Going dark...

You should write romantic suspense.

That was how it started. A possibly offhand comment by my publisher over drinks at Crimefest that sent me off into a tizzy. After 22 mysteries ranging from cozy to paranormal, I was being directed to change things up. I’d written harder books, for sure (my Blackie and Care mysteries are positively dystopian), but all my mysteries had an essential sweetness to them. And cats – lots of cats – all based more or less on either my late, great Cyrus or my constant companion and muse, Musetta. Romantic suspense? I didn’t know where to start.

“Do you have any ideas?” My agent echoed the question my editor had voiced, when I’d next touched base. “Something you’ve always wanted to work on, perhaps?”

Well, yeah, I told them both. I did have a manuscript in the drawer – what writer didn’t – but I wasn’t sure if …

“Why not try it?” I don’t remember if my agent said that, or my husband, or some voice in the back of my head. All I know is I dug out that file – 100 pages I had worked and re-worked so many times I couldn’t remember – and I thought, “yeah, I could do this.” I read the opening scene, and I thought, “I want to do this.” A few pages later, and it hit me: “I’m ready to do this.” The book I had wanted to write for more than ten years was something I now could write. At some point, I broke it to my agent that the project I was diving into wasn’t anything at all like romantic suspense. By that point, I was already committed.

Those pages became the basis for my new World Enough, a rock and roll mystery that’s as close to a true noir as I’m ever likely to write. The setup is simple: A woman walks into a bar. It’s a bar filled with old friends, for sure, but also with history. The band that’s playing that night is one she’s followed for more than twenty years, as has the rest of the sparse crowd gathered there. The woman – Tara Winton – is a corporate PR drone, but back when the band was in its heyday, she’d been a rock critic, part of the garage-punk club scene. Back then, anything had seemed possible. Drugs and other dangers had taken their toll on the scene, but Tara is glad to be out. Glad to be among her surviving crew. Until, that is, she finds out that another of the old gang has died. Before long, she’s covering the scene again – asking questions that calls not only the present but her idyllic memories of the club days into doubt.

Yes, I was a rock critic, back in the day. I covered bands like the Aught Nines and the Whirled Shakers. But no, as I have now told several early readers from those days, I am not writing a thinly veiled exposé about any real bands. It’s funny, but none of htem ask if I’m writing about myself. If Tara, with her illusions and faulty memory, is me. That would be a harder one to answer, and it would touch on why it took me so long to be able to write this book. Why it took me so long to get the club world right.

How did it feel it leave cozies behind for sex and drugs and rock and roll? In this case, liberating. In this new voice, I could depict the world I remember, without inhibitions. I could work through more complex, conflicting emotions than I’d felt capable of tackling before. Bigger issues – and, yes, I already have ideas for the next book. A rocker, getting on in years, who must re-visit the trauma that both made her and kept her stuck in place as the world moved on.

It also made me appreciate my cozies more. World Enough is rough, at least emotionally, and I missed the warmth and whimsy of magical cats and benevolent spirits. I confess, I found myself longing for a career like Catriona McPherson’s, alternating cozies with harder-edged books. Maybe that’s why I dove into another Pru Marlowe while waiting for World Enough to come out. And why I’m absolutely thrilled that Polis Books has now picked up my “Witch Cats of Cambridge” series (look for the first book, A Spell of Murder, probably in early 2019). I got the news of the Polis offer during a particularly rough couple of weeks, which saw the decline and death of Musetta, so the idea of withdrawing into a magical world of friendly felines has been just the comfort I need. I like to think that this new series will offer readers that same kind of haven – playful and homely and sweet.

The first book is due in January, by which point I will have been talking about World Enough for several months, even pairing up with some of the rockers from those days here in Boston. Will I want to go dark again, after spending time with the warm and fuzzy? Maybe. We’ll see where the muse takes me – or the spirit of Musetta, perhaps, inspiring my next move.


This originally ran on the Wicked Cozies blog