Celebrating the Release of RSVP to Murder: Another Challenge Met
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by Carol Pouliot
I love a good challenge. When I started writing, I was well aware that it would be difficult and that’s exactly what I wanted. After thirty-four successful, happy years teaching, I had been retired for five years and needed a mental challenge. So I decided to see if I could fulfill a lifelong dream of writing a mystery.
After rewrites too numerous to count—twelve? fifteen? twenty?—I finally had a decent draft to submit to an editor. Five years later, I held a printed copy of Doorway to Murder in my hands. The thrill was indescribable. (I know, not a good thing for a writer!)
Now, I faced a new challenge: write a second book and make sure it’s at least as good as the first one. Could I do it again? Was I going to be a one-hit-wonder? I worked even harder the second time around and was happy with Threshold of Deceit.
By the time that I was sketching out mystery #3, I felt more confident and challenged myself with a different aspect of the plot’s structure. I decided to include multiple time periods because the story I wanted to tell happened over several decades. Could I keep the book clear and easy to understand while taking the reader back and forth across time? After meticulous tracking of every detail and multiple charts and hand-written timelines, I worked it out and was very happy with Death Rang the Bell.
With RSVP to Murder, I tried something new...again. My series takes place near the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York. I wanted to write a story with a new twist on the classic English country house mysteries—which I love—and use one of the legendary Adirondack Great Camps to stand in as the country house.
My niece Erin Sadowski designed the cover of my first book, Doorway to Murder. I was thrilled!!
I love my new cover!
In RSVP to Murder, Steven and Olivia travel to the Great Camp for a Christmas party. Their host, a wealthy New York publisher, has planned a weekend filled with holiday activities, but, as the last guest arrives, temperatures plummet and a blizzard hits. Before long, the area is buried in snow, the roads are impassable, and the publisher is poisoned.
So, where’s the challenge?
How do I keep the story moving at a good pace while my characters are snowed in and can’t do any fun activities—no singing Christmas carols, no holiday games—because some of those present are genuinely grieving? How do I incorporate action when Steven (my cop) is stuck in the Great Camp with four feet of snow outside?
Needless to say, I figured it out—bringing in Steven’s partner, Will, and fellow officer, Jimmy Bou, adding more exciting backstories to a couple of characters, incorporating a flashback or two—and was thrilled when my editor told me it was her favorite of the four books. She called it “a classic holiday movie and Agatha Christie mashup.” It doesn’t get any better than that!
Now, on to book #5...and a new challenge.