Thursday, September 20, 2018

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--MYSTERY AUTHOR ALEC PECHE

Today we welcome Alec Peche, author of ten books split between two mystery series. Learn more about her and her books at her website. 

Reading romance and writing it are two completely different things...

For twenty or so years, I was a romance book junkie. This was prior to ebooks, so I was on a first name basis with my local used bookstore owner. It was the only way a reader could afford to support a several books a week habit. Perhaps twelve years ago I switched to the mystery genre, and a little more than six years ago, I decided there were some real duds in that genre and I could do better. So I started my career of writing two mystery series.

Circling back to my current work in progress, The Girl From Diana Park, it was time to get my protagonist together with the woman inhabiting his life. I felt that it would be disingenuous to do anything else, as both my characters were single, of a similar age, jointly raising a teenager that wasn’t theirs, while fighting off bad people trying to kill the teenager. The teenager is a secondary character, so this is not a Young Adult genre book.

So after twenty years of romance book reading, writing this single scene of romance (and what leads up to it) should be easy, right?

Wrong. As a female author, I’m trying to write the male romantic brain and to be consistent in a mystery genre tone, not in a romance novel style. My lead guy is not a Stone Barrington, or Jack Reacher, or Roarke. I’d modeled him initially after MacGyver, from the 70s show (and a new series in 2016) - a brainy, gentle, good-looking, widower (in my books) in the prime of his life. Oh boy!

The next problem is what readers expect from my traditional mysteries. Up to this point, I've had no graphic sex and less than five cuss words among my ten books, so even if I wanted to throw some 50 Shades of Grey into the story, I'd disappoint my readers as that's not what they expect from my previous series books. I also know of a twelve-year-old boy who is reading book 2 in this series, and his mom would have a conniption if the next book was unfit for that age group.

To add to my misery, I’m a pantser style of writer. I pick a location for the murder and how my man or woman got dead, and then I start writing. The story inside my head is rarely more than a chapter away from the typing my fingers are doing. So how do I work a little romance into this book, building in each chapter to a crescendo later in the story? How do I stop from over-thinking this minor story arc?

So what did I do? I decided to take a June Cleaver approach with them going back to her house, sipping wine and kissing, and him in the kitchen the next morning letting the reader's imagination fill in the blanks.... Sometimes that's the best way to write a scene. Readers’ imaginations can be just as powerful as the writer's words.

The Girl From Diana Park
A Damian Green Mystery, Book 3

Damian Green lives alone on a remote island in San Francisco Bay, he invents things and he's a computer geek who can manipulate large amounts of data to find the truth underneath.

In this story, Damian is asked to assist retired SJPD Detective Natalie Severino with a five year old child abduction case. The abduction was a cold case having not been solved in the first year after the child's disappearance from a local park.

Meanwhile Damian and Ariana continue caring for teenager, Hermione, while Damian explores new angles in the search for the girl's parents. While Hermione may not know where her parents are, or if they are even alive after men kidnapped her parents from their home nearly a year ago, someone else is convinced she does know where they are. That person is planning to use her to smoke out the parents. Damian has his hands full chasing multiple mysteries while protecting the two women he's come to love.

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