You’ve got a Ph.D. in criminology and teach at Purdue—what led you from the world of true crime to writing fiction? I read a lot of murder mysteries during my Ph.D. program. Especially classic whodunnits. Graduate school can be kind of stressful, so it helps to have a hobby. After reading forty or so of Agatha Christie’s books (which isn’t even close to all of them!), I thought it would be fun to try putting together my own mystery. I wrote The Chocolatier’s Curse during the last year and a half of graduate school. It was something I worked on when I needed a break from all the dissertation writing.
When did you first know you wanted to write fiction, and how did that passion evolve into The Chocolatier’s Curse? I actually started writing crime fiction in high school. For the most part, I didn’t do anything with these stories, although I did get the drama club to perform an original play I wrote for the Christmas variety show (The Silence of the Reindeer). I’ve also borrowed some ideas from these earlier projects to use in my Notes on a Murder series. For example, one of the first short stories I wrote took place in a seafood restaurant. A woman named Storm was murdered by poisoned clams. That story was titled The Clam Before the Storm, which I thought was very clever. So much so that I used that same pun in the sequel to The Chocolatier’s Curse.
You juggle research, teaching, parenting, pets—and now publishing. How do you balance your academic life with creative writing? The past few years have certainly been busy! I think the most important habit I’ve found for creating balance is to pay close attention to when I’m feeling tired or burned out – and then take a break, if possible. I’ve always liked to have multiple projects going in parallel, because then a break from one thing can allow progress somewhere else. For example, if I’m stuck on a research paper, I can do class prep or creative writing (or work on a different research paper). My goal is to never feel like I’m forcing myself to work on anything. Also, my baby will only take naps if she’s being rocked on someone’s lap. So figuring out how to hold a baby and type at the same time has helped me get a lot of writing done this past year.
How does your background in criminology influence the way you approach storytelling or character development? This is ironic, but I don’t think my background in criminology has much influence on the substantive content or technical details of my crime fiction. As a science, much of criminology is focused on finding generalizable patterns. For example, what are the causal factors underlying most homicides? And I investigate these questions through statistical analysis, so my conclusions are never about any individual crime. When I write fiction, on the other hand, I’m trying to think up an individual scenario that’s weird and convoluted enough to keep the reader guessing (and interested) throughout the whole book. This distinction is basically why Theo, the criminology student who narrates The Chocolatier’s Curse, is not very good at investigating crimes.
That said, I think a lot of the overarching themes in my stories are driven by my professional background. For example, what are the social systems that motivate or provide cover for violence? Why are some people more likely to be suspected of crimes, and what are the consequences of that? How do we, as a society, collectively define (and then respond to) good vs. evil behavior? These are important questions to criminology (in my opinion), so I think about them a lot. And then that bleeds into my fiction.
I’ve also found my training in academic writing to be very helpful for writing mystery novels. There is a surprising amount of overlap between putting together a coherent argument in a research paper and constructing the plot of a whodunnit. In the research context, “red herrings” are the alternative mechanisms or explanations that you’re focused on ruling out through empirical analysis. This is actually a fairly common way to explain academic research and writing; I had a professor in grad school who used to use metaphors like this all the time in his course on writing for academic publication.
Origami, sleight-of-hand magic, and now fiction—do you see a connection between these interests? For sure! Origami is all about creativity within constraints (i.e., sculpting something out of a single square of paper with no cuts). When I think up the plot of a murder mystery, I’m also operating within constraints. Namely, I write in the “fair play” puzzle plot tradition of providing readers with all of the same clues as the fictional detectives and resolving the mystery in a way that would have been possible to figure out with those clues. For example, because my books are not set in a magical universe, I can’t reveal that the murderer has telekinesis or something like that as a solution to the mystery, because the readers wouldn’t have had access to that information earlier in the book.
I think sleight-of-hand magic might be even more analogous to writing mysteries. Performing magic tricks also forces you to operate within constraints (physical reality) and cover up the creative parts with misdirection. This is a very similar process to constructing, and then hiding, the secrets that will be revealed at the end of a whodunnit. In some ways I think magic is easier, because there’s no obligation to reveal the hidden mechanism at the end. So, if explaining how you did everything would leave your audience disappointed, that’s okay. You can just not tell them and preserve the illusion. With a whodunnit, learning how everything happened is part of the enjoyment. So, there’s added pressure, not just to write a solution that would have been possible, but to make it narratively interesting, too. And to show the reader how they could have figured it out, given the clues you provided.
For example, in the same way I wouldn’t write a telekinetic murderer, I also wouldn’t write a murderer who kills people for absolutely no reason and doesn’t meet the reader until the final chapter. This kind of solution would be technically possible, but – in my opinion – very hard to make narratively interesting. There’s an implicit understanding that the murderer will be known to the reader and have a rational motive. That said, authors have complete control over what the audience sees in a way that magicians don’t. As an author, your trick can never be ruined by a random gust of wind or someone grabbing a prop. And that control opens up new opportunities for misdirection.
What role does family play in your writing life? What role does teaching play in your writing life? With regard to family, my wife Elaina is the first person to read all my stories and provides super helpful feedback. My daughter Wren takes lots of naps on my lap so that I have time to write. I also feel very fortunate to have supportive parents, colleagues, and friends, many of whom help me by reading early drafts of my books.
I think teaching has improved my writing by giving me lots of opportunities to practice explaining complex ideas. This is important when it comes to writing the last couple chapters of a whodunnit – specifically, the part when the detective stands up and talks through the whole solution. I actually write these sections as if the detective is delivering a lecture, even down to the mannerisms and gestures that I imagine someone would use in that situation.
What’s your writing process like—are you a strict outliner, a free writer, or something else entirely? I always start with motive and means. Related to Question 5, this is analogous to the “secret move” or “gimmick” of the magic trick – something that I think will keep readers guessing throughout the book and be interesting when I reveal it at the end. Everything else I write (setting, characters, plot) revolves around that fixed center. I usually have a rough outline in my head, but a lot of things change as I go. I make a lot of comments in the margins as I put together the first draft, then go back and edit for consistency.
Tell us something readers might be surprised to learn about you. My name is an anagram of the phrase “hitherto corpses,” which is creepy but also feels appropriate, given what I write about.
If The Chocolatier’s Cursehad a soundtrack or a signature scent (maybe chocolate?), what would it be? I actually had no idea on this question, so I asked Elaina, who said the following:
“For the soundtrack, I imagine cozy, slightly eerie classical songs – like Satie’s Gnossienne No.1 and Gymnopédie No 3 – blended with The Mountain Goats’ Up the Wolves, Cry for Judas, and Dark in Here. The signature scent would primarily feature the earthy exhale of eastern white pine and white ash trees into dense, late-summer humidity, with the sickly-sweet notes of an industrial confectionery plant.”
What do you hope readers take away—not just from The Chocolatier’s Curse, but from you as an author? As an author, I try to engage with ideas that I think are important to real life – even though they’re all wrapped up in narratives that might be kindly described as “darkly whimsical.” I’ve mentioned a few of these themes in my response to Question 4. My hope for the people who read my books is the same as my hope for the people who take my classes: that they will come away from the experience thinking about these sorts of things in new ways. I believe that stories can be very effective at inspiring new ways of thinking, which is presumably why authoritarian movements are always trying to ban books. Somewhat relatedly, I think reading mysteries can be a good way to practice critical thinking and updating our beliefs when presented with new evidence. Over the course of a murder mystery, the reader’s initial beliefs typically change at least once (e.g., who they suspect at the beginning of the book vs. who the murderer is revealed to be at the end). In real life, we all tend to be a lot more resistant to changing their minds, even when faced with strong evidence that our original beliefs were wrong. I would be absolutely thrilled if my work as an author helps even a few people become more comfortable critically weighing evidence and updating their preexisting beliefs accordingly.
