Greetings, Noters!
With Book One in the Book Blogger Mysteries in the capable hands of my editor, I’ve turned my attention to Hazel, Poppy, and the gang in Crucible. Since I began writing Glenmyre Whim Mystery Book Three at the start of the year (before taking a break to write Coco Cline Book Three), it’s different coming back to a halfway-written book.
I found myself completely drawn into the story as I re-read my work. Yet, I quickly realized I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going with all the clues and red herrings I’d left myself. Oops!
So, it’s been a puzzle trying to figure out what all these elements meant, given that they weren’t in my outline. I do feel like I’m back on track, though, and I’ve added about 10,000 words to the story since returning the manuscript. If all goes well, this should be in the hands of readers by December 2023 — just in time for the holidays!
This week's guest certainly knows the challenges we writers encounter during the first draft process and how to overcome them.
Without further ado…
A Bit About the Author: Skye Alexander is the author of nearly 50 fiction and nonfiction books. Her stories have appeared in anthologies internationally, and her work has been translated in more than a dozen languages. In 2003, she cofounded Level Best Books with fellow crime writers Kate Flora and Susan Oleksiw. The first novel in Skye’s Lizzie Crane mystery series, Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, was published in August 2021; the second, What the Walls Know, was released in November 2022; the third, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, launched in September 2023. After living in Massachusetts for thirty-one years, Skye now makes her home in Texas with her black Manx cat Zoe.
Skye, welcome to Noteworthy. We have a LOT of ground to cover today. With nearly 50 books published, you are totally author goals! Let’s begin where it all started. What book made you first fall in love with reading?
No single book made me fall in love with reading. Among the earliest books my mother read to me were the Winnie-the-Pooh stories––which I still love. Before I started school, I insisted Mom teach me to read for myself, and she did. I envied my older cousins who could read and I wanted to discover the worlds that lay between the covers of books. Like many other crime writers, the Nancy Drew books made me fall in love with the mystery genre.
Nancy Drew is revered here on Noteworthy, that’s for sure! How did your love of reading evolve into a love of writing? How did you begin your writing journey?
I attended poor, country schools in the rural South and was terribly bored. To entertain myself, I spent most of my classroom time reading and writing stories. When I was fifteen, I started writing a weekly column for my local newspaper in a town near Nashville, TN; at eighteen, I took a job as a reporter and ad writer for a radio station in North Carolina. After graduating college with a writing degree, I worked for TV in Boston and also wrote for numerous magazines, particularly those that focused on interior design, film, and new age subjects. In 1983, I shifted into what I loved most: the book publishing biz and worked for many years as an editor, publicist, marketing director, and copywriter. In 2003, I cofounded Level Best Books with fellow crime writers and friends Kate Flora and Susan Oleksiw––it’s now run by Verena Rose and Shawn Reilly Simmons. I’m thrilled to be back in the LBB family again with my Lizzie Crane mystery series.
What an amazing journey! Well, I’m thrilled that we connected through our LBB family, and you’ve created the perfect segue to talk about your latest novel. The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors is your most recent release and features your jazz-singing heroine, Lizzie Crane. What made you want to write a whodunit?
I love all sorts of puzzles and games. Mystery novels present readers with puzzles to solve, but they’re also games in which the writer tries to trick the reader and the reader tries to figure out the mystery before the writer reveals whodunit. In traditional mysteries, the crime gets solved, justice is done, and the bad guys get their comeuppance. Right triumphs over wrong, which doesn’t always happen in the real world. My series––which currently consists of three books Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, What the Walls Know, and The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors, although the fourth and fifth are finished and I’m now working on the sixth––is set in the mid-1920s, what’s sometimes called “the Golden Age of Mysteries.” The wonderful novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers from this period continue to inspire me.
I didn’t like history when I studied it in school––mainly because it was all about wars, rulers, economics, and politics, not the lives of real people––but I love researching the past now for my historical mystery series. All my stories take place in old cities with colorful, diverse histories, where a lot of dastardly deeds are mixed in with the grandeur. The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors is set during the Christmas holidays in Salem, MA, “a town known for its seafaring history, Nathanial Hawthorne, and hanging women suspected of witchcraft.” This gives me an opportunity to share interesting info with my readers about places, people, customs, transportation, clothing, food, architecture, art, music, inventions, and a lot more––and to learn about these things myself.
I deeply admire writers who tackle historical plots. The research required and the talent needed to transport a reader back in time are so awe-inspiring to me. How did Lizzie introduce herself to you? What made Lizzie the woman you wanted to write about?
Characters just show up and start telling me their stories, which is what Lizzie did. I knew I wanted to set my novels in the Roaring Twenties because it was such a vibrant period between WWI and the Depression, when people wanted to let loose and have fun. It was also a time of change especially for women, who’d recently gotten the right to vote and who were rapidly shedding the sociological constraints of the Victorian era along with their corsets. Lizzie is a twenty-six-year-old ambitious, independent, single woman, the daughter of poor Irish immigrants from the Bronx, who now lives a bohemian lifestyle in Greenwich Village. Although she’s a high-school dropout, she’s intelligent and self-educated, and her beauty and musical talent enable her to chart an unconventional path for herself. She’s also gutsy, adventurous, with a big heart, and too curious for her own good when it comes to poking her nose into murders and other crimes.
In a sense, Lizzie embodies the qualities I wish I had. I love music and tried to play a variety of instruments in my youth, but I lack musical talent and can’t carry a tune. I thought it would be fun to write about a protagonist who can do what I can’t, which also gave me an opportunity to learn more about the jazz greats of the time: the Gershwins, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, and many more.
Because I planned to write a series, I decided to create a cast of characters who weren’t confined to a single locale such as Louise Perry’s Three Pines. Lizzie’s band, The Troubadours, hire themselves out to wealthy people to perform at special events, including weddings, birthday parties, and other celebrations. This lets them travel throughout New England, New York, and in the sixth novel to New Orleans.
Switching topics, I’m hoping you can share a bit about your book, The Modern Guide to Witchcraft. I’m fascinated by this topic and would love to learn how you became an expert!
The Modern Guide to Witchcraft provides an overview of contemporary Western witchcraft, from a Wiccan perspective. Written for beginning and intermediate level magick workers, it covers a bit of history and the basic tenets of witchcraft in the West including how magick can help you, working with cosmic and nature energies, gods and goddesses, the eight major pagan holidays, tools witches use, tapping the power of botanicals and gemstones in spellwork, and recipes for casting spells for protection, prosperity, love, career success, and more.
I don’t like to think of myself an “expert” because there’s always more to learn, but I’ve been studying and practicing witchcraft for over thirty years. And every day I discover more of the magick in my life. One of my objectives is to share what I’ve learned and experienced with people who want to follow this path, especially young women. I love it when young women email me to say my books have given them a sense of self-confidence, an awareness of their true selves, and a way to connect with their inner knowing and power. Wicca, which is the spiritual branch of witchcraft I follow, often appeals to women because we honor a feminine deity, whereas most of the major religions in the world are patriarchal. We also try to live in harmony with nature and respect all life on earth, as well as attuning ourselves to the spirit world and cosmic influences. We have certain beliefs, but no fixed dogma. Instead, we hold one guiding principle: “do no harm.” I’d be happy to answer any questions you have––you can also go to my website skyealexander.com and listen to some of the podcasts and interviews I’ve done on this subject.
The Modern Guide to Witchcraft is my best-selling book of all. Next month, my wonderful publisher Adams Media/Simon & Schuster, is bringing out The Modern Witchcraft Introductory Boxed Set that includes this book plus The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book and The Modern Witchcraft Grimoire. My books in this series also include The Modern Witchcraft Book of Tarot, The Modern Witchcraft Book of Love Spells, and The Modern Witchcraft Guide to Fairies. Oh, and BTW, the second novel in my Lizzie Crane mystery series What the Walls Know features a cast of occultists including a witch, a wizard, a tarot reader, an astrologer, and several mediums––even a pagan Samhain ritual.
Beyond cool! The introductory boxed set sounds like a must-read for me. Let’s explore more of your writing world. What does your workspace look like? Is there anything you need for a successful day of writing?
I’m fortunate to have a nice, big office with lots of light and windows that look out on acres of rolling hills, trees, wildlife, and my outside goddess shrine. The room’s pretty cluttered, though, with piles of paperwork and books everywhere. What do I need for a successful day of writing? In the morning a couple cups of coffee; in the evening a glass of wine. And always my beautiful black Manx cat Zoe who keeps me company while I write. I agree with William Faulkner, one of my favorite writers, when he said he only wrote when he felt like it, and he felt like it every day.
Having a furry writing buddy does wonders, I find. What is your favorite, can’t-live-without writing tool?
I guess I’m pretty ordinary on this one. I use a Mac laptop and write on Microsoft Word. Nothing glamorous or unique. I keep my trusty Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, as well as my reference book Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson nearby. The software program “Online Etymology” is helpful when checking to see if I’m using words––especially slang terms––that are appropriate to my stories’ time period, and I do a ton of historical investigation through a variety of websites. YouTube lets me listen to the songs of the famous musicians I write about. Because my mysteries are set in the mid-1920s, a Sears catalog from that time is invaluable when it comes to finding out what products ordinary people used and what things cost in those days. Old magazines, postcards, photos, menus, and other memorabilia are helpful too.
I also rely on period maps of the places where my stories are set. Even though I’ve physically traveled to nearly every place mentioned in my books (if it ever did and still does exist), things don’t look the way they did a century ago, so I download old maps to get the locations right. For example, the fifth book in my series, When the Blues Come Calling, takes place in NYC during the summer of 1926 when the city was converting its els to subways. I had to acquire a map for June 1926 that showed which rail lines were still elevated and which had been placed underground at that time.
I’m bookmarking “Online Etymology” for future reference. That sounds like an incredible tool, especially for period writing. Now, for our last question: You stumble across a crime scene. What book character are you alerting first? Why?
For many years I lived in the Boston area, so my first call for help would go to Patrick Kenzie, Dennis Lehane’s Boston PI in Darkness, Take My Hand, A Drink Before the War, and Sacred. He’s a smart, brave, tough guy who’s loyal to his friends and will go to any length to bring a bad guy to justice. Of course, if I stumbled across a crime scene in an earlier time, I’d want Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Whimsey, or Philip Marlowe on the case.
A sleuth for any decade—smart choices! Skye, it’s been wonderful getting to know you, your books, and your writing a bit better. Thank you for sharing your time with me here at Noteworthy. Noters, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors is available now from Level Best Books, wherever books are sold!
The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors
December 1925: Salem, Massachusetts
When Matthew Gardner, the heir to a shipping fortune, hires New York jazz singer Lizzie Crane and her band to perform during the Christmas holidays, she has high hopes that this prestigious event will bring them riches and recognition. She’s also eager to reconnect with a handsome man from one of Boston’s most esteemed families, whom she met during an earlier visit to Massachusetts.
But the evening the musicians arrive in historic Salem to begin their engagement, police discover the body of a man near a tavern owned by Lizzie’s cousin––a cousin she even didn’t know she had. In the dead man’s pocket is a cryptic letter addressed to Gardner. To compound her dismay, she also learns that her host plans to marry his daughter to the man Lizzie wants for herself.
Soon Lizzie’s caught in the middle of a high-stakes feud between her cousin and her employer over a mysterious lady. When she digs deeper into their conflict, she learns its roots are deep and bitter: her cousin’s father crewed on one of Gardner’s grandfather’s ships that sunk during a storm in 1868. As she struggles to piece together the puzzle and find the lady at its center, Lizzie becomes a pawn in a deadly game for money and revenge.