Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guests Rosemary and Larry Mild. Rosemary and Larry Mild coauthored the Dan & Rivka Sherman Mysteries; the Paco and the Molly Mysteries; Hawaii adventure/thrillers Cry Ohana and Honolulu Heat; and four volumes of short stories, including their new one, Charlie and the Magic Jug and Other Stories. 

Many of their stories appear in anthologies. The Milds, a happy husband-and-wife team, make their home in Honolulu, where they cherish time with their daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.

Bee: When did you first have a desire to write? How did this desire manifest itself?

Larry: I was infected with the writing bug when I was a freshman in college. But it didn’t really fester until forty years later when I married Rosemary (a second marriage for us both) and we formed a writing partnership. 

Living in Severna Park, Maryland, we had great resources to learn our craft. We took creative writing courses in the Johns Hopkins Odessey program and mystery writing at Anne Arundel Community College, where we later taught the course.

All of this led to publishing our first Paco and Molly murder mystery, Locks and Cream Cheese, and our first collection of short stories, Murder Fantasy, and Weird Tales.

Now, after nineteen books with more in the works, there’s no cure for our writing.

Rosemary: Locks and Cream Cheese is a traditional “cozy” mystery, filled with intrigue and humor. Inspiration for the characters actually came from our family. 

Dr. Avi Kepple is based on Rosemary’s psychoanalyst father; Molly was his housekeeper/cook.

 In Locks she’s a shrewd lady who helps Detective Paco solve crimes. With only a tenth-grade education, she skews the English language. “I have to take my calcium so I don’t get osteoferocious.” 

My father kept a secret list of her witticisms and gave it to us, triggering our inspiration for the book.

Bee: How completely do you develop your characters before beginning to write?

Larry: I develop my protagonists (and possibly a foil or an antagonist) as fully and as completely as I can, relying on them to lead me through the thin original plot that I have devised. Rosemary says I’m the more devious than she is, so I make up all our plots and write the first two drafts. 

She rolls up her sleeves and fully develops the characters, giving them not only more individual looks and dress, but personality as well. She also polishes the scene settings.

Rosemary: I love working with Larry’s ingenious plots. Often, I find a germ of a good scene and joyfully expand it. For instance, in Death Steals A Holy Book, he tells, second-hand, of an argument between two women in a popular Annapolis restaurant. I turned it into a real-time scene, where they end up slugging each other, and the maitre d’ kicks them out.

Bee: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself?

Larry: With the exception of the covers designed by our former publishers, I do all our covers now, using Adobe’s InDesign software. 

The background is usually a solid color or a pictured pattern, which I stretch across the front, spine, and back covers. I try to select a really dynamic image for the front cover. 

For On the Rails, I chose a looming, racing-to-the-fore train picture. Next, we tackle a blurb for the back cover—a marketing synopsis, a task that requires a lot of give-and-take from the two of us. Discussion and negotiation, no fisticuffs.

Rosemary: I work hard to create a tempting blurb that’s not too wordy. I keep in mind Stephen King’s warning: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

Bee: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?

Larry: I have always admired Ken Follett, Robert Ruark, and James Clavell for their historical adventure thrillers. 

These men have given me the chance to ride along vicariously to other places, other cultures, and other times. On the ride, I have picked up a lot of useful knowledge and technique. Follett’s attention to detail is especially amazing.

Rosemary: Right now, I’m enjoying the contemporary legal thrillers by Paul Levine. Sharp courtroom scenes, fresh dialogue, biting insights. Among my favorite authors and their books, I liked best are: Frederick Forsyth (Day of the Jackal); Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train); Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities); and George Eliot (Middlemarch). 

At age fourteen, my favorite book was the notorious Forever Amber. When she unbuttoned her blouse for a man at a carnival, I thought it was totally thrilling!

Bee: This question is for Bertie. You had a very tough decision to make between staying with your mother, regardless of your stepfather’s abuse or leaving home without a job, during the Great Depression. 

Most women, back in your day, wouldn’t have thought they had a choice. How did you get the courage to strike off on your own?

Bertie: You can’t pretend to know me. I have spent the last three years away at a teachers’ college and haven’t been home even once in all that time, not even during the school’s intersession breaks. 

Why? Fred Stoltz, my lecherous stepfather, has a history of attempting to abuse me. The decision was really whether to come home at all. I had no job, nor anywhere else to go. 

I do love my mother, but not the alcoholic ghost of who she once was. Now she’s toady to that monster she lives with. My leaving was an act of self-preservation. I left without knowing where I was going, blindly, a thoughtless move. The real courage came when I had to hop onboard a moving freight train.

Bee: How has being parents impacted how you both write?

Larry: My two children, five grandchildren, and three precious grandkids (between eight months and four years old) engage me in all sorts of delightful activities. 

Without them, how would I know how a character of any given age reacts to pain, discouragement, or euphoria? The older ones engage me in all sorts of discussions and I get ideas when they relate their exploits.

Rosemary: I can’t stop gushing. My two adult stepdaughters are like my own daughters. Both are not only loving, but also gifted artists and art teachers, as well as exceptional parents to their own broods.

Bee: What do you do when you are not writing?

Larry: Currently, I enjoy reading in many genres, watching football, and doing crossword puzzles, as I am walker- and wheelchair-bound 

A score of years ago, we played tennis, swam, and took walks on a nearby trail. Although I shall have my ninety-first birthday next week, I still write four to five hours per day, five to six days a week.

 Not bad for an old fogy, eh? I look to keep on writing.

Rosemary: Larry has a great sense of humor and also loves to tell corny puns. I always laugh, which I think helps sustain our marriage! He has a store of wisdom, but never preaches. 

As a retired electronics engineer, he’s a good problem-solver for our household glitches. I do all our driving; luckily, he’s my navigator. I have a terrible sense of direction.

In a restaurant I almost need a GPS to get myself from the ladies’ room back to our table.

Bee: What are you currently working on?

Larry: I just finished the second draft of our fourth Paco and Molly mystery, titled The Moaning Lisa, and passed it on to Rosemary for her desecration. 

I also recently finished my drafts of Kent and Katcha, a spy novel set in Russia and Finland. We have just emailed two short stories to an anthology, sponsored by Hawaii Fiction Writers, with a central theme of “Lost in the Stacks and Other Library Tales.” 

One is a mystery and the other is a love story. I’m also mapping out more Copper and Goldie stories with an eye toward a second book to Copper and Goldie, 13 Tails of Mystery and Suspense in Hawaii.

Rosemary: I have a second writing life: personal essays. My newest book is In My Next Life I’ll Get It Right. 

But I’m most proud of my two memoirs of our beloved daughter Miriam Luby Wolfe, whom we lost in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December, 1988. 

She was twenty, my only child, and one of the thirty-five Syracuse University students on board, studying for the fall semester in London. All our books are available on Amazon and as e-books. (www.magicile.com)

Bee: I am so sorry for your loss, Rosemary! I remember that bombing from the news. Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Follow Here To Read Bee's Review of On The Rails