Duke Morse
Columbus-based author Connie Berry has always loved a good mystery. At a young age, she fell in love with Agatha Christie and British crime fiction. She studied British literature at St. Clare’s College in Oxford, where she became enamored with the British Isles.
However, while she earned degrees in English from DePauw University and The Ohio State University, Berry didn’t start writing novels full-time until after retiring in 2016.
Her debut novel, A Dream of Death, published in 2019, was 10 years in the making. As part of her Kate Hamilton Mystery Series, which is set in the United Kingdom, the narrative follows an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes.
Berry continues to perfect her craft as she releases her sixth installment, A Grave Deception, on Dec. 9, which follows Kate Hamilton as she’s swept into medieval and modern murder investigations at an archeological dig site in an abandoned plague village.
For the love of writing
Growing up, Berry loved writing stories. As an adult, she slowly honed her skills as she wrote for a variety of organizations.
After college, Berry wrote for a Lamaze journal, published an article on a Civil War soldier from Vermont in an academic journal and was an executive secretary for an architect firm and loan company in Columbus.
Penguin Random House
Though she spent most of her time writing for others, she continued writing for her own pleasure on the side.
“I was helping my husband in his business by doing business writing. I was editing for other people,” Berry says. “But in the back of my mind, it was always this fiction, just creating a story, creating characters, putting them in a setting, having bad things happen to them to see how they would react. ‘What would they do? How would they get out of it?’”
Following her retirement in 2016, she took a manuscript she’d been working on for years to Sleuth Fest, a writers’ conference where aspiring authors could submit a chapter to an agent or editor.
The editor for Crooked Lane Books loved Berry’s story, and after years of working on it, her dream finally became a reality.
Early inspiration
Just like her protagonist, Kate, Berry’s parents were antiques dealers. Her mom, who was also a teacher, additionally fostered her love for reading, writing and history.
“I think part of my love for (history) is because my mom was also interested in that. She would do a lot of research into the objects that my parents would sell in their antique shop,” Berry says. “She would write it down on a little piece of paper so that when people bought something, she said, ‘They're not just buying an object, they're buying a piece of history.’”
Berry notes that her affinity for British history and culture, in particular, is inspired by her grandparents’ Scottish roots and her love for British crime fiction. When she began developing her first novel, set in Scotland, her upbringing and interest in all things British were a perfect combination.
She recalls utilizing advice that her professor at OSU gave her while working on her master’s thesis.
“He said, ‘First of all, write what you know... You don't want to spend a lot of time getting up to speed, but also write what you love because you're going to be spending a lot of time with that subject,’” Berry says. “And so that's what I did when I wrote my novel. I wrote what I knew, which was British history and the antiques trade. And I wrote what I love, which is just spending time in the British Isles.”
Despite her academic training, she says writing her first book was still a learning curve. She advises aspiring writers to take time to learn their craft and seek feedback from others, especially by joining a local or national writing organization.
Words to page
Now, as a full-time author, Berry says it takes her about a year to write a book, though she doesn’t force herself to follow a rigid schedule.
Crooked Lane Books
“I'm a little more free-flowing in the sense that, when I start to write, if I'm kind of in the groove, I will write for a long period of time, but then I'll have a day or two when I won't,” Berry says. “But during that time, I'm thinking about the book. I'm never not thinking about the book that I am currently working on.”
While Berry says that some writers meticulously plan their stories, and others make it up as they go along, she’s somewhere in the middle.
“I know the major plot points that are going to get me from the beginning of the book to the end, although sometimes that changes during the course of the writing,” Berry says. “But I don't necessarily know how I'm going to get from plot point to plot point.”
To create a believable narrative, Berry does a lot of research, which she enjoys thanks to her fascination with history, even though research can sometimes force her to retrace her steps and adjust the narrative.
However, piecing the story together is a puzzle she finds engaging.
“It's the same process that Kate goes through when she has to think through this, ‘How could this have happened? Why did this happen? Who is the person who's likely to have been involved in this?’” Berry says. “So, the process that I go through is that same process, and hopefully the same process that the reader goes through.”
Future fiction
After finishing writing a book, Berry says it can be difficult to leave the story and characters behind.
“It’s all-consuming to the extent that I finish a book and turn it in... it’s kind of a grief to let go of a book,” Berry says. “It’s hard to start a new book because you’re kind of entering a new world. You’re going to have new characters and people you don’t know that well.”
However, her interest in history and her yearly travels to the U.K. with her husband, Bob, are continual sources of inspiration as she develops new stories. While she looks to continue the Kate Hamilton Mystery Series, she also has been inspired to write a separate mystery novel set in Buckinghamshire, England, just after the Regency period.
“When I write a book, I always start with some idea that has just really captured my imagination that I'm so interested in. So that's part of the reason that I went to England this time, and I found this idea that is just fascinating to me,” Berry says. “I think if it's fascinating to me, that probably will translate on the page to my reader. So hopefully people will be fascinated with that as well.”
Following the release of A Grave Deception, Berry will be in conversation with fellow crime writer Robin Yocum at the Bexley Public Library on Wednesday, Dec. 10 from 7-8:30 p.m. Click here to learn more.
Amanda Stevens is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemedia.com.
