stories about life behind the kitchen door, the outrageous incidents that pepper their profession. Night after night they mingle with all kinds of people, mostly people who share a passion about food. So I let Max direct a film behind the kitchen doors of a highly popular and expensive L.A. restaurant. And what he found astounded him. As he puts it, those chefs are more competitive and egotistical than we are! I also created a fabulous, eccentric, and successful Latino family to run this restaurant, the Mexican culinary mafia. So we have actors, chefs, and various others, and a tale of betrayal and revenge, plus some great cooking going on in the background. bon appétit! ~ ~ * ~ ~
"Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard."-- Daphne du Maurier In the late 1990's a women who had been J.D. Salinger's (the famous author of The Catcher in the Rye, etc.) mistress for a year revealed all in a notorious memoir. Salinger had effectively disappeared after the publicity and fame of his novels drove him into self-imposed exile. I used to have a tee-shirt that asked, "Where are you, J.D.?" I was intrigued by the idea of an author managing to vanish like that. So in Last Words I have Max making a film from a cherished cult novel, the first person to adapt the story into a screenplay. Then all heck breaks loose. First, there is a series of disquieting, anonymous notes admonishing them to stop filming. Then there is a face Margot glimpses that begins to haunt her consciousness. I added a few provocative characters from L.A.'s music scene and researched a Central American country to provide the mystery. Their son, Luis, is threatened. Who is it who doesnt want the story to come alive? Last Words is ultimately a story about the undoing and remaking of literary history. Good reading! ~ ~ * ~ ~
"Never do anything you wouldnt want to be caught dead doing."--John Carradine, actor The third in the series, Bad Actors evolved out of the controversy surrounding a real movie person receiving a lifetime Oscar award. It turned out hed turned in several colleagues during the anti-communist witch hunts of the early 1950's. The news was full of what had happened to these unfortunate writers, actors, and directors brought up before this committee. Lives were destroyed. There were suicides, careers ruined forever, and heaven knows what other consequences. I wondered how the families of these maligned professionals handled their horrendous changes in fortune. Out of that thought, Bad Actors became a mystery. This story takes place in current day Los Angeles. Bad Actors has a really bad person in it. I loved writing that character and also dredging up old memories of being in high school. Margot and Maxs son, Luis, here a high school student and a pretty friend of his, have important roles in this story. My poor Margot has several truly harrowing scenes, one while being stalked, she hides in an abandoned swimming pool, but she comes through with flying colors! ~ ~ * ~ ~
The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you. --Anon We had just moved here from Berkeley CA (east of Napa Valley in the high desert wine country) and I was (and am) enchanted with the vistas and climate of high desert canyons and rugged, tree-covered mountains. One afternoon two quite elderly ladies from a vast ranch at the end of our road came by and paid a formal call on us! I served tea, of course. The two women, in their late eighties, were hilarious, widowed sisters who lived together on this ranch. They kept interrupting each other with anecdotes about each other's husbands-- "You know, what was his name? That perfectly awful one?"--and when they left I told them I was a mystery writer and I was probably going to have to put them in a story that I'd like to place on their ranch. One of the sisters looked up at me with her sparkling blue eyes and wagged a finger at me. "Of course, you can use our property. Just don't make us victims!" she told me. And I didn't! The ladies had both died by the time Final Cut came out in print, but I'm sure they would have heartily enjoyed reading about themselves in it. And laughed! I can hear them laughing still. And I'll never forget receiving that first box of books. There it was, the first of my daughter's covers, and my name on the books. It was my sixtieth birthday! ~ ~ * ~ ~
The final test of fame is to have a crazy person imagine he is you. --Anon We had just moved here from Berkeley CA (east of Napa Valley in the high desert wine country) and I was (and am) enchanted with the vistas and climate of high desert canyons and rugged, tree-covered mountains. One afternoon two quite elderly ladies from a vast ranch at the end of our road came by and paid a formal call on us! I served tea, of course. The two women, in their late eighties, were hilarious, widowed sisters who lived together on this ranch. They kept interrupting each other with anecdotes about each other's husbands-- "You know, what was his name? That perfectly awful one?"--and when they left I told them I was a mystery writer and I was probably going to have to put them in a story that I'd like to place on their ranch. One of the sisters looked up at me with her sparkling blue eyes and wagged a finger at me. "Of course, you can use our property. Just don't make us victims!" she told me. And I didn't! The ladies had both died by the time Final Cut came out in print, but I'm sure they would have heartily enjoyed reading about themselves in it. And laughed! I can hear them laughing still. And I'll never forget receiving that first box of books. There it was, the first of my daughter's covers, and my name on the books. It was my sixtieth birthday! |
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Copyright
2009. All rights reserved. Design by J. Rose Allister.
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The Magicians
(2010)
The Fat
Lady Sings (2009)
Location Location
(2007)
Extreme Cuisine
(2005)
Last Words
(2003)
Bad Actors
(2002)
Grape Noir (2001)
Final Cut
(2000)