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Continuing the Story (part 2 with Ann Claire)
131 Plays2 years ago
Brook and Sarah continue their conversation about continuing the story. In this episode, they speak with Ann Claire about drawing inspiration from another author in her Christie Bookshop Mysteries.
For more information about Ann ClaireInstagram: @annclaireauthor
Facebook: Ann Claire Mysteries
Books and Films Mentioned
A Carribean Mystery (1964) Agatha Christie
Dead and Gondola (2022) Ann Claire
Knives Out (2019)
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
For more information about Clued in Mysteryhttps://www.cluedinmystery.com
Instagram: @cluedinmystery
Contact us: hello@cluedinmystery.com
Music: Signs To Nowhere by Shane Ivers - www.silvermansound.com
Transcript
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Clued in Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Good morning, Brooke. Hi, Sarah. It's so great to be talking with you again. And we have a very special guest today.
Ann Claire's Background and Interests
00:00:25
Speaker
Yes, I'm so excited. We're going to be speaking with Ann Claire and talking a little bit about her new book and
00:00:34
Speaker
using another author's world to jump into a new story. So I'll do a quick introduction of Anne, and then we can get started speaking with her. Anne Claire earned degrees in geography, which took her across the world. Now, Claire lives with her geographer husband in Colorado, where the mountains beckon from their kitchen windows. When she's not riding, you can find her hiking, gardening, herding house cats, and enjoying a good mystery, especially one by Agatha Christie. Welcome, Anne. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
00:01:04
Speaker
Hi Ann. Hi, thank you.
Adapting and Continuing Literary Works
00:01:07
Speaker
This is going to be great to talk with you today and it's just such a great jumping off point for us as we just talked about continuing the story in our last show. And you know, last week Sarah and I discussed the different ways that authors can continue or play off
00:01:25
Speaker
the work of another writer. And Sarah gave some great definitions of ways this happens, such as part of the canon, pastiche, parody, fan fiction. And, you know, after reading your book, I believe your series, The Christie Bookshop Mysteries, falls into the category of pastiche since it contains similar elements and plays off that Agatha Christie style. Would you agree?
00:01:49
Speaker
I do agree. I love those definitions, too. And as you were saying, I'm always thinking, what is it? And it is a pastiche. I wanted to sprinkle in little bits and have my characters admire her and use her as their inspiration. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And have you been a longtime fan of Agatha Christie? Do you even have maybe a favorite Christie novel?
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, I was thinking how to answer this question. And I am a long-term fan, but when I started writing these books and I, I blithely told myself, well, I'll just read all the Christie's. And then I realized how many I hadn't read. So it's been really fun as part of writing these books to read her books and to read about her. And I just, I read recently an article about her that said you could read
00:02:38
Speaker
one new work by her per month and still be going seven years later, after which you'd forget the end things, which I do all the time and you could reread them. So I feel like a little bit better about having not read all of her things, but I am a big fan. Oh my goodness. That's great. That's great. And, um, I know I fell into that category. I have by no means read all of her work. So, and I agree with you. You really could reread them in a few years because they're so tricky and they, they would just be all brand new again.
00:03:08
Speaker
they really are and I'm particularly bad at remembering endings so for me it's like oh that person did it or I will go back and I have been rereading some of them just to see if I could have figured it out and where she dropped the clues and that's been really fun too.
Challenges and Inspirations from Agatha Christie
00:03:24
Speaker
That's great.
00:03:25
Speaker
I'm like you, Anne. I very rarely remember what the ending to a book was, so I'll reread it or I'll rewatch a television, you know, television mystery. And it's only just at the end that I'll be like, hmm, I actually think I've seen this. I'm glad to hear that because I always feel like it was only me. But you asked if I had a favorite one too, and that's, I've been
00:03:50
Speaker
I've been wondering about that because as I do read them, I find things I love about each one. And since I haven't read them all, I don't know if I can say I'm a favorite, but I love Ms. Marple. I love anything about Ms. Marple. And I was thinking if I had to pick a set of favorites, maybe I like a Caribbean mystery. I don't know if you know that one when she goes on vacation, right?
00:04:12
Speaker
Her nephew, the writer, has sent her on a Caribbean vacation, and Ms. Marple is bored. But then there's a mystery, and she leaps into action. And it connects with Nemesis, which might be my favorite, where Ms. Marple solves the crime in her little fluffy knitwear that she's made herself. And she gives me chills. That's one word Agatha Christie gave me chills with Ms. Marple. So I do love those. And it's a recurring character that features in both of those.
00:04:42
Speaker
Very good. Oh, how fun. Yeah, it's always fun if the sleuth takes a vacation. I find that like in a cozy series, for instance, it's a way to keep a series fresh. So, you know, we even have Agatha to thank for that little trick that authors can play, don't we?
00:05:00
Speaker
I think so, yeah. Sarah and I often comment how daunting it must be to follow in the footsteps of one of the classic mystery authors. We'd love to hear if there was anything you kind of thought was untouchable versus what you felt like you could put kind of your own spin on. Well, it is daunting. I would never think that I am attempting to be Agatha Christie. I think my protagonist, my two sisters, they sell books. They're booksellers.
00:05:30
Speaker
And their last name is Christie and boy, they really wish they could somehow be related to their favorite mystery novelist. And then a crime happens in their little small town. And so like Ms. Marple, like Agatha Christie's protagonist, they're thrown into this crime and they have to investigate and they know their special skill is reading. They've read a lot of mysteries and they've read a lot of Agatha Christie. So like you said about the pastiche before,
00:05:55
Speaker
They call on the various books that they've read, the things they know about detecting from Ms. Marble, or what would Poirot do here. So really they're paying homage to Agatha Christie in her books, and they're detecting.
00:06:10
Speaker
That's awesome. That's so fun. It's a great idea. Agatha Christie Limited is the company now managing the literary and media rights to Agatha Christie's works. Were there any legal issues for you to consider when using the Christie name, for instance? I hope not. I really hope not. Mr. Writers have all sorts of fears, and I hope that is one of them.
00:06:38
Speaker
You know, I love the books. I love books that play off her plots or follow one of her plots. But mine doesn't do that. Like we said before, they really use their readings on Christy and use her as inspiration. So I was careful to have them talk about books, but I don't even want them to give away the endings because I don't want to be a spoiler for other readers of Christy. So I think I'm OK there, I hope.
00:07:07
Speaker
But like I said, she was the inspiration for the characters. So they're using her methods and her sleuths. And I think, you know how Ms. Marple, when she thinks about crimes, she thinks about human nature and people, she references, well, who they remind her of. This is kind of like my mother, except my mother isn't. Isn't Ms. Marple a detective? But Ms. Marple will say, well, she reminds me of so-and-so, and she behaved that way. And I know this about her because of that. In my book,
00:07:37
Speaker
I hope the characters do that a little way with their reading. Well, we've read about this and this is how that plot worked and that's how human nature and motivation and the crime worked there. And so they take a little bit of that from Agatha Christie.
00:07:52
Speaker
That's great.
Agatha Christie's Influence and Modern Resurgence
00:07:53
Speaker
That's great. And I think it's really smart that although they use some of the ideas from plots that you don't spoil any of the of the stories, I think that was that was a really good choice. And I think it would probably be a great lead in. You know, we talked about this when we were discussing some of the Sherlock Holmes continuations.
00:08:14
Speaker
that it might be a way to get readers who have perhaps never picked up a Christie into it and to think about going back and reading some of those stories. So that's I think a really charming thing about it as well. Thank you. I hope so. I hope people will read more Christie because it is so fun.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, and just on that, I do feel like there's a bit of a resurgence in interest in Agatha Christie. And I don't know, I'm sure Kenneth Rana's movies help with that. And Sophie Hannah's books that continue Poirot, I think that all just contributes to the interest that people have in reading her books.
00:09:02
Speaker
I encourage everybody to because I think same thing like you know, she's doing a pandemic and I was reading her but I was also listening to her I was walking around with Christie and audiobooks in my ear of Miss Farple and Faro and it was just so much fun and you wouldn't know that they were over 100 years old really that's what's I think they're very readable to modern readers so yes I encourage people to
00:09:26
Speaker
Absolutely. And that's a great point. And because if you think about it, when she was writing, um, the idea of an audio book, um, hadn't, hadn't even come about, but they're very, um, they're very satisfying as a listen, I think, you know, they're so there again, they probably would be a great read aloud back in the day, but I agree. I love listening to them as an audio book as well.
00:09:52
Speaker
In some of our first episodes of Clued in Mystery, we discussed how Christie films and TV adaptations have tended to remain set in the same era in which they're originally set. And this is very different from Sherlock Holmes, for instance, because we might find Sherlock in any location, any era, or even any gender.
00:10:14
Speaker
Considering this, was it a challenge to bring that Agatha influence into the 21st century setting, or maybe not? Maybe you've kind of already discussed this. Well, I think I'm going to wait now because she is quite timeless, isn't she? Like we just discussed and there's the new adaptations. I point to knives out being so popular and I can't wait for the second knives out.
00:10:42
Speaker
But that's just a pure Christie, isn't it? From the inner house, the bit of fun, that's what I like about Christie too. There's a little bit of laughing at the great detective, but then he solves the crime with these clues that he maybe could have seen that he missed or he saw. So, and I think most modern cozy mysteries really owe everything to Ms. Marple and Agatha Christie, right? It's the same kind of, here's the amateur sleuth and she can't rely on
00:11:12
Speaker
She can't go all CSI and wait for that cat fur fiber analysis to come back from the lab. She has to go out there and find who owned the cat or who visited the cat or something like that. And so in Cozy Mysteries, that's one of the challenges is getting the sleuths out there to meet the suspects and to figure it out and to use their special skills like Ms. Marble and her knitting or my bookselling sisters and their knowledge of books of people coming into the bookshop.
00:11:41
Speaker
I think really the plots and the manner of detecting can be brought in to any time period. That's great.
Ann Claire's Future Works and Agatha Christie's Legacy
00:11:53
Speaker
Brooke and I have been talking recently about locked room mysteries. And we could pick out several TV shows that use that trope, but couldn't think of very many modern novels using that. But I think your mystery is a locked room. And just wondering what inspired you to use that as the sort of context for the mystery.
00:12:21
Speaker
I love that you said that on qualified list. People could get in and out a little bit, so I won't, unless somebody says, well, it's not really locked. But I did want, what I wanted was, what Agatha Christie often has is that set group of suspects and characters. You know, I would love to write one of those books where there's snowmen in the manor house someday, and there's five people. So here, I do have a whole village of
00:12:48
Speaker
people who could be suspects. But among the cast of the mystery, there's only so many people moving around. And I like that just to keep track of characters, but also to keep focused, hopefully focused in on who's who and who's a suspect and why they might be doing it and why you might be misled, that kind of thing. I love that in Agatha Christie's books. And I do particularly love the locked-in aspect. I think one of the other things that modern cozies
00:13:16
Speaker
pay homage to Christie or the settings, the small village settings or the small place settings. There's a lot of modern cozies that are set now, even in urban areas, but it is kind of in relation to the locked room, but a confined setting. You've got this little village or you've got this little group of blocks within the city within which the sleuth operates. And that becomes, I think, a little bit of a character too, like St. Mary Mead is
00:13:42
Speaker
I love it when Ms. Marple is there. I like it when she travels too, but then she's always thinking about her hometown. And I think modern cozy mysteries do a lot of that too. And so my village is a little mountain village in Colorado. It has a ski slope and has this gondola where the death takes place. And they do think about Ms. Marple in that and sort of a closed room mystery. It just becomes maybe an interesting place where the murder happens. I think she did that a lot too.
00:14:12
Speaker
So Anne, what are your plans for the series? Will the Christie sisters have more adventures? I hope so. I'm writing right now. I'm working on the second draft and I find I've always known who did it, but I think I finally know how they figure it out. That's one of the things I marvel about Christie too. I was reading her. You can read her.
00:14:35
Speaker
her notebooks, somebody wrote a book about her notebooks and her, you can see her thought processes, like maybe this person did it, maybe this is why, maybe I'll kill off this person. And so that was really interesting, but as a mystery writer, I always find the hardest thing is to figure out how they did it. I can always come up with a, well, not always, but I feel like I have a setting and characters and then figuring out how they figure it out. There I am just in awe of Christy.
00:15:04
Speaker
I'm writing the second one, and I think we have a title, but it's not set. But it will involve the Christie sisters again, and this time it's a little different. They're engaged in a, well, Kazen has set up a book-based dating service, so you match each other by your bookish taste. But of course there'll be a murder and they'll have to solve it, and they'll be using some of the same skills they used before, their knowledge of books and people and motivations.
00:15:35
Speaker
to hopefully solve the case. That sounds like a lot of fun. I love the idea of a book-based dating service. Yes, I do too. I should set this up. Yeah. Well, the other thing that Brooke and I recently talked about was authors being sleuths in the mysteries or there being a strong literary theme
00:16:03
Speaker
in the mystery itself. And I think that really appeals to readers to be kind of reading about people like themselves, right? People who love books, people who could, you know, would much rather be tucked away with a book than in a crowd of people. You know, I think a lot of us are
00:16:22
Speaker
pretty introverted, and much prefer a crowd of books to a crowd of people. And so I can see how that would really appeal to readers, that notion of being immersed in this bookseller's world. And I love the descriptions in your book of the bookshop itself. It sounds like a really great place that I would love to visit.
00:16:53
Speaker
I would too. This is in a way, I think cozies are little fantasies in a way, like they're also like superheroes for books for all of us. Like we can enjoy reading and meeting and have our cats and be in this wonderful bookshop and then save the day too. So yeah, it's kind of my little fantasy world, the village, the bookshop, the bookshop cat.
00:17:16
Speaker
And also them being so brave. If a murder happens here, I would not, no, that would not be going out. But in cozy mysteries, they go out and they save the day. So I think that's also fun to read about and write about. For sure.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, and I think in a day and age where we don't have so many corner bookshops, that it's very nice to be able to turn to a book that references it. And like you said, kind of live out that fantasy again. So yeah, really, really fun for bookish people like us.
00:17:48
Speaker
Um, the other thing that I wanted to mention was that I liked the, so not only the references to, um, uh, Christie's novels, but the references to her life that you pepper through the book and the, you know, little Christie facts that, um, that you share. I think that's, um, that's a nice way of incorporating her and incorporating, you know, her legacy into, um, into what you're, what you're doing.
00:18:19
Speaker
Oh, thank you. No, I've really enjoyed learning more about her. And I think, I think she said something about like readers, readers will mislead themselves to not see clues. And, and when I thought I knew I got the Christie, I was seeing her as Ms. Marple. I thought, yeah, I think as writers we get like, oh, you've written yourself, especially writing a cozy mystery. People think I've written myself. Maybe I do sometimes, but not, I don't try to, not always. But I pictured her as Ms. Marple.
00:18:47
Speaker
And now as I read more about her, she's still there and she did all that traveling, but she was also very shy, I read. I was just feeling all this empathy for this connection with Agatha Christie. And I just read something about she went to, she was supposed to go to a banquet in her honor and the security guard didn't know who she was and kept her out. And she was like, okay, I'll wander around the hotel and maybe go home, which is totally how I would react. So I felt I love her even more.
00:19:16
Speaker
It's been really fun to learn more about her and her life and her struggles and her marriages. She married an archeologist as her second husband and went on digs. It's just all quite fascinating. Yes. She is a fascinated woman.
00:19:34
Speaker
I too love the story where even the doorman at the dinner in her honor didn't recognize her. It just shows what an introverted, quiet person she was. I love that story. And there she is writing all those novels and killing off so many people. In your writing, she was so bold.
00:19:55
Speaker
Well, Anne, this has been such a great pleasure. I think it really adds to the conversation, several conversations that Sarah and I have had recently, especially about carrying another author's work into the world.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:20:10
Speaker
How can our listeners find out more about you and your books? Well, just thank you so much for having me. This has been such fun. You can find me
00:20:22
Speaker
I think maybe the first place to go would be to go to Penguin Random House website and look up Doug and Gondola or my name, Ann Claire. And they have all sorts of links where you could go buy the books. I hope it'll be in libraries as a library lover. I think you could request it from your library. You can also find me on Instagram where I'm Ann Claire author and I share too many pictures of books and cats in Colorado. And on Facebook, I'm Ann Claire mysteries. And then I have a website
00:20:50
Speaker
It's novelmystery.wixsite.com. So I'm kind of lax about my website, so I'm chagrins, but you can find me many places and my books. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. We'll make sure to put links to all of those places in the show notes so readers can find you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, thank you so much for having me. This really has been fun.
00:21:16
Speaker
This has been fun, and thank you listeners for joining us again today on Clued in Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah, and we both love mystery. Clued in Mystery is produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers at Silvermansound.com. Visit us online at CluedinMystery.com or social media at CluedinMystery. If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or telling your friends.