J. A. Squires takes a fresh approach: Nepal, poker, and an African Gray

HALLIE EPHRON: It's hard to find something new in crime fiction., But Jeannette de Beauvoir and her collaborator, Susan E. Squires, writing together as J. A. Squires, have come up with something fresh in their series sleuth, Irene Adler. She's an anthropologist-cum-poker player with a pet African gray parrot. Her debut novel: "Assignment Nepal"

Jeanette, are you an anthropologist? Poker player? Have a parrot?

JEANNETTE DE BEAUVOIR: Susan, my co-author, is the professional anthropologist, though I studied it as well. We wanted to come up with a character whose background was familiar to us and whose work could potentially allow for time off to go away on adventures. Unfortunately, academia alone doesn't offer the kind of money that would pay for those adventures, so we were a bit stuck there ...

Then one evening I was watching the movie "Rounders," which is about people who play poker for a living, and that seemed the perfect way for Irene to finance her life: minimum time investment, maximum financial return.

Of course, then I had to actually *learn* about poker! I'm so grateful to the myriad people who have taken time to teach me about it, including the folks at Foxwoods Casino ... I understand the milieu now, but am personally still a terrible player!

And, finally, I had a brief relationship once with someone who had an African Gray. Smart bird. Incredibly obnoxious bird. Bird whose personality could fill a stadium. We didn't want Irene to have a permanent love-interest, but we did want her to have someone to come home to ... and so Corey was created.

HALLIE: Jeannette, I know your character in "Assignment Nepal" isn't Holmes's Irene Adler, but tell us why you used that name (I've always loved that character)?

JEANNETTE: Susan is the one who came up with that. Our Irene is, of course, named after Conan Doyle's Irene Adler; it seemed a nice connection to make, since she was the only person to have outsmarted Sherlock Holmes! I then gave Irene eccentric parents who named all their children after famous people, which might allow for some word- and name-play down the road.

HALLIE: Tell us about you and your co-author, and how this collaboration came about?

JEANNETTE: Susan and I have been friends for more years than I care to count; we met when both working for the Department of Mental Health in Massachusetts, which probably says something about us, though I'm not sure exactly what! We've always had similar interests, and early on collaborated on a photography project as well as some journal articles ... and that seemed to work well, so we started talking about what else we might try.

Susan had been to Nepal, and experienced a great deal of what Irene experiences there (sans the murder and mystery, of course!), so we decided to try our hand at collaborating on a mystery. Almost immediately we knew that we didn't want it to stop there, that Irene was interesting enough to grow into a series, so ...

HALLIE: How do you partner in the writing, and how is it different from writing solo?

JEANNETTE: By and large, Susan is the plot person. She's really good at figuring ways out of the corners I often paint us into, at seeing inconsistencies, at making the story make sense. She never panics, a trait I admire and cannot for the life of me emulate. I do all the writing—while this is my first adventure in *mystery* writing, I've been published (mostly in historical fiction) under a couple of other pen names, so the writing part and character development come easily to me.

When I was first starting out, I did some work-for-hire ghostwriting assignments (I guess you could say they were my equivalent of playing poker for a living!): the publisher gave me a detailed plot, character sketches, etc., and I connected the dots and put the book together. In some ways, working with Susan is similar: we work from a detailed plot that I deviate from as little as possible, and always at my peril!

This is very different from the way I work alone. I start out with a general idea of where things are going, but I get immersed in my characters, their dialogue, their interactions, and almost always they lead me somewhere else. I can generally come up with a plot summary for my novels—but only *after* they've been written!

So this is a challenge to me, as I'm sure it is to Susan, who's far more analytical than I am!

HALLIE: Your decision about how to publish this book is still a bit unusual. Tell us about it.

JEANNETTE: I should start by saying that I am a collector of books. I have a study that could easily double as a library. I love books and I agree that there really is nothing like holding a hardcover book in one's hands. That said, we decided to publish this series with Echelon in ebook format only. I'm not going to get involved in the electronic versus paper argument that's being waged every day across the internet (does anyone see just a little irony in that?): I think there's a place for both, and I'm excited about the convenience of ebooks—I carry about a hundred around with me every day. That continues to amaze me.

Here's the thing, Hallie: crime fiction is a crowded field, and its devotees devour books (I know: I'm one of them) more quickly than said books can come off the presses. So the flexibility of not *including* presses at all appealed to us. Ebook sales are skyrocketing, and it seems a format that more people might be willing to take a chance on a new author/character/series with, as it's generally less expensive and more quickly available.

HALLIE: What's next for Irene Adler an J. A. Squires?

JEANNETTE: Irene's off to Oxford, England, where a professor with a murky past has just been murdered, which may have to do with a cult, or his recent academic work around the "real" Robin Hood, or ... stay tuned and find out! We are expecting Irene to have a number of "assignments" that will take her to interesting places (I spent three happy weeks in Oxford this past summer researching the milieu for the second book) and, hopefully, show her growth both as a person and as an amateur detective.

HALLIE: Thanks, Jeanette! Hoping this venture deals you a winning hand!

Chime in if you want to talk about collaborating, or going digital, or African Grays, or winning at poker.

On Jo and Joy and Irene and Elizabeth and Piglet...

HALLIE: "I'm Hermoine!" comes the breathless announcement. Another person with too much time on his/her hands has taken the Harry Potter Personality Quiz. Or "I'm Ginny." Or "I'm Harry!" God forbid you turned out to be Hagrid.

But it gets me thinking about the March sisters as Louisa May Alcott fictionalized her real sisters in "Little Women." She certainly gave her readers a choice of characters to relate to. There was Jo, the tall gangly one (I used to think of myself as tall and gangly), prickly and rebellious, who wrote in her journal and yearned for an independent life. Louisa May, a spinster, based Jo on herself, and said that if it weren't for her readers' expectations she'd never have had Jo get married.

Like Jo, Louise May was the second oldest of four sisters, a 'middle' child. Jo is especially close to Beth, her gentle, shy, sickly and doomed younger sister. The youngest, the artistic Amy with her blond curls, is vain and spoiled and adorable. The oldest, Meg, is nurturing, rule-bound and proper.

Researching the entry for "Little Women" in "The Bibliophile's Devotional" which comes out next month, I discovered that Louise May was pressured by her publisher to write "Little Women." In her journal she wrote, "I don't enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it." (I also discovered that Virginia Woolf doubted the staying power of her own work. Of her "A Room of One's Own," Woolf wrote: "I forecast, then, that I shall get no criticism, except of the evasive jocular kind." Fortunately she was dead wrong.)

So are you a Jo or an Amy? An Alice (in Wonderland) or a Dorothy Gale? A Tarzan or a Jane? Or what other character from literature do you identify with?

RO: I never identified with any of the Little Women...they were all such goody goodies..and the whole Marmy thing put me off. Although my circumstances weren't quite so dire I did have a brief identification with Francie, the little girl in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." I didn't have to sell scrap metal as a child but it was the only book I knew of that was set in Brooklyn...and we were - if not quite as poor - certainly not well off. Then again..I also identified with Joy Adamson who wrote "Born Free." I wasn't exactly an Englishwoman living in Africa and raising lion cubs, but I thought I might be one day. I think it was the fact that she had no real job and got to hang out with animals all day that attracted me. It still does.

JAN: Elizabeth Bennett in "Pride and Prejudice." The intelligent form of Cinderella, isn't that every little girl's dream?? But to show you where my mind is at -- I had to really scrounge around for a female protagonist to relate to, but could immediately tick off three fictional male characters I was in love with....but hey, that's another blog.

HALLIE: That IS an interesting question. I carried the torch for ages for Gilbert Blythe. Points to anyone who remembers whose main squeeze he turned out to be.

ROBERTA: I think I'd have to go with Mole in "The Wind in the Willows." He was very interested in adventures with his pals, especially if they included picnics, but basically a homebody--not a river animal at all. Or maybe Piglet in "Winnie the Pooh":).

HANK: Little Women, no, never connected with them, somehow. Too sad.

I wanted to be Irene Adler, you know? Sherlock Holmes' nemesis and maybe-love? (In Pooh, I'm definitely Eeyore. Roberta, you are, as always, wonderful.) This is an interesting question, actually, since when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a character I can't remember the name of--she was voted the class president in some coming-of-age series of books about teenagers. She was always working really hard, and doing her best, all that. It wasn't Trixie Belden, but it was something like that. And there was some horse-owning girl in a series back then--I think her name was Connemara McGuire. (Oh. And I named my main character Charlotte McNally. I have not thought about that until this second.)

But as a high-schooler, oh, I was in LOVE with Henry V. I mean, I dreamed about him. So I guess I wanted to be...Eleanor of Aquitaine or whoever that was. And oh, Maid Marian, definitely. And Rowena in Ivanhoe.(Or Rebecca, I could never decide.)

HALLIE: Oooh, Irene Adler -- great choice! And I do see Roberta as sweet Piglet or Mole. This question is something of a Rorschach. Does it make you think of the adventures or the clothes or the food or the pets or the men in the characters' lives? Hmm.

So, gentle and not-so-gentle readers... which character is your alter ego? And first person who posts a comment identifying Gilbert Blythe's plucky girlfriend gets a copy of The Bibliophile's Devotional.

And stay tuned. Wednesday we hear from author/chef Lora Brody on cooking for Julia Child (it involves a rubber chicken). Friday Elizabeth Benedict talks about her new book of essays, "Muses, Mentors and Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives."