How A Sense of Place Proved Critical to Writing My Mysteries @victoriahouston

LUCY BURDETTE: I met and bonded with today's guest many years ago--I'm pretty sure I was writing the golf lovers mystery series, and she was getting started with her Loon Lake series. Probably we gravitated to one another because our hooks were not traditionally cozy. Now we share the same publisher and I'm delighted to introduce her and her wonderful books to you!

VICTORIA HOUSTON: Thirty years ago I had a thriving career writing non-fiction. I had published seven books on family issues including a modest bestseller: LOVING A YOUNGER MAN: How Women are Finding a Better Relationship. And I was working in book publishing as the promotion director for a humor publisher in the Midwest. We published one mystery writer whom I considered “mediocre” so when I learned he was getting a hundred thousand dollar advance for his paperback edition (those were the days ) I decided for that kind of money I could be mediocre. Plus it sounded more fun that non-fiction.

My mistake was assuming a mystery would be easy to write. Not so. It took me five years including a year-long workshop in NYC. I had already learned not to base characters on real people. I had been observing a couple I knew who were indulging in tantalizingly promiscuous behavior so I made them my main characters. Then they went in to marriage counseling. Oops. End of story.

I had also learned through the workshop how to “show not tell” on the page. Sounds easy? A cliché? Well, try being a non-fiction writer and making that change. Took a year but I got there.

Now the big moment: I started a mystery and set it in Kansas City where I had lived for fifteen years. I set it against a background of art theft as I’d been an art critic for a national magazine. One thing I do not do is plot ahead. So it was that forty-five pages into the story, the stolen art showed up at the bottom of a lake in northern Wisconsin where a retired dentist was out in his fishing boat and saw something mysterious under the water. Five pages later, I entered those 50 pages into a Mystery Writers of America’s Mentor Program offering a critique by a published author and sat back waiting for applause.

The author said “when I started reading this material, I was going to suggest the author go back to school. But when the story turned to Wisconsin it just sparkled – it came alive.” So I threw away the first 45 pages, looked at the retired dentist in his boat and said, “Not sure where we’re going, Doc, but let’s get started.”

I had found my sense of place. Better yet: I was home. I grew up in northern Wisconsin, in the fishing culture. I love our lakes and forests, our rivers and streams. My father and grandfather were dentists “so they could afford to fish” – or so they joked. And I’ve fished since I was three years old. I took up fly fishing in my early fifties. Bottom line: I can write this landscape, this world from the inside out. And so it is that I’ve published twenty mysteries set in the Northwoods of Wisconsin against a background of murder, mayhem and fishing. My newest is WOLF HOLLOW: A Lew Ferris Mystery. And, yes, I moved home twenty-five years ago.

I find that I most appreciate writers whose work radiates a sense of place. Among non-mystery writers, I like Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, early Hemingway and Joan Didion’s California stories to name a few. And in the mystery field I favor Henning Mankell, Ross Thomas, Ruth Rendell, Sjowall & Wahloo and our own Lucy Burdette to name a few. These are writers whose sense of place infuses their work and enchants me.

What writers who evoke a strong sense of place are among your favorites?

Bio: Victoria Houston is the author of seven non-fiction books on family issues and 20 mysteries featuring the town of Loon Lake and set against a background of fishing – fly fishing and bait fishing for bluegills, walleye, bass and muskies.  She has worked in book publishing and public relations in cities across the country.  Today she lives, writes and fishes in northern Wisconsin.  

WOLF HOLLOW: A Lew Ferris Mystery (Crooked Lane Books) is the first of a spin-off from Houston’s 19-book Loon Lake Mystery Series featuring Lewellyn Ferris, formerly the Chief of Police and now newly elected Sheriff, as the main character.  On taking office, Lew is confronted with the unexpected death of her beloved brother.  Soon two other victims -- a mother and son who are members of a wealthy, land-owning family -- are found murdered.  Are the three deaths related?  As she closes in on the solution to the unexplained deaths, she has to wonder:  who is the killer’s next target?