I WRITE WHAT?

by Melodie Johnson Howe

This will be a short column today because I am off to be interviewed for a show called Literary Gumbo that airs on our local cable channel. I don’t usually do these things, mainly because they light these shows with a flashlight making everyone on camera look like twisted shadows, and the other, more important, reason is that I don’t like to talk about my writing.

When I’m on panels I feel I’m being defined in some odd way that has nothing to do with what I write. This may just be a disconnect between the writer’s words on the printed page and the words that come out of her mouth.

My fear is I’m going to be asked the question I always dread: “What kind of mysteries do you write?” And I’ll be honest and say I don’t know. Interview ended.

I was talking to Linda Landrigan at Bouchercon and she told me that she and Janet Hutchings don’t’ know how to categorize my work. I’m not cozy, not, hardboiled, not police procedural, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea that two editors I admire are talking about me (emotionally meaning not rational); I found myself moving away for fear Linda and I would find a label for me. The problem is we live in a world that is obsessed with defining and categorizing. How else could The Media bleat at us if it didn’t have its buzz words, easy definitions, and labels. Red State. Blue State.

When I was an actress I relentlessly heard, “You are like so and so.” (Put in any big female star’s name.) “You are across between so and so, and so and so.” “You can be the next so and so.” “Oh, no you don’t want to be like so and so.” I would find myself looking in the mirror and wondering who the hell am I? I wanted to run away to a nice quiet cave.

My first two novels were easily definable: The female version of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. When I wrote them I wasn’t thinking of labels, I was thinking of books I loved and wanted to write them from a female point of view. I fell into a category that can be easily explained in a badly lit TV interview.

However, it seems my short stories are different animals all together. When I started writing the Diana Poole stories I didn’t think of category. I created a world I am comfortable in as a writer. And I like returning to it, and exploring it. In the novel I’m enlarging this world giving it more background, history, and breadth.

So what am I going to say when I’m asked, “What kind of mysteries do you write?” I’m taking this column with me, and read it to the interviewer.