“Very few of us are what we seem,” Agatha Christie, “The Man in the Mist”

I hope you all have enjoyed my mystery writer series with author C.L. Tolbert. This is the final post in the series where we get to hear directly form Tolbert, herself, where she demystifies how she became a mystery writer. 

A Little Mystery by C.L. Tolbert

My interest in mysteries began early on, when I was eight, and my younger brother inherited our cousin’s Hardy Boys Mystery library. There were well over fifty books in the collection, and I read the entire series in one summer. I was hooked!

Graduating to Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the eighth grade, I discovered warm and comforting worlds created by these two writers, even though their stories centered around gruesome murders. This was true even for Doyle. The back streets of London might be frightening or creepy, but Sherlock Holmes always returned to 221B Baker Street. I wanted to go back to the environments they’d created and visit them over and over, which was a key to the success of both writers. The murders and intrigue which needed to be solved kept the reader hooked, but the sense of place kept the reader coming back. Louise Penny echoes this style today. Her imaginary village, Three Pines, in Quebec, Canada, is a homespun oasis. This village with it’s shops, restaurants, and quaint characters give solace to the harsh brutality of the murders committed there.

When I first started writing fiction, one of my mentors pointed out that my plot-driven manuscript needed to include more passionate exchange between the characters because “murder is a highly emotional thing.”  She was right. But it has to be done just so, and Louise Penny does it perfectly. I’ve learned that even though not all homicides are motivated by emotion, there must be a motivation for a murder in a mystery novel, whether it is passion, revenge, money, or all three.

Mysteries move at a quick pace. They are about solving problems in layers. Some of those layers are analytical, or driven by logic, and some are emotionally driven. I’ve read a good number of the classics (Tolstoy, Hugo, Bronte, Austin, etc.) and more recent literary fiction, but still find writing an emotional scene more challenging than an action scene.

I have a Master’s in Special Education and a law degree. I taught learning-disabled students for ten years, and then practiced law for thirty years before I retired. I’m drawn to problems. I like solving them and want to help people with them. All of this is reflected in my books.

In my Thornton Mystery Series, Emma Thornton is a single mother of twin boys. She’s created a home for them, which is where they find solace and strength. The first story, Out From Silence, is in the fictional town of Jonesburg, Georgia where Emma is a law student and clerk for a local attorney. She helps represent a young deaf defendant accused of killing his girlfriend. The second story, The Redemption, takes place in New Orleans where Emma and the boys have moved since Emma has accepted a position with the faculty at a law school in the city. She takes on a case where a young boy has been accused of a double murder. Each story has a strong sense of place, as well as gritty realism.

I have a few ideas for the third mystery which will come out in 2021 and can’t wait to start writing it. I love the process of creating the story—the plotting, outlining, writing—until I get to the rewrite! I look forward to all the challenges that lie ahead.

To purchase Out From Silence via Amazon.

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About C.L. Tolbert:

In 2010, Cynthia Tolbert won the Georgia Bar Journal’s fiction contest for the short story version of OUT FROM SILENCE that is now the first full-length novel of the Thornton Mystery Series, which was published by Level Best Books in December of 2019. OUT FROM SILENCE is Tolbert’s first novel and was nominated for Georgia Author of the Year under the first novel category through the Georgia Writers Association. She is currently writing her second novel in this same series entitled THE REDEMPTION, which is set in New Orleans and scheduled to be published in December of 2020.

She has a Master’s in Special Education and taught children with learning disabilities before moving on to law school. She spent most of her legal career working as defense counsel at large corporations and traveled throughout the country as regional and national counsel. She also had the unique opportunity of teaching third-year law students in a clinical program at a law school in New Orleans where she ran the Homelessness Law Clinic and learned, firsthand, about poverty in that city. The experiences and impressions she has collected from the past forty years contribute to the stories she writes today.

She has four children, and three grandchildren, and lives in Atlanta with her husband and schnauzer. To learn even more about C.L. Tolbert, visit her author website at: www.cltolbert.com

To contact C.L. Tolbert:  cindy@cltolbert.com.

Live the story you want to write!