This week we chatted with mystery author D. A.
Bartley about her new book, her latest projects and even got some tips on how
to develop characters.
CritiqueMatch: What
motivated you to choose mystery as your genre?
D. A. Barley: I don’t think I chose it as much as it chose me. The classic murder
mystery is my happy place; it always has been. My grandmother gave me my first
Agatha Christie when I was about ten, and I’ve been reading murder mysteries ever
since.
CritiqueMatch: The
second book in the Abish Taylor series, Death in the Covenant, will be released
on August 13, 2019. What should we know about your exciting new mystery novel?
D. A. Barley: I was inspired by John Birger’s intriguing article “What Two Religions
Tell Us About the Modern Dating Crisis” in which he explores how shifting
demographics are affecting Mormon and Orthodox Jewish communities in this
country. According to Trinity College’s American Religious Identification
Survey, in 2015 there were 150 Mormon women for every 100 Mormon men in the
state of Utah. This imbalance sparked a memory of a story I’d heard in Sunday
school about President Polk demanding 500 Mormon men to fight in the
Mexican-American War in 1846, leaving the Mormons who were fleeing violence in
Illinois shorthanded, and with a distinct gender imbalance. And that’s all I
can say without giving too much away.
CritiqueMatch: In book
#1, which I binged-read in one evening, the Mormon church served as the key
backdrop for your plot. Should the reader expect an equally thorough dive into
the church’s history with book #2?
D. A. Barley: Oh, I’m so glad you liked Blessed
Be the Wicked! It’s pretty difficult to write about Utah without writing
about the Mormon church. I can trace my family history back to the days of
Joseph Smith, so I find the history and doctrine fascinating. Having said that,
I’m learning as a fiction writer to
balance what the story demands with what I, as a writer, find intriguing. The
two aren’t the same. With Death in the
Covenant, I spent an inordinate amount of time studying polygamy case law.
I found it fascinating. My editor? Not so much. She was right. I may need to
know about those Supreme Court cases, but I don’t need to write about them.
CritiqueMatch: For our
blog theme this month, we focus on “character development”. Tell us a little
bit more about your protagonist’s character arc, compared to book #1. What
is your process when developing your characters? Any advice for new
writers?
D. A. Barley: What a great theme! Great writing, clever plot, and fresh dialogue are
important, but what keeps readers turning pages is a character they care about.
That’s easier said than done. Most of us love—or are at least obsessed with—our
protagonists and main characters, but every character on the page matters.
When I’m writing my less-central characters, I try to remember the
people I meet while running errands: the dry cleaner across the street, the bakery
that sells the most divine bread in all of New York City (I’m serious, I’ll go
toe-to-toe for Orwashers), and the Italian market with the most amazing produce.
At every stop, I see people whose names I don’t know, yet, over the years we’ve
developed a friendly familiarity. We chat a little. We laugh a little. Those
interactions are important in life, and they’re important in good stories. The
baker who helps me choose the right bread for dinner has a life of her own,
with joy and sorrow, happiness and sadness, successes and challenges. It’s
lovely when that three-dimensionality shows up on the page for every character.
As to Abbie? She gets tested like never before—physically and
emotionally—but one thing you can count on with Detective Abish Taylor is that she’s
tough. Underestimate her at your own risk.
CritiqueMatch: What do
you want people to take away from reading your second book?
D. A. Barley: I hope we can all think a
little bit more about what we believe. Faith is part of life in the
Abish Taylor mysteries—both for the good guys and the not-so-good guys—and
faith is complicated: it can be a force for good, but it isn’t always. Acknowledging
the not-so-great aspects of faith makes many of us uncomfortable. We like to
associate religion with what is moral and principled. All the world’s major
faiths teach some form of loving others and treating our fellow human beings as
we’d like to be treated. Yet, we all know that for every religious tradition
that helps us be kind, honest, hopeful, and compassionate, there are variants
of those same faiths that inspire hatred, deception, fear, and cruelty. As human
beings sharing this one fragile planet, I hope we all challenge our own beliefs
to make sure that what we are supporting—with time, money, political and social
engagement—helps to bring out our kindest and best selves.
CritiqueMatch: You were
recently nominated to become the President of Sisters in Crime’s New York City
chapter. Tell us what your key priorities are as the new President, especially
as a female mystery writer in an under-represented genre.
D. A. Barley: Sisters in Crime is such a great organization for writers! I’m
absolutely thrilled to be serving as president. The organization was founded to
support women crime fiction writers at a time when women were underrepresented
at all levels of the publishing industry. We still care about that; the fight
isn’t over. At the same time, we also want to better serve the needs of all writers
as publishing evolves. That means taking stock and trying new things.
Beyond administrative goals—we’re in the process of updating our
website and on-line presence—I’m very much focused both on broadening our
membership and better promoting the work of our members. We’ll be introducing
tiered-membership rates, with discounts both for writers under the age of
thirty and for full-time students. If you’re a crime-fiction writer and you
live in the NYC/Tristate area, we want to meet you!
Also, I'd love to get the word out about our first meeting of the year: Bold Voices Expanding Horizons in Crime
Fiction with Cate Holahan, Richie Narvaez, Laura Joh Rowland, and
Catherine Maiorisi on Thursday, September 19th. We’re going to
delve into what it’s like writing crime fiction from outside the traditional
box. It promises to be a thought-provoking discussion.
CritiqueMatch: What projects
are you currently working on?
-------------
About the author:
D. A. Bartley is a member of Daughters of Utah Pioneers. She traces
her family history back to the earliest days of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. She spent much of her childhood in Utah, but her parents
were incurable travelers. She was born in Scotland and lived in Germany, France
and Russia. After studying international relations, politics and law, D. A.
worked both as an attorney and an academic in Manhattan. In the end, though,
she could not escape her life-long love of mysteries. She lives in New York
City with her family.
You can find her book “Death in the Covenant: An Abish Taylor
Mystery” at:
-
Amazon
