Mystery Trivia Tuesday: Who IS This Guy?

Welcome, Lorna and Larry Collins, writers of the Agapé Jones mystery series, which came about when asked the question "What if?" Try your hand at the trivia questions below (your answers don't HAVE to be correct) and get your name in the hat for a book giveaway. 

Agapé Jones

by 

Lorna and Larry Collins

How were we inspired to write mysteries? Actually, we never intended to write in that form. Mysteries are hard! By definition, they contain multiple characters as suspects. All must have motive and opportunity. Add to those, one or more victims and the protagonist who solves the cases. All characters must have complete story arcs, and all story threads must be resolved. This is MUCH harder than other forms if they’re done well.

After our first book, 31 Months in Japan: The Building of a Theme Park in 2005, we decided to attend the Maui Writers Conference. We attended a presentation called “So you’ve published your first book. Now what?” The first question the presenter asked was, “What’s your next book. Your first one is now out of your hands, so you should be working on the next one.” 

I was already working on a romance novel (still unfinished), but Larry had no ‘next book’.

At the end of that presentation, an announcement was made that the poet had fallen on the stairs and his classes would be cancelled. So Larry asked himself, “What if the poet was found dead at the bottom of the stairs?” We’d already met quite a few other authors, some of whom were really characters. He figured they’d make great suspects.

The next day was our anniversary, so we dressed in Hawaiian wear and wore leis since we were going out to dinner later on. As we headed for a workshop, we ran across a gentleman we’d seen around the conference. He stopped us saying that we looked very nice. We spoke with him for about ten minutes. As we walked away, I said to Larry, “We have to write that guy!” He became Agapé Jones, our protagonist. And our first mystery, Murder . . . They Wrote was born.

The real gentleman (who has since become a precious friend) is named ‘Love Smith’. I’d really have liked to have used his name, but since he’s a real person, we couldn’t.  Instead, we used the Greek word for love and ‘Jones’ in place of ‘Smith’.

We hadn’t intended to write a second mystery, but Agapé refused to stay in retirement. So he became a special investigator in Murder in Paradise. This book was a finalist for the 2012 EPIC eBook Award for mystery.

Now he’s clamoring to get involved in another case, so we’re doing the research for Murder on Maui, coming sometime next year. And there are a couple more stories he wants us to tell.

Hope you’ll enjoy our cozy mysteries, especially our retired NYPD detective, Agapé Jones.

Here are a few questions about our character: