Listen to me reading my Diana Poole short story, “The Talking Dead”.

I bought a pair of leopard shoes. I thought at the time that this was either a fashion statement or a cry for help. The shoes sat on a shelf in my closet for weeks, saucily taunting me. Glaring at them one morning as I put on my tennis shoes, I wondered which of my female characters would buy these animal-print-opened-toed wonders. Would they react with the same ambivalence as I had?

Maggie Hill (narrator of my novels) would never purchase them, but she would stare at the shoes longingly, lovingly. She’d wonder about slipping her feet into the shoes and where would they take her? What would be the possibilities? And then she would sadly say good-bye to them.

Diana Poole (narrator of my short stories), a woman of a certain age, would think that buying the shoes was a cry for help, and then wear them defiantly.

I laced up my sneakers and started my morning walk up our hilly road.

I thought about my characters. I pondered writing in the first person, which is what I do. I love short stories written in the first, third, fifth, or sixth person. It doesn’t matter to me as long as they are good and work as a short story. But I only write in the first. When I try to write in the third or the omniscient I feel removed from my work. I lose my sense of pace and actually find myself getting bored. As a woman who has many stories in her head, I know they can’t all be told from the first person. I know that this point of view by its very nature is constricting — you can’t go into other characters heads, and it can narrow the breadth of the story.

I have written a novel both ways. The omniscient point of view is fine, but to me the first person version is the one that has heart. Maybe it’s because I was once an actor who had learned to internalize the writer’s words and then speak them. It’s a process I am comfortable with. But now I am the writer so I had to invert the process. I create narrators that can internalize my words and then speak them.

I guess that’s why I view my short stories as monologues. Yes, they have a plot, character development, and all that good stuff. But for me they are monologues. That is how I tame the structure, conquer the genre and avoid the fear of the empty page. I need to hear a voice talking.

Back to my walk … at the crest of the hill a woman in a Hummer barreled toward me. I flattened myself into a hedge and caught a glimpse of her face as she careened by. It was lifted, but no burden had been removed. She looked tired and angry. Her Santa Barbara-blonde hair was fluffed yet didn’t move. She never saw me pressing deep into the hedge to save my life. I did not exist for her. I wondered what she was afraid of. Why she needed so much protection around her. And did she realize how small and fragile she looked in that tank-like vehicle? Someday she’ll be a character in one of my short stories. But she’ll never be one of my narrators. You have to love your narrator. Otherwise you’re just putting words into a stranger’s mouth. God, I hoped she didn’t have leopard shoes on.

Speaking of which, I finally wore my saucy pair on Mother’s Day.

Posted September 19, 2012 on Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s blog somethingisgoingtohappen

Every time I finish a short story I feel as if I just completed a magic trick; pulled a rabbit out of a hat; turned a scarf into a dove. I’m the hapless magician who doesn’t know how the rabbit got into the hat in the first place. Yes, I’m a professional writer, meaning I get paid for my work, and therefore I should understand exactly what I’m doing—but I don’t.

When I was an actress I had a script. I knew where the camera was. I knew my marks. I knew if I kept my focus and listened, or at least pretended to listen, to the other actors in the scene I could create a sense of reality. I also knew the camera loved me. And if the camera loves you, in Hollywood little else matters.

There is no camera, not even a net, when I’m writing. I sit in my chair and I begin. Poof! A rabbit. Poof! No rabbit! A good shake of the hat. Still no rabbit. File the story away.

In spring 2013, City of Mirrors, A Diana Poole Thriller, will be published. Diana Poole would not exist without the short stories I wrote about her for EQMM.

When I first began to write the novel I thought great, I have my rabbit in a hat. I’ll just plop Diana Poole down in a brand-new, suspense-ridden plot and I’ll be off to the races. But like so many of my ideas about writing, this didn’t work out that easily. I quickly learned that Diana Poole was born out of the short-story form. She was in essence a short-story character. What do I mean by that? A few sharp brushstrokes described her: “My husband Colin, a screenwriter, had died suddenly of a heart attack over a year ago. He left me with what the realtors euphemistically call a ‘tear-down’ in Malibu, an old Jaguar, two Oscars—each for Best Screenplay—an empty bank account, and an emptier heart. So I had gone back to what I had been doing before I married him—acting. Except now I was older and the parts were fewer.”

That is all I know about her. When I placed her against a much larger canvas, Diana dwindled. There was no rabbit in my hat.

Where did Diana come from? She needed to be fleshed out. I spent days trying to figure out how to do this. Give her a sister? A mother? A father? Multiple lovers? She had to have some connection to the real world. But if I gave her family members, then her aloneness would disappear and she’d just be barraged with the problems of relatives. Then I had an idea.

In an old manuscript I could never make work, I had created a wonderful character—an aging, ex-movie star. She had smarts, and a ruthless flair. I’d always regretted that she languished in a file on my desktop. So I took her out, dusted her off, and put her in the novel as a friend of Diana’s. But that didn’t work either. As friends, the scenes didn’t go anywhere: There was no tension. I couldn’t connect her to Diana’s life or, for that matter, the plot.

This is where hard work pays off. I had an epiphany. (My moments of insight rarely happen without the tossing away of many stupid ideas.) I would double-down, to use a popular phrase. If Diana had a dead husband why couldn’t she have a recently dead mother? A mother that had been a famous movie star. Diana’s early life was set. She grew up alone in boarding schools, coming home on vacations. Home was wherever her mother was filming at the time. And the house was always rented. And with each new house there was a new strange man. Diana earned her singularity and grit early in life.

The novel opens with her returning to one of these houses and sets the tone for the entire book.

If a dead husband is painful, a dead mother is powerful. Diana is riddled with memories. The character I rescued from an unfinished book not only defined Diana’s past, but also opened up the novel in unexpected and surprising ways. Because of these discoveries I was able to make connections that turned my narrative into a multi-layered piece. And isn’t this why writers write?

Will I still feel like a magician on tightrope the next time I sit down to write? Yes. I’ll be shaking that hat looking for the rabbit. After all, writers are always beginning.