murder.booklocker.com

Peter McGinn, author of Caught Holding the Bag, is visiting us as part of the BookLocker Virtual Tour.      Cheryl: Hi, Peter, and welcome. Caught Holding the Bag is a play on ostomy surgery, right? Peter: I like to think I am pretty good at titles and endings. I attended a mystery conference last year and pitched to an agent. She said my pitch didn’t grab her but based on the titles of the two series detective novels, she just had to see a few chapters.

Sadly, it turned out she decided not to represent me, but it may have been for the best, as her style didn’t grab me either. With Caught Holding the Bag, the title has a double meaning. A play on words, which I hope signals that there is humor in the book, and also a character uses the phrase to describe how he has been stuck with a problem that started before he was on the scene. He was kind of a whiner, but he ended up dead so maybe he had a point.

Cheryl: You have quite an array of characters in Caught Holding the Bag.

Peter: Is that why it was so hard to weave it all together? I never thought of the book as having a lot of characters in it.

When I was rewriting it I wondered if there were too many subplots and I considered dropping one or more. Plus, when I am honest with myself – a dangerous habit to get into – I thought one of the subplots was a little hokey. But when I thought it through, it felt like the threads of plot were intertwined so tightly too much of the story would unravel if I tugged on any piece too hard. Is that a good thing? I hope so.

Cheryl: How old is your main character, Patti? I’d also like to know how old Lorraine is, the one whose husband was murdered. Was Patti modeled on someone you know?

Peter: Patti is around 23 years old, and Lorraine is around 45. I rarely give my characters exact ages in my books. I give out hints, but not much more. I am the same way about descriptions. When I am reading, I don’t want to know too much about what the characters look like. Give me the basics, maybe a distinctive detail that stands out, but leave the rest to my imagination.

I love reading Anthony Trollope, but he drives me crazy when he introduces a new character. The story grinds to a halt while we get a microscopic look at the person. I know they didn’t have television back then (lucky devils) and this was their television, but it’s not my thing. I want to learn more about them through what they say and do and visualize the rest.

Patti is not based on anyone I know. I know two women who were the starting point for Lorraine and Julia [another character in Peter's book], but neither one would have recognized themselves. I know that because they both read the book! I don’t write about people I know, except that my female characters tend to be strong women because I have been fortunate enough to know a lot of strong women. (Men, not so much.)

Cheryl: where did the surgery idea come from — how does it add to or complicate the plot?

Peter: Well, the short answer is that I had this kind of surgery myself over 20 years ago. But I have learned the hard way that I can’t start out thinking like – I will write an ostomy novel. If I went at it that way my next thought would be –- gosh, even I wouldn’t want to read that!

It all started with Lorraine, what it would be like for a person to be in the hospital after major self-image changing surgery thinking her life was over, and have Lorraine stride into the room. I have heard stories like that from a few people over the years, though not with anyone quite like Lorraine.

The surgery adds a lot to the story too. I needed Patti and Lorraine to become very close friends very quickly, and that is accomplished by having Patti help Lorraine get past her ex-husband’s violent death, mirrored by Lorraine helping Patti get through the surgery Lorraine had survived already. On one level, I think I was also trying to shine a light onto a type of surgery you never hear about, but if it hadn’t worked so well in this story I would have jettisoned it for sure.

Plus the surgery is the major hurdle in Patti’s life as the book opens, but her coping with it foreshadows the way she is able to handle the other problems that are about to emerge in her life. It helps reveal her and Lorraine’s sense of humor. A sense of humor helps when you have this kind of surgery, believe me.

Cheryl: What made you decide to make the brother’s homosexuality the reason for the father/son estrangement?

He is just another character — you weren’t supposed to notice he was gay! No, seriously, I didn’t want to have a flashing sign over the gay couple’s heads saying, “Look, I’ve got gay characters shown in a positive manner!” I just wanted them to be two more characters in the book, not present because they are gay. With the divorced parents and the divorced Lorraine, though, they became the happy couple Patti needs as a model for what she wants out of love.

As Patti’s father developed, however, it became apparent that he would have trouble with the whole situation. So I let that happen. Another one of those darn subplots I mentioned before. As a bonus, the father and son being estranged for that reason fed into the subplot of the brother not getting along with their mother. That allows Patti to assume that this is also homophobia at work, but we learn it isn’t. You’ll have to read the book to find out more!

Cheryl: Thanks, Peter!      Okay, readers, go to BookLocker and buy Caught Holding the Bag so when Peter shows up for our Virtual Book Tour so you can ask him your own questions! Link to excerpt *** Peter McGinn has always lived in Maine but has never seen a moose. He was stood up on his first date, but he shook it off and married her. Then he went back to college and started writing novels. He wants you to know there are more books coming.

Visit Peter’s website

The Virtual Tour starts here

Tags: Ostomy, McGinn, Mystery, Author, Maine