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Mystery Mom
"It was 10 chapters long and it was put in the library at Sherwood school. My cousin in Nova Scotia took it and showed it to his teacher and it was put in their library too. "I go back and read it now, it's such a terrible story. Good for a nine-year-old I guess," she says, laughing at what was to be the beginning of many penned mystery adventures. "Most of my stories were mysteries. My mother used to tease me when I was little because I'd write those sort of stories that left you hanging at the end. You'd turn the page and say, "And "it" was there!" That would be the end of the story. She didn't like that, she doesn't like the cliffhangers." Fortunately for Bingley's mother, who helped her daughter edit The Night She Came Home, there was an ending, and to the author's credit, one that catches most readers by surprise. However, this novel's conclusion actually remained a mystery to the Charlottetown writer until almost the very last page. "I had in mind exactly who I thought the killer would be, but as I continued writing, I thought that's just not going to work. I can't do that," says Bingley, who has a bachelor of arts and a degree in early childhood education. "Actually, in about the last 10 pages I had picked somebody and I had this person confess and everything. Then I thought, 'You know what, I'm not ready to finish the book.' So that's when I came to the conclusion, 'Lets have another twist here - take it a couple of chapters farhter.' "And then I had to go back through the book and make sure this worked." After years of mystery movies, rapt viewings of television series like Matlock and Murder She Wrote and devouring novels by the suspenseful likes of Mary Higgins Clark and Sydney Sheldon, formulating her own complicated plot lines seemed to come naturally. However, the research end of it can be a mind-boggling process of laying out the groundwork to make sure the story works. "This particular book is set in New York City, so I had to go on the Internet, find New York, find where I was going to have it placed, download some maps and print them off. Then I had to go and find out what was on this particular street, whether it was a diner or a restaurant, townhouses here or there. I'd have to have that all marked." Even settings such as the main character's house in which the murder occurred had to be meticulously researched and designed in her mind so that she would be able to consistently describe it to readers and they could imagine it to life. "I had to write down the furniture in each room, what colour the couch was, if it was hardwood floor or carpet," says Bingley. "So I was surrounded by all these pieces of paper. I also had a notebook that I kept and every time I said something about somebody, I'd write it down so that I could go back and double check. I couldn't say this guy was married and is 35 and at the end he's 42 and he's a widower. So that really helped me to be organized." Organization is the name of the at-home game when it comes to balancing motherhood and writing time. Some days, her Charlottetown household, which also includes husband Joey Bingley, is bursting at the seams with the younger generation, especially since she also watches children during the weekdays. "It's a lot of late nights because I never write during the day ... The book I'm writing now, I had my mother kind of track it with me. She was teasing that I must have been up late because I had the main character married to three or four different people. I'd changed peoples names," Bingley says, smiling. "That's me sitting there at 2 o'clock in the morning, typing away. So you really need people to check up on you." Two other mystery novels she has written over the years are now in the to-be-published process, but not in the normal softcover novel sense. One is being considered by an e-book company in the United States which allows its readers to download a book's contents from the Internet. The other, tentatively titled One Eye in the Darkness, is being released in CD-book form by a Texas company which is also read on a computer. It's due out in March. "The first one I swore I didn't care anything about the money or anything like that, I just didn't want to have to pay for it. I wanted it to be that somebody thought it was good and was willing to publish it. Now I'm working harder trying to get with a company that people recognize." Recognition for The Night She Came Home has also come in positive review form. As one reviewer, Darlene Howatt from Escape to Romance adroitly put it: "If ever a book was written that screams movie of the week this book would get my vote ..." As for Bingley's son James, he has his own words of novel summation. "When people ask him, 'What is your mommy's book about?' He rolls his eyes and says, 'She loves Murder She Wrote and Matlock, so you can be pretty much guaranteed somebody died in it,' "Bingley says with delighted laughter. "That pretty much sums it up right there. Leave it to a nine-year-old to just sum it up like that." The Night She Came Home is available at Indigo and the Bookmark in Charlottetown. Online it ca be found at chapters.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, walmart.com and publishamerica.com. |
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