What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began working on The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Lane in May 2020, right in the middle of the lockdown of the pandemic. It was a time when everyone on the planet was likely suspicious, paranoid, fearful… it was long before the vaccines were in sight and so much was unknown about Covid-19. It was this milieu of uncertainty that inspired the story… so I made a dark comedy out of it! I suppose I wanted to tell a tale that was reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
Click on the below link to visit Thornton Wilder’s Website
https://www.thorntonwilder.com/biography
Click on the below link to purchase OUR TOWN from Amazon
My story takes place in suburbia in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, and everyone is in lockdown. Of course, there’s a murder… er, more than one murder… and thievery and adultery and all sorts of devious things going on. But I’ve tried to present the tale with a quirkiness akin to the Coen Brothers’ films. It was a blast—and very therapeutic—to write. It was finished by August 2020.
Click on the below link to view the list of all the films made by the Coen Brothers.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls053030423/
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I wrote the book in my home office. I wasn’t going anywhere! But I write all my books in my home office. It’s my little cave.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I write during the day, morning and after lunch, usually around 4-5 hours total each day, including weekends. Sometimes I put music on—that doesn’t bother me—other times it’s quiet. I use a computer, never pen and paper (I can’t read my own handwriting!). I always outline my stories first (it’s actually a prose treatment… the prose equivalent of movie storyboards), and then write a scene a day. I don’t go back to revise until I’m completely done with a first draft.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
This is the very beginning of the book:
Friends, this is a little tale about some murders.
It takes place in a stereotypical American suburb, on a familiar American street, not too far northwest—but far enough—from a major American metropolitan center, Chicago, Illinois. For our purposes, we’ll call our suburb Lincoln Grove, although its name, as well as the names of the characters involved, has been changed to protect… oh, I don’t know. Changing names isn’t going to protect anyone.
While no murders make much sense, these are truly wacky. I like to call them the Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way.
Our story is set in May 2020. This is significant, for the entire world was under the thumb of this thing called COVID-19. The coronavirus. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. I imagine every single human being on the planet is well aware of the pandemic that has altered our way of life, no matter if you’re rich, poor, smart, or stupid.
Therefore, I ask you to place yourself back to that month. From here on out, we are no longer using past tense to refer to May 2020. It is now.
Click on the link below to purchase “The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Lane” from Amazon
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? Because I was attempting to evoke something like Wilder’s Our Town, I needed an omniscient narrator. This narrator guides the reader through the labyrinth of the plot. Publisher’s Weekly described the narrator thusly: …it’s the narrator, not identified until the end, who steals the show. “I’m the storyteller here, and I can tell the tale any way I choose!” he declares, and he freely editorializes and speculates about others, himself, and the troubled times following the lockdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Is the narrator me? No, not at all, but perhaps a lot of me comes through him, so that in and of itself is an emotional investment.
Click on the link below to visit Raymond Benson’s blog page.
https://raymondbenson.blogspot.com/
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html