Esther Luttrell

The photo on the left was snapped by photographer, Carol Yoho, during a book signing at the 414 Warehouse Gallery in Topeka, Kansas where she, author Cynthia Stotlar, and I shared a table. The big bruiser beside me is my disc jockey buddy, Jack Diamond, who shows up as a character named Jack Ryman in my Noto mysteries. He actually does work at inte... rnet radio station WREN, just the way it's told in Yellow, Green, Blue & Dead, and in Murder in Magenta. People always ask how I got started writing. I don't remember starting. I've never had any real skills, but I do have an abundance of curiosity and interests. I looked into things, wrote about what I learned, and jobs - not a career - more or less happened. What I love about being a writer is the amount of research I have to do on so many subjects. During the length of time it takes to write a novel, I'm an authority on everything factual in my book. Retention is another matter, but for a few months, I'm a whiz on whatever it is I'm writing about. I've never been much of a party person; I've always hung out with Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Sue Grafton, Robert Parker and my favorite, Margaret Truman. Her mysteries are brilliant. Before I sit down at my desk to begin writing, I read a few pages of a book by any one of them. It's like having breakfast with friends who inspire and energize. From Chandler I learned plotting. I studied the way MacDonald turns a phrase with such ease and color. Sue Grafton is the epitome of good, believable dialogue; I study her work the way a college student crams for an exam. Parker helps me understand how to do away with a lot of unnecessary explanation, and from Truman I've learned that it's all right to let intelligence show in your work. Without a career plan, I fell into writing commercials, first for radio station KSAL in Salina, Kansas, then for television and Midwest ad agencies. Later, I worked for CBS and MGM in L.A. It was a fluke that I wrote my first novel. At sixty-seven my husband left me for another woman. His ...Read More