Episode 28: Crafting Characters For Cozy Mysteries with Lynn Bohart

Angela Haas (00:18)
Welcome to episode 28. I'm Angela Haas and I'm here with my co-host Cassie Newell and this month we're doing a character study today we're talking with our special guest Lynn Bohart about her characters and what makes them unique. Ms. Bohart is not your average mystery writer.

She holds a master's degree in theater and spent 35 plus years in the nonprofit world.

She has 11 paranormal mystery novels, two short story books, and three nonfiction books on Amazon. Having spent so much of her career working with nonprofits, it was natural for her to include social justice issues in many of her books. As a result, she has written about sex trafficking, black market adoption, bullying, child abuse, and homelessness to draw attention to those issues and hopefully get people inspired to get involved.

Lynn, welcome. It's so good to have you with us.

Lynn Bohart (01:19)
Thank

you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.

Cassie Newell (01:22)
Yes, thank you.

Angela Haas (01:22)
Yes, there's so much

to talk to you about. in relation to characters, how do you pull in those social justice issues, And then how does that relate to the characters you are creating in your novels?

Lynn Bohart (01:38)
You know, started it, my first book, my first mystery book was a standalone and then I started a detective series. And when I started a cozy mystery series,

I made a of a strategic decision and that was to make it what I call now next-gen generation cozy mystery. Cozy mysteries typically are no graphic sex, violence, bad language. And I decided to push the envelope a little bit because I read a of cozies and a lot of them I was left.

sort of disappointed because ⁓ they weren't edgy enough. They were just so vanilla. And that part of that was because of the crimes themselves. And so I remember, the first book in the series, Inn Keeping with Murder, it's I and N, because the lead character owns an inn on Mercer Island here, which is in ⁓ the middle of Lake Washington here in the Seattle area. And

Angela Haas (02:17)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (02:39)
and I wanted to make them funny, kind of a la the Stephanie Plum novels.

Angela Haas (02:41)
Right. ⁓

Cassie Newell (02:45)
Yes.

Lynn Bohart (02:46)
And I came up with a great idea that, you know, the first

novel was going to be one of their, this group of older women. They were also going to be older women at that time in their, in my age, which was their early sixties. And, and I wanted it to make her snarky and funny. And so I started out, you know, writing the, you know, the opening chapter where one of their best friends and their book club fell dead in her peach cobbler, literally split right in

And you know, and I gave it to my critique group. They all loved it. It took me I Bet you four years to finally I Just got stalled. It's the only time I've really had writer's block where I just went, okay great I have this concept of ⁓ the characters and Where what's the story?

until I saw a documentary on sex trafficking and I went, bingo, that's it. That's what, because I hate sex trafficking. It's just one of those things that just really, drives me nuts. And, of course, then when I did my research,

Cassie Newell (03:40)
Mm.

Angela Haas (03:45)
Hmm.

Lynn Bohart (03:57)
it's pervasive around the world. I mean, around the world. In fact, I was working at the time in Renton, Washington, which is a fairly small town and I was running a community foundation. had a ⁓ female police officer come and talk to us and she talked about the fact that because we had kind of a major bus transit hub in Renton, that was an area where a lot of the sex trafficking happened where

Angela Haas (04:01)
Yes, yeah.

Mm.

Lynn Bohart (04:27)
they would move women, girls from city to city off in offices.

And I just thought, my God, it's like happening right here. So that's kind of what kicked it off. because I was in the non- and people really loved it. I got a number of comments from people at the back of that book.

So that was the reason for the murder. That's the crime that the murder is committed around. And at the back of the book, I had a short paragraph saying, hey, this is, again, this is pervasive around the world. If it's something you want to get involved in, here's some opportunities. And so I just decided to do it again and again and again. so I've done the fact, homelessness was my last book, No Place Like Home for a Murder, because Seattle

really, really struggles. And so I use the homeless population as ⁓ who the predators were prey on. They were literally abducting people off the street thinking no one would miss them.

Angela Haas (05:19)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (05:36)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (05:37)
and for a long time that was true and ⁓ killing them for a very specific reason. And oddly enough, I ⁓ ended up talking ⁓ to a woman who had been homeless ⁓ in Portland, Oregon. when I told her my concept, she said, ⁓ yeah. She said in, ⁓ Portland, in San Francisco, she went to Presidio Park, which is a very beautiful

Angela Haas (06:06)
Yeah,

I've been there.

Lynn Bohart (06:08)
She said, yeah, there's something they call the white vans. She said, when you're in the park, you watch out for the white vans because they come around and they pick up homeless people and you never see them again.

Cassie Newell (06:13)
Mm.

Lynn Bohart (06:20)
So yeah, so that's kind of how I got involved in doing that. And then I added dog fighting to one of my Detective George Hill Savitory because that's the word. Yeah, I know, I'm a dog lover. I've got a sleeping dog right next to me here. ⁓ So that's how, and because I spent my whole life, my career life anyway, in the nonprofit world, it just seemed like such a natural thing for me to

Angela Haas (06:21)
my gosh.

Ugh.

Yeah.

Cassie Newell (06:36)
Mm.

Lynn Bohart (06:48)
do, it is my small way of helping, I suppose.

Cassie Newell (06:55)
Yeah, your contributions. I love it.

Angela Haas (06:55)
you

Lynn Bohart (06:58)
It does mean it does push me into that next generation of cozy mysteries though. Yeah.

Angela Haas (07:02)
Yeah, I was gonna say, how do you keep the lightness?

I mean, seems like your characters probably help keep things lighter when you're talking about something so sensitive.

Cassie Newell (07:11)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (07:11)
They do.

Excellent point because they're these are funny books

The Old Mates of Mercer Island is sort of the title of the series. And Julia Applegate, who's the main character, is funny. She's klutzy. She's snarky. She always thinks snarky comments about people in her brain. But people love her. And she's one of those individuals that she can't accept that wrong wins. To her right, it's got to win. So she constantly is getting involved in these. And then she's got these four best friends.

Angela Haas (07:43)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (07:49)
that would follow her anywhere and they're all different. ⁓

was one of my challenges when I first created the series was making the women, you know, I belong to a critique group and they kind of say, God, I'm getting confused between Blair and Doe. you know, so I had to work very hard to give them very ⁓ individualistic personalities, but that's still blended. that you when you, in I've just gotten so many comments from readers that they wish they had friends like these in the, you know, that the best that the friend

Cassie Newell (08:06)
Mm.

Angela Haas (08:20)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (08:21)
Yeah,

I love that.

Lynn Bohart (08:24)
relationships between these women just comes out loud and strong.

Cassie Newell (08:30)
Great. Are there techniques that you used as a part of those characters, the secondary characters to have those distinct voices? it motivation, personality, or was it part of the plot and how they reacted? I'm just kind of curious.

Angela Haas (08:31)
That's so great.

Lynn Bohart (08:48)
I would say more motivation and personality. I mean, Blair is probably everybody's favorite character because she's a 63 year old Marilyn Monroe bombshell.

you know that she's maintained her

Cassie Newell (09:00)
Nice. ⁓

Lynn Bohart (09:02)
she's had some you know plastic surgery done but you had you guys last sent me a couple of questions and one of your questions was how how much I base on things that I know in my books well she's based on a woman I used to know who I I actually traveled with her once when my daughter was very young and we went in an RV and she

we were gonna stop and see some guy that she had dated years and years ago and he was now married and he we picked him up downtown she he got on the RV and I just watched her

physically change around him. She became this undulating, you know, I mean, it was just amazing. And I and then she flirt even when we spent the night at their house. She flirted with him shamelessly the entire time. And I asked her about it the next day. said, Mary, and she said, Well, it's just the way I am. She said, My mother used to call me a man's woman.

Angela Haas (09:43)
Wow. ⁓

Lynn Bohart (10:07)
Meaning that she had never met a man she didn't like, basically.

And so that's how I created Blair, that she's on her third marriage. All her ex-husbands still adore her. But every time a man walks in the room, she becomes something different. And yet she has a photographic memory. I mean, she's sharp as a tack, and yet she plays the role differently. Rudy, one of the other women, is a sports jock. So she's like 65, but she golfs. She's got bad knees.

Angela Haas (10:26)
⁓

Lynn Bohart (10:40)
And she's on the senior fastball team. then Doe, the fourth in the group, is the CEO of her dead husband's waste management group. So she's always in a pantsuit and silk blouse. So that's kind how I did it, to create women that live their own lives. They're all very independent.

Angela Haas (10:41)
Ha ha!

Lynn Bohart (11:10)
They all had some money. ⁓

But because of this book club that they had been in together for 10 years, they had just bonded. ⁓ so they literally finish each other's sentences and stuff, you know? You know, and Julia is so klutzy that at the end of book one, when they're going to throw their friends ashes into Lake Washington, the woman who dies at the beginning of the book, because that's she loved Lake Washington, and she would love that. Julia goes to

Cassie Newell (11:26)
I love that.

Angela Haas (11:27)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (11:44)
take the top off the urn and because they know her so well they all back up. But errant wind comes up and blows all the ashes back into Julia's So yeah so that's that's how that's how I create those characters.

Angela Haas (11:58)
my goodness. ⁓ my heavens.

when you're starting from zero though, do you, how do you, you know, do you pick the name first? Are you making those sheets of personalities? And like those were some really specific like personality traits, like klutzy, bad knees, this person's side to, you know, waste management. Like how do you get there?

Or did they just come to you or do you have a very specific process?

Lynn Bohart (12:32)
it does kind of just come to me names are very important to me. ⁓ I tend to shy away from common names, know, Nancy, Susan, at least for lead characters. But I also shy away from, you know, things like Alexis or, those kinds of trendy names. When I named Doe, that's a really odd name. She never explains it that maybe she was originally a Dorothy. It's just Doe.

Angela Haas (12:58)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (12:59)
⁓

You know Blair just seemed perfect for Blair because of who she was, you know the Marilyn Monroe type so But they have to you know names for me Just have to feel right and it's all it's like naming a new dog that comes into the house or something sometimes you try this you try that name and you have to just find something that rings true with you and it's it's a little bit the same with the personalities that I I'm a panster so I don't

Cassie Newell (13:18)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (13:29)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (13:29)
out

first.

I will just start writing and I would admit that when I started writing Old Maze, that's when my critique group said they were getting them confused because I hadn't differentiated them well enough. Then I had to go back and be a little bit more purposeful and say, okay. I not only clarified their differences, but I nicknamed them in the first book ⁓ so that ⁓ Julia

because she's always thinking, snarky thoughts in her heads. She has nicknamed, like Blair's catnip to her. That's her nickname.

Angela Haas (14:09)
I love that.

Lynn Bohart (14:12)
Rudy was an ex-investigative journalist. so in her head, Julia calls her the boss, because she's one of those people that she knows the right word at the right time, So by the end of the book, the reader is able to differentiate them also. so I just used a couple of little hacks, I guess, in a way, to do it.

Cassie Newell (14:37)
So you also, Lynn, if I understand correctly, have a background in theater and directing. And I am really curious because my daughter has

a background in theater and she just loves certain characters and she's a big book person like me. But I'm just curious, has that shaped how you approach character development on the page? And if so, in what way, how do you correlate the two?

Lynn Bohart (15:02)
And by the way, I see

Marilyn Monroe on the wall behind you. There's my Blair right there. You know, my directing, I have a graduate degree in theater, specifically in directing. So yes, I love to tell people what to do.

Cassie Newell (15:05)
Yeah. You do?

Angela Haas (15:06)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (15:09)
Yeah, there's your Blair

Angela Haas (15:21)
Hahaha! ⁓

Lynn Bohart (15:23)
That's true with my characters. So I tend to visualize every scene in the book ⁓ as a movie. I've often said to people that I do this when I'm driving, so you wouldn't probably want to be next to me on the highway because I'm in beta land, know, in my brain, you know, running ⁓ scenes in my...

Angela Haas (15:44)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (15:45)
And I've had reviewers say that my books read like a movie almost because they can visualize, which makes me feel good. But for the characters, then that really, I see how they move, what their reactions are, how they talk. I visualize that. I see that in my head first. And then as a director, I tend to then move them and have them react and do stuff as I would if I

directing them on stage. will tell you that my critique group though will tell you that I get heavy on stage directions.

Cassie Newell (16:17)
really interesting.

Lynn Bohart (16:24)
And that's true.

Angela Haas (16:24)
yeah.

Cassie Newell (16:24)
Mm.

Lynn Bohart (16:25)
I have to, my final edit, have to go back and look for that for the stage directions that I really don't need and kind of either eliminate them or at least soften them. ⁓ But I think it does help me. So I think any kind of person who's a visual person probably kind of goes through the same process.

Cassie Newell (16:35)
Right.

Interesting. I love that.

Angela Haas (16:49)
Yeah, I

struggled with that when I first started, because I also studied more film and was a theater major. so I was

making my characters, I was writing the blow by blow of every movement. I really had to say, okay, you don't have to say they went from here to here there's ways to, you know, show what they're doing. But

I don't have to show every step they're taking or every time they turn their head. I had to really learn to take that out because I didn't, the reader doesn't need to say that she, that's also too much telling. Like she saw this instead of saying this just happened.

Lynn Bohart (17:27)
Yeah.

if you've ever read a screenplay, it doesn't have hardly any stage directions in it. ⁓ It allows the actors to do what they're going to do. But, Cassie, I think it was you who also asked about character motivation.

Angela Haas (17:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cassie Newell (17:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (17:54)
And, you know, I give a talk called Creating Characters That Readers Can't Quit. And so I talk a lot in that presentation about, you know, especially the lead characters driving narrative. What makes, what forces them to act?

Angela Haas (18:06)
.

Cassie Newell (18:08)
Right.

Lynn Bohart (18:11)
What pushes them forward in the story? And at the end, even though this is all about novels and fiction writing, I talk about actors. ⁓ So it's interesting that I

saw that question from you because I mentioned at the end of this talk that when actors pick up a script, film actors or stage actors, they're gonna look for the character's motivation within the script.

it's not there, they'll make it up themselves. They'll do their own research on what they, not their own interpretation of this person and they'll, you know, they'll watch other people that look like them or act like them or whatever.

Cassie Newell (18:42)
their own interpretation. ⁓

Lynn Bohart (18:50)
And so, you know, I make the point that if you don't give that driving narrative in your novel for your lead character, the readers are going to look for it, just like the actors look for it. And the difference is where the actor will go find it, readers, if they don't find it, may put the book down. Stop reading.

Cassie Newell (19:12)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (19:13)
Right.

Cassie Newell (19:14)
Yeah, there's, there's this interesting quote, and I have no idea who it came from. But I remember, ⁓

early on in my career, writing coach said this to me. And they were like, you need to lead the horse to water. But you don't need to show everybody what the water is. And I thought that was really interesting, because I also like reading books that assumes I'm in it. I'm an intelligent reader.

Lynn Bohart (19:34)
interesting.

Cassie Newell (19:43)
So I will skim over and it's so different between me and my oldest daughter who's in her her mid 20s. If you tell me there's this forest and you keep describing it to me as somebody's running through it, I will skim over it. I will speed read over it because it will drive me nuts because a forest is a forest is a forest. I've got the baseline for her. She loves the beauty of the words.

Lynn Bohart (20:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Angela Haas (20:11)
Right

Cassie Newell (20:12)
you know, like she wants to it depends on what

she's reading. But most of the time she wants that built out and she wants to experience that and I'm like, no, kill me. I know trees are there. I know animals are there, you know, like just let me move with the character. So like I don't I like it on the periphery, but not so built out that it loses the action for me. Because for me,

Angela Haas (20:27)
All right.

Cassie Newell (20:40)
stories and action are what I enjoy to move to the next plot point to the next decision to the next crazy element. And she there, I think she's a little bit more literary on that side of things. But some people just really love

Lynn Bohart (20:53)
Yeah.

Cassie, you made such a good point because again, in some of my freelance writing talks when I'm talking about writing to hold people's attention, I'll talk about the fact that they've now researched that humans have an eight second attention span.

Cassie Newell (21:12)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (21:14)
like 10 years ago. And we skim things, we skim websites, know, we live in a soundbite world. And so I think most readers are gonna tend to be more like you. I certainly am. I like description and I like the beauty of the words.

Cassie Newell (21:23)
media.

Angela Haas (21:27)
I am, yeah.

Cassie Newell (21:34)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (21:35)
if they still move the story forward. there's a reason to describe that tree and that rock in conjunction with each other for something, because she's going to trip over that rock and fall flat on her face. If there's a reason for it. And yet I think there are people that just love, I've read some books that just go on and on and on.

Cassie Newell (21:37)
if they move the story forward.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I know.

Lynn Bohart (22:01)
about the characters thoughts, you what they're thinking in their head and I'm skimming pages and yet it's a best-selling book.

Cassie Newell (22:08)
Yeah,

Angela Haas (22:09)
yeah.

That's what always throws me because you're not, to open with pages of exposition. One of the bestselling sci-fi books did. it was like four chapters without dialogue. And I was like, my gosh, how is this like a traditionally published bestselling novel?

Cassie Newell (22:10)
yeah, for sure.

Angela Haas (22:28)
And I do think it's genre dependent. I think sometimes if you're sci-fi world building, sci-fi readers are fine with that if it's building this alien world. I skim over it because I just want to get to what's happening and who are the people, you know.

Cassie Newell (22:48)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (22:48)
But

I have read some books where I had trouble because they didn't ground the scene enough and that the characters just seemed floating. You know, I was like, wait, where are they now? Where did they go? You know, like how did they get there? You know, so I've had to work because setting is, it's my least, it's such a weakness for me. I was going to say least strength and that doesn't make sense. It's a weakness. Because.

Cassie Newell (23:00)
Ha

Angela Haas (23:15)
I can see it in my mind, but translating it, it's so literal. I'm like a house, tree, rock. There you go. It's nighttime. Boom. That's it. Because I'd much rather spend more time with the characters, dialogue, what they're saying. So, but I think it's balance and I do think it depends on your genre.

Cassie Newell (23:27)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (23:39)
⁓ It's so timely that you said that I've started ⁓ creating a series of ⁓ what I call micro books on writing that I'm offering on my website. I've done a presentation on setting several times. ⁓ Primarily, I was asked to do it for ⁓ a crime and thriller summit and how setting lends itself to things like suspense

So what I did is I turned that into an e-book and I talked exactly in the e-book about what you're saying, Angela, about grounding the reader in the beginning. I think that's really important. And sometimes you can do that in a sentence or two.

Angela Haas (24:06)
I did it.

Lynn Bohart (24:18)
Also using setting, setting has so many other benefits that I think a lot of writers miss. They're just not into how they can leverage the power of setting in different scenes and chapters and how it can enhance your character. So if anybody's interested, it's a whole $7 book on my website, they can go pick that up.

Cassie Newell (24:26)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (24:27)
and

Cassie Newell (24:37)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (24:43)
Thank

Cassie Newell (24:46)
One of the things I do is I like making the setting for me a character. So it has specific character traits because I write ⁓ short southern small town romances. So it's definitely a character, you know, within the town. So I do love that. And I have to admit, I didn't think I...

I didn't purposefully know what I was doing when I did it until I started writing it. And then it was into the next book and the next book and then it's just this town, you know, so it just kind of evolved that way. And I was like, this is a character. And then the next series, this part of the town is the character and then this part of the town and I was like, ⁓ this really works for me.

Lynn Bohart (25:28)
I'm glad you did that.

I'm

so glad you did that because I think some romance novels are too character driven. It's just all about the two lead characters and the setting just kind of fades into the background. my guess is that probably works really well for you.

Angela Haas (25:42)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (25:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like it so far. I haven't had the readers that I have there. They are like, I want to visit this bakery slash romance bookstore really badly. Does it exist kind of thing. ⁓ But we'll see how you know, now I'm going into the next series in the same town how it kind of follows. So I'm curious to see how it will go.

Lynn Bohart (26:12)
keep.

People have said that

about my old mates of Mercer Island Books is sat on Mercer Island and she runs a big Victorian bed and breakfast. ⁓ I have paranormal in all my books. So there's resident ghosts and I've had so many people say they wish they could, they want to go visit the St. Clarean on Mercer Island, which of course doesn't exist except in my imagination. So yeah.

Angela Haas (26:17)
Right.

Cassie Newell (26:38)
Yeah, mine doesn't exist at all. Angela,

however, her book ⁓ in Scottsdale, Arizona, I think, I mean, it has personality too. Like, it's very specific, and you can kind of visualize just the wedding scene as she has it laid out. I don't know if you would call it a character or not, Angela, but I think it definitely sets the scenes really quite well.

Angela Haas (26:59)
I think.

I think it is because Arizona, you know, it is its own character because the weather impacts things, in, my plus one equals you, they definitely depend on tourism for the characters businesses, but the season.

Lynn Bohart (27:12)
the heat.

Cassie Newell (27:12)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (27:24)
is pretty much, I think the high season is like November to April, May. And then July, it's not completely dead and people still travel and they have to be there. But it's like the town just stops, you know, like, and some businesses close and you know, things are seasonal. And so that makes its own character because you're not just running your business full

Cassie Newell (27:40)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (27:52)
know, full steam in July in Arizona and you're dealing with monsoons and heats. And so I did bring that in because it did impact what the characters were doing.

Lynn Bohart (28:03)
Yeah, see, and to me, that's sort of the telltale that a care that the setting becomes a character.

if it impacts the story in a specific way. ⁓ In my first detective George Hill's Savatore book, it's set in a big Catholic Spanish monastery and a woman is killed in the monastery and he can't figure out how the killer got her from an upstairs ⁓ room to a downstairs supply closet because there was a party going on.

Cassie Newell (28:11)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Angela Haas (28:21)
Hmm.

Lynn Bohart (28:33)
until near the end of the book, he finds out that there are secret tunnels and secret passages. The building inhibits him finding the answer to the mystery. So it becomes a character. It becomes something for him to overcome. It's, know, partly the conflict in the book is the building itself. I find those kinds of or when you, Angela, when you're talking about weather, I talk a lot about the movie, the

Angela Haas (28:56)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (29:03)
between us in my talks because it's a plane crash up in the the mountains of Idaho in the snow and so obviously the the setting the story wouldn't happen without the setting

Angela Haas (29:08)
And now.

Cassie Newell (29:16)
Right.

So another question I have. You've written about murder, ghosts, paranormal twists. How do you ground your characters so that they feel real, even in those really heightened genres like that?

Lynn Bohart (29:32)
So all I don't write scary ghosts, first of all, ⁓ some of my grave doubts, my standalone book, it's eerie and spooky. ⁓ But in the other books, the Giorgio Salvatore book, it's a young boy who was ⁓ killed himself on this in this big Spanish monastery. was being he and some of his friends were being abused by the priests and his father was a cop. And he starts showing himself to Detective Salvatore.

And he starts just, you know, subtly offering ways and clues that he begins to follow. Of course, in the beginning, he can't believe what he's seeing. He doesn't believe in ghosts. He thinks it's the stupidest thing in the world. But he can't deny it after a while. And even though it still spooks him, he begins to lean into it. In ⁓ Old Mains of Mercer Island, Julia accepts it more readily, but also the book start after she's already

the ghosts that live that are resident ghosts so by that time she's already used to them but in the very first book and man this was something talk about me pushing the envelope her dead mother calls her on her cell phone

Cassie Newell (30:33)
Mmm.

Lynn Bohart (30:44)
She has her mother's

cell phone and the battery's been dead for a long time and she's embroiled in this big mystery and her life has been put in danger a couple of times and all of sudden the phone starts ringing and it's your mother. of course she thinks somebody's pranking her. She does not believe it. She's like, no, I'm gonna hang up. Mom calls again. And when I first wrote that scene, I thought it was hysterical and it is, but I

Cassie Newell (31:02)
Of course.

Lynn Bohart (31:14)
of my critique group is just gonna kill me. They're just saying no, not enough. They loved it. And now the mother shows up in every book and she's connected to her daughter.

Angela Haas (31:20)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (31:29)
know, psychically and electrically, you know, the world is ⁓ all energy, the universe is all energy, that's all we are. And so I felt like I can make this work. And I did. And even though she had trouble accepting it, ⁓ she finally did. Her mom said something to her that happened in her, you know,

Angela Haas (31:30)
.

Lynn Bohart (31:49)
when she got her period for the first time, and had had a stain on the back of her skirt. And Julius is like, yeah, nobody would ever know that nobody should hold anybody about that. And that's how she finally accepted it. So, I play with them, I, I make the paranormal aspects add flavor to the story.

Cassie Newell (31:57)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (32:10)
add humor to the story in some cases and in the detective Georgio Savatori books because those are are more a little bit more hardcore the second book is very much more hardcore than

It's just a lot edgier. yeah, it's, I just, it's such as an area that I've always been interested in. I've always believed in the possibility of the paranormal and figured why not. So I've always added paranormal and dogs in every one of my books. Dogs.

Cassie Newell (32:26)
I love it.

Yeah, interesting.

Angela Haas (32:41)
Which I

think people, well the dogs sell the books every time. Ghosts have got to be an interesting character because they're not here. You know, so you're not quite describing their body language modifiers all the time. You're definitely pushing it.

Lynn Bohart (32:53)
Right.

Angela Haas (33:01)
having really interesting different types of characters from buildings, ghosts, pets.

Lynn Bohart (33:06)
Well, in the old days,

I used, so this building, the St. Clair Inn had burned down at one time. It was built by John St. Clair and his wife, Elizabeth. And when it burned down, Elizabeth and two of her children died and the dog. So they remain there, although we've never seen the sun and we've only heard the dog.

Angela Haas (33:24)
and

Lynn Bohart (33:30)
But the daughter and the mother, the mother actually appears occasionally, sort of this hazy version with long, and it was at night, so she's in a nightgown, she has her hair in a braid. And before she even shows up, Julia smells rosewater, because that was her favorite perfume. Chloe, her daughter,

Angela Haas (33:48)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (33:52)
never actually appears, but she's a prankster. She's only like 10 years old. And so because it's bed and breakfast, if there are kids there that she likes, she kind of plays with them. If they're bratty kids there, she plays tricks on them. And I think it was in the third or fourth book, there's a young girl across the street who is slow. ⁓

Cassie Newell (34:09)
You

Lynn Bohart (34:21)
And she can see Chloe. She actually plays with Chloe, which her mother, of course, freaks out at in the beginning, but then accepts

they save the day sometimes for the women when they get in trouble because Elizabeth can scare the hell out of people. Julia's mother, whenever Julie's in trouble, her mother knows it.

because that's that sort of psychic connection. And she can somehow ⁓ manipulate electronics. So she can burst lights where they just shatter. She can turn lights on and off. She can turn music on and off, scare the hell out of the predator or whatever. So I've also tried to make the ghosts all different so that they have different abilities, different personalities, ⁓ so that they're as interesting and intriguing as

Cassie Newell (35:08)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (35:14)
⁓ the human characters.

Cassie Newell (35:16)
I don't know if you've ever seen

the TV show Ghosts, but it's so worth it.

Lynn Bohart (35:21)
yes, yes, yes, yeah.

Cassie Newell (35:25)
They are very much different personalities and also personalities that are current, but I love how they keep it to their time and their century of how they're dressed, their vocal inclination, the words they use, the vocabulary. Hetty's my favorite.

Angela Haas (35:44)
.

I'm going to put that on my watch list because I just like non spooky ghosts, like not the conjuring, but something lighter, you know. So we've got inspirations, based on, ghosts or paranormal characters. But you interview some pretty incredible real life people.

Cassie Newell (35:52)
It's hilarious.

Angela Haas (36:06)
and including Marcia Clark, which I want to know, that must have been an experience. Do you ever get inspired by the traits of those real people you're interviewing and use those for characters?

Lynn Bohart (36:21)
Because I don't interview them in person. So what I have is an online newsletter called Let's Talk about Murder. And I did interview Marcia Clark that way. But I did it through her publicist. I was disappointed. I didn't get to deal with her directly. And all she wanted to talk about was her current book. she has now, ⁓ she's not only written a couple, she's written a book about the OJ Simpson trial. And reading that is...

Angela Haas (36:26)
Okay.

Gotcha.

Lynn Bohart (36:49)
you just amazing to find out what happened in the background, you know, that we, you you're not probably not old enough to have lived through all that. But yeah, but anyway.

Angela Haas (36:53)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (36:57)
Yes, we are.

Angela Haas (36:57)
⁓ no. Yeah, we were

there. Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (37:01)
She's now

writing fiction as well. she's writing, she wrote a true crime novel about a true crime case. I got really involved into listening to true crime. And so I started this Let's Talks Talk About Murder and I turned my website into what I'm calling the No Alibi Zone. So anybody who writes mysteries or aspires to write mysteries should go to my website because I have all the interviews are up there. I've interviewed not only writers,

Angela Haas (37:03)
⁓

Cassie Newell (37:06)
⁓ wow.

Angela Haas (37:12)
Yes.

Cassie Newell (37:36)
Right.

Lynn Bohart (37:38)
I interviewed Barbara Butcher who was in Homicide New York. She was featured on that. She's what they call a death investigator.

Angela Haas (37:43)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Cassie Newell (37:47)
well.

Lynn Bohart (37:48)
wrote a really good book. had her for two interviews and private investigators. And now, upcoming in August, I'm interviewing, I just got her answers back, ⁓ Kate Winkler Dawson, who is not only a journalist and writer, but she has two podcasts and one's called Barry Bones, where she and this guy named Paul Holes, which is a he helped

He's very quick to tell you he helped solve the Green River Killer, but the Golden State Killer case with the, when they first started using familial DNA.

Angela Haas (38:19)
⁓ yeah, yup.

Lynn Bohart (38:26)
Anyway, but they pick apart true crimes. So that's been really, really interesting for me. And I don't know that I've used any of that in my writing yet, partly because I switched to, I started a new series, YA series called The Unstoppable's where I took Julia Applegate from my adult, Old Mesa Mercer Island.

Angela Haas (38:49)
That's right, yeah.

Lynn Bohart (38:51)
I moved her into when she was 13 years old in 1965, solving murders with her brother and their best friend up the street. yeah, so I didn't have a way to really utilize some of the new stuff that's coming up in these interviews.

Cassie Newell (39:09)
Interesting.

Angela Haas (39:09)
Well, tell me more about that because I'm trying to take side characters that kind of my side characters always take over. mean, I just have so much fun writing the side characters that I'm like, yeah, I actually have a protagonist that I need to make 3D, but I have these two that I'm thinking, well, I think readers are going to like this couple. So I want to take them and put them in their own story.

And it sounds easy enough, but then I'm like, wow, I still have to make the voice consistent, but they're in a whole new environment. But then also writing a dual timeline where we're seeing how they fell in love over one summer. And I got a little stuck because this is a little harder to take existing characters and put them in a new story. And you're even doing it where she's a ghost, right? She's not a ghost. Okay.

Lynn Bohart (39:57)
Yeah. No, she's 13

Cassie Newell (40:00)
No, she's the detective.

Lynn Bohart (40:02)
years old. She's a kid now.

Angela Haas (40:05)
Right, but then in the story where we first meet her, is she one of the... Okay. That's right, okay, yes, okay. I was getting too excited about the ghost. Is this a ghost that we're seeing her alive? Hello, okay. Yeah, yeah, like, see? New idea. Like, what was the ghost's life like when she was alive?

Lynn Bohart (40:10)
She's the lead character. She's the lead character. So she's Julia Applegate. She owns...

So

the hard thing for me was not only the age difference and

Angela Haas (40:33)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (40:35)
And seeing Julia, like, where did she get that spunky attitude and, you know, that sense of right and wrong. And, but also I said it in 1965. So before cell phones, before the internet, you know, before DNA, it's not like they can, they're kids solving crime. So sort of like, you know, I really had to reach deep to kind of figure out. had a...

Cassie Newell (40:39)
Mm.

Angela Haas (40:46)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (40:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Get kid

mentality.

Lynn Bohart (40:59)
great

time yes not only that but just researching the bikes that they would be riding at that and you know that sort of thing so it's kind of like it turned out a little bit like stranger things you know the kids and strangers you know it's set in 1965 so

Angela Haas (41:05)
Yep.

Cassie Newell (41:12)
I love that.

Angela Haas (41:12)
Ooh, I love that. Yep.

Cassie Newell (41:16)
I

great. I'm curious because, well, I have a character called Mrs. Havers. And I did a I've written a story that I haven't shared with Angela yet. But I did that I, I went backwards to say why she's the matchmaker of this town in her 20s. And I was I had a lot of fun with it. But then I was like, no.

Lynn Bohart (41:34)
to.

Cassie Newell (41:40)
I don't know if this will work for everybody else. You know, because it's such a leap back as to why she's known as kind of this matriarch in the town and a busybody and why she matchmakes. But I had a lot of fun with it. And then I had ⁓ some interesting comments. I have a single dad romance and everybody loves the little daughter Poppy. And everybody's like, we want Poppy's love story. I'm like, she's seven.

Angela Haas (42:07)
Hahaha!

⁓

Cassie Newell (42:08)
I have

to really jump, you know, I'm not ready for that. ⁓ But I find it hard, as Angela was saying, to kind of take these characters that you have in these other stories and then jump sometimes to completely new stories and where they are in the timeline of things. I'm just curious, did you have a thought process of moving her to 13?

Lynn Bohart (42:29)
You know, I think it's like, it's...

I just had to get into her head again, and visualize Julia as an adult. She's klutzy as an adult. She's klutzy as a kid, more embarrassed by it as a kid because of the whole peer stuff. She's accepted it as an adult. It still irritates her, but she's accepted who she is. ⁓ But I had to just kind of see the world through her eyes, but young.

Cassie Newell (42:39)
Yeah.

kid.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (43:05)
I mean it is it is You do have to make a shift. There's no doubt about it

And again, it's another reason why having a sort of a peer critique group is so important because they're able now they'll come in and say to me, that's that's not a phrase a 13 year old would use. You know, I'll use word or a phrase or sentence structure that seems perfectly natural to me because she's telling the story. It's first person past. So she's telling recent past. So she's telling the story probably as a 15 or 16 year old.

Cassie Newell (43:24)
Right.

Angela Haas (43:26)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (43:37)
Mm-hmm.

Lynn Bohart (43:41)
But she wouldn't talk like that.

Cassie Newell (43:43)
Right.

Lynn Bohart (43:44)
So they really helped me kind of keep straight that way and even have given me some ideas on how to make her more realistic and making the kids' relationships more realistic and things like that. I have a kid that stutters badly, you know, and kids back then I deal with racism in the book because only black kids in the school, it's back in Wisconsin. So in 1965,

Cassie Newell (44:06)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (44:08)
Sure.

Lynn Bohart (44:14)
So it's that's been kind of fun and there is a ghost that shows up that you know Scares the hell out of everybody, but Julia I mean she gets she's really shocked, but she accepts it before anybody else and I just have fun

Cassie Newell (44:30)
That's fun.

Angela Haas (44:31)
That's gotta be tough though because 13 year olds today are, I think, way more grown up than when I was a 13 year old in the 80s versus even 65, those 13 year olds, but even like our lexicon is completely different, you know? So where I was like saying, totally rad, and I did talk like that.

Lynn Bohart (44:37)
So, yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Angela Haas (44:58)
Because I thought I was totally rad, but just interesting like you can't even go by a 13 year old today versus in the past because it's totally different with social media and I think they're way more grown up now than they were.

Lynn Bohart (45:00)
Good turn.

No.

So the lucky thing is that...

I grew up during that time period. I'm old enough in high school in in I graduated from high school in 1967. So I remember that time period. remember what it was like, you know, I would have been, you know, 1718 at that time period. But we did just get on our bikes and, you know, go ride. We didn't lock our doors. We you know, we used to let our dog out and just we didn't have a fence. And, you know, it was a different time. And so fortunately, I grew up in

Angela Haas (45:25)
Right, okay.

Yeah.

Cassie Newell (45:38)
Right.

Lynn Bohart (45:45)
that time. So I'm able to, you know, capture that in a way that I think is believable. ⁓ Because it's it is you're right, it's totally different. I remember when I had my daughter, she was like, ⁓ you know, five or six when she started visiting friends, seven, eight, whatever it was, she wanted to walk down the street, and I wouldn't let her No way, I'm with you. When she was 12, it was still like, okay, take that's when she she finally got a cell phone. I was one of the first mothers to give her a

Cassie Newell (45:50)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (45:55)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (46:16)
cell phone and I said you need to call me as soon as you get there But I grew up with it. She used to say to me I wish I'd grown up at the same time you did because I could just knock out the door and I'd be gone until dinner time my mother had no idea where I was.

Angela Haas (46:20)
You know what? That's okay. That's a whole other. Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Yeah. We had

Cassie Newell (46:32)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (46:34)
a touch of that too. Plus my parents both worked. So we had to entertain ourselves. I mean, Gen X. And you know, we were called the latchkey kids because we got ourselves home, got a snack, got started on homework, helped clean the bathroom. and then, you know, parents would come home from work. So they didn't really know when we got home from school. And, and

Cassie Newell (46:41)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (46:44)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (46:44)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (46:55)
Yeah.

Cassie Newell (46:56)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (46:57)
You

Angela Haas (46:57)
On weekends, we were gone all day. ⁓

Lynn Bohart (46:57)
could have been smoking dope, but they wouldn't have even known it, you know?

Cassie Newell (47:02)
My mom

was, if I turn on that front porch light and you don't come in, you're late. So it was like, the sun go down and then you're waiting to see when you had to go in.

Angela Haas (47:08)
Yep. Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (47:08)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Angela Haas (47:13)
Right, exactly.

Lynn Bohart (47:16)
Let's see, those are

the kind of details if you ever do choose to take a character back in time or something. You know, Cassie, those are exactly the kind of details that would make the story legitimate and authentic and frankly more interesting to the reader.

Cassie Newell (47:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Angela Haas (47:31)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (47:35)
Yeah, I remember a lot of Southern isms too. So they're definitely in that book. My dad might be like, wait, I know it was me that said that. And I know your grandma always said that. But I figure it know, when you're a writer, everything's up for fodder, you know, just be prepared. So anyway,

Angela Haas (47:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yum. ⁓

Lynn Bohart (47:41)
and interesting.

Angela Haas (47:50)
Yeah.

yeah. Yep, absolutely.

Lynn Bohart (47:58)
Yeah,

and if we can't put a little bit of ourselves into it, to me, it would be boring. I mean, that's part of the fun to me.

Angela Haas (48:05)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Cassie Newell (48:05)
Yeah, true.

True, true.

Angela Haas (48:08)
Yeah, I'm a treasure trove of awkwardness that I can add to my character, so it's always in there. ⁓

Lynn Bohart (48:15)
You need to read the

Old Maids of Mercer Island. You might really be a simpatico to Julia. I don't know.

Cassie Newell (48:21)
you

Angela Haas (48:22)
I

have it, but I know myself, like I have to stick to romance, because if I read it, then I'm going to think I'm going to try cozy to it. Like I have to read the genre I'm writing or my mind goes like, no, I can write paranormal.

Lynn Bohart (48:37)
But you know, there's a lot of romance writers

that have now then added mysteries, you know, to gain other... I just gave a talk, in fact, the beginning of June to the Texas affiliate of the League of Romance Writers and talking about murder mysteries, how to write a murder mystery, because they were interested in that.

Angela Haas (48:42)
Yeah, but yes. No, totally.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Cassie Newell (49:00)
I love it.

Angela Haas (49:00)
I love it. So I've got it. It's right here on my shelf. So, ⁓ yep. As soon as I get this last romance done. Yeah. I'm sorry. Well, so, well, this was a such a fun discussion. Thank you so much for joining us. There's one more thing to do and that is our table topics. This is an interesting one since we're talking about characters. What?

Lynn Bohart (49:06)
Well, if you read it, I want to know if you identify with Julia at all.

Angela Haas (49:28)
don't women want? You know, there's that movie, What Women Want? What don't we want as women? yeah, I don't like that. Yeah?

Lynn Bohart (49:33)
to be ignored.

Cassie Newell (49:41)
I don't like mansplaining.

Lynn Bohart (49:43)
Yeah, which to me is a type of being ignored, you know, when, yep.

Angela Haas (49:44)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

Cassie Newell (49:47)
See, I think it's just like being lectured too. Like

we don't have an opinion or an idea or know how to fix something that somebody has to mansplain it to me.

Angela Haas (49:59)
Yeah, I think it depends. As I've gotten older, you know, I've wanted things like flowers less because I'm getting like, they just die. And then I feel bad. My husband actually, because I love things like the as seen on TV stuff. So he got me for a gift, like one of those copper pocket hoses that like shrinks.

Lynn Bohart (50:25)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (50:27)
And I know that to some that might be insulting, I was so excited because it's such a practical thing that I wanted. And I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. So I don't, you know.

Lynn Bohart (50:38)
But see,

Cassie Newell (50:39)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (50:40)
the difference is he knows you.

Angela Haas (50:43)
Yes.

Lynn Bohart (50:43)
Talk

about not being ignored. He was playing into your personality and something that he knew you would like. to me, that's, you know, so often men, anybody, lot of people, it's not just men. When somebody gives a gift to somebody else, they give the gift that they would want. I do that a lot. really, I really. So, know, so for him to give you something that, you know, you really, you know, he was listening to you.

Cassie Newell (50:52)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (50:52)
Yeah.

Right.

Cassie Newell (51:05)
Yeah

Lynn Bohart (51:14)
He watches, listens to you, and he knows that that's the kind of thing. That's great.

Angela Haas (51:14)
Yes. ⁓

Absolutely. ⁓

Cassie Newell (51:18)
I have a funny story

that displays that so well. My husband, his name is Butch, and when we were first engaged, this is how old I am, we bought our first ⁓ VHR set recorder. And our deal was, is he bought it, but I got to pick out the movies. And this was a Christmas gift. And the first movie I opened,

was Die Hard and he was like, don't you love it? And I was just like.

Angela Haas (51:48)
Which is.

Cassie Newell (51:51)
Sure.

Angela Haas (51:53)
I would have been

excited by that, but then. Yeah. ⁓

Cassie Newell (51:55)
Bruce Willis, but it was obvious. That was his choice. You know what I mean? But

Lynn Bohart (52:00)
You know that

Cassie Newell (52:01)
don't you just love it?

Lynn Bohart (52:02)
Die Hard is one of the most popular Christmas movies though.

Cassie Newell (52:05)
Of course it is.

Angela Haas (52:06)
And it is a Christmas movie and no

one can argue with us on that.

Cassie Newell (52:09)
And well,

I got it on Christmas. It will always be a Christmas movie for us. But I just thought it was so funny. We, you know, go in buy this, you know, the DVDs, and then that's the movie.

Lynn Bohart (52:19)
You know, I use

Angela Haas (52:19)
Yeah.

Lynn Bohart (52:22)
Die Hard in my talks for characterization just to bring it back to writing because when you talk about

Angela Haas (52:26)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (52:26)
Do you?

Lynn Bohart (52:29)
the driving need of your lead character. If you look at the Bruce Willis character, John McClain, obviously he's a cop and he's faced with these guys that have taken over the hotel. He's got to interject himself into it, right? And you might say to yourself as the reader or the writer, okay, that's his driving need. But it's more than that. His wife is there. She's being held hostage. And that deepens that driving need that kicks it up to

Cassie Newell (52:37)
Yeah.

Angela Haas (52:43)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (52:51)
His wife's? Yeah.

Angela Haas (52:53)
Yes, yeah.

Lynn Bohart (52:59)
next level to the point where now he will do whatever he has to do. Which I think is a really interesting thing for writers to understand the difference between those two that you can make that driving need so integral to the plot that the character can't not do it. ⁓ So anyway.

Angela Haas (53:08)
Mm-hmm.

Cassie Newell (53:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. That was great.

Angela Haas (53:26)
Yeah.

Well, thank you so much, Lynn. I had such a blast. Well, we I don't want to speak for Cassie, but I'm assuming she would say we had such a blast talking to you about all your wonderful, juicy, amazing characters. Where can readers find you? Readers and writers.

Cassie Newell (53:35)
Yes, of course.

Lynn Bohart (53:45)
My website is www.lynnbohart-author.com

Angela Haas (53:58)
Okay, good.

Great. Awesome.

Lynn Bohart (54:14)
There's free writing tools on the website and then there's the micro books on the website that they can take a look at.

Angela Haas (54:20)
That's great. Well, thank you everyone else for joining us today. Don't forget to give us a review and rating wherever you listen to the podcast. really helps us with visibility. Next week, we're going to discuss the characters Cassie and I have written and our processes behind crafting them. Till next time, keep writing, keep doing. We'll see ya.

Cassie Newell (54:42)
Thank you.