A smashing middle-grade mystery: Michael Beil's The Swallowtail Legacy

 HALLIE EPHRON: Three years ago, in the "before times," I taught a workshop for Yale Summer Writers. It was a truly memorable group. The participants were serious about their writing, some of them already published and trying out something new or working to climb to a new level. They'd each brought an excerpt from their work-in-progress, and early in the week, we read and critiqued them.

I vividly remember hearing Michael Beil read a scene from his work in progress, one which he said was his attempt at an *adult* novel after he'd published seven middle grade novels. (His Red Blazer Girls Mystery #1 (there are 4) was nominated for an Edgar and was published by Knopf. VERY impressive.)

I'll let him tell you what happened next.

PS: He's now celebrating the publication of The Swallowtail Legacy: Wreck at Ada’s Reef and basking in the glow of STARRED reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, AND Shelf Awareness.

MICHAEL BEIL: First, thank you, Hallie, for inviting me to guest post on the Jungle Red Writers blog. I’m excited to follow in the digital footprints of so many great writers, and I’ll do my best to keep up with them.

When I started writing the book that eventually became The Swallowtail Legacy: Wreck at Ada’s Reef, I was a writer in search of a new challenge. After publishing my first book at 50, I wrote six more (all middle grade mysteries) in a little over six years. I was in the process of outlining a sequel to my last book when my longtime editor left the publishing world and a few weeks later, I received the equivalent of a break-up text from my old publisher.

So, no sequel, and for the first time in seven or eight years, I didn’t have a contract. On top of that, my wife and I had left Manhattan for the wilds of Connecticut and I had given up full time teaching. (I had taught English at a girls’ school in the city for 16 years.)

It was time to regroup. And, maybe, time to think about writing a book for someone other than middle school aged kids. Long ago, I had written a (never published) novel for adults and after a few weeks of feeling sorry for myself, I started sketching ideas for a mystery about a young woman who returns to Swallowtail Island, where she had grown up but left under tragic circumstances.

Pretty soon I had a good outline and a few chapters under my belt and was rolling right along. I was even feeling pretty good about it (maybe not loving it, but not wanting to throw my laptop out the window after reading what I’ve written, which is not an uncommon urge for me).

After seven middle grade books, I felt like I had a decent idea of what worked and what didn’t in that world, but this was my first attempt at writing for adults in a long time, so, in June 2018, I signed up for Hallie Ephron’s mystery writing class at the Yale Writer’s Workshop, thinking that it would be a good thing to get some feedback on my pages. As my protagonist Lark might say, the GHT (God’s Honest Truth) is that I fully expected everyone to love it. I thought they would be begging me to hurry up and finish it so they could read the whole thing.

Boy, was I wrong.

It’s not entirely accurate to say that they hated it, but it’s not that far off the mark. They seemed especially harsh when it came to the structure of the story, which relied heavily on flashbacks to Lark’s unhappy, tragic childhood on the island. The consensus was that it was unnecessarily complicated and detracted from the plot.

I remember going back to my dorm room that night feeling dejected, even angry. I considered deleting the entire file and just starting over, but then I replayed some of my classmates’ comments in my head. In the midst of all the criticism there were two things about the story that people liked: the 12-year-old version of Lark and Swallowtail Island. Maybe it isn’t ready for the dumpster, I thought. Maybe this is the universe telling me that my style and my voice are best suited for middle grade. And I’m okay with that.

I am also nothing if not stubborn, so without telling anyone what I was doing, I spent the next few nights completely rewriting the first two chapters. They had been written in third person, but I realized that it was Lark’s story, and she had to be the one to tell it.

Gone were the flashbacks, gone was the older, damaged, cynical Lark. And more importantly, Lark’s family—her sister, stepfather, and three stepbrothers—and her relationships with all of them became as important as the missing will at the center of the mystery.

On the last day of the workshop, we all had a chance to read what we’d been working on during the week. When I read the first chapter in its new form, the reaction was completely different—people like it!— and I knew then that I was on the right track.

HALLIE: Michael is remarkly agile and resilient, not to mention SO talented... it's no mean fete to take brutally honest criticism from strangers and use it to feed a roaring success. I am SO THRILLED with an outcome is as glorious as this one. Just for instance, here's what Kirkus Reviews had to say about Michael's Swallowtail Legacy:

"Each character, historic and contemporary, sparks with life. Lark’s process and the reveals are perfectly paced. . . . Most heartwarming, Lark develops feelings of loyalty toward her blended family and uncovers a surprising link to their property. Readers will be hooked—more, please!"—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

So, anyone out there with middle graders to nourish with a corker of a mystery? What do you think makes a novel with a young main character appeal to middle graders, and what book(s) "sang" for you at that age?

And Michael, will there be the Kirkus-requested "more"?