Kay is here to talk about the question authors dread. And she's giving away a copy of AFTER YOU’VE GONE to one lucky commenter!
KAY KENDALL: “Where do you get your ideas?”
If you hang around with authors long enough, you’ll invariably hear one say, “Someone asked me a silly question at my book event yesterday.” Then the second will chime in. “Right, I bet it was the old stand-by, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’” The third replies, “Hate answering that, and it comes up often.”
The first time I heard a conversation like that, I mentally patted myself on the back, thinking “Whew, at least I never asked that silly question.” Sure I asked plenty of others as I prepared to become a published author, but not that one.
By then I knew that ideas can float up from anywhere, often from the unlikeliest places. I was reminded of this when I read Deborah Crombie’s post here on Jungle Red last week about including maps in her mysteries. She shared examples and extolled the delights of working with her illustrator Laura to prepare maps to show the terrain of her plots.
Now, I happen to be a keen aficionado of maps. A good in-depth map thrills me. In my travels, the best I’ve seen are put out by German publishers—I swear some show every tree. Also, in the UK the Ordinance Survey maps are splendid, offered with astonishing levels of detail. While I was admiring Deborah’s maps online, I recalled other mysteries that contained maps (for example, Donna Leon’s mysteries always include maps of Venice). I was blissed out just thinking about them. And then it hit me. I could include a map in my next mystery! What an idea. And why had it never occurred to me before? See. Ideas can bubble up anywhere, anytime. So, thank you Deborah Crombie.
I realize that when I write, I’m working from a mental map of the places my characters inhabit. For my first two mysteries, I used places that already existed in the cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Seattle in the late 1960s. I consulted maps that showed streets and landmark buildings, making sure that my people were situated properly. I made nothing up.
In my new book, AFTER YOU’VE GONE—AN AUSTIN STARR MYSTERY PREQUEL, I made up a fictitious small town in Texas. I called it Gunmetal. (I checked. There isn’t one, but there is a Gun Barrel in Texas. Of course.) I situated my town near the real ones of Cuero and Yoakum. The first time I ever saw Spanish moss on trees was when I visited cousins in Cuero, and my father was born nearby in Yoakum. While I know lots about those towns, I wanted to be free to imagine my own places and not feel bad if I were to hurt any current residents’ feelings by what I wrote. Large cities I’d written about before were different. Small towns didn’t seem like fair game.
I would’ve liked to show readers of AFTER YOU’VE GONE where Gunmetal was located on a map. Although I say in the book that Gunmetal is near Cuero, many readers will never have heard of Cuero (pop. 8,200). Likewise, when I note that Gunmetal is in-between Houston to the east and San Antonio to the southwest, this may not leap to their minds either. My mystery is set in 1923, and my amateur sleuth Wallie MacGregor and her Aunt Ida take a road trip in a brand new Buick motorcar to visit a relative in Houston, 150 miles away. In those days the trip took eight hours or more. Today it takes less than three.
I wish I’d included a map that shows the house twenty-three-year-old Wallie lives in with her father, the judge. Her real name is Walter, after her father, and her male name seems to have made her extra spunky. They live in a large Queen Ann Victorian, with an empty lot to the right and standoffish neighbors to the left—so
mean that they hate Wallie’s beagle puppy Holler on sight. Wallie takes a walk with her dad’s hunting dog across town, across the tracks to the colored part of town, where their housekeeper Athalia lives—she doesn’t have a phone. Now I long to show my readers those things on a map. And then of course there’s the location of the so-called accident that induces Wallie to prove it was murder. And I think … Well, next time I will include a map.
Luckily for me, Vienna, Austria, is the location of my next book. Austin Starr’s grandmother Wallie flies over there in 1970 to help her granddaughter when she becomes a suspect in a grisly murder. There will be lots of beautiful historic places to situate the explosions and gun battles I have planned. And this time you will see those locations on a map—or perhaps even on two.
What are examples of books you’ve read that included maps—besides those wonderful ones by Deborah Crombie? And are any of you location challenged? My super smart gal pal is and could get lost in a ladies room in a hotel. She can’t even read a map, although she got all A’s in college. Is anyone else like that?
And a copy of AFTER YOU’VE GONE to one lucky commenter!
Kay Kendall writes the Austin Starr mystery series (austinstarr.com ). After You've Gone (February 2019) is a prequel featuring Austin Starr’s grandmother who comes of age during the Roaring Twenties and Prohibition. This amateur sleuth searches for the killer of her uncle—who just happens to be a famous rumrunner in Texas. The first two Austin Starr books capture the spirit and turbulence of the 1960s. Desolation Row (2013) and Rainy Day Women (2015) show Austin as a young Texas bride, forced to the frontlines of societal change by her draft-resisting husband. Austin copes by turning amateur sleuth. The latter mystery won two Silver Falchion Awards in 2016 at Killer Nashville. In all her fiction, Kay shows how patterns of human nature repeat down the decades, no matter what historical age one reads about.
Before Kay began to write fiction, she was an award-winning international public relations executive, working in the US, Canada, the Soviet Union, and Europe. Ask her about working in Moscow during the Cold War. She and her Canadian husband live in Texas with three rescue rabbits and one bemused spaniel. She is president of the Southwest Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.
http://AustinStarr.com
www.facebook.com/KayKendallAuthor /
@kaylee_kendall
Kay blogs monthly on 3rd Wednesday of each month at https://thestilettogang.blogspot.com/ ##
