A Brief EMail Interview with Mary Welk and Mark Zubro
Twilight Tales would like to introduce you to two mystery writers at this weeks featured reading: Mary Welk and Mark Zubro, both of whom write great mysteries with interesting locales. Both also have quite a following for their books, so we are quite pleased they could both make time to come and visit us and share something of their work. You can look them both up online to see just what sorts of fun and mayhem they get their characters into. If you aren’t yet fans of theirs you will be once you hear them read.
Following are their answers to our interview questions.
Let’s start with the basics: What’s the title of the story you’ll be reading for us, and can you tell us a little something about it?
Mark: Schooled in Murder - 12th book in the Tom Mason mystery series. It’s about a murder at a school and the madness of the world of modern education.
Mary: I’ll be reading the prologue from A MERRY LITTLE MURDER, the first book in my “Rhodes to Murder” mystery series featuring Caroline Rhodes and Carl Atwater, followed by “Code Blue”, a short story I wrote for the anthology CHICAGO BLUES. The two pieces differ greatly in characterization and mood, the second piece being much darker than the first.
One of our volunteers tracked you both down at the Printer’s Row Book Fair, are you still surprised at the unusual things that can happen at personal appearances?
Mark: For me the most surprising thing is when someone actually shows up.
Mary: Having been in the writing business for over ten years, very few things surprise me any more. But something happened at Printers Row this year that really tickled my funnybone. On Saturday, two of my writing companions walked up and down Dearborn Street carrying a sign advertising the 2009 Love Is Murder mystery conference. The sign was tacked to a yard stick that they held high enough to be seen above the crowd. Love Is Murder was spelled out in big, bold letters on the sign, and my friends handed out bookmarks explaining the event to all they met. They eventually returned to the Echelon Press booth where some of us associated with LIM were signing books. Hard on their heels came two security guards who were working the fair. They pointed to the sign and asked us what it was about. We told them about the conference and they just shook their heads. Apparently they’d been approached by several people who saw the sign and decided that the words “Love Is Murder” referred to some sort of terrorist plot cooked up by a sect of hate mongerers. Once we stopped laughing, we assured the officers that we loved the city of Chicago and everyone in it, we were innocent of any and all hate mongering charges, and we were only advocating a fun time at a great mystery conference. The officers accepted our word, but they made us hide the sign under the table for the rest of the day. It was amusing at the time, but it does remind you that some people are one beer short of a six pack when it comes to brains.
You’ve both been published mystery writers for a while now, was that an easy or hard thing to make happen?
Mark: The short version of a tale I am loathe to tell is that in a stunning bit of luck and serendipity, I sold my book to the first place I sent it to and without having an agent.
Mary: Not easy at all. As an unpublished manuscript with the working title of FOUR TO GO, my first book, A MERRY LITTLE MURDER, was a finalist in the 1996 Hemingway First Novel Competition. It was the only mystery among the twelve finalists, the winner being a novel called THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF OSCAR WILDE. I’d also entered it in the 1996 St. Martins’ First Novel Contest, and the judge who read it wrote to me saying it was one of the two best manuscripts she’d read that year. It didn’t win that competition either, but I was encouraged to seek out an agent by those two successes. The problem was, I wasn’t very knowledgeable about the publishing business, and my query letters stunk. I never found an agent to represent me. Despite that, the book was finally published in 1998 under the title A DEADLY LITTLE CHRISTMAS. After the fourth book in the series, THE SCARECROW MURDERS, was released by Hilliard & Harris Publishers in 2 004, Echelon Press agreed to reissue DEADLY under their imprint. The only problem was, they weren’t thrilled with the title. Eventually we compromised and the book came out as a revised edition in 2007 under the title A MERRY LITTLE MURDER. Echelon will be reissuing the second in the series later this year, but again as a revised edition under a new title. What was originally published in 1999 as SOMETHING WICKED IN THE AIR will now be called THE RUNE STONE MURDERS.
What kinds of things first brought you to writing, and what kinds of things inspire your stories?
Mark: Freddy the Pig in the Walter R. Brooks novels brought me to writing. Two things that inspire my writing: one - the desire to understand why we do the awful things we do to each other; two - the desire to get even with people I don’t like, for example, it would never be good, in my stories, for a person to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or a school administrator - you are unlikely to make it to the end unscathed.
Mary: I come from a family of avid readers and writers. My dad was published in the field of science. My mother saw some of her poetry published. Two of my sisters are published in the non-fiction field. I had my first short story published in a school newspaper when I was fourteen. Needless to say, it was a mystery. 
In the mid ’60’s I turned to music and joined a couple of local folk-singing groups as a guitar player and song writer. In 1967 I met my husband, a motorcycle-riding, guitar-playing college student who, although he was in ROTC at Loyola, still tweeked his nose at the establishment by singing war protest songs outside of City Hall. We married in ‘68, and a bunch of kids later, I returned to writing, this time writing stories and plays for my children. I’d written the first draft of A MERRY LITTLE MURDER in 1967 while in nursing school, but it gathered dust in my desk until 1992 when I pulled it out, discovered that the plot was pretty good (although the characters and dialogue weren’t), and set about rewriting the entire thing. Due to work and raising children, it took me four years to get it to the point where I was pleased with the results. After that, I hired a professional editor and revised the manuscript six times before sending it off to the two competitions I mentioned previously.
I’m inspired by good puzzles, and so I try to write puzzling mysteries. I get ideas from things I read in the newspapers, from personal stories told by friends and family members, by places I’ve been and things I’ve seen. I’m fascinated by interpersonal relationships, so all of my plots involve people who commit crimes because of relationships gone wrong.
Did anyone every give you any advice about writing that was really helpful or totally out there?
Mark: Yes, and I’m not quoting here, but Sarah Paretsky told me once that I should concentrate on writing the book and creating the characters I wanted to. She gave me confidence to keep going.
Mary: Most of what I’ve learned about writing has come from reading excellent literature. I try to read writers who are masters at their craft, and I read as much to learn the craft as to enjoy the story. Other writers can teach you about the technical side of writing, but I’ve found that learning how prose should flow, how tension should build, etc., comes mainly from reading novel after novel after novel. As for advice, the best thing someone told me was to put my manuscript aside for a few weeks after finishing it, then take it out and read it with a fresh eye for style, rhythm, word use, description, etc. I’ve found I can improve a story if I do this.
When you wander the aisles of a book store, what kinds of books do you pick up?
Mark: Mysteries and non-fiction history.
Mary: I write mysteries, but when I’m in a bookstore, I naturally gravitate to the non-fiction section. I’m fascinated by history, and I enjoy reading historical non-fiction, especially political or war-related history. Again, I’m interested in what makes people tick, and history fulfills that need to understand people.
Finally, is there anything else you’d like to share with our audience before we see you read in person?
Mary: I’d like to thank everyone who’s come tonight to hear Mark and me read. I appreciate your interest in our work and in storytelling in general, and I hope you enjoy our stories. I’d also like to thank the staff of Twilight Tales for inviting us to appear here. And if you enjoy mystery fiction, please join Twilight Tales — and me! — at the annual Love Is Murder mystery conference in February, 2009. We have a great lineup of authors, demonstrations, and activities to offer both readers and writers at a brand new hotel just north of the20city limits. Thank you!
We hope you’ll join us on Monday August 25th at Mystic Celt (3443 N. Southport) to hear Mary’s and Mark’s fiction, and perhaps more discussion!
