They speak of the proper way to stage a mugging, and the importance of having doctor friends you can query about the most effective poisons. One of them confesses she once shot a gun into a pillow to see if the padding would act as a sufficient silencer.
It’s a biweekly meeting of the Salem Mystery Writers group, a group of seven fiction writers who seemingly will do anything to get into the criminal minds of their characters.
The group, which has been meeting for about two years, is made up of literati from Massachusetts and New Hampshire who meet to compare notes about the writing business and critique each other’s works-in-progress. Most have published their writing in crime story anthologies or in novel form.
Margaret Press, the group’s host, published her first novel, “A Scream on the Water, A True Story of Murder in Salem in 1997” about neighbor Martha Brailsford, who was killed after accepting a sailing invitation from a man she believed to be friendly.
Tonight the writers meet in Press’s kitchen, filing past a flickering woodstove into a parlor lined with bookshelves, and dominated by a large picture window that overlooks Collin’s Cove. They settle into two white couches and three wicker chairs, and someone asks where Rae, one of the group members is tonight. Rae Francoeur, Press says, has been diligently working on writing explicit sex scenes for her crime novel at her publisher’s request because “that’s apparently what sells.” Some of the writers chuckle sympathetically.
Press hands out glasses of wine and bottles of root beer, and asks the group who will be sharing their work aloud. The writers have an agreement that even if they have nothing to share, they must come to offer insight to the other members. Tonight Press is sitting out, her writing at a temporary lull.
A thin woman with cropped dark hair who teaches horseback riding, Joy Seymour, says she’s loved writing reading and writing mysteries since the fourth grade. Seymour, 45, begins reading rapidly in a strong, brassy voice the first chapter of a novel where a mafioso is about to be mugged by a group of teenage boys, but is saved by Kevin, her gun-wielding protagonist. “It’s tighter than last time,” Margaret says, nodding.
“But would Kevin walk in front of the old man? Would the boys attack if they saw him there?” someone asks. The writers attack the scene like choreographers, working out where each person should stand till it makes more sense. Joy seems satisfied afterwards, collecting back the manuscripts peppered with peoples’ comments.
Next to read is John Urban, 49, an administrator at Northeastern University who has a house out near Buzzards Bay where he sets many of his crime short stories. Urban begins reading a scene where a ship, the Queen Victoria, is about to be overtaken by a submarine. At one point the main character’s hands are “shaking from adrenaline and rage.”
“Do we need to know that?” asks Joy.
“Isn’t that a Jane Austen novel?” Press jokes. “‘Pride and Prejudice, Adrenaline and Rage?’”
The group chuckles, and decides Urban should leave the detail about the main character, who is stoic and rarely shows such signs of emotion.
Bill Joyner, 66, is a former technical writer who says he began writing fiction to appear busy at work when after the dot-com boom his job started dwindling.
Though the majority of the group writes straight-up crime fiction, Joyner says he likes to write “for chuckles.” Since joining the group, he’s found he’s been writing more in six-page stretches that sometimes resemble stand-up comedy skits.
His writing tonight is infused with humor, and bits of his real-life experience playing in a jazz band. Joyner’s voice is high and pleasantly creaky like an underplayed instrument, perfectly suited for comedic reading. His character, an absentminded private investigator in this chapter of his book, gets cajoled into playing keyboard in a band and nearly forgets he is trying to solve a murder. The piece is a last-minute addition to a book he’s been working on for five years.
“It’s terrible,” Joyner says dryly. He quotes Duke Ellington, who apparently once ripped up sheet music, saying, “I don’t want anyone to know how bad I can be.”
“It’s wonderful,” he is assured.
“There’s nothing wrong with writing for chuckles,” says Press. “You can bring the main issue in sideways.”
Sprawling on a sofa, legs spread like one of the loosely wound tough guys he writes about, Larry Griffin, 56, says his first novel read much like Raymond Chandler. “His writing had no contractions,” says Seymour.
The group agrees this one, begun last November, is much better. The chapter read tonight is tightly packed with dialogue between a fast-talking investigative journalist and a spoiled teenager with a dark past.
“I have nothing to like about this narrator,” Joy says when he is done reading.
“Do you have to like every character?” someone asks.
“He’s an antihero,” says Griffin.
The writers have found inspiration for their novels in varied places. Some of them belong to the group Mystery Writers of America, a consortium of writers who meet once a year at Crime Bake, a conference where they hear police officers, private investigators and skip tracers (professionals trained to find missing persons) share inside details that could help bring their writing to life.
Sometimes they stumble onto real-life events that prove inspirational. Urban once was inspired to write a story after hearing about a boat that went down off the coast of Cape Cod in the 1950s. Joyner, having spent years teaching English at Salem State College, decided to make his novel’s murder victim an English professor. And Press lived down the street from the murder victim she featured in her first novel, and after the tragedy occurred, spent hours talking to police to gain insight for the story.
“It’s like nail soup,” says Press. “You start with a real incident and then start asking what-ifs. A man got run over by a bus, well, what if he just won the lottery? A ship went down off the Cape, what if there was a second ship?”
To learn more about Mystery Writers of America visit www.mysterywriters.org. Salem Mystery Writers at this time is not seeking new members, although it may again in the future.
