with Judy Hogan
We are delighted to welcome back mystery author Judy Hogan to Omnimystery News today. Judy last visited with us a year ago after her debut mystery, Killer Frost, was published.
Judy has a new mystery this fall, Farm Fresh and Fatal (Mainly Murder Press; September 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats), which introduces sustainable farmer Penny Weaver.
We asked Judy to tell us more about how she incorporates social issues into her mystery novels.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Judy Hogan; Photo credit Greg Puhl, Malice Domestic 2013
Some of my favorite well-known contemporary American mystery authors take up social issues: Louise Penny, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Margaret Maron, and Sara Paretsky, but as I was seeking publication for my series, I ran into skepticism and rejection. One book I was trying to sell was Nuclear Apples? In it a group of community activists was working for safer waste storage at their local nuclear plant. One agent wrote to me: "Nuclear problems in a mystery?" It didn't fly with her.
My first published mystery, Killer Frost, takes up the issue of education in an historically black college, and the agents I tried didn't want that one either, but a small press with an open-minded editor did, and my readers have liked both the mystery and learning about the problem of students barely able to read and write being admitted to college when they were doomed to fail. I have also, since the book came out, learned that students from a variety of backgrounds entering a variety of colleges are more and more often unprepared for college work. A Russian friend read Killer Frost and wrote to me that they were seeing the same problem with some of the first year students entering their university.
My publisher, Mainly Murder Press, was open to my next novel in the series, too, Farm Fresh and Fatal, which takes up the hot button issue in farming today of genetically modified seeds. We're still learning what this GMO produce does to human beings, but I knew when I wrote the novel that the seeds were modified so that herbicides like Roundup could be sprayed on the crop without harming the plant, but not good for us. I used humor in the novel to discuss the baseball hard tomatoes that are best, though still hard, three weeks after they're picked, but new research also shows that the seeds engineered to kill insects, by making their stomachs leak, can affect us that way, too, and set off allergies.
I myself have always liked to learn new things when I read mysteries, and if I've done a good job combining a mystery with new knowledge about a human problem, my readers will like it, too.
Other issues I've worked into books in my same series, written but not yet published, are: the hatred of Germans that lasted many years after the end of World War II; various forms of racism and prejudice, including anti-Semitism; air pollution; vicious behavior in local politics; the treatment of Hispanic workers; and fracking.
Margaret Maron said once, "You can do anything in a mystery." I tell my creative writing students, "You can break any rule if you can get away with it." Ezra Pound said some books are bed books — they put you to sleep; others wake you up and make you think. I don't see why mystery novels can't do a little of both. If I can keep the reader awake, wanting to know what's going to happen to the characters and who the killer is, why not? Elizabeth George in Write Away says, "If it works, it works." Readers make the decision ultimately. Thank goodness.
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Judy Hogan founded Carolina Wren Press (1976-91) and was co-editor of Hyperion Poetry Journal, 1970-81). In addition to her mystery novels, she has published five volumes of poetry and two prose works with small presses. She has taught all forms of creative writing since 1974. She joined Sisters in Crime in 2007 and has focused on writing and publishing traditional mystery novels. The twists and turns of her life's path over the years have given her plenty to write about.
A small farmer herself, Judy lives in Moncure, NC in Chatham County near Jordan Lake. For more information about Judy and her work, please visit her website or her blog.
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Farm Fresh and Fatal
Judy Hogan
A Penny Weaver Mystery (1st in series)
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