Carolyn Eichhorn, author of Murder in the Mix, a Gina Morrison mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us about Writing Where You Know (And Where You’d Like to Go).
Welcome, Carolyn. I’ll turn the floor over to you –
We’ve all heard “write what you know” as a starting place to story creation (and, I assume, nonfiction, but that’s a different article) and it makes sense. If we start from the familiar, there is opportunity for authentic detail, for personal reflection, and it gives a solid base for the whimsy or exploration outside of the known that becomes the world inside our readers’ heads – or so we hope. As a mystery writer and lifelong fan, I’ve gotten to know London through Sherlock Holmes and village life in England through Miss Marple. Of course some of Christie’s best known works are in more exotic locales – the Orient Express, the River Nile, but I still believe her – that she knows these places.
Many writers have become inextricably linked to the places where their sleuths solve crimes: seedy L.A., mid-century New York City’s brownstone, wild, unapologetic Florida. My first (and forever unpublished) novel is set in Orlando. Not theme park Orlando, but Thornton Park – a small historic neighborhood not far from the iconic Lake Eola and its fountain. I took some liberties with specific locations in the story, partly out of necessity – my dream coffee shop/mystery bookstore does not exist there sadly – and partly because I imagined that small business owners probably don’t want murders or shady characters or crimes scenes in their workplace.
Laura Lippman – a mystery writer known for stories in and around Baltimore – was asked if the restaurants in her Tess Monaghan books were real and she replied: “If Tess likes the food, the restaurant is real. If the food is bad, the place exists only in my imagination.” (Lippman, n.d.) This makes sense to me. I want to hype up the favorite spots that make my setting authentic. I wrote a series of short stories inspired by the mind-numbing realities of corporate cubicle life- a space I know quite well – in which I take a familiar kernel of truth and push it into terrible places outside of my experience. Clearly, I had no desire to name a specific organization, so I made one up. And not because I feared comparisons to real places, but because our own experiences limit us. We have to push our characters into unfamiliar spaces, make them uncomfortable, unsure where to go. That said, the corporate parks, the nearby quarry blasting periodically, the winding streets through Columbia, Maryland that annihilate one’s sense of direction in those tales are all very real. When Lippman, a former journalist at The Baltimore Sun, was asked if the Beacon Light in Tess’ world was really based on the Sun, she gave this cheeky reply: “Obviously not. The Sun is on Calvert Street, while The Blight is on Saratoga Street (Lippman, n.d.).”
In Murder in the Mix, my main character Gina lives in a bungalow in Baltimore. She frequents diners with her friend Mark. I love diners and in fact wrote scenes for this book in a few. My real-life spot, the BelLoc Diner closed before I finished writing the book and was transformed into a Starbucks. Not the same vibe, so I shifted Gina’s lunch to the Towson Diner. She travels to Savannah and New York City to solve the mystery, stopping at real places along the way – Gabrielas on the Upper West Side, The Place in the Village, and others. Most, I’ve visited, but The Place was chosen for its name and my descriptions came from photos I found online. Sadly, it also closed before I finished my book, so I made the decision to leave the story existing in a time before that happened. I’m still sad I didn’t get to eat and drink there.
Place has such a fundamental impact on us as humans that it makes sense to carry that emotion, those sensory details, that personal history into the worlds we create for our characters. My summers at Lake Gaston, NC inspired a short mystery chosen for inclusion in Malice Domestic’s Murder Most Traditional anthology. I suspect it was not the mystery itself that caught the editor’s attention, but the smell of the ski boat exhaust, the cloudy water always a bit cooler at toe-depth where one can’t see, the coves off the main lake and their piers full of holiday weekend renters who drink a little too much, drive boats a little too fast and make a little too much noise to suit the locals. So if tragedy falls upon one of these obnoxious visitors, that resonates with those who know that world. There is enough familiar to make it real.
My next novel is set at a writing retreat in the mountains of North Carolina, another setting I know reasonably well. But, like Christie, I aspire to write some mysteries in more exotic destinations while I still can. Perhaps the sparkling clear waters of Croatia? A European river cruise at Christmas Market time? The stunning views at Zion National Park? A girl can dream tax-deductible travel dreams, right?
Kudos to the writers of fantasy and sci-fi who build their places without that familiarity and yet still make them feel familiar and grounded in truth. You inspire me. For now, I’ll pull inspiration from places that have moved me and places I dream to visit that have ignited my curiosity.
Thank you for sharing this with us, Carolyn, and good luck with Murder in the Mix, the latest book in the Gina Morrison mystery series. Readers can learn more about Carolyn Eichhorn by visiting the author’s website and Grounds for Suspicion as well as her Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram pages. You can also follow her on Threads.
The book is available online at the following retailers:
About Carolyn Eichhorn: Carolyn is a mystery novelist and former Disney Imagineer whose work blends suspense, humor, and heart. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has published short mystery fiction and essays. Based in the mountains of Western North Carolina, she draws inspiration from small towns, big secrets, and the stories people tell to survive.
dianneascroft.com 