A COUPLE OF INTERVIEWS ON OTHER BLOGS

I was just interviewed by Angie Azur for her blog at http://teazurs.blogspot.com/2013/09/interview-with-jerold-last-mystery.html?spref=fb.  She asked me some very unusual questions as she explored my process for writing mysteries.  It was fun.  Please visit Angie’s blog and have a look.

I also was interviewed by Jessica Kong on her blog a couple of days ago.  You can find this posted at http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/interview-with-mystery-author-jerold-last?xg_source=activity.  This interview focuses on my newest novel, The Deadly Dog Show, and on me (blush!).

Where Do All of Those Characters in the Books Come From?

As we try to create the imaginary worlds of our books, to be believable we have to rely on reality for inspiration.  I try to use the places I’ve lived in and visited in South America as settings in my South American Mystery novels.  These novels have to be populated with people, both the central characters like my detectives Roger Bowman and Suzanne Foster, and all of the rest of the characters they will meet as they investigate the murder or murders.  We quickly encounter a problem of how to make these other characters into distinct individuals rather than just 20 clones named Pedro or Jose.  To solve this problem I try to use real people I’ve met in South America as models for fictional characters in these books by visualizing someone I actually met for a physical description or taking part of their personas to start building my fictional characters.  Let me introduce you to the path from reality to book pages of a few of the suspects in the murders being investigated and a couple of the minor characters from two of my novels.