We are delighted to welcome back author Bonnie MacBird to Omnimystery News today.
In September Bonnie visited with us to talk about the backstory to her Sherlock Holmes adventure Art in the Blood (Collins Crime Club; October 2015 hardcover and ebook formats) and we asked if we might follow up with her on a couple of points.
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Omnimystery News: Your leading character and the first person narrator are a different gender than you. Why did you choose that, and it is challenging to find the right voice/and or put yourself in their shoes?
Photo provided courtesy of
Bonnie MacBird
Bonnie MacBird: Finding Watson's voice came quite naturally to me, I think for three reasons. One is that I love him, his subtle humor, his loyalty, his bravery, and his matter of fact sense of honour. He's also kind, he's generous, and he loves his best friend. I hope that I share some of these qualities, at least I value them and aspire to share them.
Second, I can identify with living with a renowned genius. My husband invented the personal computer. So, like Watson, I know I'm not in the same league intellectually as my daily companion, but also like Watson, I this doesn't really bother me, either.
Frankly, if I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm hanging out with the wrong people. And I'm bored. So I'm very happy to be the dumber partner, very happy indeed. So that's pretty Watson-like, I'd say.
While I don't seek adventure, and am not ex military, nevertheless I have had a lot of adventure in my life … met a gorilla close up, jumped on a moving train, rode a runaway horse, punched out a peeping tom, etc. I think of myself as quite retiring and not very physical but I recently realized that these things add up to more than I thought. It's just that except for the gorilla, I did not seek out these, er, opportunities.
I get a little bored without new challenges — although as I get older, I don't feel the need for them to be physical. And I love to write and tell stories. So in those ways maybe I'm a little bit like Watson. I have lived a rather full life.
Like Watson I'm very attracted to the opposite sex, and although that means men for me and women for him, we are both a bit romantic, I'd say.
And finally, I just love Sherlock Holmes. It's not hard to convey affection and caring for this character through Watson's eyes.
OMN: It's said that writers put themselves into their books. Is that true here? And if so, how much of this is based on your own experience? What about people you know?
BM: Well, I did want to explore in Art in the Blood what it means to have an artistic temperament. "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms" is the original Conan Doyle quote from "The Adventure of The Greek Interpreter" and refers to Holmes being related to the artist Vernet and sharing some of this temperament.
Conan Doyle's father was an artist who ended his days in an asylum. My mom is an artist. The artistic temperament is a well known phenomenon, the ups and downs, the intense energy, the ability to hyper focus, the sensitivity, susceptibility to flattery, etc. Those things relate to Sherlock Holmes, his creator, and to me. So finding a bit of myself both in Holmes and his creator has been a part of this adventure.
OMN: Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process? Are you a pantser or plotter, and what does that mean?
BM: I'm half and half. I started knowing the crime and who dunnit. I worked backwards from there, pantsing all the way. I'm probably leaning more toward pansting than plotting. I always thought more mystery writers were planner/plotters but the reverse seems to be true, at least in my informal polls.
OMN: Describe your writing environment. Do you have any tricks or suggestions to advise other writers on getting a novel done? Of finding your best working rhythm? How and where do you work?
BM: I work on a Mac desktop computer with a gigantic screen, and I use Scrivener. I would not use another program and could not recommend it more highly. I turn to longhand to warm up and to write long sequences of dialogue. I write to word count goals rather than to hours, and I drink a lot of coffee. My brain does not function without adequate intake of carbohydrates, so often gain weight while writing. I am experimenting now with a standing desk, and with timed breaks and high energy exercise during them. I use a program called F.lux which changes the color temperature of the screen at dusk and prevents the blue light of the computer from disrupting your sleep cycles, but I also use orange lensed glasses and also am experimenting with getting off the computer earlier. I use a program to block social media and email programs for set periods of time so that I don't allow myself to get distracted and give into the dreaded FOMO. I work a lot, and like my hero Sherlock Holmes, am happiest when working. But I'm an extravert and so I need to see friends regularly while writing or I get depressed.
OMN: All good writers do research, fact check and consult experts. Who or how did you work on Art in the Blood? How important is it to be diligent, and what kind of help do the publishing companies offer?
BM: I set about to prepare Art in the Blood for publication without expecting any help whatsoever, and so I ran my drafts though several sets of editorial comments, including a professional writers' group (we meet weekly), two expert Sherlockian friends, an Oxford University press editor for Americanisms, and a private editor/colleague (we both teach at UCLA Extension's Writer's Program). So when HarperCollins received my manuscript it was pretty polished. Nevertheless they found a few things and were helpful in sharpening it into its present form. In my view, a writer can never be too diligent. No one will complain that you have too few typos or grammatical errors or bozo research goofs. So … my advice is to take multiple passes and be tough.
Writing is all about alternating being loose … to draft and dream and create the magic … and then being tough to make it all polished and gleaming and error free … as best you can. You can never get all the mistakes out but you can only do your best.
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San Francisco native Bonnie MacBird earned a BA in music and an MA in film from Stanford before embarking on a thirty plus year career in Hollywood as a studio exec (feature film story development at Universal), screenwriter, multiple Emmy winning producer, actor and playwright. She currently writes and directs plays, teaches screenwriting at UCLA Extension and writes Sherlock Holmes novels for HarperCollins. She lives in Los Angeles with her own Sherlock Holmes, computer scientist Alan Kay, and spends part of each year in London, "the city of her heart".
For more information about the author, please visit her website at MacBird.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Art in the Blood by Bonnie MacBird
A Sherlock Holmes Adventure
Publisher: Collins Crime Club
London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend — until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris.
Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.
Racing to Paris with Watson at his side, Holmes discovers the missing child is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem. The most valuable statue since the Winged Victory has been violently stolen in Marseilles, and several children from a silk mill in Lancashire have been found murdered. The clues in all three cases point to a single, untouchable man.
Will Holmes recover in time to find the missing boy and stop a rising tide of murders? To do so he must stay one step ahead of a dangerous French rival and the threatening interference of his own brother, Mycroft.
— Art in the Blood by Bonnie MacBird
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