Crescent Blues | Author Interview: "Valerie S. Malmont: A Life In-Country"

Valerie S. Malmont (continued)

…in a row on the sidewalk in front of our apartment. Fire is the one thing that terrorizes me -- I can't be comfortable anywhere until I have checked out all the fire exits.

Crescent Blues: Was the subterranean cavern system that pays such a large part in Death Pays the Rose Rent based on a real geographical feature?

Valerie S. Malmont: Definitely real. This whole area is limestone and undermined with huge caves. The description of the caverns following the street layout is from an old book about Waynesboro, the next town. There are entrances to the caves through the basements of the old houses and people really did use them for cold storage before they got electricity. The caves under Chambersburg were rumored to be used in the Underground Railroad.

Crescent Blues: Any particular reason why all of your priests and ministers' names begin with "B" Father Burkholder, Rev. LeRoi Barkdoll and Father Buckminster Ashby?

Valerie S. Malmont: None at all. I'll make sure I don't do that in the next book. Maybe I can do it in alphabetical order.

Crescent Blues: The plain people -- Amish, Mennonites -- seem very much a part of the Lickin' Creek landscape. Any plans to focus on them in a future adventure?

Valerie S. Malmont: I don't plan to focus on them. They are an important part of the local culture, so I wanted to include some of them. But they are seen only from Tori's outsider point of view, and I don't know enough about their society to feel comfortable writing about them.

Crescent Blues: Although many of the same characters appear in Death Pays the Rose Rent and Death, Lies and Apple Pies, the two books have a very different feel. Death, Lies and Apple Pies seems much sparer in terms of plot and characterization. What led to this change in style? Which style are you most comfortable with and why?

Valerie S. Malmont: Funny you should notice...! Rose Rent was written over a two year period with no plot in mind, only characters and setting. After it was sold, my (then) editor asked for a rewrite, saying there were too many elements in it. Before I did the rewrite, she left and the book went to print pretty much as I wrote it. With Apple Pies, I had a new editor, I had a deadline, and I didn't have a clue about what I was going to write about. I worked very hard on plotting that book, and I was happy when the first review came out in Publishers Weekly calling it a "breezy, well-plotted novel." It got good reviews everywhere, but I think I left out some of the exuberance of the first one.

I'm very pleased with the book I just turned in, Death of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I think it is well plotted, and I also think I go a lot deeper into my characters minds and motivations. I hope readers will find it warm and colorful.

Crescent Blues: Some of the characters themselves seem to have undergone a major change in the months that lapse between the end of the first book and the beginning of the second. The changes seem most pronounced in Garnet Gochenauer, Lickin' Creek's police chief and Tori's major squeeze. He goes from contemplating his dream house on a Pennsylvania ridge to accepting a job in Costa Rica. What caused that shift?

Valerie S. Malmont: I wanted to show that people are not always what they appear to be at first, and that people change as their circumstances change. Garnet was forced into being the police chief when his father was killed on the job. He tried to make the best of it, even started to believe he was happy, then he met Tori, the big city girl with the rather exotic background, and he began to question whether or not he really was cut out for small town life.

Tori changes too, wanting to be accepted in the small town, thinking she can be happy there. Although they are both nice people, they don't communicate very well. Perhaps he's thinking she'll like him better if he takes an interesting assignment abroad. Perhaps she's thinking he'll like her better if she takes a job in Lickin' CreeK and tries to fit in.

Crescent Blues: Can you tell us something about what the future holds for Tori and Garnet?

Valerie S. Malmont: I really don't know where this is going to take them.

Crescent Blues: Over the course of your travels as a foreign service brat and DoD civilian spouse, you had plenty of time to contemplate your first novel. What prompted you to make it a mystery?

Valerie S. Malmont: I was a mystery fan from the day I picked up my first Nancy Drew. I rapidly moved on to Agatha Christie, Ngaoi Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, and all the other great women mystery writers of the Golden Age. Back when I was seven or eight and people would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd say I was going to write a mystery series. And yes, people did look at my strangely!

Crescent Blues: What do you like best about writing about a small town?

Valerie S. Malmont: It's such a great source of inspiration. I cut my newspapers to shreds every day, filing stuff away for reference. Right now, I'm fascinated by the "Battle of the Blackbirds" in Hagerstown, Md., (about 20 miles from here). The birds have taken over the downtown area, soiling the streets and keeping people awake at night with their noise. Last I heard, the city was spraying the trees with grape juice, which is not lethal but makes the birds sick. I can imagine thousands of little black birds barfing all over the sidewalks tomorrow morning.

An added plus about writing about and in a small town is that I have become a local celebrity. Nowhere else in the world do people stop and stare when I walk into a place. That's kind of fun.