For Halloween, we've asked Leigh Perry to talk about her newest mystery with Sid the Skeleton, THE SKELETON STUFFS A STOCKING, and about her writing process.
Writers usually hate writing book summaries. Will you share with us your real book blurb or one you wish you could have used?
Oh yes! I absolutely hate writing summaries, but I’ll give it a try:
All of adjunct English professor Georgia Thackery’s family members are excited about Christmas: her teenaged daughter Madison; her parents and fellow academics, Phil and Dab; and of course her skeletal BFF Sid. You might not expect a walking, talking skeleton to be excited about the holidays, but then again, you might not expect him to be Georgia’s partner in crime-solving, either.
Their Christmas cheer is interrupted when the family dog goes missing on a cold December night, and when finally found, has a femur clutched between his jaws. Georgia and Madison run to apologize to Sid for letting the dog gnaw on him yet again.
Only to find that all of Sid’s bones are present and accounted for.
This bone is from somebody else, and when they trace Byron’s trail to a nearby overgrown lot, they find the rest of the skeleton. It’s the normal kind, not moving or telling jokes, and when the police come to take charge, they’re sure it was murder.
And one of Georgia’s adjunct friends could be implicated.
With tensions stirring at the college and everyone hiding a secret or two, Sid and Georgia must uncover the truth before the ghost of a Christmas past strikes again.
What was the a-ha moment that made you write this story?
There were two, I think. One was wanting to write a Christmas-themed book because the juxtaposition of a skeleton celebrating Christmas sounded like fun. (Given the popularity of The Nightmare Before Christmas, I guess I’m not the only one who thinks that way.) The second was the opening scene, where the Thackery family’s dog shows up with a femur, and it’s not the one they expected. The fact that their first thought was, “Cripes, how did the dog get that out of the house?” kind of encapsulates the family for me. (A family of serial killers or forensic anthropologists might have that same thought, but those would be very different books.)
What was the most interesting thing you learned writing the book?
The book revolves around a dead body found in a vacant lot, and in trying to plot how an amateur sleuth might try to identify somebody in that situation, I discovered a great paradox in the US. One is the vast backlog of unidentified human remains in the US; the other the vast number of missing people. I would have thought it would be easy enough to match up the two sets, but it’s not. Poor record-keeping, no easily accessible database, multiple jurisdictions, and so many other things combine to make this a mess. I also found out about the communities and rivalries formed around trying to match up these missing people and unidentified remains, thanks to Deborah Halber’s book The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths are Solving America’s Coldest Cases.
What is the hardest part of writing a book?
Getting started! There’s a moment when I have to go from research and ideas and such to start actually writing the prose. And that moment stretches out to far too long sometimes. Once I’m going, I go pretty swiftly.
Were there indispensable people without whom you couldn’t have written the book?
For the research into pop culture for younger people, my daughters Maggie and Valerie are invaluable. Even if it’s nothing more than the geeky t-shirt a character will be wearing, I want to make sure it’s a current geeky t-shirt. For reading and helping me improve the prose, I rely on my husband Steve and my friends Dana Cameron and Charlaine Harris.
Leigh Perry writes the Family Skeleton mysteries. The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking was just released. As Toni L.P. Kelner, she wrote eleven mystery novels and co-edited seven anthologies with Charlaine Harris. She’s won the Agatha for Best Short Story, and was nominated for the Anthony, Macavity, and Derringer.