Claudia H. Long is a literary marvel. While raising a family and working as a lawyer-mediator, she has managed to write multiple books (one of which will soon be a feature-length film), in a variety of genres. As she says herself, she doesn’t need a lot of sleep. It’s a great honor to have the chance to catch up with Claudia in this Spotlight interview and celebrate the launch of her new and wonderful novel, Murder Without a Duck.
I was both delighted and on the edge of my seat from the get-go reading Murder Without a Duck. How do you achieve and maintain that balance between “cozy” and spine-chilling?
There is a wonderful anthology edited by Phyllis M. Betz called Writing the Cozy Mystery, and one of the “rules” discussed is: no swearing. Another is: no sex. Those rules are often broken, but lightly. I had a hard time with them! But I did manage not to have much of either. I ended up with what I call an “edge-of-cozy” mystery. I think the key is to keep the violence present but off-screen, in the background. We all know that murder is terrible, that bad guys do bad-guy-things. But the focus is on the relationships, the town, and the protagonist’s personal development. In this case, the villain’s motives are probably the most chilling, and yet they are very much in the villain’s head.
Much of the levity in this mystery begins when we learn that Sal, the narrator, has come to live in a California town called Simpato, which the natives call Sin-Pato, which is Spanish for “without a duck.” Talk about the pervasiveness of the duck/no duck theme and how it holds (or doesn’t hold) the community together.
Clearly a funny theme that runs in the background, the Duck motif has a bit of a serious side to it as well. Duck jokes abound in town, giving the little community a sense of identity, entertaining visitors and tourists, and letting everyone have a bit of fun. But what of the name of the town? Forced by a drunken town founder to bear the truncated name of Simpato, because he couldn’t be bothered to write out Simpatico, the name is a constant reminder of the destruction of what had been a thriving Native community before settlers, miners, and ranchers decimated the population and took over the land as their own. A joke is a way of diffusing pain. There’s a bit of that in Sin-pato, along with the Duck puns!
Sal’s parents (presumably deceased), owned the house she has moved into. Her mother was the community’s much-loved “keeper.” Now Sal is expected to follow in her footsteps. Explain the keeper concept.
One of the most intriguing concepts in the book, the Keeper of Secrets is an invention of mine to provide the town, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, with a place to let off steam. Everyone needs a confidant, and one who is sworn to secrecy—and yet won’t assign Hail Marys as penance—is a valuable commodity in Simpato. It also lets Sal into secrets that as a relative outsider she would never hear.
For all that there is a lot of horseplay among the characters, the plot line is actually built around some serious issues. Which one means the most to you?
I knew a lot of kids who struggled in high school as a result of social pressure to perform, and to me the concept of shame is terribly powerful. With internet shaming leading to suicide, and the fragile state of a teen’s self-esteem, I wanted to explore, within the confines of a mystery, what shame can lead to. I think the “villain” committed terrible crimes but was subjected to such shame that the villain’s actions may be understandable.
Your characters come to life in these pages. There is the annoying but trustworthy August; the Little Sisters of the Earth, a collective of women with their own agendas; Scooter the explosive librarian; Devon the circumspect police officer … the list goes on. Which of your characters is your personal favorite? Who was most fun to write?
You know what they say: there’s a little piece of the author in every character, from the protagonist to the truck-loader! But my favorite character to write was the librarian, Scooter. What a mess that guy is! What a burden he carries. And so terribly gorgeous! Though Sister Marigold was a hoot, too …
Having read your previous series, the Zara and Lilly Mysteries, I know you are a big fan of having your protagonist solve problems with some help from her sister. In Murder Without a Duck, Sal’s sister, Dahlia, is alluded to and even sends Sal a few helpful text-messages, but we don’t actually meet her. Will she make an appearance in forthcoming books in the Simpato series?
I felt bad about that! Poor Dahlia, sidelined to tarot-reading in Maui for a whole book! I have an intense relationship with my own sister, which is definitely evident in the Zara and Lilly series, but I felt she needed a break from showing up in all my plots. In Book 2, though, Dahlia does have a greater role. And who knows, maybe she’ll pull a “Lilly” and get all the best lines in Book 3!
The plotlines in your mysteries are satisfyingly complex. Yet by the end of each book you have neatly connected the dots between all the events that have occurred. Craftwise, how do you work that out? Do you start with the crimes and work backwards?
This is the first book I’ve ever written without an intensive outline, completely covering all plot points before I start. (And when my characters go off script, as they always do, I usually redo the outline …) I wrote half of Duck by the seat of my pants, something I never do. Halfway through, I panicked and outlined the rest.
I was in an angry place in November 2023, after the horrific events of October 7, and I just wanted to write joy and exuberance back into my life. When I sat down on November 1 to write Murder Without a Duck, I knew who died, and who did it, and some of the “why,” but never before did I just let loose and write. This time, it was what I had to do. Needless to say, Book 2 has a detailed outline for my characters to ignore!
Claudia H. Long is a lawyer with over forty years of practice in California. She recently moved from the San Francisco suburbs to the tiny town of Calistoga, in the Napa Valley. She’s a long-time writer of literary fiction, including Josefina’s Sin, the Latino Book Awards-winning The Duel for Consuelo and Chains of Silver, as well as the Zara and Lilly mystery series. The first in that series, Nine Tenths of the Law, has been optioned for a feature film. Murder without a Duck, A Simpato Mystery (Sibylline Press Digital First), is her fourth mystery and the first that falls squarely in the humorous-edge-of-cozy category, with wine, gossip, and bad duck puns! When she’s not working or writing, she’s a passionate weaver, a creative cook, and an absolutely doting grandmother. Find her at www.claudiahlong.com.