Jess Lourey talks about writing and secrets

Jessica (Jess) Lourey is best known for her critically-acclaimed Murder-by-Month mysteries. A tenured professor of creative writing and sociology, Lourey has also written sword-and-sorcery fantasy and YA adventure. In this interview, Jess Lourey talks about what is important to her in writing and the one common theme she returns to: secrets.

One secret Jess Lourey doesn’t keep is that she writes under three names. Her fantasy novels are written as Albert Lea, her YA novels are under J.H. Lourey, and her other writing is under her given name. Lourey described the reason for writing under a pseudonym.

“It’s important to me that my readers not feel tricked into reading my different styles of writing. My mysteries are funny. My magical realism is dark. I’m currently writing a thriller that is different from anything I’ve created before. So, I’d like my readers to know that I pour my heart into everything I write, and that I get better with every book, but that one piece I write may be very different from another.”

Lourey said that the Murder-by-Month Mysteries have traditionally been set in Battle Lake, which is a real town in Minnesota. With “February Fever,” however, Lourey said she felt like it was time for something different. “I wanted to take Mira James on the road. I also wanted to try writing an extended locked-room mystery in the flavor of Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express.’ So, I combined those two impulses with a heavy dash of Janet Evanovich-style humor.”

The adventure begins with PI-in-training Mira James’ Valentine’s Day going from bad to worse when she’s trapped on a train containing one murderer and hundreds of innocents in the Colorado Rockies. “February Fever” turned out to be the most challenging installment in the series for Lourey. She said, “It opens with a sex scene, which is super uncomfortable to write. They say to write those as if your mother is dead and can’t read it, but that’s even MORE uncomfortable to imagine, so I wrote this one as if my mom was illiterate.”

Obviously, Lourey’s discomfort didn’t show through in her writing because Kirkus Reviews called this “Mira’s best outing yet.”

Back when she was working on “June Bug,” her second Murder-by-Month Mystery, Lourey said she needed to know what shape a corpse would be in if it had been sealed in an air-tight safe for 100 years. Lourey said she did online searches, but couldn’t find the answer. After the fact, she began wondering if her search terms might have landed her on a government watch list.

“I finally sent an email to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is what we have instead of an FBI office in Minnesota. I was green—it was only my second book—and so I didn’t want to call myself a writer. I posed the question as if it were curiosity. Rookie error. They did answer my question, but I’ve noticed that once a week for the past ten years, a ‘Charter’ [cable company] van works on the transformer outside my house.

“I’m sure the BCA and FBI have gotten weirder questions and have figured out by now I’m not a basement-dwelling conspiracist.” Lourey added, “Can you italicize and underline that so they get the message?” [Done, but I may be on the same watch list, so that might not have been in your best interest.—Ed.]

One of the reasons Lourey chose to set the Murder-by-Month series in Battle Lake was the weather. She said, “Conflict makes great fiction, and when you live where it’s not unusual for the weather to shift 60 degrees in 24 hours, you have a lot of inherent conflict in the setting alone. You also have a lot of weirdos who choose to live here, and quirky characters make for interesting writing.”

Citing the beautiful scenery, the interesting residents, and a 23-foot tall fiberglass statue named Chief Wenonga, Lourey said, “As a writer, what’s not to love? Besides, I was living here when I wrote May Day, the first in the series, and they say to write what you know.”

Writing what you know brings us full circle to where this interview began, which was with the issue of secrets. Lourey said, “Every book I write is about the poison and power of secrets. This is true whether it is a funny mystery, like ‘February Fever,’ an extended family drama like ‘The Catalain Book of Secrets,’ or a seat-of-your-pants YA adventure like ‘The Toadhouse Trilogy: Book One.’ I don’t ever start out meaning to focus on secrets, but that theme seems to bubble to the surface of everything I write.”

When pressed for details, Lourey would only say, “Secrets have absolutely affected my life, and there are three in particular. Fortunately, I write fiction so I never have to talk about them.”