My guest this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is the award-winning author of the Detective Parrott and Quinn McFarland Mystery Series, Saralyn Richard!

Check out our discussion about her latest work, including the Quinn McFarland novels and a new historical novel in the works, inspired by her grandparents, about the 1900 Storm in Galveston, Texas.

Treat yourself to a PDF copy of the transcript.

Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest today is the award-winning author of the Detective Parrot Mysteries and the Quinn McFarland Mysteries, as well as other books. Her laudable goal is to change the world one book at a time, which I think is a great, great goal. It’s my pleasure to introduce today’s guest, Saralyn. Richard. Hi, Saralyn. How are you doing? It’s been a long time.

Saralyn (01:19): I’m good. It’s wonderful to be back with you, Debbi.

Debbi (01:23): It’s wonderful to have you on. Thank you. Before we delve into the world of Quinn McFarland, I have to ask about good old Detective Parrott. Do you plan to continue that series?

Saralyn (01:37): I do. I do.

Debbi (01:39): Awesome.

Saralyn (01:40): But I generally give him a rest and he gives me a rest after a book just to have some time to regroup and have some new things happen in his life. New things happen in my life. So I kind of alternate between Detective Parrott books and other books.

Debbi (02:04): That’s a great approach actually. That way you don’t get burnt on doing the same sort of thing. It adds a little variety.

Saralyn (02:14): And he doesn’t get burned with me asking a million questions. I like it when he comes to me and he whispers in my ear and I don’t have to beg and plead for, give me a new story.

Debbi (02:31): That’s great. I like that. That’s absolutely a wonderful approach. What inspired you to write about a woman who works in her family’s mortuary?

Saralyn (02:43): Well, Quinn is more than that. She works in that mortuary because she is kind of withdrawn from society. She had a very bad experience when she was young in high school, and she doesn’t really trust people. She really just kind of resorts to her family business, which happens to be a mortuary, and there she can be herself. She doesn’t have to worry because dead people don’t hurt you and they don’t talk about you and they don’t tell lies about you and things like that. So she’s gotten very comfortable in that life and in the first book, which was Bad Blood Sisters, she was just about to turn 30, and it was a big aha moment for her that life is passing her by and she’s not accomplishing any of her goals. Originally, she wanted to be in the medical profession, and she is an embalmer, so that is considered the medical profession, but she wanted to be on the living side of things, and she hasn’t done that.

(04:17): She hasn’t gotten married, she hasn’t had a family. She hasn’t really made friends since high school. And so she’s uncomfortable with the place that she’s in in her life, and boom, suddenly she’s thrown into solving a mystery and she becomes an amateur sleuth, and that’s Bad Blood Sisters. And by the end of Bad Blood Sisters, she is getting herself more on track. When the second book begins, which is Mrs. Oliver’s Twist, she has foresworn police matters and crime. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with that anymore, and she actually wants to leave the mortuary business and become a physician’s assistant. And she’s applied to that school and she’s about to get in and she’s feeling a little guilty that she’s leaving her family in the lurch, but she’s ready to move on and she’s promised, well, she’s now got a husband. That’s a bit of a spoiler, but she’s promised him and she’s promised her parents no more criminal activity, no more searching for perpetrators.

(05:41): And then suddenly she is thrown into another mystery because her very favorite teacher from high school who helped her get through that rough period in high school turns up dead, and she’s in the morgue and the police come to ask her to identify the body, and so she feels that she can’t turn her back on this woman who helped her so much. So she gets involved and that’s the second book. But to answer your question, the mortuary is really an important part of every community. The service that’s provided by the people who work there is so important, and it’s something that most people don’t want to have anything to do with because most people are uncomfortable about death. My experience, and I’ve interviewed a lot of people who work in funeral homes because I write mysteries, and so I have opportunity to talk to them. My experience is that they’re all very kind, very loving people who really want to take care of their customers, their clients, and Quinn is like that. And so I really wanted to shine a light on that industry a little bit, and it also is a perfect place to put somebody who’s going to get involved with crimes because dead people end up in mortuaries. So it all worked out.

Debbi (07:25): That’s true. That’s quite a concept too. I like the way you’ve set up that character with a backstory like that, and then the realization that, oops, life is passing by. I got to do something. How much research did you do on mortuaries or anything else in terms, when you wrote these novels?

Saralyn (07:50): I’m a big research person. It’s really one of my favorite parts of being an author because I love learning new things. I love meeting new people. I love interviewing them. I love going to see how things work. And so I did quite a bit of research and I’ve had lots of encounters with people in funeral homes, but because of the book, I’ve had to get pretty detailed. I’ve had to go through an autopsy, go through an embalming process, what does it look like? What does it smell like, what does the room look like? Because I want my book to be as authentic as possible. At the same time, I don’t want to gross out my readers and tell them more detail than they really need to know for the story. So there’s finding that right balance, but the research is a lot of fun, and I found almost everybody that I ever talked to, so willing to help and help with a book and be mentioned in a book or have their job mentioned in a book. They’re flattered and they’re very forthcoming with information, and that’s what I love about doing the research. It gives me an entree into a whole different world.

Debbi (09:32): It’s kind of the same impetus that a journalist would have, to find out more, to learn. Let’s see. Do you have an arc for this character? Do you have an endpoint in mind? I’m not saying you have to tell us what it is.

Saralyn (09:52): Yes and no. I have ideas about where she’s going to end up, but I’m a pantser. I’m really not a plotter. And I have experimented with being a plotter. I’ve listened to webinars by very famous writers who say, you must, you must outline.

Debbi (10:22): Banish that word from all this.

Saralyn (10:25): I tried. I’ve tried. I’ve tried to sit down and write an outline, but it frustrates me to do that because it takes away the creativity that is so much of the joy of writing. And I myself do not want to know the ending. When I start a book, I want to surprise myself. I want to entertain myself. I want to puzzle myself. I want to put myself in the role of a reader. I feel like if I’m writing with a lot of expectation and joy, then the reader is going to read it with that same emotion. Exactly. It gets across in the prose. So I really don’t plan too far ahead for my characters. I do have ideas, though.

Debbi (11:35): I myself have a tendency to plot things, but I don’t always end up following that thing that I wrote out ahead of time. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, after say the midpoint, anything could happen, really. I might end up in almost the same place that I had imagined at the beginning, but who knows?

(11:56): It just seems to be the right place to end it. Something like that. I don’t know what it is. It’s like a kind of a hybrid approach I want to plot, but I can’t do it completely. I can’t just write everything out.

Saralyn (12:10): Well, it’s like real life because you may have a plan for yourself, and something happens to hijack that plan that turns out to be even better than what you had planned. So in real life that happens. And in books, that happens too.

Debbi (12:33): Very true. Very true. What are you currently working on?

Saralyn (12:41): Well, I have to smile over this because when I was 15 years old, I wanted to write a book about Galveston, Texas during the 1900 Storm, which Galveston is my hometown. My grandparents were here for the 1900 Storm. I’ve always been fascinated by it. And at the time when I was 15, there wasn’t that much written about it. So I started doing research in the library. I researched for 10 years. I read everything that they had in the library about the 1900 Storm. I had extensive notes. I had my plot in mind. I had everything ready to go, but I didn’t write the book. I started writing the book in the 1980s on a Macintosh computer. Do you remember those, little screen?

Debbi (13:46): Oh, yeah.

Saralyn (13:49): And I had about a hundred pages written, and every time I sat down to write though, I had to reread what I had written. And pretty soon I was spending all my time reading and not having time to write. So I didn’t get that far into the book. And then that computer crashed, so I lost that manuscript, and that was my first manuscript. Well, in the meantime, many people have written books about the 1900 Storm and great books. So one of them is Isaac’s Storm, and one of them is The Promise by a friend of mine, Ann Weisgarber. And so I feel like a lot of books have been written about that time period, but not about the rebuilding of Galveston after the storm.

(14:41): And that’s really where my grandparents’ story takes place. Anyway, so I still hadn’t written it and hadn’t written it, and finally I decided, you know what? I’m going to write that book. It’s a departure for me. It’s not Detective Parrott. It’s not Quinn McFarland. It’s historical. It’s still mystery. It’s a historical mystery. It’s got a little bit of romance. It’s got a lot of suspense, a really fabulous setting, and I’m enjoying it so much. I’ve been doing a lot of really heavy research into the time period, and I’m learning just a million things, and I’m recreating these characters that are my grandparents, but I don’t really know for a fact that that’s what they were like. I’m creating them and I’m trying to be as careful as I can possibly be based on what I do know about ’em and what I have been told. And then the rest I’m just imagining. And I think it’s pretty fun. I’m just really enjoying it.

Debbi (16:05): Interesting. It’s like creative nonfiction in a way. Yeah. Interesting. Galveston is an interesting location. Is that why you decided to set your story there? Because that’s your hometown?

Saralyn (16:23): The Quinn McFarland books are set there, and there was a clamoring, A lot of my readers are from Galveston, and they were like, well, when are you going to write about Galveston? Because the Parrott books are in Brandywine Valley. And for a while, Parrott was toying with the idea of moving to Galveston in one of the books. But I did some research to see what it would take to bring him here, and it’s just not feasible. He would have to start all over again. He’s, he’s risen in the ranks where he is, and he would have to start all over again being a patrolman, nobody would do that. No. He’s not coming to Galveston, so.

Debbi (17:15): What a shame.

Saralyn (17:16): Yeah, but that’s okay because it made room for Quinn.

Debbi (17:20): That’s true. He could always take a busman’s holiday, find Quinn, and they could work together on something, or he could advise her on something. He could make a cameo appearance. I always think about these things, how to cross things over.

Saralyn (17:38): And that’s because our characters are so real to us.

Debbi (17:42): Yes, to us, yeah.

Saralyn (17:43): Really are real people,

Debbi (17:47): Really. I know they come to you and just, why aren’t you writing about me now? I hear from Sam. It’s like, I’m getting there. I’m getting there. What are you reading these days?

Saralyn (18:04): Well, I just finished …

Debbi (18:06): Other than Galveston stuff.

Saralyn (18:08): Just finished this book.

Debbi (18:09): Ah, The Quiet Librarian.

Saralyn (18:12): And it’s by Allen Eskens. And the reason that I chose that book was because I went to a webinar at which this author spoke on a panel, and he talked a little bit about The Quiet Librarian, and I was fascinated by it, and so I decided I was going to read that book.

Debbi (18:40): Well, your fascination has fascinated me, so now I have to check it out.

Saralyn (18:45): It’s a very interesting book, and it’s about Bosnia.

Debbi (18:48): Really?

Saralyn (18:48): And that’s something I didn’t know very much about

Debbi (18:56): Really. Yeah, neither do I. What is your biggest challenge when it comes to writing and how have you overcome it?

Saralyn (19:16): Well, a lot of people have asked me, why do you write mysteries? Because you’re such a refined ladylike person. You’re so kind. You wouldn’t kill anybody. And why are you writing books that have murders in them? And the truth is, I really abhor violence, and I don’t even like the sight of blood. It makes me faint, which is why I didn’t go into medicine. So I would say that killing characters or putting characters in dangerous, perilous situations where they’re hurt physically, emotionally hurt is hard for me because I love my characters and they are so real to me. And so when I make these awful things happen to them, I struggle with it. And sometimes I have to stop writing and give myself a pretty long break because of that. That’s the big challenge, and that’s what I do, is give myself a break. And sometimes I’ll write something completely different, something lighthearted, something a little romantic or something just to divert me from those unsavory things that happen in mysteries. But I really love mysteries, so I always go back to them. I just don’t like the violent parts, and I try not to have a lot of violence. My mysteries are not very gritty, but still, it’s hard for me to kill off a character.

Debbi (21:18): Oh, same here. And I know if I read, if I’m in a series, into a series of books and one of the characters gets killed, that hurts me. I might end up crying over that. That’s the thing, something that’s well written, when you really get to know the characters, you get close to them, and when you’re writing them, it’s just as bad. So yeah. If your books were adapted for the screen, who could you picture playing Quinn?

Saralyn (21:53): I don’t know. I try not to think of actors and actresses as my characters. I would rather have my readers imagine or answer that question for themselves because we all have different preconceived ideas about what characters look like based on what they are. I don’t even have a lot of description in my books of my characters. I just give a minimum description. All I really say about Quinn is that she’s petite and she has curly dark hair and light eyes, but I never really get specific about her looks because she could be any woman, any young woman, and probably any young woman could play her.

Debbi (23:04): Okay. I always ask what advice you would give to somebody who would like to have a career in writing. Has your advice on this changed, given the tremendous changes in publishing?

Saralyn (23:24): It really hasn’t. There are tremendous changes, but a lot of things are still the same.

(23:33): And if you want to have a career in writing, you have to write. I mean, that’s just the first step you have to write. So for years, I said, I want to be a writer, but I wasn’t writing. And you can want to be a writer, but you’re not going to be a writer until you actually get started and write. I would say, and I do, I teach creative writing and I mentor young writers or new writers. Sometimes they’re older people who want to start writing, and what I say to them is just start writing. Don’t worry about the publishing part right now. Don’t even worry about the editing part. Just write, get that craft going because it’s not going to happen overnight. And practice is what makes you a good writer and makes your writing good enough to be published. You can’t even get to that stage of publication until you’ve mastered your craft to a certain degree. And so none of that has changed. I think that that’s always the truth. What I think has changed is the options. There are many more options than there used to be for publishing and marketing, and those keep changing. Sometimes they open up, sometimes they close up. Sometimes one platform becomes another, but to aspire to be a writer, you have to start with the writing part.

Debbi (25:36): That part has to be really good too. I mean, it has to be the best that you can do because any less than that, and really you’re not doing yourself any favors. Find a group that you can bounce, show your stuff to, get a critique from them. Take notes. Listen with an open mind, all of those things, the basics, this is the thing. The basics are the most important part before you even get to that whole marketing part, that’s something to keep in mind. Very important. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?

Saralyn (26:24): We just started, it seems like we just started.

Debbi (26:28): This always goes very quickly. It’s like before you know it, a half hour is just up.

Saralyn (26:34): Yeah. I just always enjoy talking to you, Debbi, because your trajectory as a writer, it is so interesting. So I can just learn a lot from you.

Debbi (26:51): That’s nice. Thank you. I always feel like I don’t know if I’m doing anything right. I just do things and hope for the best.

Saralyn (27:02): Well, I think one of the things that you and I have in common is that we both are open to new experiences and new challenges. And this historical mystery for me is something totally new. And I know you’re venturing into something new too. I don’t know if you want to tell about it.

Debbi (27:27): Yeah, I can talk about it briefly. For those who don’t know. I am directing a short film. It’s called “Absolution”. It’s about a priest with a very dark past who has to deal with a penitent who comes to confess and basically face the consequences of his actions in his old life, which were, they were not nice, let’s put it that way. So it’s got kind of a neo-norish feel to it, too. It’s going to be like 10 minutes long. It’s not like a long movie, but our production shut down because of heat in the studio, and we were supposed to make it in one day, and we’re going to hopefully finish that day that we started back on July 8th actually, which was the day before my birthday. I was hoping to have a finished production for my birthday, not quite pulled off. That’s okay. I can defer this kind of gratitude.

(28:31): But yeah, it was just a wonderful experience and if anybody is interested in film and directing and screenwriting, I’m here. I can answer questions on things like that. I can tell you it’s not an easy road to take because you really have to put yourself out there and be able to say, hi, this is what I do, and here’s my screenplay. And then take all of the comments that you get and don’t just immediately go, “You don’t understand. I’m trying to say this.”

No, you don’t understand. You’re not doing what you think you’re doing. Listen to what they’re saying because, yeah, I mean, I just had to hear it two or three or four times before it finally sank in. Oh, I get it now. I need to get there faster. I need to be clearer. I need to go from point A to point B in this scene and not waste a lot of time. I can get rid of this character. I can get rid of this whole scene here. It’s useless. It’s amazing how much stuff you can cut when you start doing screenwriting. Anyway, now that I’ve gone off on that little tear about screenwriting and filmmaking, I’m very happy to be doing it, which is very weird. You have to be a little bit crazy to do this, I think.

Saralyn (29:53): You have to have fun.

Debbi (29:55): It is. It’s total fun.

Saralyn (29:57): And I want to do screen. I want to write a screenplay. I want to get into that too. There’s so much that I want to do and so little time, but one thing at a time.

Debbi (30:11): Exactly. One book at a time, one word at a time. All of it.

Saralyn (30:17): I didn’t start writing until 2013. Since that time, now I have seven books out.

Debbi (30:25): Wow. I’m impressed.

Saralyn (30:27): And I’m up to the eighth. So little by little I’m climbing in that mountain.

Debbi (30:34): Yes. That’s the way it feels, doesn’t it? Like climbing a mountain. Oh, boy. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your being here and spending time with us.

Saralyn (30:45): Well, thank you so much for having me.

Debbi (30:47): It was my pleasure, believe me. And I will come back on now, and I will just say thank you to everyone who is listening. I appreciate all of you and to my Patreon supporters, thank you so much for your help there. It helps a lot. I was just going to say something else. Oh, yes. When I started this podcast, I started and thought it was one of the best things. I’ve come to think of it as one of the best things I’ve ever done because I feel like I have learned so much just by talking to so many authors over the past 10, 11. This is the Eleventh Season, so it’s been 10 years and it’s going to be 11. So it has been a wonderful experience to do this. I’m going to continue doing it, and I want to thank you all for listening, and until next time, when my guest is Howard Kaplan, take care and happy reading. Be seeing you.

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