…buying a Seventies-vintage white polyester ladies' jumpsuit, which will be perfect for signings for Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit, the Elvis book out in hardcover in fall '99. But I can't sing on key, so there's no danger of my bursting into "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog." If I get some time (unlikely) and the technical assistance, I might someday put part of my Marilyn Monroe tape on my home page.

Crescent Blues: What impact do adventures "out of the box" of writing have on your novels? What other methods do you use to break the routine?

Carole Nelson Douglas: I very seldom get out of the box of writing, traveling to conventions and going on book tours these days. In fact, I had sacrificed so many pastimes (playing the piano, going to estate sales, local writers' group meetings, the health club and a tap dancing class) over the past few years as my schedule has gone nova, that I've made it a goal to get out and about more. I've found a nearby dance class -- clogging, not tap -- and meet with local "book ladies" once a month, when I can make it. I have visions of beading in my spare time someday, but more realistically should use any spare time to update my web page.

Crescent Blues: How has the Midnight Louie series changed since Catnap? Has the series progressed according to some master "game plan" or have the characters surprised you?

These books really aren't "cat mysteries," although the cat is a major character, viewpoint and actor in the storyline. These books are really about the interactions of the four human characters who alternatively compete and cooperate in the arena of crime-solving while evolving in their own lives, as Louie is evolving in his own nine (or whatever number) of lives.

The Midnight Louie series itself is constructed like a three-year television series, such as The X-Files, with an ongoing back story that involves the main four characters' private and past lives, and episodic front stories that involve different characters and crime milieus in each book. Because I introduced an internal alphabet with the third book title (Cat on a Blue Monday), the entire series will number 27 books, with three back story arcs of nine books each.

Although my proposal for the series mentions that it will get "deeper and darker" as it progresses, I didn't plan any structure. But that's how it developed organically, because I wanted the characters to grow, and I've just recently detected the structure that's evolving, like a sculptor who finally sees the shape hidden in the stone.

A mystery series can be so formulaic: murder, milieu, suspects, solution every book. Life just isn't that tidy. That's why the Midnight Louie series has "continuing" crimes that are not solved in the book in which they occur, but over the course of several books.

I did start off in the classical amateur style, only in cozy-noir mode: Louie is the noir, his roommate Temple Barr is the cozy amateur sleuth, a public relations freelancer. Because so many women of mystery were becoming androgynous amazons by the time I started the series in the early Nineties, I went for a petite, ultra-feminine heroine (to contrast to Louie's macho swagger). But Temple is a terrier: cute but tenacious, and deadly to vermin.

The series' human cast are: two amateur detectives (Temple and Matt Devine, the hotline counselor) and two pros (female homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina and the magician, Temple's on-and-off lover, Max Kinsella, who has ties to international terrorism). In the first books, you get Midnight Louie's first-purrson chapters interspersed with Temple's third-person chapters.

I always intended to use all four people as point of view characters, but introduced them gradually so as not to confuse readers with too many points of view about whom they knew nothing. Cat in an Indigo Mood is the tenth book in the series, and the first to use all four human viewpoints, plus Louie's. Gets complicated! I'll probably go back to a more limited narration for the next couple of books, but will definitively be using all five points of view from here on, so we can find out what the various characters think of each other.

I've also been expanding the "animal universe," another intentional plan. Louie has his expert advisor (Ingram, the mystery bookstore cat -- maybe I'll have to change his name, given recent publishing developments). There's also the Divine Yvette, the beautiful shaded silver Persian Louie languishes for, and her equally beautiful shaded golden sister, Solange; Karma, the landlady's reclusive psychic cat; Maurice, the catfood spokescat who's out for Louie's hide when Louie competes for his job; and Nose E., the tiny Maltese dope-and-bomb-sniffing dog I introduce to the series in Cat in an Indigo Mood.

I'm so glad you mentioned "master plan." So many book reviewers see just skin deep into genre fiction and thus review only the plot, which in the case of books like mine that are character-driven is rather like describing an article of clothing by giving a detailed anatomy of the hanger it's suspended from. What this series is really about, for instance, is sexual responsibility in the Nineties, a concern that I found missing from otherwise realistic mystery and mainstream thriller novels.

Crescent Blues: What were some of the surprises?

Carole Nelson Douglas: I hadn't really planned on continuing villains linked to one or more of the human characters. That evolved in the first six or seven books, so when that male antagonist was ready to disappear from the scene, I found a female one taking his place. She is a psychopath! Luckily, I've known a couple in real life.

Crescent Blues: In the earliest books in the series, murder is discovered quickly, sometimes on the first page. In later books, the story develops first, and murder occurs as part of that larger canvas. Why the change? Do you feel it's an inevitable development in a mystery series? If so, why?

In Catnap, I was moving Louie from his romance quartet to mystery. I wanted to make the demarcation line clear. Hence the body in the first chapter.

A lot of people (and critics) find romances formulaic -- and they were in the old days. Mystery is by nature far more formulaic than romance, because romance is based on character, and mystery is based on plot. Or it has been traditionally

Think about it: every book, a dead body. Every dead body, a reasonably large circle of suspects to meet, besides the victim, and all their whys and wherefores. No wonder the classic mystery revealed information about the sleuth and his/her circle very stingily. Now that I'm putting all the factors into position: multiple point of view, continuing villains and character issues that reflect modern social problems, I don't feel obligated to prove the books involve crime solving by putting the problem in the foreground every time.

A literature professor who interviewed me recently about the Irene Adler series using feminism in historical mysteries became intrigued by the Midnight Louie series as well. She describes them as "retro post-modern" and says that unsolved murders that run over into subsequent books is "very cutting edge" and what "the literary writers who try mystery are doing." I just know, as a veteran multi-genre writer, that …

Carole Nelson Douglas (continued)

Click here to read the Crescent Blues review of Cat in a Golden Garland.