Writer's Corner Wednesday is back! This week I am so excited to get to talk to author Claudia H. Long, whose latest book, Murder Without A Duck, comes out November 15! Mystery is a personal favorite genre of mine (I was raised on a steady diet of Nancy Drew books as a kid), so this was an especially fun interview for me to do. Murder Without A Duck is somewhere between cozy mystery and thriller, and kept me up way past my bedtime -- I just had to finish it! Read on for our interview, in which we discuss how she plots her murder mysteries, what makes a character Jewish "enough," her best advice for struggling writers, and so much more.
Q. Like the main character in your new series, you are an attorney by trade. Tell me about your journey from lawyer to author. What made you decide to take the plunge into authorship?
A. A lawyer writes for an unwilling audience! Think how much more fun it is to write to entertain, enlighten, and delight, all at once! I wrote my first book nearly 40 years ago—it went nowhere. I self-published a mystery about two decades ago, wrote erotic fiction (under a pen name—I am a lawyer after all!) for a few years, and then finally decided to take myself a bit more seriously. I think a lawyer always writes!
Q. When it comes to writing murder mysteries, what is your process like? What comes first -- the crime? the culprit? the detective? How do you go about plotting a mystery novel?
A. The detective comes first! I’m writing stories about someone. She (I have yet to have a male protagonist, but maybe someday!) is immersed in an adventure, but it’s her life, personality and desires that attract me.
I’m also big on setting. The place needs to come alive for me.
Once I know who and where, I plot the crime or the challenge. What is my character up against? Does something happen to her? Near her? Or does she just need something very badly?
For me, the villain comes last. But the villain often proves to be a very, very interesting character. What s/he wants, needs, what drives them, that always turns out to be fun.
The two problems I have with writing mysteries are: I have a real hard time killing anyone. Really. That’s tough for a mystery writer! I always think of how awful it really is, how scared/sad/broken-hearted the victim and their family are or will be. That takes the fun out of it. The second is how is the main character going to get out of the problem? Without getting killed herself? (Remember the scene in Austen Powers where Dr. Evil’s son says, “Just shoot him, Dad!”)
But I’m the consummate planner. Not a pantser by any means. My outlines have outlines. Of course, my characters go off script all the time. So yes, I do rewrite the outline!
Q. You wear a lot of hats: you're a lawyer, author, parent, and s0 much more. What advice do you have for fellow writers who have to juggle writing with a day job and caregiving responsibilities with writing?
A. I had one, then two children, and a career, and a few hobbies, but I wrote for my sanity and artistic expression. My “cheat” is that I write all my first drafts in November with Nanowrimo. That gives me the structure to juggle it all: one month, with 29 days to write (as the family cook, Thanksgiving day is a non-writing day!) and a year to edit.
Q. Your new series features a Jewish protagonist who lives in a very un-Jewish small town. Why was it important to you to make Sal Jewish, and what went into deciding "how Jewish," so to speak, to make her character and the book overall?
A. Such a meaty question! Even in my erotic fiction days, most of my main characters were Jewish. Just because I am. And it’s hard to write about someone who isn’t! I have written about Crypto-Jews (the hidden Jews during and after the Inquisition) as a subject that fascinates me. I am part of that heritage in a few ways, not the obvious ones, and that fueled my main characters in The Duel for Consuelo and Chains of Silver. Inherited trauma of daughters of a Holocaust survivor, as my sister and I are, forms the basis of the Zara and Lilly series, Nine Tenths of the Law and Our Lying Kin.
When I decided to write the fun, lighthearted small-town mysteries of the Simpato Mystery
series, I looked to the little town I live in. I moved here from a place where there was a huge, fancy Temple and many other synagogues in the county. Here, you can count us on one hand. When I meet another Jewish woman, we joke about how you can’t get a minyan in this town. So I made that part of my story.
Remember, though, that we are only 2% of the American population, and we aren’t scattered evenly across the nation, so I don’t have a lot of trouble with being such a tiny minority. I really have a huge problem, though, when the bigotry, antisemitism, ugliness and horror become the focus of towns and schools, in an intellectual and factual vacuum, and I’m pretty vocal about that.
I wrote the first draft of Murder without a Duck in November 2023, right after finishing Sisters at an Exhibition, book 3 of the Zara and Lilly mysteries, and I was screaming with rage.
I don’t think any character is Too Jewish, or Not Jewish Enough. Your character gets to be exactly who you want her to be.
Q. What is the best writing (/publishing/marketing/editing, etc...) advice you've ever received?
A. You write for yourself but you publish for others. If you want to sell your book you have to ask yourself, “Is this interesting to anyone else but me?” And just write it. You can always edit it later—you must!—but just write the dang thing!
You can pre/order the ebook by clicking HERE!
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