Spotlight Profile
December 2000
Why does a writer decide to write a murder mystery? How's this for a reason: Sara Hoskinson Frommer, this month's member in the Spotlight, thought it was a good way to bump someone off.Sara says: "I got mad at an oboe player once! That started me writing mysteries. In the first one, I bumped off an oboe player. Not that person, of course, but someone I made up. Aside from not wanting to be sued, I needed a much more important motive than my little annoyance."
That first Joan Spencer mystery, Murder in C Major, was published by St. Martin's Press in 1986, and Worldwide in 1988. Now it's back in print as a trade paperback from Poisoned Pen Press (Missing Mystery #17 April, 2000). It's part of their program for publishing out-of-print first books in a continuing series.
Sara has more to say about Murder in C Major, but first, here are some tidbits from the biography on her Web site.
Sara was born in Chicago and grew up in Hawaii and northern Illinois. She has degrees in German from Oberlin College and Brown University, and taught German as a graduate teaching assistant at Brown. She has worked with a transportation economist, ethnologists, and foreign exchange students (having been an American Field Service exchange student to Germany herself).
Sara lives in Bloomington, Illinois with her husband, Gabe, a professor of psychology at Indiana University. She's a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, and is a charter member of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra's viola section.
"All my years of playing in community orchestras come into my books, in which my main character, Joan Spencer, plays in one," Sara says. "We both play viola, about which people tell terrible jokes. The one I heard today is a riddle. Q: What do you do if a viola player dies? A: Move him back one chair."
And on that note ...
IC
Sara, do you have a favorite quotation you'd like to share with us?
Sara
One of the great southern writers is supposed to have said not to put anything in a novel that doesn't have at least two reasons for being there. To which I add Frommer's corollary: The fact that I want it there doesn't count.
IC
Your bio speaks of a varied and interesting background. Can you pinpoint an experience or time that proved to be especially valuable to your writing?
Sara
Not really. I think we put our whole lives into the mix, at least I do. And then all kinds of miscellaneous stuff we've read or heard about, plus stuff we just make up, of course.
IC
Did admiration for certain mystery writers inspire you in that first effort?
Sara
I admired many mystery writers. At that time, if I'd had to pick one favorite, it would have been Dorothy L. Sayers. But I couldn't be Sayers. I made that first effort thinking it didn't have a chance in the world of being published. That made me fearless, and I could relax and be myself.
IC
Can you elaborate on that? Did you just sit down at the word processor and let 'er rip, and write something you would enjoy reading?
Sara
Well, not exactly. I mean, I planned it and I plotted it, and I rewrote like crazy. But I didn't try to outguess some agent or editor about what the publishing industry was looking for. So, yes, I did let go, and write the kind of thing I would enjoy reading, as best as I could.
IC
Have you had problems with editors or publishers who wanted you to make changes? If so, how did you resolve differences?
Sara
I haven't had problems, but I have had requests. (The publisher speaks to you through the editor, so that's one person. My agent also reads carefully and recommends changes he thinks will improve the book.) If I didn't like what they suggested, I listened to what they were saying, and thought about why they were saying it. Then I tried to think of something I'd like better that would have the same effect.I called my first book Ill Wind, and the editor (before Nevada Barr used that title for a best-selling mystery) didn't think it sounded like a mystery. "It could be Gone With the Wind," she said. She wanted to call it Death of An Oboe Player. I thought that was a blah title, but realized that it told readers instantly that it was a mystery about music. So I suggested Murder in C Major, which had the same effect, besides fitting the plot, and we were both happy.
IC
Did you take writing courses, or did you learn by trial and error? What stands out in your mind as the most helpful class, teacher, experience or insight gained?
Sara
Trial and error! A friend of mine was taking a playwriting course while I was writing Murder in C Major, though. She told me about learning to think in scenes. That was a big aha! for me. It applies just as much to a novel as to a play.
IC
Do you remember which books you loved when you were nine, sixteen, thirty?
Sara
At nine, I loved Kate Seredy's books, and Marguerite Henry's horse stories. Seredy wrote about Hungary. Little did I know that I'd eventually marry a Hungarian (who came here so young you wouldn't know it unless he told you). King of the Wind was my favorite book by Henry.By thirteen, I read voraciously. All kinds of books. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Mark Twain. And science fiction. I remember liking Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Heinlein.
At thirty, I was reading mysteries. The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers, blew me away in my twenties.
IC
What books have you read in the past year that you especially liked?
Sara
I've just finished Val McDermid's A Place of Execution. Wonderful book, but no one who can't stand books in which bad things have happened to children should read it. From the title, I had expected a book about death row, but it's not like that. Plot, characters, writing--all outstanding.
IC
What are your favorite memories from your time as an AFS student in Germany?
Sara
Oddly enough, or maybe not oddly at all, my favorite memories are not of being in a foreign place, but of interactions with people, many of which could have happened almost anywhere.The family with which I stayed the summer I was an AFS student (the year I was sixteen) was the family of the German student who had lived with my family in Kewanee, Illinois, when she was sixteen and I was fourteen. Her name is Ilse, and I called her parents Onkel Karl and Tante Else. They were wonderful to me.
Onkel Karl, a high court judge, had been imprisoned by the Nazis because he refused to do what they ordered. Ilse and her mother and brother lived on a farm during that time. Later, American soldiers were quartered on the farm.
Ilse and I were both stubborn as mules. That was the summer of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, so racial integration was a hot topic. I remember vividly the day she and I got into a huge argument about whether the American army was segregated.
I knew it was not, and she knew it was, and neither of us would give an inch. It turns out that we were both right. During the war (World War II), the army was segregated, but by then it was not. Neither of us knew that President Truman had integrated the armed forces since Ilse's experience.
When I'm absolutely sure the other guy is wrong, I try to remember that argument. And all these many years later, Ilse and I are still friends.
IC
Do you read German authors in the German language?
Sara
Not anymore. I did, back when I was studying, and I wrote my master's thesis in German, about the poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
IC
Tell us a little about your writing habits. Do you outline, for example, or put your scenes on cards that you can shuffle around?
Sara
When I started, I put my scenes on full-size pages I could shuffle. Cards weren't big enough, because sometimes they would get me started writing the scene. Those pages became my outline. At first, I'd label them at the top: near beginning, or near end, or after murder.Now I do that on the computer, where it's as easy to shuffle chunks around as it was to shuffle those pages. Sometimes I don't see clearly enough what comes next, and have to stop and outline as far ahead as I can see, in as much detail as comes to me at that time. Usually only a few chapters at a time, even though I have a bare bones outline to the end.
I do bios of some characters, but know only some of what's in them when I start out. They change as I get to know them better. And I rewrite as I go.
IC
What advice would you give to a writer just beginning a first mystery?
Sara
Read a lot of mysteries! Then reread them, to see how they did it. Reread the good ones, but pay attention to what bothers you in the other ones, too. Your own good reader's eye is your first good editor.Go to a writers' workshop or conference. There are several good ones for mystery writers. Of Dark & Stormy Nights, which didn't exist when I started writing, is the Saturday after the first full week in June every year. Put on by the Midwest chapter of Mystery Writers of America, it's a one-day workshop for beginners, but I learn something every year, even though I also share what I know.
From such a conference, I learned how to compress several unimportant characters into one, so as not to clutter the reader's poor mind.
I was so glad when Magna Cum Murder began, because all the other mystery conferences were so far from home, and I can drive to this one in just a few hours. In fact, I had a hard time believing that anything so convenient would turn out to be good. I was delighted to be wrong about that, and have returned every year since.
For me, one of the special joys of going to such conferences, especially if they're not as big as Bouchercon, is the opportunity to get to know both other writers and mystery readers, the people for whom I'm writing. I always learn something and come home inspired to finish the book I'm working on. Not fast, you understand. I wish I weren't so slow.
IC
Your second Joan Spencer mystery, Buried in Quilts, is available again, this time as print on demand through iUniverse. The pros and cons of print-on-demand publishing make for lively discussions these days. Some people dismiss it as vanity publishing. Others see it as a marketing tool. What are your thoughts about it?
Sara
Print on demand can be vanity or not, just as electronic publishing can be vanity or not, and ordinary print publishing can be vanity or not. The difference is who pays whom, and whether anyone other than the author has any control over what's published. I've never sold a book to an electronic publisher, but I've had short stories e-published, and the publishers paid me for them.If I wanted to publish a book for friends and family, or to sell to customers myself, I could do it electronically, or through my local printer, or through a print-on-demand publisher, which will print only books that are odered and paid for ahead of time, whether by me or by a wholesaler like Ingram's, or by a bookstore.
In all those cases, I'd pay the publisher to set type, do the cover, etc. If I went to my local printer, I'd have to make a guess about how many copies to have printed, and would have to pay for all of them up front. With e-publishing and print on demand, I wouldn't have to pay for or to store lots of books.
I've never wanted to become my own publisher and run a publishing business, as some authors have done. I know that my books have benefitted from the editorial suggestions and the good copy editing they have received from St. Martin's, not to mention being in their catalog and being represented by their reps to bookstores. You have to work to sell to a publisher that pays you instead of the other way around, but there's a lot of dumb luck involved, too. I've been lucky.
I have no idea whether self-publishing a first book would be likely to interest a traditional publisher in future books. I tend to doubt it, but it's probably worked for someone. Certainly some of them are good books, and they're as eligible for Edgars as any other books.
Still, books can go out of print before anyone hears of them, or even of their authors. I was delighted when Poisoned Pen Press asked to republish my first book, Murder in C Major. But PPP wasn't interested in the rest of the series. They specialize in out-of-print first books in a continuing series. So I was glad to find a way to get the second book (Buried in Quilts) back into print.
Anyone can pay to publish a book through iUniverse, but the Authors Guild has worked out a contract with them through which Authors Guild members can have their traditionally published books that are out of print made available again, at no cost to the author. It's called Authors Guild Backinprint.com.
I have no idea how many copies of Buried in Quilts, which both St. Martin's and Worldwide published and let go out of print, will sell now. But for those readers who like to read a series in order, it's available again. And for people who love quilting mysteries and who have been begging me to try to get it into print again, it's there. I understand that independent bookstores can order it through Ingram's, or soon will be able to.
IC
The end of the year approaches. Time to get mellow and philosophical. Here's your chance to say anything you'd like to say, about anything at all.
Sara
I write light fiction. It doesn't try to be anything else. But I bring in things I care about. The one I'm finishing up now has characters in it with Alzheimer's Disease, the disease my mother struggled with for ten years before she died.I'm writing a story, not a textbook. But that's the way it is. Life goes on around problems. It doesn't stop and wait for you to deal with them. Joan Spencer, with a son living at home and going to school, and a daughter getting married, is in the sandwich generation when her mother- and father-in-law show up, and feels from time to time that someone must be sitting on her brown bag.
So did I. It was a good time for enjoying light fiction.
IC
Look into your crystal ball and tell what you see for yourself in the coming year.
Sara
My husband retires next month, hurray! So in the first half of next year, I hope we can do a little traveling. If we both live that long...But I already have another book in mind.
This interview was conducted during the month of November 2000 for SinC-IC by Pat Browning.
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