Murder is Everywhere: Researching a novel

Showing posts with label Researching a novel. Show all posts

Sunday, June 29, 2025

There is Magic Here - Update

Annamaria on Monday

I am updating this post, which I wrote in January 2016. Back then, I was learning the history and working on a first draft of a historical mystery/thriller that takes place in my ancestral city of Siracusa in Sicily. And I was also continuing along with the Vera & Tolliver series.

By 2019, I had what I thought was a worthy draft. My then agent was happy with it, and she found two editors who were quite interested.

Then came the perfect storm: a publisher in breach of contract, a book launched without ARCs going out, my wonderful agent facing a family catastrophe, and COVID.

And so the book, eventually named La Magica, went into limbo, which turned into purgatory, which threatened to turn to hell. The difference between purgatory and hell is that hell is permanent, purgatory is temporary. my story now stands on the cusp.

Just now, La Magica is resurfacing. I am polishing the manuscript, and it is with my agency. Hope is on the horizon.

Here a peek at what I had to say about the story nearly 10 years ago.

Period map of the area, found, of course, in the peerless New York Public Library

What would you call it, if a thing you saw in a dream was suddenly before your eyes and real?

My work in progress, which I began at my desk in New York, takes place in Siracusa, Sicily in the late 17th century and involves the life a young widow, mother of baby son, both of whom are threatened. I had been to Siracusa a few times before starting to imagine how the tale would unfold. But there was no certainty that the places I imagined were plausible, much less realistic.

The tale begins with the heroine on the roof her palace across the piazza from the duomo of Siracusa. From there she can see the harbour and the the moon reflected in the water. But did the geography of the place allow that?

Here is the reality. It seemed completely magical that what I had imagined was exactly right:

The Piazza del Duomo, and there at the end my Marchesa's palazzo on the
left, just across from the Duomo.

The facade of the palazzo, with no buildings behind, nothing to block
my character's view of the port.

Evening view from my room--the same point of view as from the palazzo's roof.
There, barely visible in the upper center, is the new moon. And across the water,
the other arm of land that forms the port, which you will visit with me below.

An ensuing scene takes place in the duomo itself and involves the chapel of Santa Lucia, the patron saint of the city. A revered statue of the early Christian martyr and resident of Siracusa graces the chapel, but I had never seen it face to face. It is ordinarily enclosed. I didn't know that it is kept on view for a month after the saint's feast day--December 13th. By chance, I got there just in time to see it in person. And to discover some more grist for my imagination's mill.

Santa Lucia in her niche, open and on view just when I needed her.

A close up of the martyr, nicely gruesome for local color
in a historical thriller.

On the left of this ancient Greek column, you see the entrance
to the chapel of Santa Lucia, and behind it....

...the perfect hiding place for a kidnapper. I planned the
scene without knowing how perfect the layout of the
Duomo would turn out to be.

A grave in the church floor, just where I imagined it.

The following two days in the Ortigia afforded a close look at places I had chosen from a map.

Just enough room for a man on a horse.

My main character has a wise, old grandmother who lives in a castle at the end of the other peninsula that forms the great harbour of Siracusa. I needed a way to put my feet on the ground over there across the water. But I was off to visit my cousins in Solarino, a small hill town overlooking Siracusa. At another time, I will tell you in detail of the warmth and joy that has always greeted me when I visit them. For now I will concentrate on two darlings, who like a fairy godmother and godfather gave me a fabulous view of everything I wanted to see and much more. I did not even have to ask. They came to greet me and offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go.

Antonello Martorana and Anna Puglisi, teachers and warmest of cousins.
For me on this trip they were magic makers.

We spent a gorgeous, spring-like day investigating a place I had seen only on maps.

In trying to imagine what my characters would be eating in December and
January, I gave them oranges, not knowing if such would have been in season.
And here in January, I saw them ripe and ready for picking.

From the coast road, the two sides of the port entrance.

I had imagined that from the south arm of the bay, one might see the Ortigia
clearly enough to pick out the buildings. And you can!

What I did not know is that you can also see Etna.

There is an old lighthouse just at the end of south arm of the bay.

I told Anna and Antonello that in my story there is a castle where the lighthouse now stands. When I was finished photographing everything in sight and waxing ecstatic about how perfect everything was, they drove me along the coast road where my characters travel--a road I imagined but did not know existed. We continued north, beyond Siracusa, to a town called Brucoli and parked next to this:

It is the castle of my imagination. I had no idea there really were castles like
this in the area. It is the same size as mine and made of the same stone.

And it occupies a position on the edge of the sea!

And has a view of Etna!!

With my soul satiated with what I had seen, we then repaired to a gorgeous
restaurant just across from the castle, where we ate a FABULOUS fish dinner,
with wonderful wine.

Here I am, as happy as I ever was! And grateful to have such generous and wonderful
companions with which to share my joyful day.

Thursday, October 19, 2023

Bali Why?

Wendall -- every other Thursday

My newest Cyd Redondo mystery, Cheap Trills, set in early 2007, drops on October 30th.

Here's a quick synopsis: After her mother secretly books an Eat, Pray, Love tour to Bali that goes horribly wrong, travel agent Cyd Redondo heads off to save her, facing down songbird smugglers, snake removal experts, thieving monkeys, a runaway funicular railway, and an underground Tupperware network, all while trying to keep three endangered Bali starling chicks alive in her Balenciaga bag.

To be honest, it’s a miracle that the novel got finished at all, since I could have easily spent the next five years researching this amazing island, its rich flora and fauna, its unique and compelling culture, and its heartbreaking, and often violent, history.

Many of my friends, who write traditional or cozy mysteries, face the challenge of coming up with new murders and storylines in the same location or community, book after book. My challenge, in writing a Romancing the Stone-inspired, “fish out of water” mystery, is that I have to create (and research) a whole new world for every book.

That’s part of the fun, since I love doing research, but it’s also time-consuming and there’s always the temptation to go down a million different rabbit holes and either never get to the writing, or weigh it down with too much information

Cheap Trills was particularly tricky, because the story has so many moving parts. First, I had to try to understand and capture the physical location of Bali—from active volcanos to black beaches, rice fields, monkey forests, and holiday resorts.

The stacked infinity pools at the Hanging Gardens resort, the model for the hotel where Cyd stays in Ubud.

The Balinese are known for the effectively engineered rice fields all over the island.

Then I had to take in and communicate parts of its culture—from cremation ceremonies to daily offerings, cockfighting, traditional dance and theater, the belief that redheads (like Cyd) are demons, and the sacred holiday of Nyepi.

Many Balinese children begin their traditional dance training when they are only three years old.

Cremation ceremonies are extremely important in Balinese culture, and should occur only on auspicious days.

I loved reading books on Bali, especially The Island of Bali by Miguel Covarrubias, which is still considered the ultimate text on Balinese culture, even though it was published in 1937.

My Bali research also included questions about how brakes work on a funicular railway, how snake removal experts work,

Apparently, everyone knows Ron.

why Indonesia was suddenly the largest global market for Tupperware, and whether more people do indeed die from falling coconuts every year than they do from shark attacks.

Many Indonesian women hold "underground" Tupperware parties to create their own income.

Because the book takes place a year after Elizabeth Gilbert’s book hit the bestseller list, I also had to research the effect of the Eat Pray Love phenomenon on the island, as well as all the travel complications possible in the journey from Brooklyn, and what seniors could and couldn’t expect in terms of discounts, ADA, emergency medical care, and the correct 2007 exchange rates from rupiahs to dollars.

Since the book also takes place soon after Bali made the news for a terrorist bombing as well as the arrest and execution of a group of Australian drug smugglers, I also researched crime in Bali and all the ways tourists can wind up in Kerobokan prison (which discourages escape by being surrounded by grasslands full of cobras!).

An excellent book on both the beauty and the darker side of Bali.

All of my Cyd Redondo books deal with endangered species and wildlife crime, so I needed to know as much as I could about Indonesian bird markets, songbird competitions, and smuggling onto and off the island, as well as the breeding and feeding habits of the threatened Bali starling.

The Bali starling, the only bird indigenous to Bali. In 2007, when the book is set, there were fewer than 10 in the wild.

Songbird competitions are held all over Indonesia. Over 70% of households have a pet bird.

I was extremely lucky to have two experts helping me in this area. Dr. Chris R. Shepherd was the head of TRAFFIC Southeast Asia for twenty years, now runs the Monitor Conservation Research Society, and spent many years actually counting illegal songbirds in the markets of Bali and Jakarta. Lori Rogalski has traveled to Bali to volunteer at the starling sanctuary there, and as part of the LA Zoo’s Avian Conservation Center, helped hand-raise two clutches of Bali starling chicks.

Bali starling chicks need worms (dropped vertically) and live crickets whose legs have been torn off...

And my research wasn’t only for Bali--I feature a Bay Ridge Brooklyn baby shower, so I did a deep dive in the hottest party trends, as well as into how many power outages are sparked by Mylar balloons every year!

A particularly unpleasant baby shower trend in 2007--"chocolate" filled diapers.

All in all, it was a wonderful time, for which I'm grateful.

A Balinese daily offering.

As my other Murder Is Everywhere compatriots will know, with so many research balls in the air, it’s hard not to drop one or two. So, see you on the other side of release day, where, if you are kind enough to read the book, I will await your verdict.

As Jeff mentioned a few weeks ago, pre-orders are vital for an author’s standing with their publisher, so if anyone is interested in the book, here are places you can order it now. Of course, requesting it from your local library is just as wonderful.

LINKS:

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Cheap-Trills-Cyd-Redondo-Mystery/dp/1960511203/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1697586680&sr=8-1

Barnes and Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cheap-trills-wendall-thomas/1143827402?ean=9781960511201

Through your local independent bookstore via Bookshop.org:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/cheap-trills-wendall-thomas/20290359?ean=9781960511201

--Wendall

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Write What You Want To Know: Sailing in the Greek Islands

Zoë Sharp

For me, doing the research is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing, although it can also be one of the most frustrating and time-consuming parts as well. Getting something authentic without going overboard on extraneous detail is a fine balance. I’m looking for realism rather than real.

After all, if we wrote truly authentic accounts of the lives of most private detectives, we’d be describing a lot of boredom combined with trying to get covert photos of cheating spouses and insurance claimants doing things they swear they’re now too injured to attempt. In real life, Detective Inspectors spend more time on paperwork than they do chasing murderers. Serial killers are still something of a rarity, thankfully, rather than popping up every other week, particularly in sleepy little English villages when elderly spinsters happen to be staying at the vicarage. Bodyguards, if they’re good at their job, will face few attacks they didn’t see coming and plan a way to avoid. Some soldiers have made it through entire conflicts without ever firing a shot, let alone seeing the whites of the enemy’s eyes.

I know some authors try to keep away from the lures of the internet while they’re writing, to avoid the distraction, but I find I have page after page of my browser open to check history, details, maps, and images.

And if those images are ones you’ve taken yourself, rather than relying on simply searching for pictures posted by others, they serve as a further aide de memoire.

So, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been putting together my own aide de memoire of sailing in the Greek Islands, for a book I’d like to make a start on over the winter. And here's the proof.

Dog on the water. Watching how well dogs adapt to life aboard a boat is always instructional.

The smart harbourside at Agios Efimia.

Not every harbourside is quite as smart as Agios Efimia, but they all have their charms.

Plucky little dinghy lolloping along behind the boat.

The joys of monohull sailing, cranked over on your ear ...

In Greece, cats are everywhere. This one had staked her territory as the roof of this Seat, just below the balcony of a restaurant ...

Being in a constant saltwater environment does have its downside.

The number of larger yachts has grown considerably over the last few years.

Sivota harbour, with one of the many catamarans in the centre. There are far more cats around than there were even five years ago.

ZS at the helm. Who put the horizon at that angle?

I'll be back from this trip next week, at which point I will try to make sense of my notes, and tuck away various of my Greek Islands photographs for when I sit down to write. Nice memories as well as useful information!

What do you like to research, whether for a novel or simply out of a sense of curiosity?

This week's Word of the Week comes from the boat anchored next to us as I write this. It's called 'Sempre Decanter' because, according to the owner, the definition of a decanter is 'a vessel filled with spirit'. Coupled with 'sempre' meaning 'always', as in the Marine Corps motto, 'Sempre fi(delis)', meaning 'always faithful'.

Coming up

When I return next week, I'm straight back into the thick of it, with a Noir @ The Bar at The Winter Gardens in Morecambe on Friday, Sept 29th, from 6-7pm.

The following day, Saturday, Sept 30th I’m taking part in the inaugural Morecambe & Vice Crime Writing Festival, also being held at the Winter Gardens. I’m on the panel ‘Local Legends—I Did It My Way’ with other local authors AS Chambers and Beth Jones, and moderated by Kevin Wignall. The event starts at 9:45am, and the Local Legends panel is on at 10:15am.

And early next month, I have a blog tour starting for the publication of the UK edition of the new Charlie Fox book, FOX HUNTER. Many thanks to Ayo Onatade for organising me so brilliantly.

Zoë Sharp Blog Tour dates

2^nd October

Victoria Watson

http://www.elementaryvwatson.wordpress.com

3^rd October

Crime Book Junkie

https://crimebookjunkie.co.uk

4^th October

Liz Loves Books

http://lizlovesbooks.com

5^th October

A Lover of Books