We've thrown the ornamental iron gates of Maywrite Towers open to welcome our latest feature -- author essays.

Let Me Tell It

Jane Tesh

As a writer, one of the main questions I get asked all the time is where do you get your ideas?

My answer is, well, I sit down at my computer, my characters start talking, and I write down what they say, which doesn’t really explain anything to the people who ask that question because I can’t honestly explain it myself. I have an idea of what my characters might say in a particular scene, but when they get there, they start talking and the story unfolds in the direction I think it should go.

That’s usually what happens, but sometimes my characters have very different ideas.

My Grace Street mystery series is set in the fictional city of Parkland, North Carolina. Dealing with the loss of his little daughter Lindsey, my main character PI David Randall comes to live in his friend Camden’s boarding house at 302 Grace Street. Cam is a gifted psychic, but has trouble accepting his gift. His girlfriend, Ellin Belton, produces shows for the Psychic Service Network and longs to be psychic. At 302 Grace, Randall meets Kary Ingram, the woman who will become the love of his life. Having lost the ability to have children due to a teenage pregnancy and botched abortion, Kary longs for a baby, something she and Randall will have to work out over the course of the series.

But when I first started writing Stolen Hearts, book one in the series, David Randall was not the main character. He was one of Cam’s boarders, a balding, paunchy, washed-up salesman, who was ornery and fairly useless. I tried writing the story from Cam’s point of view, but that didn’t work. I wanted his visions to be something a detective could interpret as clues to his cases. Then I tried writing from Ellin’s point of view, but her focus was too narrow and her ambition too strong. Again, the story stalled.

Then one day I was in my office wondering how I could make everything work when clear as day, I saw Randall walk in. He slouched against the doorframe, took a few puffs of his cigarette, scratched his fat stomach, and said, “It’s my story. Let me tell it.”

I agreed to let him have a try.

“Let’s get one thing straight first,” he said, and pointed the cigarette at me. “If this is my story, I’m going to be a damned sight more handsome.”

The minute he started telling me the story from his point of view, the whole book took off.

“I didn’t expect a murder to happen right down the street from my second wife’s house, but then, I didn’t expect a lot of things, including sleeping in my car. Admittedly, there’s plenty of room in the back seat of a ’67 Plymouth Fury, but October in Parkland, North Carolina, can be pretty steamy, even at dawn, so I was awake when the sirens and flashing lights came by. When I first heard the sirens, I was in that odd state of not quite awake not quite asleep, and my heart jumped, thinking I was back on that hillside twelve years ago searching for Lindsey through clouds of black smoke, not realizing my world was about to end.”

As promised, I made him tall, dark, and handsome, with the ability to see and hear Lindsey’s little spirit as she helps him with his cases. I live for moments like this, the unexplainable bursts of creativity, the unplanned dialogue, the sudden metamorphosis of a secondary character into the hero of what is now a series of ten books with three more adventures to come. Not bad for a former washed-up salesman!

Stolen Hearts

A seemingly minor case involving the recovery of a missing songbook leads PI David Randall into a full-blown murder investigation. Complications arise when his psychic friend Camden is possessed by the composer’s restless spirit. Hearts are broken and healed and ghosts confronted as Randall searches for answers, family, and forgiveness.

Jane Tesh

Jane Tesh, a retired media specialist, lives in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, Andy Griffith’s home town, the real Mayberry. She is the author of the Madeline Maclin Mysteries, featuring former beauty queen, Madeline “Mac” Maclin and her reformed con man husband, Jerry Fairweather, and the Grace Street Mystery Series, featuring struggling PI David Randall, his psychic friend, Camden, and an array of tenants who move in and out of Cam’s boarding house at 302 Grace Street. Ghost Light is her first standalone mystery and the first to feature an asexual heroine. She has also published six fantasy novels. When she isn’t writing, Jane plays the piano and conducts the orchestra for productions at the Andy Griffith Playhouse.

Visit at Jane’s website and her Facebook page, Facebook page