The Oxford Covered Market

New Court, Pembroke College

Back in the 1990s, I had a unique opportunity to teach creative writing to American high school students on a summer program at Oxford University. For four weeks, I lived in Pembroke College, one of the over forty self-governing colleges and halls that make up the university. Five mornings a week, I met with the creative writing “majors” for three hours to read, talk about writing, and write. Three afternoons a week, I did the same thing with the “minors,” who were all majoring in something else – English lit, law, archaeology and so on.

The Eagle and Child

We were encouraged to take the kids out into the city. I took my group down to the train station, where I asked them to pick someone they saw and imagine where he or she was going. We went to the Eagle and Child pub (whose nickname is The Bird and Baby), where J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis hung out and discussed their writing.

We got kicked out of the pub because the kids weren't old enough to drink.

One day, we went to the Oxford Covered Market.

The market was built in 1774, and it’s a warren of small shops, about half of which are food retailers. I assigned the students to think about a chase scene through the market. Who was running, and who was chasing? What would they have to dart around? I asked them to use the five senses to catalog the sights, smells, sounds and so on of the market.

The first episode of the new season of Inspector Lewis featured a climactic chase scene took place – in the Covered Market. Art imitating life? Or art imitating an assignment? Who knows, maybe one of those students grew up to become a screenwriter!

Libby Fischer Hellmann and Jake Foreman

Have you ever heard a writer say “when my character gets on the page, they write themselves?” I always thought that was hyperbole….until I met Jake Foreman.

I’ve written eleven novels  and twenty short stories, but my favorite supporting character appeared in the first short story I ever wrote.

(More about that later)

Jake Foreman is Ellie Foreman’s father. Ellie, a video producer and single mother in Chicago, is the protagonist of my amateur sleuth series. Ellie has a teen-age daughter, an ex-husband who, unfortunately, shows up in every book, and Jake, her senior citizen father. For some reason, Jake is the only character about whom I never have to worry. Whenever he appears in a scene, the scene literarily writes itself, and, of course, he steals it.

 

After fifteen years I’m still not sure where he comes from.  I can say he’s nothing like my own father, who was a businessman and banker. Jake is a lawyer. He’s retired, lives in an assisted-living facility although he’s in reasonably good health, and always has a good line or comeback. He looks a little like Ben Kingsley; he’s prone to wisecracks, and he snaps his fingers to Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra. (Okay, in that way he IS like my father). He loves Ellie desperately, even protectively, but he has his own secrets. Some of them are revealed in the series.  In one book Jake tells his daughter a story from his youth where he brushed up against the Outfit. In another he tells her the story of his true love, who wasn’t Ellie’s mother. In yet another he has a girlfriend of his own. In AN EYE FOR MURDER, the first Ellie Foreman mystery, it’s Jake’s youth in Lawndale that sets up the premise of the novel.

But Jake is critical to the series in other ways, too. He is an integral part of Ellie’s support system. He reflects back her insatiable curiosity, puts up with her neuroses, becomes exasperated at the dangers she takes, and adores his granddaughter Rachel. Btw, the feeling is mutual, much to Ellie’s chagrin when she accuses both generations of ganging up on her, the generation in the middle. Moreover, Ellie’s sense of humor is directly attributable to Jake. Her tenderness, too. In fact, I can not imagine writing an Elie book without Jake in it. He may get a little older and frailer in each novel, but aside from some scrapes and his unyielding arthritis, nothing serious is going to happen to him for a long time.

I mentioned above that Jake first appeared in a short story as a teenager. “The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared” was the first short story I wrote. It takes place in 1938 in the formerly Jewish neighborhood of Chicago’s Lawndale. Jake develops a crush on an actress with the Yiddish theater. But Miriam only has eyes for a guy named Skull who may or may not be a gangster. It sounds like a story about unrequited love—until you remember the year in which it was set. The story won a couple of contests and the brief burst of confidence it gave me inspired me to keep writing.

 

At the time, of course, I had no idea that story would be prequel to my Ellie Foreman series, or that the Georgia Davis series would spin off Ellie’s. Funny about that.

Anyway, that story is now free and you can download it from my website so you can meet Jake at the same time I first did.

 Btw, AN IMAGE OF DEATH, the third Ellie Foreman mystery, featuring Jake as one the supporting characters, is also free through June 13 at Amazon.

Thanks, Neil, for letting me go on about Jake.

Libby Fischer Hellmann is the award-winning author of 10 crime thrillers, including A BITTER VEIL, SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE, and the Ellie Foreman and Georgia Davis series. She also writes short stories and novellas. Her next thriller, HAVANA LOST, will be out in September. She’s lived in Chicago 35 years. Find out more here.

Favorite Supporting Character - Angus Green

FBI Special Agent Angus Green made his first appearance in my M/M romance novel Mi Amor. Adam Beller is the book’s hero, a twenty-something party planner whose primary client, the owner of Vladi Vodka, is in trouble with the law. Here’s where Angus makes his first appearance:



I woke Monday morning to a banging on my door. I hadn’t quite recovered from Jason’s bar mitzvah; the shots of Vladi Vodka the night before, coupled with an awful lot of dancing, hadn’t helped. My head was pounding as I pulled on a pair of boxers and stumbled to the door.

There was a cute red-headed guy in a business suit standing there. “Adam Beller?” he asked.

“That’s me.”

“FBI agent Angus Green. We have a warrant to search the premises and confiscate any materials relating to your business with Vladislav Solonenko.”

At first, I thought it was a hoax. That [my best friend] Jean-Jacques had hired a stripper to come to my door in the guise of an FBI agent. At any moment I expected the guy to peel his clothes off and start dancing.

Angus comes back later in the book to tell Adam what happened to his client. And this is the time when he really came alive to me. Here are a couple of the pictures I used for inspiration.

Love the hair!

So sexy!

    

It was Agent Green. He looked disheveled, as if he’d been up all night. His white shirt was wrinkled, his tie askew, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

“May I come in?”

I shrugged. “Sure.” I walked toward the kitchen, and over my shoulder I said, “Can I get you anything to drink? Orange juice, water, coffee?”

“I’d kill for some caffeine.”

“I won’t ask you to do that, though I’m sure you’re armed. Have a seat. I’ll get something going.”

My cappuccino maker was earning its keep. I ground some beans, started the brewing, frothed the milk. I didn’t know what had brought Agent Green to my door, but I had a feeling it wasn’t a social call. The longer I could delay whatever it was he wanted, the better.

When I came out of the kitchen with two mugs of cappuccino, I saw him reading an Advocate magazine I’d left on the coffee table. Well, well, I thought. I wondered if Jean-Jacques was right.

“So what brings you here in the middle of a Friday morning?” I asked, sitting down on my desk chair. I leaned across and handed him his coffee.

He sniffed deeply and sighed, then took a sip of the hot brew. “I have some bad news.”

“You’re arresting me?”

He shook his head. “We found Vladislav Solonenko. Yesterday evening. Next to the sewer plant on Virginia Key.”

“What was he doing there?”

“The current must have washed him over there.”

Suddenly I realized what he was saying. Vlad hadn’t been hiding out on Virginia Key, the little island on the way to Key Biscayne. He was dead.

I put my coffee down on the desk. “My God.” I saw Vlad in my mind, lying on his back on the sand, tendrils of seaweed covering him, his dark, dead eyes staring at the sky. I shivered and pushed the vision away.

“I wanted to come and tell you in person. Even though you said your relationship was all business.”

I nodded. “Thank you.” I picked up my coffee and took a deep drink. “I didn’t love him, you know. It was just about the sex, and the business deal. But I did care for him, in a funny way.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” I asked. “Agent Green, are you gay?”

“I don’t see…” he began. But then he stopped. “Yes, if it matters to you.”

That moment is when I started thinking that maybe Angus Green deserved his own book. I didn’t know what that book was going to be for a long time, but Angus hung around in my subconscious, showing up for another cameo appearance in my YA novel, Soul Kiss.


There will be more about Angus the next time I don't have a guest!

Supporting Characters and Why We Love Them

I first “met” Sarah Byrne through the e-list for mystery fans, DorothyL. She’s know there as “Sarah from Canberra,” her home city in Australia. We met for the first time in person at a Bouchercon, when I went up to her after a panel and introduced myself. And then, we met again at Bouchercon in Indianapolis, where we hung out in the food court, and she mentioned that she’d love to be a character in one of my books.

Though she’s an attorney in real life, she became a paralegal in my book Mahu Blood. I quizzed her a bit about her life in Australia, and discovered that she was also a jazz singer, and often sang songs by Dave Frishberg. Not only did that detail turn out to be important to her character, she taught me something about Ray Donne, Kimo’s detective partner.

Here’s a quote from that book:

As she typed her name and password into the database, she began to sing a little under her breath. I didn’t recognize the song, but then, most of what I listen to comes with slack key guitar accompaniment. Ray did, though.

“Is that ‘My Attorney Bernie?’ I love that song,” he said.

She blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was doing that.”

“No, you have a good voice,” Ray said. “I’m a big Dave Frishberg fan. ‘Bernie is a purist, not your polyester tourist,’ he sang. His voice was surprisingly good.

“I sing with a jazz group,” Sarah said, hitting a couple of keys. “We do a lot of his songs. You should come by some time. You and your wife.”

She was sharp, Sarah. I liked her.

Until I wrote that scene, I didn’t know that Ray could sing!

Here's the real Sarah singing.

Sarah was such a great character that I knew I wanted her to come back at the end of the book. It’s about ohana, after all – the Hawaiian word for family – and she had become part of Kimo’s extended family, at least in my mind. Here’s the very last bit of the book, where Sarah sings again.

The CDs had all ended by then, and no one had gotten up to put new ones on. “I think we need a little live music,” Peggy said. “To cap off a great luau. Sarah, you want to sing something for us?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Sarah said. “Not without a band behind me.”

“You have a great voice,” Ray said. “You know Frishberg’s song I’m Home? The one Al Jarreau sings? It’s a great song for a housewarming.”

After a little more persuading, Sarah stood up, and we shushed the crowd. When she sang, “I knew that I'd found what's at the end of the rainbow... There's no place on earth I'd rather be than stayin' right here with you," I looked around for Mike.

He was standing at the back door, where two steps led up into the house. He looked so handsome, in his Honolulu Fire Department t-shirt and geometric print board shorts. A smile curled out from beneath his mustache. I had this powerful desire to be with him—the kind of magnetic attraction I’d seen between Haoa and Tatiana, where neither of them looked complete without the other. I’d always envied that about them, and now I knew what it felt like from the inside.

I climbed up there with him, and we listened the music and looked at everyone enjoying themselves, celebrating a union that neither of us had ever dreamed we could enjoy.

Sarah finished the song, and everyone applauded. Then, holding hands, Mike and I stepped down to take our places in our ohana.

Sarah returns in Natural Predators, my 2013 release. So there's still more to tell about her!

Win a free copy of The Russian Boy

I'm giving away a free copy of my M/M romance, The Russian Boy, in the Sizzling Summer Reads contest at The Romance Reads. My question will be up on June 30, from 12:00am EST to 11:59pm EST.



A famous, erotically charged painting called The Russian Boy depicts a nude Russian noble named Alexei Dubernin, younger lover of painter Fyodor Luschenko. Their affair takes place in the elegance of a lost world, the Russian enclave on the Cote d’Azur in the years just before the revolution of 1917.

The painting, owned by the New York Museum of Fine Arts, is stolen from a restorer’s studio in Paris, bringing together three very different men, each of whom must risk his life to return this precious work of art and earn the love he deserves.

Fifty-year-old Rowan McNair was a college art history professor until he lost his marriage, his family and his job after an affair with a young male former student. Now he struggles to make a new life in New York as a journalist and art theft consultant.

Taylor Griffin is finishing his first year on a painting fellowship at the Institute des Artistes in Montmartre, sharing a tiny studio apartment with his Russian émigré boyfriend, Dmitri Baranov, a fellow student. When Dmitri steals The Russian Boy, he plunges himself, Taylor, and eventually Rowan into a dangerous world of drugs, sex and intrigue.

The Russian Boy is a sexy, romantic story about older men involved with younger men, about art and love and the risks we take when we fall in love.



Sizzling Summer Reads contest at The Romance Reviews

Sneak Peek Sunday - Olives for the Stranger

As demonstrators and police spar in the streets of Tunis, bodyguards Aidan and Liam must protect Leila, a young girl whose mother has been taken into police custody. While the threats against her and her activist parents grow, hunky ex-SEAL Liam is stuck in the Tunisian countryside while teacher and novice bodyguard Aidan travels to France on his own with Leila.

Liam must deal with his emotions once separated from his partner, while Aidan struggles to protect Leila and her father from a deadly villian as Liam has taught him. Both men must examine the depths of their love for each other and satisfy themselves that more than just sexual desire keeps them together.

Here are the first six paragraphs of Olives for the Stranger, fourth in my Have Body, Will Guard series:

There were two of them, and they came at Liam McCullough fast and low, both of them screaming as they did.

The one on the right went for his leg, while the other tried to climb up his chair and get to his head.

“Children! Please!” their mother called. “Leave the nice bodyguard alone.” Her English was heavily accented, and she switched into her native Brazilian Portuguese, following with a string of speech that did nothing to pull the boy or the girl off him.

He smiled grimly and grabbed them both under his arms and stood up. The little girl kicked at the back of a gilt chair, which fell to the plush carpet with a thud. “Why don’t I take the kids outside so they can run around?”

The middle-aged saleswoman who had been showing Zoraida Figueroa hand-embroidered shawls looked relieved. She had been twisting the pearls around her neck with long, elegant fingers as the children rampaged through the narrow store.

Liam and Aidan, his partner in love and business, had been watching Zoraida and her two children for three days by then, while her husband concluded a deal to sell Brazilian rubber to the Tunisian government. Zoraida, twenty-eight, had bonded immediately with Aidan, the two of them chattering away and shopping like best girlfriends.

http://www.loose-id.com/authors/l-p/neil-plakcy/have-body-will-guard-4-olives-for-the-stranger.html