Marcia Talley
Award-winning Mystery Writer
Mystery Talks
 The Mind of A Mystery Writer
Demystifying the Mystery: Tips on Writing Crime Fiction
Early Female Sleuths: From L___ to Nancy Drew
Surviving to Write Another Day
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford: Partners for Life
After the Golden Age in America: Emma Lathen and Other Women Mystery Writers of the 50s and 60s
Confessions of a Serial Novelist: Or, How I Wrote Novels with 12 Other Women and Lived to Tell the Tale
The Mind of a Mystery Writer
Ms. Talley discusses her background as a writer, her influences and where she gets her ideas, focusing on the real stories behind her novels. Copiously illustrated with PowerPoint slides, the talk includes photographs of the actual settings for each of her award-winning mysteries. Ms. Talley also discusses the writing/publishing process and gives readers a sneak preview of projects that are “in the works”. A question and answer period follows.
Approximately 40 minutes, not including Q&A
Demystifying the Mystery: Tips on Writing Crime Fiction
 From “where do you get your ideas?” to the final “The End”, a concise discussion of the roles of plot, character and dialog in the modern mystery novel, with tips on point-of-view and planting clues for the aspiring mystery writer. A question and answer period follows. Includes bibliography and tip sheet handouts.
Approximately 60 minutes, not including Q&A
Early Female Sleuths: From L__ to Nancy Drew
 Ms. Talley discusses the female sleuth in British and American popular fiction from 1837 – 1930, contrasting the development of the female detective with the coincident pressure for women’s rights. Liberally illustrated, with anecdotes and quotations from nineteenth and early twentieth century novels.
Approximately 40 minutes, not including Q&A
 Surviving to Write Another Day
Inspired by a fan's question - "Are you Hannah?" -- Marcia shares how a cancer diagnosis changed her life, giving her "permission" to leave a high-profile library career to concentrate on her writing. Follow her development as a writer from the early years as a daughter of a globe-trotting Marine officer through the day her novel -- featuring breast cancer survivor and amateur sleuth, Hannah Ives -- won a writing contest that helped Marcia land an agent and a three-book publication deal. Copiously illustrated with PowerPoint slides, the talk includes photographs of the actual settings for each of her award-winning mysteries. Ms. Talley also discusses the writing/publishing process and gives readers a sneak preview of projects that are "in the works". A question and answer period follows.
Approximately 40 minutes, not including Q&A
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford: Partners for Life
 Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are unique among the catalog of Agatha Christie's detectives. They began as partners in The Secret Adversary in 1922 and were still actively detecting as happy retirees 51 years later in Postern of Fate. The five Tommy and Tuppence novels span the entire length of Christie's career, and of all her characters, are the only ones who age naturally. It is interesting to note that their adventures are contemporaneous with the publication date of the novels and the lives of the fictional couple roughly parallel Christie's own. "While researching this paper," Ms. Talley comments, "it was often difficult to remember where a piece of information came from. Was it taken from one of the Tommy and Tuppence novels or from Agatha Christie's autobiography?" Talk first delivered on August 21, 1999 at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, U. K.
Approximately 40 minutes, not including Q&A
After the Golden Age in America: Emma Lathen and Other Women Mystery Writers of the 50s and 60s
In the period following the Second World War, women writers were taking the crime novel in new and innovative directions, introducing non-traditional protagonists, topics and places that helped pave the way for Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone who, in turn, opened the door for Sara Paretsky's VI Warshawski and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone. The creativity and talent of these women served as models for writers to come; their influence on later authors is almost all that remains today as, sadly most are no longer in print. Ms. Talley focuses on one of these authors, Emma Lathen (Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart) who wrote enormously clever and witty books featuring Wall Street banker John Putnam Thatcher.
Approximately 40 minutes, not including Q&A
Confessions of a Serial Novelist: Or, How I Wrote Novels with 12 Other Women and Lived to Tell the Tale
  Ms. Talley is editor/author of two wacky collaborative serial novels, Naked Came and Phoenix and I'd Kill for That, set in a luxury health spa and an exclusive gated community, respectively. She presents a history of the serial novel beginning in 1914, describing its development and transformation over the years from the multi-part serial radio broadcasts of the 1930s through the sexually liberated forms of the late 1960s up to the present day. The talk is a revised and expanded version of an article Marcia wrote for the July 2004 issue of Mystery Scene.
Approximately 20 minutes, not including Q&A
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