This isn’t about when the cat threw up on the bed, but it could be

Back a little more than 40 years ago, I had just started as a reporter at my second newspaper, the now-defunct Haverhill (Mass.) Gazette. It was a very shallow step up from my first job, at the also now-defunct Biddeford Journal-Tribune. With 19 months of daily newspaper reporting under my belt, I figured I had some capital. I told the boss that I wanted to write a column related to the business coverage that was part of my beat. If I had to cover something boring, I thought, I might as well try to find a way to make it interesting, at least for me.

The boss thought about it and then said, with no enthusiasm, “Sure, as long as you don’t write about the time the cat threw up on the bed.”

At my first newspaper job, the Biddeford Journal-Tribune, in 1983. I’m sure I’m thinking, “One day I’ll write about the time the cat threw up on the bed and they’ll not only thank me for it, they’ll beg for more.”

He was speaking figuratively. I did have a cat, and I’m sure it threw up on my bed at some point, because they all do, but I’m also sure I hadn’t discussed it with my new boss. It’s not like I was going to be writing about the cat throwing up on my bed even if I wanted to, unless there was some Haverhill business angle to it.

It wasn’t about the cat, anyway. The message was: Have something relevant to say.

That was not a problem. Having something to say is something I’ve tried to do no matter what kind of writing I’ve been involved in over the decades since. Who’s the audience? What do they want to know? What can I tell them even if they didn’t know they wanted to know? What do I strongly feel they NEED to know?

At a newspaper, or other type of publication created by someone else, the writer must feed an audience that’s already been formed. Yes, you want to give them something fresh, and maybe lure some new readers, but there’s still a framework required for your writing that’s someone else’s construction.

The “thing to say” is much easier, for me at least, as a mystery fiction writer than it was in journalism or other writing I’ve done for other people. I say what I want, and the audience follows. Or not. I do have a lot to say about things and I don’t expect everyone to be cool with it. I’m happy that enough people are that I sell a few books.

We mystery writers have to grin and bear it once in a while when there’s an implication, or outright to-our-face declaration, that our genre is frivolous or superficial. That we have nothing to say. Sure, some mysteries are like that. So are some books in other genres. On the other hand, mystery writers are delving into the bottomless pit of human behavior. That means they ought to have something to say. [I prefer “mystery fiction” to describe what we do rather than “crime fiction,” a column for another day, but just so you don’t think I’m talking about a genre subset. I am not.]

Mystery fiction books that deal gratuitously with murder and the other topics traditionally found in them, or have no depth, don’t hold my interest as a reader. I know. I know! Some become best-sellers. Of course there’s an audience for books that have nothing to say. Having something to say and selling millions of books are similar the way being able to cook a really tasty meal and owning a super-successful chain of fast-food restaurants are similar. I am not saying that fast-food isn’t tasty and can’t be really good food. I’m not saying best-selling books can’t be really good books or that they don’t have anything to say. My comparison is in the form of the analogy questions on the SATs. I recently learned they got rid of those in 2005, so if you’re 38 or younger and have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s this: It’s not about the food/book or it’s quality, it’s about one type of thing vs. another type of thing. I’ll take it further and add that one thing does not necessarily result in the thing that you might logically think it would.

If tasty books that had something to say were automatic best sellers, then the entire group of Maine Crime Writers would be lounging on the world’s most comfortable patio chairs around a glimmering pool in a tropical, but not too hot or humid, paradise, toasting each other with D’Amalfi Limoncello Supreme [the world’s most expensive alcohol*], and lighting the tiki torches with rolled-up $100 bills. Wait, why would WE be lighting the tiki torches? Our entourages would be lighting the tiki torches for us as we waved our empty limoncello flutes at them, demanding refills.

*$44 million a bottle. AI says so.

Seriously, though, I can’t imagine writing and not having something to say. It’s part of my writing DNA, not something that sprung out of the 1984 cat throwing up on the bed warning. In fact, I may have been drawn to writing, and reading, mystery fiction for that very reason.

When I pitch my books to potential readers at the kind of events where authors who don’t drink even cheap limoncello often find themselves, I stress that my books are character-based. What is a murder mystery, after all, if it’s not about people making decisions, interacting, and navigating the world around them using their own unique map? How else does a person end up murdered, if not for a decision someone made? How do you explore the “why” without digging deeper into the person? How do you write about people moving through the world, interacting and making decisions, some resulting in death, without a bigger context?

That may sound like it makes for boring books, but if done right, it doesn’t. Knowing your characters, figuring out the themes and the context behind the “why” — both for the major plot point and the little ones — are the keys to a book that keeps readers engaged.

The books I’ve read that have had the most impact on me as a writer, and just as someone who has running streams of thoughts and ideas crashing around in my head, are the ones that don’t stop at plot.

My biggest influce is Dorothy L. Sayers, who I discovered when I was 14. Reluctantly discovered, after my sister won a fight over what we’d watch that night on TV. Her choice: “Murder Must Advertise” on PBS’s Masterpiece Theater. My choice: “The Streets of San Francisco.”

From left, Liz, Becky and Maureen Milliken in 1970 or 1971. The 70s were… not like they’re portrayed on TV. But they made us the creative thinkers that we are.

Like the analogy questions on the SATs, for this scenario to make sense you have to be of a certain age. It was 1975. Real 1975, not one created by Hollywood to amuse today’s younger TV watchers. Picture one TV [black and white, with a broken channel knob, so we had to use a pair of pliers to turn channels]. There was no option to record one of the shows, or stream it later. You watched when it was on, or you didn’t watch at all. Liz won, and my life changed. Changed the same way it had three years earlier when she “accidentally” melted my Bobby Sherman record by placing it on top of a lamp while she was vacuuming. She was 12. I was 11. We had a plastic portable record player in our shared bedroom, and the loss of Bobby Sherman meant I was forced to listen nonstop to Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde,”which she’d just bought. We painstakingly copied down the lyrics to “Visions of Johanna,” then sat on the floor for hours as the album played, trying to decipher them. When they started including lyrics in record album liner notes, it was a huge win for the Milliken kids. Younger readers may want to find a Boomer or Gen X friend or relative to translate the above sentences.

For whatever reason, I recall the 1970s much more fondly these days than I felt about them at the time. That’s a blog post for another day, too. Except to say that maybe things like sharing one TV, watching shows you normally wouldn’t because you only get four channels and you don’t feel like finding the pliers, writing down and deciphering song lyrics, and basically having to make our own fun, is likely a foundation for the kinds of things that this blog post is about.

Back to Dorothy L. Sayers.

The 1970s TV version of “Murder Must Advertise” led to me reading the book. Over and over and over. Pictured are Ian Charmicael and Fiona Walker.

I was hooked on Sayers about two seconds into the TV show. Lord Peter Whimsey goes undercover at an advertising agency to solve a smaller mystery that ends up being murder. Every single thing about it made me want more. I checked the book out of Lithgow Library in Augusta the next day (in my memory), and was off to the races.

Sayers’ books are well-plotted, clever mysteries. That’s not what drew me in so deeply, though. Hers were the first mystery novels I read that were about characters more than the plot. Her books said something. Moments from her books have stuck in my head for decades, and even informed some of my writing. I read all of her books multiple times, but I may not be able to tell you, if you named one now, who the killer was, or the victim. Thematic things, both big and small, though, personal conflict, emotions, sad or poignant moments of drama, are still vivid to me.

Sayers had a lot to say about people — how they’re affected by what’s going on around them in the transforming era between the two world wars. How people interact with each other. How their beliefs and experiences collide with those of others. She did it in a way that makes readers care about her characters. Through that richness, she made readers care about the things she was saying far beyond characters.

The things we say in our books don’t have to be earth-shattering. In fact, if you manage “earth shattering” as a mystery writer, or any kind of writer, I really do hope it’s appreciated enough that you’ve got a bottle of that limoncello in the fridge. The things that I want to tell readers are not so much shattering the earth as maybe lighting up a corner of it. Or dog-earing it enough that it’s noticed.

If you’ve read my books and are wondering what the hell I’m talking about, that’s okay. I try not to hit readers over the head with the things I have to say. My satisfaction comes from saying them, and putting them out there for readers to take from them whatever they are geared to take.

At an author event a couple of years ago, a woman who’d paused to glance at my books answered, “No, I prefer literary fiction,” to my chirpy “Do you like mystery novels?” The sister to five siblings in me wanted to respond “Well, lah di DAH DI DAH DI DAHHHH.” But she seemed like a nice lady, and I’m a grownup in a public-facing moment, so I said, , “I like to believe that any well-written book is literary in its own right.”

Do you like mysteries? Kate Flora and Matt Cost prepare to repeat that questiion for the next three hours at a Brunswick Art Walk.

Right. I did feel kind of pathetic saying it. Like I was trying to weasel my way into a club that I didn’t belong to. Thinking about it more as I sat there with my books, I decided that I had nothing to feel pathetic about. Literary fiction focuses on character and themes. So do my books. Maybe yours, too. Or if you’re a reader, the ones you like to read. Character and theme aren’t exclusive to non-genre books, they can be — should be — part of any decent mystery novel or any book regardless of genre.

It follows that having something to say in a novel isn’t the exclusive domain of those writers who can draw in readers without using a body and clues. Lack of a dead body and clues, conversly, doesn’t put a book on a loftier plane. I’ve been scoffed at for saying this, but being scoffed at is totally in my wheelhouse, so I’ll say it again: Many books that claim to absolutely not be mystery fiction are secretly just that. They just don’t want to be sigmatized. That’s their problem, not ours.

If you’re wondering what the hell my thing to say is in this post today, as we hit the 2,000-word mark, it’s this: If you’re a writer, figure out what you want to say. Don’t be shy about saying it. You not only have a right, you have an obligation. If you’re a reader, don’t have AI summarize the book for you, then call it good. Don’t speed-read it. [Yet another blog post for another day]. Take the time to focus on and enjoy it. The writer likely has something to say and worked hard to tell you.

After 42 years of thinking about it, I do believe that I even have something to say about the time the cat threw up on the bed. I’ll save it for another blog post.