Girlfriends by Charlene D'Avanzo #giveaway

LUCY BURDETTE: JRW welcomes Charlene D'Avanzo to the blog today. Hallie, Hank, and I met her a couple of years ago when she attended one of our Seascape writing weekends. And now her second mystery will be published this month--yay! She asked if our readers might be interested in how she develops her characters--and I said, bring it on!

CHARLENE D'VANZO: If you have the messed-up-world blues, I’ve got the perfect antidote.

This comes via my good buddy Marcia. It’s a YouTube clip of Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Cher singing “It’s A Wonderful World” at the “Mothers & Others” concert in 1989.

Seconds after Bette launched into “I see worlds of green …” I sported a huge whopping grin and swayed with the (so very young) lovely ladies on the stage. It was an instant up, a memory-lane high.

Since yesterday, I’ve been trying to puzzle out the magic of that video clip and think I’ve got it.

It’s girlfriends. Bette, Meryl, Cher, and Goldie, arms around each other’s waists, belting it out together. It’s me and Marcia singing along, loud and out of key.

And it’s the lyrics -

            “I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do,
            They're really saying I love you.”

Corny, to be sure, but sometimes that’s just what you need. At its best, corny is relaxed, familiar, undemanding. Kind of like comfy shoes you always reach for. Best girlfriends are like that.

I write what I call environmental mysteries that feature girlfriend Maine oceanographers. Mara, my protagonist, and fellow scientist Harvey (short for Harville) are colleagues at the “Maine Oceanographic Institute”. These women watch out for each other. Harvey does things like make sure Mara’s wearing her seasick patch on research cruises (Mara’s a marine scientist who is plagued by seasickness). Mara gently challenges lonely Harvey’s claim that local guys in Spruce Harbor are too “rough” for her.

Mara and Harvey share a lot of traits. They both bright, successful scientists who’ve made it in a male-dominated profession. So I’ve struggled to draw them as distinct characters.

They do look different. Mainer Mara is an auburn, athlete type who hangs out in rubber boots and flannel shirts. Harvey’s a silver-spoon child who’s crisp and clean after a day counting fish underwater. That works, but I needed more and found it in Enneagrams.

The Enneagram defines nine distinct but interconnected personality types also called archetypal characteristics. For example, Individualists want nothing more than to be uniquely themselves and Peacemakers avoid conflict at all costs. As Mara and then Harvey I took an Enneagram test available online. My two leading ladies came out quite different in ways I hadn’t articulated. The contrast made a lot of sense and has been very useful.

In my first book “Cold Blood, Hot Sea”, Reformer Mara is outraged when a colleague’s life is threatened by climate change deniers. She’s on a mission to make this wrong right at all costs.  While noble, that quest gets her into a whole lot of trouble. Leader Harvey also sees the world as an unjust place, but she exudes confidence and good sense. People see her as someone who accomplishes her goals, a person they’d follow.

In “Demon Spirit, Devil Sea” (second book, out in May) I used the classic traits to set the two characters apart. For instance, anything that interferes with Leader Harvey getting the job done drives her wild. So when a stalled boat motor delays an important fieldtrip, Harvey looks at her watch every thirty seconds and scowls at the boat captain. Mara wants to move along but isn’t catatonic. Later, when the captain makes a fundamentally wrong claim about warming oceans, Mara instantly confronts him. Pragmatic Harvey steps in bring down the heat and make sure they get safely back home.

Of course, the veteran Jungle Red authors know how to draw well-defined characters (Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy is one of my favorites). But other newbies like me might just find the Enneagram approach useful. 

Who are your favorite fictional girlfriends, and why?

Charlene will be giving away a copy of DEMON SPIRIT, DEVIL SEA to one lucky commenter. Leave a comment and your email to be entered in the drawing.

Demon Spirit, Devil Sea, the second in Charlene D'Avanzo's Maine Oceanography Mystery Series, is set in Haida Gwaii fifty miles off British Columbia, one of the few intact temperature rainforests on Earth and a spectacular sea kayak destination. As she untangles a climate change crime, scientist Mara Tusconi faces the Haida Nation’s mistrust of outsiders like her, spiteful spirits that aren’t suppose to exist, and mystifying death of the Haida guide who saved her life.

Marine ecologist and award-winning environmental educator Charlene D’Avanzo studied the New England coast for forty years. Her Mara Tusconi Oceanography Mystery Series takes readers into the stunning beauty of Maine’s seawaters and other magnificent coasts plus the grave threats facing them. An avid sea kayaker, D’Avanzo lives in Yarmouth, Maine.