Amber Royer, author of Vanishing into the 100% Dark, the latest novel in the Bean to Bar mysteries series, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today.

Welcome, Amber.

Tell us about your novel. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

Vanishing into the 100% Dark is the eighth book in the Bean to Bar Mysteries series.  In the series, Felicity Koerber moves home to Galveston, Texas to open a bean to bar chocolate business on the historic strand – only to have to solve a murder that happens at her grand opening party.  In addition to solving mysteries throughout the series, she has been putting her life back together after suffering tragic loss.  Her business has offered her an opportunity to build a community and make new friends, and she heals enough to be ready to find a new love interest.

Vanishing into the 100% Dark takes Felicity and her friends halfway around the world in the first book in the series set outside of Galveston.  (Though technically, the third book takes place on a cruise ship that briefly reaches international waters.)  This one sees Felicity invited to a chocolate festival in Tokyo, where she is to give a class on bean to bar chocolate making.  One of the recurring characters tagging along with her is Chloe, a teen Youtuber whose jerk-face cat has bought her a measure of fame.  Obviously, when she finds out that local Youtubers are being offered a part in a monster movie, she wants to participate.  Which puts Chloe in the position to become a main suspect when a stunt man is killed, and the police hold her passport.  Felicity is Chloe’s chaperone for the trip, giving her an extra measure of motivation to solve the crime before she and her friends are scheduled to return home.

Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?

 Honestly?  I was reading a book by one of my favourite authors where the protagonist finds a phone in a trash can.  It was a fun story, but I couldn’t help but think about how I’d take that setup in a completely different direction.

I was recently in Japan, lecturing aboard a cruise ship, and I realized just how much I was relying on my phone when my husband and I – in a situation very similar to what Felicity is dealing with the Vanishing’s opening – needed to call a friend to find out where in the airport she was going to meet us.  Unlike Felicity, we were able to make the connection with no further incident.  I had her get her phone pickpocketed by a guy who later turns out to be a stunt man working on the movie Chloe wants to be in.

I wanted this mystery to have an extra layer of complexity to go along with the “super-mystery” setting taking characters half way around the world from where I usually write them.  So the idea of the body vanishing was a fun trope that I couldn’t resist playing with.  Felicity’s fiancé’s reaction, along with who does and does not believe her, gives me a lot to work with.

Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?

For the series: Felicity’s craft chocolate making and growing her business is a consistent part.  I am something of an accidental chocolate expert.  My husband and I were asked to do several presentations for our local herb society, back when we lived closer to Fort Worth.  One of those became our cookbook, There are Herbs in My Chocolate.  This happened near the time I was invited to speak on a cruise ship sailing to the Dominican Republic, where I visited a cacao plantation for the first time.  When I saw a cacao pod, my brain immediately compared it to a Nerf football, and I wrote a sci-fi novella about a bunch of characters on a spaceship all trying to get their hands, claws or paws on a cacao pod to get the unfermented – aka growable – beans inside.  They were throwing the pod and racing up staircases and darting inside elevators.  I later developed that piece into Free Chocolate, a much more thoughtful and complex novel – that still supposes chocolate is the most important thing in the universe.  I met so many chocolate makers and cacao farmers researching and marketing those books, that when I wanted to start a new project, it was a no brainer to have a craft chocolate maker sleuth.

For this book:  When we go to the movies, my husband and I like to visit Alamo Drafthouse, because they do a half hour presentation before each movie that somehow relates to it.  We went to see The Fall Guy, and the presentation was a montage of clips from everything from the Burt Reynolds Stuntman movie to a documentary about Jackie Chan.  It hit my movie-lover’s brain just right for a movie to become a big part of Vanishing into the 100% Dark.

How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?

When I start writing, I have a few things in mind about a character – maybe a name or an occupation.  Descriptions usually come in a way that matches the character’s voice, either in dialogue or in narration.  If the character is going to be important, and I don’t instinctively get a feel for who the person is, I will do some exercises from the viewpoint of that character.  Typically this involves character interviews (take the character into a white room and ask upsetting questions to see how the character reacts and what she values) or what-choice-would-this-character-make dilemma exercise (put the character in an uncomfortable or ethically difficult situation and see how he responds).  It’s weird, but when forced, you can get your characters talking, from their viewpoint.

My favourite characters to write are the side characters with big personalities.  There’s a blogger in The Bean to Bar Mysteries who starts out in Grand Openings Can Be Murder by rashly accusing my protagonist of being the killer.  In the first two books, Felicity sees him as a nemesis.  But in the third book, after he gets accused of being the culprit and turns to Fee for help, she starts to see him more sympathetically.  (As did I, once I figured out that he, like me, is adopted.)  Now it is to the point where readers ask me for, “More Ash!”  My husband, who is my alpha reader, gets excited for “Ash chapters.”  I love writing characters who grow in sympathy like that.  There’s so much more to them than a reader gets to see on first encountering them.  I see characters that are unlikable on the outside but endearing once you get to know them often cast as leads in K Dramas and other long-form series.  That’s because it takes time to peel back the layers.  I am grateful that readers are sticking with this series long enough for me to do that.

A fan-favourite character that I put in the Chocoverse books was also a secondary character.  Chestla is an alpha-predator leopard woman who is a warrior with a tragic past.  But she is also heartbroken that most people keep their distance, while her greatest desire is to be invited to a local party.  She is, at times, comic relief. 

She’s completely larger than life.  Even though they are very different characters, so is Ash.  I have a ton of fun writing them – but I don’t think they would make good protagonists.  They shine so bright in the time they are on the page, it would be hard to sustain for the length of a book – or series – without them starting to feel either cliched or tiresome.  That’s why I have fun writing protagonists like Felicity.  She’s a bit steadier, but she still has a sense of humor and finds herself in some wacky situations.

How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?

It’s all about the details.  Writing Galveston is easier because I’ve spent a lot of time there over the years.  I know what parking is like on the Strand, and where to get good coffee.  I’ve changed the names and particulars of a lot of businesses (often combining several into one place), but landmarks such as Pleasure Pier are present in the series and named.

Vivid writing appeals to the senses.  If you put a character onto the beach, it can’t be just a generic beach.  What is the temperature? (Galveston can get cold and windy in the winter.)  What does the sand feel like?  (Sand comes in such a variety of textures and colors.)  What seabirds frequent the area?  Is there a specific smell to the breeze?  What are tar balls?  Is it jellyfish season?  What are the flowers growing up against the seawall called?  Filling in all those blanks can put a reader right where they need to be to feel like they’ve visited that beach alongside the characters.

What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?

It depends on what is happening in that particular book. For instance, I did a lot of research into octopuses and sea turtles for 70% Dark Intentions.  We even went down to Padre Island to attend a sea turtle release.  I’m planning to have an upcoming book in the Bean to Bar Mysteries series involve a subplot about the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, so we just visited Port Aransas (a bit down the coast from Galveston) for their Whooping Crane Festival. 

Vanishing into the 100% Dark is a bit different.  It’s set in a foreign country.  I’ve visited Japan a couple of times, and my husband and I do community service work for the Japanese community in Dallas. We’ve watched a decade’s worth of mystery-themed anime and Japanese dramas – not to mention most of the Godzilla movies. When I recently lectured aboard a cruise ship with ports in Japan, I researched Japanese mysteries, the history of journaling in Japan, poets, Zuihitsu literature and more.  It feels like little bits of all of that went into my book, some of the passive research I absorbed just by being places or experiencing media. 

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?

There’s a lot here that touches on social media. Felicity ends each book by setting up and taking a photo for her Instagram with the people who changed her life over the course of that book.  She meets characters who blog, have YouTube channels, and teach on-line. 

Pretty much everything I write also has sweet/clean romantic subplots.  The Bean to Bar Mysteries has a love triangle in the first few books, but Felicity does make her choice, and by the time you get to Book 8, she is engaged.  This is a second romance for her, so she is taking her time.

The mystery in each book is self-contained, and I try hard to include enough context surrounding repeating characters or events that happened in previous books that you can follow along easily, even if it is the first book of mine you’ve read.

I hope you enjoy getting to know Felicity and seeing her grow and heal throughout the series.

Thank you for answering my questions, Amber, and good luck with Vanishing into the 100% Dark, the latest book in the Bean to Bar mystery series.

Readers can learn more about Amber Royer by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Goodreads pages. You can also follow her on Twitter.

The novel is available at the following online retailers:

Amazon    Barnes and Noble    Kobo     Bookshop.org

About Amber Royer: Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series, and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach. Her workbook/textbook Story Like a Journalist and her Thoughtful Journal series allow her to connect with writers.  Amber and her husband live in the DFW Area, where you can often find them at local coffee shops or taking landscape/architecture/wildlife photographs.  They both love to travel, and Amber records her adventures on Instagram – along with pics of her pair of tuxedo cats.  If you are very nice to Amber, she might make you cupcakes.  Chocolate cupcakes, of course!