{"id":1829,"date":"2022-04-18T17:22:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-19T00:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=1829"},"modified":"2022-04-18T17:22:38","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T00:22:38","slug":"tell-me-your-story-betty-webb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=1829","title":{"rendered":"Tell Me Your Story : Betty Webb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Betty Webb<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am beyond thrilled to welcome Betty Webb to tell us her story this month, and quite a story it is. You thought your family was eccentric, did you? Well, let Betty tell you a thing or two about eccentricity. Betty is the author of the best-selling Lena Jones mystery series (Desert Redemption<\/a>, Desert Wives<\/a><\/em>, etc.) and the humorous Gunn Zoo mysteries (The Panda of Death<\/a>, The Otter of Death<\/a><\/em>, etc.).\u00a0Lost in Paris<\/em>, the beginning of her new mystery series, set in 1922 France, will be released in April of 2023;\u00a0Found in Paris<\/em>, arrives in April 2024. Before beginning to write mystery novels, Betty spent 20 years as a journalist, interviewing everyone from U.S. presidents, astronauts who walked on the moon, Nobel Prize-winners, and polygamy runaways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Reality Into Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Betty Webb<\/p>\n\n\n\n

William Faulkner once famously said, \u201cThe best job for a writer is piano player at a brothel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s terrific advice for writers who can play the piano, but I\u2019m not one of them. Heck, I can\u2019t even play \u201cChopsticks.\u201d Instead, I get my ideas from my exceedingly weird family, who are weird enough to give me tips for character-driven mysteries, but not so weird that they ruined my childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, inserting real people into a novel can be a risky business. When you base your characters on real people, you must take steps to avoid getting sued. Accordingly, I always change my real-life characters\u2019 names, change their physical appearance, and sometimes even change their gender. More about that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I was putting together the cast of characters that make up my Gunn Zoo series (The Anteater of<\/em> Death<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>The Koala of Deat<\/em>h<\/a>, etc.), I based my protagonist sleuth on myself, a freckled-faced redhead with an abiding love of animals (Yes, I used to be a redhead until Mother Nature had her way with my hair follicles). I named this character Theodora Bentley, aka \u201cTeddy.\u201d She\u2019s a zookeeper who lives on a houseboat in California\u2019s Monterey Bay, and as zookeepers go, she\u2019s fairly normal. But Teddy\u2019s parents are weird. Readers often remark on the weirdness of Caro, Teddy\u2019s clotheshorse mother. Caro is a wealthy ex-beauty queen with a string of husbands\u2014five, so far, and perhaps more to come in later books. Since good fiction must be believable, I don\u2019t use the actual seven husbands my own mother accumulated. Mom, just like Caro, her fictional doppelganger, dresses her Chihuahua in baby-sized versions of her own designer wardrobe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fictionally speaking again, Teddy\u2019s father is her family\u2019s black sheep. After swindling millions from his own company, pere<\/em> Bentley skipped the country to take shelter in a South American country that has no extradition agreement with the U.S.\u2014much like my own rascally real-life father, whose financial activities resulted in a gaggle of Feds waving subpoenas. And there\u2019s another art-mirrors-life \u201ccoincidence.\u201d In The Panda of Death<\/em>, a DNA test proves that Teddy\u2019s husband had unknowingly sired Dylan, a handsome 18-year-old who shows up at Teddy\u2019s door, creating a comedy of errors. That happened in my family, too. But despite the scary stories now flourishing on the DNA-influenced internet, my discovery of a long-lost brother turned out to be a delight for everyone\u2014so much so that attendance at the annual Webb family reunion has happily grown in size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I use my friends for characters, too. In my Lena Jones\u2019\u00a0Desert\u00a0<\/em>books\u00a0(Desert Noir<\/a><\/em>, etc.), the character of Dusty, Lena\u2019s dude-ranch cowboy boyfriend, is actually based on an ex-boyfriend of mine, who in real-life was a dude-ranch cowboy named \u201cDusty.\u201d I\u2019d met this paragon of rascality (another long story) at a real-life Scottsdale, Arizona bar named The Rusty Spur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come to think about it, I also write about my daydreams. It started a few years ago when someone asked me, \u201cIf you could live anywhere at any time, where and when would you choose?\u201d Talk about an easy question! Ever since I took my first trip to Paris (France, not Texas), I\u2019ve imagined what the City of Lights must have been like during one of the twentieth century\u2019s most creative eras: the Jazz Age. Everyone who was anyone was in Paris then. Ernest Hemingway. Pablo Picasso. Salvador Dali. Mary Cassatt. Cole Porter. Josephine Baker. Coco Chanel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our virus-laden Pandemic hit, I escaped from reality by writing two \u201cParis\u201d books, introducing my readership to the fictional Zoe. She\u2019s a disgraced Southern Belle whose family shipped her off to Paris so she could no longer sully the family honor. Fortunately, Zoe is an artist, so the other American boozehounds greeted her with open arms. Apparently, I wasn\u2019t the only person who needed to escape from our Covid reality, because Poisoned Pen Press\/Sourcebooks snapped the books right up. Lost in Paris<\/em> comes out in April 2023; Found in Paris<\/em> arrives in April 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Writing in the Pandemic Era<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Again, the \u201cParis\u201d books are crowded with real-life people, but this time, the only thing my protagonist and I have in common is our mutual love of art. And Zoe\u2019s life is sad; mine isn\u2019t (knock on wood).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oops, almost forgot. I don\u2019t just write about my family, friends, and daydreams\u2014I also write about my enemies\u2014one enemy in particular. While I was still working in advertising (a long story I won\u2019t bore you with), I had a boss who was so outrageously awful that I\u2019ve put him\/her in three books, where I killed him\/her slowly and very, very painfully. In two books, I made him\/her male; in another book I made him\/her female. Knowing that ex-bosses can be litigious, I took care to change his\/her career and his\/her physical appearance. Killing him\/her was so satisfying I\u2019ll probably murder him\/her in more books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always sympathize with beginning writers who struggle with character development, and instead, use mere stereotypes. When I see my creative writing students doing that, I advise them to take a closer look at the people in their lives, because real<\/em> people are always deeper than fictional stereotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I was putting this article together, I realized I\u2019d never used one particular real-life person as a fictional character in any of my 20 mystery novels, so it\u2019s time to rectify that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hank Ducharme\u2014his real name\u2014had a carnival act where he was billed as \u201cThe Human Cannonball.\u201d My mom once took me to the Michigan State Fair to watch him get shot from a canon, make a beautiful arc in the sky, and come back to Earth via a safety net. Hank was French-Canadian, and he told the most marvelous stories about the carnivals and circuses he\u2019d headlined. After a few dates, Hank fell in love with my mother (men always did). Believing that the way to my mother\u2019s heart was through her daughter, he bought me my first typewriter, a Smith-Corona portable. Hank\u2019s gift so impressed me that for the first time, I actually lobbied for Mom to marry him (usually I just sulked when she brought home another husband-to-be). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Betty’s writing space<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alas, Mom married an accountant instead. But that too-short relationship with Hank Ducharme wasn\u2019t a total loss. Several years later, I wrote my first novel on that same Smith Corona portable, and since then, I haven\u2019t stopped writing \u201cfiction\u201d about real-life people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now, it\u2019s the Human Cannonball\u2019s turn.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check Betty’s websites at\u00a0www.bettywebb-mystery.com<\/a> and\u00a0www.bettywebb-zoomystery.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am beyond thrilled to welcome Betty Webb to tell us her story this month, and quite a story it is. You thought your family was eccentric, did you? Well, let Betty tell you a thing or two about eccentricity. Betty is the author of the best-selling Lena Jones mystery series (Desert Redemption, Desert Wives, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5,232,233],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-betty-webb","tag-gunn-zoo-mysteries","tag-lena-jones-mysteries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2H58s-tv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1842,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions\/1842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}