When Ann Shepphird got her master’s degree in film, she quickly learned how briefly the story she wrote, which became a screenplay, which morphed into a film, remained her own. Her story, for the most part, had been no more than the blueprint for the movie. Her audience experienced not what she wrote, but what it became.
That’s when she started writing novels.
“When you write a novel, you get to write the whole work,” said Shepphird. “While you can’t control reader response, the story remains yours to tell.”
Her first novel, “The War Council,” published last year, has nothing to do with war, except anyone who’s ever been in love, hoped for love, or lost it, might beg to differ. Her protagonist, a young communications professor, recently abandoned by the one she thought was the one, comes up with the concept for a counseling service that questions whether all really is fair in love and war. It’s a fast-paced read, mostly because she talks like a millennial with a cocktail in her hand.
Shepphird, who had been cobbling together a career teaching communication at the college level, reading scripts and working for a small regional magazine destined for meeting planners in the travel industry, had unexpectedly become a travel writer. So, while shopping around “The War Council” to various agents and editors, she decided to write a “destination murder mystery.”
Nothing too dastardly. More like a quick read, which could be consumed over a weekend, sort of a fun, easy, cozy mystery that would engage her readers but not traumatize them. Kind of like the “Nancy Drew” mysteries that dictated Shepphird’s weekend reading as a child, paired with her adult affinity for Sue Grafton novels.
One publisher, to whom Shepphird pitched “The War Council” to said their model was to sign only authors who write book series, typically churning out one to five books per year. Shepphird said, “How about a series where the protagonist goes on trips and solves mysteries along the way?” They loved it.
Shepphird, who was raised in Southern California but grew up constantly visiting several relatives who call Carmel home, chose to anchor her series in the city by the sea. It’s the home base she created for Samantha Powers — Sam — the travel writer who solves mysteries while investigating her articles.
Her first “destination murder mystery,” published in January by 4 Horsemen Publications, is “Destination Maui,” a 175-page romp in which Powers, an investigative reporter, has taken a job as a travel columnist for a lifestyle magazine, “Carmel Today.” When sent on assignment to Maui, she can’t help but get involved in helping an attractive detective solve a crime. Which, of course, is only the setup for the story.
“Sam Powers returned to her family home in Carmel, which I based on my aunt and uncle’s house,” said Shepphird, “because her father, the former Carmel-by-the-Sea chief of police, has dementia. Travel writing for ‘Carmel Today’ becomes the vehicle that gets her back into her real passion, investigation.”
Shepphird’s second novel in the series, “Destination Monterey,” published in August, is driven by Powers’ assignment to write a travel piece about the Monterey Bay Area on behalf of a “Pebble Beach Pro-Am Golf Tournament” special issue. The 194-page mystery develops after Powers comes across a cold case about the disappearance of the previous editor of “Carmel Today.”
The thread Shepphird weaves between her first and second stories in the series has to do with whether Powers enlists the help of that handsome Hawaiian detective in helping her add heat to the cold case in Carmel. This time, Powers just might be in over her head, so to speak.
“In ‘Destination Monterey,’ I used real places and referenced real things,” said Shepphird, “but I often created an amalgam of well-known inns and resorts, giving them made-up names. No reader wants a murder to happen in their hometown.”
Ann Shepphird’s third novel in the series, “Destination Lake Tahoe,” is scheduled for publication in Spring 2023. It takes place at “Palisades,” a fake historic lodge she based on legendary inns and lodges that exist.
“In ‘Destination Lake Tahoe,’ our Carmel-based travel writer gets to ski with an Olympian,” Shepphird said. “I know just enough about the sport that I can put Sam Powers on skis.”
Everything is true except the parts that are not. And even those parts are inspired by people, places, and things that are. That’s just how mystery writers roll.
Time to tell her tales
Shepphird graduated from UCLA with a degree in communication studies, followed by a master’s in film and television, history, criticism and theory, an academic degree that makes her interesting at a cocktail party, she says, and led to a career in teaching and writing.
“I have a lot of time to write and I could teach film at the college level,” she said, “but someone has to die before a position opens up in film communication studies.” Sounds like the premise for another murder mystery.
Married 25 years to Jeff Wolf, an artist who works a beach bar in Santa Monica — yes, Shepphird and Wolf — Shepphird enjoys an active-outdoor lifestyle and a couple of cats. She’s also started to think about starting a sequel to her satirical romantic comedy, “The War Council,” perhaps set in Italy, or wherever else she might like to travel.
“After spending 20 years writing for the owner and publisher of a magazine, creating his vision,” she said, “it is fun to finally be writing my own stories. It’s easy to turn out these books because the stories are all in me. I wouldn’t have had them to tell back then.”
“Destination Maui” and “Destination Monterey” are available “anywhere good books are sold,” she said, including River House Books at The Crossroads in Carmel and on the shelf at Oliva and Daisy Bookstore in Carmel Valley, which will host a festive author event on Tuesday at 5 p.m.
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2022-11-27 17:35:50Z
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