By Elaine Viets

   
    Why are married men so dumb?
    I’m not an exasperated wife, but a fed-up reader and viewer.
    I’m tired of dumb men in movies, TV and fiction. You know what I mean: the smart, cute wife is married to a buffoon with a room-temperature IQ.
    The prime – or maybe prime-time – example is Homer Simpson. Yes, I realize he’s a cartoon. So is Peter Griffin in “Family Guy.”

    But “Everybody Loves Raymond,” is another clueless consort, and his wife would get the gold at an Olympic eye-rolling contest.
    Dumb husbands are (laughing) stocks in commercials and America’s Funniest Home Videos, though AFV men are hit in the gonads so often that has to lower their chances for reproducing.

    How did men go from “Father Knows Best” to Father Knows Nothing?
    And what kind of consorts are we providing for our smart women of mystery?
    Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple is a spinster. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone, like many women detectives, is divorced and likely to stay single. Grafton said she doesn’t want to write Nick and Nora Charles dialogue.

    As for Nick and Nora, they’re happily married, but Nick’s a bit alcohol addled and doesn’t like that Nora has all the money. He goes to work, but only when she complains. They aren’t really equal.
    Few women in crime fiction marry equals. Helen Hawthorne in my Dead-End Job series started out like many female detectives: divorced and bitter. The judge had promised Rob, Helen’s unfaithful ex, one-half of her future income, and she swore Rob would never see another nickel of her money.
    At first, Helen’s single state was fine. She kept working low-paying Dead-End Jobs and solving murders. But I realized that Helen had to make some changes if the series was going to stay fresh. She had to let go of her bitterness. Otherwise, she’d become a bore. We’re all sympathetic when our friends divorce. But eventually, we expect them to get over it. Yes, he’s a jerk, we say. Thank goodness you dumped him. Now find something new to talk about.
    Besides, a bitter, divorced woman didn’t reflect my own view of marriage. I’m happily married and believe that equals can and should marry. Who wants to hang around a stupid spouse till death?

    In my third Dead-End Job mystery, Dying to Call You, Helen started dating Phil Sagemont, a private eye who also lived in the Coronado Tropic Apartments. As she overcame her dislike of men, I worked on my Nick and Nora dialogue. Finally, in Killer Cuts, Helen agreed to marry Phil.

    Their landlady, Margery Flax, tied the knot and I was committed to marriage equality for better or worse. Helen became a private eye and the new couple started Coronado Investigations. 

 
    The change worked.  The two married PIs make the series stronger and more believable. Helen no longer has to trip over bodies and find reasons to conduct amateur investigations. As licensed private eyes and in-house detectives for a Fort Lauderdale law firm, she and Phil are paid to investigate murders. It’s their job.

    In Catnapped!, my new Dead-End Job mystery, is a hardcover and an e-book. Helen and Phil are hired for what looks like a simple job: retrieve a show cat in a pet custody case. The soon-to-be ex husband should have returned the cat Sunday night. Monday morning, Helen and Phil find the husband dead and the cat held for a half-million dollar ransom.

    Helen and Phil are still happily married, and I’m still learning how to write their dialogue. I make sure they have fights and disagreements, because even happy couples have those. Helen and Phil are both smart and equally dumb:  In Catnapped!, Phil stole the wrong show cat and Helen blurted information to the police that nearly derailed the investigation.
    Catnapped! is the 13th book in the series. Married people do live longer.      
   
    
   

By Elaine Viets

    “Your next Dead-End Job mystery should be about cats,” my editor said.
    I reacted as if she’d handed me a freshly used litter box.
    “No,” I said. “Not cats.”
    “You love cats,” she said.

    I do. And I like most cat mysteries, too. But some are so cutesy they make my teeth ache. Cats are not sweet. They’re funny, they’re beautiful, they’re elegant. But I never forget that under a cat’s soft fur beats the heart of a killer.
    So I persuaded my editor that I should write my 13th Dead-End Job mystery about another subject. I sent her the outline. She was underwhelmed. “You really should write about cats,” she said.
    “But they’re so girlie,” I said.
    “They don’t have to be,” she said. “Write the Elaine Viets take on cats.”
    That’s when it dawned on me. Cats are the new vampires. They’re a subject that’s eminently portable and ever changing. Cats are whatever you want them to be: cuddly, ruthless, aloof, loveable – or all four.
    Each generation reworks the vampire myth. The classic Bram Stoker vampire was the rich preying on the poor. The ’70s Frank Langella vampire was sex without responsibility – or pregnancy.

    Charlaine Harris brilliantly reworked the vampire myth, and I’m not saying that just because I know her. Charlaine was already a successful New York Times mystery writer with several series when she got the idea for her Sookie Stackhouse  Southern Vampire series.
    Charlaine added a fresh twist. Her vampires, like gay people, lived unrecognized among us. Then the Japanese blood substitute let the vamps come out and northern Louisiana was overrun with the undead.
    When other writers tell me they’re going to write a vampire mystery, I congratulate them. But I wonder if they’ll write a different vampire mystery, or simply another variation on one of the timeworn themes.
    I wrote a vampire story called “Vampire Hours,” about a woman who becomes a vampire to escape the trials of middle age – an unfaithful husband, constant dieting, fading beauty. People asked me if I was going to make that story into a novel. No. My idea was different, but not universal.
    But cats are universal. So I agreed to do the cat book. I’m owned by a defrocked show cat, Columbleu’s Unsolved Mysterie. She bit a judge at her first show.

I would write my new Dead-End Job mystery about the world of show cats and the people who love and care for them. I’d report on a culture.
   

And so Catnapped! was born. Helen Hawthorne and Phil Sagemont, my husband and wife PI team, are the in-house lawyers for a Fort Lauderdale attorney. The lawyer’s client, Trish Barrymore, is divorcing her husband, financier Smart Mort,  and the only thing the couple can agree on is custody of their show cat, Justine.
    When Mort fails to return the cat on time, Helen and Phil are sent to collect the cat. They find Mort dead and Justine kidnapped and held for half a million dollars. Helen goes undercover to work for a show cat breeder.
    Judge Tracy Petty, Cat Fanciers’ Association southern region director, helped with the cat show details.
    Did you know that long-haired show cats have to be bathed – and they learn to like it? Their fur is so thick they are slathered in Goop, the mechanic’s hand cleaner, and then the cats get two shampoos, a conditioner and more. Their fur is dried with a special blow dryer. There’s more. Much more. But you’ll have to read the book to find it out.
    When you pick your next subject, ask yourself: How novel is it? How universal?
    Catnapped! is two days old today. Too young to know if I have a were-tiger by the tail, like Charlaine. But my show cat is scratching her way up the charts.

___________________________________

Check out the first chapter and the book trailer for Catnapped! at www.elaineviets.com

Let’s follow up Nancy’s post about finding ideas with this question: How did you come up with the idea behind your current WIP? What was your moment of inspiration that caused you to begin writing?

Let’s talk about the bad guy (or gal) in your WIP for a moment. How have you humanized him, or added depth to that character? 

What is your favorite thriller sub-genre? Legal thriller? Female in jeopardy?  Psychological or techno thriller? What would be the best example of your favorite sub-genre?

By Elaine Viets   

    In my first mystery, “Backstab,” I had a character named Lee the Rehabber. I killed him. In fact, in that book I slaughtered folks like a serial killer on a rampage.
    Then I had to write the second book in the series. That’s when I discovered I needed Lee again. He was smart, funny and city savvy.
    Too bad he was dead. Not only dead but autopsied. I had to come up with another character, and he wasn’t as good as Lee.  
    That taught me a lesson about writing a series – kill wisely and with restraint.
    I also learned not to nail down the family details. In my Dead-End Job series, Helen’s father is dead. She has a disapproving mother and a younger sister. But how many uncles, aunts and cousins does she have?
    I’m not sure. I just finished my 13th Dead-End Job mystery and I may need a long-lost relative.

    One of my friends discovered she had a half sister. Her mother – a homemaker –  confessed that she’d had an unwanted teenage pregnancy and given the baby up for adoption. Forty years later, Mom broke the news to her bewildered daughter. My friend went to meet her half-sister at her mother’s insistence. She decided the woman was nice enough, but the only thing they have in common is DNA. They may exchange Christmas cards, but they’re not going to be best pals.

    I tucked away that tidbit for future reference.
    I was equally vague with Phil Sagemont’s past. He’s Helen’s PI husband, and he has an ex-wife named Kendra, but that’s all we know about him. Phil’s extended family could be useful for future mysteries.
    I was really glad I never made up my mind whether Margery Flax, Helen and Phil’s seventy-six year old landlady at the Coronado Tropic Apartments, was married or divorced and if her husband was dead or alive. Helen and Phil weren’t sure either. The two private eyes noticed Margery never displayed any photos of her husband, but felt they had no right to investigate a friend.
    Good thing I kept Margery’s marital status vague. In “Catnapped!,” my 13th Dead-End Job mystery, Margery’s husband walks back into her life. Here’s the scene.

    
    Helen and Phil barely passed the umbrella table when an older man appeared at the back gate. He didn’t walk up. He seemed to materialize.
Helen stared at him. He was Margery’s match in every way: dramatically handsome with an unconventional edge. Six feet tall, slender, with broad shoulders and thick hair like fine white silk. Blue eyes. So blue Helen could see the color from this distance. He wore Florida dressy casual: crisp, blue fitted shirt, rolled at the forearms, white linen slacks and boat shoes.
    His bouquet of purple flowers belonged in an Impressionist painting.
    “Margery!” he said, striding toward her with the flowers. “Margery, my darling, I’m back.” He knelt at her feet.
    Margery jumped back as if she’d been attacked, and knocked over her chair. Her lit cigarette rolled across the concrete. “You!” she said. Her eyes were fierce with rage.
    “I love you, Margery,” he said. “I always have. I know purple is your favorite color and brought you these.” He held out the bouquet. Helen could see velvety lavender roses, pale fragrant lilacs and star-shaped asters.
    “I don’t want your damned flowers, Zach!” Margery said. She hit him in the face with the heavy bouquet.
    “Get out!” she said. “Get out and don’t come back!”

    But Zach does come back, until he’s murdered and Margery is jailed for killing him. The man’s definitely dead. But this time, I’d killed thoughtfully.

Check out the book trailer for “Catnapped!” here
http://www.elaineviets.com/new/Misc/trailers.asp

Enter my contest to win a free Dead-End Job mystery at www.elaineviets.com Just click on Contests.

Have you made your plans for attending  writing conferences or retreats this year?Which ones will you be going to (or already completed)? What are you most looking forward to about them this year?

Hey Gang,

Just jumping in to announce that TKZ has once again been named a top 101 website for writers by Writer’s Digest. Congratulations to all our bloggers and readers–we all work together to make TKZ required reading for the writerly set!