I met the sensational Wendy Delaney some years ago at Left Coast Crime in Portland, Oregon. I’m a fan of her work, and I’m delighted she’s joined me on HELP FROM MY FRIENDS Friday! ~ Donnell
By Wendy Delaney
It’s a glorious feeling when a story idea starts to bloom in a writer’s brain.
Over ten years ago, I had what I had hoped was a good idea, not just for one book but for a multi-book series. Okay, in all honesty, I wasn’t so sure it was that good of an idea, but as a fledgling mystery writer it was something I was excited about because I had been surfing the Web and stumbled upon an article that I found very interesting. It was about the Wizards Project.
This was a research project that studied the ability of people to detect lies and found that a very small percentage of the population has this ability. The study called these very special individuals Truth Wizards. I read that article and within minutes, Charmaine, the human lie detector/sleuth in my Working Stiffs cozy mystery series, was born. Okay, more accurately she was conceived, but I knew in my bones I was onto something.
After a bit of “think” time, I decided that Char should work for a coroner (you know, someone who might have some mysteries that need solving), and I had the good fortune of chatting online with the prosecutor/coroner of a rural Washington county. She was kind enough to answer some questions. A week later, we met in-person and after I told this very generous county prosecutor about my fictional sleuth, I asked her the make or break question: “Would you hire such a person to work for you?” Her answer was “in a heartbeat,” and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I had a viable story idea. Wahoo!
That was the “green light” to get to work on my first mystery novel. That eventually became Trudy, Madly, Deeply, Working Stiffs Mystery, book 1, that debuted in 2013.
Why did it take so long for my story to go from the idea stage to published novel? I was a very left-brained programmer/analyst at the time, and I probably over-analyzed every aspect of the series I wanted to create. However, on the positive side, I gave myself the time to create something that I feel is critical to my series: a sense of community.
I wanted that feeling of coming “home” for Char as well as for the reader—that place where we feel connected to people we know and love. To populate that place I borrowed from the most influential people in my life—my parents and grandparents as well as my favorite “guy,” my husband. Yes, no one from my past and present is safe from showing up in one of my books!
While I want the writing and reading experience of spending time in Char’s story world of Port Merritt (a fictional small town near Seattle) to feel as comfortable as slipping on a old pair of cushy slippers, each book in the series needs to stand alone. Also the mystery must serve as a challenge for Char and the reader to solve while pulling on the threads of some continuing story lines.
Let’s face it – life can be messy and even the best of relationships are often complicated. When you’re a human lie detector, I think your relationships could be especially complicated. That’s why I gave Char a B-list, Hollywood actress-mother known more for her physical attributes than her acting skills—pretty much a professional liar who chose her career over being a “mom” to her daughter. So when Marietta, Char’s mother, blows into town … well, like I mentioned, it’s definitely complicated.
As a character stated in a TV show I was watching recently, “Mothers and daughters.” Everyone around her nodded like no more needed to be added to that pithy line. Heck, I was nodding as if I were there with them. Going back “home” isn’t always easy. It wasn’t for me as an adult when I was single and between jobs much like Char is at the start of Trudy, Madly, Deeply, and it definitely wasn’t when my mother needed me as a caregiver years later.
Complicated relationships provide great fodder for fiction. Wounds of the heart don’t heal easily. Truths from our childhood that we thought we had understood can reveal themselves in such a way that we come to realize we don’t understand a darned thing! And while we may be the “stars” of our own stories, all the other players in our lives are the stars of theirs, and they may have goals and needs that don’t “play well” with ours. This can be downright annoying in real life, but absolutely essential in a mystery series of seven books like mine (as of December 2019). Otherwise, the stories can start to feel episodic and flat.
Stuff happens. That’s life. That’s also the definition of plot. There is forward movement with the telling of the story. I believe this also needs to happen book-to-book in a series, and it’s certainly my goal to make all the stories within the story entertaining. It’s also my great pleasure because, in the words of many of my readers, I can’t wait to find out what happens next!
Thank you for visiting today, and thank you, Donnell, for welcoming me to your blog.
About Wendy Delaney:
Wendy writes fun-filled cozy mysteries and is the award-winning author of the Working Stiffs Mystery series. A long-time member of Mystery Writers of America, she’s a Food Network addict and pastry chef wannabe. When she’s not killing off story people she can be found on her treadmill, working off the calories from her latest culinary adventure. Wendy lives in the Seattle area with the love of her life and is a proud grandma.
Her latest book is Crazy, Stupid, Dead (Working Stiffs Mystery, #7).
Death was by drowning . . . but in her bathtub?
The crazy way Naomi died was all everyone talked about at her funeral.
Weeks later, the question remains: How could that nice old lady get herself into lethally hot water by mixing drugs and alcohol?
By all appearances, there’s nothing to indicate foul play.
But human lie detector Charmaine Digby knows that appearances can be deceiving.
When Char starts sleuthing, the strange truth surrounding Naomi’s puzzling death begins to emerge, but can she crack the case before the killer gets away with murder?
Visit Wendy at www.wendydelaney.com.
