Locating The Bride!
Writing The Bride Must Be Stopped!
Writing a story is a journey that involves answering a lot of questions. Who? How? Why? What? When? I have a book coming out on December 6th, and the question I got hung up on the most while writing it was where? Where does this story take place? And the corollary: when?
After twenty years of writing short stories, I’m more than happy to report the forthcoming publication of my first book: THE BRIDE MUST BE STOPPED! It’s a YA thriller, the first book in a series of self-contained mysteries featuring a group of teenage high-school friends – the Mean City Mysteries. It’s noir, hence the pulpy cover. The main character, Thornton Thacker, is a teenage detective who wears a trench coat and spends his spare time playing in a jazz band.
The story’s journey from the synapses in the back of my head to the pages of a published book has been long, and for a long time while writing it, I got hung up on WHERE and WHEN is it set?
The book didn’t seem like a fit for my hometown of Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland is a city, but it’s not a big city. For some time, I considered setting it in London. I’ve lived there and have a feel for it. There’s a noirish grit to dear old London town, and I’ve written several short stories set there, but that didn’t feel right either.
With frustration mounting, I sat at my desk and did the writing exercise: Define your story in one word. The word I finally wrote was NOIR. It was immediately clear to me that the story was set in America – the origin of noir. That was its natural home.
But which city? I’ve spent time in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. And when? I still hadn’t decided on that either.
I deliberated over this for weeks (possibly a year).
Eventually, the clouds cleared, and obviousness stared at me. You see, the book hadn’t been the sole focus of my life. I’d been quietly working on it when I could find the time, and after several years, I had simply forgotten where and how it had all begun.
It began with two events occurring around the same time in 2010.
A short story of mine, The Man with One Eye, was published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (December 2010). The story was about a small boy investigating the disappearance of a school friend. It was noir, spooky, set in the 1950s in a large, unnamed US city, and not without humour. It was nominated for a Derringer Award (Best Novelette) and was an Ellery Queen Readers’ Award finalist.
My wife bought a box set of The Famous Five TV series: she’d been an Enid Blyton fan since childhood. I didn’t know them; I had been an avid Secret Seven reader. Watching the show, and observing its quaint, 1970s Britishness, I had joked: “Imagine if the Famous Five had been written by Raymond Chandler?”
Note: If you don’t know The Famous Five, think Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys.
That had been my initial spark. My noirish, spooky short story, and the adventures of The Famous Five. Everything about my Mean City world had grown out of that, and remembering this set me back on the right course: The setting is a large, unnamed US city in the late 1950s.
Journeys are sometimes odd adventures. You find yourself in the middle, not entirely sure of the destination, and you’ve forgotten where you started from… It could just be me.
Anyway, my book launch is at the Whangaparaoa Library. If you’re in Auckland, do come along.
©2025 Stephen Ross