Writers
have the best jobs in the world: We hear
voices in our heads without being thought crazy (well, not too crazy anyway)
and we get to tell lies for a living. When we’re writing cozy mysteries, we
also get to kill people—imaginary people who will be missed only by their
imaginary loved ones. Still the voices we hear become real on the written page,
the lies we tell carry the very essence of truth, and the imaginary people
whose imagined lives we end bring hope to the very real futures of the flesh-and-blood
readers whose lives we touch. What could possibly be better?
The
beginning of every new year finds me having a chat with those voices in my
head, all of whom are jockeying for position. Whose story will be next? Who is emerging
as the new heroine, love interest, victim, murderer, detective, hero or confidante?
This year’s conversation sounded something like this:
MALE
VOICE: Yo! Pay attention! You put me off
all of last year and I think it’s about time you heard my story.
ME: Sorry. I’m working with Roman and Lottie just
now. They’ve both been lonely a long time and…
MALE
VOICE: I know, I know, but life isn’t
all about the hearts and flowers. I’m about to be murdered here.
ME: Take a number and get in line. I’ve at least
half a dozen potential murder victims in front of you.
FEMALE
VOICE: No kidding! When am I going to
get to come out and play again?
ME: Maggie, is that you?
MAGGIE: What? I’m wounded! You don’t even recognize
my voice anymore?
ME: Of course I do, but it has been a while…
MAGGIE: No kidding! You don’t have to tell me. You made
me the star of one book, and then you told me to take a number.
ME: Sorry. There are only so many hours in a day,
only so many books in a year.
MAGGIE: That’s what I tried to tell you when you were
on deadline with MAGGIE RISING, but you just kept pushing me for a solution
anyway.
ME: That was in your best interest, you know. You
didn’t want to spend any longer in the county jail than absolutely necessary.
MAGGIE: My best
interest? You say that now, but you were the one who put it on the cover that
MAGGIE RISING was “the first book in the Maggie Rising Case Files.” I’ve been
waiting ever since.
ME: You’ll just have to wait a little longer.
2nd
FEMALE VOICE: What about me? You told me
if I came to work in the Hope Creek Medical Center, you’d find someone special
for me.
ME: Hi, Caro. I’ve found him and I’m working on
the plot line. If you can just be patient a little longer—
NEW
FEMALE VOICE: Patient? You told me that
too. I’ve been waiting about two years since that day you found me wandering on
the beach near Sydney.
ME: And I do plan to tell your story, Lucy, but there
hasn’t been that big a market for historicals lately—
LUCY: Tell that to Harry. Until I go to
live with Aunt Marjorie in Stowe-on-the-Wold, I won’t be able to come back to
him again, and that will leave him stuck with that floozy from Leicester—
ME: So tell her to take a number and—
LUCY: …and get in line. I know.
2nd
MALE VOICE: Have you figured out what
you’re doing with me yet?
ME: Oh hi, Sean. You’re going to be Caro’s love
interest at the Med Center. Didn’t I tell you?
SEAN: Hmmm.
Caro, huh? Um, yeah, I like that idea. So how long before you get around
to our story?
ME: Probably not more than five or six months.
SEAN: Five or six…?! Really? Come on! I was just
talking with Rand. He says he thinks his story would make a good follow-up when
you get done with mine.
ME: (sighing)
Tell him to take a number—
SEAN: I know, I know, take a number and get in
line. Hear that, Rand?
RAND: Yeah, I heard. Do you think we can find a
writer who isn’t quite so preoccupied with other characters?
SEAN: We can certainly look around. Can’t hurt,
since we’re just hanging out here doing nothing anyway.
RAND: Hear that, folks? Sean and I are going to
start looking around, seeing if we can find someone else to tell our stories.
You wanna come?
ME: Wait! What is this? Mutiny?
MAGGIE
AND CARO: It all depends. How soon do
you think you’ll get to our stories?
ME: Now this sounds like blackmail. I don’t think
I like this at all.
SEAN
AND RAND: So how does it feel now the
shoe’s on the other foot?
ME: But I’m the one who created you, the one who
thought you up! What will you do if you go to another writer, someone who
doesn’t know you like I do?
ALL: Sorry. We may have to tell you to take a
number and—
ME: (sighing harder) Ugh, take a number and get
in line.
I’ve
decided this is what comes from writing uppity characters with minds of their
own. This year I’m making a new resolution: I will tell as many of their
stories as I can. I may have to commit my own set of crimes with the others,
drugging them all into silent submission to avoid having them mutiny. I don’t
like taking numbers, and I’m not good at standing in line.
