Interview with Marie Dees, author of Tea and Witchery

Interview by Natasha Gapinski

Marie Dees’ new novel, Tea and Witchery, is the first in her Cassadaga Mysteries series, set in the real-life spiritualist town of Cassadaga, Florida.  Marie lives in Orlando, where she works in corporate communications, gardens, and channels her alternative interests into mystery novels.  Marie shares with us her techniques for weaving a fictional murder story into a very real and unique place, and tells some of the advantages and challenges of publishing a novel that crisscrosses genre lines. 

How do you classify your book when a stranger asks you what kind of book you’ve written?

It’s a mystery novel-- it has the traditional “somebody gets dead, somebody finds out who done it.”  It’s like Agatha Christie with sort of a witchy paranormal twist.  I have entered a couple of contests with it and I get widely varying results-- some judges give it all top scores and love it, some think the paranormal aspects aren’t believable.  But my publisher is releasing it as a mystery novel. 

It’s also going to be in one of their ads in Romantic Times Magazine.  Publishers, particularly small press, like to be able to cross-market books-- they like to have mysteries with romance so that they can get as many markets as they can.  I think it is an advantage, particularly with a first book because it allows the publisher to find what they feel is the best niche.

How did your story come together into this shape? 

It took a lot of time.  I originally started the first version of the book a decade ago, which was more of a traditional mystery-type book.  When I would turn it out to friends in writing groups to read my chapters, the parts that were really wanted and liked were [the parts with] the psychics, the tarot card readings, the ghosts, the paranormal, the witches.  My first thought was, people will not believe it if I weave in too much paranormal and funky happenings.  They’re going to say this isn’t a mystery novel.  But the feedback I kept getting back was, we want to see the characters do some more of this.  So I kept developing it. 

It took courage in some ways to let it go as far as it did.  The second book and the third are even farther into the paranormal realm than the first book because the first time I wrote I was really nervous that this ghost stuff and paranormal stuff could be interpreted as being what’s really happening. I kept trying to build in outs-- well, this COULD have been that, but it could be this really logical explanation. You’ve got to really work to build that balance.

How long did you spend writing it?

I’ve worked on the book on and off.  When I started it I was working on a Master’s program in English Literature and Creative Writing, and for a Master’s program you write literary fiction.  Tea and Witchery is not literary fiction-- it was something I could just pound out a chapter or two or some scenes while I was trying to work on the stuff I was really supposed to be working on-- a collection of literary short stories that aren’t worth publishing anywhere, but they got me a degree.  I would drive to Cassadaga on the weekends to get away from some of the other stuff.    It was known in the graduate program that I was the author that wanted to go write genre fiction, mystery novels and things like that.

That was rare or unusual in that program?

In graduate school, you’re supposed to learn to write literary fiction, get your degree, and then go off and teach creative writing at a college.  It doesn’t take long for you to look around at the number of students getting writing degrees in just one year at one college and figure there’s just not enough room for everybody to go out and teach creative writing at a college.

I started out writing fantasy, but I had a problem: I could write fantasy, but I couldn’t finish it.  Part of what got me into a mystery was, I was working on an epic fantasy that was going on forever, and didn’t know how any of it pulled together, or how it ended.  And I also like reading mysteries, so I thought, maybe if I TRY a mystery novel, well, mystery novels have to have an ending. You’ve got a beginning, somebody gets killed, you’ve got clues along the way, somebody has to discover “who done it,” and that’s the end. It was kind of a challenge, a puzzle.  I enjoyed it-- I put it together and I actually got to an end!  And the aspects of the paranormal and characters that were a little outside the norm were fun, too. 

So I finished Tea and Witchery, started sending it out, and got back the rejection letters.  Some agents are kind enough to tell you why they’ve just rejected you, and it’s always good to stop and say, “Are they making a good point?”  And one comment was, “This would fit most closely to the cozy mystery genre, but it’s far too long for that, over 120,000 words.” So I cut it down to about 85,000 words.

Somebody else said, “The beginning’s really slow.” I think a lot of us ease our way into our first books because we’re so busy establishing our characters and world.  At Sisters in Crime, which is a writing group I’m in, we have a “guppies group” for newer writers; we exchange comments, and apparently the common ones are “slow beginnings,” “saggy middles” or “disappointing ends.”  You’ve got to kind of hit all the bases the first time out.

Did you always think that you would be an author of a book one day?

Yeah, it’s been something I’ve always wanted to do.  I think I tried to write my first novel at about age eight.  Going through school, no matter what I studied, I was always doodling story lines and scenes, chapters and dialogue, in the margins.  Got through organic chemistry with a professor thinking I was a great note-taker.  Yeah, for epic trilogy fantasies, but not for chemistry, unfortunately.

What’s your day job?  Do you wish you could write full time?

My day job is in corporate communications, so it’s in the communications field, however, the actual work I do is more technology-related.  It gives me a good left-brain/right-brain mix.  I don’t actually do a lot of creative writing at work.  I do problem-solving around why something’s not appearing the way it should on the webpage or how do we make something look best.  Then when I go home, I get to escape from that world and delve into the world of my characters and my book.  When I was younger I always thought what I wanted to do full-time was be a writer, but I’ve found that I actually like the mix of a steady day job with the writing because now there’s not so much stress and pressure at stake with the books having to come out one after the other to pay the bills.  Would I object to at some point being a wealthy writer and just writing for a living? No!  But it’s nice in the business world to know you’re going to get paid every week regardless.

Who and what were your inspirations? 

One of my favorite writers, who I find relaxing and fun, is Elizabeth Peters, who also publishes as Barbara Michaels.  In her Barbara Michaels books, she blends romance and spookiness, ghosts, and the paranormal.  She has a very good understanding of genre and how the elements work, so she can play with the elements of a traditional mystery or romance and make them work very well.

With most fiction, if it’s paranormal, it’s all about ghosts and horror, like in Poltergeist-- the whole focus of the story is around “There is a ghost, and that’s a problem.”  Whereas in a paranormal mystery, like Barbara Michaels’ books or mine, it’s “There’s a ghost, but that’s not necessarily the problem.  The problem is somebody just got murdered.  Somebody’s creating more ghosts, and we want them to stop that.”  So I think it’s a difficult line to tread, and maybe I’m not doing myself a favor, maybe it’s harder for publishers to figure out how to market.  They know how to market a Clive Barker.  They know how to market Diane Mott Davidson, who writes mysteries.  Give them somebody who’s kind of a blend between the two and you’ve got to find a publisher who’s willing to explore that world, which is usually a small press-- “We like things that are mixed up!”  A traditional publisher may say, “Well, we don’t know which editor would take this on, because it kind of fits here, here, OR here.”  Or nowhere.  But then again, you can always start the new trend.  Harry Potter was far too long for children’s books until it got out there.

Whom did you accept feedback from as you wrote?

I have a group of fellow writers that I meet with a couple times a month to exchange feedback. One member in particular is what I would call the perfect average reader.  She doesn’t read like another creative writer who’s going to give you feedback with all the terms like “point of view”--  she reads like my mother would read a book.  So I knew when she was confused, I needed to fix it, and when she liked something, I was doing well.  I also had feedback from agents; feedback from people in the actual business is the most valuable, the hardest to take, and sometimes the hardest to get.  Because they do get a lot of submissions and it takes time for them to even write a little note to tell you, “Your writing style’s very nice, but you’re a little slow here.”  But I like getting feedback from a variety of sources.  If you get it just from your fellow writers, you can get too much of that writer perspective on it.

What kind of research about Cassadaga did you do?

I was raised in sort of a liberal, New Age-type family, so we were familiar with Cassadaga, I’d already studied with Indian shamans, with Hindu yogis, spiritualists-- I’m a certified ghost hunter!  (I’m not very good at it, but I’m certified.)  So I knew a lot of background, and I know people who either are part of or close to the Cassadaga community who let me know what was going on.  I made a lot of visits, figuring out what I wanted to include.  The Cassadaga in the book is a slightly different Cassadaga, a reflection of the real one.  Since it took so long to write the book, sometimes they rebuilt or reorganized and I still had things structured the old way. 

Everybody I know who’s been to Cassadaga says it’s a spooky place, but to me it isn’t.  It’s a very different atmosphere, but it’s one I enjoy visiting and relaxing in.  One of the challenges of writing the book is, people in Cassadaga have a very unique view of things, slightly different from what you would find in the day-to-day business world.  The difficult thing is to do justice to the people that I’m representing, so that they don’t come off as too flaky, but I don’t lose their uniqueness.

I think a lot of people who don’t know psychics and spiritualists and pagans also don’t know the real-world interactions between those groups.  Because spiritualists usually are Christian, witches are not.  In the real Cassadaga, there’s a little leeriness about having too much of a pagan influence because they’re afraid that clients will not view them as Christians, which is what they are.  So knowing their world helped me understand some of the inner workings that motivate those groups to react differently.

Part of what I’m trying to bring out in the book is, to be a thriving community, Cassadaga has got to have business, but their focus is on very spiritual things, and they can’t lose that or they lose what brings in the business to begin with.  All you need to create a murder mystery in that situation is to throw somebody whose sense of balance is completely off into the mix.  One character who’s just too far to one side or the other.

Will any stores in Cassadaga sell Tea and Witchery? 

I will approach a few stores and see if they are willing to take it.  It’s coming out from a small press, but Hard Shell does distribute through Ingram, which makes it easier.  I’d love to see them carry it.  I think that would be a perfect audience, people visiting Cassadaga who could buy a book about it.

Do you think it was easier or harder to sell your mystery story because of its setting in a community of psychics?  How did you find your publisher?

As popular as psychics are right now in the TV show “Medium,” I think I ran into some trouble because a lot of agents outside Florida don’t “get” Cassadaga.  A town full of psychics?  They don’t realize, it exists!  Someone I met at a writing conference said, “You know, you should send it to Janice at Hard Shell because she knows Cassadaga, and she’s probably going to be interested in a book there.”  I sent her the query, and she said, yes, send the manuscript, so I did, and the answer I got back was, “We’ll read it, but we’re not accepting right now, and it could take five months to get a reply back.”  I got a yes in two weeks.

From my first submission to an agent to acceptance by Hard Shell was probably about 18 months.  Over the 18 months I didn’t submit to as many places as a lot of authors I know, only because I would get feedback from agents-- it’s too long, it’s too slow-- and I would take it back and rework it.

Has it been a good experience so far?

Yes.  You hear good and bad things about small press not getting in all the bookstores and that sort of thing, but they have the time to spend with a new author to help you along with learning the process.  I have an editor!  Which is a wonderful thing.  I can say, what do you think of this, should I stop editing this one, how much more work do I need to do on this? 

Being accepted and just hearing that the book is worth publishing, regardless of whether it’s Mysterious Press with 100,000 copies or Hard Shell with 1,000 copies, lets you know that you’ve reached that point where your work IS professional enough to go out to an audience.  That’s kind of a nice justification to get back, a nice feeling.

What are you doing and planning to do to market and promote Tea and Witchery?

Right now, one of the things I’m doing to market my book is trying to figure out exactly when the publication date is.  One of the problems with a small press is that things do slide a little bit now and then.  With a number of people being in Florida, the hurricanes this year did not help anyone.  I have a website (http://www.mariedees.com/), and I do a blog (http://teawitch.blog.com/).  The ladies of the Orlando Area Historical Rose Society, which I’m involved in, all want to buy the book.  Once I get something in hand, I will go out and work with bookstores, small ones, too, not just the big chains, to get the book out and get some publicity behind it. A lot of the Borders and Barnes & Nobles are very friendly towards local authors.  New Age and Wiccan bookstores, too, because that’s an audience that’s interested in this sort of thing.  Although I’ve found out that people who don’t hang out at New Age bookstores also like to read about psychics.   They all like to watch “Medium.” 

Tea and Witchery is meant to be a fun book.  I’m hoping when people read it, they enjoy it.  I’m just exploring getting the writing career started in a small way.

What’s next?

There’s a book that’s at my editor right now currently titled, Love is Blond.  It’s in the same series.  And I’m currently working on what would be the third in the series, When the Ghost is Clear.  I’d be perfectly happy to do more.  I enjoy them.

I have also actually been working on a fantasy novel.  I was reading a book Reclaiming the Magic by Lorna Tedder, which is a book written for authors who’ve already been published and are getting their writing started again.  One of the pieces of advice if you get stuck is to try a “Sunday book.”  On Sunday, you write something completely different. Not always just on Sundays; I had a couple bad months where I discovered I needed a month of Sundays.  I’m just playing with that to see where it goes; it may be a fantasy romance, I don’t know yet.  But I’ve found that it helps every now and then to be able to step back from the mystery series and do something else, so that you come back to it with a fresh eye.

Natasha Gapinski is an entertainment writer and researcher in Central Florida.  When she’s not facing a deadline, she likes to play online video games, read some of the many books in the world, and assist her husband in his quest to make their two cats the most spoiled felines in the U.S.  You can contact her at Natasha.Gapinski@gmail.com.

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