Marilyn's Musings

Like it or not, research is invaluable to writing a good mystery novel. But much of that research means double-checking things you already “know.” For instance, I’ve lived in Scottsdale AZ since 1982, and much of my time here has been spent as a reporter, driving back and forth across the Valley of the Sun chasing story after story. So I knew the Valley pretty well, right? Wrong. In the first draft of “Desert Noir,” my first mystery novel, I misnamed streets and put in intersections that don’t exist. I also wrote in tracts of empty desert that no longer exist, having long been replaced by sprawling subdivisions. I misnamed hotels, I misnamed corporations, I wrote in one-way streets running the wrong way. How did this happen? Easy. I was writing from “memory of the known” only, and thus didn’t bother to fact-check my memory. Fortunately, in the second draft of “Desert Noir,” I fact-checked myself via a map and updated business and location information, so I caught those...

                                                        Where do writers get their idea? As the old joke goes, sometimes they buy them at Wal-Mart. In my case, however, I get my ideas by watching real live people do real live crazy things, which is exactly how I came up with the plot of THE LLAMA OF DEATH. I may be best known for my noir-ish Lena Jones mystery series, but I also write the humorous and cozy-ish Gunn Zoo mysteries, which means some pretty loveable animals turn out to be characters in those books. We’re talking koalas, anteaters, lemurs, giraffes, wombats, honey badgers… On second thought, maybe honey badgers aren’t all that adorable, although their mothers probably love them. ...