Making It Up by Julia Henry

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm so pleased to host Julia Henry today, whom you may also know as Julie Hennrikus. She not only writes wonderful cozy mysteries, she's also the executive director of my favorite writing organization, Sisters in Crime. Welcome Julia, in all your guises!

JULIA HENRY: When Barbara Ross writes a book, she does a ton of research. The subject may be barely touched on in one of her Maine Clambake mysteries, but nevertheless she immerses herself in details, and could probably do a speech about the sex life of lobsters, the ice business, pottery and farming oysters.

My historical mystery writing friends, which include Jessica Ellicott and Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) do a lot of work to make sure their books are accurate. Reading newspapers of the time, finding out if a word was used then, fussing over the right bonnet and accurate footwear. Readers demand the accuracy, and they both provide it.

Cate Conte, aka Liz Mugavero, has made up the world of her Full Moon mysteries. But then she has to remember how things work (what can witches do when?) and be consistent throughout the series.

And Sherry Harris needs to know how a bar in Florida operates. For the sake of accuracy, she made several trips to the location where her Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mysteries are set, took pictures and had a cocktail or two. It is very likely that her research was more fun that learning about the reproductive lives of lobsters, but I digress.

Why am I bringing this up? I have a new book coming out on October 25, the fifth in my Garden Squad series. When I was thinking about what new gardening adventure could launch the book, Barb Ross suggested the Garden Squad cleaning off graves. From that idea, The Plot Thickets was born. A few early reviews and a couple of emails let me know how much readers enjoyed learning about how a cemetery works in a small town. They used terms like “fascinating” and “I had no idea”. Now, were I Barb Ross, I would have done a lot of research, site visits, had conversations, etc. I did do research, Julie style. Then I made it up.

This is not to say there’s not some truth in the premise of the book. Small towns in Massachusetts do have cemetery committees who make decisions about who has access to what. A friend told me that she and her sister used their town allocations for their aunts, so she’d either need to move to another town or be cremated when the time came. I read about two sisters who went to bury their mother next to their father, and found another coffin in the space. (It ended up a less than reputable company had been selling plots they didn’t own.) I heard about a friend’s father who was beside himself because he couldn’t get a space in the historic cemetery in town; he didn’t want to be relegated to the newer spaces. I read a town charter that made it clear that cemetery spaces were leased for a period of time, but they didn’t belong to the occupants in perpetuity. I thought about tombs in New Orleans and doing grave rubbings in Concord. I let it all steep and stew until an idea started to emerge.

Through my writing lens I came up with the idea of a disreputable funeral director who had managed to get herself on every committee in town and was running several scams. This isn’t to say that the situation in the book couldn’t happen. Though it is highly unlikely. My books tend to be heightened reality. Lilly Jayne’s house gets bigger and bigger in every book. Ernie’s store sells everything anyone could ever need. Tamara serves on so many committees it’s hard to believe she isn’t a candidate for burn out. Goosebush, Massachusetts is an alternate reality, based on a real town, but not really. Everything is a bit extra. Including the issues with the disreputable funeral director, long lost fathers, stolen jewelry and more. I’m glad that my world resonates with people, and that they find the information fascinating. I just hope everyone takes it with a grain of salt.

Writer friends, do you use facts loosely in your books? Readers, do you assume everything is true, or that it’s true in the world of the book?

Julia Henry is one of the pen names of Julie Hennrikus. The Plot Thickets is her tenth published novel. Julie is also the executive director of Sisters in Crime.  @jhauthors on Instagram and Facebook.

About the book: The ever-quintessential New England town of Goosebush, Massachusetts truly shines in springtime, but when an underhanded undertaker digs herself an early grave, it’s up to sixty-something gardening sleuth Lilly Jayne—and her fellow Garden Squad members of course— to unearth the cryptic killer . . .

With spring’s arrival in Goosebush, Lilly and the Beautification Committee turn their eyes to new projects. A cleanup of the historic Goosebush Cemetery may be in order, after Lilly and Delia find the plots there sorely neglected and inexplicably rearranged. Lilly soon discovers that Whitney Dunne-Bradford snapped up custodianship of the graveyard once she inherited Bradford Funeral Homes. But before Lilly can get to the bottom of the tombstone tampering, she stumbles upon Whitney’s body at the Jayne family mausoleum . . .

Though at first it appears Whitney died by suicide, Lilly has doubts, and apparently, so does Chief of Police Bash Haywood, who quickly opens a murder investigation. Plenty of folks in town had bones to pick with Whitney, including her stepdaughter, Sasha, and funeral home employee, Dewey Marsh—all three recently charged with illegal business practices. But when the homicide inquiry suddenly targets an old friend, Lilly and the Garden Squad must rally to exhume the truth before the real killer buries it forever . . .