AUTHORS INTERVIEWING AUTHORS

Carrie Dalby and Candice Marley Conner

Candice: Historical Southern Gothic author Carrie Dalby and I met through the Mobile Writers Guild and have been critique partners for about a decade. And for the past year, we’ve also been neighbors! We’ve been on panels together, participated in literary festivals, critiqued so many novel and short story manuscripts but this is the first time I’ve actually sat down to interview her. While I’m now a children’s and teen book author, my writing career started off as a freelance journalist so it’s fun to get to ask the questions once again.

First off, a bit about Carrie: a California native, Carrie has lived in Mobile, Alabama, since 1996. She’s published several non-fiction articles in national and international magazines, served two terms as president of Mobile Writers Guild, and helps coordinate the Mobile Literary Festival. When Carrie is not reading, writing, browsing bookstores/libraries, or homeschooling, she can often be found knitting or attending concerts.

So, Carrie, you’ve published two young adult novels, the nine-book Possession Chronicles family saga, The Malevolent Trilogy family saga, a short story collection, and you’re working on the paranormal Washington Square Secrets series with book number three, LOYALTY, which hit shelves on August 27th. With all the books (except one YA) in the same historic Mobile Bay area universe that spans from 1897 to 1929 with a Southern Gothic flair, and you have founded and run an online Gothic book club, what is it that draws you to Southern Gothic as a genre?

Carrie: The atmosphere, tone, and raw emotions of the genre. Southern Gothic is gritty and full of human flaws. The stories read truer than whimsical Gothic romances or lofty Gothic classics—though I adore both as well. And with Southern Gothic family sagas you get moody romanticism, tumultuous secrets, grotesque imagery, and damaged characters, all coupled with multi-generational drama. As a reader, that’s tops for me. The more tears when reading, the better!

Candice: And you write all five of those pillars so well! The atmosphere is what makes me fall in love with Southern Gothic stories. Give me a Spanish moss-shrouded cypress swamp and I am in heaven. Do you have a favorite Southern Gothic novel that you recommend?

Carrie: Just one? No, but I’ll keep it to three. They are all historical because that’s my favorite genre for Gothics.

For an example of the last subgenre mentioned—Southern Gothic family saga—I’d recommend CRESCENT CARNIVAL by Frances Parkinson Keyes, a best seller when it was first published eighty years ago. Keyes is the queen of historical Southern Gothic family sagas! She has an inter-connected saga of Louisiana-set novels, which CRESCENT CARNIVAL is part of, as well as Virginia/Washington D.C. set novels at are all connected, though neither have numbers or a set series title.

For Southern Gothic paranormal/horror: BELOVED by Toni Morrison. Though a good part of the book is set just over the river from the South in Ohio, the whole haunting stems from the family’s time in Kentucky while they were enslaved/escaping. It hits every type of Southern Gothic theme with shattering effects.

For more modern characters, both written and portrayed, check out The Juxville Chronicles by Carolyn Haines. Haines does gritty Southern Gothic with a side of jalapeno hush puppies.

Candice: Ha! Hush puppies. I love that. As your critique partner, I’m always blown away by how well you immerse your readers into the time period. That immersion is huge for me as a historical fiction reader. I learn so much—I actually got a trivia question about the tile used at Mobile’s Saenger Theatre and the Bellingrath House correct last week thanks to you! I know you have a whole presentation’s worth of knowledge on research, but could you explain a bit of your process?

Carrie: Awesome win with the trivia!

My Southern Gothics are centered on the characters, with historical things like disease, war, and hurricanes happening around them and I take the history—and even the paranormal activity—in the stories seriously.

I read a lot of books written during my timeline (what was contemporary back then) as opposed to books set during it. That gives a truer picture of daily life, conversations, and social norms—along with the art, music, periodicals, etc. created during the era. Reviewers will sometimes mention my characters sound “too modern.” That would be true if you’re comparing them to British Victorians or Antebellum Southerners, but my stories are set at the end of/post-Industrial Revolution. The language of people on both sides of the pond (because I do love British literature) was very modern, even if certain topics were still impolite to mention socially. Having a concise time period (The Progressive Era, spanning the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties) helps me focus on more specific details when researching and allows me to reuse knowledge and build on it from story to story.

Living in Mobile, I’m blessed to have not only a rich cultural history to draw from, but amazing historic buildings and public spaces to set stories in, as well as the terrific Local History and Genealogy Library run by Mobile Public Library as a resource. There are lots of museums and other archives to explore, but I find my best tidbits when scrolling through the daily newspapers on microfilm from my timeline at the Local History library branch. Where people shopped and dined, how much things cost, fashions, what shows were in town, and the gossip of the day.

Bonus: the social page always has a wealth of inspiration. One of my favorite finds is a comic strip from 1910 called “Henpecko the Monk”, featuring a hen-pecked husband. In this strip—which is very simple and modern in tone and style—the man’s wife buys him a tie and becomes belligerent when he doesn’t respond gushingly with thanks. Exasperated, he finally stamps his foot and exclaims “It’s punk!” (meaning it’s ugly.) And she goes off on him for criticizing her taste because “it’s a beauty!” Did you know “punk” was a word used in 1910? I sure didn’t.

There is also a large crop of local interest nonfiction books from a variety of small presses over the course of Mobile and the surrounding area’s history. Plus amazing yearbooks from schools that have been around a century or more. I collect everything from church histories to architectural books to Barton Academy and Mobile/Murphy High School yearbooks—and utilize them often. I go to estate sales, thrift stores, and antique shops regularly to feed this collection.

Regarding paranormal events in my books, I research them as they would have been seen and handled by people during my books’ time periods. I did a deep dive into exorcisms for the Roman Catholic characters in The Possession Chronicles. For DISCERNMENT, the first book in Washington Square Secrets, I read and researched Allan Kardec, a late Victorian Era professor who was one of the first to write extensively about mediums and spiritism.

Candice: I thoroughly enjoyed how you brought real-life Mobile color to the page, specifically with Miss Eiland, the Floating Island lady I’ve read mention of in Eugene Walter’s stories. It was fun to get to see her as a person in LOYALTY. And in MALEVOLENT HEARTS, it was interesting to me how we reacted to our pandemic compared to the people living during the yellow fever epidemic. I had no idea the doctor who discovered the cause and spread of yellow fever was actually from Mobile until you shared your research with me. So neat.

Now let’s talk about your latest release, LOYALTY. It’s book number three in the Washington Square Secrets series, but do folks need to read the first two to understand what’s going on or can they hop into this series anytime?

Carrie: The first two books in Washington Square Secrets definitely stand alone. DISCERNMENT and ALLIANCE both have different main characters and neither (at that point) know each other. LOYALTY is set more than seven years later, and introduces a new main character (Jim) but also focuses on Francesca, who was a secondary character in ALLIANCE. Francesca knows both main characters from the first two books (and they now know each other), and they each play supporting roles in LOYALTY. Since Jim doesn’t know any of the others before the book begins, readers get a brief recap of their histories within the neighborhood. So, long story short—yes, LOYALTY can be read alone, but you will get more out of it if you read the other two books first.

Candice: Tell us what the book is about.

Carrie: LOYALTY is about love, loss, family, and friends in the aftermath of a horrific event. Here’s the official synopsis:

In the autumn of 1920, a murder-suicide shakes the residents of Washington Square. Officer Jim Abbott doesn't realize the return of his shellshock is only the beginning of his concerns. Jim is assigned to keep tabs on the surviving child, Ernest Hart, who appears to be haunted by the recently departed murderer.

Neighbor Francesca Wilton grows closer to Ernest during her temporary guardianship of him, but his deteriorating emotional state reveals there is more to the seven-year-old than she expected. Then a loss of her own throws her life into further turmoil.

As the haunting looms closer, Francesca involves a friend gifted with telepathic and astral powers, as well as a skilled medium from the neighborhood to rid Ernest from his father's oppression. In their attempt to save Ernest, Jim becomes entangled in the women's unconventional abilities on a level he never expected.

Candice: The male main character, Jim Abbott, is one of my favorites of your characters. Sorry, Henry of The Possession Chronicles.

Carrie: I love hearing that—not about Henry slipping down a notch, but when readers have new favorites. Many long-time readers have declared Washington Square Secrets and the main characters their favorite series and people from everything I’ve written. I think part of that is from me shedding the “family saga” from this project. Multi-generational stories make for heavier reading, both physically and emotionally. With WSS, I was able to write leaner and drop some of the drama while still tackling gritty subjects in the era I love. The whole series pays homage to the books I loved best in childhood—ghost, paranormal, and historical stories, both fiction and nonfiction. I think my fangirl came out because it was a lot of fun writing them.

Candice: Deborah, the main character in WSS #1, and Josephine, the main character in WWS #2, both have paranormal abilities. Did you ever toy with the idea of giving Fran, the main character in LOYALTY, a supernatural skill?

Carrie: I never thought of Francesca as being gifted supernaturally. Her skill is in comforting/serving people. Her mother and Ernest, and even Jim, receive the benefits of her ability in LOYALTY, but you see a bit of it between Fran and Josephine in ALLIANCE as well. Jim, on the other hand, has never been exposed to the supernatural and finds himself completely immersed in it.

Candice: You recently graduated from the Mobile Police Department’s Citizens Police Academy. I’ve enjoyed hearing all about your adventures on ride alongs. That kind of in-depth research makes your story come alive. Why did you choose to make LOYALTY’s male main character, Jim Abbott, a police officer?

Carrie: MPD’s Citizens Police Academy was an enlightening experience spanning ten weeks this Spring-Summer, but Jim Abbott is a carryover character from SEVERED LEGACIES, book 3 of The Malevolent Trilogy, which was published in 2022. In that book, he was introduced as a veteran of the war (WWI) who is working as a bank security guard with hopes of joining the police department. When I decided to use him in LOYALTY, the timeline worked for him to have gotten to that point in his life. And since the story opens at the scene of a murder-suicide within his beat area, Officer Abbott is right in the middle of things from the beginning. I joined the academy to help make sure I was accurately portraying the moods and emotions a peace officer would be going through—but with a lot less available technology than we have today.

Part of the fun of working multiple books/series within the same world is seeing how they fit together. With Jim, it worked without effort, but sometimes I have to really think about a person and where they would have been in their life, even if that specific year wasn’t shown on page in a different series. I keep a character list with highlights of dates for things like marriages, jobs, children, deaths, etc. to help with this, but I do sometimes find myself pulling out a book to double check specifics. My current editor has even said stuff like “unless this couple is set in stone from another series, this relationship isn’t working for your plot.” He watches out for me, which I appreciate.

The stories could easily get tangled if I’m not careful. So far, I’ve been able to catch miscalculations on timings during edits before publication. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to have a whole series drafted before the first book is published. And, side note, the trickiest character to handle—but also the most fun—is Sean Spunner. Spunner is in all three series plus several short stories, and his life was written completely out of chronological order.

Candice: Oh, Sean. How did I know he would figure out a way to pop into this conversation? Speaking of tricky, I know you had a devilish time researching the MPD during the 1920s, do you want to comment on that?

So much trouble! It took me over a year to find what I truly needed, but when it came, it was in conjunction with an eager-to-help MPD captain. Totally worth the wait.

I started researching Mobile Police Department during Prohibition (which started in 1915 in Alabama) in January 2023, when I began the first draft of what is now LOYALTY. I went to the Local History library files and also the archives at the University of South Alabama. Both had some information from turn-of-the-century to about 1913—several photos and a couple books—and then things picked up again about 1930.

So I contacted the head of a different local history archive with my needs and was laughed at because there was “nothing from that era.” I also reached out to the closed MPD History Museum (a COVID era closing that was in conjunction with a precinct move), but that didn’t pan out either.

I did the best I could when writing/self-editing, guessing at things to fill in the missing historical pieces.

The day after I turned in the shiny (twentieth) draft of LOYALTY to my editor in February 2024 in preparation for several passes of professional edits before publication, I noticed MPD had a lot of recent publicity posts on their Facebook page. On a whim, I decided to message the page and ask a couple key questions I had about MPD for my historical novel, giving permission to pass on my name and email to someone that might be able to help. Within half an hour, I had an email from Captain Billie Rowland, offering assistance. Captain Rowland is the acknowledged department historian, doing things like teaching MPD history to the recruits at the Police Academy and keeping track of the MPD Museum pieces in various stages of storage and display.

After my meeting with Captain Rowland a few days after his email, I had pages of notes and a list of several major and minor things I needed to change in my manuscript in order to keep it historically accurate. I immediately let my editor know what type of changes I’d need to make. After I got his first editorial notes, I addressed everything from him as well as the newly acquired MPD information in my next editorial pass. It took several extra weeks of edits, but it all worked out for the better. And I was able to include my favorite historical tidbit—that MPD had two motorcycle officers as early as 1918—into a subplot line.

When Captain Rowland read an Advanced Reader’s Copy of LOYALTY in June, he appreciated the details about Jim’s uniform, the downtown Mobile scenes (including the correct placement of the police headquarters), and other historical information woven into the story that “made Jim take shape as a Mobile Police Officer.”

Job done, and a major relief!

Candice: Excellent! Way to stick with it. What has been your favorite or most surprising thing you’ve learned or experienced during the Citizen’s Academy?

Carrie: That the officers are human. Seriously. The force is a wide variety of personalities and passions, but everyone I’ve met from patrol officers to telephone operators to SWAT members to lieutenants to the interim chief himself have been dedicated to making the community a better, safer place for everyone. They are concerned about their family, friends, and neighbors, just like we are. We’re on the same side. The officers are underpaid, work in stressful situations daily, and they know all eyes on them—many waiting for mistakes to be made. But they have a heart for service rather than being power hungry.

The wide variety of things the patrol officers are asked to address during their twelve hours shifts was enlightening. Even when they know there is nothing they can do to help, they answer EVERY call. Everything from reports about wild animals (there’s nothing they can do, folks) to mental health issues. But they’re willing to do the little things too, like push the vehicle of stranded motorist into a parking lot, stop during a neighborhood patrol to move branches out of the road, or on rare, slow days, play basketball in parks with school kids. And they aren’t “out to get you.” During most traffic stops I witnessed, the drivers were let go with warnings rather than tickets.

It was a wonderful experience in the classroom, on field trips, and during the ride alongs. I encourage everyone to participate if their local police department hosts a Citizens Academy.

Candice: Wonderful reminder of humanity and community. I know you are currently working on book four. Do you plan on stopping the series there or wait and see what your characters have to say about that?

Carrie: The fourth Washington Square Secrets book will be the final for this series. I’m on the thirteenth draft and rewriting about ninety percent of the book this time through.

When writing LOYALTY last year, I decided if it was supposed to be a trilogy, that should have been in the series title from the beginning, like The Malevolent Trilogy. But I knew it didn’t merit a long series like The Possession Chronicles. After letting the idea sit in the back of my mind, I realized the answer was in the series title. Square. Four sides—four books.

Candice: Oh, I didn’t catch that! How clever. Thank you for chatting with me!

Carrie: Thanks for taking the time to ask these great questions—and putting up with my drafts before the professionals polish them. You know all my craziest ideas and worst grammar mistakes, Candice, but I trust you with them.

Y’all can check out Carrie’s books at www.carriedalby.com. She has an events tab so be sure to see where she’ll be next if you’re in the Mobile area.

Candice Marley Conner is a haint at The Haunted Bookshop in Downtown Mobile and an officer for the Mobile Writer’s Guild. Her poems and short stories are in various anthologies and magazines including Well Read, Wild: An Anthology of Poetry, Woolgathering, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and more. She is the author of three picture books and THE EXISTENCE OF BEA PEARL, a YA Southern mystery with Southern Gothic vibes.