Sherry Thomas’s sleuthing librarians and gender-bent Sherlock

Episode Notes

Transcript

Lee Rawles:

Welcome to the Modern Law Library. I’m your host, Lee Rawles, and today I’m joined by Sherry Thomas, author of the new mystery book, The Librarians, and of the long-running Lady Sherlock series, A Historical Mystery. Sherry, thank you so much for joining us.

Sherry Thomas:

It’s my pleasure to be here.

Lee Rawles:

I’ve really wanted to get more into the mystery genre for my listeners. We do an awful lot of nonfiction, but in my personal life, I read a lot of fiction. And I know that audience members seem to like when we talk about legal thrillers and mystery. So I was reading, I picked up your new book, The Librarians and really enjoyed it. And then I saw your name. I was like, wait, is that … And it turned out that you are the author of a series that I had been following. So thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be a writer at all and then to find these genres?

Sherry Thomas:

Well, I came to writing in a bit sideways in the sense that I think when I was maybe 10 years old, I very much loved reading. I thought I’ll grow up and write children’s literature. And then I actually tried my hand at it like 11, 12 and realized I didn’t know what to say once I’ve written the first page. I had no idea where any story should go. Tried several times and was like, okay, that’s clearly a sign from above as I should do other things. So I did go on to do other things. My undergrad education was in economics and economic is a totally useless major. If you only do it as an undergrad, so obviously it was intended as a stepping stone to grad school and I was going to study international relations. And then man proposes, God disposes. And I instead became a stay-at-home mom at the ripe old age of 21.

Lee Rawles:

Oh my goodness.

Sherry Thomas:

Do not go to grad school. And two years into my career as stay-at-home mom, I grabbed a historical romance, which I devoured growing up. I grabbed a historical romance from the library, took it home and was going to spend my son’s nap time enjoying it. But it so turned out that I did not enjoy that book at all. In fact, I was kind of furious at it because I didn’t enjoy it at all. And I spent the entirety of my available time that day on that and did not get any pleasure in return. So very seldom does this ever happen to me. But on that day, I was kind of angry. And by the time my husband returned home from work, I said to him, “I am going to write historical romances.”

Lee Rawles:

Because I know I can do a better job than that person.

Sherry Thomas:

I am not sure whether that was actually what I thought, but I was like, “If this can make money, surely I can do it. ” But the thing was that book just may not have suited me. It was written by an author that I enjoyed greatly as a younger person. It just may not have suited me at that moment. So it’s not to say the book lacked merits. It did not match up with where I was at my life at that time.

Lee Rawles:

I think that’s so true. There have been many times when I’ve tried to go back to a book that I adored as a child and sometimes it’s because you as an adult are like, “Oh, wait, this is colonialism.” This is eugenics. This is alarming. And sometimes it’s just you needed that book at a certain point in your life and you no longer do. It’s

Sherry Thomas:

The alchemy of reading. No two readers ever read the same book and no person ever read the same book again.

Lee Rawles:

Yeah. And there have been books where I’ve been like, “Oh, if only I could go back and read this again for the first

Sherry Thomas:

Time.” I know, right?

Lee Rawles:

But part of the magic of the librarians, which is your most recently released book, is that it is set in a library. And this isn’t the hogwords of libraries. This is your kind of basic district library. It’s in Austin, Texas, and everything about it should be low-key. And then it turns out to not at all be that way. And it does seem like a bit of a departure. You have written historical romance and contemporary romance and YA fantasy and historical mystery, but this is a contemporary mystery. So I would love to hear from you about the librarians and what sparked it.

Sherry Thomas:

What sparked it, as it so often is, is a request from the publisher.

Lee Rawles:

He’s like, “This is what we’ll sell, Sherry.”

Sherry Thomas:

They just came to me with, they said, “For your new contract, we would like two more Lady Sherlock books, and we would like you to write a book with a trio of female librarians in a contemporary setting.” And they specifically said, “We want this to be the Thursday murder club, but with librarians.” And at that point, I had not actually read the Thursday Murder Club, which I immediately went and found and enjoyed. And I was like, “Oh, okay. So it is cozy, but with a international crime bent with the interesting characters with their own goals and life stories, I was like, I could do this. ” I especially asked them, “Is the international aspect of the Thursday Murder Club okay?” And they say, yes, and I just went wild with it. So it is this little library, but it’s connected to a worldwide web of crime and cryptocurrency and whatnot.

Lee Rawles:

Well, and not to do too many spoilers, but technically a little bit of a kidnapping and hidden identities and long lost love. And you were able to weave together. You mentioned that there are three female librarians, but there’s also a male librarian.

Sherry Thomas:

Three female librarians was actually written in my contract. But I wanted to add a little balance, yes, because the librarian will help me the most in the research for this book is a gentleman. So I was like, “He should be celebrated.”

Lee Rawles:

Yes. That’s one of the things I wanted to say. What I loved about the librarians was it more closely reflected the diversity that I see from my friends who are librarians or when I go to my public library, there may be in our popular cultural ideas, this idea of a librarian as a older, middle-aged white woman who probably never left the town, and that just isn’t the lived experience.

Sherry Thomas:

That is not at all the lived experience. Lots of librarians being a librarian is maybe their second or third career. They have done other things. And then they came to the library because they’ve always been big readers. They’ve always loved libraries and other things they were doing, and they’re interested in public service. So among writers, there are many current and former librarians. So just from knowing them, you immediately get this idea of the diversity of their backgrounds and everything, and they’re very interesting life stories.

Lee Rawles:

And they are very interesting life stories. For example, the male librarian, Jonathan, who we spoke about, was a former closeted high school athlete who then went into the military, never really found himself. And after his military time ended, he decided to use the GI Bill and go to library school.

Sherry Thomas:

The greatest use of a GI Bill ever.

Lee Rawles:

Greatest use of a GI Bill ever, for sure. And each of the librarians does come from a very different background. You have the woman administrator in charge is Sophia. And I would say the first couple chapters she felt very remote because I think that she feels remote to her coworkers. And then you find out her deep and rich history and how she became a single mother and is navigating being a black woman raising a black daughter in Austin, Texas. And you have Astrid, who the first couple chapters, Astrid is the youngest librarian. Yes. And I’m like, “What is your deal? You seem very needy, but also so alone and you come to find out her story.” I think that we can spoil it because you yourself- I

Sherry Thomas:

Think we’re spoiled because it’s spoiled in the writing the first or second chapter. Yes. Yeah.

Lee Rawles:

And Astrid, who comes from an Iowa Farm family, went to college and did something that I think many people have done, which is invent a new backstory for themselves when they hit college. A

Sherry Thomas:

Totally new one.

Lee Rawles:

Unfortunately, for adult astrid, teenage astrid was like, “And my story is going to be that I am a Swedish exchange student and I’m going to use a Swedish accent and talk about Mamo and Sweden’s dairy production and was totally unable to escape this false self she had built for herself.” So she is now, I think, late 20s what I-

Sherry Thomas:

Late 20s, yes.

Lee Rawles:

And traps- Still

Sherry Thomas:

Stuck. Trapped in

Lee Rawles:

This lie that she had constructed for herself.

Sherry Thomas:

And her Scandinavian identity. And

Lee Rawles:

Her Scandinavian identity, talking about Malmo where she’s never been. The

Sherry Thomas:

Farm, not far from Mamo.

Lee Rawles:

That’s true. She makes that very clear. Yes. And so these are characters with, like I said, just such interesting quirks and backstories. And we haven’t even come to the woman. I

Sherry Thomas:

Have to point out with as far as … I mean, we all know this. I don’t know whether we all know this, but I think in Austin, Texas is kind of a legend because Matthew McConohy went to UT Austin and supposedly sported a Australian accent for the whole first year when he was a freshman. Yeah, he came clean. But Astra didn’t have that kind of guts, I guess she would just felt stuck. Yeah.

Lee Rawles:

And so she’s having to approximate a Swedish accent in her job as a librarian and never make any super close friends because they’ll discover her non-Swedishness. And she acts as though there are, I don’t know, accent police who will come and take her away. And of course that’s not her actual experience, but-

Sherry Thomas:

What is this? Our greatest fear is fear itself.

Lee Rawles:

Yes, yes. And we have not even come to the woman who I feel like really springs forward that … Her presence galvanizes a lot of the underlying mystery, which is Hazel. Can you talk a little bit about Hazel and her grandmother who I adore, Ni.

Sherry Thomas:

So Hazel is actually not a librarian in the strict sense of librarian shit because she does not have a degree in library information science. So she enters a library as a library clerk. So maybe in legal terms, she’s a paralegal. I’m not quite sure what the exact parallel is, but so she is there to do the grunt work of the library. But her arrival is often the case in this kind of story. So the arrival of a stranger is what kicks off a whole string of events that make people who are already there kind of look at their life, or it kind of changes everybody’s circumstances just enough that they start becoming different person or they start living different lives. So in this sense, Hazel’s arrival was a little bit like Gandalf coming to the shire and kick Bilbo bags out of the door onto a great adventure.

So don’t want to give too much away, but Hazel was born in Austin, but when she was 10 years old, her mom is from Singapore. Her parents are … Her dad is an Asian American. Her mom was from Singapore. So when she was 10, her parents got divorced. So she went back with her mom to Singapore. And then now at about, I don’t know how old … She’s approximately 35. She came back and got a job at the library because she came to live with her grandmother, but her grandmother didn’t want her under foot all the time.

Lee Rawles:

Her grandmother’s busy. Her grandmother has a lot going on.

Sherry Thomas:

Her grandmother has a life. Her grandmother has to go workout. Her grandmother has several book clubs. Her grandmother- Has

Lee Rawles:

To defeat a bunch of youths.

Sherry Thomas:

Plays lots of game online and is extremely competitive. So grandma has alive. Grandma doesn’t want Hazel moping around.

Lee Rawles:

All right. So again, we don’t want to do too many spoilers. This is a mystery, but I will say that very early in the book, you meet the librarians as they’re about to throw the libraries first game night where they’re hoping to attract kind of younger crowd and everyone will play board games and have a grand old time and it’s near Halloween. And the game night seemingly goes well, but-

Sherry Thomas:

Of without a good glitch, yes. Oh

Lee Rawles:

Yeah. And people come in costume, including a Sherlock Holmes nod. And then shortly thereafter, two people wind up dead. And

Sherry Thomas:

I

Lee Rawles:

Think that’s all we’re going to say about the plot at that point, but you can pick up the librarians and find out more. We’re going to take a quick break to hear from our advertisers, but when we return, I’ll still be speaking with Sherry Thomas about her writing career and her Lady Sherlock series. Welcome back to the Modern Law Library. I am here with Sherry Thomas. And Sherry, the first book of yours that I read was A Study in Scarlet Women, which was the first book in your Lady Sherlock series. And as I said, we want to be doing more mystery coverage and what could be more traditional than a Sherlock Holmes related mystery. So I want to hear from you. Like I said, there was a little Easter egg in the librarians nodding to Sherlock. Have you had a longstanding love of the Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle?

How did you come to write this series?

Sherry Thomas:

I have always enjoyed just reading, reading everything I’d get my hands on. And so I first read the adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Chinese, translated into Chinese when I was a little girl in China. My grandfather got them for me from the library of his medical college where he was a professor. And the slightly odd thing about my love of Sherlock Holmes is that I read original canon Sherlock Holmes and then almost immediately read what they call pastiche, which is Sherlock Holmes stories featuring the original characters were written by other authors. And so I read The 7% Solution, which is one of the most successful, most famous books in the Sherlock Holmes cannon when I was either in fifth or sixth grade, like shortly after I read the original books, lots of the original stories. And it kind of fascinated me. I mean, I knew I was reading Sherlock Holmes written by someone else.

And it kind of fascinated me because the premise of the 7% solution was that when Sherlock Holmes disappeared for those three years following the Reichingbach Falls, no, he hadn’t actually disappeared and maybe he hadn’t fallen off the Reichingbach Falls either. It was being so long ago, I can’t quite remember the details, but basically he was in rehab, he was in detox.

He was getting over his drug habit from injecting himself with cocaine all the time.

Lee Rawles:

Well, something needed to happen. It’s usually not very simple for someone to kick morphea or

Sherry Thomas:

Cocaine habits. So I just absolutely loved it. When you read Sherlock Holmes stories original, you’re just like, oh yeah, sure. He’s shooting himself up with something exciting. And then it’s like, yes, this is something that actually has consequences. It’s a very different take on the character, I mean, on the habit, on the vice that he’s well known for. And it’s an exploration. What if you come at Sherlock Holmes from a completely different perspective as somebody who’s fallible, who has to pay the price for doing whatever he wants to. So in my mind, these two were always parallel. And so in my future reading, I had always loved the pastiche almost as much as I love the original. And one book that influenced me a lot was TheBeekeeper’s Apprentice. By

Lee Rawles:

Laurie R. King. Oh, she’s a master of the genre.

Sherry Thomas:

Exactly. In her Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell series, or I should say Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, in which she gave Sherlock Holmes a female partner who’s basically the exact temperament and exact same brain power as Urgent Shallow Homes. And I love those books. And the moment I read those books, I was like, “I wish I could write something like that. ” It was a very strong desire, but at that point I thought plotting is actually my weak point. And I had just started my romance career. I just random house at that point had bought my first historical romance, but it hadn’t even published it. So I was in the middle of going to grad school and writing my second one. So it was like, this is not the right time. But fast forward a few years and I’d written nine romances and I was running out of ideas and I was like, let me see if my publisher will buy a gender band Sherlock Holmes for me.

Because if you want to write Sherlock Holmes Prestige, so many people have tried their hands and there’ve been so many good works. So you got to bring a new perspective. And so I basically went online and said, has anyone actually published other than maybe in fan fiction space, had anyone ever published a female Sherlock Combs? As it turned out, there wasn’t. So I was like, maybe I could do it. And my first idea, believe it or not, was actually not to write a historical mystery with the female Sherlock Combs, but to write a contemporary middle grade book, middle grade a YA book. But my YA editor heard the idea and said, sorry, but mysteries don’t sell in YA. So then it was like, okay to my adult publisher, would you like this? They said, sure, we’ll take three books, go home and write. And- It’s

Lee Rawles:

Amazing to me that you say, oh, YA, people don’t buy mysteries. Because as you were talking about your first exposure to Sherlock Holmes, I realized I read the actual Arthur Conan Doyle stories after. I was probably a teenager, but when I was maybe 10, 11, I devoured a series about the Baker Street irregulars. And I wish sitting here, I could tell you who that author and series was, but that was my first exposure to the Sherlock Holmes world. And he does seem like a character who has captured the imagination of so many authors. There’s so much pastiche that he exists almost as a force unto himself. And I think that Arthur Conan Doyle felt that way too and was like, “Ugh, I am cursed by this powerful being I can’t get away from.”

Sherry Thomas:

I know. Even Rikenbog Falls couldn’t kill him.

Lee Rawles:

What if I just kill him? And then what if I need money then three years later. Poor Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sherry Thomas:

Poor Arthur Cohen

Lee Rawles:

Doyle. But I interrupted. So you approached your adult editor and he was like, “Oh, she

Sherry Thomas:

Was interested.” Yeah. They said, “We’ll take it. ” And that came to it at the right time in the sense that traditional publishing was losing authors in droves at that time because it was the rise of self-publishing. And so even though I was like, I will write you something different, but I was still willing to write for them. So they were like, “Yes, here’s some money. Now go home and give us these three books.” So it was a good point because otherwise I don’t think publishers are quite as supportive about just complete genre changes as that. Usually they prefer you to keep writing what you’re writing.

Lee Rawles:

So we have hinted, so this is a female Sherlock Holmes. Okay. But that doesn’t get into the full depth of Charlotte who is the character. Could you tell us a little bit about Charlotte, her sister Olivia, who I love. What was your character development like for this heroine who you’ll now be releasing, is it her ninth book

Sherry Thomas:

In the fall? Yes. The Vanish sister will be the ninth Lady Sherlock book coming out late September of this year, I think.

Lee Rawles:

And we meet her in a study in Scarlet Women who, as you said, it was your first book, but it sounds like you had at least a three book deal. You knew that you were going to have to develop a character who could travel through time, have multiple- Adventures. Adventures. And I see why you originally thought, oh, maybe this was contemporary, because as contemporary women, we have a lot more freedom, but this series is set during the time period that-

Sherry Thomas:

Of the original Sherlock Holmes, yes.

Lee Rawles:

Of the original Sherlock Holmes. The 1880s.

Sherry Thomas:

Yeah.

Lee Rawles:

You would think that there were many more barriers and strictures on women, particularly in Charlotte’s class.

Sherry Thomas:

Charlotte Holmes is generally thought to have come from either the upper gentry or the lower aristocracy, which is exactly where I’ve placed Charlotte Holmes, his gender-bended self. But the thing is, moving through the world as a woman is a very different experience than moving through the world as a man. I think especially 150 years ago, there were just so much more leeway to what a man could do as opposed to what a woman could do. There’s so many more opportunities, so many fewer questions asked of, what are you doing? Or so many times being told, “You cannot do this. Why? Because you are a woman.” Because I’ll bet a man has never been … There’s so many things we’re told as women cannot do that men haven’t heard. And all of this, I think, has a huge effect on how someone grows up. So my Charlotte Holmes, as a result of that, she’s not just Sherlock Holmes in a dress.

I had to take into consideration what kind of pressure she was under, what kind of career … I mean, not career option, what kind of life options she had. Basically, she had only one life option, which is to grow up and be a pretty personable lady and get married. And what can you do in addition to that? So she was navigating a very narrow path, which one could fall off at any moment. And we say this glibly now, but being a long, unsupported, poor spinster was a very much feared fate back then because you really are alone, you really are unsupported and you really have very few means to improve your lot or to just even live with as much dignity as you like. So Charlotte, having the mind of a Sherlock Holmes wants to forge a path for herself, but even she had to pay a great price for it in that without her family support, she cannot go to school and become a headmistress at a girl’s school as she had hoped to be.

She had thought that was her way to independence, but her father refused to support her after telling her all throughout her adolescent and early 20s that yes, he will support her if by age 25, she still hasn’t found somebody she liked to marry. So the book starts with Charlotte becoming a fallen woman, not out of choice, but she was trying to get rid of her maiden head so that she becomes ineligible so that her father will have to send her school, but something goes awry and she’s seen doing it. She’s basically caught in the middle of it. And so then she becomes an outcast, but then her life kind of only begins as she becomes an outcast because there are people who sort of in this gray area between totally acceptable and totally rejected who are willing to help her and that’s where her Watson comes from.

Mrs. Watson, who used to be- I

Lee Rawles:

Love Mrs. Watson.

Sherry Thomas:

Who used to be an actress and therefore her respectability is also always a little bit questionable despite having been later respectfully married. So yeah, so this is where she draws support. This is where her story starts about being able to actually use her talent to support herself. So Charlotte’s characteristic, unlike Sherlock Holmes, she does not have the luxury of taking just the cases she find interesting because she has to make money.

Lee Rawles:

So some of them are. They start out as the kind of “lowly case” that someone

Sherry Thomas:

Might write. Very cool TDN cases. Yeah. Not all exciting murders and very intriguing mysteries, but of course the ones that we focus our attentions on art. And also she cannot really shoot herself up with cocaine. So her vice is carbs, basically. She’s very fond of all kinds of refined carbs and has to periodically watch out because clothes back then aren’t as elastic as they are now and she’s not made of money. So she has to keep being able to wear the same cloth.

Lee Rawles:

Well, we need to take another break to hear from her advertisers. When you return, I’ll still be speaking with Sherry Thomas. Welcome back to the Modern Law Library. I’m your host, Lee Rawles here with Sherry Thomas, and we were just discussing the Lady Sherlock series. So you said that you initially had a three book deal and it’s now, it’s extended to nine-

Sherry Thomas:

I recently signed a contract, so there’ll

Lee Rawles:

Be at least 11. Oh, I feel that this is breaking news on the Modern Law Library podcast. You heard it here first, or maybe you didn’t, but it’s news to me. Thrilled to hear it. When you are the author of a long running series, you want to keep true to the character you created, but all of us through life develop and change. How do you think your Charlotte has changed? I also, I have the opportunity to ask you the author now. I read the books as Charlotte also being neurodiverse. I don’t know if she would have been diagnosed as autistic. Were she a child today, but something. Obviously, she’s out

Sherry Thomas:

Of the ordinary. On the borderline, probably on the borderline.

Lee Rawles:

Yes. I mean, she has this genius that the Canon Sherlock Holmes had, and that does not necessarily make an easy life, particularly when it comes to fitting into society. But you’ve got this long-running series. She has to be able to grow and change, but still remain herself. And I just wonder how you think about that as you write her.

Sherry Thomas:

One of Charlotte’s greatest growth is that she becomes more capable of expressing herself and of returning other people’s affections in a way that they will understand. That, I think, has been her path because she has always been capable of being loved. I think Charlotte has never had that problem. She very much takes a matter of fact that somebody’s good to her. She knows who is sincerely kind and caring toward her, but she has sometimes had trouble expressing love toward other people or expressing love in a way that they will perceive as love without having to think very hard about it. So that has been her path because career-wise, she’s already said she’s already … Sherlock Holmes is the best. Every case is difficult and every case she’ll face setbacks, but Sherlock Holmes always solves her case. So that is not where her thing come from.

And because she isn’t the original male Sherlock Home, I didn’t instill her with too much arrogance that need to be worn down on, so that’s also not where. So for her thing is just emotionally she learns to open up more. She learns to express. She learns to understand other people’s language of love. And I feel like one of the greatest arcs in these stories, actually her sister, Livia, who is the scribe, who is the one officially chat Translating Charlotte stories into cannon Sherlock Holmes stories because every Sherlock Holmes paste needs someone like that. And she has been going from someone extremely insecure, extremely afraid of challenging the norms and the expectations placed on a woman to somebody who’s more capable of it. She’ll always be somewhat insecure. She will always be a little fearful of doing the things she really want to do, but now she’s actually doing those things instead of just seeding against the restrictions placed on her, but not being able to actually go after what she wants.

Lee Rawles:

And when you come to the part about experiencing love and then learning how to express it towards someone else, I feel like your background as a romance writer had to have helped with that. And it’s interesting because many of the historical romances or romances that I have read, they’ll have some sort of mystery element thrown in, but that’s not their primary purpose.That’s kind of a device that helps the two love interests interact.

Sherry Thomas:

Exactly.

Lee Rawles:

But when we talk about thinking of different backgrounds for characters than the stereotypes we have about them, I feel like the romance industry is getting better at this, but acknowledging that historical romance should include people who are not just rich and white because that’s not who lived in the past.

Sherry Thomas:

No, no.

Lee Rawles:

Other people were there too. So can you talk a little bit about your writing in the historical romance and how you have tried to reflect actual history and the diversity that existed in real life?

Sherry Thomas:

I have to say, I did not do a terribly good job at it.

Lee Rawles:

You were fighting against an industry that has a certain script.

Sherry Thomas:

When I was writing historical romance, my idea of diversity was just setting my story in different places. And it was very, very difficult because I had one that featured rich, beautiful looking Anglo-Section people in India. And that book lost me my Walmart distribution for my next historical romance because the readers were not very receptive even to a diverse setting. So my only real challenge to the status quo was my last book, which featured a half-Chinese heroin who is a martial arts expert because I grew up really martial arts epics. And a lot of it is set in Central Asia and the background is the Great Game, which is the name for that period of time when Russia, England, and China were trying to divide up Central Asia among them. So that was a background setting. That was a lot more real history, a lot more heartbreak, a lot more just unusual for historical romance setting at that time, but not necessarily unusual for historical romance as a whole.

If you go back to the ’70s, a lot of those were globe trotting volumes, falling through all kinds of wars and great historical events, meeting actual historic personages. But historical romance has unfortunately contracted and contracted and become smaller and smaller and completely focused in Britain and during a very narrow band of time. And that was part of the reason I left historical romance. And I think it’s a lot easier to bring a more diverse cast into mysteries because you don’t have to guarantee anybody a happy ending. So you don’t need to at least tell them, okay, these people reassure people upfront that at least one of those people has lots of agency and there’ll be no problem as soon as you can sort out your romantic

Lee Rawles:

Problems. But for listeners who did want to pick up those last books where it’s the great game setting, I believe that’s the heart of Blade Duology. Is that correct?

Sherry Thomas:

That is correct. That is correct. The first book is actually a coming of age YA story called The Hidden Blade. And the second is published as a historical romance. It’s called My Beautiful Enemy. And it’s I think my personal favorite among my historical romances. And the thing is, late 19th century Britain was just not a very diverse place. The number of minorities were kind of limited, but in a mystery, you actually get to meet a lot of those people and you actually get to meet regular working people, poor people, people in the service class. And so yeah, it’s much easier to bring diversity to a mystery than it is to a historical romance where the readership was not very accepting of it. And I think we talked about this already, which the contemporary is even easier because we actually reflect how a workplace is in contemporary times.

And in a place like Austin, it is very diverse, thank goodness.

Lee Rawles:

Well, I want to close out our discussion by talking to you about advice for people who are interested in writing, because I think that many of my listeners, especially lawyers, I’ve never … Not never, but I’ve talked to so many lawyers who will be like, “Well, I have this book idea and someday I want to write it, et cetera.” But one of the things I’ve found fascinating about our conversation is, and maybe this goes back to your background as an economics person, is you are very intentional about finding out, well, what’s the market? What can sell? Because you can write a wonderful epic, but if you can’t get it in front of reader’s eyes, what are you going to get from that other than personal satisfaction? So if someone does have the thought, “Oh, I would love to write mysteries or I have a great idea,” what would you recommend for them to put as their next step?

Sherry Thomas:

Well, if you want to have a foot in the marketplace, I think it is always good to do your research. You want to not just study the bestseller list to see who is currently selling well. What you want to know is who publishers are buying, assuming you want to go traditional publishing, you want to see what new books are coming out. And you want to … So say for example, you want to write cozy mysteries or you want to write legal thrillers. You don’t just look at what the established writers are writing. They can get away with a lot more than you can, or often they can sell a book to their publisher, site unseen means the publisher will just come to you and say, “Well, two more of your books. That’s good enough.” But for a new writer, they’re much more stringent. So you want to see what are the books that are being published right now.

And if you have the time and the inclination, you can get a subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace, which will tell you in real time what publishers are buying, not books that have come out because there’s a delay in traditional publishing, but what publishers are currently buying and then you can see, okay, what is currently selling? But the thing is, unless you are a very fast writer, I also do not advise necessarily writing to exactly what is currently selling because by the time you finish your draft and you put it into a shape that’s good enough to sell, the trend may have moved down a little bit. So what you want to do is also read widely in what you’re interested in publishing, then you can sort of spot the gap. What is something that you would like to read, but nobody’s producing? That is your niche like I did 10 years or more ago when I said to myself, I would love to write a Sherlock Holmes story.

So what was the Gap Black song? I saw there was no gender Sherlock Holmes available at that time from traditional publishing. So I was like, let me propose it. So you want to be able to spot your own opportunity and also it would be good to get into writer’s groups, get into writer’s group because other writers who are at the same stage you are or who are just newly published often has the most current, most useful information. If you want the agent, if you want to find out which conferences are correct for you, if you want to … Some people might even be interested in writing short fiction, which places still paying for it and are considered legit credits. All those you will learn from your fellow writers. So get yourself a community of writers.

Lee Rawles:

I love that. And I love that this isn’t a spoiler. At the end of the librarians, they truly have formed their own supportive little community and I love that for them. Will there be more of the librarians?

Sherry Thomas:

That I’m not sure. That will depend on the marketplace receptively. It was pitched to me as a standalone and right before I turned it in, I made sure you still wanted as a standalone. So then I tied everything up. It

Lee Rawles:

Does work. It’s tied up, but I could see other adventures for this crew. Well, Sherry, I want to thank you so much for coming on to talk to the Modern Law Library. Listeners, I hope that you enjoyed this. If you’re interested in reading more from Sherry Thomas, sherrithomas.com is her website. Sherry, are you on any other social media sites we can point people to?

Sherry Thomas:

I am on bluesky as @sherithomas.com and I am on Instagram at writersherithomas, but I’m not very active on social media. You’re

Lee Rawles:

Too busy

Sherry Thomas:

Writing. People want to find out about my books, my website is the best place.

Lee Rawles:

If you have a favorite mystery book or legal thriller, please go ahead and write into us at the [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe in your favorite podcast listening service.