Guest Blogger Mary Anna Evans

Type M is thrilled to welcome our friend and guest blogger Mary Anna Evans, author of thirteen award-winning Faye Longchamp mysteries. Her fourteenth mystery novel, The Physicists' Daughter, is the first in a fabulous new series set in WWII-era New Orleans and introduces Justine Byrne, whom Mary Anna describes as “a little bit Rosie-the-Riveter and a little bit Bletchley Park codebreaker". What's it like to start anew after a long successful run? Mary Anna has some thoughts about that.*

The Terror of Starting Something New

Mary Anna Evans

It has just now occurred to me that there is a strange symmetry to my writing career as of this moment. From the time I submitted my first short story to a magazine (and was rejected) to the time I sold my first novel, Artifacts, about eighteen years passed. 

Now, I wasn't writing and submitting and being rejected continuously all that time. I had jobs. I had children. I published a few poems. But, by and large, the publishing world spent eighteen years telling me "No," loudly and often. 

It has now been about eighteen years since I sold Artifacts, so my writing life hands in the balance, at least in terms of time. Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that I'm doing something new? And is it any wonder that I'm nervous about it, after writing thirteen books about Faye Longchamp, a protagonist whom I still admire and enjoy? I could easily keep writing about Faye, and I may well write about her again, but life and art are about learning and growing. It's time to flex some new muscles. 

The Physicists' Daughter went out into the world this month. It's a historical novel, and 1944 is a new time period for me. While still published by a mystery imprint, it's as much a spy thriller as it is a traditional mystery. I had enormous amounts of fun learning about 1944 and World War II and top secret weapons and mid-twentieth-century science. My new protagonist, Justine Byrne, is young and awkward and brilliant and loyal, and I think my readers will have as much fun spending time with her as I do. Her best friend, Georgette Broussard, has been another gift to me as a writer. These two women were born for adventures, and I hope I get to the intrepid pair on many of them.

None of these things makes the nervousness go away, but you know what? I think we're supposed to be nervous. It's not good for us to get complacent. Who wants to live in a rut?

I like to think that I've brought everything I've learned in the years I wrote Faye to this book. I like to think that those things have made The Physicists' Daughter the best book I can write today. Next year, I'll know enough to write one that's even better.

In the meantime, don't mind me. I'm just sitting here in my corner of the internet, watching my new baby go out into the world and worrying about her.

_________

*p.s. Mary Anna has nothing to worry about. The Physicists' Daughter is an absorbing, heart-pounding read - Donis

visit Mary Anna's website at https://maryannaevans.com

Life Intervenes Yet Again

I was really looking forward to my upcoming trip this Wednesday from my home here in southern Arizona (where the temperature is 116º F as I type) to my native Oklahoma (where it's only in the upper 90s), where I was scheduled to do two library events with friend and colleague Mary Anna Evans at libraries in Woodward OK, Aug.2, and Watonga OK, Aug. 3.

But guess what? My darling yet troublesome husband took a header in the kitchen yesterday morning (Tuesday the 24th) and broke his right arm in two places. We spent most of yesterday in the emergency room, a very familiar venue for us. This latest round of trouble and strife started on Monday morning July 9th, when he went in to see his ophthalmologist for a routine eye shot and ended up having emergency eye surgery that very afternoon.  The doc said that his eye pressure had risen so much in six weeks that he had to get it fixed RIGHT NOW before it damaged his optic nerve. Seems new blood vessels have grown to take the place of the broken one in his right eye, but they inconsiderately grew over the place that drains the fluid in the eye and blocked it. Of course the only surgical center that could do it on such short notice is an hour away from where we live, so we raced up there and he had the outpatient operation at about 4:30 that Monday afternoon during a raging thunderstorm. They put in a permanent shunt to drain the eye. We had a couple of follow-up exams, but all was progressing nicely.

Except for the fact that he'd reach for something and have to try a couple of times before he could grasp it. Its seems that the vision in the healing eye is distorted and his perspective is off. It was all kind of funny until he took a wrong step and careened into the wall.

Everything seems to have gone well and we're home. They set and splinted his arm and immobilized it, and he didn't have to stay overnight. He's not in terrible pain, just uncomfortable. Can't dress himself or drive, of course.We're going in for a follow-up with the orthopedist on Friday and go from there. This is his tenth operation in nine years. My sister-in-law told me I should be in the Guinness Caretaker Book of Records.

But I say he's the one who should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Nobody can deal with adversity with as much equanimity as he can. He says that getting all upset about unfortunate things just makes them worse. If only I could be as sanguine.

So long story finally to the point, I've had to cancel my trip to Oklahoma, which has been in the works for months. This is not the first time I've had to do this. Sometimes I wonder why I bother to make plans. Everyone has been very gracious, but I don't care how good your excuse is, it isn't fun to have to back out at the last minute. Fortunately, the libraries are far from left in the lurch. They still have the wonderful Mary Anna, and that is enough to make up for everything. Here's a link to the event in Woodward: http://woodwardlibrary.okpls.org/category/author-visit/

As for me, I'll be spending the cruel month of August nursing, chauffeuring, and trying to finish the first draft of my work in progress.

p.s. I'm so happy that Tom Kies will be joining Type M 4 Murder!

Ten Books Later...

Alafair #1

Alafair # 10

When I first began writing the Alafair Tucker Mystery series in 2003, I had a story arc in mind that was going to carry through 10 books. This is a wonderful idea, but as anyone who has ever written a long series knows, after a couple of books all your plans for a story arc have been knocked into a cocked hat. The reason this happened, at least to me, is that I seem to be writing about real people who have their own ideas about how things should be gone about, and once I put them into a situation, they react to it in ways I had never anticipated. Besides, I really want readers to be able to pick up any book in the series and have a satisfying experience without having to know anything about what went before.

My original arc idea went like this: I would to feature a different one of Alafair's ten children as the character of interest in each book. The featured child would somehow be involved in the events surrounding a murder, and as their mother, Alafair would intrude herself into the kid's life, whether s/he wanted her or his parent's help or not, and in the end, Alafair and maybe the child would contribute to the solution of the mystery. As an aside, the featured offspring might end up with a life-partner.

I stuck with the formula through book one. As it turns out, I like to mix it up a bit.

The million dollar question for the author of a long series is this: How do you keep it fresh? How do you make every story stand alone, yet in its place as well? I have found over the course of ten books in the same series that I have even departed from the usual mystery novel format. The later books are constructed more like thrillers than puzzles, they may or may not revolve around one of the children, and Alafair may or may not be able to solve the mystery.

And now that book number ten, Forty Dead Men, is in the can and due to hit the shelves in February 2018, I’m wondering where I want to go from here. I have begun an eleventh Alafair and it is a big departure from the formula, but I have also started working on something completely different. Because if you aren't excited by your own writing, how can you expect your readers to be?

Speaking of repeating myself, let me remind you Dear Readers that I will be making a nine library tour of small eastern Oklahoma towns from Sept. 12 through Sept. 16. The September 16 event at the Muskogee Public Library will be particularly of interest, since after my talk at 11:00 a.m. I’ll be joined by fellow mystery authors Mary Anna Evans, Will Thomas, and Julia Thomas at noon for a mystery writers’ roundtable. Check out my entire schedule at my website. I hope to see you there.

Fred Ramsay and Me

Donis here, feeling sad today. I just heard that my friend and fellow author Frederick Ramsay passed away this morning. Fred was a lovely and accomplished man and a prolific author, and I understand that his latest book is still to be released. He did an amusing and enlightening guest entry for us here on Type M back in 2013.

Fred Ramsay and Donis at Poisoned Pen Bookstore, Scottsdale, AZ, Feb. 2017

It seems that as I grow older I find myself facing the impending mortality of my friends and loved ones more and more. Not to mention, as one of my friends noted, that we are each of us one blood clot away from our own end. Not long ago, I heard a woman on NPR relate that her five year old daughter once came stomping down the stairs in a snit and demanded to know why we were ever born if we're just going to die anyway.

An excellent question that should convince anyone that children are deeper than adults give them credit for. The mother said she pondered for a minute before answering, because she wanted to give the girl a meaningful answer, and finally she replied that it was because of all the stuff that goes on in between.

Billy Graham was asked what he had learned about life, and interestingly, he said that he was just surprised at how fast it goes by. I think of that quite a bit, especially when it comes home to me that I have less time ahead than I do behind, and I wonder why on earth I ever spend time doing things I don't have to do that I don't particularly enjoy.

On a more cheerful note, let me reiterate that I will be making a nine library tour of small eastern Oklahoma towns from Sept. 12 through Sept. 16. The September 16 event at the Muskogee Public Library will be particularly of interest, since after my talk at 11:00 a.m. I’ll be joined by fellow mystery authors Mary Anna Evans, Will Thomas, and Julia Thomas at noon for a mystery writers’ roundtable. You can see my entire schedule on my website. So if you live in eastern OK or western Arkansas, I’ll be looking for you.

Guest Blogger Mary Anna Evans

Type M is pleased to welcome guest blogger Mary Anna Evans, author of the wonderful  Faye Longchamp Mystery series. Faye lives the exciting life of an archaeologist, and Mary Anna envies her a little. In her latest Faye Longchamp mystery, Mary Anna takes Faye to Oklahoma, which I, Donis, think is a very fine thing indeed. Find Mary Anna on Facebook and Twitter, where she runs regular contests for her followers, who can win books, swag, or the chance to have a character named after them!

TORNADOES!

I just moved to Oklahoma, the very heart of Tornado Alley. My new book is set in Oklahoma, thus it has a tornado traveling menacingly across its cover and I have deadly whirlwinds on my mind.

This should be no surprise to anyone who has read my work, since Artifacts closes with the mother of all hurricanes. To research that story, I read a book called Florida's Hurricane History from cover to cover, but I also dredged my own memory for colorful details. When I was seven years old, Hurricane Camille blew ashore 60 miles south of me and roared over my head. When you read that Faye is hearing the trunks of thick-bored pine trees snap, know that I remember that sound. And if, perchance, you should read in Burials about Faye experiencing extreme weather in the form of severe thunderstorms and maybe a tornado in Oklahoma, know that I have personal experience with those, too. I grew up in Mississippi, which weather aficionados have dubbed with its own stormy nickname--Dixie Alley. I've lived through enough hurricanes, tornadoes, and near-misses to know that it's all fun and games until The Weather Channel sends Jim Cantore to town.

So what does it feel like to be way too close to a tornado?

Well, a tornado took out my school's football stands and field house when I was eight, just a short walk from my classroom. I should have been able to see it happen, but all I can tell you is that the sky turned so black that we couldn't see even that short distance. When I was in the fifth grade, a funnel cloud skirted our elementary school campus, but I can't tell you much because we were all in the hall, sitting on the concrete floor with our heads between our knees. The same thing happened when I was a student at Ole Miss, but we were all ushered to the library basement, where we could trust that we'd be safe, unless all the floors, ceilings, books, shelves, and furniture on the upper floors caved in on us.

Fortunately (fortunately?), I can tell you more about the tornado that interrupted my eighth-grade English class. The sky turned green. (Yes, it really does that.) The clouds were a shade of purple that was somehow both deep and bright. As they lowered over us, daytime went nighttime-dark and the streetlights came on. We were herded into the hall to, once again, sit on the concrete floor with our heads between our knees, but this time there were skylights over us. And this time I peeked.

Those purple clouds roiled above the skylights and they dropped hailstones the size of softballs. The hail hit the roof with loud thunks and clanks, and the sky got even darker. The sound of the wind did indeed sound like a locomotive, just as every witness of a tornado has always said. Later, school gossips said that our school principal was outside watching the storm as it happened. Now that I'm an adult, I'm guessing that he was wondering what he'd do to protect us all, if things turned bad, but the gossip among youngsters was more lurid. Everyone said that he had to wrap his arms and legs around a post just to keep from being blown away. Remembering the force of the wind's gusts, I do not doubt it.

I'm writing this post on the sunniest of days, but a thunderstorm just two nights ago brought marble-sized hail to my Oklahoma back yard. It took those icy nuggets for a reminder that the earth is big and that I am small. And I took it for a sign that the tornado gracing the cover of my brand-new book was just the right image to usher it out into the world.

Happy spring to you all!
___________________

Visit Mary Anna's website at http://maryannaevans.com