RHYS BOWEN: It's interesting how often in our life we become an accidental expert in a sphere we'd never have expected to. My husband John's airline career saw him as a manager of Air India.This role required that he knew all about India. We toured every part of India, including Kashmir. We cooked Indian food and entertained. When we lived in Houston there was no Indian Consul so John, as regional manager for Air India, had to step up, entertain dignitaries, go to cricket matches and find himself on the board on the Indian dance school. As such we had to attend all their performances. We became knowledgable on South Indian dance. Who ever expected that?
One of the side products of being an author is having to do research. Unless every book is set in St Mary Mead, or a bake shop, new research will be required for the setting of a new story. For the Molly Murphy series in particular I have been in constant research mode. When Molly stepped ashore in Manhattan in Murphy's Law and I realized I knew nothing about New York in 1901 I accepted I was doomed to research on every page for the rest of my writing life. This has proved to be true to an extent although I do now know my way very well about Molly's New York City. For those first books I actually walked anywhere that Molly walked around Greenwich Village and Lower Manhattan. I chose a real house for her on Patchin Place. I once said that I could now easily conduct a tour of Molly's New York and watched my publicist's eyes light up. "No, I'm not really volunteering to,' I said hastily.
But since the series began I have taken Molly into the sweat shops of the garment industry, and read the senate depositions after the Triangle Fire, the drawing rooms of the Four Hundred, to the dockyards, to the Catskills and across to Ireland. Since Clare joined me as my co-writer she has been the research whiz. She reads the New York Times for every day we are going to write about and unearths fascinating little tidbits as well as plot-driving stories.
Our new book, SILENT AS THE GRAVE, takes Molly inside the fledgling motion picture industry. In 1909 movies were made in New York with two rival companies-- Edison and Biograph. These two were fierce rivals and were not above sabotage or spying on each other. We did lots of reading and unearthed so many fascinating tidbits about early movies (and great motives for murder). Here are some of them:
1. When movies started to employ actors they refused to put actors' names in the credits, because then they'd have to pay them more. So movies paid a pittance compared with theater.
2. All stunts were done by the actors themselves at considerable risk. They clung onto moving vehicles, they shot scenes on real train tracks with real trains approaching (not knowing a movie was being shot). There were accidents and deaths.
3. Our book features many real figures from the time: Edison (who wasn't a very nice man), DW Griffith, Mary Pickford, the Marvin brothers, slightly fictionalized, and a fabulous woman called Alice Guy, whom we have fictionalized as Alice Mann. She appears on credits as a secretary but she was responsible for many innovations and inventions in movies. She invented the fade in and fade out by placing a cigar box over the lense of the camera and opening or closing it slowly.
4. Edison's new studio in the Bronx was like a giant greenhouse, thus letting in all available natural light. It also had a swimming pool on the roof so they could shoot water scenes.
All of these fascinating facts appear in SILENT AS THE GRAVE. It comes out today! Clare and I are hosting a launch party at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale. A fun tea party. It will also be streamed and here is the Facebook link if you'd like to watch: https://www.facebook.com/thepoisonedpenbookstore/videos
Now it's your turn: what is the most surprising subject on which you've become an expert? I'll send a copy of the new book to my favorite comment!
