LOCAL AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT MAY 2021
“A LIGHT TO KILL BY,” by Mikel J. Wilson
Millionaire entrepreneur and real estate magnate Blair Geister dies under bizarre circumstances in her sprawling home, Geisterhaus. That same night, a ball of light pops out of a television and kills an estate employee. Her trusted assistant, who lives on the deceased’s estate, believes that Blair sent a ghost to kill her as well.
Enter the PIs of Mourning Dove Investigations, Emory Rome and Jeff Woodard, hired to solve the mystery of these deaths. Set in the Smoky Mountain region of Tennessee, which is where the author Mikel J. Wilson hails from, follow the action of this creative mystery’s twists and turns to find out who among the long, colorful list of suspects killed Blair, and how.
This third book in the Mourning Dove Mysteries launches in August 2021. To learn more, visit the author’s website at www.MikelJWilson.com.
Q1: Mikel, congratulations on releasing “A Light to Kill By,” Book #3 in the Mourning Dove Mysteries series. What was your primary motivation to write a mystery series?
A1: My love for mysteries started when I was a kid. I read every book in the Nancy Drew and The Three Investigators series, and I had subscriptions to the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines. By the time I graduated high school, I had read the complete works of Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe.
The first book I ever wrote was a dark adventure novel featuring a fifteen-year-old boy in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. After I finished, I filed the book away, but I revisited it a few years ago when I started wondering what he would be up to today. I decided Emory Rome would now be in law enforcement, and that was the genesis for my Mourning Dove Mysteries. Throughout the series, I’ve been weaving in bits of his past from that first book.
Q2: “A Light to Kill By” highlights main character Emory Rome and his partner at Mourning Dove Investigations, Jeff Woodard. Emory and Jeff are also partnering in their personal lives, giving your books an LGBTQ subplot. Do past relationships in your own life inform theirs? If so, how?
A2: I think for Emory and Jeff, I’m informed by relationships I had in my twenties. They’re young and volatile and unsure about where they are in the relationship or how the other one truly feels. I think many, if not most, new relationships at that age are riddled with doubt and insecurity. Emory also experiences something that I think is common with LGBTQ youth – questions about your own worth. These feelings would keep him from opening up fully to Jeff, even without the trauma of his past or the knowledge of Jeff’s secret.
Q3: Mikel, having read all of the books in your series, I know you have a “no guns no knives” policy about murder weapons. The murder “weapon” you use in “A Light to Kill By,” is creative indeed. How do you research the methods by which the victims meet their untimely ends in your books?
A3: I like to instill a WTF factor in the instigating murders of my Mourning Dove Mysteries. The books’ bizarre murders have a seemingly supernatural but ultimately scientific explanation – like The X-Files if Dana Scully were always the one proven right instead of Fox Mulder. Before the Mourning Dove PIs can search for the perpetrator and motive, they have to first determine how the murders were accomplished. How did a frozen lake in the woods erupt in flames to kill a teenage ice-skater? How did a man fly into a thirty-story window when there are no other tall buildings around for him to have come from? How could a ball of light bulge out from a TV screen and kill a man?
When I envision a cool death, I can spend weeks researching a way to make it a reality. My research often takes the form of a maze, with one dead end after another before I finally find the true path forward. I have come up with a few strange murders that I’ve had to abandon because I just couldn’t find a way to scientifically explain them, which is frustrating.
Q4: In “A Light to Kill By,” the characters engage in a lot of internal dialogue. What made you choose this method of sharing their thoughts with the reader?
A4: I use internal dialogue primarily when my characters are alone because I personally want to know what they’re thinking, and you can’t always make that obvious by the action in which they’re engaged. I do write more internal dialogue for Emory Rome, however, for two reasons. First, he’s analytical and often reaches solutions by talking through the problems. Sometimes he’s with a partner who can serve as a sounding board, but when he’s alone, he talks to himself, both verbally and internally. Second, Emory is full of secrets – his own and those he’s learned about his partner, Jeff. The secrets he references in his thoughts inform his interactions with other characters and seed clues for the fourth book in the series, which will reveal everything about his past.
Q5: Do you have any advice for aspiring mystery series authors?
A5: My advice is to start with your characters. When writing a series, your primary recurring characters will be spending an incredible amount of time in your head, and you’re going to be writing about them for years to come. Make sure you care about them – which doesn’t mean they have to be likeable – and, above all, make sure they’re interesting enough to sustain a series.
You also need to know them inside out before you start writing your books. I keep a character spreadsheet in which I answer important questions about each one. After I figure out their physical attributes, I determine their mannerisms, intelligence, sense of humor and general likeability. I then answer questions about their world – where they live, what car they drive, weapon of choice, favorite drink and background. Finally, I delve deeper into their personality to discover their motivations, sexual desires and ultimate goals in life. Once I’ve completed all that, I know how each character will interact with others in the book.
