Details, Details, Details, by Susan Oleksiw

The first Anita Ray story appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, in 2003. The first book in the series, Under the Eye of Kali, appeared in 2010 from Five Star/Gale Cengage. The fourth, When Krishna Calls, will be published in August 2016.

Few readers are aware of the range of work that goes into creating a mystery series. As a young reader in elementary school I was entranced by good stories. It wasn't until I was almost a teenager that I realized I knew someone who had actually published a book. It could have been a one-hundred page pamphlet on changing flat tires and I would have thought he was a genius. I hadn't yet thought about breaking the task down into manageable parts.

A successful series involves a lot of details that may not seem to be closely linked to the casual reader. But writers know better. If I begin with a certain type of character to be the sleuth, that choice will influence the period. Am I locating the story in the present or the past? And what about location? Is the story set anywhere in the United States, or in another country? Does the town or city have to be described in detail as part of the story?

And then I begin to zero in on the details of description. The first few efforts to define Anita Ray, or a young woman living in India and solving crimes, didn't work, in my opinion. I refined and added or deleted details. Creating a character with both Indian and American parents gave her greater freedom of movement as well as allowing her the opportunity to comment on the traditional culture she lives in.

My next concern was titles. As the two examples above indicate, I wanted to use the name of a Hindu deity in each title, one that would suggest to the reader some of the concerns in the story line. In the first book, Kali, a wrathful deity in one form and a loving beautiful young girl in another, is invoked in both forms, but in the end takes on an unexpected role. In the second book, The Wrath of Shiva, the Hindu deity is invoked in a form that is a warning to a group of smugglers. And in the third book, For the Love of Parvati, the theme is obvious in the title. In the fourth book, When Krishna Calls, the forms of love underlie the actions of the characters.

When it came time to reprint the books in trade paperback. I wanted to continue the consistency across covers, as a way of tying the individual titles together. As a result, I asked a designer to create a basic format that I could use for each book, making each one distinct by the specific cover photo used. This has worked well, and I now have three Anita Ray titles available in trade paperback, with all three tied together by cover design and titles.

 All are available from Amazon as trade pb and also as ebooks.

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Eye-Kali-Anita-Mystery/dp/0983600082

http://www.amazon.com/Wrath-Shiva-Anita-Ray-Mystery/dp/0991208218

http://www.amazon.com/For-Love-Parvati-Mystery-Volume/dp/0991208293

Titles, Themes, and Planting Ideas

HOW do you come up with a title? I know there is a better process than the one I have.
I slink out to the hammock with a tablet and stay there until I've compiled a list of 15 titles. Anything that comes to mind can go on the list. Then I trot back inside, type up the list, and blast it out to my closest friends and family. They pare it down for me.

The truth is I'm TERRIBLE at coming up with Titles. Encapsulate my entire work into an eye-catching 3, 4 or 5 word phrase? Also, you should google your title on Amazon to be sure it hasn't been a best-selling title recently. (Although a title can't be copyrighted, so you're free to re-use someone's).

In truth, a title is very closely related to that thing we were taught in high school English--THEME. It makes us uncomfortable to talk about theme. Most of us had high school teachers who slapped us with a D on the paper and wrote "WRONG" across the top. I graduated from college during a time when something called reader-response theory was in vogue. If you read it, and your response is genuine, then your ideas are valid.

I often tell my college students that the theme of a story is the meaning minus the specific character names. It's over-arching like an umbrella. Our title should suggest or tease that theme. Choose carefully, then enjoy the fun part . . . planting it deep in the story.

Lucy realized they would all continue to take the risks they needed to take,
pay the price required of them. They would do it for the people they cared
about. So Dayton, and any other children coming into this circle, could grow up
in the country they loved. Living without love was something she wasn’t
courageous enough to do. The cost of love? It had always been, would continue to be, high. Gazing across into Dean’s eyes, she’d wager love was worth any cost.
(excerpt from The Cost of Love)