Marian Stanley--Secrets

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am an instant fan of anyone who quotes the wonderful Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Add in Boston AND Ireland and you really have a treat. Most crime novels are driven by secrets of one sort or another, and I'd hazard a guess that the Irish have more than their fair share. I've become fascinated in the last few years with the Troubles, so am always keen to read anything that sheds light on turbulent Irish history. Here's author Marian Stanley to tell us how this ties into her latest Rosaria O'Reilly mystery. This is so intriguing!

SECRETS
Marian Stanley

“You’re only as sick as your secrets.”       

Alcoholics Anonymous

Psychologists tell us that keeping a secret can hold us in a developmental deep freeze. Life can be frozen at the point in which we learn of or even see something that can’t be shared – ever.

The emotional strain and ethics of keeping long-held secrets drive much of the narrative in the second Rosaria O’Reilly mystery BURIED TROUBLES. Set in Boston and the stunning landscape of western Ireland, the story follows a search for answers after the body of young Irish journalism student is found floating in Boston Harbor.

In BURIED TROUBLES, a man does penance his entire life in service of the secret he is keeping – not able to live authentically because he is always conscious of what he witnessed and can never talk about. This particular secret is special and unique to his home country, one wrapped in old grievances and crimes. Never far from his mind, it exerts a gravitational pull that he can’t escape.

Add a layer of Irish history with all its turmoil, complications and oppression and you have the famous Irish adage, which followed the immigrant community to Boston’s Charlestown, Southie and elsewhere. “Whatever you say, say nothin’.”  Don’t be a snitch. Don’t be a tout. Don’t tell. A code of honor which would be familiar in any inner city neighborhood today.

“You know them by their eyes, and hold your tongue”, said the beloved Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Or, as the songwriter Colum Sands from County Down, put it – “Whatever you say, say nothin’ when you talk about you know what . . . For they’ll take you off to you know where for you wouldn’t know how long.” And who is the they? It could be the oppressor or it could be your own ones.

There is a great freedom in the releasing of secrets, but releasing a secret is disruptive. There is always a price to be paid and life is never the same, both for those involved and for those who might go digging for answers. There are repercussions and sometimes great danger, as there is for Rosaria O’Reilly in this story. Danger from those who won’t let go of the past and its secrets, danger of a different sort in an old flame from her University of Galway days who threatens Rosaria’s relationship with Boston Police Detective Solly Belkin, and even an unexpected danger to her own family history.

In this book, families move through life keeping old secrets from each other. Families have always done this. The secrets differ from family to family and don’t necessarily involve a crime, as we have in BURIED TROUBLES. Perhaps it’s an old affair, perhaps it’s sexual orientation, or maybe it’s an older sister who is really the mother of the youngest child. Perhaps something as sweet as when our longtime and well-loved Irish babysitter was somehow able to put an altered birth date on her citizenship papers so that she was eternally younger than her husband – at least in the US.

What’s your viewpoint on or experience with secrets and their impact on lives? I’m happy to send a copy of Buried Troubles to a selected commentator.

Marian McMahon Stanley is the author of two Rosaria O’Reilly mysteries from Barking Rain Press - The Immaculate (May 2016) and Buried Troubles (June 2018) as well as a recent short story “Career Transitions” in the Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.  Marian enjoyed a long international corporate career and, most recently, a senior position at a large urban university. She writes in a small town outside Boston.

www.marianmcmahonstanley.com

DEBS: And here's more about BURIED TROUBLES--

Rosaria O’Reilly finds herself in grave danger from those who won’t let go of the past in this thrilling sequel to The Immaculate.

Still recovering from injuries sustained during her last effort in solving a murder, Rosaria is dragged into a new case with ties to the Irish community on both sides of the Atlantic. The victim is an Irish journalism student working on a research paper in Boston. His aunt, a friend of Rosaria’s, reaches out to her for help in solving the case.

This does not go over well with Rosaria’s significant other, Boston Police Detective Solly Belkin, who wants Rosaria to leave the case in his capable hands. Determined to help her friend and assert her independence to Solly, Rosaria travels to Ireland for the funeral and continues her investigation there. Soon, she is caught up in a dark web of ancient grievances, old crimes, and secrets that powerful people are determined to keep hidden forever.

Can Rosaria unearth these buried troubles and solve the murder before the killer buries her instead?

DEBS: Be sure to comment for your chance to win a copy of BURIED TROUBLES!

And I want to know more from Marian about her own connection with Ireland.

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