Please welcome Rosemary
and Larry Mild, today's guests and fellow members of the Hawaii Chapter of Sisters in Crime. Rosemary and Larry spend their winter months in Hawaii, writing, visiting, and traveling around
the Islands. They continue to write at their home on the
mainland, where they teach mystery writing at Anne Arundel Community College in
Arnold, Maryland.
On Wednesday, March 21, Rosemary and Larry will give a presentation entitled "A Quickie Look at the Traditional Mystery" for members and guests of SinC/Hawaii.
Gail: Thank you for taking
time out of your busy schedule for this interview, Rosemary and Larry. In the
synopsis for one of your novels, you describe retired detective Paco LeSoto and
his wife Molly as “an endearing pair of sleuths.” As co-authors of these
mysteries, do you each write a certain number of chapters, collaborate on the
entire manuscript, or balance the writing, editing, and publishing through
another method?
Rosemary: First,
thank you, Gail, for this blog invitation. Larry
says he's more devious than I am, so he conjures up our plots and writes the
first draft. I come behind him, chapter by chapter, cutting, tossing, and
dressing the narrative salad. I polish the prose, flesh out the characters,
sharpen the dialogue. If a romance seems too sappy, I’ll make the girl more
feisty to give her scenes more conflict. Of course, that tactic has
consequences; it can actually affect the plotline. Then . . . with sleeves
rolled up, we negotiate. Here’s our
typical scenario.
Larry: You cut that whole
paragraph! It’s cruel—operating without anesthesia.
R: Just a little
judicious pruning, dear. (That’s an expression I learned as an assistant editor
at Harper’s.)
Larry: But it took me hours
to create those metaphors.
R: It's too much
already. Less is more.
Larry: Talk about overdoing.
Your description of the grocery clerk goes on for a whole page.
R: But his backstory
really gives him depth.
Larry: He’s a pass-through,
not a major character.
R: You’re squashing my creativity.
Larry: You’re trimming my
subordinate clauses.
R: You’re acting like a
spoiled brat.
Larry: I can’t stand to hear
a woman cry.
R: Our jousting is
usually short-lived. I sigh and submit. Larry licks his wounds, and we resign
ourselves to the compromises required. Maalox helps, too. Larry groans when I
even edit a one-paragraph business letter he’s written. Well, you know how it
is. Stephen King said, “To write is human. To edit is divine.” Harlan Coben
said it in a more earthy way. “If somebody tells me he doesn’t rewrite, I don’t
want to party with him.”
Larry: The great advantage
to co-authoring is that you’re never working in a vacuum. Reading aloud to
each other slows down the word rate to a point where the minutiae, typos,
and errors literally jump out at us. It’s so necessary to hear what we wrote— what it sounds like. We might discover Clara
walking into the room in a sequined gown and leaving in cut-off jeans. It’s during the reading process that our
individual writing styles blend into a single seamless product.
Gail: While Paco does the heavy lifting involved in sleuthing,
Molly often delivers comic relief through a delightful amalgam of misused
words. Can you give an example of the malapropisms that Molly sprinkles
throughout the novels? What inspired you to develop this characteristic?
R: Molly says: “I have
to take my calcium so I don’t get osteoferocious.” Or she accuses a villain of
“defecation of character.” She’s based on a real person: my psychoanalyst
father’s fabulous housekeeper/gourmet cook. She never went past the tenth
grade, but she was smart. He was so fascinated by the way she skewed the
English language that he made a secret list of what we call “Mollyprops.” After
my father passed away, we found his list in his desk drawer and decided Molly
would be a great character for a mystery. She was also nosy and observant,
which made her a perfect sidekick for Paco.
Gail:
Each of the titles for your Paco and Molly Murder Mysteries offers an
interesting play on words, something Molly might say. Do you choose the titles
of your novels as a team? Which comes first, the manuscript’s plot line or the
title?
R: Larry creates the
plots, then makes up the titles. They contain food because Molly is a gourmet
cook. But they’re also puns because Larry is an incurable punster! The night we met, on a blind date, he slipped a pun or two into
our dinner conversation. I retorted: “Do you pun in your sleep?” "Sure,”
he said. “I was born in the Year of the Pun. That’s the thirteenth sign of the
Zaniac.” I still laugh. I’m pretty sure our marriage depends on it.
Gail: Your stand-alone novel, Cry Ohana: Adventure and Suspense in
Hawaii, is the story of a local family, a Hawaiian ohana, torn apart by the
reckless act of one of its members. The danger described in this novel is
darker and highly personal. Was your research for this story more extensive
than for the Paco and Molly novels? Did you conduct your research on each of
the Islands mentioned?
R: We’ve spent our
winters in Hawaii for eighteen years, so we’ve been soaking up the “research”
all that time. Also, I have pounds of newspaper clippings and other
documentation from every island and locale, so the book is rich with authentic local color and cultures. Last year we
attended Left Coast Crime in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a convention for mystery
writers and fans. We were on a panel discussion and I talked about our killer
in Cry Ohana. He uses his skills as a lover to get women to help him in
his illegal business deals. A man in the audience asked Larry: “Who does the
research for your sex scenes?” And Larry said: “I do not farm that out!” The
author sitting next to Larry, Penny Warner, leaned over to him and said in a
sultry voice, “What’s your room number?” She brought down the house!
Gail: “They” say that all good writers are voracious readers. What keeps
you entertained or active when you are taking a break from reading and writing?
Rosemary: We
walk at Magic Island several days a week. We attend the Hawaii Opera Theatre
season with friends, plus the Metropolitan Opera simulcasts at Dole movie
theater. We’re involved in our synagogues both here and at home in Maryland.
We’re Washington Redskins fans (always hoping for a better season), and watch
most NFL games, which begin at 8 a.m. on Sundays here. In Boston Scream Pie,
Paco's two macaws squawk "Touchdown" and "Ten-yard
penalty." But what is most precious to us in Honolulu is our family here:
our daughter, Chinese-American son-in-law; and two granddaughters. They’re the
reason we chose Honolulu as our second home.
I
also write nonfiction. I just published my second memoir, Miriam's World—and
Mine, about our daughter Miriam Wolfe, whom we lost on Pan Am 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland. It deals with love, loss, and political betrayal, and I
think of it as moving from grief to grace: one mother’s guide to getting there.
All
our books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle and Nook.
