Interview with LESLIE WHEELER

You’ve published both fiction and non-fiction. Which do you prefer writing—and why?

I prefer writing fiction because it enables me to play God and make up the story myself. When I wrote non-fiction, there would always be moments when I’d think to myself, what if something else had happened instead? But I couldn’t go there, because I had to stick to the facts. It’s those “what if” moments that make writing fiction fun. I often begin with a real life situation then take off from there. For example, in my first mystery novel, MURDER AT PLIMOTH PLANTATION, I started with a real-life trip to Plimoth Plantation I made when my sister and her family were visiting from California. My eight-year-old niece complained the whole way up the path to the Pilgrim village. But as soon as we went into one of the houses, and a Pilgrim woman spoke to us in the wonderful seventeenth-century English they use, she stopped complaining and listened with interest. My imagination kicked in and this is what I got: What if my niece became so enchanted by Plimoth Plantation that years later, she returns as an interpreter, and what if while she’s there, a murder occurs. Of course, this part never really happened.

In addition to being a writer, you’ve worked as an editor. Tell us how your stint as an editor affected your fiction writing.

When I worked as an American history textbook editor, I tried to wrestle other writers’ manuscripts into better shape, which often involved a fair amount of rewriting. This helped my own writing to a certain extent, but not as much as I would have liked. In my experience, it’s always easier to fix problems in someone else’s work than your own. That’s why being in a writers’ critique group is very important to me. The group members pick up on things I don’t see, and vice versa.

Does the fact that you can trace your ancestors back to the Mayflower have anything to do with your love of history?

I credit my paternal grandfather for giving me my love of history rather than my Mayflower ancestry. My grandfather, Burton K. Wheeler, was a U.S. Senator from Montana from the 1920s to right after World War II. He was a colorful, larger-than-life figure, and a wonderful raconteur. All he had to do was walk into a room and start talking to become the center of attention. In his early years in the Senate, he helped expose the Teapot Dome scandal during the Harding administration, and the movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, is based on his battle against corruption. Later in his career, he fought Roosevelt when FDR tri
ed to pack the Supreme Court. I grew up listening to his stories, and since he lived until he was almost ninety-three, I was able to spend lots of time with him. Because of him, I took many American history courses in college, even though officially, I was an English major, specializing in medieval literature. My Mayflower connection stems from my grandfather Wheeler, but it wasn’t a big deal to me for a long time. I even forgot about it until reminded by my sister on the above-mentioned visit to Plimoth Plantation, when she and my brother-in-law raced around trying to find the interpreters who portrayed our ancestors, Susannah White and Edward Winslow.

Tell us about your “living history” mysteries.

I call my series “living history” mysteries, because, although they take place in the present-day, they are set at historic sites, which enables me to weave in a lot of history. I get to have it both ways: I don’t have to worry about getting all the period details right, but I can still include a fair amount of history in my books. All three of my books feature reenactors: the interpreters in MURDER AT PLIMOTH PLANTATION, Confederate reenactors in MURDER AT GETTYSBURG, and the demonstration squad staff at Mystic Seaport in my new book, MURDER AT SPOUTERS POINT, which takes place at a fictionalized version of the Seaport. These folks appeal to me, because they try to make history come alive for their audiences, just as I tried to do for the readers of my American history books.

What advice can you give to new writers?

Don’t give up! I’m a poster girl for determination. Although I published my non-fiction early on and with relative ease, I had to travel a long, difficult road before my fiction was published. I spent nearly ten years writing then marketing my first novel without success, and another year writing part of a second novel before I came up with the idea of my “living history” series. Even then, it took me about five years to finish the first book in the series, another two years to find an agent, and so on. A second piece of advice is: Don’t aim for perfection the first time around. I’ve seen too many writers develop severe cases of writers’ block as a result. They write the first chapter over and over again, and never get beyond it. My early drafts are so awful sometimes, it’s embarrassing. They read like bad translations from Sanskrit into Polish, then English. But I know that eventually I’ll be able to turn out polished prose. I’ve also learned to trust my imagination to help me find my way around the inevitable roadblocks that crop up in writing fiction.

Two of your mysteries, MURDER AT PLIMOTH PLANTATION, and MURDER AT SPOUTERS POINT feature Native American characters and history. How did you become interested in Native peoples?

My interest in Native peoples goes back to the summer vacations I spent in Montana at the family cabins in Glacier National Park. My grandfather Wheeler was responsible for legislation that was favorable to the Indians, so members of the Blackfoot nation would come to visit him in Glacier, sometimes bringing gifts, including a spectacular headdress which used to hang on the wall in the main cabin. My grandfather arranged for my cousins and I to be “adopted” into the Blackfoot tribe. There was a ceremony at which we were given Indian names (mine was Morning Girl) and beautiful beaded necklaces. (I still have mine.) Later, in my work on American history textbooks, I often wrote the “Closing the Frontier” chapter, which, among other things, deals with the Indian wars in the West toward the end of the nineteenth-century. But it wasn’t until I started researching my first mystery,

MURDER AT PLIMOTH PLANTATION, that I discovered how much more complicated and troubled the relations between the eastern tribes and the early settlers were. In grade school, I’d learned about friendly Squanto who showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn and kept them from starving, and how the Pilgrims were so grateful that they invited the Indians to a harvest feast, which evolved into Thanksgiving. What I didn’t know was that there was a darker side to this history: that while we’re stuffing ourselves with turkey, the Native peoples are holding a “National Day of Mourning.” I continue to explore this theme in MURDER AT SPOUTERS POINT, where I deal with the Mashantucket Pequots (called the Dottagucks in the novel), who were practically exterminated in the early 1600s, but managed to hold onto a small parcel of land, enabling them to qualify for Federal recognition, then start a successful gambling casino complex.

What are the addresses of your website, blog, and other online presences?

My website is http://www.lesliewheeler.com/.

I’m on both Facebook(www.facebook.com/lesliewheelerauthor) and Twitter (@Leslie_Wheeler). But only because my tech-savvy teenage son got me on!