Casting Call

Here's what I know about the next book in the Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery series. I haven't started writing it yet, but I have a setting--Oxford, UK, present day, summer. A group of scholars including Dotsy, who has just earned her PhD so I guess we'd better start calling her Dorothy, is gathered at one of the forty or so colleges in the University. The college will have a name, but I haven't made it up yet.

There will be a murder, of course, but I haven't decided who will get the axe or how it will be administered.

I'm working on characters now. More precisely, I'm interviewing possible characters and asking them to read for the parts. Of course Dotsy Lamb and her good friend Lettie are givens, but beyond that I need a couple of dons, very intelligent but a bit warped. I need a couple of Arthurian wannabes of the sort that hang around Glastonbury and dress like flower children. I need a bulimic wife married to one of the dons. I need a shy chemist. I need a porter (Oxford's term for gatekeeper/receptionist)  I need a scout (housekeeping) and I need a blue badge guide who does ghost tours.

This is backwards from the way I usually work. Normally I start with a murder. Wouldn't it be weird if a (seriously maladjusted person) killed someone by (fatal action)ing him to death and used (really unique circumstance) as an alibi. Then I decide on setting, characters, etc, and only then start interviewing imaginary friends for the various roles. I don't know if this will work or not.

I'll keep you posted.
Later.