Museums, mysteries, mint tea - and windmills!

I'm delighted to have Jennifer Alderson, author of popular travel and cozy mysteries, on the blog today. Jennifer was born in San Francisco, raised in Seattle, and currently lives in Amsterdam. Her love of travel, art, and culture inspires her ongoing mystery series, the Adventures of Zelda Richardson. Her background in journalism, multimedia development, and art history enriches her novels. When not writing, Jennifer can be found in a museum, biking around Amsterdam, or enjoying a coffee along the canal while planning her next research trip.

Jennifer,  welcome. Do tell us more about yourself and your family.

 Thank you for inviting me to your blog, Harriet!  

I am an American expat currently living in the Netherlands. I moved to Amsterdam in 2004 to study art history for one year, but met my future Dutch husband soon after arriving and ended up staying!

 After graduating, I worked for several Dutch museums and cultural institutions on project-basis as a part-time collection researcher, exhibition assistant, and assistant curator. However, subsidy cuts made it was quite difficult to secure a full-time job.

When my son was born in 2011, I decided to stay at home instead of searching for a new contract. Years earlier, I had started writing a thriller about a naive volunteer in Nepal, but I hadn’t gotten much more than halfway before I threw it in a desk drawer and forgot about it. My son’s naptimes provided me with the opportunity to actually get it done. After completing Down and Out in Kathmandu, I used my love of art history as inspiration for The Lover’s Portrait – book one in my Zelda Richardson mystery series. It was only after my second novel was finished that I actually tried to get them published.

 I am extremely happy to see the art history novels in my Zelda Richardson series have won several readers’ awards and are listed as recommended reads on several book blogs and online magazines.

The Rijksmuseum, and several other museums in Amsterdam, feature heavily in Jennifer’s art mystery series.

  

How many books have you written? What are they about and why did you want to write about those subjects?

 As of May 2020, I have ten books published and am planning on releasing two more later this year. My books can be split into three series, but all are a mix of travel and mystery.

 The Travel Can Be Murder cozy mystery series is my latest creation. It follows the adventures of tour guide Lana Hansen as she leads tourists and readers to fascinating cities around the globe on intriguing adventures that, unfortunately for Lana, often turn deadly. The first four books take readers to Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam, and Edinburgh.

 At this point, I have nine planned out but am having so much fun writing them, I’ll probably extend the series. Lana’s tours are set in cities I personally enjoyed visiting. Writing these cozy mysteries is a great way to “relive” my own travel experiences. I truly hope they inspire others to visit the cities I describe – when it is safe to do so. Until then, this series is a great way to travel by book!

 The four books in my Zelda Richardson mystery series were all inspired by art history classes and actual art crimes. The Lover’s Portrait is a suspenseful “whodunit?” about Nazi-looted artwork that transports readers to wartime and present-day Amsterdam. Art, religion, and anthropology collide in Rituals of the Dead, an artifact mystery set in Dutch New Guinea (Papua) and the Netherlands. Marked for Revenge is a fast-paced heist thriller inspired by the mafia’s use of stolen artwork as currency in drug transactions. The Vermeer Deception was inspired by German art dealer Cornelius Gurlitt – both his family’s ties to the Nazi-party and the large collection of World War II-looted paintings and drawings he had been hiding in his apartments.

 The three novels in the Adventures in Backpacking series (Down and Out in Kathmandu, Notes of a Naive Traveler, and Holiday Gone Wrong) take readers on backpacking journeys around Nepal, Thailand, Panama, and Costa Rica. The nefarious characters and wonderfully kind locals I met in all of those countries inspired the plots.

A visit to Nepal inspired two novels. Swayambhunath is possibly the most famous temple complex in Kathmandu.

  

 Do you have a special place where you like to write?

Under normal circumstances, I am a café writer. As long as there is good music, mint tea, and the other patrons aren’t too rowdy, I write faster in a café. When I write at home, I am easily distracted by the laundry that should be washed or the floors that need a good mopping. Luckily, Dutch cafes are now allowed to reopen their outdoor terraces, which has helped increase my productivity after being in lockdown for three months!

This cafe in Vondelpark is one of Jennifer’s favorite places to write.

  What part of the writing process do you enjoy the least?

The last few rounds of editing. By that point, I know the story by heart and have trouble really focusing on the words in front of me. Luckily, editors are involved at that stage so I use their cues to focus on what I need to fix, instead of trying to line edit the manuscript every time I read it.

  

 What was the first thing you wrote? Was it any good?

When I was fifteen, I finished my first full length novel, a murder mystery à la Sidney Sheldon. It involved identical twins and the big plot twist was that one of them had a fake leg. Reading it with adult eyes, I can assure you it is quite horrid! However, it was a fully developed plot and actually fairly complex.

  

What are you working on now?

I am currently finishing Death by Bagpipes: A Summer Murder in Edinburgh, book four in my Travel Can Be Murder cozy mystery series. It will be out at the end of this summer – on September 18. If everything goes well, book 5 will be out in time for Christmas!

 

A windmill seemed like the perfect weapon for a cozy mystery set in the Netherlands.

 Do tell us about your latest release.

Death by Windmill: A Mother’s Day Murder in Amsterdam is the latest release in the Travel Can Be Murder cozy mystery series. These stories are much more connected than the books in my other series, which means readers get to know several reoccurring characters and watch them grow and evolve.

In my latest novel, Lana’s estranged mother is a surprise guest on the tour, invited by Lana’s boss Dotty who is convinced all they need is a few days together to reconcile their differences. Before mother and daughter can patch things up, Lana’s mother is arrested for murder after one of her guests is pushed off a windmill. Lana has to forgive her mother and flush out the real killer, before the tour is over.

 One of my favorite aspects of writing this series is the holiday themes that I try to infuse into each book. In book 1 – Death on the Danube – the murder takes place during a New Year’s trip and book 2 – Death by Baguette – is set during Valentine’s Day. In Death by Windmill, Mother’s Day gives me an excuse to explore several mother-daughter relationships – some healthy and others not so much.

 Lana’s tour group visits many of my favorite tourist hotspots in Amsterdam and the outlying regions. It was quite fun to write about my adopted hometown from the perspective of a tourist! Choosing which places to include and which to leave out was possibly the most difficult thing about setting it in a place I am now so familiar with.

 Lana and her mother Gillian are struggling to reconnect after a ten-year estrangement. Three of the mothers worry about their daughters’ job prospects, and another is too wrapped up in herself to notice that her child is ready to leave the nest. Lana’s boss Dotty also decides to come along for the tour, only to become ill during the trip. But the main conflict has to do with one of the guests, a former CEO of a corporation that wronged several members of the tour. When her identity is revealed, the group’s comradery is tested, to say the least!

  Where did the inspiration for the story come from?

 Traveling to new places and learning about other cultures and customs is what I love to do most. After releasing the third Zelda Richardson novel, I decided to create a new character-driven series within the framework of a whodunit-style mystery. Because I love to travel, a cozy mystery series based around a tour guide turned amateur sleuth was ideal! Deciding on the series name – Travel Can Be Murder Cozy Mysteries – was surprisingly easy once I knew tour groups and at least one murder would feature in each story.

 

 How did you do your research?

 Deciding on where Lana’s group will visit is quite challenging, but also part of the fun of writing the series. I try to tie the theme to the location, as much as possible. For example, Mother’s Day makes me think of flowers, which makes me think of Holland, which is why Death by Windmill is set in Amsterdam!

I wanted to write about cities I had personally visited, in order to better describe them. Because I don’t want these novels to turn into travelogues, the confrontations, eavesdropping, and sleuthing take place during the group’s day tours, so readers get a mystery and trip in one. To refresh my memory, I went through my old photos, maps, and travel journals when choosing the locations. I also scanned recent travel blogs in order to make certain the places I describing had not changed dramatically since my visit.

 Stephen King once said:  ‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.’ Do you agree?

Yes! Creative writing courses give you the basic tools, but reading a wide range of genres is akin to taking the master class. I believe it is the best way to become a better writer.

Jennifer, thank you for coming on the blog. It's been such a  pleasure having you.

Thank you for inviting me, Harriet!

 

 Connect with Jennifer via her website, Facebook, Goodreads or Twitter.

 Social Media:

Website: http://www.jennifersalderson.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/JennifeSAlderson

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jenniferSAldersonauthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JSAauthor

 Purchase Book Links:

Amazon worldwide: http://getbook.at/DeathbyWindmill

 Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/death-by-windmill-jennifer-s-alderson/1137058674?ean=9789083001173

 Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Death-by-Windmill-Mothers-Day-Murder-Amsterdam-Jennifer-S-Alderson/9789083001173/