Picking a Profession for a New Sleuth

Elaine L. Orr

For my mystery series I have used a variety of sleuths. The long running Jolie Gently series has a real estate appraiser. I deliberately picked that so the job would put my amateur sleuth among people from all walks of life. Not just her homeowner or small business customers, but also real estate agents, local government officials who dealt with property law, merchants, and almost anything else you can think of.

For early stand alone books I learned lessons about limitations of given professions. For example, A teacher is tied to a classroom much of the time. Archeology is a fascinating profession, but it requires a lot of research on the writer's part. I like to do research, but I also like the story to flow easily.

The landscaper in the River's Edge series and the graphics artist in the Family History mystery series are also involved in many aspects of their communities. I like rural communities and I'm a family historian myself, which made those series especially interesting to me. 

Cozy Mystery readers expect an amateur sleuth. My two series without them are the Logland Mystery series, which features a female police chief in a small college town; and the Shore Shenanigans series, which introduced a private investigator (a man!) in a Jersey Shore town. Both of these series have many features of a cozy mystery series -- the murders occur off screen, the sleuth is involved in the community, and there's a fair bit of humor.

I learned that even though these two series are essentially cozies with a professional crime solver, readers aren't as likely to pick them up. I actually find them easier to write because the police chief and private investigator have a reason to delve into the crime. The amateur has a harder route to crime solving. But, I have to think hard about writing more books in the series. I love to write but I also love to sell.

As I was creating the Bay View Harbor series I needed a sleuth who had reasons to interact with a lot of people and yet had flexibility in her schedule. I always avoided professions that involved cooking, crafts, or (believe it or not) books. So no bakeries, yarn or other craft stores, or libraries or bookstores. I thought there were so many options already, and I also have no talents or cooking, sewing, or anything else that requires true talent. Libraries and bookstores seemed redundant -- I'm in them all the time.

In a small Maryland Eastern Shore town there aren't as many options as in a larger community. Thus came a former event planner turned bakery owner. I set it up so that she has a partner, which makes it easier to get around town, and the partner is actually a talented cook. I finally realized that a baker can get into as much trouble as a real estate appraiser or landscaper. I don't really have to know how to cook. I do have to like what I'm writing about, and Maryland's Eastern Shore is one of my favorite places on the planet. So, here we go.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Watch Out for Weak Words

By Elaine L. Orr

Some authors write gently, even with deep drama. I'm thinking of Ann Tyler. Others pack every metaphorical punch with swinging fists. Think James Patterson or John Sandford.

What's not good for either style is diluted text, especially verbs. "I was walking up the stairs after work" connotes a clearer imaged as, "I trudged up the steps after a long day at work." 

Another generic verb is look. We can look at a piece of paper or study it. Look at the sky or glance at it with deep concern. I now do a word search for 'look' at the end of my first draft. 

For my writing style, gerunds have a specific purpose. I like to use them to convey immediacy -- "walking into the deserted house confirmed my fears" puts you with the character more than "I walked into the house feeling fearful." You can edit either of those sentences, but I think constant use of gerunds dilutes their sense of immediacy, perhaps even intimacy, with a character.

My critique mate, Sue, pointed out that I used 'and' a lot. I didn't think so until I counted -- almost 200 times in one chapter. I had some longer sentences that could be separated without making the text choppy. But a big part was using 'and' rather than infinitives. Any style can work, but overuse becomes apparent.

I'll use another blog post to talk about how much more a colorful word conveys than a neutral one. Dropping to the floor is one thing. Crashing is something more. And louder.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

From Both Sides of a State

By Elaine L. Orr

I'd written for decades before I decided to set a mystery series in Maryland, the state where I grew up and lived until my mid-forties. I didn't make a conscious choice to avoid my state of oceans and mountains. I suppose other venues seemed more interesting because I didn't know them as well.

Now I have not one but two series set in Maryland. The Family History Mystery Series is in Garret County, as far West as you can get. Living in the DC suburbs when I was a kid, people went to Garrett County to ski. I have friends who live in the Rockies who think 4,800 feet is not much of a mountain, but it's pretty tall when you're standing on a couple of pieces of wood going downhill. 

You don't have to go to the top of a mountain. One of the best ways to view the county is on the Capital Limited, the train that runs from Chicago to DC's Union Station. You ride along the water, seeing vistas that hikers or white water rafters could access -- but not the rest of us!

My hobby of genealogy research led to creating an amateur sleuth who is an active family historian and active with other local historians. What's been fun is to get to know the region and its Civil War history better. That isn't part of every book, of course. The Maryland battle of Antietam early in the war stopped the Confederate Army advance into Maryland, essential to prevent Washington DC from being surrounded by enemies of Lincoln's Union.

Heading to Maryland's Eastern Shore

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. If you're on a boat in the middle of the bay you might as well be on the ocean -- no shore in sight. 

The Western shore is readily accessible from the DC suburbs, which is why a friend and I bought a cottage there in the mid-1980s. It's beautiful, but has a sense of being anchored to the land that you don't get from the Eastern shore.

I selected Talbot County for the fictional town of Bay View Harbor. It's midway down the western part of the Eastern shore with plenty of shoreline. Lots of history to learn about, and I like to blend local history into much of what I write. I planned to spent time re-exploring the area, but a back injury marred the plans. I have a strong sense of the culture of the places from past visits and now a good excuse to spend more time there (with a healed back).

The books are cozy mysteries and the focus of town life is a bakery. I never thought I'd pick that profession, but when I was looking for a job for a new sleuth, it offered a way to interact with a lot of people and still have time to get into trouble and investigate. The Handyman's Last Bite comes out in May. 

I'm excited to work on The Art Critic's Last Forgery, I love art museums and relating artwork to the history of the period. If you look at the covers, you'll see they show the interior of the bakery with the harbor in the background. Now, on to learning more about forgeries.

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Elaine now has two mystery series set in Maryland. To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

Maryland Looking Back and Forward

By Elaine L. Orr

Montgomery County, Maryland was a great place to grow up. Beaches to the east and mountains to the west. In the 1950s, the DC suburbs were growing rapidly as veterans and their families used the GI Bill to buy their first homes. Schools surged and the Catholic parish we belonged to got so big a new one was created down the street from us. My father, a Presbyterian, was a parish scout leader and oversaw the Sunday donut time.

It didn't seem odd to me to have Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish neighbors, a family that had recently arrived from Germany, and a native of Costa Rica who worked at the Organization of American States. It was only after I moved to the Midwest in the 1990s that I fully understood that most suburban neighborhoods were not as diverse. 

We didn't have Black neighbors in the 1950s and early 1960s, though my parochial school had a few Black students and I had Black teachers in high school. When my nieces and nephews played on the teams or cheered at my old high school, they would have thought it weird beyond belief not to have Black fellow students, friends, and teachers.

Our immediate neighbors included two families of Japanese descent. I didn't realize until I was an adult that they must have been interred during the War. Among my memories are that the family next store bought the same set of Golden Book Encyclopedias that our parents bought for us. Their very bright son read them cover-to-cover, while we referred to them on occasion.

The family across the street had an immaculate lawn and some neighbors grumbled that the family, especially the dad, didn't want people running across it. I remember my father saying very directly to another neighbor that it was their lawn and they could have it any way they wanted. Again much later, I realized my dad knew that they had likely had homes and possessions taken away and no one should criticize them for decisions about their property.

My parents bought their small house for $13,500. The homes in the neighborhood, Garrett Park Estates, now sell for millions. Of course, applying the concept of present value of money would mean the house (based on just that calculation) would have been worth more in 1951. But not that much!

In fact, my parents' former home was just sold and torn down so a developer could build a McMansion. The old home sold for $1.9 million. The new one has not been on the market, but I've seen pictures. In today's economy, I would assume $3.5 million or more.

Clearly, this would not be a neighborhood for first-time homebuyers today. Nor would the area near the  house I sold in Takoma Park, MD (for $194,000) in 1994. It's estimated to be work about $900,000 today. 

As I think about moving back to Maryland someday (so I can annoy my family) I realize buying or renting would be almost impossible. Unless I sell a lot more books. When you live in a place with reasonable prices (Springfield, IL for my husband and me), you get used to, well...living comfortably on retirement incomes.

I didn't intend to write a morose post! Perhaps it's a version of be grateful for what you've had and have today.

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Elaine has set two of her mystery series in Maryland. To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

What on Earth are We Doing?

By Elaine L. Orr

For the first time since I began the Irish Roots author blog in 2011, I did not post anything during a month (February 2026). If I want an easy excuse I could say it's because I had back surgery on the 19th and it's been tough before and after. (Successful, but not what you want to do for fun.)

While that may be a factor, the bigger issue is that I am overwhelmed by the U.S. actions to start a war that will kill a lot of people and cannot be won. We focus, appropriately, on the US service members who were killed and I wish I could bring them back for their families. We seem to gloss over the fact that we are killing many hundreds of women, children, and men with our bombs and drones. Some are in the military, most are not.

Have we become immune to sorrow because we see killing all the time in movies and on television? Or are we simply trying to ignore bellicose chest-beating from political leaders?

The Secretary of War recently bragged about the March 4th sinking of the Iranian IRIS Dena with a torpedo in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka. This was the first sinking with a submarine-fired torpedo since World War II. Think about it for a moment. Eighty-seven young men either died immediately or drowned. (The Sri Lankans recovered their bodies.)

These sailors signed up for service in their country's military for some of the same reasons men and women sign up for service in the U.S. They may have been motivated by patriotism but also simply needed a job. They have families who relied on them. They may have had pictures of their children taped to the bunk above theirs in their sleeping quarters just as US submariners do.

I accept that the US military did not purposely bomb a school full of young girls, but lack of intent doesn't make it better. Have you seen the pictures of the girls' bodies separately wrapped in sheets awaiting burial? I can't get that image out of my head any more than I can remove the one of people covered in grit running from the collapsing Twin Towers in 2001.

This is not a game. We are sending our young people into horrific danger and causing the same for millions more. Where is the outrage and sorrow?

Before you think that I'm anti-military, be assured I am not. I visit my parents in Arlington National Cemetery and fly a flag on Memorial and Veterans Day. The two charities to which I give monthly are World Central Kitchen and Armed Services YMCA. In case you've never heard of the latter (and especially if you want to donate), they help "junior enlisted personnel and their family members. The Armed Services YMCA empowers military families, no matter who they are or where they’re from, by ensuring access to resources, relationships, and opportunities for all to grow and thrive." That includes food for families whose budgets can't be stretched far enough.

One of the questions asked of current military and political leaders is if we will run out of bombs and drones. I told my doctor yesterday she needs a magic wand to make growing chronic back issues better. That need pales in comparison with our nation's need to feel empathy for our own service members and those whose lives we end and uproot.

Don't be afraid to pray and cry for an end to the carnage.

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Eaine's favorite book (of hers) is Falling Into Place, a story of grace as a World War II vet struggles with his wife's death...and life since he served. To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

What Draws Us to Family History Mysteries?

By Elaine L. Orr 

Among the broad topics that fascinate mystery readers, genealogy or family history mysteries have gained fans in the last few years. They vary from cozy mysteries to forensic mysteries so a reader can take their pick on level of gore, though in general there is far less of it in these books than, for example, thrillers.

Historical mysteries may delve into a family's past but the focus is on solving a mystery that occurred in the past rather than using census data or family heirlooms and diaries to get the clues. There could be some of that but it's not the main focus.

As I was looking at books for this blog post, I noted there are also some contemporary romances with a genealogical theme.

What is it that captivates us? Is it that old secrets refuse to remain buried? Sometimes the past collides with the present so there's no way to ignore it.  Essentially, what happens when ancestry holds dangerous secrets?

As an author I delve into some of the other series, but it takes time to write so I would probably be reading more of them if I weren't writing a lot! There are very different choices when you ask for genealogy mysteries versus family history mysteries. I don't know what Amazons criteria is for the varied search results.

The series noted below are simply a smattering. Personally, I love English history, so I especially enjoy Nathan Dylan Goodwin's books. These are the Amazon links. Some books are only on that site, others are also sold elsewhere.

The Lost Ancestor (The Forensic Genealogist series Book 2) by Nathan Dylan Goodwin 2014. Eleven-book series set in England. This book is on Kindle Unlimited.

Family Secrets (Ellie McLellan Genealogy Mystery Book 1) by Beth Farrar. Ten-book series set in Quebec. The protagonist works with her genealogy group. Looks as if all books are on Kindle Unlimited.

Paging the Dead (A Family History Mystery Book 1) by Brynn Bonner. 2013. Four-book series set in North Carolina. This series may be finished, but you don't want to miss looking at the gorgeous covers.

The Attic's Deadly Secret  (The Heritage Mysteries Book 1) by Lyra Embrerlyn. 2025. A five-book series. Novella set in New England.

The Unscheduled Murder Trip (The Family History Mystery Series Book 2) by Elaine L Orr. 2021. A five-book series set in the mountains of Western Maryland. Not in KU because the books are at all sites, but a box set of the first three is.

Even if you don't like ancestry research when it's talked about around the Thanksgiving table, take a look at some of these. I think you'll find some favorites.

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Note: The photo of trees in a forest is from Depositphotos_135536030_XL.

To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.

When You Start Writing too Soon

 By Elaine L. Orr

When an idea comes to me it's exciting and also tempting to put words on paper. I may start with a few sentences but then graduate to a few pages of notes. If I'm in the middle of another project, I can stow those pages in a computer file or paper folder and have enough information to continue when I go back to it.

It's not necessarily a good thing when I have time on my hands. I may start a book immediately. After a few chapters I realize I don't know the characters, setting, or or perhaps plot well enough to continue. What I have may be good but the phrase "now what?" enters my mind too often. That's OK if you're writing an outline but troublesome if you're in the middle of a chapter.

I have finally learned that what I omit if I make an early start is showing the normal world. In most mysteries, an event propels a sleuth (professional or amateur) into action. They may get involved reluctantly but eventually there is enough at stake to push to find a killer, kidnapper or embezzler. Take your pick.

Having a period of time before the inciting event lets the reader know something about the sleuth as well as their town and some of the other people in it. Without that first chapter, or however long it takes, every time the author introduces a character or they visit a place, the reader will want an explanation.

I started a new book before Thanksgiving, The Handyman's Last Bite, and I was considering introducing a couple more characters so the pool of red herrings could be larger. (How's that for a pun?) Then I did a forehead slap and realized I should have mentioned those people in an earlier chapter. They need to be part of the Ordinary World before it turns upside down.

Cozy mystery authors are familiar with the four-part structure discussed for that genre (and others). 1) The Ordinary World, 2) Reactive Phase, 3) Proactive Phase, and 4) Confrontation. If you search for "four-act structure for mystery novels" you'll fund a number of very good articles. If you want more, you can go to The Creative Penn, a multifaceted site that deal with writing, publishing, marketing and more.

I don't want to "have" to use a certain structure, but the concepts are helpful. Plus, the new Ordinary World chapter in The Handyman's Last Bite provided some good ideas for other parts of the book.

If you want to become familiar with the thought process of a writer who is a meticulous outliner, get to know William Kent Krueger. I've read many of his books -- intricate and firmly ensconced in their environment.

Back to my handyman to be sure he doesn't mess up the project.

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To learn more about Elaine's writing, visit her website or sign up for her newsletter.