There isn't much better on a cold winter evening than curling up with a good mystery, and reading Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's stories about struggling mystery writer Emily Kincaid and her adventures in small-town northern Michigan is a special treat for me.
Elizabeth teaches creative writing at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan, when she's not writing novels or figuring out what to do with the bad guys in her fictional worlds.
The Emily Kincaid series includes Dead Dancing Women, Dead Floating Lovers, and Dead Sleeping Shaman, as well as Dead Dogs and Englishmen (slated for release in spring of 2011).
Elizabeth, who I met at a metro Detroit writers' group meeting, took some time out from writing her most recent novel to answer a few questions for me.
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Q. How did Emily Kincaid introduce herself to you and become the lead character of your northern Michigan mystery series?
A. I think Emily Kincaid split off from my psyche. She's a mystery writer, lives in my house, uses my writing studio, has a dog a lot like my old dog, keeps getting into trouble. Only she's a lot younger, a lot smarter, a lot dumber, a lot more put-upon. Oh, and she doesn't weigh much. Yeah--just like me.
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Q. How did the northern Michigan setting inspire or drive these stories?
A. Northern Michigan is a place out of time--at least where I live. The people are real--without the hang-up of proving how much money they have, who they know, which schools they attended--nothing but reality, real lives in progress, up here. The towns I write about are much as I write them. The people care about each other and sometimes hurt each other. Deward, the abandoned mining town in Dead Sleeping Shaman, is real and haunted and a part of a colorful past. Leetsville is no more, but could have been--if it had survived the end of logging days the way other towns survived. So, I breathed life into Leetsville. Traverse City is the antithesis of my other places--it is alive and growing and wealthy, and culturally and artistically viable. I have it all up here--and along with that some evil people who I like disposing of.
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Q. How did crows become harbingers of danger in your books?
A. Actually the crows aren't harbingers of anything but more crow smarts. They've been my muse since moving up here, and one time they saved my life. They look out for me and gossip about me and hang around my house. Since taking on the rehabilitation of the crows I have been told amazing stories by people in up close and personal encounters with the birds. Amazing creatures. For me they've become a harbinger of more and more ideas for mysteries.
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Q. It's been interesting to see the growth of Emily's character, and her relationships with other characters, as the series progressed. I admit that her relationship with her ex-husband in the second book made me want to shake a bit of sense into her, though. How can we expect to see these characters progress in the next book in the series?
A. A lot of people got mad at Emily when she went back to her cheating ex-husband, Jackson, temporarily. The thing is, I'm tired of fairy tales in women's novels. Sorry, but women can do dumb things when they're scared or too lonely. They return to men who are bad for them--as Emily did when her finances were scaring her. But the thing is, they can learn from their mistakes, as Emily did--she wasn't going to leave northern Michigan. She wasn't going back with Jackson. She was actually getting what she wanted and would find a way to make it work. She got stronger through her temporary insanity.
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Q. When is the fourth book in the Emily Kincaid series coming out?
A. The next book in the Emily Kincaid series will be out in May, 2011. Dead Dogs and Englishmen is about facing someone so evil you doubt your own sanity. And here, too, Emily is forced into a situation she wished she weren't in, but needs the money she makes to pay her bills. Another lesson learned by Emily, who comes out of it wiser and even rather proud of what she did and who she is.
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Q. Do you have any plans for Emily beyond these four books?
A. I have two more books in the Emily Kincaid series in the works but at the moment I'm taking a break. Emily and Dolly want to get away from me for awhile and I need to see less of them for a year or so. The thing is, people up here keep coming to me with stories. I just got a phone call from a man who ran into this great story . . . so . . .
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Q. What's next for you?
A. At the moment I'm working on a novel very unlike the DEAD series. It is much darker, much more threatening, and takes place in Detroit, among the homeless. My protagonist is a woman--Roberta Brimley, a social worker who joins the homeless (the faceless, unseen people) when she is threatened by a madman who murdered her husband, a philosopher, and has come after her, first stalking and torturing her, to find something her dead husband had hidden. I'm always excited by new work and can't keep it out of my mind. I'm on chapter 23--pushing forward but already looking to the end, when I get to do away with the bad guy in as gruesome a manner as I can come up with. Sins must be paid for, after all.
Thanks, Elizabeth, and I'll be sure to look for your next novels!
Meanwhile, are you curious about Emily, love a good mystery, and love discovering great regional authors? Be sure to check out Dead Dancing Women, Dead Floating Lovers, and Dead Sleeping Shaman.
© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved
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