An Interview with: Peggy Ehrhart

When Peggy Ehrhart was in the third grade at Our Lady of Peace School in the San Fernando Valley , she won a Knights of Columbus essay contest and her fate was sealed. It just took her awhile to realize that what she really wanted to write was fiction.

After a BA in English from University of Portland , she headed to San Francisco , just like several thousand other people who had gotten word that San Francisco was the happening place to be. Amid many enjoyable distractions, she managed to get an MA in English from San Francisco State , then headed off to University of Illinois for a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature. Her first college teaching job after grad school brought her to the New York City area, where she has happily remained ever since.

Then, after several years of teaching and in the throes of a severe midlife crisis, she bought an electric guitar and wrote her first mystery novel–though as her alter-ego, Margaret J. Ehrhart, she'd been writing busily the whole time: numerous scholarly articles, and a book about Greek myth in the Middle Ages funded by a research grant from the American Council of Learned Societies.

The transition from would-be mystery writer to published mystery writer would have happened a lot sooner if she wasn't having so much fun with the music. She formed The Last Stand Band, which over the course of its five-year life, played numerous gigs in New York City and the surrounding area. She's now in a second band, Still Standing, which plays occasional library gigs.

Her first mystery, Sweet Man Is Gone (Five Star/Gale/Cengage) appeared in 2008. Besides the hardcover edition, it's available in Kindle and other e-book formats, including iBookstore for the Apple iPad. The sequel, Got No Friend Anyhow , is due in January 2011. Peggy has also published stories, essays, and translations in print media and online. Visit her online at www.PeggyEhrhart.com .

1. What is your writing method?

I am definitely a planner. I start a new project by brainstorming—daydreaming and jotting down ideas. I often first decide who the victim will be, then I think of several reasons people might have for killing that person. So I end up with a list of suspects. Then I figure out what clues are going to point to each suspect and in what order those clues will be revealed. I consider the victim, the suspects, and the clues to be the essence of a tightly plotted mystery, a classic traditional mystery. Traditional mysteries got me hooked on reading mysteries in the first place and when I started writing them, that was the type of mystery I wanted to write.

2. Where is your favorite place to write?

I write in my study—more about that in my answer to Question #4.

3. When is your favorite time of day to write?

I wake up slowly! And I like to read the paper and play my guitar and take a long walk before I sit down to write. And I usually put in an hour or more in the morning doing email and book-promotion things. I was able to retire early from my college teaching job, so I don't have to squeeze my writing into spare moments. I have all day. Since I outline ahead of time, I always know what scene is coming up next, and I think about it while I'm doing those other things. Then I sit down at the computer at about four p.m. and write till it's time to cook dinner. My husband comes home at 7:30 or 8:00, and we have a drink and talk while I cook.

4. Describe your writing space.

My husband and I are lucky to have a four-bedroom house to rattle around in—our son is grown up and living in Brooklyn . So I have my own study. I go in there and close the door, leave the blinds down, turn on one little desk lamp, and commune with my computer—and it's a writing-only computer—no email, no internet. Our email and internet computer is across the hall in my husband's study, so I have truly no excuse not to keep filling those pages

5. Where do you go to work when you want to escape from your usual surroundings?

I use my study only when I'm actually writing. When I'm brainstorming, outlining, or revising, I sit at my dining room table. There are big windows and I have a view of trees and grass—very serene. My writing stuff is at one end of the table and my music stuff is at the other. When we actually have guests for dinner, I have to do a lot of tidying!

6. What are the five most distracting things when you're working?

As I mentioned, I have a “writing-only” computer with no internet connection, so that cuts down on the distraction a lot. But I look back now at what the writing experience was like before I was published and think maybe I was happy then and didn't know it! Book promotion is indeed distracting. I'll be writing, but a little voice in my mind will be nagging me, raising all kinds of bothersome questions—many more than five: When should I order cards and bookmarks for my forthcoming book? And who should I order them from? And what, besides the book cover, should they include? And will the book get reviewed by lots of reviewers? And what will the reviews be like? And who should I contact next about doing a speaking event? And what interesting questions can I ask the panelists on that panel I'm moderating next week? And on and on . . .

7. What do you consider your two writing strengths and your two writing weaknesses?

Weaknesses: 1. Too much exposure to serious literature. Really! I have a Ph.D. in English literature. Reading Finnegan's Wake does not prepare one for writing commercial fiction. 2. My guitar habit. If I put all the time into my writing that I put into playing my guitar I would have ten books out by now.

Strengths: 1. I'm very observant and I think I do a good job bringing my characters and settings to life with telling details. 2. I love strong plotting and I think I do a good job writing mysteries that keep the reader puzzled and sneak up to a nice twist at the climax.

8. What rituals do you go through to get yourself started?

I have to have my glass of cold seltzer sitting at my elbow. Back when I was still in the academic world and devoted my writing time to scholarly writing, I used to drink coffee all day—cups and cups of it. By evening I would be bouncing off the ceiling.

I also have a strange little row of rubber monsters lined up along the top of my computer monitor. I'm very fond of them but I can't even remember where they came from or when I put them there. I think they function, in a tongue in cheek way, like gargoyles—scaring away evil forces that might interfere with my creative impulses. The other day I noticed one was missing and had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl around under my desk to find it before I could concentrate on my work.

9. Do you have a “writing warm-up” exercise?

No, I just jump in. But I find it helpful to remind myself that this is the first draft and everything can always be changed. Sometimes what comes out sounds very clunky to me but I just keep charging ahead. Often I'm surprised when I go back to revise and I discover that maybe half or three-quarters of what I wrote is fine. By the way, I don't revise day by day. I try to write the whole first draft straight through. It's probably not possible to do this unless one is an outliner—but since I know where the whole thing is going, I just pick up at the next scene when I sit down the next day to write.

10. What three habits interfere with your work on a regular basis?

Even though my writing computer doesn't have an internet connection, I find it all too tempting to wander across the hall to my husband's study to see if I have any new email. And while I'm there I often can't resist checking what's new in the New York Times online. And the worst vice of all—there's actually a website that shows day by day what Michelle Obama is wearing at her various public appearances. I can never resist taking a look at that.

11. What is it that kick-starts a project?

My mysteries are set in the world of a blues band so I'm always on the lookout for musical clues—clues that only a musician would recognize, since my sleuth is a blues-singer. When I first realized that left-handed people need special left-handed guitars, or at least needed to string their guitars backwards, I pondered for years—literally—how I could use that as a clue in a story. My first attempt was in an early mystery that probably will never be published, but later I worked that tidbit into a flash-fiction story that has appeared a few places and is now up on my website: “Death Gig.”

12. How long does it generally take you to complete a novel—from conception to completion?

I wrote my first mystery in three weeks. It just came pouring out over winter break—I was still teaching then. But the one I'm working on now was started in 2006 and I'm just now wrapping it up—because shortly after I started it, I sold Sweet Man Is Gone and then my time was taken up seeing that book through the publication process, setting up my website, and doing a great deal of promotion, including traveling. After that I revised an already-written book, the sequel to Sweet Man Is Gone which is coming out in January: Got No Friend Anyhow . At the beginning of 2010 I went back to work on the new project and I'm just about ready to start submitting it. It's a whole different premise, not a Maxx Maxwell mystery, so I'm not necessarily going with the same press.

13. How many revisions do you normally go through when writing a novel?

I'd say three or four. Since I do so much planning at the outset, I'm not doing major surgery when I revise—I'm revising for smoothness and consistency. But often, of course, a character will come to life in the writing. So as I revise, I flesh the character out in scenes where he or she might originally have appeared only to keep the plot moving forward. It's fun when a character comes to life—one of the things that makes writing seem magical.

14. If you could invite any five historical figures to dinner, who would they be? And why?

I'd invite five great blues women: Bessie Smith, Big Mama Thornton, and Ma Rainey from the past and Shemekia Copeland and Ruthie Foster from the present. I'd love to hear them compare notes about their experiences. Modern blues women undoubtedly have an easier time but I'm sure they would all have remarkable tales to tell.

15. Have you ever thought of casting your novel as a movie? Who would you like to play your characters and why?

Casting the film would involve a bit of time-travel. The perfect actress to play my blues-singer sleuth Elizabeth “Maxx” Maxwell would be Madonna as she appeared in that great film Desperately Seeking Susan. And the perfect actor for Jimmy Nashville, the sexy guitar player who Maxx has a tremendous crush on and whose death provides the mystery in Sweet Man Is Gone would be Aidan Quinn as he appeared in the same movie. Desperately Seeking Susan came out in 1985, about five years before I started writing mysteries or taking guitar lessons. As a typical New Jersey suburbanite, I identified with the Rosanna Arquette character. Everything exciting seemed to be happening across the Hudson River and I was just starting to realize that I wouldn't be happy unless I found a way to explore the creative side of my personality.

16. How important is the book cover for sales, etc.?

I think it's crucial. Most importantly, it has to capture the feel of the book. Is it a fun read? Scary? A thriller? Cozy? I've been delighted with my two Five Star covers. Five Star asks for a lot of author input to help with cover design, and it shows in the finished product—none of those funny blunders writers wring their hands about, like a cover featuring a naked woman with a knife in her back when the victim in the story was actually a clothed man who was shot.

17. How important is the title? How easy is it to come up with titles?

Titles are crucial too. Even before I wrote my first mystery I loved titles that alluded to songs, so when I started writing mysteries, I decided my titles would allude to songs too. Since my mysteries are set in the world of a blues band, titles that allude to blues songs are a natural fit. The title of Sweet Man Is Gone comes from a wonderful Muddy Waters tune called “Who's Gonna Be Your Sweet Man When I'm Gone?” In the book, my blues-singer sleuth's guitar player, Jimmy Nashville, sings it in the first chapter and then in the second chapter, he's gone—lying dead on the ground below his ninth-floor window. Since she had a terrific crush on him, thinking of him as her “sweet man” comes naturally, and it's part of the impetus for trying to figure out who wanted him dead and why. The sequel, Got No Friend Anyhow , is all about friends and the demands they put on each other, and the title is taken from “No Friends Blues,” a great tune by Sonny Boy Williamson. A line from “Rollin' and Tumblin'” is constantly in my head: “If the river was whiskey and I was a diving duck. . .” Sometimes I lie awake at night pondering plots that would let me use “The River Was Whiskey” as a title.

18. What makes mystery a popular genre? Why do you think people like it?

People like to believe that justice triumphs, even though in real life it often doesn't, and they like to believe that human reason is powerful enough to put things to rights. Those at least are the premises of the classic traditional mystery. Think of a Sherlock Holmes plot, for example. Merely by observing and deducing from what he observes, Holmes is able to bring evil-doers to justice. Often in the modern mystery the emphasis isn't as much on observation and deduction as it once was, but mysteries still guarantee the reader a satisfying resolution at the end—that's a very comforting thought. And the mystery form is like a template that can be superimposed on any world—so we have wonderful mysteries set in far-off lands and we get to experience exotic cultures but through a prism of the familiar—the crime-solver stalking evil-doers.

19. Is there a subject you are sure to stay away from in your writing?

I don't like mysteries that glorify violence of any kind, especially violence against women. My books, despite the blues-band setting and characters who often exist at the fringes of society, are definitely cozies. I don't dwell on the gory details that might accompany a murder. Instead I focus on the process by which my sleuth, even though she's an amateur, observes and reflects on what she observes to bring the killer to justice.

20. What is the most difficult kind of character for you to create?

It's hard to create a good villain—because in the traditional mystery the villain isn't unmasked until the end. So the villain can't be a monster of evil. That would give the plot away right at the start. Yet the villain has to have the kind of personality that will make the reader say, in retrospect, Oh, yes, of course it was him. I should have seen it all the time.

21. What's your favorite mystery movie?

The Maltese Falcon.

22. If you ever did a cross-genre book, what would be your choice to mix with mystery (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Historical, etc.)?

I'm already doing one! It's mystery mixed with history; scenes that take place in the past are juxtaposed with scenes that take place in the present, and there are two mysteries, an old one and a recent one. I don't want to talk too much about it because it's still in the revising stage. It's so different from my Maxx Maxwell mysteries that I think I will publish it under a different name. Peggy Ehrhart is my real name and I already used it up, in a sense, for the Maxx Maxwell mysteries. Sometimes when I have down time, like recently when my husband and I were on a car trip, I play around with anagrams. I haven't had too much luck turning Peggy Ehrhart into something else, but my “official” first name is Margaret so I've been noodling around with that—and then I ask my husband if he would buy a book by someone named, for example Greta Mar, or Mara Gret, or Tara Germ. The verdict on those three was no.

23. Do you blog? If so, why and what do you usually blog about?

I don't have my own blog but I did do a blog book tour when Sweet Man Is Gone came out—see Question #24.

24. Have you ever done a blog book tour? What was that like and would you do it again?

When Sweet Man Is Gone came out in 2008 I guested on a number of blogs. I enjoyed writing the posts—the topics ranged from helping my son move to Brooklyn to the perils of revising one's work based on the critique of only one reader. After the blog tour was over, I posted the blogs on my own website as well. They're on the “Other Writing” page. In addition to my “official” blog book tour, I've guested on friends' blogs on and off over the past few years. I plan to arrange another blog book tour when Got No Friend Anyhow appears in January.

25. Do you enjoy doing promotion?

Unlike many people, I love speaking in public. I was a teacher for over 30 years, teaching freshman composition to kids who mostly did not want to be there, and I faced some pretty tough audiences. I always said it was like playing in a bar band. You learn to think on your feet. So it's a pleasure to speak to an audience of mystery fans who actually do want to be there and are anxious to hear what I have to say. I would much rather spend my promotion time and energy doing in-person events than trying to promote myself on the various mystery listservs. I like to see the people I'm communicating with!

26. What's the oddest thing you've ever done to promote your work?

I guested on Clea Simon's blog Cats and Crime and Rock and Roll . Knowing how much she likes cats, I wanted to include a picture of me with a cat—and I had a cat in mind. My brother-in-law Steve has a wonderful cat named Homer and it happened that at that time I was hanging out at his apartment every week for a few hours jamming with him—he's a great piano and harmonica player. I envisioned a photo of me sitting on my amp playing my guitar with Homer looking at me adoringly. Homer didn't want to cooperate though, so I went online and found some mail-order catnip, a variety called Meowie Wowie. Homer really liked the Meowie Wowie. In fact, as I tried to rearrange little piles of it so he'd be facing the camera when Steve took the picture, he became wildly alarmed. I guess he thought I was trying to separate him from this wonderful substance and I ended up with claw marks all over my arms. But when I told my husband about it, he said, “You know what? You're having fun.” And I had to admit he was right.

27. What's the strangest fan question/request you've ever gotten?

More like a fan response. I played a library gig with my band the other night. We've got two guy singers and all I do is play the guitar. A woman came up to me afterwards and said, “I love your singing!”

28. How have you grown as a writer?

1) What has gotten better? 2) What things have you dropped along the way?

My plotting has gotten much tighter. I used to focus too much on the atmosphere and incidentals of the worlds in which my stories took place. Then I realized that people who read mystery fiction are looking for a strong plot, even if they also appreciate the more literary qualities of a writer's work. So I've tried to cut way back on description just for the sake of description and instead to zero in on one or two telling details to bring a setting or character to life.

3) What helped most in your growth as a writer?

What's helped me the most is taking mysteries that I consider especially effective and outlining them in great detail.

29. What is the naughtiest or most evil thing you've done in a novel?

In an early mystery which never got published, my amateur sleuth was a twenty-something guy who lived at home with his parents. One of his rituals was to offer to take his mom's recycling down to the recycling center so he could sit in his car and smoke a joint. This is a very tame “naughty” thing I know, but I was in a critique group at the time and one of my critique partners was quite horrified and was sure a book with a character who smoked pot would never get published! I'm still very fond of that character would love to revisit that project one day.

30. Respond to these pairings and tell why you respond the way you do:

a. Series or stand-alone books

Series—as a reader I have always loved them. If you love a book's premise and protagonist, you don't want to leave that world. When you turn the last page and know the story has ended, it's comforting to know that there are more books waiting in that series. That's why I'm delighted that Five Star is bringing out the second book in my Maxx Maxwell series, Got No Friend Anyhow , due in January.

b. Outlines or find-your-way plotting

Outlines—as I said, I love books with strong, complicated plots and I'm not sure I would be able to achieve that without a lot of advance planning.

c. Lots of research or make it all up

Lots of research—when I come upon a factual mistake in a book, it really spoils the story for me. I've been told by many musicians that the setting of Sweet Man Is Gone —blues band in New York City —really rings true. In that case, the “research” came before the idea of writing the book was even hatched. I had spent so much time learning how to play the guitar and then forming a band and trying to keep us together and line up gigs that I said to myself, you've got to do something useful with all this stuff you know. Now I'm working on a new project, a mystery that involves the history of the part of New Jersey where I live. I've got piles of books and notes in my study. Before I started working out the plot I read and read and read. And the funny thing is that when I was in school I didn't like history at all—but living in a town where every day I walk past a house built in the mid-1700s makes it all come to life.

d. Neat or sloppy

Neat—it goes with the outlining thing, and unless I had some kind of a filing system all those notes for my new project would be useless.

e. NY or DC

NY—I guess I'm more interested in the arts than in politics.

f. Carnivore or vegetarian

Carnivore—my husband is a hunter. I try to use every last scrap of the game he brings home.