El Segundo Author Fair  

Okay, so I thought about character creation after reading another article on the topic. Apparently you're supposed to treat your main character as if you were preparing for a roll on stage (aka method acting). We do something similar out at faire, not like anyone ever asks...

So what's Lydia's back story? Well here it is:

Lydia Proctor was born to older parents in the 1960's (I like leaving that ambiguous). She is an only child. She met her best friend Faye in high school. Unlike Faye, Lydia married early and had a small family of three, her children being spread out a bit (okay so I took from my own life for that one...). Her oldest in the stories is in college, her son in high school and her youngest just entering the elementary school realm. Lydia has an associates degree and works in an academic library. In her spare time when not dealing with the home fires, she is the librarian for Tri-Cities in the fictional town of Rancho Camino. Her husband works in marketing and travels a lot, leaving Lydia home to take care of the daily chores. On the side she takes on helping people search their family tree (aka genealogy). Normally when she helps it's just a straight forward family, but for some reason, starting with Julia Bower's family, all Lydia can seem to find in her client's family tree's are murders.

Now mind you, I think most amateur sleuths who do what they do and get beat up every five minutes or are knocked out convieniently at the end of the book before they are rescued is a bit much. I don't think like that, and I can't imagine a parent putting herself into that position all the time. Plus in genealogy unless you're working with an estate and heirs who want the whole pot, she's not going to be in that situation often. So my solution of course was to have the murder's in the past.

Like any good crime, there is evidence and leads - and that my friends is what genealogy is all about. Without leads (documentation) and evididence there is no family tree, just a bunch of names, dates and places without any life to it.

So Lydia uses census, court records, vital records, wills, diaries, tombstones - you name it - to solve the problem and if it just happens to lead to murder...well then so much the better.

What makes it a cozy? Little to no violence, no in your face sex (sorry...) and no unreasonable foul language.

Lydia, as a last note, was shy in high school, but thanks to her involvement in genealogy and the genealogical world (her speaking, writing, and chairmanships...) she is now a new person.

Come learn more about Lydia and her co-horts. My next installment will be on Faye...stay tuned!

It's funny I was thinking how a character evolves as a series progresses (this sort of ties in with my observations on secondary characters and how they weave in and out of the story line). I've got a little bit of background established with each character. In book one of course we get a look into Julia's and then again I put out a tid bit in the second one. The third installment A Case Study in Murder looks at Muriel, and the fourth has a bit more of Muriel again. It doesn't necessarily help them "grow" but it explains who they are today. 

That doesn't mean I don't give some background on Lydia and Faye, I do, especially the main one - Lydia. I think Lydia, grows in a good way. She goes from being a helpful, sort of passive person in An Old Fashioned Murder to a more forward thinking/independent person in book three A Case Study in Murder. With time I have come to show her as being more of an "in charge" person, especially in book four A Class in Murder. Maybe that is because, myself as a person and a writer, has grown over the two and a half years since I wrote the first installment. And like Earlene Fowler who is slowly taking one book at a time so that her character Dove doesn't age and die, I too am doing the same. Life goes so fast we don't get a chance to blink sometimes before something in our life changes. I wanted Lydia to have Julia and Muriel active and healthy as long as possible. To give them time to live their lives as older adults before time and age wears them away. Plus I want her children to be around the house a while too - I know all too well what it is like to start having the babies leave the nest.

So if you want to see how the characters develop, then you need to read them all - the books that is. Starting with book one is a great place. And there is time for you to read it too since book two should be out in a few months. Maybe around April. I was originally pushing for December, which placed each book a year apart, but with my life being what it is, that isn't going to happen too soon...But don't give up on me...it will happen!

I promised to address this topic in my last blog entry. For those of you reading this that think genealogy is boring let me pitch some words your way:

Illegitimate children, murderers, runaway children and spouses, high commerce, oil and gas leases, divorce, insanity, genetic defects, slavery, clergymen, adoption, alcoholics, con-men, deserters, soldiers, church politics, revival meetings...

What do any of those descriptions...words have to do with one another - they aren't all adjectives, or adverbs - although they are descriptive. The above can describe any member of your family, past or present. Families are NEVER boring, and therefore neither is genealogy.

Genealogy is the hobby that brings all those family members together - the odd ones, the quirky ones - the just plain scary ones and makes them all real. Your family is great fodder for tall tales, and murder mysteries.

So the next time someone says genealogy is boring, show them how "not" boring it really is. Dig in and do 5 or 7 generations and see how much fun you can have pulling those well hidden skeletons out of the closet!