Dorothy’s Paris Adventure

It Seems to Me . . . . was the byline of Heywood Broun’s
column in The World

I have been a bad girl.  I haven’t posted a blog in weeks!

Well, I’ve been busy, reading, researching and reading and researching some more for my next book in my Dorothy Parker Mystery Series.  Number Five. This should be a wonderful adventure, based on real events in the life of Dorothy Parker during the winter of 1926.  And, I have to say that all the reading and researching has really paid off.  Because I’ve discovered–or you might say, re-discovered, events that have long been forgotten, and were only unveiled by my  accidental trip over one fact that led me to another and another.  So, in this coming book I will be resurrecting a real-life character to join the mix of fun and intrigue, a person never linked to Parker and her partner in crime, Robert Benchley, by any biographer or documentation.  This new person plays perfectly into the dynamics of my main characters, and after eighty-six years, he will  be remembered and acclaimed once again.

Research can be lots of fun, and very seductive.  It’s hard to stop!  I have learned, as many writers can attest for their own methods, that most research is best done while you are writing your book.  But, as Dorothy and Mr. Benchley will be sailing the Atlantic to Paris with their new friend, Ernest Hemingway, I absolutely needed to re-read all of his early books.  Twice.  And, I’m sorry to say, I am not a fan.  But, I better understand the man and his work.  And there are peripheral characters entering into Dorothy’s life, people whom I know and love, and who will be appearing in this new book, as they did in reality, and a lot of re-reading had to be done by and about them!  Even if I don’t use ten percent of what I have learned, the knowledge will bleed through the pages to the reader, because I am invariably transported back in time while I write, and although my mystery plot is fiction, the rest is history, and I have to know what I’m talking about.  Hemingway agreed with me in this in that, what you leave out of a book is as important as what you leave in.  Clarity.  It’s all about clarity.  I do my best to encompass the atmosphere, the reality of my characters’ lives while building my stories.

All I will say now about this new book is that, if you liked Midnight in Paris and The Artist, you’ll probably enjoy the this novel.

So, expect a June, 2012 release of my fifth Dorothy Parker Mystery.

Until next time,

Agata