Interview with Phyllis Entis
“Celine Sutherland’s body is
discovered half-hidden under the Atlantic City Boardwalk, and Damien Dickens,
PI is the prime suspect in his client’s murder. Detective Lt. James Holmes
finds Damien’s gun and wallet near the crime scene, and a search of Damien’s
apartment unearths Celine’s cash-filled, emerald-studded evening bag. Sylvia
Sutherland, Celine’s older sister and CEO of the family’s tobacco empire,
insists that Dickens pulled the trigger. And the Sutherlands carry a lot of
influence in Atlantic City. Even Damien’s secretary has deserted him; gone to
work for the Sutherlands. Only Celine’s younger sister, Susan, believes Damien
is innocent.” Such is the blurb for Canadian
mystery author Phyllis Entis’ first entry in the Damien Dickens mystery series,
The Green Pearl Caper.
15)
Phyllis, long before you made the transition to mystery fiction, you were a
food safety microbiologist. Has that career helped inform your mysteries? Like,
had any of your characters been deliberately poisoned from tainted food?
I’ve used a food safety plot element
in two of the novels: THE CHOCOLATE LABRADOODLE CAPER and THE BLUE MOON CAPER.
In THE CHOCOLATE LABRADOODLE CAPER,
Millie and Damien are engaged by their client to run a background check on a
Canadian chocolate company, which the US client intends to acquire. Without
giving away too much of the plot, all is not well at that chocolate company,
and their products are contaminated. I based the plot element on a true story
of a 1970s-era Salmonella outbreak that was traced back to contaminated
chocolate, but also borrowed some other elements from my own experience in
dealing with the food industry.
The food-related plot in THE BLUE MOON
CAPER was drawn from some instances of contaminated pet foods that I reported
on in eFoodAlert (yes, I still maintain that food safety blog) in the last
couple of years. Hershey, the chocolate labradoodle who is first introduced in
the third book, is accidentally fed some tainted meat by Millie and almost
dies. Part of the novel deals with her determination to track down the source
of the bad meat.
14) Damien Dickens is an odd duck. He’s
straight out of a Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe novel yet he plies his trade in
the late 70’s-early 80’s from the Jersey shore to California. How did you, a
native Canadian, arrive at that combination?
I love watching noir movies and
listening to the old-time radio programs - so easy to do these days with them
streaming over the internet. Also, I grew up reading mysteries of all sorts.
When I was a tween and young teen, I used to babysit my kid sister and my kid
cousin. When both sets of parents had Saturday-night plans, my sister and I
would have a sleep-over at my cousin’s house. One evening, to entertain the
youngsters, I proposed we play ‘Dick Tracy.’ I prepared a set of cryptic clues,
which I hid in various places in the house. The first clue led to the location
of the second one, and so forth, with the final clue leading to my hiding
place. The game was such a hit that it became our regular pastime.
When I was thirteen and my sister was
nine, my parents took my sister and me to Atlantic City for a couple of weeks.
We stayed at the Imperial Hotel, about a block or two away from the Boardwalk,
spent time on the beach, on the Steel Pier, and walking the Boardwalk. I
retained an image of Atlantic City as a slightly seedy, just over-the-hill kind
of place, the perfect locale to situate a down-at-the-heel private detective. I
even set a couple of the scenes at the Imperial.
Atlantic City had its limitations,
though, and I decided to expand the geographic horizons of the novels. I
selected South Florida, notably the area in and around Hollywood, as the
location for most of the second book, as it was an area I knew. My in-laws
retired to Hollywood, Florida in the 1970s and we visited them every year. I
went north to Montreal for the third book. This was a natural, as I was born,
raised and educated in that wonderful city. Then, with the fourth book, I
decided to start moving the action westward, where my husband and I lived. So
Damien and Millie ended up in Carmel, California.
No sooner had I moved them to California
than my husband and I decided to return to Canada. We are now living in
Victoria, British Columbia. Will Damien and Millie follow us? I have no idea -
they haven’t told me yet.
13) I noted every entry in the Damien
Dickens series is color-coded. Was that simply a branding technique or was
there another reason for using a different color in each title?
It was an accident, at least at first.
I never planned to write a novel, much
less a series. In 2011, after a seven-year exile in Stowe, Vermont, my husband
and I returned to the San Diego area, settling in La Jolla. I had spent the
previous three years writing my food safety blog, eFoodAlert, and was feeling
the need to stretch my brain in a different direction.
Learning that the La Jolla library branch
hosted a weekly drop-in writing group, I decided to give it a try. Pen to Paper
turned out to be a write-to-a-prompt group. Each week, our moderator, Diane,
would start the session by offering a prompt - usually verbal, sometimes
visual, occasionally tactile. We would all write at a frenzied pace for 15 or
20 minutes (depending on the size of the group that week and the complexity of
the prompt), shutting off our internal editors and simply getting our ideas
down on paper. Yes, we used pens and paper; laptops were verboten. Once time
was up, we would take turns reading our creations aloud to the group.
The purpose of the weekly session was
to liberate the creative side of our brains. There was no critique. The
fascinating thing for me was how a single prompt could trigger a dozen very
different stories (or more, if we had a particularly large group that week). I
learned an awful lot from listening to those stories!
One week, Diane arrived with an
armload of brown 10 x 12 envelopes, each one containing a different object. She
handed out the envelopes and, at her signal, we withdrew the objects and used
them as our prompts. The object I was given was a string of green, plastic
carnival beads. Instantly, the image of a slinky, buxom blonde wearing a rope of
green pearls flashed into my mind. I imagined her walking down a hallway, her
stiletto heels clicking on the bare floor, and her rope of pearls swishing back
and forth across her chest. I saw her entering the office of a private
investigator to solicit his help in finding her wayward sister.
Somehow, that scene remained with me.
I few weeks later, my husband and I went on a winter vacation. I took along a
pen and notepad just in case. I wrote a few more scenes, read them to my
husband, and THE GREEN PEARL CAPER was born.
Even then, I hadn’t thought about
writing a series. But, the characters of Damien and Millie stayed with me. I
wanted to know what happened to their relationship. I wanted to learn about
their pasts, about their futures. So I began the second book. When I was
thinking about a title for the sequel, the idea of using a color in the title
as a branding tool led me to THE WHITE RUSSIAN CAPER.
Now it’s like eating Lay’s potato
chips. Once I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop.
12) Meryl Streep once said she created
a secret for every character she played that was never revealed in the movie.
Tell the readers at home something about Damien Dickens that was never
mentioned in the novels.
This is a tough question to answer.
Every time Damien tells me something about himself that I didn’t know
beforehand, I include it in the work-in-progress. Likewise with Millie. I’m
sure they both still have a few secrets; however, they haven’t shared them with
me yet.
11) You’d just launched THE
BLUE MOON CAPER
last December 8th, I believe it was. Tell us a bit about what that’s
about.
Millie and Damien are engaged in
separate investigations in this book. Damien is called back to Atlantic City to
help an old friend, Bruno, who has confessed to a murder he didn’t commit.
Millie is on the trail of tainted meat, thanks to a Carmel resident who
believes her son is trying to poison her, and has engaged Team Dickens to
uncover the proof.
However, if you scratch below the
surface of THE BLUE MOON CAPER, you will discover that it is about
relationships: between Millie and Damien, between Millie and her brother/son
(trying to avoid a spoiler here), between Bruno and his mother. Ultimately, it
is a love story.
10) I assume you’re chugging away on
Book Six of the Damien Dickens series. But are you planning on writing
standalones, spinoffs in the future?
I have started thinking about Book
Six. I even have a tentative title (which I am not ready to share yet), and a
basic idea for one of the plot elements. If my idea proves practical, I shall
need to do more than the usual amount of research before I start writing the
first draft.
My next project is a non-fiction. In my
guise as the FoodBugLady on eFoodAlert, I have learned more than I cared to
know about the foibles and fumbles of the pet food industry. I have been
researching this over the last year, and plan to begin writing A DOG’S
BREAKFAST in January.
I have thought about writing a
standalone, but haven’t pursued that idea as yet. The last year was filled with
distractions relating to our move from California back to Canada. I am hoping
to scrape together larger swatches of creative time now that we are mostly
settled in place. One concept that has been running through my mind is to base
a story on my own family history, which I have researched off and on over the
last several years.
9) Describe your typical writing day.
Do you use a laptop or notebooks exclusively, both and do you set daily word
goals? If so, how many a day?
It’s confession time. I don’t have a
typical writing day; I don’t set goals. And (gasp!) I don’t write every day (or
even every week when I’m between projects). Sometimes I write in the morning,
sometimes in the afternoon, and sometimes in the evening. It depends on what
else is going on in our lives on any given day.
When I started to write the first
book, I scribbled in a notebook and then transcribed to my desktop computer. As
I get older, I find that my writing becomes ever more difficult to read, even
for me. If I’m at home, I write directly on my desktop computer. I’m hoping
that we’ll have some time before spring to acquire some comfortable patio
furniture. If so, when the weather is fine, I might work outdoors on my laptop
computer.
I never set word count goals. If I’m
in the midst of a first draft, I might set a long-range goal (first draft
complete by the end of July, for example). Usually, when I sit down to work, I
try to complete a scene. This might take half a chapter or even a complete
chapter, depending on the scene. That’s about as serious as I get regarding
goals.
I’m the same way when it comes to
reading goals. What difference how many books I read in a given month or year?
What is important is whether or not I am enjoying my leisure reading, not how
many books I push myself to plow through.
8) What do you see for the future of
mystery fiction? Does it have room for new tropes and conceits or do you think
the old ones should just be reinvented as you’ve done?
There’s always room for something new.
Something creative. I wish I could be the one who comes up with it. Failing
that, I shall just muddle along with the old tried-and-true.
I think that fiction, like fashion, goes
through cycles of popularity. Some years, romance is all the rage; other years,
it’s the turn of mystery, science fiction, paranormal fiction, or fantasy. I
believe there will always be a solid core of fans for each of these genres.
7) You’re obviously very enamored of
your pooch, Shalom. Has she made her way into your series or will she make an
appearance in the future?
You’re asking whether Hershey will
find himself with a baby sister one day. I really don’t know. Hershey is
modeled on our first dog, a chocolate Australian Labradoodle named Quintzy, who
died suddenly just as I was starting to write the third book. I hadn’t planned
on introducing a dog into the series; THE CHOCOLATE LABRADOODLE CAPER became a
sort of memorial to him. The cover image for the book was one taken of Quintzy
just a few days after he joined our family, and I use the name Quintzy Press
for my self-publishing activities.
Shalom, who is an Australian Cobberdog
from the same breeder (in fact, Quintzy and she are distant cousins), joined
our family about three months after Quintzy’s death. Some of her mannerisms and
activities (the head tilt, the beach romps) have found their way into
descriptions of Hershey’s behaviors, but I have no plans to add her into the
character mix. At least, not today.
6) Considering the similarity in
climates, do you see Canadian noir one day becoming as prominent in world
fiction as Scandinavian noir?
I doubt that climate has anything to
do with the popularity of a particular series. I think there needs to be a
certain critical mass of writers for a “regional sub-genre” to develop.
My exposure to Scandinavian noir is
limited to Stieg Larssons’s Dragon Tattoo series. Although well-written, I
found his books too violent and gory for my taste. Having moved back to Canada
relatively recently, I would be hard-pressed to point to a Canadian noir writer
of note. The Canadian mystery writers I have enjoyed the most are Louise Penny,
whose Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series is phenomenal, and Maureen Jennings.
Her Inspector Murdoch series is a police procedural set in Toronto in the
1890s. I’m hoping to expand my exposure to Canadian mystery and noir writers
(if the latter even exists) now that I have access to a Canadian library.
5) Among mystery writers, who were
your biggest influences while growing up?
As was the case for many girls of my
generation, I cut my teeth on Nancy Drew. I devoured that entire series,
reading the books over and over again. I graduated from Carolyn Keene to Agatha
Christie (both the Miss Marple and the Hercule Poirot series) and Ngaio Marsh.
At the time, while I loved to read mysteries, I had no thought of writing them.
That came much later.
You haven’t asked the question, but
the current (or recent) mystery writers who have influenced me the most are Sue
Grafton and Louise Penny. My narrative style and my decision to set my books in
the early 1980s owe a lot to Grafton. However, as the years have passed and I
have developed and improved my skills, I find myself absorbing more and more
from Louise Penny’s work. She has a wonderful ability to create
three-dimensional characters and to bring their emotions and motivations to
life. Every time I find myself trying to figure out how to do something I haven’t
tried before, I go back to Penny’s books for advice and inspiration. I have
never met her (that would be a top item on my bucket list if I had one), but
she has been my teacher, my mentor and my muse.
4) Are there any No no’s that you
would never put into your fiction? If so, what are they?
There are several items on my TO-DON’T
list. I do not include erotic love scenes, although I have some romantic
passages, mainly between Damien and Millie. I do not write serial killers. I do
not rely heavily on swear words (although I throw in the occasional cuss where
the situation warrants). While my books are (except for the third book) murder
mysteries, I do not subscribe to gratuitous violence or gore. I go only as far
as the story demands. And I never, never leave the reader dangling on the edge
of a cliff at the end of the book. There is usually a transition at the end
that leads to an opening for the next book, but each novel is complete in
itself.
3) Does your training as a
professional scientist help you in your fiction-writing?
Aside from using some of my
experiences to generate plot lines, there are two aspects of my science
training that help me in my writing: attention to detail and clarity of
presentation of information.
Over the years - the decades, actually
- of my scientific activities, I have written hundreds of reports, some for
internal use when I worked for the Canadian government, and others for
publication in scientific journals. I also served as a peer reviewer and was on
the editorial board of one journal for a couple of years. I have been taught -
and also have trained myself - to read with a critical eye, which is a big help
when I am revising my early drafts, and to support conclusions with evidence, a
useful talent when writing a mystery.
My science writing also has trained me
to ‘write lean’—to avoid flowery phrases, passive speech, and unnecessary
adverbs. As a result, my first drafts tend to be heavy on dialogue and action,
and light on scene-setting. I beef up the latter during the course of my second
and third drafts. I believe this approach has helped me to keep the story
flowing at a brisk pace, especially in my last couple of books as I’ve become
more adept at writing fiction.
2) Plotter, pantser or plantser?
Pantster, mostly. I start a new
project with a couple of plot elements in mind, or an idea for a pivotal scene.
While I have an idea of where I want to go, I usually don’t know how I’m going
to get there. Therefore, I don’t try to prepare a chapter outline.
When I started to write THE WHITE
RUSSIAN CAPER and decided to set part of the story in Florida, I had in mind a
climactic scene on one of the drawbridges over the IntraCoastal Waterway. I
didn’t know which characters would be involved in that scene or how they would
find themselves at the top of a raised drawbridge; I just knew I needed to work
that into the story.
This approach has benefits, but can be
risky, too. I like working alongside Damien and Millie as they pursue their
investigations. They often surprise me with their findings and their actions.
On the other hand, I have written my way into a dead end on more than one
occasion. In THE GOLD DRAGON CAPER, I reached one of those impasses about
10,000 words into the first draft. I had to backtrack about half that distance
to the fork in the plot road and take the other path. Fortunately, I was able
to use some of the discarded material later on in the book.
1) What’s next for Phyllis Entis?
Book 6 in the Damien Dickens series,
of course. Also, an exposé of pet food industry practices, which I have been
researching for the last year or two. I am hoping to release at least one of
these two books by the end of 2020.
In addition, I plan to continue my
eFoodAlert food safety blog, which I typically update twice weekly with links
to human and pet food recalls, and occasional opinion pieces or background
pieces on food safety.
If
you’re interested, Phyllis’ books are available from Amazon in ebook (including
Kindle Unlimited), paperback and audiobook.
THE GREEN PEARL CAPER: https://www.amazon.com/GREEN-PEARL-CAPER-DICKENS-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00VF7YF5S/
THE WHITE RUSSIAN CAPER: https://www.amazon.com/WHITE-RUSSIAN-CAPER-DICKENS-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B014Z8IJLY/
THE GOLD DRAGON CAPER: https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Dragon-Caper-Dickens-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B07C9WY152/
As for her
website and social media accounts, here are links to each of the individual
ones:
Twitter
handle: @PromptProse
The
paperback editions are also available from Barnes & Noble online. The
audiobooks are available from Audible and iTunes in addition to Amazon.
Barnes
& Noble links (paperback only)
Audible.com links for audiobooks
posted by jurassicpork @ Sunday, December 29, 2019
1 comments
1 Comments:
Thanks for the interview, Robert. I enjoyed my vist to Gotham City.
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