Giveaway, Guest Post

Guest Chick: Mary Winters

We are thrilled to have a visit from Edgar-nominated author Mary Winters today (congratulations on the nomination, Mary!). Please join us in giving her a warm welcome back to Chicks on the Case and please enjoy this fascinating and thought-provoking post.

Thank you, Chicks on the Case, for inviting me on the blog today, and a special thanks to Cynthia Kuhn, who is one of my favorite writers AND has a new book coming out (yay!). I appreciate your friendship!

Advice. Authors get a lot of it. Write every day; don’t write every day. Have a daily word count; don’t have a daily word count. Trust your writing group; don’t trust your writing group. It’s never ending and to be honest, a little bit confusing. If I paid attention to all the advice I’ve heard over the years, I wouldn’t be able to write a word.

Luckily my sleuth’s advice rarely involves the topic of writing.  Amelia Amesbury is the secret author of an agony column, which looks somewhat like our advice columns today. Thankfully for Amelia, who uses a nom de plume, Victorian columns did not include pictures of advice columnists. Nor did they include original questions submitted to the column. Newspapers and magazines were notoriously chock-full of information, and editors omitted them to save space. It’s easy to ascertain the question, however, by reading the response.

Early agony aunts gave short responses, sometimes just a sentence or two, on inquiries about places, words, history, problems, and relationships. When I research agony columns, I’m always surprised by their variety. A few of the latest examples from a single column include a recipe for wrinkle cream (the answer included onions!), the proper conditions to grow a privet shrub (both shady and sunny), and a cautionary tale about stress and hair color (a story of a man in prison whose hair turned gray overnight). If I get through this book release with my short brown hair intact, I’ll count myself lucky.

Although we might associate advice columnists with gentle, grandmotherly types, agony aunts were smart and resourceful. They had to be to find answers to so many different questions before the age of Google. Their tone was sardonic, and often, their advice had a righteous quality that was irrefutable.

For example, in 1862, a reader named Cordelia wrote in to The London Journal about a man who slighted her. She wanted to be the first to reconcile. The agony aunt’s answer was straight forward and left little room for debate: “It would be better to treat him with cool indifference. That, from a lady, generally makes a man feel excessively humiliated.” Ouch!

Their advice was not only sting worthy, it was also surprising.  Two daughters, Emma and Louisa, wrote in that same year about their bad-tempered mother. Instead of siding with the mother, which we might expect, the agony aunt sympathizes with the daughters: “Some mothers fancy they rule well by continually finding fault. They nag at their children—especially their marriageable daughters—all day, and finish with a grand Babel chorus of wrongs and mistakes with their husbands at night.” Burn!

My sleuth’s advice is often sardonic, surprising, and unconventional. In Murder in Masquerade, Amelia gets into a dispute with a male reader who asks if she’s married. Her answer leads to a deluge of angry letters. I have as much fun writing her responses as anything in the book. And although Amelia doesn’t always adhere to her contemporaries’ advice, I believe she writes in the same spirit.

Whether or not we take it, advice can be a lot of fun to give, receive, and read. What’s the best or worst advice you were ever given?

(Mary has kindly agreed to give away a book to one commenter today, so if you sign in with your preferred email and comment, you are eligible! Winner will be notified by email.)

© Julie Prairie Photography 2016

Mary Winters is the Edgar-nominated author of the Lady of Letters historical mystery series. Mary is also the author of two cozy mystery series and writes short fiction.

Three of her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching, reading, or spending time with her family.

She lives with her husband, daughters, and spoiled pets in the Midwest. Find out more about Mary at MaryWintersAuthor.com.

34 thoughts on “Guest Chick: Mary Winters”

    1. Thank you so much for visiting us today, Mary!

      So happy about your new book. Love your writing!! Congratulations again on the Edgar nomination–that’s fantastic. (And thank you for the very kind words, oh my gosh.)

      This is great: “If I paid attention to all the advice I’ve heard over the years, I wouldn’t be able to write a word.”

      Best advice > Read your work aloud to catch things that your eyes don’t see. (No matter how many times I think I’ve gotten all the things fixed, when I read aloud, I always hear something more.)

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      1. Thank you, Cynthia! I’m very excited about your new book. I agree about reading aloud. I catch so many errors this way.

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  2. Thanks for visiting, Mary! I love the look at advice columns from 160 years ago.
    I remember being advised a number of years back that I needed to write every day, with a goal of at least 1,000 words. It didn’t take me long to learn that was too many words for me and I need a day or two off each week. It wasn’t necessarily bad advice, it just didn’t work for me.

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    2. Thanks, JC! I’ve heard similar writing advice, and you’re absolutely right. It’s not bad advice, but that doesn’t mean it will work for all authors.

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  4. Really enjoyed reading “Guest Chick” Mary Winter’s article today–went to her website and signed up for her newsletter (and will buy her books!), so thanks for introducing her to us. Would love to have you host/feature another SIC author of many books, David Putnam (not a “chick”–he’s a rooster?), who speaks frequently at SIC events–(“david@davidputnambooks.com”). Love finding new authors to buy and read. Am enjoying the “Chicks On The Case” Blog. Love the articles. Thanks! Sue Baughman, SIC-LA, SIC-OC ++ member.

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    1. Thanks for checking out my website, Sue! I appreciate it. I love finding new authors. I find lots on blogs like Chicks on the Case.

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  5. Thanks for being on the blog today, Mary! What a great post. I used to read the Miss Manners column and found it so interesting.

    I don’t know if I can remember the best or worst advice I received. I do remember getting a lot of tips (sometimes opposing) when I was a new mom–and realized I needed to be okay with my own path.

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    1. Thank you, Jennifer! I remember all the advice I got as a new mom. Thankfully, I was too busy to remember most of it. 🙂

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  7. Welcome to the Chicks, Mary, and congrats on the Edgar nomination–so exciting!

    My favorite advice column was always Hints from Heloise–though it’s more on how to remove stains than how to remove an annoying in-law….

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    1. Thank you, Leslie! Advice columns were full of practical knowledge, weren’t they? A Victorian column I read recently discussed how to get rid of freckles.

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  8. What a fun post, Mary! (A “grand Babel chorus, ha!) I stumbled onto some Victorian newspapers while doing family-history research. Did the agony aunts change the name of the questioners as well?

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    2. Thanks, Lisa! Correspondents used names, nick names, and pseudonyms when writing into columns. Usually agony aunts themselves didn’t change the names.

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  9. Congratulations, Mary, on the book and the award. What an agony of suspense! As for advice, the best I received was “bad writing comes before good writing” and sometimes you need to walk away. Worst, “just be yourself” before an interview. Who else was I going to be?

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  10. Welcome and CONGRATS, Mary!

    Your book sounds fantastic–and fascinating! I’ve had some great advice over the years concerning writing (for me, making room to build word count was huge), but my favorite not-so-great advice was from my dad, who said that I needn’t use my turn signal because “it’s no one’s business where you’re going.” Haha!!

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  12. Congrats on the Edgar nomination. When I was going through premarital counseling the couple that was marital counseling told us that the key to a successful marriage is communication. I never forget that so I try to push myself out of my comfort zone often to do so.

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  13. I can imagine the advice given was based on the Agony Aunt’s personal reflections. So fun. When I wanted to move out my Mom told me get a job to support yourself. Best advice I ever got.

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