Our speaker for November 1 - Joan Blacher, PhD

Today’s guest speaker was Joan Blacher, PhD.  Joan is a psychotherapist by profession and has also been a professor.  She came to us today as an author of mystery novels!

With her background as a tenured professor at Cal Lutheran as well as psychologist, she has written quite a bit.  When she left Cal Lutheran, she wanted to get away from all the research required for her professional work, and she decided to try writing fiction.  She had previously written some short stories while attending a class at UCLA and wanted to go on from there.

Why the mystery genre?  She grew up with her father reading Sherlock Holmes, while her mother read Agatha Christie.  She also liked analyzing problems and looking for solutions.  So she dove into this new challenge.  She was surprised to discover she still had to do extensive research, sometimes involving trips and interviews as well as some formal training.

She actually began by writing two books at the same time:  Difficult Teens, which she co-authored, uses her professional background to guide parents through these years with their children, and Murder Canyon, a mystery novel.  (She said she would never try writing two books at once again.)

Why the setting – a murdered body found in a rural canyon?  It’s taken from actual events.  A body was dumped in a canyon not too far from their home in Somis, and then, six months later, another!

She gave us the three basic elements in a mystery:

1)      Plot.  Mystery writers need to be illusionists, trying to mystify the readers.  They look for plots on the darker side of life.  Examples are everywhere.  The plot is the reason to tell the story.  Motivation and the manner of death are all important.

2)      Character:  the victim, the killer and the sleuth (who may be professional or amateur).  The sleuth must be compelling and have a reason to be involved in the case.  Then you must drag the sleuth through roadblocks and danger, twists and turns.  Other characters must be introduced and developed.  Some will also be suspicious, and must be believable and thus add to the complexity of the case.

3)      Settings create atmosphere.  An urban setting may involve hard-boiled characters, whereas in an urban setting, those involved may be more laid-back.  Settings can also call up a mood and a response by the reader.  To make a setting realistic requires a lot of research.

In Murder Canyon, she started by writing the ending, and then worked backwards.

Thanks, Joan, for a very interest and informative explanation of the work involved in writing a mystery novel!

Rocky Ludes