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Speaker 1: Hello, and good morning Marine. How are you doing today?

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Speaker 2: I'm fine. Thank you so much.

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Speaker 1: You must have had a lot of fun putting this

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book together, because I mean, first of all, you deal

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with a modern day mystery, but you also travel into

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the past. And I love it when authors can do that,

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they can put us in two different places at the

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same time.

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Speaker 2: I find that I like working in dual timelines, but

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I think it makes sense with mysteries because mysteries are

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always about going back into the past, whether it's an

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hour or one hundred years, and rewinding and taking it

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apart and trying to figure out how you got to

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where you are.

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Speaker 1: How do you do your research for something like that,

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just to make sure that the continuity is spot on.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of things. I mean, it's just

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a lot of general knowledge and reading, and then once

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you kind of narrow down what you want to do,

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then it's in person research. Like I go, I went

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from this case. The book takes place in the Southern Island,

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so I go there. You know, I look at beIN

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mundane everything from you know, just stare sometimes staring at

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the sidewalk what's on the street, to going going from

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island to island, going into the houses, trying to pick

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So sometimes what you need is really really small, like

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you never know what is you're going to need. You

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pick up little things as you go, just you know, oh,

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a doorknob, a whole building, a doorknob, a feeling in

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the air, you know, a local food. You never know

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what is you're going to need to do.

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Speaker 1: Where do you find the inspiration to create something like

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the Ralston family and then a modern day Marlowe? I

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mean because I mean it's it's two completely different things,

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but at the same time they all come together in harmony.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's Marlo in the modern story, which sounds like

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I've just written some sort of weird you know, Nickelodeon

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stick on there, But it's I always start with why,

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why the thing happened, And because murder is a big deal,

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even if you're writing a murder mystery, which is the

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lighthearted kind of a thing, weirdly, you always have to

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start with why, and then I build out to the

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who and how, and I kind of build from that

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censure outwards. The Wilson family in the past, there's loose

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historical precedence I'm using there because what you find out

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that the family was into in the past was very

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There's a lot of stuff that happened in our past

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that we simply do not talk about and don't want

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to talk about, or that we collectively are forgotten. Was

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really common. For example, the family is very into eugenics.

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Eugenics was accepted day to day practice. Like it was

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just like and you went, you could go to a

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eugenics tent at the state fairs. You could get yourself

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a corn dog, and then you could go to the

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eugenics tent in case the baby's head measured. That is real.

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That is what used to happen. So this was this

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was a belief system. This was you know. It's also

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you know Philip Roston, so that the Ralston family has

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six older children and one younger children. So two children

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die in the past, one of the older children and

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a younger child. He adopted his six children as a

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doctor in World War One. So there's a lot about

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how families would put together, what the political situation was

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like in the United States. It's a it's a real

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mix of things. I mean, I guess I'm just you know,

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when you're a reader, you're I've always been interested in

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that period in history.

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Speaker 1: I'm always interested in mansions and and all my entire life.

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If I read about anything about a mansion, it's I

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need someone to take me inside. And that's exactly what

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you do, is you. It's almost like wearing those VR goggles.

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You take us inside by way of your paragraphs.

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Speaker 2: I'm very exacting. I like a map. I like a chart.

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There's a map in all my books, all the mysteries,

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and they always mean something. I have to really feel

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like I understand exactly where everything takes place. I don't know,

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like this might be a theater. I work in theater

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as well, and it's and wrote for it. There's something

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about having to touch the things to know, like this

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is exactly how long it takes to cross the room,

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this is how you get from one floor to another.

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I feel like I have to know these things. You

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know in some of the books i've you know, I

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go and you go on eBay and you buy old maps,

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like for my True dB series, which takes place in Vermont.

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Part of it takes place in the twenty so I

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went online and you find a bunch of maps, so

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you know exactly what rose were there. But mansions are

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They are kind of a personality made manifest. They are

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wealth their personality. They are display their house, but they

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are also legged. They're not just a house for your family.

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It's a house for like all your servants. All of

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these backs theres. They're designed part of the houses that

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you're not supposed to see if you've given them, which

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is strange. That's not how we normally think of houses.

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But those houses have a backstage.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of maps, my wife and I had a really

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deep conversation about your style of writing. She says that

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you leave bread crumbs, and so I always want to

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make sure that that I can spot a bread crumb

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when you leave in it forest, because it's almost like

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you're pulling us into the story and you give us

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something to hold on to so that we can grow

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with the story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean these are fair play mysteries, and by

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that it means that they are favable by the reader.

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You don't need outside information, and the perpetrator or perpetrators

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are always introduced early enough that if it's a four

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hunderd page book, they don't come in on three hundred

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and ninety eight. You know you know who they are,

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what you do, is you kind of I work from

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the back, like I always write, I know exactly how

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everything ends. I write kind of case files about it.

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I write why everything happened, I break it all down,

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and then I kind of pull threads out of that,

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so I pull back to front, you know, rather than

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kind of you know, I don't. I also don't write

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in order, so I'll kind of pull the things I

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want and write those sections.

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Speaker 1: Because songwriters will sit there, they may get a guitar

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riff here, they may get a lyric over there. Somehow, someway,

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it all comes together. And that's what I'm learning with you,

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is that when you build from the back first, it's like,

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oh my god, that's so inspiring.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I've never written a book in order, but certainly

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with mysteries I always I've never written a book in

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order ever. Ever, I don't know how to write in order.

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Everybody writes in their own way, everybody. And the thing is,

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you also write, learn to write every book by writing

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that book. You know. Kids off and ask me, like,

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how do you learn to write? Well, I'm like, you

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write a lot. You have to write all the time

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and just fail constantly because you fail writing that book

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until you've written it, so you have to learn how

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to write each book by writing that book.

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Speaker 1: Wow, where can people go to find out more information

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about you Marine? Because I mean this, this book right

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here is your first standalone book, but I mean you've

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got a series out there like you wouldn't believe.

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Speaker 2: I have a lot of standalone books. This is this

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is a stand alone mystery I have. You can go

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to Marian Johnson dot com. You can go to Marian

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Johnson Books on Instagram or Marian Johnson on Twitter h

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and also Morerien Johnson books on TikTok which is new

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and in development, but Instagram on a lot more.

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Speaker 1: I love it. Please come back to the show anytime

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in the future. The door is always going to be

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open for you.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much.

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Speaker 1: Will you'd be brilliant today