Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with TR Rankin

What inspired you to write “Murder in the Limelight & The Gilded Murder”?

Rankin: After writing five novels, four fantasy and one historical fiction, I was eager to try a murder mystery. One day, I stumbled on a story in the MV Times, October 16, 2019, by Chris Baer: https://www.mvtimes.com/2019/10/16/this-was-then-the-lime-schooners/ , telling how two lime schooners, anchored in Vineyard Haven harbor went aground and caught fire during the “Portland Gale” of 1898, and how on one, the E. G. Willard, the crew made a miraculous escape. I did not know then that when quicklime is exposed to water, it can catch fire, which made the business of transporting quicklime aboard wooden schooners a very dangerous affair. This, along with the ‘miraculous escape,’ provided the perfect fodder for my story.

How did you come up with the names of your main characters?

Rankin: Characters, and their names, have always just come to me. Carl Jung would say they spring from the great primordial soup of the ‘collective unconscious.’ Charles Dickins famously said that one afternoon he just ’thought of Pickwick.’ So, I don’t know; they just appear, fully developed and already part of the story, often before I even know much about the story. The best depiction I have ever seen of character naming and of the writing process appears in the movie, “The Man Who Invented Christmas,” staring Dan Stevens as Dickins and Christopher Plumber as Scrooge, which tells the story of Dickins’ travails in writing “A Christmas Carol.” It is absolutely delightful.

Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?

Rankin: As for writing process, see above. As for my Matthew and Martha Mystery Series, the first book, Murder in the Limelight is based on an actual event and takes place on Martha’s Vineyard in November 1898 after the Great Portland Gale has decimated the Northeast coast. When a body is found aboard a wrecked and burning lime schooner and the remainder of the crew turn up on Captain Matthew Reynold’s yacht, he and the recently widowed Martha Dickinson find themselves caught up in a mystery involving drug smuggling, tax evasion, fraud and finally murder. Add in a bit of romance and Murder in the Limelight keeps readers guessing right to the very end. The second book, The Gilded Murder, follows Matthew and Martha as they mingle with Newport high society in the summer of 1899 while setting out to enjoy the America’s Cup Trials between Columbia and Defender. When Matthew runs into a group of fellow Civil War veterans, one of whom has become a multi-millionaire, they are invited aboard his yacht where one of them is viciously murdered. Under police suspicion themselves, Matthew and Martha must enlist several confederates to search for motives dating back to the war, and confront issues of their own as well, before uncovering the real killer.

When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?

Rankin: I just suffer through it. I don’t think there is a cure. I spent forty years writing technical articles for trade magazines along with tons of other advertising and PR copy and never once suffered writer’s block. But that wasn’t fiction. Fiction is a different animal, comes from a different place. Sometimes, a story will just go cold on me. I’ll come down one morning and find that the characters who were busily bouncing about the stage of my story the day before are just lying there, strewn about like paper dolls. What to do? I don’t know. I beat myself up, yell at myself, tell myself I’m no good at this and should quit even trying. But it doesn’t help. Sometimes I can turn to another story, but not often. Mostly, I just have to wait. I’ve read that one has to just keep writing, bull one’s way through. But that doesn’t work for me. It only makes me more frustrated and less able to reach the story. Once I got so tied up in knots I could literally not write a coherent sentence. But through all that, the story never goes away. It’s always there, lurking in the corner, tiptoeing around in the background of my brain, ducking away when I try to look at it. Then one day, it’s back. ‘Hey there,’ it says, and off we go as if there never was an issue. So I don’t know. I’ve read many times that stories have to germinate and ripen — 'accrete like barnacles on a sunken ship,' as one writer likened it. Maybe that’s not the case with all writers, but it seems to be with me. I just know I’ve been trying to quit for half a century now and have yet to succeed.

Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?

Rankin: If you are a writer, you will write: you will keep at it until you figure out how.

What are you working on next?

Rankin: I’m currently working on the third book in the Matthew and Martha Mystery Series, Murder in the Works… except for this morning when I’ve gotten way too distracted answering these questions! :)

Learn More About the Author and Murder in the Limelight & The Gilded Murder here:

https://trankincom.wordpress.com/

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