Gerri Lewis knows all about death...

 

HALLIE EPHRON: As mystery writers, it's a given that we write about death.

This comes with the warning: Respect death! DON'T allow your characters to make light of death or reduce it to a plot point. Even (and especially!) when you're writing an amateur sleuth

We're supposed to engage and entertain even as the body count mounts.

Gerri Lewis comes at this challenge with with exceptional credentials and hard-earned sensitivity to the reality of death.

Her second "Deadly Deadlines" mystery (Grave Words, dropping June 10) features Winter Snow, an obituary writer who is as equipped to investigate deaths as Gerri herself is to write about them.

GERRI LEWIS: The comments I get about the character (Winter Snow) in my Deadly Deadlines Mystery series sometimes pile up faster than a publisher’s slush pile.

So, you probably want to know what a nice girl like me is doing writing about obituaries?

Writers crave praise like a chocoholic needs a daily fix because those validations can be the confidence boost it takes to write the next word. And yet, the greatest writing compliments I've ever received didn't come from the many awards and accolades I've accumulated during my career as a journalist.

The compliments I treasure come from people like the father of a young man who was barely out of his teens when he died in a car accident. The dad had pulled a yellowing news clip from his pocket and told a crowd of a hundred people at my library talk that an obit I had written had brought their family comfort.

Sometimes praise is unexpected like that from the family of a young woman who committed suicide. They used the obit to notify long distance acquaintances. Then there was the obituary I wrote about a 101-year-old woman whose family never realized that one of the many quilts she created sits in a museum.

Since the early years of my writing career when I was first sent by our local newspaper to write obituaries, I’ve become a go-to person in my community to help people tell the stories.

What I’ve learned is that obituaries aren’t only end-of-life notices. They facilitate acceptance for those grieving. They immortalize a person for their earthly accomplishments. They will live in genealogical and historical documents, community memory and on the internet for perpetuity.

I think of an obituary writer as the keeper of the collective conscience.

Not to mention, obituaries are great fodder for mystery writers.

And so, meet obit writer Winter Snow, the protagonist in my debut mystery, The Last Word, and my second book, Grave Words, releasing June 10. Winter is a 29-year-old former reporter forced to take a buy out when the paper was taken over by a large conglomerate.

I can’t think of anyone better to go through the growing pains of writing than a person who must balance the seriousness of her job with the humor she finds along the way. And who better than Winter and her friends to happen upon the deadly mysteries set in my charming hometown of Ridgefield.

If "write what you know" is an author’s mantra, I can tell you that I’ve written many obituaries. Incorporating the things I’ve learned into Winter’s character and nudging her fledgling business along while offering something sinister is great fun.

If Marie Kondo can find joy in my messy closet, then Winter Snow can find joy in writing obits.

Did the deceased survive two pandemics and two world wars?
Did they like potato chips?
Or secretly write poetry? Which makes Winter wonder—what other secrets did they have?

Obituaries are also a great segue into many other aspects of a story. How do you share historical fact without sounding like a history lesson?

In THE LAST WORD, Winter is asked to write obituaries for three Revolutionary War soldiers whose remains were found when a renovation turned to an excavation on a Main Street property in Ridgefield.

Funeral parlors, caskets and wakes are all good ways for Winter and her friend Carla, a funeral home director, to balance the somber with humor.

 Ask yourself. Would you climb into a casket to hide from a potential murderer?

So why did a nice girl like me pick an obituary writer as a protagonist? Maybe because life stories matter. Besides, as Winter would shrug her shoulders and say, “it’s a living.”

HALLIE: Gerri will be here today to talk about her high wire act, incorporating (respectfully) suspicious deaths into a page turner with an amateur sleuth at the helm.