Please Welcome Mystery Author Lisa Alber

with Lisa Alber

We are delighted to welcome mystery author Lisa Alber to Omnimystery News today.

Lisa's new County Clare series of mysteries begins with Kilmoon (Muskrat Press; March 2014 trade paperback) and we asked her to tell us a little more about it and her writing process. She titles her guest post for us "Five Reasons Why I Love Backstory".

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Photo provided courtesy of
Lisa Alber

Recently, I got to thinking about my process after an interview for a Blog Talk Radio show called "Authors on the Air." My interviewer, Stephen Campbell, asked me about my characters. He was struck by how well-developed they were, and how I had revealed their stories as the plot advanced through all kinds of neat stuff like murder, betrayal, shocking discoveries, family dysfunction, conflicts, and reversals.

Specifically, I got to thinking about character versus plot and how I'm definitely a character person. In fact, when I'm developing a story, I write character analyses rather than plot outlines. And when it comes to characterization, I adore backstory more than anything.

Why backstory? Because I love secrets — and everyone's got them. Case in point, my own mom. She was always fuzzy to me until she revealed her secret in 2001: an illegitimate son! Everything about her came into focus with that knowledge. Ah, I thought, now I get what she's about.

In the same way, I love knowing what my characters are about. In Kilmoon, Californian Merrit Chase travels to Ireland to meet her biological father. Only, he's not just any Irishman, he's the celebrated Matchmaker of Lisfenora. Unfortunately, she has no clue that her father has a dark past and this dark past is about to erupt into the present.

Backstory. And how! Merrit's father's past is about to cause her and a few others a world of pain.

Let me count the many reasons I love backstory:

1. I shoulda been a psychologist. I'm always analyzing people in an effort to understand why they do or act the way they do. Truth is, who we are now is a result of everything we've lived through thus far. In my writing world, this goes for characters too. The only difference being that I can know everything about them.

2. Secrets, shame, angst, resentment, and bitterness make for good conflict. These aspects of character stem from the past. Backstory provides the necessary context so that even a nasty character can read sympathetically.

3. Backstory deepens characters so that they're not just plot puppets. Characters who only serve the plot tend to be flat, stereotypical, cardboard. Just because you're writing a high-octane thriller doesn't mean you have to forgo a little backstory to flesh out your hero.

4. And deeper characterization leads to stories with soul. Gotta have soul, man. Or heart. However you want to say it.

5. Can we say "subplots"? You gotta have subplots too, and for me subplots rise out of my characters' backstories. As I get to know my cast through my character analyses, subplots (and plot points too) suggest themselves. For example, in Kilmoon, Merrit befriends the village drunk. When I realized what this man's backstory was — why he's a drunk, in other words — a world of possibilities opened up for him as Merrit's new friend and also as a possible witness in the murder investigation.

Let's face it, mysteries rely on the backstory reveal to explain the whydunnit that goes with the whodunnit. Maybe this is why I started writing mysteries in the first place — an insatiable need to know why.

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Lisa Alber received an Elizabeth George Foundation writing grant based on Kilmoon. In addition, Ms. George asked Lisa to write a short story for Two of the Deadliest: New Tales of Lust, Greed, and Murder from Outstanding Women of Mystery (HarperCollins). Lisa is a Walden Fellowship recipient and Pushcart Prize nominee.

Ever distractible, you may find Lisa staring out windows, dog walking, fooling around online, or drinking red wine with her friends. Ireland, books, animals, photography, and blogging round out her distractions. Lisa lives in the Pacific Northwest.

For more information about Lisa and her work, please visit her website at LisaAlber.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.

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Kilmoon
Lisa Alber
A County Clare Mystery

Californian Merrit Chase doesn't know what she's in for when she travels to an Irish village famous for its matchmaking festival. She simply wants to meet her father, a celebrated matchmaker, in hopes that she can mend her troubled past. Instead, her arrival triggers a rising tide of violence, and Merrit finds herself both suspect and victim, accomplice and pawn, in a manipulative game that began thirty years previously.

When she discovers that the matchmaker's treacherous past is at the heart of the chaos, she must decide how far she will go to save him from himself and to get what she wants, a family.