By Nancy Brannon
Memphian mystery writer Carolyn McSparren has published her second book, One Hoof in the Grave, another Merry Abbott carriage driving mystery. She held a book signing at The Booksellers of Laurelwood February 2 to promote her book and talk about how she combines her two passions: mystery writing and carriage driving.
A Nashoba Carriage Association member, Carolyn has been driving seriously for four years. From the first time Beverly Hollingsworth took her to Schilling Farms (when it really was a farm) in Collierville, TN, and put her in a Meadowbrook behind a Shetland pony, “I loved it!” she said. “I have a half Shire mare who hated being ridden, but she loves being driven.” She credited Sam Garner, a local breeder of North American Spotted Draft Horses, with teaching the mare and her how to drive.
So her passion for driving drives her mystery writing, and her observations of ordinary people dealing with life’s vicissitudes are bases for the interwoven plots in her books. “Everything that goes wrong in the book is true. You can’t make this stuff up!” she told the audience at her book signing. “Horse people can come up with a lot of crazy stuff!” Carolyn collects stories from horse folks. She likes it when they keep a log of funny stories for her. “Everything is fodder for the grist mill, but I do change the names, etc.”
Although the settings and characters in her books overlap, her books are stand-alone books. In her first carriage mystery, The Cart Before the Corpse, a troublesome miniature donkey, Don Qui, short for Don Quixote, was a central character. “In this book, we teach Don Qui how to drive,” she said.
In her current release, One Hoof in the Grave, the central character is Meredith Abbott, a horsewoman who gave up driving because when she was 16, she ran over her mother’s leg. But recently she has started driving again and now she’s driving her father’s horse in the high-stakes world of carriage-horse competitions. In this novel, at an elegant Southern horse show, a man is found murdered with a tent spike through his neck, and Merry Abbott has to catch the killer.
Her side kick is Peggy, “who’s half way between 50 and death and can hold her own with anybody,” Carolyn explained. “The two can get into big time trouble, but also manage to get out of it.”
Carolyn talked a little bit about her process: She explained the dilemmas in writing mystery novels. “How do you involve amateur detectives in a mystery without killing off everyone around them? It’s called the Jessica Fletcher syndrome. So the answer is that you make sure people get killed elsewhere, rather than underfoot. Another dilemma – if you’re not really nosey, how do you find out things that people really don’t want to tell you?”
“So you start with the last chapter, with the solution, and work backwards. When things get dull, you drop a body through the ceiling!”
For a new book, Carolyn writes about 100 pages, then goes away from the book for about 6 weeks, letting it “percolate in her mind,” then picks it back up, working 8 to 10 hours a day. “It helps to have a deadline,” she said. “The more pressure, the better I write.”
And she’s always contemplating how she can kill people, metaphorically speaking. “It’s amazing how good oriental rugs are at concealing blood!”
“Your characters will surprise you!” Carolyn explained, “Sometimes they take on a life of their own. In one novel, I had the end “plotted” out, but when I got there, I had to change the murderer. The characters had come to life and weren’t cooperating with me.”
She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, River City Romance Writers, and Novelists, Inc. She’s a founding member of Malice in Memphis, the Memphis Chapter of Sisters in Crime, the national organization for women mystery writers, which meets the second Saturday of the month at the Bartlett Library.
Currently she’s working on her third carriage driving mystery book. If everything is agreed upon by her editor, it will feature the draft pony breed, Gypsy Vanner.
So in closing her book signing chat, she didn’t want to give away all the intricacies of her latest novel. “I want you to buy books. I need the money,” she quipped.
Memphian mystery writer Carolyn McSparren has published her second book, One Hoof in the Grave, another Merry Abbott carriage driving mystery. She held a book signing at The Booksellers of Laurelwood February 2 to promote her book and talk about how she combines her two passions: mystery writing and carriage driving.
A Nashoba Carriage Association member, Carolyn has been driving seriously for four years. From the first time Beverly Hollingsworth took her to Schilling Farms (when it really was a farm) in Collierville, TN, and put her in a Meadowbrook behind a Shetland pony, “I loved it!” she said. “I have a half Shire mare who hated being ridden, but she loves being driven.” She credited Sam Garner, a local breeder of North American Spotted Draft Horses, with teaching the mare and her how to drive.
So her passion for driving drives her mystery writing, and her observations of ordinary people dealing with life’s vicissitudes are bases for the interwoven plots in her books. “Everything that goes wrong in the book is true. You can’t make this stuff up!” she told the audience at her book signing. “Horse people can come up with a lot of crazy stuff!” Carolyn collects stories from horse folks. She likes it when they keep a log of funny stories for her. “Everything is fodder for the grist mill, but I do change the names, etc.”
Although the settings and characters in her books overlap, her books are stand-alone books. In her first carriage mystery, The Cart Before the Corpse, a troublesome miniature donkey, Don Qui, short for Don Quixote, was a central character. “In this book, we teach Don Qui how to drive,” she said.
In her current release, One Hoof in the Grave, the central character is Meredith Abbott, a horsewoman who gave up driving because when she was 16, she ran over her mother’s leg. But recently she has started driving again and now she’s driving her father’s horse in the high-stakes world of carriage-horse competitions. In this novel, at an elegant Southern horse show, a man is found murdered with a tent spike through his neck, and Merry Abbott has to catch the killer.
Her side kick is Peggy, “who’s half way between 50 and death and can hold her own with anybody,” Carolyn explained. “The two can get into big time trouble, but also manage to get out of it.”
Carolyn talked a little bit about her process: She explained the dilemmas in writing mystery novels. “How do you involve amateur detectives in a mystery without killing off everyone around them? It’s called the Jessica Fletcher syndrome. So the answer is that you make sure people get killed elsewhere, rather than underfoot. Another dilemma – if you’re not really nosey, how do you find out things that people really don’t want to tell you?”
“So you start with the last chapter, with the solution, and work backwards. When things get dull, you drop a body through the ceiling!”
For a new book, Carolyn writes about 100 pages, then goes away from the book for about 6 weeks, letting it “percolate in her mind,” then picks it back up, working 8 to 10 hours a day. “It helps to have a deadline,” she said. “The more pressure, the better I write.”
And she’s always contemplating how she can kill people, metaphorically speaking. “It’s amazing how good oriental rugs are at concealing blood!”
“Your characters will surprise you!” Carolyn explained, “Sometimes they take on a life of their own. In one novel, I had the end “plotted” out, but when I got there, I had to change the murderer. The characters had come to life and weren’t cooperating with me.”
She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, River City Romance Writers, and Novelists, Inc. She’s a founding member of Malice in Memphis, the Memphis Chapter of Sisters in Crime, the national organization for women mystery writers, which meets the second Saturday of the month at the Bartlett Library.
Currently she’s working on her third carriage driving mystery book. If everything is agreed upon by her editor, it will feature the draft pony breed, Gypsy Vanner.
So in closing her book signing chat, she didn’t want to give away all the intricacies of her latest novel. “I want you to buy books. I need the money,” she quipped.
