Real People in Mercury's Rise

Ann Parker, on the second day of a two-week (plus a bit) virtual tour for Mercury's Rise, the newest book in the Silver Rush series.

Today is a "home stop" at my own blog, which features random musings on writing, history, mystery, or whatever crosses my mind. This time (rubbing hands together gleefully), I'm going to talk about using real people in my latest mystery.

Now, there are several kinds of "real" people. There are the people who existed in that time and place. There are a few of that kind wandering through the pages, including Colorado photographer Anna Galbreaith, who is a source of curiosity and mystery to me (I would *love* to know more about her and her life). I do know she was a landscape photographer in Manitou, Colorado, during the mid-1880s and also ran a boarding house called the Ohio House. Since she signed her photographs "Mrs. Anna Galbreaith," I assume she was a widow... or possibly a divorcée? You can read more about Anna and see an example of her work here in a post I did yesterday to kick off this virtual tour. Other people of the day are mentioned in Mercury's Rise: William Palmer Jackson (founder of Colorado Springs and the Denver & Rio Grande) and Dr. William Bell (founder of Manitou Springs).

The real Robert Calder

But the real people I REALLY had fun with are folks I know in the present day world of 2011, who gave permission for me to use their names. In two cases, these folks "won" the honor of appearing in the story. Robert Calder (an artist who does wonderful watercolors that capture Leadville's past) had his name pulled out of a hat to appear as a character in the book. You can read a little about Bob and his work in this online article from Colorado Magazine. It seemed a natural fit to make Robert a plein-air artist, who is visiting Manitou with more than painting on his agenda. Sharon Crowson is a mystery reader and fan who has "been dying" (so to speak) to appear in a Silver Rush book. A bribe of chocolate did the trick, and she's there in the pages of Mercury's Rise, with a slightly different first name.

The real Dr. Prochazka

Dr. Aurelius Prochazka is a bona fide doctor... but not of medicine. You can get the gist of his claim to the Dr. title from this on his website: "Aure began his career at the California Institute of Technology  analyzing the aerodynamic stability of the F-117A Stealth Fighter and worked on computational fluid dynamics for his PhD thesis." Aure is a scientist, a musician, and an author in his own right. I've worked with Aure, and from those earliest days was just itching to steal his name (and some of his "renaissance man" personality) and plunk him down in 1880. He was a good sport about the whole thing when I asked (hopefully, he still is, now that the book is published!).

Finally, there are the Paces. While I was working with Aure, I also worked with Kirsten Pace and her husband Eric Cummings. I decided it would be fun to put Kirsten and her family (kids and all) in the story. She was fine with that, even after I gave her a much older, cantankerous husband (WHO IS NOT YOU, ERIC. Just want to make that clear. You appear at the end as a nice guy.) Kirsten just finished reading the book the other day and said she enjoyed it (well, she'd better say that! ;-) ) and then added it was odd to see her name crop up page after page after page... Just one of the hazards of being a key character in a novel!

There are shades of other "real people" in some of the continuing characters in my series. My protagonist, Inez Stannert is named after my grandmother. (You can read a bit about her and why she ended up my protagonist in another guest post here on Gayle Gresham's Colorado Reflections blog.) Doctor Cramer embodies elements of my own father, a kindly physician with a real knack for listening to his patients. Susan Carothers has a spirit much like a dear friend of mine from childhood, also named Susan, who like my fictional character forged a life to match her inner passions.

And then... there are those real people whom I shadow in darkness, twist their genders and their names, and gleefully make them murderers or victims and do horrible things to them (in fiction!) because at some point in my life they really ticked me off or hurt someone I loved. But I'm not going to say anything more about them. They will remain a mystery. ;-)
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Of POV and gender ...

Another little tidbit I picked up from the recent Mayhem in the Midlands conference involved writing characters not of one's own gender, again from the What Authors Get Wrong panel. One of the authors (male, I'm thinking, although I'm not going to throw out a name, because I'll probably mis-remember!) related a story about a woman in his critique group who wrote a scene with a "manly man." The rough, tough testosterone-driven protagonist enters a home to interview a suspect and notices ...

The lovely pattern in the drapes.

The critique group pointed out that a guy is not likely to notice (much less comment on) the print curtains.

Writing characters from a gender differing from your own is a topic of some discussion. Here's a sample of blog posts and discussions:

• Writing a POV character of the Opposite Gender on Crimespace (Brian Thorton, back in 2007) ... check out the comments and discussion
• Gender, Author, and Characters on Author Intrusion (Rod Duncan, recently)
• A Writer Can be Anyone or Anything on Daily Writing Tips (by Maeve in 2008)
  

And now, here's something fun! Copy/paste a 500 word sample of your writing into The Gender Genie (on BookBlog) and it will analyze your work and "determine" whether you are male or female.

I slapped in the first 800 words for the as yet nascent 4th Silver Rush book ( first chapter drafted and I know where the second is heading). I checked the "fiction" button and punched "submit."

... Here's what popped up ...

Score: Female: 796 Male: 1046
Result: The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

I'm intrigued (but not male)!

The results list "feminine keywords" and "masculine keywords" and the occurrence of each in the writing sample. The words are apparently weighted according to an algorithm. What I take away from this is that I am comfortably balanced between the two worlds.

Try it and let me know what your results are....

Must there be romance?

... Continuing with my intent to post Malice Domestic tidbits this week, here's an interesting one from author Kate Collins from the panel "Wine, Flowers and Murder: The Role Romance Plays in Mysteries" (paraphrased ... so I hope I've got the essence of it here):
"You can't build a normal well-rounded character without romance."

At first, I thought, hold on there ... you can't? But then, I started thinking about it. Perhaps the operative words here are normal and well-rounded. There are certainly plenty of damaged, loner-type characters wandering through crime fiction that seem unable to form romantic attachments.

In most mystery series that I can think of (cozy series in particular), romance creeps in sooner or later, to add tension, interest, character development.

So, what do you think? Can you have a normal, well-rounded character without romance? Do you like romance in the mysteries you read?

Zeroing in on "the bad guy"

I'm very much enjoying the Malice Domestic convention here in Washington D.C. One of the things I love about this convention and others is that I always pick up writing tidbits and "food for thought." Today's tidbit has to do with writing/creating villians, i.e., the antagonists or "bad guys" in mysteries ... a tidbit that I'm going to share with you.

Author Anne Perry, who is receiving the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement, had this bit of advice about getting to know the bad guy in your story:

"Write your story from the antagonist's point of view."

What a great way to see if the actions and the motivations of the "villain of the piece" make sense and ring true.

Something I'm going to try in the future!