Even More Fun With Research
Here's an old one, to remind me that I really do need to get back to painting. Having turned in the manuscript for the next Hollywood murder mystery just before Christmas, I've been putting together outlines for what I hope will be the next Ben January book (# 21!) and the next Hollywood book (which will take place mostly in the film industry in New York, which was just as much a center of motion picture production in the mid-'20s as Hollywood was, and a lot more fun after hours). Writing up an outline is like pre-writing the book. I, at least, have to figure out what happens, and how; who's the villain, who gets killed, and why. Any murder mystery is actually two stories: the story of the crime itself, and then the story of how Mr. Holmes or Lord Peter or Professor Tamar figures out whodunnit. And, in my case at least, to give a picture of the world, the society, in which such events take place, which is a large part of the fun. It's one reason I love historicals.