One Character - Two Views by Mary Jane and Victoria Maffini aka Victoria Abbott

Pen M won the Walter the Pug tote.

That shadowy figure known as Victoria Abbott is a collaboration between the always very funny and creative artist, photographer and short story author, Victoria Maffini and her mother, Mary Jane Maffini, award-winning author of three mystery series and two dozen short stories. Their first book in the series, The Christie Curse, has received excellent reviews and the second, The Sayers Swindle, hit the shelves in December. They are hard at work on the third installment: The Wolfe Widow(September 2014) and haven’t killed each other yet.

You can keep up with their characters on the thirtieth of the month over at www.killercharacters.comand their culinary adventures at www.mysteryloverskitchen.comor by signing up for their newsletter at www.victoria-abbott.com or www.maryjanemaffini.com. MJ also blogs at www.cozychicksblog.com

One character – two views

By Mary Jane and Victoria Maffini

                First let us say how glad we are to visit Meanderings and Muses today. Thanks so much, Kaye, for inviting us. Now, we’ll segue into our little ‘situation’. Perhaps you can help us out.

                We are at the end of book three in the book collector mysteries, our mother-daughter collaboration using the name Victoria Abbott.  With The Christie Curse and The Sayers Swindle already on the shelves and doing well, you’d think we really knew what we were doing. People keep asking us about our process.  They want to know how we write together.  We try not to stare at them blankly or to make things up, such as, an alien told us what to write or we write in our sleep. The truth is that we’re not entirely sure how it all comes together, as we seem to be using different approaches in each book. Still we usually sing from the same hymn book. We talk, we plot, we discuss.  Sometimes we compromise.  We love what we’ve created with our young protagonist, Jordan Bingham, a grad student and the first person in her very large family to go straight. We agree on everything about her curmudgeonly employer, Vera Van Alst, the most hated woman in Harrison Falls, NY. We cherish the world of book collecting we’ve created for them, the stately old home and the quirky folks who inhabit it. We both love the classics from The Golden Age of Detection (Christie, Sayers, and Stout) that we draw on for our stories. We are equally fond of Walter the Pug and Cobain the whatever.

                However, every now and then, we realize that Victoria Abbott is not a single entity and we can have very different views of the same character.

                This came to our attention when we were reworking a scene in The Wolfe Widow (book three) just as Jordan saw her Uncle Kev show up bringing chaos and danger in his wake, as he so often does.

                One of us added ‘his pudgy face’ to the narrative. 

                The other gasped. “Pudgy? What pudgy? He has cheekbones that could cut glass and he has a chiseled jaw.”

                “Pudgy.”

                “Chiseled.”

                “No, listen to me, definitely pudgy.”

                “What? Pudgy? This is the man that all women seem to fall for despite the fact he’s a disaster in the making. Only chiseled could explain that.”

                “I’m pretty sure his face is pudgy. Nothing’s going to change my mind.”

                “Seriously, Victoria?”

                “Really, Mum, really?

                And so it went.

                The thing is, neither of us owns Uncle Kev or any of the other characters in the series. Nor does either one have the right to tell the other what to do, write or think.  Occasionally, the mother finds this a bit hard, but never mind.

                So what did we do?

                We considered possibilities: pudgy in one book and chiseled in the next? Pudgy on one side and chiseled on the other? Pudgy cheeks, chiseled chin? Obviously, no solutions there.

                It was a bit tricky as Uncle Kev had already appeared (and caused quite a bit of trouble) in The Sayers Swindle. Was he pudgy or chiseled?  We’d have to go with whatever we’d said, despite our different visions and memories of Kev. Apparently, there was a bit of pudginess and some chiseled as well in The Sayers Swindle, but neither was connected to Kev’s face.

                At least we agreed on the ginger hair and wild eyebrows that all the Kellys attribute to their Viking ancestor, Olaf, who washed up in Dublin sometime in the ninth century and made his own kind of trouble. But we digress.  

                So, now we have to decide. And soon.

                How about you?  Given Kev’s appeal— his ginger hair and wild eyebrows, not to mention the frenetic disposition and attention deficit thingie—which would you vote for?

                We may need you to break the tie.  Or we could just see who does the ultimate set of edits …

                Of course, you’ll have to wait until September to find out. Maybe we will too.

In the meantime, leave a comment here and we’ll put your name in the draw for a Walter the Pug tote bag.  At least we all agree on Walter.

                If you had fun with us today, please visit us at www.victoria-abbott.com or www.maryjanemaffini.ca to sign up for our newsletter!

Note:  COMMENT MODERATION SETTINGS HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED DUE TO SPAM AND ROBO COMMENTERS - MY APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE

Meet Victoria Abbott

I tried to raise her to do the right thing, but then my little girl grew up to kill people. She does it with a light touch of course, but even so.  Who would think that could happen? Of course, I must have read two hundred mysteries when I was expecting her, so I guess I’m lucky she only kills on the page.

You see, some mothers and daughters make cookies together, take a trip or join a choir,  but we decided to see if we could bump off the unsuspecting for fun and profit.

That’s what happens when you agree to collaborate with your daughter on a mystery series.  Now we’re over on the dark side together.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I’m having too much fun.

We used to be Vic and Mum, now we’re Victoria Abbott.  We used to read mysteries, now we write them. We used to love and collect books, now we try to get inside the world of book collecting. We used to get annoyed with people, now we can turn them into characters that come to a bad end.  Crime writing: there’s no life like it.

 

But what of this collaboration?  How does it work?  Everyone wants to know. Sure, we’d like to know too. For us, the biggest mystery is how the first book came together.  Two different people, vast difference in ages (don’t ask) and different speaking, writing and working styles. How could that possibly succeed? Yet it did and we are very proud of The Christie Curse: the first in a book collector series hitting the stands on March 5^th from Berkley Prime Crime.  The protagonist, Jordan Bingham, is a grad student in desperate need of funds who accepts a job as a research assistant to a reclusive and difficult book collector. Her task is to track down a previously unknown play by Agatha Christie. Much as she loves her attic accommodation and the wonderful food served by the cook, Senora Panetone, she’s not so happy to hear that her predecessor died mysteriously. 

The strange part is that as we near the completion of book two: The Sayers Swindle, we still don’t know how or why the collaboration functions. We just know that it does.  We’ve tried all the variations: sometimes alternating scenes, or having each one write from the point of view of a certain character and most frequently working on the telephone, acting out scenes. As weird as it may sound, that seems to be the most effective way.

It was during these phone calls that the extensive cast of Jordan Bingham’s larcenous uncles first showed up in their small kitchen behind Michael Kelly’s antiques. Uncle Mike immediately started cooking, if you can call it that. KD, anyone?

And it was during a phone call that the secret of the bi-polar cat was revealed to us.

If we are tracking the benefits of this collaboration, laughter must be the first one.  Victoria is the taller, funnier one and she continues to crack me up as she introduces whimsy and humor into the story.  She’s also the pro on vintage clothing and antiques. I am in charge of the bad food that the Kelly uncles specialize in.  

Of course, there is much pussyfooting around. Mother/daughter relationships might be full of love and hugs, but they are also fraught with peril.

Like any creative endeavor, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. We’re not sure how we got there, but we like the world we’ve created for Jordan Bingham, we get a charge out of the crotchety employer Vera Van Alst and her bag lady wardrobe. We enjoy watching Jordan squirm as a certain police officer becomes very interested in her. She’ll never be able to introduce him to that particular family of crooks.  Most of all, we’re keen to see how Jordan’s life changes and how she grows in expertise and value to her book collector boss. Naturally, we have to put her in danger and then let her use her considerable smarts to get herself out again.

We are rolling with the challenges: finding the right time to work together, keeping up the story energy, homogenizing our voices and, as always, having fun.
 

Victoria Abbott is a collaboration between the always very funny and creative artist, photographer and short story author, Victoria Maffini and her mother, Mary Jane Maffini, award-winning author of three mystery series and two dozen short stories. As you can see, their four miniature dachshunds are understandably outraged that a pug and some Siamese cats have wiggled their way into the series.

The Christie Curse: a book collector mystery, by Victoria Abbott
First in a new series!  Coming March 5, 2013
Victoria Abbott is Mary Jane Maffini & Victoria Maffini
www.victoria-abbott.com
www.maryjanemaffini.com