Marian McMahon Stanley shares 5 lessons on publishing her first novel

HALLIE EPHRON:  Several years ago I read the opening of Marian McMahon Stanley's then unpublished novel, THE IMMACULATE. Ever since then, the nun who haunts those opening pages like Poe's raven has stuck with me. 

The book is just out, and I'm here cheering for Marian. It's a terrific heartfelt read with a fierce courageous nun whose death sets the story in motion. 

I asked her to tell us what she's learned from writing and launching her first mystery novel.

MARIAN MCMAHON STANLEY: Two years ago, I wasn’t sure where this journey of writing THE IMMACULATE would take me. I am happy to say that it’s taken me to three wonderful places - to getting published, to becoming part of a spirited writing community and to meeting a great group of readers. Here, I share five lessons I learned along the way. Probably not new to you, but were for me.

1. How hard could it be? I’ve read mysteries all my life. I’m a pretty good writer. I think I’ll write a mystery story. I mean, how hard could it be?

Oof. . . it’s hard. Pulling a tight plot together, developing a compelling storyline, creating believable characters, researching, polishing prose. The writing itself, classes, workshops, manuscript critiques, revisions, revisions, revisions. The most important lesson I’ve learned is that writing a readable mystery novel is hard work.

2. I’ll fit it in somehow. Well, hmmm. Not a great plan. Maybe because I hadn’t published a book yet, I first tried to fit my writing into the corners, the small spaces of my life that weren’t taken up with other responsibilities. Then, I evolved into an early morning writing schedule, scribbling on a yellow legal pad in the pre-dawn darkness before anyone else was awake. In the green chair in the living room, a small white dog asleep on my lap.

Now, I still start writing in the green chair, but I move to the parlor where I can close French doors against household activity as the morning progresses. I put up a WORKING sign with the Parlor Dragon on guard. The doors to my now office/parlor stay closed till I’m done. The dog still sits on my lap. Simple. Why didn’t I think of that before?

3. We live in the story. We’d better choose a story and a set of characters we can live with. I was not prepared for living in two worlds – this world and the one I was creating. I forgot my characters were not real and I worried about them. “They’re even tougher than you are, Aurelius,” I’d whisper. Or “Be wise, Rosaria. Listen.” or “For crying out loud, Leo, just let it go!” This can be disorienting, but it’s also kind of fun and enriching.

4. Even I get tired of hearing about me, but you have to do it. As a reader, I often feel inundated by author promotions. But if we don’t promote, then the book that we worked so hard on will get lost in the marsh. I’m still in the process of learning that delicate balance.

5. A bonus – the writing community! What a bessing. Sisters in Crime, the Guppies (Great Unpublished etc.), Grub Street Writing Workshop – all communities of hardworking, talented and enthusiastic authors ready to embrace and support new, unpublished writers. Generous with advice and experience – and maybe even showing up at some small bookstore where you are doing a reading on a rainy night. An unexpected and sweet benefit.

A question for you, dear reader. Which of these lessons resonate with you as a writer and/or a reader?

HALLIE: They all do for me, especially finding the time and place to write. The green chair and the white dog asleep in your lap - I love the image - and the dragon guarding your gate.

THE IMMACULATE, set in Boston, opens with the brutal murder of Sister Mary Aurelius, a tough old nun at the Immaculate Conception School. A former student, Rosaria O’Reilly, is distraught and outraged by her mentor’s death and returns to the neighborhood to find that nothing about this crime is as straightforward as it appears.

Like her protagonist, Rosaria O’Reilly, author Marian McMahon Stanley enjoyed a long corporate career with a Fortune 500 company and, more recently, a senior position at a large urban university in Boston. She is the mother of four adult children and a small pack of adorable grandchildren. She writes in Concord, where she lives with her husband Bill and – just as in the story – a Westie named Archie.

Marian’s next Rosaria O’Reilly book, BURIED TROUBLES, is set in Boston and Ireland. A young Irish journalism student visiting Boston on his independent study project pays a deadly price for his initiative as the long shadows of old grievances and crimes in Ireland reach across the Atlantic.

www.MarianMcMahonStanley.com

Edith Maxwell

JAN BROGAN -  It's my pleasure to welcome here today a friend, as well as a regular Jungle Red commenter, Edith Maxwell. Her first murder mystery, Speaking of Murder, which features Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau as sleuth, was first runner up in the Linda Howard Award for Excellence contest, and it is hitting the book shelves this week. It is published under her pen name Tace Baker by Barking Rain Press.

Why the pen name? Because when it rains success, it pours. Edith also has another book, first in her  Local Foods Mystery series, A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die, featuring organic farmer Cam Flaherty, coming out in June, published under her real name by Kensington Publishing.

Her short stories have appeared in Thin Ice and Riptide by Level Best Books, the Burning Bridges anthology, the Larcom Review, and the North Shore Weekly, with one forthcoming in the Fish Nets anthology. She is active in the Sisters in Crime Guppies group and on the board of SINC New England.

Best of all, Edith is willing to give away a free copy of Speaking of Murder to one lucky mystery fan who will be chosen at random from the comments page. So please give Edith a big round of welcoming applause.

EDITH MAXWELL/TACE BAKER: It’s such a thrill to be here in this illustrious company, and on the other side of the Comments page that I haunt every morning. Thanks for having me to visit, Jungle Reds, my esteemed mentors and pals.

Crime novels always have something bad that happens, often to someone good. Sometimes something good comes out of it, sometimes not. Four years ago something bad happened to me. One early morning I drove from my home in Ipswich, Massachusets to my job as a technical writer for a software company, as I had for the past fourteen years. By 8 AM word had already spread through the cubicles that it was a Layoff Day. Ouch. Nobody got any work done, as my colleagues and I clustered in the halls, waiting to hear who would be axed this time. When I heard the phone on my desk ring, I knew I was the next victim of a Reduction in Force (in the software industry, people speak of being RIF’d).

I drove home, stunned. I polished my resume, searched for a new job, applied for unemployment, signed up for Cobra. The economy was collapsing around us and I had no idea how long I would be out of work. But once my mood stabilized a little, I knew writing fiction would make me feel better. So I wrote a short story of murderous revenge called “Reduction in Force.” It was published in Thin Ice by Level Best Books in 2009. And then I told myself, You can’t look for a job all day long. Might as well write that book. And why not write what I knew?

I’m a native Californian who started my adult life living in Brazil as an exchange student for a year when I was 17. I earned a BA in linguistics and then taught English in Japan for two years.  I went on to earn a PhD in linguistics in southern Indiana, taught a few classes, spent a few years in high-tech in the Boston area, and spent a few more raising babies and organic vegetables north of the city. I attended a Friends meeting on Sundays and started to write crime fiction. I lived with my now ex-husband and (still-current) sons in West Africa for two separate years. When I reentered the paid work force, it was to write documentation for Avid Technology, the company that eventually RIF’d me, a company that produces a video-editing application augmented for forensics by small police departments and used to win Oscars by big film studios.

So when I started writing the book, I dreamed up a linguistics professor. Made her a Quaker, a world traveler, and a runner (did I mention I ran the Boston Marathon in 1998?). Gave her a boyfriend who is the local police department’s video forensics expert. Placed her in a fictional town very much like Ipswich, and made up a larger town nearby where I located the college where she teaches, a Friends Meeting, and a hospital. Even incorporated a fictional owner of the very real decrepit boat shop that actually burned down in Ipswich while I was writing the book. And then I followed the professor and the other characters around and wrote down what happened to them. Which turned out to be a lot.

I’m not my protagonist Lauren Rousseau, by any means. She’s younger and taller, slimmer and fitter, and is a tenured college professor, a job I never managed to snag. And she still has knees that can run, unlike me. But the research part of the book? I’d already lived much of it.

Which fictional character’s experiences would you like to have in real life? Writers, which parts of your real life did you use in your fiction? And what bad thing were you able to turn into something good?

JAN BROGAN _ Don't forget a free copy of Speaking of Murder will be sent to one lucky commenter.  Look for Edith M. Maxwell on Facebook and @edithmaxwell on Twitter. She blogs weekly at www.edithmaxwell.com. Tace Baker can be found at www.tacebaker.com, @tacebaker, and www.facebook.com/TaceBake