Episode 23: Jane Kelly

Destination Mystery

I'm so pleased to chat with Jane Kelly, a wonderful writer and delightful human being -- one who just happens to thrive on mystery. Jane's Meg Daniels Mysteries have always had a lot of heart, but as they've evolved, the series has grown richer. It has also begun to include an element of delving into the past. Missing You in Atlantic City looks into a death linked to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and the next one in the works will involve the 1968 Miss America Pageant. Jane has launched two other series, both with an element of the Kennedy era: Widow Lady, set in 1960, and Swoon '64, a Writing in Time mystery, set in the present but investigating a crime of the past. Check out her Pinterest page for gorgeous 1960s images to set the scene. Jane gives a shout-out to historical mystery writer Annamaria Alfieri and also to the wonderful M.Phil program she did in Dublin, Ireland, at Trinity College, which I have to link to because it sounds so awesome. I live vicariously through these interviews! Here are the Meg Daniels Mysteries in order: 1. Killing Time in Ocean City 2. Cape Mayhem 3. Wrong Beach Island 4. Missing You in Atlantic City Also, the bonus book, A Fear of Seaside Heights, could be considered 3A -- it falls in between Wrong Beach Island and Missing You in Atlantic City in Meg's timeline. You can also find Jane on Facebook at her Author Page and her Meg Daniels Page. As always, if you'd rather read than listen, the transcript is below. Enjoy! Transcript of Interview with Jane Kelly Laura Brennan: My guest today is Jane Kelly, author of the Meg Daniels, Writing in Time, and Widow Lady mysteries. Her mysteries focus on personal stories: missing mothers, murders that haunt from childhood. But whether historical or contemporary, they all offer a terrific ride. Jane, thank you for joining me. Jane Kelly: Thank you for the invitation. LB: Before we talk about your writing, I'd like to talk a little bit about you. You have a Masters in Library and Information Science and an Master of Philosophy in Popular Literature from Trinity College, Dublin -- you are the queen of books! JK: Well, it does dovetail nicely, the two masters, even though they might seem very dissimilar, they do fit together very nicely. I didn't get the literature degree until later in life, so I couldn't use it in conjunction really with the library degree, but the library degree helps me immensely in terms of doing research for the books. LB: I'm not going to fib, I am crazy jealous that you studied at Trinity College in Dublin. What took you to Dublin? JK: The idea came to me -- well, not specifically Dublin -- one day I was on a panel at a conference and we were going down the row, we were asked to introduce ourselves. And the first person said, I'm so-and-so and I just got back from the writing program at the University of Iowa. And somebody else said, I'm so-and-so and I have an MFA from Columbia. And the next person said something similar, and I said, hello, I'm Jane Kelly. So it occurred to me that perhaps I should look into getting some real credentials for what I was doing because I had already published a couple of books. And I went online, and I found a program in Dublin which was popular literature. It was the first in Europe and it was one of the first in the world, if not the first. So it was very different. And I went over, I interviewed, and I went back. And I think it's been a tremendous help in terms of writing. We started in the early days with chapbooks, I think I recall they are called, and went through all the modern genres and just learned what people have been liking in literature for hundreds of years. It was really a great experience. LB: I would imagine genre literature appeared in that list. JK: It did, yes. We read mysteries, westerns, speculative, any genre. We even read romance -- I like the way I said "even romance" because I don't read romance but I kn...