A Conversation With Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

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Mary Reed and Eric Mayer are a husband and wife writing team. Full time freelancers, they collaborate on some fascinating historical mystery novels.

When did you first become interested in writing historical mysteries?

Mary: I've always been interested in history but had never considered writing an historical mystery until after I got wed. I'd published a couple of short stories in EQMM by then but hadn't contemplated writing at novel length. We began writing short stories together and they too saw ink. Then one
afternoon we had a call from master anthologist Mike Ashley, who asked us if we could
write a short historical in short order, the deadline being less than a month. At that point we looked around for an appropriate setting. It happened that Eric was interested in, and had a number of books about, Byzantine times. So that was the era we picked, and thus was born John, Lord Chamberlain to Justinian I. So you could say the historical mysteries are all Mike's fault. And we do.

Since then we've written other short mystery stories, including a couple of
Shakespearean stories and one involving two members of the Pickwick Club.

There have also been a handful revolving round Herodotus, whose writings
about his travels are a gold mine for interesting -- not to say
outlandish--observations which served well as inspiration for these stories, and a few involving Inspector Dorj of present day Mongolia.

Eric: I first became interested in writing an historical mystery when Mike Ashley asked for one. Actually, I had never considered writing mysteries of
any sort until Mary talked me into collaborating on one set in modern day Mongolia, The Obo Mystery, which appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Up until Mary and I were married my few, unsuccessful forays into fiction were of the science fiction and fantasy genres. However, I had always enjoyed reading history books. History holds some of the same attractions as science fiction and fantasy, being about times and places different from our own, and so historical mysteries, to me, have something of the flavor of sf/fantasy.

There's such rich history in your area, did that influence your decision when choosing a genre? And do you plan to write about the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Quakers?

Mary: No, or at least not yet! When we began writing historical mysteries we
were living in NY state, so quite a step from the countries in which the stories are set, to say the least. Thus neither of us has set foot in Istanbul or any of the settings of the Herodotus or Dorj mysteries. However,we did write a couple of stories for Shakespearean mystery anthologies and I have been to Stratford and seen Shakespeare's grave with its famous curse on those who move his bones though I have my doubts the Swan of Avon actually composed those lines!

Eric: In the part of Pennsylvania where I grew up you can walk out into newly plowed fields in the spring and pick up arrowheads. When the Europeans
arrived there was considerable strife amongst them and the Indian tribes. Maybe because that was all so close at hand when I was a kid, it never caught my imagination. Or maybe I saw it through the lens of the television
westerns which were all the rage. My friends and I spent so much time battling
Indians in the back yard it probably exhausted any future desire to write about it.

How is the historical mystery market fairing in today's market?

Mary: A good question and one we ponder constantly. I'd say its popularity is holding up well even though it's long been the stepchild of mystery fiction. Currently the Roman Empire, medieval times, and the l920s and l930s are some
of the most popular eras while Victoria's reign is continuing to be strongly presented. And more is being published set in distant, exotic locales such as Japan or unusual periods such as war time France. In fact, what is considered historical for mystery purposes is a discussion that returns now and then to elists and the latest I have seen advanced as still within the definition is the 1960s, within living memory of many readers and certainly a number of authors.

Eric: Historical mysteries probably don't have as big a potential audience as many other genres. When you consider that the novels combine not only a
mystery puzzle, but also are set in a different time and place than our own, which readers need to imagine from the information conveyed, historical mysteries might be a bit too much work for some. In fact, eras with which readers are more familiar are more popular. Which to me is a shame. I would have supposed that people would be clamoring for books set in eras which had not already been done to death -- I always like to be introduced to new things -- but my understanding is that publishers don't particular like historical mysteries set in unfamiliar eras.

Tips to those considering writing in the subgenre?

Mary: Research, and then research some more. But don't just throw all your information into the plot in the form of a side digression lasting a page or
two. You have to blend it in in subtle ways to convey the necessary information and background colour or even at times a clue or two. It's difficult and I still struggle with it, but too much information at once can stop the flow of the plot and take the reader out of the spell you are hopefully casting on them.

It's a good idea to read as much as you can from the written and pictorial record of the period. I am thinking of its literature, songs, diaries, periodicals, newspapers, and so on. I also gain a great deal of information from examining photos or paintings or frescoes of the time which is being researched. Soaking up the atmosphere in which you set your story will help shape the writing as well as giving clues to the society of the time.

Noticing how mannered letters were in the l9th century compared to nowadays, attitudes in the early 20th century to women or minorities or unmarried mothers, or how husband and wife of different social stratas addressed each other for example provides a palette from which to paint your fiction in a pleasing and authentic fashion.

Eric: I think writers of historical mysteries need to remember that although it's necessary for us to get our facts right, we are writing novels, not
history. History is so fascinating, I find it tempting to just regale readers
with interesting facts and events I've learned about. But if readers primarily want to learn about the past then they should consult history books, both modern and ancient. How could Mary and I top Procopius' Secret History wherein Emperor Justinian is depicted as a faceless demon? What we can offer is what non-historical mystery novelists offer--an interesting plot, engaging characters, a fairly clued puzzle.

Now the other side of that coin--or should I say solidus to remain historical?--is that the plot, mystery. and characters should be firmly rooted in the era. Or at least that's my opinion. If the same events could have occurred last year, if the protagonist is just a wisecracking television detective in a toga, why write a historical?

How much time do you spend in research and how much of that research do you estimate that you actually use?

Mary: We spend a lot of time researching and quite often an unusual fact or incident discovered through it will be grabbed and used in some way in what
we are writing. We make copious notes before we begin drafting the work and then do more research as we go along and as it's needed. It's amazing how occasionally even a minor matter that will be mentioned in passing gives pause and then sends us to look it up. One that springs to mind involved Byzantine door handles. Did these doors have handles, and if so what form did they take? We never could decide the question so we fudged the issue a bit, but generally just about all the research is used and anything left over is noted down for use in subsequent works.

Eric: I couldn't venture a guess as to what percentage of my research I use.
Not much certainly. But then I'm not sure I could even identify where my research ends and reading history for my own amusement begins. Suppose I need to know how many spectators could fit into the Hippodrome for a race during the sixth century, but before long I am reading about the monuments in the stadium, and how many centuries they survived, and how the last Byzantine emperor assembled his forces in the Hippodrome ruins before the final fall of the city in 1453, and the fact that some historians think the empire could be said to have lasted a few more years because claimants to the throne still held on in other parts of the empire. So I've been reading about places far from Constantinople where our books are set and 900 years after our era. Now I ask you, dare I call that research?

Do you ever use actual historical people in your stories? If so, how much research do you conduct into their personalities and character traits?

Mary: Theodora and Justinian are good examples of real people who appear in our stories. We based them on descriptions in contemporary sources such as
Procopius' Secret History, with its scandalous account of court behaviour by a man who did not care for Theodora. Admittedly she had a rather lurid past but we have painted her in even less flattering colours in order to create tension between John and herself. He is well aware she would just as soon have him executed but to a degree his intelligence and usefulness to Justinian protects him--though this could change at any moment. Justinian appears to have been more enigmatic and we have therefore presented him as largely unfathomable, but in both cases we extrapolated their behaviour from what is recorded about their historic actions.

The series has also included several other real persons, perhaps most memorably the Gourd, a murderous City Prefect who was ruthless in keeping order in Constantinople. His real name was Theodotus but his nickname came from the shape of his overly large head. We never did find out what was thought to be responsible for this physical shortcoming so we invented a couple of reasons for it when he appeared in Four For A Boy. As is often the case, real lives outdo the fictional. For example, the Gourd appears to have been a fascinating person in a nasty sort of way. Despite his zealous
devotion to duty he was eventually arrested on charges of poisoning and practicing magick. Spared execution, after hearing assassins were on the way to kill him he took sanctuary in a Jerusalem church, remaining there for the rest of his life.

Herodotus was another real person but the springboard we use for the fiction in which he appears is mostly inspired by material or comments in his works.

We play up his presentation of himself as a man of the world and a world traveller while underlining the ego the onlooker senses, but overall remaining sympathetic to a man who was interested in other cultures and provides us with vivid pen portraits of them--including if not the first then certainly one of the earliest locked room mysteries, in this case involving an Egyptian king's treasury. Here again we are able to draw upon a fascinating amount of information, giving inspiration a kick start.

Eric: Historical characters play a slightly larger role in the book we're currently working on. However, our fictional characters remain the foreground. To accurately incorporate real historic personages into a novel you need to be a biographer in addition to everything else! Too often, I think, writers tend just to use the names of historical people and some interesting facts about them and then go ahead and make them into characters that are just as fictional, and have as little to do with the real people, as any fictional characters they would have invented whole. There are any number of historical mysteries featuring, as detective, people it is impossible to imagine would ever have got involved in trying to solve a murder. So if the writers got something so fundamentally wrong as their premise how much does their character have to do with the real historical figure? And if the
historical character has been badly distorted, then I don't see the point of
the exercise.

What's the most difficult part of writing for you and the aspect you enjoy most?

Mary: For me the most difficult part is leaving the research and beginning the writing. The best part is when the Muse takes over and pages flow from the keyboard without effort. The odd thing is that quite often they are what I at
least consider some of my best writing. History may have another judgment.

Eric: I enjoy much of the reading I do for research. It's a good excuse to read history. I also like making up the stories. Always have. When we were
kids my friends and I would sit around telling each other stories we made up as we
went along, or played our stories out in the yard--usually they involved lots of running and shooting cap guns. So the days we spend batting around ideas, and deciding what's going to happen in the next book, are great fun.

When I have to start transferring all the bright ideas in my head into cumbersome words that can be understood by others, that's when the difficulties begin.

What's your writing schedule like and do you have "day jobs?"

Mary: We're both full time freelance writers and work at home so the commute is not too difficult! Whatever we're writing we are generally at work by ten or eleven a.m. and continue working until about twelve hours later--with time
off for meals and chores of course--or even later than that, depending on the work load. But our day jobs might more accurately be described as night jobs since we tend to have reverse hours to most workers inasmuch as we clock off later and get up later, whereas the few neighbours we have generally seem to roar off to work at dawn, the middle of our night.

Eric: I do a lot of writing for legal publications, none of which, I hasten to add, is the slightest assistance in writing mysteries. Endless cups of
coffee are much more helpful. Since I work at home I am usually writing with a cat sleeping in my lap. Whether that helps or not is hard to say.

Who's your first reader?

Mary: Inasmuch as we draft chapters and pass them back and forth during the revising and polishing part of the procedure, you could say we are each
other's first readers. But outside that our first reader is our editor, Barbara Peters at Poisoned Pen Press. Nobody else, well, apart from the copy editor and type setter, sees what we have written until it is printed and launched on an unsuspecting world!

Eric: I prefer that no one sees work in progress. It isn't so much that they might discourage me by not liking it (although I suppose it's part of
it) but rather that showing off unfinished work seems to remove all the impetus for
actually finishing it.

If you weren't writers, what would you be doing instead?

Mary: One thing I would certainly do is devote more time to reading. There are so many Golden Age novels waiting for an eyetrack to be imprinted on them, even before considering other works of fiction and the huge amounts of non
fiction, both of these widely available online. A small sample would be the archives of Punch magazine and other publications, engaging collections of poetry and obscure technical works on topics long since left behind in the march of progress, biographies written by or about those who are part of our collective history, from the ordinary schmoes who fought so bravely in various conflicts to the politicians who were instrumental in bringing in social reforms of all kinds, not to mention the works of wonderful old country vicars who translated obscure tomes or wrote delightful treatises on the wild life of their rural livings. And that does not even scratch the surface of what is available online. With the internet there is access to a wonderful library open clock round, and sometimes the choice is so bewildering it can take twenty minutes to decide on what to read next.

Eric: Considering my talents if I weren't a writer I would probably be collecting welfare. I seem to have been doomed to some sort of writing or other. Well, that or reading. But reading pays even less than writing. I have often wished I had tried to get into academia, however, rather than going originally into the corporate world. But mostly because teaching at a college would, I suppose, be more conducive to doing the kind of writing I prefer. Not to mention maybe paying me to read. For research purposes of course.

Do you ever argue about the content or writing when you're working together? And if so, how do you settle the argument? In other words, who has the final say when there's a disagreement about something in the plot?

Mary: Well, yes, we do argue sometimes but whoever feels strongest about the point in question usually carries the day. Eric is just pulling peoples'
legs when he talks about the necessity of having extra strong door hinges or
hiding the kitchen knives!

Anything else you would like to talk about?

Eric & Mary: We'd like to thank you for this opportunity to put forth a few thoughts and since we've talked at some length may we close by mentioning our website provides content that may interest your readers? Among other items there are personal essays on a wide variety of topics, information on mystery
author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, an interactive game written
by Eric, and Mary's ongoing project listing links to free e-texts of classic
and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural.
Interested parties should point their clickers at: http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/

Finally, for those who enjoy blogs, Eric's is to be found at: http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/