Catriona Confesses

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Woohoo, and ruffles and flourishes! Today we welcome, with great fanfare, one of the dearest and best friends of the Reds, the brilliant and incomparable Catriona McPherson. A blazingly good writer, and infinitely hilarious, her books are consistently terrific--thoughtful and funny and twisty.

I don't know how she does it. Some of her books are so deeply dark and literary and thought provoking that they will break your heart (and your brain, too), and others are laugh-out-loud funny.

Today, she offers a confession.

 

Confessions of a Philistine

   By Catriona McPherson

 

In Scot’s Eggs, the eighth Last Ditch Motel mystery, the fluffy-soft, pastel-shaded innocence of an Easter holiday in Cuento, CA, is somewhat spoiled by the murder of two tourists and especially by the crime scene, which is a vintage Mustang full – like seriously full – of their blood. It’s been left in the hot sun for a week until the arrival of the turkey vultures makes someone take a closer look.

Why’d it take a week? Because the killers parked it outside the brand new art museum on the UCC campus, where the curators mistook it for the early arrival of the promised work by a young creator from an Oakland collective, who’s long been interested in decay.

I can’t lie; I had a lot of fun writing the employees of the Patsy Denoni Cultural Center and their combination of aching earnestness and corporate lock-step. Here’s just a flavour.

Fern had arrived at our side. ‘These resources are free and there is no entry charge,” she said. ‘But we encourage you to make a small donation to support our work in celebrating, promoting and protecting the diverse practices of artistic expression by the families of peoples who comprise our communities.’

 

Before any of us could answer, another woman came our way, stalking across the polished marble in spike heels. It took some kind of confidence to walk that fast in those shoes on this surface, but she was being powered by irritation.

 

‘Diverse expressions of artistic practice, Fern,’ she said. ‘The communities of peoples who comprise our family. Wait.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Diverse communities of expressive practice, to protect the arts of-’ She sniffed. ‘We suggest fifty dollars.’

 

I had even more fun describing the art itself, but it’s too gross for this blog. (Yes, I know I described a Mustang full of blood. The actual art is worse.) As ever, I need to say that the opinions expressed – here regarding the collection – are those of the fictional Lexy Campbell, nothing to do with me.

Ahem.

Honestly?

Every so often an exhibition of conceptual art blows me away completely. I saw a dozen pieces at the Serpentine in London a few years back that still haunt me – hyper-realistic and disturbing – and there’s a sliced-apart full-size house at Tate Modern with a film of 1950s DIY leaflets playing in the slices that . . . maybe you have to be there but it’s amazing. Also, I think Shedboatshed – the wee huttie dismantled, turned into a boat, sailed to the museum and reassembled into a shed again thoroughly deserved its Turner Prize. And I’ve got a lot of time for Tracy Emin. Even her Bed.

But.

The pile of wrapped sweeties (US hard candy?) in the all-white room in the National Gallery that the museum-goers are supposed to help themselves from? (And presumably suck as they walk round the rest of the exhibition? Dropping the wrappers?) It doesn’t work. There’s a security guard on duty. Who’s going to eat the art when there’s a guy in a uniform watching?

And in another room of that same exhibition, we read the card and peered about looking for the art for ages, wondering if someone had stolen it, before we realised it was the light fixture plugged in low down on one wall and tacked up and across the ceiling.

“Okay,” I remember Neil saying. “So we’re in one of those ‘But what is Art?’ exhibitions.” He cleared his throat. “So. What is Art?” There was a long silence then someone behind us whispered “You forgot to say Hey, Siri.” So we weren’t the only Philistines in there that day.

Look, I’m not saying it’s not an interesting question. (Seriously, what is Art?) only that you can’t necessarily stand in front of a pile of sweeties, ask yourself what art is for a while, then move on, ask it again underneath a light fixture, and on again and on and on, in front of, under, on top of, or sucking on another fifteen or twenty works. At some point you start wondering if the café’s any good. I do.

How about you, Jungle Red readers? Are you big fans of conceptual art? If so, have you lost any respect you ever had for me? I might as well put the cherry on top and tell you that my favourite artist is Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn then. Mostly because he painted women with love and tenderness, not as if he’d simply scoured the Bible for any page where someone’s dress fell off. And his unflinching gaze at his aging self makes me want to give him a cuddle.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  See, Reds and readers, easy question today: what is Art? 

(This always reminds me of when my editor and I were discussing one of my book covers.

She said: I’ll tell Art what you said.

 I said: Great, tell him I appreciate it.

And she said, no, there’s no Art, I meant the art department.

I mean, how’m I supposed to know that?  But that’s a question of WHO is Art. Not today’s question, which is: WHAT is art. See?  Weigh in, Reds and readers!

 

 

Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. A former linguistics professor, she is now a full-time fiction writer and has published: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik; and contemporary psychothriller standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California sneezedavissneeze.

Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com

finally, Finally, FINALLY: At Midnight Comes the Cry is here!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: To understand how excited I am today, you need to realize my last published book was released on April 4, 2020. In the 5 years, 7 months and two weeks since then, most of my writer friends have released 5-6 books. Rhys (and her co-writer Clare Broyles) have put out 14 novels, and Jenn, I assume, has published 57.

 

By the way, today is also the book birthday for FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE, the latest, much-anticipated Royal Spyness mystery, and the reason you're not reading about that book is because Rhys was gracious enough to insist I take the spotlight instead. Thank you, Rhys!

 

The prospect of the publication of AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY kicked off a lot of positive changes in my life. I finally got a new website, courtesy of Xuni.com. I figured out how to post to both Instagram and Facebook at the same time, and my daughter Virginia taught me how to do Insta stories. (Reels are still to come.) I restarted my newsletter, News From the Kill - with many thanks to Jenn, who inspired me to try Substack, where she hosts her own newsletter. 

 

 And I just feel, well, more on top of things. More organized, more able to take one the myriad of tasks popping up every day. Part if that is undoubtedly because Karma and Janey have returned to Victoria's house (dogsitting those two was the LONGEST three weeks of my life.) Part of it is due to my friend Celia Wakefield's suggestions, tips, techniques and plain old kicking me in the butt. Which is why this book is dedicated to her.

 

 Surprise, Celia!

 

Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me during the long, long, LONG journey to seeing the 10th Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery in bookstores. I love you, and even more importantly, appreciate you all. I hope to see some of you while I'm on tour, or, next spring, at Malice Domestic. When we meet up, rest assured, the drinks are on me!

Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The frustrating thing is that sometimes it is so easy and sometimes it is so hard. And right now it is so hard. I am working like mad on a book synopsis, a proposal, and all I need, all I need! is the name of the main character.

Sometimes the names just show up, like Prime Time's Charlotte McNally, there was no question but that Charlotte was her name. (Although, if I had to do it over, I'd bet I would change it, the McNally at least, it seems too cute now,  but that's another story.)

 

And, come to think about it, everybody in the Prime Time series had an instant name, they just arrived, fully formed, Franklin and Penny and even Josh Gelston, which was an amalgam of a strong first name and the last name of my first boyfriend. (Imagine my surprise when I got an email from someone named Josh Gelston, who was something like a caterer for a rock band, who wondered where I had found his name. In my imagination, is the answer!)

Anyway, Jane Ryland, let’s see. That one was SO hard! I had Jane Elizabeth, right off the bat. I worked and worked and worked and had 1 million last names for her, I cannot begin to tell you, and honestly on the way to New York, for a publishing conference I realized I had to come up with a last name for her.  And I said to myself: the next name I see out of the window of this train is going to be her name. And there it was, a massive billboard, I am not kidding, for Ryland Industries. Okay, I thought, got it! Everybody loved Jane Ryland. And then, in one of my first book events, someone ask me “why did you name your main character with the same last name as yours. I was completely baffled. And then I realized. No wonder it sounded familiar.

Anyway, as I said,  I am now trying to name characters in a synopsis in progress. (And I use the term "progress" loosely.) And I cannot come up with the main character name.

I am sitting here looking at the 2025 commencement program from the University of Massachusetts that has fifty million names in it. I have looked through the entire graduating class, thousands and thousands of names. And there is not one that I can find that I can use. Just randomly Ana Gretchen Chapman. Sara Elizabeth Chappelle . Haley Charles . Mia Charles. Desteny Ann Charon. Christina Chen. Catherine Grace Chu. Erica Clarkman. Katie Lynn Clifford. Bridget Breanne Coughlin. Riley Collins. 

Okay, Wait, Riley Collins? Briley? Or maybe Collin Briley. Or, no, Colleen Briley! Wait, I had a Briley in another book.  See the problem? AND a Colleen.

I know there are all those things like the Social Security list of names, and the missing money list, I always look at that. I always look at the credits at the end of TV show shows, they are always fascinating, and maybe why I have so many British sounding names in my books.  

There’s also the tendency to come up with the name with the same first letter. In a previous attempts at a synopsis, I had Annie, all good. Then another character Ava. Then Aiden. That’s just not gonna work. 

Sometimes I just open a random book and look at the names and see if those names remind me of any other names that might remind me of any other names. I really think the best way of finding a name is that it just comes to you at some point. 

You just have to let it appear as you write.

Jenn, your dubious main character has such an interesting name, where did that come from? And Rhys, you’re always having to be careful of history when you choose a name.  And people who write contemporary novels have different kinds of choices.

Reds and readers, tell me your thoughts about names! 

RHYS BOWEN: As Hank said I do have an extra challenge for names as I write historical characters. They have to be right for the time and place.  And in the case of the Royal Spyness novels they have to witty or amusing. So I adore using silly nicknames like Binky and Fig and Podge (some of which are stolen from John’s family members who still have silly nicknames.). My favorite name so far is Lady Wormwood, Fig’s mother. I still chuckle every time I use it.

Sometimes I find I’ve used the wrong name for a character and the story is  plodding along and one day the character says, “Why do you keep calling me Richard when my name is Robert?” And I say “oh sorry” and then the story leaps ahead. It’s true that I believe Elmore Leonard said Once you have the name you have the person. Get the name right and you know exactly who they are. I changed my Scottish inspector’s name in the upcoming From Sea to Skye about five times until I finally realized he was Melrose.

So the only advice I can give to Hank is not to try too hard. Let the name come to you. You’ll wake in the middle of one night and say “Oh of Course. She’s not Abby, she’s Maddy!"

HANK: That is absolutely what happens! 

LUCY BURDETTE: This is funny Hank, as I've just been finishing the murder mystery for the Key West library to be held in February.  The Key West Woman's Club is co-sponsoring the event with the Friends, so I wanted it to have a KWWC cookbook theme. I took several of the characters from the list of Woman's Club members who worked on previous editions of the cookbook, with names like Mrs. Lee Goddard, Mrs. Frank Bowser, Ruth Munder, etc. I lifted the victim from my own THE KEY LIME CRIME. So in answer to your question Hank, it depends on the project!

JENN McKINLAY: Such a great question, Hank! The main character from WITCHES OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN - Zoanne Zakias - was taken from a girl in my judo class when I was 10 years old! I knew even back then it was a cool name. Thanks, ZZ,  wherever you are! 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I have a terrible tendency to insert the names of friends and family members for incidental characters and then not being able to change them out later because they become those names during the course of writing the first manuscript!

 

My biggest bugaboo when it comes to character names is getting them right for the age of the character and the socio-economic class they were born into. There's potentially a wide gap between Nathanial and Jaxon, and there's fifty years of time between Billy and Braydon.

HALLIE EPHRON: For me, names evolve, and I OFTEN change the name of my protagonist once I figure out who she is by what she does. I try not to start with a name that will be difficult to isolate by the search-and-replace function. (No Sue’s or Ann’s - those letters turn up together in too many innocent words.) I can be changing names in the final edit. 

HANK: Oh, definitely. Me,too. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, I look at TV and movie credits, too, mostly British, and authors of books on my shelves, or people in the news. But one thing I always check is the most popular UK baby names for the years around my character’s age. Which doesn’t mean I can’t pull something out of left field, or have a character named after an older relative, although that would have to be mentioned. And sometimes names just click. A character in the current book is called Karo, short for Karoline with a K. No idea where that came from. Also Quill, whose last name is Quillen. No idea on that one, either!

HANK: That’s my very favorite, when the name just pops into your mind. It proves it's the right name! 

How about you, Reds and readers. Do you like your characters to have quirky names?  Do you think there are names that  instantly  fit a category, like Tiffany or Rex or Claire or Trixie or Emmaline or Betsy?  (Oh, Emmaline!) 

Do you prefer your characters to be Janes and Davids?

Do you notice diversity in names? Do you ever notice a trend in names? Once my pal Hannah and I came out with a book the same cycle–with the main character Lily. How does that happen? We did NOT know about the other’s naming.

Let’s talk about whatever strikes your fancy about names! (Oh, Fancy!) I mean, you've all done it when you named a child or a pet, right?