Monday, May 6, 2024
Part Three of the Origins of the short story, Madam Sibyl's First Client
Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
In addition, now and again I will provide some of my fiction to read, for free, on this newsletter. Everything is available to anyone who subscribes, but I am always pleased when someone shows their appreciation for the newsletter by upgrading to paid.
Daily Diary, Day 1343:
Check-in: Well, we made it through the weekend of noise caused by the dehumidifiers the asbestos removal company set up to deal with the leak they caused in the bathroom, the leak that meant they had to take out most of the den ceiling. Supposedly they are coming this morning to remove the equipment. I am hoping they will be able to show us that everything is completely dry before they do so. I’ve done yoga, and my first walk, my husband is out for the second walk with our dog, and I have already had one unscheduled phone call. Thank heavens it is sunny, so if for some reason they need to keep the noisy machines running another day, we can sit outside for much of the time. But now for the promised last part of my post on Madam Sibyl’s First Client. I you want to read the first two, these posts and subsequent scenes from the short story are easy to find here.
Origin of Madam Sibyl’s First Client: Part Three
Almost any fiction writer will mention the difficulty in weaving in backstory without slowing the plot down. This is a particular issue when dealing with a series because you don’t want to bore people who have read the earlier books and know the backstory. On the other hand, you don’t want new readers or readers who don’t remember the details to feel lost. This is one of the reasons why I often end up taking so long editing the first chapters or two of a book. I am frequently dithering over how much back story to do. I tend to overwrite in the first draft, so then I will need to cut or figure out where to move the material where it won’t be as intrusive.
In some ways, this problem might have been even more difficult for Maids of Misfortune because I had been thinking about the plot off and on for nearly 10 years, and then there had been another 20 years of fiddling with the first draft, before I actually published the book in 2009. By the time I wrote that last draft I had created a fairly detailed backstory for the main protagonist Annie, but the feedback I got from beta readers along the way made it clear that I I needed to keep a good deal of that detail to myself at first.
I did get to weave in much of this backstory in the next two books, especially more detail about Annie Fuller’s disastrous first marriage and her earlier experience pretending to be a clairvoyant. However, I hadn’t done much with why she needed to supplement her income from the boardinghouse or the crucial role Herman Stein had played in convincing her of this decision.
The success I had been having expanding back story, albeit for minor characters, through short stories, suggested this might be a way to explore both of these topics. For example, in Maids of Misfortune, I had introduced both the Boston terrier, Dandy, and Barbara Hewitt and her son Jamie, but very briefly. My first short story Dandy Detects permitted me to go into more detail about all three, as well as begin to set up some future plot points for the third book in the series, Bloody Lessons, where the reader learns a good deal more about Barbara Hewitt’s backstory. I was able to do the same thing with the next two short stories, The Misses Moffett Mend a Marriage and Mr. Wong Rights a Wrong.
Consequently, by 2014, it seemed to me that it was time to use a short story to provide a bit more back story for Annie herself, especially about her experiences as the present clairvoyant. The result was Madam Sibyl’s First Client.
I will publish the first scene on Wednesday. From the respondents to the poll I did about this short story, more than a third of you said either said you hadn’t read the story (or couldn’t remember if you did). Obviously, I will be delighted if this group, in particular, will at least give the first scene a try!
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Looking forward to seeing it!