You're Writing About What?

RHYS BOWEN:Last year I had the fun experience of writing a short story for an anthology edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni LP Kelner. It was called AN APPLE FOR THE CREATURE and gave me a rare chance to write something deliciously dark and spooky. But these very successful anthologies have really given Toni a taste for the supernatural and the creepy, so much so that she has recently become a shape shifter and has morphed into a new person called Leigh Perry. I'm delighted to have LEIGH PERRY guest blogging for us today so take it away Toni--I mean Leigh Let me put this right out on the table. I’ve written a mystery about a skeleton. You may be thinking So what? There are plenty of mysteries with skeletons. For starters, there’s Aaron Elkins, who’s famed for his wonderful Gideon Oliver mysteries about a forensic anthropologist using his knowledge of skeletal remains to solve crimes. Charlotte McLeod’s The Family Plot starts out with finding a mysterious skeleton in the family tomb. In fact countless books include skeletal versions of the murder victims. But here’s the difference. In A Skeleton in the Family, the skeleton isn’t the victim--he’s a sleuth. You see, he’s a living skeleton. Named Sid. Sid walks, talks, and makes really bad bone jokes. And in the first Family Skeleton mystery, he helps solve his own murder.  Needless to say, the first question I’m usually asked about the book is how I came up with the idea. Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer. Worse still, I don’t even have a funny answer. The fact is, I don’t remember. I do know that I’ve had the bare bones of the book planned since May of 2004, and have gone back to my earliest notes to see if I wrote down anything like, “I got this idea from...” But all I can find is references to noodling over the idea for a year, meaning that I first got the idea in 2003. That’s where the trail on my computer ends. From the very first, I recognized that it was a weird idea, but I just kept coming back to it. Like most writers, I’ve got tons of ideas I’ll never get around to writing, and most of the time, once I jot down an idea I forget about it until I look through my files. But Sid never left my skull. Flash forward to 2011. My “Where are the now?” series was ending, and Ginjer Buchanan, my editor at Berkley Prime Crime, asked me to pitch something new. I wrote up nine different ideas of various flavors: dark, light, straight mystery, paranormal mystery, a historical, urban fantasy. And Sid.  Ginjer went right to Sid. The ironic part is that I almost didn’t include the Family Skeleton series proposal at all. As much as I liked the premise, I still thought it was kind of weird. But my husband Steve said, “Why not?” so in it went. I never dreamed Ginjer would pick it, and I was flabbergasted when she did, though not so much that I turned down the offer. I didn’t know if anybody other than the two of us and my agent would want to read the finished book, but at the very least, I knew I’d have a great time writing it. And I really did. Now I could talk about the other characters in the book. Sid doesn’t work alone, after all. He lives with Georgia Thackery, who is technically the protagonist. Well, maybe not “lives” so much as “rattles around in the attic of.” At any rate, he’s been a part of her family since she was six, but the only other people who know about him are her parents and her older sister. Georgia has her own story. She’s an adjunct English professor who can’t seem to make tenure track, and is the single mother of a teenaged daughter. She and her sister have some sibling rivalry going on, and she doesn’t have the best luck with men. I like her a lot, and she’s also fun to write about. I think she’s a strong character. But I know darned well that it’s Sid who’s going to be remembered. There are so many mysteries with interesting, strong protagonists. (Including the books written by the Jungle Red authors.) Skeletons? Not so much. In fact, there really aren’t that many ambulatory skeletons in any kind of fiction. A talking skull which houses a demon features in Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books; Lord Shinigami in the Soul Eater anime and manga series is a skeletal death figure; and Ghost Rider looks like a skeleton, as do some other comic book characters. The most famous is Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas. But none of those are mysteries--I’ve got this particular sub-sub-sub genre all to myself. Of course, I realize that the whole ambulatory skeleton bit will lose me some readers even before they open the book. Some people aren’t going to be interested in this particular brand of whimsy, no matter how well written it might be. (I’ve already had one Goodreads review to that effect.) My sense of humor may very well turn off other readers. I can’t help that, and I can’t let myself worry about it. After all, there are readers who won’t pick up a cozy, an amateur sleuth, an academic setting, a single mother, and so on. Readers are entitled to their own preferences. I just hope there are enough people who share mine so I can keep the series going. You see, while I can’t really tell you where I came up with the idea for Sid the Skeleton, I can tell you why I want to keep writing about him: Because he tickles my funny bone. Though A Skeleton in the Family is Leigh Perry’s first book, she’s been publishing under her real name--Toni L.P. Kelner--for twenty years. She’s the author of the Laura Fleming Southern mystery novels, the “Where are they now?” mystery series, and a slew of short stories. It was while co-editing paranormal anthologies with Charlaine Harris, including the New York Times Bestselling Many Bloody Returns and Death’s Excellent Vacation, that she got her first taste of writing about the supernatural. Leigh and/or Toni lives north of Boston with her husband, two daughters, and two guinea pigs. Her personal philosophy is that we’re all skeletons under the skin. And meat, and organs, and stuff. RHYS:Leigh and I are attending Bouchercon, the big mystery convention in Albany NY today but she has promised to check in and answer comments and questions. Also she has generously agreed to give a copy of A SKELETON IN THE FAMILY to her favorite comment of the day.

Who Killed the PinUp Queen?

HANK: It's really difficult to go to a group appearance with Toni Kelner. She is SO FUNNY--and so droll and so soft-spokenly southernly hilarious, she has the audience in stitches (whatever that means) and they mob her afterwards, thronging for books. Her husband is a motivational genius, and her daughters are marvelous and hip and smart.

Bless their hearts. (Little southern humor I learned from Toni.)

Anyway--Toni is everywhere! Writing her own books, editing anthologies with someone named Charlaine Harris (heard of her?) and winning awards. She also is the absolute QUEEN of TV trivia! (We should try to stump her. Anyone? It's kind of impossible..)

But today, she's talking about another queen. A pin up queen.

The Mystery of Bettie Page

There were lots of pinup queens during the fifties, but only one Queen of the Pinups: Bettie Page. Her photos range from outdoorsy bikini shots that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow to seriously kinky bondage and domination pictures, and everything in between. But whether she was posed as a dream girl next door, a sultry vixen, a bound beauty, or a stern dominatrix, the camera loved her. Her photos were ubiquitous from 1951 to 1957--the best estimate is that she posed for half a million pictures and worked with almost all of the amateur and professional photographers in New York City. Then, at the height of her popularity, she left the modeling business.


That could have been the end of the story, but in the 1980s and 1990s, Bettie's photos started re-emerging, and artists based a multitude of drawings and comic books on her. As interest grew, the search for her began in earnest, and there were endless theories about her "disappearance." Had she been murdered by a mobster? Been abducted by a sheik for his harem? Gone into a convent? What could have happened to the so-called Dark Angel?


In 1993, Bettie finally came forward after having heard about the frenzied search. She was amazed that anybody even knew who she was, let alone cared. She'd been living in obscurity for most of her life, and was nearly broke at that point. For a few years, she would only give interviews by phone and if her likeness wasn't shown, saying that she wanted her fans to remember her as she had been, not as an old woman, but in 2003, she did allow her picture to be taken for Playboy, in which she'd last appeared as a Playmate of the Month for January 1955.


So what was the mystery of her disappearance? It was no mystery at all, really. She stopped modeling for a combination of reasons: she was getting older, the laws surrounding pinups--particularly where bondage was involved--were getting more strict, her acting career had never taken off, and she got religion. So she left New York and went on to live her life. She had some good times and sadly many bad times before fame found her again. Bettie died just over a year ago, but still continues to inspire artists, models, film makers, and even musicians (including Bob Dylan, who included an image of Bettie on the back page of the album booklet of his brand-new album, Christmas in the Heart).


More importantly to me, Bettie inspired this mystery writer to write Who Killed the Pinup Queen?, the second in my "Where are they now?" series. My protagonist Tilda Harper is a freelance entertainment reporter who specializes in tracking down the formerly famous to write about them, so Bettie Page's story is right up her alley. Tilda interviews the once buxom Sandy Sea Chest, who has discovered late in life that there's still plenty of interest in her, and who has gone public with her story. When the former model is bludgeoned to death, Tilda sets out after the killer.


When I decided to use pinup queens for a backdrop for a mystery, I knew I wanted to draw on Bettie's story. But which story should I use? The story of the disappearance, and the fans' search for her years later? The real story of her life? Or the legends about what could have happened to her? I decided to use all three.


Sandy, the murder victim, takes pleasure in her pinup past and capitalizes on it with a web site from which she sells autographed photos and t-shirts. But another former pinup Tilda encounters is desperate that her past--which she considers sordid--stay deeply hidden. And a third has disappeared completely, even more thoroughly than Bettie did, creating a special challenge for Tilda.


Of course, none of these stories are exactly what happened to Bettie Page and none of these characters are exactly like Bettie herself. Despite all that's been written about her, and all the pictures, and the movies of her, and the movies about her, she's still a bit of an enigma. I suppose the irony is that even though Bettie bared all for the camera, she still kept her secrets.
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Of course you can't wait to read the book--comment for a chance to win an autographed copy! And if you have a TV trivia question for Toni--let's see if she can answer..

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Toni L.P. Kelner multitasks. In mysteries, Who Killed the Pinup Queen?, the second in her "Where are they now?" series, is just hitting the shelves. In urban fantasy, she edits anthologies with Charlaine Harris. Death's Excellent Vacation is due out in August. In short stories, she has her first noir story coming out in March in Carolyn Haine's anthology Delta Blues. Kelner has won the Agatha Award and a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, and has been nominated for two other Agathas, four Anthonys, and two Macavitys. She lives north of Boston with author/husband Stephen Kelner, two daughters, and two guinea pigs.