Tell us about yourself.

MR: I'm English, from the north-eastern city of Newcastle- upon-Tyne, the one to which coals are sometimes carried. It's also the area in which Catherine Cookson set her enormously popular novels -- not to mention being well known as the original stamping grounds of the Animals! Finished school at l7 and went to work and that's about it.

EM: I grew up in Dallas - in northeastern Pennsylvania, not Texas. Studied English Literature in college, mainly because I liked books, but discovered, on graduation, that very few employers are willing to pay someone to like books. (Silly of them, isn’t it!) Went to law school out of desperation but realized I would never be able to stomach making a living practicing the law. However, having a family by the time I graduated, I took a job writing legal books.

Are you coming to mystery writing from another job?

MR: We earn a crust (and very little butter) by freelance writing, including a fair amount of nonfiction for various publications. So I’ve written about topics as varied as weather forecasting goats and the symbolism of fruit as well as construction equipment rental and how to organise a tea party.

But fiction is our first love and we are now striking out into it more and more, and doubtless simultaneously striking terror into editors' hearts.

EM: Most of my income still comes from legal writing and editing. I was going back and forth between revising ONE FOR SORROW and writing the “Corporations” article for The Maryland Legal Encyclopedia. Just as arcane as the Byzantine Empire, but not as interesting.

What led you to write mysteries?

MR: Yes, I've been reading mysteries for mumblety mumble years, beginning with three of the greats - Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. First stumbled across the latter because the printer in whose office I worked at the time produced the covers! From there I jumped to D. L. Sayers. Then I swooped upon any anthologies I could find and began working my way along the shelf of mysteries - this was at the then quite small library in Banbury, England.

Thus it is not perhaps surprising that I remain devoted to the body in the library and locked room sub genres, although I also love historical mysteries. But of course I will read whatever I can get, both within the mystery field and without.

EM: Mary led me to write mysteries. When I was younger I was more a reader of science fiction and fantasy, though I did delve into Sherlock Holmes, and I suspect I was attracted to the historical setting of ONE FOR SORROW because it resembled the exotic settings of sf and fantasy.

Over the years I made a few desultory attempts to write sf. Mary, on the other hand, had written, and sold, some mystery stories. For a couple years, at various times, when we would get to talking about whatever writing we were doing or thinking about, I would mention to her a vague idea I had for an “open room” mystery She kept nagging ... uh, encouraging . . . me to write it but she didn’t succeed until we were married when we finally sat down and collaborated on “The Obo Mystery”, which introduced our Mongolian policeman, Inspector Dorj, and was published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Tell us about your road to publication.

MR: A friend of mine went to live in Iran. Out there, she met a visiting Briton who knew someone connected with the BBC World Radio Short Story programme, who had been lamenting about the lack of good stories being submitted ... so we all submitted stories, and mine was accepted. It was the first piece of fiction I sold - not a traditional mystery as such, but concerning Death, who has grey eyes and visits twice before he arrives to carry you away. It was based upon a dream, and a famous pre-Raphaelite painting, Home From Sea.

Crazed with success, I thought, I shall give myself five years to sell more or else Take The Hint. It actually took two years to make my next sale. Most of what I was writing was nonfiction, though idiosyncratic topics, such as cheeserolling and canine companions to the saints. A theory I developed then was to always keep as many pieces circulating as possible, because when a rejection came in, then perhaps tomorrow would bring an acceptance. My personal record on that was thirteen rejections in two days. But I all but a couple of them went on to be accepted elsewhere.

I often refer to us as orphan scriveners, because we did not really known anyone in the mystery field when we arrived in it. Thus,our writing had been non-critiqued and written pretty much marching to our own bagpipes. However, the prolific Ed Hoch (near whom we lived at one point) has always been kindness itself and most encouraging, although we never managed to summon up the nerve to actually ask him to critique anything!

Eventually, we were invited to join a bunch of fellow writers who met monthly in each other's houses. It was not a writers' group as such. Horror writer T. Lucien Wright organised these meetings, and they were a very loose sort of arrangement, more a bunch of friends getting together for pizza and chat. Of course, the chat did include discussion of works in progress, and we all found it very valuable.

But apart from that, we were whacking away at the writing pretty well on our own.

EM: I seem to remember, when I was about sixteen, giving myself five years to sell my first novel. That didn’t quite work out. In fact I couldn’t even get a story into my college literary magazine. While I was in college, I did write a weekly column for the local newspaper.

Over the years I made sporadic efforts to sell short science fiction but each time was soon discouraged. I particularly recall the sf mag that, rather than the cold impersonal standard rejection slip, boasted a helpful checklist whereon the writer’s failings (wooden characters, stilted dialogue, bad grammar etc.) could be considerately checked off for the rejectee’s elucidation. The shortcomings of one story I sent were so egregious that the editorial reader felt compelled not only to check off every available error but to fill the slip with crabbed notations of numerous additional failings as well!

For many years I mostly wrote for what we referred to as “sf fanzines,” which were not usually about sf, oddly, but mostly just personal writing and response, not unlike what you see in internet newsgroups and mailings lists. I wrote mostly personal essays and short humor.

I was in my mid thirties when I finally sold a humorous essay I’d originally written for a fanzine to “Baby Talk.” Which my first sale to any sort of national publication. For a few years I made about one such sale a year. Then I tried my hand for a time writing nonfiction. Among other things I wrote about running and orienteering.

I finally got serious about fiction when I started collaborating with Mary. As for novels, I’d always preferred books to short stories and aspired to have a novel published but I had neglected to actually complete one. The writing group we joined gave me an incentive to do my bit to complete a novel, simply because practically everyone else in the group had managed to do so. Losing my legal editing job in a corporate buyout didn’t hurt either. Aside from giving me (temporarily) some spare time, it also forced me to realize I might as well do something with my life that meant something to me, because handing your life over to a corporation doesn’t even guarantee a livelihood these days.

The first novel completed was a funny (we hoped) mystery, of the body in the library and eccentric suspects mode, but set out in the woods at an orienteering meet. The universal reaction was, “Tells me more about the sport of orienteering than I wanted to know.” So we set to work on ONE FOR SORROW and perhaps some will find that it tells them more about sixth century Constantinople than they want to know. (Hope not.)

What kind of research was involved for your first book?

MR: A powerful amount! I don't know why we are such fools to ourselves, because both our series (that is, the John stories, and the Dorj stories, set in Mongolia) require a lot of research.

Access to the Web has helped enormously, and we have built up a small library of reference books. For John, the three volume Dictionary of Byzantium is particularly useful. But it was getting the smaller details right that sometimes caused the worst headaches. For example, we wound up spending longer on checking a culinary question than writing the entire chapter in which the one reference was made -- and we subsequently left it out anyhow! On the other hand, we subscribe to the "ask the expert" school, and the Web is particularly useful for finding them -- and they all have been most obliging when getting questions about arcane matters from complete strangers, folks they don't know from Adam's housecats.

EM: I didn’t give much thought about the research implications of writing a historical mystery novel ahead of time, luckily. Our first story about John the Eunuch was only four pages long and didn’t require much research, but probably could’ve used more. In a historical there’s practically nothing you can write that you can’t second guess yourself about. A character says, “Wait a minute!” Did Romans have “minutes?.” And what kind of fish is that served at table? Did they fish for swordfish in the sixth century? Were they swimming around the Mediterranean then? And if you don’t second guess yourself, someone else will. Worse yet, the experts don’t all agree! I’m kind of looking forward to getting old enough to write a “historical” set in the sixties.

Who are your influences as a writer?

MR: The classic Golden Age mystery writers, and also Ray Bradbury, for his autumnal feel, and M. R. James, the master of atmosphere.

EM: Oddly, neither Mary nor I had read any mystery novels set in the Roman era before writing ONE FOR SORROW, although we have since. After we began writing it, we made it a particular point not to read any, because we feared being influenced. For my own part, I have to work hard to avoid that, to the point of trying not to read books similar to whatever I might be working on, because I find I tend to write like whichever author I’m reading.

My own favorites include John D.McDonald and Georges Simenon, but I don’t know that there is much Travis McGee in John the Eunuch. Maybe a little Maigret. I also like mysteries featuring a strong puzzle aspect, like those of Agatha Christie and any locked room mystery, even though, I admit it, I have yet to completely figure out a mystery before the author reveals all. For many years my writing was strongly affected by essayists like E.B. White, James Thurber and Robert Benchley, but I can’t say what affect that’s had on my novel writing, except to make even a short novel seem like a very lengthy piece of work.

What does your family think of having a mystery author in their midst?

MR:

Like the body in library, they remain rather silent on the matter. But we like to think they are secretly quite tickled about the situation, unlike the aforementioned departed.

EM:

I suppose it is rather taken for granted, since my dad is a watercolorist, with paintings hanging in many galleries and museums, and my brother is also an artist. I suspect, on the whole, my family would’ve preferred I go into the law or some other ‘real’ career instead of writing. My grandmother, who died many years ago, was an avid mystery reader and my one regret about ONE FOR SORROW is that I will not be able to hand her a copy.

Tell us about plans for future books.

MR: ONE FOR SORROW is the first of six, at least, about John. The second is planned for publication next year.. There'll be more short stories about John, of course, including a locked roomer coming out this autumn in a historical mystery anthology edited by Maxim Jakubowski.

EM: Speaking for myself, I have lots of plans (after all, I’ve had to save all the ideas up over the years!) and not enough time. For the last couple of years, for instance, I’ve returned sporadically to a modern-day mystery, with a rather controversial theme, but haven’t gotten more than 10 or 12 thousand words into it. Our primary focus now is on John the Eunuch.

How can readers get in touch with you?

They may like to visit our Web site at
http://home.epix.net/~maywrite
or perhaps jot an email to us at maywrite@epix.net

Mary and Eric, thanks for joining us! Readers, we have a review of One for Sorrow on our Historical Mysteries page.

November 10, 1999