Writing Crime

Want to win an autographed copy for someone for Christmas of Sarah Osborne's newest? Be the first person to email her with the answer to a question about her newest FLO AND MAUDE Mystery.

How would you describe the plot of the book?

I have to start with the why of the book: FLO AND MAUDE CHRISTMAS CAPERS. This is a book of mysteries written expressly for women of certain age who find themselves up to their eyeballs with preparations for the holiday season. It is designed to give them a few laughs and several mini breaks from the stress of the season. While  eighty-year old Flo Wellington loves the holiday season, she rarely finds it precisely to her specifications. She has a cutting edge wit which she puts to good purpose when it’s clear a murder is about to be committed. Her kinder and gentler partner Maude Merriwether is the perfect foil for Flo, and together they travel the US with their highly successful OLD DAMES PROTECTION AGENCY.

This is one book with five mysteries to solve as time allows over the holiday season.

Who is your favorite character and why?
    
I’d have to say Flo is my favorite because she gets to speak her mind and she does. She is a no-holds barred kind of matriarch with a good heart that she generally keeps well-hidden. She’s wealthy enough to do as she pleases and has never needed a man to prop her up or show her the way. She’s just hitting her stride in her older age. All of that I enjoy writing about.

Is there a setting in your book you would like to visit?

Setting is where I start when I’m imagining a new mystery. The five settings in these mysteries are all locales I know well—with one exception. Can you tell which one? Let me know after you read the book, and if you are the first to guess correctly, I’ll send an autographed copy to a person of your choice for Christmas. You can contact me with your guesses at sarah@doctorosborne.com

Which of the skill sets were useful in constructing the plot?

I’m a physician in my other life, so I enjoyed using medical themes in some of the stories. Often I had to do research to make sure I got the information right, and that was lots of fun.

Were there indispensable people without whom you couldn’t have written the book?

Early readers are indispensable to me. This time they included friends, beta readers, and my writing group. I want every book I write to be better written than the one before it. I can’t always pull that off, but I still try. Many in my group read stories over and over as I tried to improve them. They told me which lines were funny and which should be left on the cutting room floor and helped me get facts and details straight. One reader gave me a joke I had to include in the writing—that was the one about Beef Wellington from a writer partner Mike Fournier.

Sarah Osborne is the pen name of a native Californian who lived in Atlanta for many years and now practices psychiatry part time on Cape Cod. She writes cozy mysteries because she wants to make sure the good guys always win. She also believes that one day women of a certain age will rule the world. Check her out at doctorosborne.com or on her Facebook Fan Page: Sarah Osborne, Mystery Author.