I have read every Elizabeth George mystery novel, from A Great Deliverance (1988) to The Punishment She Deserves (2018). I have loved Detective Lynley and admired Barbara Havers and followed their prickly partnership through their cases and tragedies. I had a slight falling out of love with Elizabeth George after she killed off Helen (spoiler alert), and I struggled through several subsequent novels where the author herself seemed to be grieving and off her game. I cheered when I read her most recent novels. She was back! For George, it’s not the murder component, though it’s brilliantly devised and written. Her stories are compelling. Her characters have emotional depth. They exhibit critical flaws and live complicated, multidimensional lives.
I say I want to be like here because I hold her books up as a model for my own attempts at writing in the mystery genre. I have read and re-read her writer’s guide, Write Away. In developing my story, I diligently devised character prompts and story arcs. I devoured her chapters on dialog, description, and atmosphere. I also try to maintain writing journals in which I outline ideas, problems, and progress or lack thereof. However, I have found that I lack the discipline to write in them every day. Instead, my journaling is sporadic, and, sadly, I tend to write my notes on scraps of paper that get discarded, or in the margins of earlier versions. I seem to have misplaced that sense of order that served me so well in my academic life.
I have wanted to write fiction since I was young. I remember my earliest “book,” Babe, about a girl who raised a cow for 4H. This ten-page masterpiece was written long before the Disney story about Babe the pig, and I have been upset that Disney stole my story…but enough about that. I also wrote a story based loosely on Hansel and Gretel, about two children who are kidnapped. I don’t remember the exact plot, but the most memorable line I remember was when the father came home from work, and the mother admitted that she had lost the kids. His response: “Don’t worry honey. Here’s some money. Go shopping and enjoy yourself.” Needless to say, the kids escaped on their own.
During my last year of teaching at Grand Valley State University, I dreamed of a retirement during which would write that mystery novel floating around in my brain. I was looking for inspiration and found a mystery writers’ retreat at Interlochen Academy. It fit into my schedule, so I dove in. “This will be fun,” I thought. “A mystery will be easy. I love mysteries.” I packed my suitcase, my computer, and all my enthusiasm, and drove to Interlochen. The retreat was fun, the group conversations and instructor were stimulating. I enjoyed sitting in my room at night concocting crime scenes, victim and perpetrator character sketches, and reading these to the group. The basic ideas I developed that weekend became the bare bones of Human Sacrifice, the novel that will be published soon!
But the idea that a mystery would be simple was highly optimistic. In all of my reading, I didn’t appreciate the difficulty of developing plot, timelines, and characters that move the story. Several additional writing courses and mystery writer events added to my store of knowledge. However, knowing the techniques is easier than doing it. That takes practice!
Human Sacrifice has evolved over several years, more time than it took to conduct my anthropological fieldwork in Mexico and write my doctoral dissertation. Since that first writers’ workshop, I have written and re-written more drafts than I care to admit. I have discovered how difficult it is to develop a timeline that withstands the ability of my characters to muck up my story. When I realized that Clare (my protagonist) couldn’t possibly know a bit of information (who last saw the victim near the pyramid) in Chapter 20 because she wasn’t at the critical meeting in Chapter 4 where it was disclosed, my beautiful timeline had to be revised again…and again…forward and backward.
Happily, persistence and hard work have paid off and I have finished Human Sacrifice! Admittedly, it is not Elizabeth George (after all she can get away with writing 600 pages!), but it is mine! It takes place in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico where Dr. Claire Aguila is participating in a conference of Maya scholars. Here she meets up with and assists a detective whom she had met years earlier. I have completed a draft of a second mystery novel that brings Claire back to the US where the detective meets her in Florida. Here, she is visiting her parents in a senior retirement community which I hold is a great place for a murder. This book is titled Culture Shock. Even though I have improved my ability to develop detailed timelines, my characters don’t always cooperate; they still resist showing up at the time and place I had planned.
But I muddle on….
Cindy Hull 