Excuse Me. There’s a Vampire in My Mystery

Ladies and gents, I'm happy to present to you the fantabulous Jeannie Holmes, here to talk to us about her new release, Blood Secrets (sequel to last year's Blood Law; a really fun read - and yes, a good mystery!)

Take it away, Jeannie!


Question: Can a mystery contain elements of the supernatural and still be a mystery?


Answer: Of course it can. However, playing with the supernatural doesn’t give the author free license to play fast and loose with the rules.

I’ve been asked—sometimes innocently and other times maliciously—if I chose to include vampires in my books because “they’re hot right now.” The short answer is “no.” The long answer is far more complicated…as any good mystery should be.

The Alexandra Sabian books are a blend of genres. I admit this. At their core is a mystery unraveling to the ticking clock of a thriller. They’re fantasy with a romantic twist, and science fiction that quietly slips into the dark realms of horror. And yet, it is a mystery that is the beating heart of each book.

Alex Sabian, my protagonist, possesses some unique psychic abilities in addition to being a vampire. She’s also a federal agent charged with policing the vampire population of a small Mississippi town. Playing with vampires and the paranormal does make for greater temptation to wave a magic wand and avoid some of the corners I’ve inadvertently painted myself into in the past. However, as I said, inclusion of the supernatural doesn’t free me from my obligations as an author to fulfill readers’ expectations. I could easily have Alex use her abilities to solve cases. But I don’t. I force her to rely on familiar police investigative procedures and practices, including the use of forensic science. This doesn’t mean I don’t alter these practices slightly to fit my needs and file the differences until the heading of “Vampiric Law.” After all, it is fiction and a little creative licensing is not only expected but encourage.

I can think of other authors who have included the paranormal in their mysteries—Carolyn Haines with Jitty the Ghost in the Sarah Booth Delaney series and Charlaine Harris with telepaths, vampires, and a host of other creatures in the Sookie Stackhouse series both come to mind.—and saw a continuation of their work labeled as “mystery.” But I can also think of others—Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series and Diana Rowland’s Kara Gillian series for example—that rely heavily on a mystery as the central plot but are viewed more as fantasy than mystery.

Does an author working in a paranormal element make a story less of a mystery? Is it a sign of a poor writer? I say “no” to both questions. If it does anything, a supernatural component should enhance the story as adding spices to a recipe can enhance the flavor. Granted, too much salt can make a dish inedible, and pushing too far into the territory of deus ex machina with the paranormal can cause the reader to walk away. However, if peppered throughout the story and woven into the plot, the supernatural can take a mystery to an entirely new depth.

So when does a mystery stop being a mystery? Should the inclusion of the supernatural automatically shift a mystery into another genre?

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Knock yourselves out, kids!

I'm in St. Augustine this week, so I probably won't be stopping by a whole lot, but have fun without me. I just wanted to say that cozy mysteries are all over paranormal. It has it's own sub-genre. There aren't vampires so much as witches and ghosts and things, but there are certainly a lot of paranormal cozy mysteries out there for anyone who likes them. And yes, they're mysteries. As long as the mystery is the focus, and the thing that gets 'solved' at the end, it's a mystery.

See you next month, and be sure to check out Jeannie's books!

You Get What You Play For

By Martha Reed

I’ve been working steadily on the new novel and something has come out of it that is new to my process – I’m using background music to help me develop my characters. For instance, my new femme fatale is a character named Sally Poldridge who is known among her enemies as The Witch of Wauwinet.

Wauwinet is a small village on Nantucket and it was also the working title of my manuscript until about a year ago when I decided to go with an alternate title because of the difficulty most folks would have in asking for a book with the word Wauwinet in it – a word compounded of a stutter and a bite. That is asking a bit much from the paying public.

I’m not going to reveal the new title until the day the manuscript gets sold. Of course, cut me a check and you can call it anything you want.


Anyway, today, I am going to show you just a little bit of what I’m holding in my hand. It’s a tease, just like Sally is, and as I’m writing her character into the story I listen to the following song on a continuous looping track and do my best to imagine Sally working her evil magic behind the scenes.

I invite you to close your eyes and listen:



This amazing voice belongs to Canadian jazz stylist Diana Krall who happens to be married to Elvis Costello. For someone who managed to survive the ‘80’s, that combo is pretty cool. Someday I’d love to be in a position where this song gets incorporated into a movie based on my book – and isn’t that a lovely dream to work on? Something this good does make it easier to get up every morning at 5:30 to work feverishly on the manuscript before I head out for my day job. Actually, the writing part is so sweet right now I can’t wait to go to bed so I can get up and write even more.

And my dream isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. A couple of weeks ago Charlaine Harris turned up on the red carpet at an HBO premier of her original story TRUE BLOOD. Of course, scoring an HBO series based on your story, produced by Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) is a bit of a stretch, but if we’re dreaming, why not dream big? You get what you play for.

PS. HBO’s TRUE BLOOD has just been signed to a second season and it’s the focus of an immense viral marketing campaign that includes the development of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), a wiki collaborative Web page and what I am sure was an extremely expensive print/mail campaign that targeted high profile members of social Internetworks. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for that mailing list!

This is what targeted subjects found waiting in their mailboxes:



Hey! Why aren’t we seeing anything this creative coming from the publishing houses? Actually, let’s be honest. When was the last time you saw anything sent out from a publishing house? Bookmarks, anyone?