Chris Rogers on her shift from romance to mystery
Chris Rogers, author of Here Lies a Wicked Man, shares how she shifted from writing romance to writing mysteries.
Chris: When I first started writing, my genre of choice was romance because I'd had plenty of those in my past. I thought I knew how a romance might begin, mature and end before residual sparks brought the couple back together for happy ever after. As it turned out, romance wasn't my strong point.
I've long been a fan of all sorts of stories, but my continuing love is for mysteries. I grew up reading all the classic whodunits, then I matured reading grittier novels involving espionage and serial killers, but my love for simple murder mysteries never died. One of my favorite writers of all time is Agatha Christie, and a favorite current writer is Bill Crider. Bill writes several different series, but my favorite is about a Texas sheriff.
When I decided to take a break from writing suspense novels featuring Dixie Flannigan, the idea of a cozy murder story that takes place in a town much like where I live appealed. Fans always believe I draw on real people to populate my stories, but that's not the case. As with most writers, creating the characters is one of the best parts of writing fiction, so I draw traits from a number of real or imagined individuals to weave into the character of my story people.
What I learned right away about small-town mystery is that one or more of your focal character's sidekicks is likely to steal the spotlight. Take Emaline Peters. Tall, stringy, loud, 50-odd years old and tough as pigskin, Emaline pokes her nose into everybody's business. She's a retired golf pro who dabbles in astrology and doesn't see any problem with creating astrology charts on her friends and neighbors so that she can determine what they might be up to.
Then there's Pete Littlehawk, who owns the country club's restaurant and bar. Pete claims to be half Choctaw and half Blackfoot. The Choctaw half he can prove, and what he loves most is making money. He'll gamble on anything, if he stands half a chance of winning, and he promotes any opportunity that might turn a dollar.
Roxanna Larkspur owns the nearby inn, which she purchased on a shoestring. With more imagination than money, Roxanna takes hot rolls from the oven and places them in the window then turns a fan on them to blow that fresh-baked smell toward the town square, where it might entice customers to come in for dinner. She hasn't enough money to decorate all the guest rooms, so she makes good use of paint to symbolize striped wallpaper, a flowered rug, and even a trompe l'oeil hat rack in one corner.
Each of these characters has an offbeat personality that makes readers smile, and sometimes laugh out loud, I'm told, while Booker Krane plays the straight man. And when all these friends become suspects in a murder, Booker can only hope it will turn out to be a stranger who came to town as he works to solve the puzzle.
About Here Lies a Wicked Man (courtesy of Chart House Press):
When Booker Krane retired early from his career as a white collar corporate investigator, he was sure of only two things: he was done digging up buried secrets, and he loved being near water. After recovering from the bullet wound from his final case, he settles into a leisurely lifestyle at his new home on Turtle Lake—including his new part-time job as a freelance photographer. But the morning his dog drags a dead body onto the shore, Booker and his camera are commandeered by Sheriff Ringhoffer, and in less time than it takes the elusive perfect lighting to disappear, he's deeply embroiled within the investigation.
While the deceased, a prominent yet awfully wicked man, had many people who'd likely have motive and opportunity to kill him, Booker wants to believe it was simply an accident. An arrow would be an unusual murder weapon, and he can't picture any of the suspects—the victim's wife, sons, business partner, sexy mistress, or attractive lessee—as cold-hearted killers. But it turns out more than one of them knows how to draw a bowstring, and Booker's curious mind can't ignore the evidence against the victim falling on his own arrow—even when the sheriff rules the death an accident.
Putting his own life at risk, can Booker solve the case for the residents of Lakeside Estates? Or will magazine deadlines, his budding attraction for Roxanna Larkspur, or tension with his only son interfere with his search for the truth?
Find out more about Chris' books at www.chrisrogers.com.