A Man Drops From The Sky

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The world works in mysterious ways, and we are grateful for that, right?

 

Here’s the scoop.  (And giveaway below.)

 

Some months ago, or whenever, Hallie emailed me asking if I could book an acquaintance of hers on my interview show called CRIME TIME on A Mighty Blaze. His name was David Freed, and his newest thriller DEEP FURY.

(You know Crime Time, I hope:  Every Tuesday at 4 PM ET on the Facebook page of A Mighty Blaze, I do a 30 minute live interview with an author, and then the audience chimes in with questions. I have done about 265 of them so far, can you believe it? And we always have a giveaway. We are on hiatus until Jan 7, but see you then.)

 

Anyway.

 

Any friend of Hallie’s is a friend of mine, of course, so I said, sure, and gave his info to the CRIME TIME show producer. (She's the one who decides who appears.) And it was scheduled.

 

Of course, before I do such an interview, I have to read the interviewee’s book, and that is always a treat – – sometimes they are books by author I would have read anyway, and sometimes they are new. This one was new.

 

So, darling, Reds and Reader. I open this DEEP FURY, and it is instantly, absolutely, terrific! Suspenseful, tense--and hilarious!

(And here is the interview. You will note I was so in control about it that I had no idea what day it was.)

 

David Freed, (whose bio is below, and it will make you gasp, truly,) has created essentially a genre of his own:  a witty and humorous noir.

 

How can there be a funny noir?

 

And that is why David is here today. And we are the luckier for it.  (And I will give a copy of DEEP FURY to one lucky commenter!)

 

Laughter and Murder: An Odd Couple of Comedy and Corpses

By David Freed

 

The legendary comedian and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin was once reputed to have said, “Life is easy. Comedy is hard.” The man knew what he was talking about. Trying to write funny is nothing to laugh at, especially when it comes to murder mysteries.

Trust me. I’ve been there.

If you’ve never tried it yourself, you might assume that all you have to do in writing a mystery with comedic elements is to come up with a few well-placed chuckles and—Shazam! -- you’re the next Janet Evanovich or Carl Hiassen. But that’s not how it works.

Not even close.

It’s been my experience that infusing humor in prose can be an ordeal, a chaotic whirlwind of trial, error, and sitting sullenly at my desk, weeping periodically into my coffee cup. And by coffee cup I mean a large tumbler of Irish whiskey. (Just kidding. I’ve tried writing a time or two after having had a wee too much to drink, just to get the old “creative juices” flowing. The results have always been masterpieces of unreadable hieroglyphics).

The fundamental struggle when writing funny, as every stand-up comedian knows, is that humor is highly subjective. What I might consider comedic gold might make zero sense to you, and leave you convinced I’m a few neurons short of a synapse. The good news is that doctors have discovered a medical explanation for this phenomenon, and that is this: the funny bone is not a universal organ.

What makes things even trickier for a writer trying to write funny is the endless sea of humor styles out there. Some readers prefer witty banter. Some enjoy sarcasm or slapstick. Still others find sardonic glee in the graphic spilling of blood and guts and triple-digit body counts. Thus, at that very moment when you think you’ve hit your comedy sweet spot, you’ve likely alienated broad swaths of your potential audience.

Then there is the seemingly dichotomous issue of murder and humor. As anyone who has ever watched Dragnet  or NCIS Sheboygan knows, homicides tend to be serious business. A mystery novel centering on homicides can’t be too funny. Or can it? It’s like baking a soufflé. The ingredients must be perfectly proportional and mixed precisely.

Like a soufflé, if the humor doesn’t rise just right, the whole thing collapses into one, big, gooey mess of confusion. One must be ever mindful of the delicate balance between timing and pacing, between being over-the-top too funny and not funny enough. It’s a high-stakes game. Get it right and it and it feels like magic. Get it wrong and it’s like a microwaved burrito from 7-Eleven. It’s either burned to a crisp or cold in the middle. And who the hell wants to eat that?

The next hurdle to overcome when trying to write funny is overthinking it. Humor is a cruel master or mistress. He/she demands that you constantly mull the merits or lack thereof of individual lines, even when you’re not sitting at your desk.

Such times can include staring up at the ceiling at 3 in the morning, taking a shower, walking the dog, and especially when your significant other is reminding you for third time about your social schedule this weekend, but you don’t hear a word she’s saying even if you’re looking straight at her because you’re thinking to yourself, “Hmm, I wonder if that reference to Engelbert Humperdinck is too obscure or too obvious?” or “Gee, I sure hope that line about kinky sex in Chapter Three doesn’t spawn a book boycott in the Bible Belt.”

You find yourself trapped in an endless loop of analyzing and second-guessing and being accused by your significant other of living in your head too much, all of which is the opposite of funny. Congratulations. You’ve now turned a simple thought into a three-act drama, and by the time you’ve worked through your internal monologue, the joke is so far removed from its original form that it might as well be a thesis about the wonders of quantum physics.

But perhaps the most excruciating part of writing funny comes invariably after you’ve set your pages aside for a day or two, then you go back and objectively reread them, only to realize... By the whiskers of Sherlock Holmes, this is just not funny!

Alas, this is the dark moment where every writer’s worst fears materialize: You’ve written something you thought upon first blush worked. It doesn’t. So you rework the bit 17 times and it’s still doesn’t work. All those carefully crafted sentences that you labored over so intently are now nothing more than tombstones of lost laughter. It's at that point that I’ll call it a day, get online, and explore other possible means of employment, like maybe becoming a plumber, because you know what they say about plumbers--when you have a plumbing license, it’s a license to steal.

But, alas, I digress.

Anyway, after I’ve pondered various other possible occupations, I’ll realize that really, I’m not suited to do anything other than be a writer. And so, the next morning, I will force myself to return to my desk, armed with fresh eyes and a clear head, and give it another go. The opening of Deep Fury, my new Cordell Logan mystery, is a good example of such an effort. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the first paragraph went through no less than fifty revisions before I was finally comfortable in letting you read it:

Long after the naked man plummeted from the night sky and exploded like a bomb through the roof of Walt and Lena Rizzo’s double-wide mobile home at the Sun Country RV and Trailer Park, Walt couldn’t decide if it was the dog or divine providence that had saved his wife’s life.

Did you smile inside, if only a little? I surely hope so.

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “So, Dave, what’s the bottom line here? Is trying to write funny nothing more than a torturous pursuit that ultimately leads to the gnashing of teeth and wishing you were never born? Hardly.

Writing humor may well be a maddingly frustrating dance between wit, timing, and despair, but when you finally get it right, and a reader emails to tell you they guffawed out loud reading your book on the subway, it’s worth every agonizing second. Because in the end, humor is a gift. It may be difficult to pin down, but when you’ve manage to brighten a stranger’s day, all the struggles are worth it.

And that, my friends, is no joke.

HANK: SO great, Reddies! Do you enjoy humorous mysteries and thrillers? Like what?

 And remember, a copy of DEEP FURY. to one lucky commenter!

 

DAVID FREED

The son of a cop, David Freed is an instrument-rated pilot, proud aircraft owner, produced Hollywood screenwriter, and a former daily newspaper reporter. He logged nearly two decades in investigative journalism, the majority at the Los Angeles Times, where he covered the military, served as the Times’ lead police reporter, and reported from the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq during the first Gulf War. Among many other awards, he was an individual finalist for the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for Public Service, the highest honor in American journalism, for his multi-part expose of ineptitudes within the Los Angeles County criminal justice system, and shared the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting of the Rodney King riots. David was subsequently hired by the Los Angeles bureau of CBS News as an investigator and associate field producer to help cover the OJ Simpson case.

Later still, he worked as a contractor for the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the US Army’s Battle Command Battle Lab at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He's also written frequently for national magazines, including Air & Space Smithsonian, where he was a contributing editor, and the Atlantic, where his story, “The Wrong Man,” detailing the plight of a government medical researcher falsely accused of murder, was honored as a finalist in feature writing by the American Society of Magazine Editors. 

A former special assistant professor of journalism at his alma mater, Colorado State University, David holds a master’s degree from Harvard University and currently teaches creative writing at Harvard’s Extension School. Deep Fury is the long-awaited seventh installment in his Cordell Logan series of mystery-thrillers. David lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his clinical psychologist wife, Elizabeth, and Oz, their brilliant, gentle Australian shepherd. They have two adult children and three grandchildren.

 

Deep Fury

A naked man drops from the night sky and crashes through the roof of a mobile home, nearly killing the elderly couple inside. The victim is soon identified as Pete Hostetler, a well-respected executive at a California-based toy manufacturing company. But detectives are baffled, and there are no leads. Did he accidentally fall out of an airplane or was he pushed?

For Cordell Logan—a sardonic, financially struggling flight instructor and former government assassin—Hostetler’s death is personal. The two men were classmates at the US Air Force Academy and later served together as fighter pilots during Operation Desert Storm, where Hostetler saved Logan’s life during one particularly perilous combat mission in Iraq. Logan is convinced Pete was murdered. But who would’ve killed someone in such bizarre fashion, and why?

Determined to avenge his battle buddy’s death, Logan starts digging and discovers nothing is as it seems, and that he may not have known Hostetler as well as he thought. Soon a vexing trail of clues lead him and his aging Cessna, the Ruptured Duck, across California, deep into Mexico, and relentlessly into harm’s way.

 

DavidFreed.com

https://www.facebook.com/suspectfreed/

@davidjfreed.bsky.social

Seeing Doubles

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Woohoo, and throw confetti! We are welcoming the fabulous and incomparable J.T. Ellison today! Her newest book, A VERY BAD THING, is a very fabulous thing. (If you will allow me the cringey parallel construction.)

Every author will tell you, I think, that there is a thread or a theme that runs through all of their work-- whether it is central to the story or not, it is always there. I know Hallie often talks about how her books are always about trust, and mine are always about the nature of truth, as well as empowerment.

The wonderful J.T. has a persistent and constant theme as well—one you might not have noticed until she reveals it l today. And we promise, no spoilers.

Seeing Doubles

by JT Ellison

I am obsessed with twins.

Growing up, a nascent writer and perpetual planner, I wanted four children, two sets of twins. Two boys, two girls. That felt like a logical way to have children, especially because it would mean I could get a two-fer, more bang for the buck. 

It was an odd obsession. I knew no twins. They did not run in our family. I have no idea where I even got the idea, though logic says it was from reading about Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf in my well-thumbed mythology book that I checked out of my elementary school library so many times the librarian gifted it to me on the last day of 6th grade. 

Not that I thought I was destined to become a she-wolf, but you know how imagery sticks in your brain when you’re a child.

Fast forward to adulthood. In what was a true shock to us all, I struggled with infertility. Two sets of twins became a dream of the distant past; the choice of boys and girls went by the wayside. Any child at all became the goal.

When I lost the twins we’d conceived using IVF, I realized my dream was never going to happen. I never thought I’d struggle to have a family. I assumed, like so many, that it would be easy, natural, and achievable. 

I am a goal-setter and high achiever. A true Type A personality. You can imagine how infuriating it was to learn my body was betraying me. (Turns out I have Ehler’s Danlos and Celiac, which contributed to my infertility. Found that out ten years too late, sadly.) I became instead a forever mother of cats. It’s not such a bad gig. Especially when we adopted—you guessed it—twin kittens.

I channeled my energy into my writing career and birthed a number of books. I didn’t realize that I was writing twins into all of my books until a reviewer pointed it out. She was right. Before, during, and after my childbearing years, they cropped up. And then, it became a thing. I started to add them purposefully. If I couldn’t have them of my own, I could certainly write them into my stories.

There are twins in almost all my work. Identical twins. Fraternal twins. Twins who don’t know about one another. Twins with hidden pathologies, twins who act out their basest desires. Twins who were separated at birth and find each other, whose lives are eerie mimics of one another. 

I have quite a few Doppelgängers, too; twins that might have been. The complexity of a character who shares a soul with another creates confusion and excellent family dynamics, and allows for some sleight of hand when needed. Exactly what a suspense needs.

There are plenty of examples of stories with twins at their heart—mine are usually secondary to the plot so it doesn’t become a trope. It is a device that I love to use because the mirror reflection of another soul fascinates me. And of course, there are twins in A VERY BAD THING, though I can’t talk about them without spoiling the story. Not surprisingly, it was untwining the twin “situation” in the story that made the book come alive for me and ultimately drove the narrative to its inevitable conclusion.

This isn’t the only theme you’ll see in my stories. Women finding their power is also a huge component, as is finding justice for those who might not otherwise get it. These are rich veins to draw from, and my hope is always to find a path straight to the readers’ hearts, to make a connection that allows a story to come alive and creates characters you love, empathize with, and sometimes love to hate.

How about you? Do you have a favorite theme or trope in thrillers?


HANK: Oh, great question! And wasn’t one day this week National Twins Day? I know some of you are twins—tell us a twin thing!

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty novels and the Emmy Award–winning co-host of the literary TV show A Word on Words. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries. J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens, one of whom is a ghost, in Nashville, where she is hard at work on her next novel. For more information, visit https://www.jtellison.com/.


A VERY BAD THING

From New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison comes a taut

thriller about one author at the pinnacle of her career, whose past threatens to destroy everything she has―and everyone she knows.

A great writer knows when to deliver a juicy plot twist. But for one author, the biggest twist of all is her own murder.

With a number of hit titles and a highly anticipated movie tie-in, celebrated novelist Columbia Jones is at the top of her game. Fans around the world adore her. But on the final night of her latest book tour, one face in the crowd makes the author collapse. And by the next morning, she’s lying dead in a pool of blood.

Columbia’s death shocks the world and leaves Darian, her daughter and publicist, reeling. The police have nothing to go on―at first. But then details emerge, pointing to the author’s illicit past. Turns out many people had motive to kill Columbia. And with a hungry reporter and frustrated cop on the trail, her secrets won’t stay buried long. But how many lives will they shatter as the truth comes out?

Matching Pipe to Psychopath

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: One of my favorite things in the world to say is: Reds and readers, here is Tracy Clark!

Tracy, as you well know, is a long time and fabulous friend of the Reds, and she is one of the most fascinating people ever. And an incredibly talented writer. AND her main character is named Harriet, as am I, so that has also rendered her to me forever.

The newest Detective Harriet Foster books is ECHO, and it is out right now, and more on that below.

But back to how Tracy’s mind works. Herewith: a look inside.

O drainpipe! My drainpipe! (Hat tip to Walt Whitman.)

By Tracy Clark

I have a drainpipe. Wait, let me back up. I don’t actually own a drainpipe, I’ve just laid claim to one, and it’s a beaut.

Here’s the history.

I got one of those always-comes-at-the-busiest time emissions notices in the mail letting me know my car was due for testing, or else a big arm would swoop down out of the sky and pluck my vehicle up and sling it into Lake Michigan. Needless to say, it wasn’t happy mail. An emissions notice is about as welcome as a jury summons.

Duty-bound, I took the car in, though the nearest testing facility is miles away from where I live, out in the middle of nowhere, practically. Coming out of the place, obligation met, that’s when I spotted it. The drainpipe. It was just sitting there at the side of the gravel road, as bold as you please. I stopped my car. I got out. I marveled at the drainpipe. My imagination grew wings.

The pipe is about the size a body might fit in, I thought, as others summoned for emissions tests passed me by, giving me curious glances. No matter. Crime writers get curious looks all the time as we skulk around town poking our heads into places they don’t belong. How else are we going to find the perfect spots to drop fictional bodies?

All rusted and solitary, with a couple of inches of gunky water at the bottom, the pipe looked as though no city worker had touched it since Old Man Daley ruled the roost from the fifth floor of City Hall. Perfect.

I grinned like a mad scientist at the dirty old drainpipe as I thought of all the things I could do with it, fiction-wise. Looking around, I noticed a few streetlights and wondered how many would actually work once the sun went down. There were also security cameras outside the testing facility, which likely meant somebody somewhere had footage of me standing in front of the pipe, eyes wide and mouth agape. There’s also probably tape of me taking photos of the pipe (click, click), but let them go ahead and send it to the cops. I’m pretty sure I can talk myself out of a trespassing rap.

It's funny how an out-of-the-way place can spark an idea and set a mood. I’d bet you good money thousands of regular people passed that pipe a bazillion times and never gave it a second thought. I saw it once, and I haven’t forgotten about it since.

Why? Because where writers set a story is as important as what the story’s about. How creepy would Stephen King’s The Shining have been if he’d set it in a small B&B off Redondo Beach on Fourth of July weekend?

The right setting is important, vital even to good storytelling. I write crime. Dark, gritty, out-of-the-way places work for me. Behold the drainpipe!

Since my fortuitous discovery, I’ve thought about how to use my drainpipe and, more importantly, about what kind of killer would stoop so low as to cram a body into such an inhospitable place. I’ve written a couple of books since finding my treasure, but neither story seemed right for the pipe, and I don’t want to just shoehorn it in. My drainpipe deserves better than that, and I can likely only use it once.

I need the right story, the right killer, and when I find them, boy, is it gonna be great. A lot will have to go into this, though. The killers I’ve written about so far have had other priorities and other kinks. Pipes weren’t on their dance cards. Once I create my twisted killer, then I’ll have to figure out their motivation. I mean, why pipes and not, oh, I don’t know, treehouses or car trunks?

Is the pipe simple expedience, or is it something more?

Then comes atmosphere. I think I can do better than a gravel road. I Googled drainpipes (don’t judge) and found a few that were creepily concealed by rocks and mossy leaves. I think I can take my pipe and zhuzh it up a bit. Writers zhuzh all the time, taking something real and dialing it up a notch or two.

Anyway, that’s my current challenge. Matching pipe to psychopath, taking what’s real and making it more real, starting with something creepy and adding more creep to it for book thrills. I know my assignment, and I am ready for opportunity to knock.

Side note: I didn’t crawl into the drainpipe with a flashlight like Nancy Drew. I know some writers who would have, though. (You crazy kids know who you are. Props!) Nope, I got enough from looking at the pipe to imagine the mysteries it could hold. My brain will do the rest.

So, if you read one of my books and come across a scene where there’s a body stuffed in a drainpipe, just know that’s my pipe. You can also be assured that as I wrote that scene there was a satisfied grin on my face.

Meanwhile, back at this writer’s ranch, I just got a summons for jury duty. Ugh. I’m not looking forward to that so much, but you never know what hidden gem I might pass on my way to the courthouse.

Wish me luck.

HANK: Oh, Tracy, I think jury duty is destined to bring you a life-changing story idea! And as the wife of a criminal defense attorney, I am especially grateful when smart and thoughtful people agree to be on juries.Someone will really thank you for this.

Reds and Readers, how do you feel about jury duty?

   

Tracy Clark is the author of ECHO (December 3, 2024; Thomas and Mercer) the third novel in the Detective Harriet Foster police procedural series. She is also author of the Cass Raines PI series (Kensington Books), a two-time Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author, the 2024 Anthony Award-winner for Best Paperback Original, the 2024 Lefty Award-winner for Best Mystery and the 2022 winner of the Sara Paretsky Award. She is a board member-at-large of Sisters in Crime, Chicagoland and a member of International Thriller Writers, and serves on the boards of Mystery Writers of America Chicago and the Midwest Mystery Conference. You can visit her online at tracyclarkbooks.com.

 

ECHO (December 3, 2024; Thomas and Mercer):

From the award-winning author of Hide and Fall comes a taut tale of renegade justice and long-awaited resolution, bringing the thrilling Detective Harriet Foster series to a heart-stopping conclusion.


Hardwicke House, home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society, is no stranger to tragedy. And when a body turns up in the field next to the mansion, the scene looks chillingly familiar.


Chicago PD sends hard-nosed Detective Harriet “Harri” Foster to investigate. The victim is Brice Collier, a wealthy Belverton student, whose billionaire father, Sebastian, owns Hardwicke and ranks as a major school benefactor. Sebastian also has ties to the mansion’s notorious past, when thirty years ago, hazing led to a student’s death in the very same field.


Could the deaths be connected? With no suspects or leads, Harri and her partner, Detective Vera Li, will have to dig deep to find answers. No charges were ever filed in the first case, and this time, Harri’s determined the killer must pay. But still grieving her former partner’s death, Harri must also contend with a shadowy figure called the voice—and their dangerous game of cat and mouse could threaten everything.

Getting Back on the Creativity Road

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Have you ever doubted yourself? Before you answer, here’s another question.

Have you read The God of the Woods by Liz Moore? I confess it is on my nightstand, ready and waiting. But you all probably know it’s been lauded and applauded and named number one on so many best of 2024 lists. 

So I was– gosh, what word should I use–reassured to see an interview with the author in the New York Times the other day. In which she said, and I quote:  "Every time I write, I convince myself that I can’t possibly stick the landing, and that I’ve written myself into a corner.”

Reds and Readers, I have used those very words. In exactly that same situation. And I just said them, recently, about my book 17. I say: THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK!

But I recognize it now! You always think this, I say to myself. You always think this way! And it’s always fine. So, I suggest to myself, why don’t you just skip the worry part and go onto the fun. Just let it happen.

Today’s wonderful essay by the brilliant Amy Bernstein goes along that road as well. See what you think.

Short-Circuiting Phobias Through Creativity

By Amy L. Bernstein

It was the summer of 1977 and Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” was one of the carefree hits playing several times a day on the FM radio dial. But I was not carefree. I was driving my parents’ Pontiac station wagon northward on an unfamiliar highway in Minnesota. The unnervingly straight blacktop seemed to stretch toward infinity as the signs for Fargo reminded me I had strayed far from familiar turf.

My destination was a summer temp job between college semesters. All I remember from that particular day was that I arrived at the job shaking like a leaf. The drive had unnerved me. I never told a soul about my phobia, yet was forced to admit to myself that driving anywhere I had not been before, where I did not already know the route by heart, completely terrified me—even in broad daylight.

Over the decades, this feeling abated—but never completely disappeared. Earlier this very week, I had to bring our car to a new service dealership. I followed GPS scrupulously, but the nerves kicked in yet again when I thought I might have taken a wrong turn. I didn’t, but I was on edge, nevertheless.

What is this about? As a writer, I’m constantly taking all sorts of risks—creatively, emotionally, pushing at the boundaries of craft, experimenting with structure and format, putting my vulnerabilities on the page and also putting myself “out there.”

But in the external world, I’m a bit of a mess. In addition to my driving phobia, I have a lifelong spider phobia (which extends to bugs in general) and an irrational fear of drowning. (I’m terrified of sailboats because I’m convinced we’ll capsized and I’ll get trapped beneath the boat and drown.) Oh, and I almost forgot to mention a bone-rattling fear of steep inclines—on foot or wheels.

When you’ve lived with certain fears long enough, you can’t imagine living without them. They become part of your temperament. Perhaps I compensate for these, uh, quirks by spending considerable time counseling other people on how to manage their fears and self-doubts around expressing their artistic side, so they may joyfully throw themselves into their creative passions.

Put another way, I seek to normalize fears I’m confident I can get a handle on, while accepting those that will always have a handle on me.

“Even when we know our thought patterns aren’t helping, it is so incredibly hard to think differently…,” writes Nick Trenton in The Art of Letting Go.

As a writer, I give myself permission to think differently—to step outside as many boxes as I can. That helps me to strike a balance with the perceived treacherousness of the physical world.

I will undoubtedly panic again when I lose my way on the road. But when it comes to losing myself in my imagination—and encouraging others to do likewise—I feel right at home.

Readers, do you have any life-long phobias, and if so, what are your tricks for compensating for them, or at least managing so they don’t interfere with your goals?

HANK: Oh, I cannot wait to hear your answers!

Amy L. Bernstein’s new book is for self-doubting creatives, Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration. Learn more about Amy’s books, creative workshops, and book coaching business here. 

The Murderess and the Monkey

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: You are not going to believe this story.  It’s just–wild!

First (and this part you will  believe) I am a massive fan of Sharon Short–you also may know and love her as Jess Montgomery. Right? 

But under her real name, she’s just published (from Minotaur)  the instantly terrifically successful and completely immersive TROUBLE ISLAND.

(Pause: isn’t that the most evocative title ever?)

So when she was asked “where did the idea come from? She said…

Well, here she is to tell the incredible story. (And a giveaway below!)

Two Great Ideas That Go Great Together

By Sharon Short 

When I was a kid, I got a kick out of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials with the tag line “two great tastes that taste great together,” referring to the combo of peanut butter and chocolate. Anyone else remember those? I especially liked the one where the teen boy and girl run into each other. https://youtu.be/O7oD_oX-Gio?si=ATo1bewBK6Mi-8AR)

As I’ve had the privilege of giving book talks and interviews about TROUBLE ISLAND, my standalone suspense debut just out from Minotaur Books, I’ve been asked about where I got the idea for the novel. And each time as I’ve answered, the “two great tastes” tag line has echoed in my head.

TROUBLE ISLAND is set on the Lake Erie private island owned by a Prohibition gangster’s estranged wife, an alleged murderess—forced into hiding as the wife’s servant—plots her escape just as the gangster and a rogue ice storm make unexpected landfall.

And the “two great tastes” that came together to form the core of the idea—the alleged murderess and the island—lived in my imagination for decades before they ran into each other.

Let’s start with the murderess.

A week or so before I married my husband—forty-one years ago at Christmas time—I was visiting with his family when my future mother-in-law approached me and my soon-to-be sister-in-law.

She had two rings—one a lovely diamond ring that had been my sister-in-law and husband’s grandmother’s wedding ring, the other an also lovely but much smaller ring that had been their grandmother’s sister’s (their Great-Aunt Ruth’s) wedding ring. My mother-in-law gave the grandmother’s ring to my sister-in-law and Great-Aunt Ruth’s ring to me—and my sister-in-law immediately offered to trade.

I asked “why?” and my sister-in-law—who had yet to fully realize how much I value a great story—told me Great-Aunt Ruth’s saga.

She’d been married to Pony, an abusive man who was a wanna-be mobster. They could not have children, and she adopted a pet monkey who she named Betty after Betty Grable. 

One day in the 1950s, Pony was furious, yet again, but instead of hitting Ruth, he picked up Betty and threw her across the room into a wall, whereupon Ruth grabbed his gun from the coffee table and shot him dead. She’d finally been pushed too far.

Ruth went to jail, Betty to the humane society.

My far in the future father-in-law, just starting out as an attorney, defended his aunt, and between a technicality and the well-known and documented abuse Ruth had endured, she did not face trial. She and Betty were reunited and moved back to Ruth’s small Ohio hometown to live out their natural days.

Well, after hearing that story, there was no way I was trading rings. Mine came with a great story!

But what to do, what to do with Aunt Ruth as a character? I imagined an essay, maybe a short story, but nothing quite felt right.

Fast forward about eighteen years later. I was chaperoning our older daughter, then in the fifth grade, on a visit to Stone Lab, The Ohio State University’s biological research station located on South Bass Island just off the coast of Ohio in Lake Erie. Another chaperone approached and pointed to a sliver of land on the horizon.

The tiny island, my fellow chaperone said, had belonged to some mysterious bootlegging gangster who built a mansion on the island during Prohibition…

Then a fifth grader got into some fifth grade shenanigans and off we ran to intervene.

But my imagination had already taken the bait. An island with a mansion owned by a Prohibition gangster? Oh… what a great setting! But what to do, what to do with it?

Now, it seems obvious. What if an Aunt Ruth inspired character moved back in time just a few decades and ended up on that island owned by a gangster…

And yet… many more years would pass before the Aunt Ruth idea and the Lake Erie gangster island idea finally ran into one another. About four years ago, they finally did, and it was just like peanut butter and chocolate coming together: two great ideas that work great together.

The result: TROUBLE ISLAND, an historical suspense that has plenty of mysteries, twists, and turns.

For me, though, one mystery remains unsolved. Why did it take my imagination more than twenty years to bring together Ruth and the island? I’ve heard writing advice that states one must develop an idea right away or it will go stale—but that has not been my experience with many ideas.

The story of Ruth simmered in the back of my mind for nearly forty years, and the setting of the island for twenty, neither working on their own, before finally they, figuratively, ran into each other and I had a moment of “ahhh…”—there’s the story.

Maybe mysteries of the imagination are meant to remain mysteries. In TROUBLE ISLAND, though, mysteries are solved—and I finally feel I’ve given Ruth’s story her due.

The novel is dedicated “In memory of Great Aunt Ruth. And to all the women who’ve survived their versions of Pony.”

 

Leave a comment, and one Jungle Red reader’s name will be drawn at random to receive a copy of TROUBLE ISLAND.

 

HANK: I have NEVER heard a story like this, NEVER!  And Sharon, congratulations on the massive buzz about his book–you know I absolutely loved it!

And I’m so interested in what Sharon said about disagreeing with “I’ve heard writing advice that states one must develop an idea right away or it will go stale…”

I agree, Sharon, sometimes it needs to percolate.

But I know Elizabeth Gilbert (is that right?) says the muse offers you an idea, and you MUST take it, or she will give it to someone else.

How about you, Reds and Readers? Surprising relatives, anyone? And do you think ideas vanish if you don’t use them right away? 

And don't forget--leave a comment to be entered to win TROUBLE ISLAND!

 

Sharon Short is the award-winning author of more than fifteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense (Minotaur Books), set in 1932 and partly inspired by true family history. Under the pen name Jess Montgomery, she also writes the Kinship Historical Mysteries, set in 1920s Appalachia. Short is a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, for which she writes the column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life)" and teaches for Writer’s Digest University. She is also a three-time recipient of the Individual Excellence Award in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council and has been a John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House (Columbus, Ohio). When not writing, Sharon enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, swimming, and hiking. Learn more about her work at www.sharonshort.com.