I often get asked how I got my start as a professional author. I expect most people who do what I do get asked this question. For me, it dates back to my childhood and my very first novel, which would eventually set me on the road to fame and fortune. Okay, some fame. I’m still waiting for the fortune! I was between ten and eleven years old when I wrote it. My mother held on to it ever since, as mothers tend to do with such things – and it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve been carting the blasted thing around with me for years. It’s been stored inside a box in a closet.
The Wrong Number Was Bad – a gruesome murder mystery that would make the likes of Stephen King hide under his bed. Check out my retro-noir cover art, since, in addition to being a budding young author, I was also a budding young artist. My artistic inspiration for the cover likely stemmed from watching too many of those vintage horror Hammer films my dad got me into as a child. Looking at it now, I have to wonder if the late great Bette Davis might’ve been my “model.” The novel contains all the elements that go into the making of a successful murder mystery: blood, sinister people, creepy phone calls, and, of course, murder!
My most vivid memory of writing the book was when I’d accompany my mother and stepfather on their music gigs. They performed on Sunday nights at a Hungarian cultural club (my mother on piano and occasionally accordion, stepfather on violin, accompanied by a cimbalom player and a drummer). These were lively evenings when those from the expat Hungarian community, a number of whom had fled persecution in their homeland, could relive better days – though it wasn’t unusual to see people crying into their glasses of Bikavér during a sad Hungarian song, and there are many. In fact, my familial homeland has the dubious distinction of having produced a song considered the most depressing song ever written. So it’s probably no surprise that I kept asking the band to play some cheerier Romanian songs or even a Russian ditty, “Ochi Chernye” being a personal favourite, as I’d had enough of those “miserable Hungarian songs.”
On these Sunday evenings, it wasn’t uncommon to have musicians from the Roma community join the band, as well as popular Hungarian singers who’d flown in from New York City or Los Angeles. And just in case you’re wondering if I ever got roped into some of these evenings as a performer, the answer is yes. I recall being onstage one New Year’s Eve, champagne glass in hand (it might’ve been filled with ginger ale), toasting in the new year and then, ceremoniously, smashing the glass to the floor. No one was harmed in the making of this endeavour.
As people around me danced the Csárdás, I’d be working diligently on my novel, occasionally chatting with the adults who shared my table. Needless to say, some of these chats got very interesting, especially when I told them what I was doing, since it definitely wasn’t my schoolwork! I remember discussions about the best way to get rid of a dead body (in reference to a character in my book, not someone I’d offed), with one woman in my coterie helpfully suggesting quicklime. So quicklime it was! And the rest, as they say, is history.
I’m still waiting to hear from one of the Big Five with a lucrative publishing deal for The Wrong Number Was Bad. Frankly, I can’t understand what’s taking them so long. All I can say is they’d better get a move on, since Netflix is bound to want to snap this up before Amazon Studios gets wind of it. The film business can be very cutthroat. Mind you, so can the publishing business.
For those of you who simply can’t wait, I have good news. I’ve got a new book coming out this month – and yes, it contains plenty of murder! Women Who Murder: An International Collection of Deadly True Crime Tales will be my eighth true crime book in what has been a nonstop whirlwind of true crime.
And better still, unlike my as-yet unpublished childhood literary masterpiece (an excerpt of which is provided), Women Who Murder is available to readers worldwide.
Deadly dames and murderous damsels. Can it get any better than that?
