>>> Part 4 of 6...
more of me in a sixteen-year-old street musician who appears in
JAZZ FUNERAL. 
MOI: How are your characters representative of the city?  Could
they live anywhere else?
JS: The term "melting pot" doesn't even begin to cover what we
have here in New Orleans.  It's impossible to know every ethnic
and economic group, but I try.  I think in the end some of my
characters could only be New Orleanians -- the St. Amant family
in NEW ORLEANS MOURNING, for instance, because the things that
happen to them over the generations could only happen here -- and
I mean _only_ here.  But some could live other places.  I
sometimes tackle a peculiarly New Orleans situation, like Mardi
Gras or Jazzfest, in a given book, and sometimes I'm looking for
more general themes.  One book, for instance, involved Twelve
Step programs, one computer bulletin boards, and the one out this
summer (THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS) is about the devil.  Not
actually Beelzebub, but a very evil character based on someone I
met once, though not in New Orleans.  He was the Rev. Jim Jones,
who ended up killing 900 people, which is more than anyone else
in the twentieth century, I think, who wasn't a head of state. 
He started out in Indianapolis and moved on to San Francisco --
but _could_ he have lived in New Orleans?  The city's just lucky
he didn't. 
MOI: Do you base your characters on real people?  If so, do these
people generally have a connection with New Orleans?
JS: Usually I start with some tiny aspect of a person I actually
know -- maybe a mannerism or personality trait, maybe something I
know about them ("killed 900 people" brings up a lot of
possibilities) and build on that.  I've been told that somewhere
in New Orleans is a six-foot female cop who went to the same
schools Skip Langdon did and, if I remember right, even belonged
to the same sorority.  Yet I've never met her and certainly
didn't base Skip on her.  My one worry about living here (besides
termites, which never let up) is that I'll learn fabulous secrets
that it would be unethical to write about and die of frustration.
MOI: You have wonderful, colorful names for your characters, both
major and minor.  How do you come up with them?
JS: I may not steal people's secrets but no name is safe from me. 
I find them in the phone book, I overhear them, I get plenty from
the obituary column and, in truth, I grab  em when I'm introduced
to  em.  Last night I met a woman named Nini, who better get a
deadbolt for her name, because she's about to get it burgled; the
day my hairdresser introduced me to his friend Romalice
(pronounced Rome-Alice), Romalice underwent an emergency name-ectomy 
that didn't hurt a bit.  Delavon, a nasty villain in HOUSE
OF BLUES, is a name I got off a clerk's nametag at Walgreen's.  I
mentioned what a nice name it was too -- I'm always trs polite
while name-napping.
MOI: Do you consider New Orleans itself a character in your
books?
JS: New Orleans is very definitely a character in my books --
sort of a shadow character, but very much a presence.  No
character in a book can ever be as complex as a real person, but
if he or she recurs over the course of a number of books, you
have a better shot at it.  One of my goals in the Skip Langdon
series is to write an ongoing biography of the detective -- to
deepen the character in every book, to have her reveal a little
more about herself, to let her grow.  She's hugely depressed at
the end of HOUSE OF BLUES and in THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS, she
begins to work through her depression.  She won't entirely
process the events that happened in HOUSE OF BLUES for another
two books, and she'll be stronger for it.  Then who knows?  She
may get promoted or otherwise rewarded.
     Such is life -- cyclical; and such is the life of a city. 
In every book, I try to show a little more of the complex pageant
of New Orleans, and I try to portray it in all its phases and
cycles as a complement to what's going on in Skip's life.
SIGNINGS, READINGS, AND SO ON------------------------------------
(Please note that times are subject to change)
Joyce Burditt, BUCK NAKED, Ballantine, 345-40136-0
Santa Barbara, CA     Sat 6/01     BORDER'S, 2:00
Taffy Cannon, CLASS REUNIONS ARE MURDER, Fawcett, 449-22389-2
San Juan Capistrano,  Sat 6/08     THE GREEN DOOR, 1:00
CA
Thousand Oaks, CA     Sat 6/15     MYSTERIES TO DIE FOR, 3:30
Westminster, CA       Thu 6/20     COFFEE, TEA & MYSTERY, 7:00
Robert Cullen, DISPATCH FROM A COLD COUNTRY, Fawcett, 449-91258-2
Washington, DC        Sat 6/01     MYSTERY BOOKS, 12:00
Kensington, MD        Sun 6/09     CROWN BOOKS, 1:00
New York, NY          Tue 6/25     PARTNERS AND CRIME, 7:00
Mary Daheim, THE ALPINE FURY, Ballantine, 345-38843-7
Seattle, WA           Mon 6/24     KILLING TIME MYSTERIES, tba
Lee Harris, THE PASSOVER MURDER, Fawcett, 449-14963-3
West Milford, CT      Sat 6/29     FOOTNOTES, tba
Tim Hemlin, IF WISHES WERE HORSES, Ballantine, 345-40318-5
Sugarland, TX         Fri 6/21     BARNES & NOBLE, 7:30
Sugarland, TX         Sun 6/23     BARNES & NOBLE, 3:00 
Dick Lochte, THE NEON SMILE, Ivy, 8041-1405-6
Venice, CA            Fri 6/07     SMALL WORLD BOOKS, 6:00
Anne Perry, PENTECOST ALLEY, Fawcett, 449-90635-3
Toronto, Canada       Tue 6/04     WHODUNIT BOOKS, 7:00
Lora Roberts, MURDER MILE HIGH, Fawcett, 449-14947-1
Grover Beach, CA      Sat 6/08     SAN LUIS OBISPO LIBRARY, tba
SPOTLIGHT ON: JILL MCGOWN--------------------------------------
Jill McGown started writing the Inspector Lloyd and Judy Hill
mystery series in 1983.  She first introduced the English
detective team in A PERFECT MATCH, a brilliant story about a
wealthy widow whose strangled body is left in the woods near a
small village.  McGown took a detour in her writing, producing
several non-series mysteries before returning to Lloyd and Hill
in 1989 with MURDER AT THE OLD VICARAGE.  She has written five
more books in the series since then.
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