You Can Take the Writer Out of Mysteries…. Laura S. Anderson

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Picture it — Anne Bolelyn gives King Henry VIII the son he so desperately wants, who grows up to be England's king — instead of Queen Elizabeth. This intriguing "what if" is the basis of novelist Laura S. Anderson's alternative historical fiction trilogy about Anne Boleyn's son.

I remember tossing The Boleyn King, the first in the series, in my bag for an eighteen-hour flight from New York City to Honolulu. Well, in all that time, I barely looked up from the page — finishing just before we started our descent to Hawaii. Yes, it was that enthralling.

Here's the official description of the The Boleyn King:

Just seventeen years old, Henry IX, known as William, is a king bound by the restraints of the regency yet anxious to prove himself. With the French threatening battle and the Catholics sowing the seeds of rebellion at home, William trusts only three people: his older sister Elizabeth; his best friend and loyal counselor, Dominic; and Minuette, a young orphan raised as a royal ward by William’s mother, Anne Boleyn.
 
Against a tide of secrets, betrayal, and murder, William finds himself fighting for the very soul of his kingdom. Then, when he and Dominic both fall in love with Minuette, romantic obsession looms over a new generation of Tudors. One among them will pay the price for a king’s desire, as a shocking twist of fate changes England’s fortunes forever.

And I'm going to let Laura describe herself, since she does it so winningly:

Laura Andersen has one husband, four children, and a

college degree in English that she puts to non-profitable use by reading everything she can lay her hands on. Books, shoes, and travel are her fiscal downfalls, which she justifies because all three ‘take you places.’ She loves the ocean (but not sand), forests (but not camping), good food (but not cooking), and shopping (there is no downside.) Historical fiction offers her all the pleasure of visiting the past without the inconvenience of no electricity or indoor plumbing. After more than thirty years spent west of the Rocky Mountains, she now lives in Massachusetts with her family.

And now, I'm honored to introduce novelist Laura S. Anderson on mysteries, secrets, dead bodies, and more….

LAURA S. ANDERSON: Once upon a time there was a woman whose secret dream was to write. After years of writing silently in the background, rarely speaking of her dream, her friends dared her to do it. Finish a novel, they said, and when it’s finished we’ll read it in book club. She took the dare, and ten months later her first novel was complete.

      Clearly I work well under the threat of public humiliation.

     That first novel (and the second) was a historical mystery. From the time I could read by myself, I devoured the Bobbsey Twins and Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. When I was eleven, I discovered Agatha Christie. And in my best college class ever, I took a senior seminar on The Mystery Novel. Everything from Ellery Queen to Dostoyevsky, as well as an introduction to several of my enduringly favorite authors: Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers. I distinctly remember reading A Morbid Taste for Bones, featuring Peters’ medieval Brother Cadfael and thinking, “I didn’t know you could do this!” Mix history and mystery . . . who knew?

    

Passion, however, doesn’t always equal skill. Those first novels—like most first novels—were not received to rapturous acclaim in the publishing world. I wrote other books, ones without an overt mystery, and finally landed on the publishing path. While receiving a long string of rejections for a YA time travel novel, I sent my agent the third manuscript I’d written, an alternate history featuring the imaginary son of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. “I love it!” she said. “Make it a trilogy.”

     With no idea how to do it, I tore apart that long novel and set about creating a new coherent plot on which to center the first book. And that’s where my love of mysteries came to my rescue.

     I love every aspect of mystery novels: characters under pressure, communities fracturing from the weight of wickedness, the search for truth, the guiding principle that every single life matters and murder destroys more than just that single life.

     Then there’s structure. Mystery novels center on the answering of questions—who, what, why. I adore questions. Present me with a blank page and no structure and my mind revolts. Give my mind a starting place and it begins to spin a web of hurts, pains, desires, fears, possibilities.

     So what happens when a mystery lover is writing a non-mystery novel?

     Secrets. Lots and lots of secrets. Of which, thank goodness, the Tudors possess plenty.

     Also bodies.

     In my case, in need of a new plot structure on which to build the first book in a trilogy, I began with a body: a young woman at the bottom of a staircase with a broken neck. Did she fall or was she pushed? Why did she seek an audience with the king just before her death? Why is she carrying a scandalous broadsheet directed at Queen Anne Boleyn’s past sins? And who fathered the inconvenient child she is carrying?

     While working on the second book for Ballantine (The Boleyn

Deceit), I got a new editor: Kate Miciak. It was a name I knew, as the past or present editor of such mystery writers as Laurie R. King, Elizabeth George, Alan Bradley, Charles Todd (and now Susan Elia MacNeal.) In our first conversation, I told her that my fondest writing dream is to be able to write a good mystery novel.

     She told me I have it in me. So I continue to practice. I imagine my detective and my setting. I force my mind to construct twisty plots and wonder when I’ll be able to keep them from collapsing under their own weight. I use elements of mysteries in my alternate historicals (the first novel in my new trilogy features Queen Elizabeth I’s intelligencer, Francis Walsingham, and the young woman he persuades to spy for England.)

     And I continue to devour my favorite novels: mysteries of every sort. Cozy and procedural. Contemporary and historical. Devastated communities and committed investigators and—the final, essential ingredient for the best mysteries—hope. Hope that evil is an aberration and goodness a state to be continuously sought.

  
What do you think of the idea of alternative histories? Novelists switching genres? Defining genres?

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