SK author shows there’s simply no place like home – The Independent

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. South Kingstown has its own share of stories local lore, legend and legitimate and Claremary Sweeney is hunting them down for her series of mystery novels laced with pages of town flavor and intrigue.

A South Kingstown resident for many decades, she has now published four mystery novels set in South Kingstown. Her characters and details appear in surroundings so familiar that readers could think they are bystanders watching the action.

I create the setting and the scene, some place I know and can write about, she said during a recent interview about putting the town in her literary limelight. I compose them from all the things I heard. No character is someone I have ever known, they are all composites, she added.

This authors string of self-published books are the composites of real and imagined events infusing her tale of mystery into local places like the Kingston train station history and milieu that put both readers and the authors imaginations into fictionalized tales of drama and intrigue.

The stories also have a Who Done It? flavor for murder. Sweeney brings a twisting plot with seriousness as her characters explore means, motivation and opportunity among suspects. It comes from within herself, she explained recently.

I always loved mysteries. I loved the who puzzle element of mystery, figuring stuff out. It is just a challenge for me to go from here to here, and what the journey is that takes you there, she said, adding, It isnt so much solving the puzzle, its how you get through to solve the puzzle.

Sweeney, who recently signed copies of her books at Wakefield Books, said the creative flow starts with an intriguing idea about South Kingstown.

The idea wants to be expressed. Settings drive me I just love settings. Do you feel them? Are they like a person to you? Arent they like a person with their arms around you? she asked with enthusiasm whose roots go deep in her years as an English teacher and Army Reserve Corps photographer from 1977 to 1981.

I create the setting and the scene, some place I know and can write about. You give me an idea Im passionate aboutand then on top of all that, I create characters. And I love to do that. I compose them from all the things I heard. No character is someone I have ever known, they are all composites because Im a sponge, she said.

I dont know who the killer is. I know who will get killed and how they will get killed. I have suspects and they will tell me later on in the book and who has best means, motive and opportunity, she added.

Characters take over the crafting of the book, Sweeney noted, both figuratively and literally in her subconscious mind.

The characters up in my head are insane. They live up there. One night, while I was writing Last Sermon for a Sinner, the young priest was screaming at me and woke me up at two oclock in the morning, the storyteller explained, eyelids opening wide to grab the attention of her audience. Her voice pitch rose and sunk, like a ship in the high seas heading toward a determined destination, as she talked about this character.

He was really ticked. You make a mistake. Youre a Catholic, you know better than to put Palm Sunday two weeks before Easter, he said, she recalled. I was born on Palm Sunday. Dont you think I should have known this? she asked rhetorically, explaining that eagerness to develop an upcoming scene blinded her to the calendars actual date as the week before Easter.

When I discovered it, I had to do a lot of rewriting of chapters, she said, bringing her mini-tale about writing and unexpected twists to an end. Silence fell, she looked for the nod that the listener understood her dilemma.

And so it goes day in and day out for Sweeney, 70, who likes to explore, talk and write about ideas and scenes that need solving. On Nov. 8 she will be the featured guest speaker at the weekly seminar at the Rhode Island Forensics Lab at the University of Rhode Island.

Her presentation is titled, Inside the Devious Mind of a Murder Mystery Writer, and, she smiled while adding, The subtitle is Unearthing Hidden Sins. Her lecture is open to the public.

Her mind, she said with some introspective analysis, has always been like a sponge. It soaks up scenes, conversations, hidden meanings, overt statements and many details - clear and obscure that make up life around every day.

She notes that her curiosity, personality and willingness to engage with and learn from people has drawn out some unusual stories and situations.

I dont know why Im a magnet for strange things and strange people, she said, summoning again her storytellers voice and persona. She then unravels a conversation about national intrigue with a Ukrainian Embassy staff member she met sitting next to her on a plane.

In another instance, she recalls an early association with convicted killer Michael Woodmansee who admitted to the 1975 murder in South Kingstown of five-year-old Jason Foreman. She said she worked in plays with Woodmansee at the Peace Dale Library.

These and other similar situations, she said, probed her own thinking about the complexities in her novels and approaches for her characters.

You dont know who youre with. You dont know people. You really dont. You talk to them. You listen to them. You do things with them. And you dont know them unless you really dig deeply, said the ever-present narrator about how life imitates her art and craft of storytelling.

Much of her work starts with that deep dig, such as historical research at local repositories, including the South County History Center, the Kingston Hill Library and Peace Dale Library. Each provides a trove of information useful for framing in her mind how the mystery will be built and ways it can unfold later.

And then there are the actual South County natives who are more than willing to sit with me and talk about their memories of the villages that make up South Kingstown, she said.

Her book writing career began in earnest in 2015 by authoring childrens books. She followed that in 2017 with Last Train to Kingston, the first of her South Kingstown setting mystery novels.

Since then she wrote Last Rose on the Vine (2018), Last Carol of theSeason (2018), recently released Last Sermon for a Sinner (2019) and upcoming next year, Last Castle in the Sand, which is scheduled for launch in the fall of 2020.

All her books are self-published through The E Book Bakery, self-publishing agents for paperbacks, ebooks and audiobooks, in Narragansett. Design for her covers has been done by South Kingstown resident Zachary Perry.

Writing and publishing books is much more a hobby than a money maker, said Sweeney, who said that shes sold about 3,000 copies of her books, but everything goes back into self-publishing. I really dont make any personal money from it.

The research, writing, unraveling and re-packaging of mysteries keeps her mind turning and grounded in meaningful work, said this now retired school-administrator-turned-author.

Its not tedious (work) at all because I really love South County and enjoy finding out more about this awesome area. Thats a good thing because being a totally undisciplined character, I probably would not enjoy the time invested in the research if it werent interesting, she said.

Read more here:

SK author shows there's simply no place like home - The Independent