I know Chris DeSmet as a writer of film scripts—she teaches script writing at the University of Wisconsin—but I didn't know whether she wrote anything else until we were standing in the back of Booked for Murder, our independent mystery bookstore in Madison, talking . . . with my tape recorder running.
Wisconsin writing teacher churns out the copy
Chris DeSmet has been teaching writers the craft of writing at the University of Wisconsin for—well, she won't say how long. "That's like asking a woman how old she is," she says.
But it's longer than I've been back in the state. I returned in 1996.
It was the next year that I met her up at the Extension service office. We developed a wave-across-the-room friendship because she worked with fledgling script writers and I was writing a novel. I drew Marshall Cook as my writing coach, not Chris.
Chris and a partner have written a bunch of movie scripts, several of which have been optioned. They've also have a script for a television series out in Hollywood that also has been optioned.
Script writing, that's her first love.
But I always wondered whether she had others. So a couple months ago I asked what else have you written?
A mainstream novel, she said.
Spirit Lake.
Published by Hard Shell Word Factory.
"Then I have my Mischief in Moonstone series, a series of short stories, all are romantic comedy mysteries," published in anthologies and collections by Whiskey Creek Press.
"And, like everybody else, I have two or three manuscripts sitting on the shelf at home that probably will never see the light of day."
Chris thought about that for a moment, then said one of those manuscripts is really pretty good.
"I'm going to do something with this one. It's a western romance mystery, set in Wyoming."
A western? And a mystery?
My James Early series are western mysteries set in Kansas.
She had my attention.
"It's about a woman in Chicago who goes out to Wyoming to solve a mystery having to do with her dead father."
The story starts with the woman finding her father's ashes on her doorstep. They had been shipped up from Mexico. She must take them back to the family ranch.
Now you might wonder, as I did, why this Wisconsinite would select Wyoming as the setting for this mystery? She's never been there. Chris could as easily have put her story here or in Iowa or in Texas.
"My father is a fly fisherman," she said. "He goes fishing there, loves it. So there's a mystique about Wyoming.
"I was intrigued by the mountains and why my father loves the place so much. So I decided I could go to Wyoming by book."
That manuscript, as much as Chris likes it, will have to wait.
"I'm working on two new mystery series. They come first."
Both series are cozies.
I sharpened my questions. "What are they about?" I asked.
"Can't tell you."
"Titles?"
"Can't say. In the cozy mystery genre," she said, "it's really important that you sell your series as a brand name. If you reveal what yours is too early," some other writer may steal your idea and run with it.
Two agents are looking at the two series. One has a meeting with an editor ready to take the synopsis of the first book in one of the series to his boss.
No contracts yet, but there could be before the month is out.
If the agent does indeed sell the series, all of Chris's time away from her day job will go into writing that new set of books.
They will be foodie books, so there will be recipes. And because they are mysteries, there will be lots of dead bodies.
Yes, said Chris, lots of them.
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© Jerry Peterson.
