Life of a Series Character by M.K. Graff
First I created a “bible” for my recurring protagonist. Nora
is an American living in the UK because I thought it would be interesting to
see how she adjusted to a place with different traditions and slang from what
she was used to, things that would go beyond learning to drive on the other
side of the car and road. I gave her a background I was familiar with, and a
reason to be there—a transfer from the US wing of the magazine she works for to
its UK branch. When the series opens, Nora has won a contest and taken a leave
to work on the children’s books she’s always wanted to write.
With her backstory firmly in mind, although I parsed out
that information over several books, I added a major complication in Book One, The Blue Virgin. As the book opens, Nora
is in the early stages of an unplanned pregnancy and preparing to leave Oxford
to work with illustrator Simon Ramsey in Cumbria. Her fiancé, a scientist
working for the British Government, has died in a plane crash several months
before. Nora was on the verge of breaking that engagement when Paul died. When
she finds out few weeks later that she is pregnant, she makes the decision to
have the baby and raise it as a single parent.
That particular decision has made life both easy and
difficult for me in several ways. In The
Blue Virgin, Nora’s budding pregnancy creates sympathy wherever she goes.
She’s a journalist by nature and not above a bit of creative lying to get an
interview, so it’s second nature to her to use her pregnancy to gain entrée to speak
to suspects when her best friend becomes the main suspect in a murder
investigation.
But in Book Two, The
Green Remains, Nora is heavily pregnant, and that comprises her ability to
move around and be active. Now she’s living in the Lake District, temporarily
ensconced with Simon and his sister, Kate, at the lodge they run. They’ve
offered her a home while she awaits the birth of her child, and she and Simon
grow close as they work on her books. When Simon is implicated in the murder of
the son of the town’s wealthiest patron, Nora wants to swing into action to
clear his name—but that swing became more of a lumbering due to her tiredness,
hormonal moods, and inability to see her feet.
In The Scarlet Wench,
due out this May, Nora’s baby is almost six months old when a theatre troupe
arrive at Ramsey Lodge to put on Noel Coward’s play Blithe Spirit. A series of accidents will escalate to murder—with
Nora on the premises with her infant. Great motive for getting her involved in
finding the murderer, right?. But it also means that I had to account for that
baby in all of Nora’s activities. She can’t just run off to sleuth with a child
who needs feeding, diapering, playtime and naps. Boy, did I create a mess for
myself!
And then there’s the issue of her love life. Nora’s
back story includes her father drowning when she was a teenager, on the same
night she turned down his invitation to go sailing for a date. For years she felt
responsible for his death, carrying around the conviction that if she’d been
with him she could have saved them both. Nora’s mother, back in Connecticut,
has never felt blamed Nora and is remarried after many years of being alone.
But guilt affects Nora’s relationships with men; she chooses unwisely, and puts
up walls to keep them from her inner thoughts. This compartmentalizing, which
has served her well in other areas of her life and allowed her to get ahead in
her career, becomes a liability when she’s attracted to the detective she met
in Oxford. In The Scarlet Wench, DI
Declan Barnes arrives to cement their budding relationship. Besides her own
fears, there’s that baby to consider. Will Declan understand she’s truly a
package deal? Will she screw up their
relationship by allowing him only into certain parts of her life? And don’t
forget there’s a murderer living under the roof of Ramsey Lodge.
These are some of the questions Nora must answer as she
forges ahead in her personal relationships. They are separate issues from the
mysteries in each volume and I hope readers of the series will see her grow and
change as she irons out what she wants from life.
Bio: Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney
Mysteries, set in England and featuring an American protagonist. Written in
traditional English mystery style, complete with chapter epigrams and a cast of
characters, they are a mix of amateur sleuth and police procedural. The series
are available from Amazon.com in hard copy and Kindle; signed copies from
Bridle Path Press (www.bridlepathpress.com).
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