The First Book is a Pilot by Ellen Byron

Jenn McKinlay: One of my very favorite Agatha Award winning authors is here today to talk about her latest and share her insights from her TV writing days. Welcome Ellen Byron!

Ellen: A few weeks ago, I happened upon a Friends rerun from the show’s first season. I sat down on the couch to watch the episode, and I noticed something strange—at least strange by sitcom standards. There was an entire scene where Courtney Cox didn’t have a single line. They serviced her character with a couple of reaction shots, but she didn’t utter a peep. 

I spent over twenty years writing sitcoms and I knew exactly what happened. 

 Whatever material they gave the actress at the table read didn’t land. The jokes the writers replaced it with didn’t land either, in rehearsals or even on shoot night, when you have to come up with jokes on the fly to replace ones the audience doesn’t respond to. It’s extremely rare for a lead to be left without a single line in a scene. How did the writers wind up in such dire straits? It’s simple, really. Remember, this episode was from the first season. The writers hadn’t figured out yet how Courtney – and thus her character, Monica Geller – was funny. 

 A good sitcom gets funnier as it goes along. The confidence of everyone on the crew, from stars to writers to post-production, grows. Showrunners discover the strengths – and weaknesses – of the actors and write to – or away – from them. In Courtney’s case, the Friends writing staff discovered the actress was a neat freak and a little obsessive in an entertaining way. Soon, so was Monica. They found Courtney’s funny and translated it to her character. 

Want the scent of Monica Geller wafting through your house? Here’s your chance: https://amzn.to/3LzgzNZ 

I’ve come to think of the first book of a mystery series as a pilot for the series. You may think you’ve laid out everything perfectly, but then you suddenly find yourself writing great scenes between your protagonist and a character who you had every intention of keeping on the back burner. Did you know that actors Julianna Margolis of ER and Kathy Kinney of The Drew Carey Show were only supposed to be in the series’ pilots? They both had so much unexpected chemistry with their series’ stars – which would be swoony George Clooney and the hilarious Drew Carey – that they went from day players to cast regulars to stars. 

In Plantation Shudders, the first book in my Cajun Country Mystery series, I created Gaynell Bourgeois as a sidekick and ear for Maggie. But as the series evolved, I had so much fun writing scenes between Maggie and Grand-mere that their relationship took center stage until the fifth book, Fatal Cajun Festival, where an entire plot revolved around Gaynell. 

In my Catering Hall Mystery series, which I write under the pen name Maria DiRico, when I was breaking the story for Long Island Iced Tina, the second book, I realized I’d written myself into a corner with the romantic relationship I’d set up in the first book, Here Comes the Body. I spent an entire subplot extricating my protagonist Mia from the doomed relationship and setting the stage for a new love interest. 

Bayou Book Thief is the first book in my new Vintage Cookbook Mystery series, but I’ve already written the second book, Wined and Died in New Orleans. I’m having a blast playing with all my new fictional friends, discovering which characters have the most chemistry, especially matched with my protagonist. Who will go from day player to regular to star? And which character may find themselves on the reverse trajectory? Think about this when you read Bayou Book Thief, which I hope you will. Let’s see if you can guess who the “breakout” characters in my new series will be. 

 Eliza in the Friends fountain at age two, from when I worked on Maybe It’s Me, a show that shot on the Warner Ranch. That’s where the fountain resided until they moved it to the main Warner lot. 

Readers, can you think of a TV show where a supporting character “broke out?” 

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SYNOPSIS: A new mystery series from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award–winning author Ellen Byron. 

 Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital. 

Ricki’s career dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a trunk of donated vintage cookbooks doesn’t contain books – it holds the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
 

The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki’s past as curator of a billionaire’s first edition collection comes back to haunt her. 

 Will Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success… or a recipe for disaster? 

BIO: Ellen’s Cajun Country Mysteries have won multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and multiple Lefty Awards for Best Humorous Mystery. Bayou Book Thief will be the first book in her new Vintage Cookbook Mysteries. She also writes the Catering Hall Mystery series under the name Maria DiRico. Ellen is an award-winning playwright, and non-award-winning TV writer of comedies like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly Odd Parents. She has written over two hundred articles for national magazines but considers her most impressive credit working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart. An alum of New Orleans’ Tulane University, she blogs with Chicks on the Case, is a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America, serves on the national board for Mystery Writers of America, and will be the 2023 Left Coast Crime Toastmaster. Please visit her at https://www.ellenbyron.com/. 

 PURCHASE LINK: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron