Maryann Miller on Killing with Piano Wire

When I was doing research for Open Season, the first book in the Seasons Mystery Series that features two women homicide detectives, Sarah and Angel, I needed to find out some things about piano wire. It is used as a murder weapon, so I wanted to find out if there is any way to determine what piano a piece of wire came from, as well as the age. It was important to know those facts as I decided what kind of a piano the killer would have.

The initial draft of this book was written before Al Gore gave us the Internet, so I had no idea how to find the information I needed. I called my local reference librarian to see if she could help, and her first reaction was, "You need to know what, why?" After getting her past the shock about killing people with piano wire, she did say she could do some research, but it might take several days before she could get back to me. Then she suggested I call a piano tuner.

Good idea, so I grabbed my trusty Yellow Pages and looked up "piano tuners." I called the first one who was listed, and he was very helpful once he got past his shock about the murders and all, too. At first, I didn't plan to put him in the story, but after writing down the information he gave me, I thought, why not let him tell Sarah as well. The following conversation is pretty close to the one I had with the man, as I didn't know what questions to ask at first, either.

Swiveling in her chair, Sarah pulled her mind away from the impossible to the nearly impossible. At least she had a place to begin with the case. She picked up the phone book and looked in the Yellow Pages for piano tuners, her finger stopping on an ad that boasted thirty years in the business. Propping the phone receiver between her ear and her shoulder, she dialed the number.

Experience counts.

"Good day." A British accent clipped the words. "Precision Tuning."

Sarah identified herself, then paused, not sure of what questions to ask.

"How may I be of assistance to you, Detective?" The voice prompted.

"What can you tell me about piano wire?"

"Strings."

"Pardon?"

"They're called strings." The man chuckled. "But not to worry. Most people make that mistake."

"Oh." Sarah leaned back in her chair and put one foot on her desk. "Are they distinctive?"

"How do you mean?"

"From one piano to the next. Between a Grand and a Kimball, for instance."

"No." The man followed his one-word answer with the beginning of what Sarah suspected could be a lengthy explanation of how wood and craftsmanship creates the unique sound of each instrument. She used her next question to cut him off.

"How about age? Can you determine how old a string is?"

"That would be almost impossible. Strings have been made the same way for over a hundred years."

"So a string from a piano made last year wouldn't be any different from those in a fifty-year-old piano?"

"The old bass strings might be a little dull after so many years. But otherwise, no. The basic elements would be the same."

Well, that was an abrupt dead end, Sarah thought, hanging up after thanking the man for his help. The only good thing to come out of it was that she could correct Roberts the next time he talked about the piano wire.

And the good thing to come out of it for me was that I did not have to worry about what kind of piano I gave the killer.

The Seasons Series which debuted with Open Season, has received great reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Journal. The second book, Stalking Season, was just released in hardback, and Open Season is available as an e-book.

You can find out more about Maryann Miller's  books at her Website   and Blog    and connect with her on Facebook   and Twitter        

Shawn in Jeff Marks' The Scent of Murder

I wrote The Scent of Murder in just six weeks. Granted, editing and polishing took longer, but the first draft was written at a white hot speed at all hours of the day and night. I’ve never written a book that fast before (and unfortunately for me, I’ve never written one that fast again.)

Since I was writing at such a pace, research was strictly to be avoided. I’m the type who goes to look up the meaning of the word and two hours later, I’m studying the flora and fauna of Tasmania through a series of tangential website links. 

So when it came time to add a gay designer to Kantor’s department store, I used the source material I had at hand (also known as me.) Shawn, while very much his own character, has a number of my minor traits that I used to flesh him out on the page. While I only worked briefly in retail and hated every minute of it, I imbued him with some of my more quirky characteristics. 

Shawn and I both hate the sight of blood. The first time that I had to have a blood test I passed out and hit the table so hard that it left a mark on my forehead for days (which might explain my desire to write!) The sight of any blood leaves me on the floor, no matter how little or whose it is. Shawn doesn’t like blood either, which means he’s definitely not going to like being in this mystery. That’s why in the early scenes of the book he’s face down and not feeling well. Marissa, the main character, takes it as a possible sign of guilt early on, but changes her mind quickly. 

I also gave Shawn my love of pop culture. That’s why he can rattle of which of the royals has been seen naked, and he can discuss the various theories of who was Jack the Ripper, including those where the motivation was animus to women. Shawn is at his best here, using pop culture history to support his theories of the crime, and giving his opinions on the relative attractiveness of all of the characters.

Shawn also has a knack for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, which is something he came to through me as well. My lack of timing is legendary, where I seem to step into situations when three minutes either way would have allowed me to miss the entire drama. Shawn runs into trouble, because he suffers from the same malady. 

Without giving away a minor plot point, I also used to stash things into eat inside the retail displays at work, in case I needed something to munch on between sales. I used all of this knowledge in creating a funny and yet memorable character in the book. 

While Shawn doesn’t appear in the first book in the series (Love Stinks), he does make an appearance in the third book in the series, which I’m currently polishing.

The Man I Never Met

Long ago, in another career far from this one, I worked as a construction manager for shopping center developers. I met a lot of fascinating characters, many of whom have wormed their way into books that I’ve written. But one of the most interesting was a guy I never actually met.

The Pier Pavilion

During the mid-eighties, I was working on the development of the Pier 17 Pavilion at South Street Seaport in New York. I kept hearing about a guy who’d worked there, but who had died shortly before I started.  He was a great construction guy, always on top of everything going on, but also a wild man, popping pills and snorting cocaine, working crazy hours. He was only in his mid-thirties when it caught up to him, and he had a heart attack.

The story that resonated most with me was told by one of the leasing reps. She’d had a party at her apartment, and this guy had taken off his shoes and done vertical push-ups against her living room wall. Long after he died, the smudge marks from his socks remained high up on the wall.

This guy, whose name I’ve long since forgotten, became the inspiration for Junior, the project manager in my MFA thesis, Invasion of the Blatnicks. He’s introduced to our hero, Steve, by the secretary.

“You can’t miss Junior,” she said. “He’s about six feet six and he’s wearing a tie that looks like it ought to have an extension cord.”

“I think I can find him,” Steve said.

Junior is going to make a construction manager out of Steve, and often shows him things around the site:

On Friday, Junior and Steve were out on their morning walk-through when Junior stopped to let a concrete truck rumble past, its mixer rotating slowly. When it stopped, Junior walked up and plunged his arm into the lumpy gray mix. He brought his hand up, rubbing his fingers together. “This shit won’t pass the slump test,” he said. “Look how thin it is.”

He held his hand out to Steve. “Good concrete holds together more than this shit. You’ve got to get a feel for it. Here, stick your hand in.”

Steve hesitated. 
“Go ahead, there’s no alligators in there.”

Junior was just a minor character in Invasion, one of the crazy people circling around Steve, who was the calm, if sometimes clueless, center of the storm. But Junior kept floating around in the back of my brain, wanting a story of his own, and what resulted was “Rhiannon,” e-published by Untreed Reads.

The story is set in North Bay Village, on an island in the middle of a causeway linking Miami to Miami Beach. It’s not a place that gets much play in South Florida fiction, and I thought there was a nice metaphor there about where Junior is in his life – stuck in the middle.

When I met Rhiannon I was going through a bad time.  I had been working as the project manager for an office building in West Miami, but the funding was all coming from some South American country, and when they had one of their frequent revolutions the supply dried up quicker than a splash of sweat on hot pavement, and I was out of a job.

Rhiannon has a secret, though, and when it’s revealed Junior is going to be challenged. But he’s a wild man, and I knew he was up for whatever came his way.