Lucy Burdette Muses About a Long Mystery Series

 

LUCY BURDETTE: Today is the day that the paperback copy of A POISONOUS PALATE, Key West mystery #14, hits bookshelves. The ebook is also on sale through July 11. (And of course, THE MANGO MURDERS is coming on August 12.) Who knew the series would go this long? Not me!

To celebrate this milestone, I decided to share some thoughts about a topic I wrestle with every time I begin a new book: How to keep this long series fresh. I know that series readers (including me!) like to read about familiar characters and places. This can be a comfortable place to retreat when the world feels so scary and unpredictable. But I don’t want to be bored and I sure don’t want to bore you. I have some ideas about what keeps me reading--the sleuth's stake in the mystery, the characters growing and changing, interesting layers in a familiar setting. Here are some examples...

When beginning a book, I start by thinking about Hayley’s stake in getting mixed up in murder. Since she’s a food critic, not a cop, she has no legitimate reason for crime solving—being nosy isn’t enough. So how do I make sure readers find her believable? In the first book, AN APPETITE FOR MURDER, Hayley was the suspect in a death involving a poisoned key lime pie. She had to poke around or end up in jail. (Obviously, she can't be a suspect in every installment.) In the second book, DEATH IN FOUR COURSES, Hayley finds the victim at an important foodie reception and a dear friend of hers is implicated in the murder. She’s very motivated to help clear his name. Ditto with book four, MURDER WITH GANACHE. Her parents are visiting the island for the first time, along with her stepbrother, who disappears into the spring break crowd. They can’t leave him in trouble, so the chase is on. Each book tackles her involvement in a different way.

I also like to watch my characters grow and change, and I love introducing new facets of Key West in each book. For example, THE KEY LIME CRIME, #10 in the series, takes place at Christmas, a magical time in Key West. I had the most fun introducing Hayley’s new mother-in-law Helen to Key West and Hayley, and having the two of them find a body hidden in a Santa suit. (This idea came from an actual decoration that we spotted on someone’s porch.) 

I found inspiration for #12, A DISH TO DIE FOR, when I took a tour of the real Key West Woman’s Club. While there, I was gifted a copy of the second edition of their cookbook. Inside that book, I discovered so many nuggets of history that fired up my imagination. But how would I use this? I decided that Hayley’s mother, Janet, would be hired to cater a murder victim’s memorial service reception at the Woman’s Club, using recipes from their vintage Key West cookbook. Hayley and her octogenarian neighbor, Miss Gloria, sign on to work with her, hoping to cook up some clues by observing the mourners. 

With A POISONOUS PALATE, I experimented with several new things—moving the action north on the Keys to Big Pine Key and flashing back to an old murder from the 1970’s that had never been solved. 

By the way, can you guess which book in the series is less popular than others? 

If you picked A SCONE OF CONTENTION, you're right. Seems that readers who love a certain setting object to the characters going somewhere else.

Red Readers: What keeps you reading a long series, and maybe more important, what makes you stop reading? Do you dislike a series book that moves to a new setting? Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for a paperback copy of A POISONOUS PALATE.

A Poisonous Palate is launched! @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I came across this post from 2022 when I was beginning to write A Poisonous Palate. Today, hurray, we’re celebrating launch day! (That’s a long haul from idea to finished product when you think about it.) 

For me, every idea for a new book arrives a little differently—it could be a new character, or an event in Key West, or a crime I spot in one of the Key West newspapers. This one was a gift from a reader. On August 23, 2022, a fan wrote to tell me about her experience camping in the Keys in 1978. For three months, Kathryn and her friend Denise camped communally near the mangroves on Big Pine Key. She ended her email with this:

Eventually the Monroe County Sheriff showed up one night and informed us that we had 48 hours to leave or be arrested.  That started a gypsy caravan to various locations like No Name Key and camping for a while in a cemetery.  We eventually disbanded and ended up staying at the Bahia Honda State Park, where I was offered a job.  We were also offered a job house sitting.  The locals called us Gypsy Trash which we loved.  

Denise in red, Kathryn in denim

It was an unforgettable experience.  We never discovered any dead bodies.  It was a strange time where we were taking chances on strangers that seems reckless now, but we only encountered good people.  We ended up going back to Michigan but wonder what if we had stayed there?

Can’t you imagine how my writer’s brain was racing? What if the friend she came south with disappeared, and never resurfaced? What if this character returned to the Keys in the present day to ask Hayley Snow to help her figure out what happened? I had to tell this story. I had a long chat with the real Kathryn to hear more details, and obtained her permission to use this idea as my starting point. Of course, my story is not her story. Of course, there are dead bodies. And of course, I took the Monroe County Sheriff’s Police Academy over the next six months and corrected my limited knowledge about the MCSO procedures.

I loved writing this book and hope you will enjoy reading it. The photos are from the 1970’s, with Kathryn, Denise and other campers. This is exactly how I imagined it would be.

Lucy with friend Carolyn 1978

If you don’t believe in coincidences, take a look at this photo of me and a friend Carolyn in 1978. We were operating in a parallel universe along with Kathryn and Denise, only in Tennessee. I'm so grateful that Kathryn wrote, directing me to this new book. Can you think of an eerie coincidence in your life that sparked a new path?

I hope you’ll enjoy the story in A Poisonous Palate, which is available now in hardcover, ebook, and audio!

Not Your Grandmother's Research @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Many eons ago, I did a lot of library research in college, and also graduate school. I studied psychological papers and ran small studies and did data analyses on this work and so on. These days, I do a very different kind of research for my Key West series. Since the books are set in a real place with many real restaurants and people and points of attraction, I like to immerse myself in them during the writing process. (In other words, John and I eat at those restaurants!)

But it’s not only getting the details right that’s important to me. When I am in a place, all kinds of ideas spring up, based on what I’m seeing and hearing. The idea of having to make all of the words up from scratch seems very difficult. I thought you might be interested in some of the experiences, I’ve had while working on Key West Food critic mystery number 15. I will often start a book with an idea, in this case, Hayley Snow and her mother and coworkers are on some kind of a Sunset cruise with important people from Key West. It will go wrong, of course, so I needed to take a boat ride that would go by Mallory Square. John is a very good sport about these kinds of things and this is what we found:

My writing group pal Angelo thought I might get a visit from the FBI when he heard I’d quizzed the captain about ways a boat might blow up.

One of my recurring and very popular characters is Lorenzo, a tarot card reader who works on MALLORY Square. (He is a real person named Ron.) I like to get his take on things, in this case, what sort of person might have been sitting with his fictional tarot card reader character, and what cards would be on his table. We had lunch and he did a reading for my fictional person:

I posted a query on Facebook a couple of weeks ago asking friends and readers What places in Key West they would like to see in the books. One of them mentioned White Crown Pigeon Park, which my sister had also noticed on a previous visit. So I took a ride out there and took pictures and a walk. Until I scared myself, thinking about what might happen here toward the end of this new book…

I’m not sure exactly where this next photo might get worked into a book, but it is an example of the hardships I have to endure: waffles, with fried chicken and sausage gravy at Louies Backyard. (I did walk 4 miles in order to atone for this!)

Miss Gloria has the same weakness for chicken and waffles that I do. Lest you think I’m making all this up, here she’s ordering at the Square Grouper in A POISONOUS PALATE: 

Our waitress came over with menus and water. “Our special

today is fried chicken and waffles.”

“Sold,” said Miss Gloria, slapping the menu on the table.

“Sorry,” she said after the waitress left with our

order. “If you need me to try something, we could call her back.

But that waffle was singing a very powerful siren song.”

Reds, tell us about the kinds of research you’ve either done, or noticed in the books you’ve read!

What We're Writing: Lucy's at the Beginning

 LUCY BURDETTE: Happy New Year and welcome to all Jungle Red Readers, both old and new! I’m at the beginning again, this time of book 15 in the Key West food critic mystery series, tentatively titled LAST MANGO IN PARADISE. That means I’m starting to tackle the questions of how to get both food critic Hayley Snow and her detective husband involved in a mystery, which other beloved characters must be included, and how to find something new and fresh about the setting of Key West to satisfy long-time readers and tempt new ones. 

I realized this isn’t the first time I’ve written about beginnings. Here’s what I said back in 2016 about my writing process: I try to think about the questions a therapist would ask a new patient: Why is this person here now? What drives her and feeds her passions? For an amateur sleuth, why is she getting involved? Usually this ends up having to do with good-hearted Hayley worried about a friend or relative who's landed in big trouble.

In some ways, this is the most amazing phase of writing a book. Anything is possible! Nothing is horrible because it isn't written yet! If I’ve come up with a grand idea, I haven’t had enough time or enough words to realize the many ways it just won’t work. This time around, an idea came from an op-ed in the Keys Weekly by Robert A. Jensen, who’s written a book called Personal Effects, about his life’s work as owner of the world’s largest disaster management company. His opinion piece called for the Key West authorities to prepare better for a possible ship-borne emergency in our port.

Hmmm. That’s exactly the kind of headline that jiggles my writer’s mind into fifth gear. So now I know the book will open at one of Key West’s best-known ports, Mallory Square. There will be many visitors and performers and possible witnesses—though I imagine that most of them have cocktails in hand as they enjoy the chaos, so no one is really watching…For sure, Lorenzo will be there...

Here are the first paragraphs (maybe!) from the new book...

Chapter One

 

Key West’s Sunset Celebration on Mallory Square has been a magnet for visitors to our island since the 1960s. An hour or two before sunset, the square on the waterfront begins to bustle with food and drink carts, performers and buskers of many kinds, a sprinkling of homeless folks, and purveyors of Key West-themed trinkets and tchotchkes. Everyone loves it—except the police tasked with keeping people safe, including my hubby, Nathan Bransford. I tease him that from a police officer’s perspective, it’s all about what could go wrong.

As the sun drops closer to its nighttime resting place in the Gulf of Mexico, the square grows more crowded with chattering tourists, the air ringing with performers call to action (donations to the artists!) and scented with buttered popcorn and sweet mojitos. The water off the square hums with happy revelers on sunset cruises.

I’d visited the scene hundreds of times since I moved to the southernmost point in the Florida Keys, sometimes with out-of-town guests, sometimes to check in with my dear friend and tarot card reader Lorenzo, and sometimes on my way to dinner at a nearby restaurant or a musical or dramatic performance. Tonight was the first time I would be experiencing it from the water, sailing on a cocktail cruise sponsored by my employer, Key Zest—the ezine that aspired to be the go-to source of information on all things Key West for tourists and locals alike. (Everyone knew this truth—if you wanted the real dirt on our island, you went to the locals’ Facebook group.)

Lucy again: Who knows if any of that will still be there when I write The End. But for now, how important are the first few pages of a new book? Do you give a book and its writer time to unspool, or are you impatient to be drawn in? 

PS I’ve just turned in the copyedits for book 14, A POISONOUS PALATE, and you can pre-order that here.

PPS If you didn't catch the promo video I made for this post, here's another version of it, with blooper included!

PPPS: If you haven't yet joined the Jungle Reds new private Facebook group called Reds and Readers—launched January 1st—there will be live chats, giveaways, and so much more! Join now so you don’t miss out! Leave a comment over at Reds and Readers to be entered in the drawing for A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS.

Another Cover Story @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Since next summer’s Key West mystery is number 14 in the series, I knew exactly what to expect along the way. A year and several months before the publication date, I knew I would get an email from the publisher asking for a book summary, cover ideas, and title suggestions. I try to think ahead, even though the book isn’t written yet and there isn’t even a ghost of an outline. Here’s what I sent in:

Key West food critic Hayley Snow is working on this week’s articles for Key Zest magazine when an intriguing e-mail hits her inbox, titled Hemingway’s toxic love and an old story. Catherine Davitt tells Hayley that she has returned to the Keys to research a book, but she also wants to investigate the disappearance of an old friend back in the late 1970s. The two young women were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves on Big Pine Key, until Catherine’s friend Veronica disappeared, and the Sheriff’s Office cleaned out the camp.

Ever-curious Hayley agrees to help her, and they travel up the islands to Big Pine Key to talk to some other Islanders who were around in the 70s. After chatting with one woman who has nothing much to add, they stop at an old motel to visit a man who was on the outer edges of this commune. Instead of answers, they find him murdered. It’s hard not to imagine a connection. Then Catherine disappears, leaving Hayley and Miss Gloria to unravel two possible murders, one old and one new, and track down a murderer who might very well have them in his or her sights.

As for the cover, I told them I’d love this one to look a little bit vintage, with perhaps a weathered picnic table with a Key deer nosing around in addition to the requisite cat. (There are two storylines woven together, one from the 70’s and the other today.) If we chose a vintage postcard look, I said, the title and artwork could be cached inside the words—see the Key West postcard. These are the photos I sent:

Way, way, way far down on the page, I added, 'if the vintage postcard idea isn’t chosen, another option could focus on this picnic table, with umbrella and deer and cat, but a more scruffy background as Big Pine isn’t manicured like Key West.' (I really had my fingers crossed for the vintage postcard look.)

John has a cameo:)

 

And here was the first draft I received:

Well, sigh. No deer, no vintage postcard. Though there is a turtle! (Though there is no turtle in the book...) I went to bat for a few changes, and I've come to realize that the vintage look would have distracted from the series look. It's gorgeous, don't you think?

Question for readers: How important are the details of a book's cover when choosing what to read? Do you notice changes within a series?

If you'd like to read my other cover drama stories, you can find them here:

Death in Four Courses

Killer Takeout

A Scone of Contention