Introduction:
Trish MacEnulty
Trish MacEnulty is the author of four historical mysteries published by Prism Light Press, including The Whispering Women, The Butterfly Cage, The Burning Bride, and Secrets and Spies. (You can read our review of The Whispering Women here.) MacEnulty grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, and earned degrees from the University of Florida and Florida State University. For twenty years, she lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was a Professor of English at Johnson & Wales University, teaching writing and film classes. She now lives in Tallahassee with her husband, Joe; cat, Tumbleweed; and dog, Franco. In addition to her historical novels, she has written novels, stories, plays, and a memoir. Her stand alone historical novel, Cinnamon Girl, recently won the gold medal in its category in the Historical Fiction Company Annual Contest and first place in the Dante Rosetti for YA fiction. She currently writes book reviews and features for The Historical Novel Review. Learn more at https://trishmacenulty.com.
Donna Meredith: Historical mysteries are quite a change from your earlier books, which often grew from your mishaps and growth as a young person. What made you tackle a new genre?
Trish MacEnulty: For most of my life, my stories (fiction and memoir) stemmed from events in my own life. It was a great way to hone my craft — and real life often provides a ready-made structure. However I have always wanted to write books that entertained people and, as teaching is in my blood, educated them as well. What makes historical fiction so much fun is that once again, the stories often have a ready-made structure and yet there’s so much out there to learn. I’ve been reviewing historical fiction for several years now and I’m amazed at how they never run out of World War II material. It seems there are always untold stories!
Donna Meredith
DM: You have been very productive over the past few years. Since September 2022, you have had four historical mysteries published in the Delafield and Malloy Investigations series. Why did you choose the particular time period as your setting for these mysteries? What research was required?
I always liked historical fiction but I discovered that I loved it through television shows. I was devastated when Downton Abby ended. I didn’t want to leave that world. As I pondered how to fill my craving, I thought about how my paternal grandparents were living in New York during the same time period. I never met them and I’ve always been curious about their lives. They were very much in love (though I gather they were lousy parents). He was the son of a street sweeper who rose to become president of the manufacturing company that his future father-in-law had started. They wound up with an estate on Long Island and an apartment on Central Park in New York City, but they were not from the Edith Wharton Old New York set. They would have been labeled “parvenues.” That led me to exploring the lives of the wealthy New Yorkers through the eyes of an impoverished society writer. During my research I discovered one family who had a maid named Ellen McNulty (an Irish immigrant who would surely have been somehow related to my father’s side of the family). I loved the idea of running the gamut of class and income levels. I didn’t know a lot about how people lived in the 1910s and it turned out to be a rich vein to tap. There was just so much going on as people (especially women) transitioned out of the Gilded Age and into a more modern era.
DM: The investigations in the novels take place in different areas of the country. Could you discuss the settings. What did the variety of places allow you to bring to these novels?
I didn’t set out for it to be that way, but at some point I decided to let historical events dictate where I set the stories. Some part would always take place in Manhattan as that is Louisa’s home base, but for the second book, when I discovered that the Prince of Monaco had been on a hunting trip in Wyoming during the time period I wanted to write about, I knew that Louisa would have to go to Wyoming to interview him. The fact that a wealthy hunter died at the same time and in the same place set the plot in motion. So Joe and I took a trip to Cody, Wyoming, that year. I’d never been to that part of the country and the scenery was so stark and beautiful. I was thrilled to put my characters there and live through them for a while.
For some reason I had an idea to set one of the books in St. Augustine, maybe because it’s one of my favorite places in the world. The fact there was a huge fire in 1914 meant it was the perfect setting for a murder. Meanwhile all KINDS of stuff was happening in New York that year what with anarchists and protest movements. Honestly I think I just get curious about the history and it winds up in the books. Book four was the easiest one to write. I woke up one morning and realized I had to write about the ship that sank in 1915. I had a vague notion about the Lusitania and started doing the research. From then on the book practically wrote itself.
So the short answer is that I just get curious about what was going on in a particular time and let the research take the lead.
DM: How long did you work on the four stories in the Delafield and Malloy series? Did you find books two through four of the series easier to write than the first one?
Yes, absolutely. The first book took several years. I started off having written a television pilot, which placed as a finalist in several contests and was optioned by a producer in Hollywood. When my life took a turn due to unexpected care-taking duties and it looked like I could not pursue screenwriting, I decided to turn it into a novel. “It’ll be easy!” I thought. No, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t really know how to write historical fiction. I hadn’t read enough of it yet. So I had several false starts. I would get interest from an agent and they would want changes. Then they didn’t like the changes. LOTS of heartache. Then I met author Libby Grant, who advocates for a hybrid publishing career. She advises authors to do both traditional publishing and independent publishing. She also said that it was smarter to publish series independently as readers don’t particularly like to wait for the next book, and you know traditional publishing takes forever. So I took her advice. My first six books were published by smaller, respectable traditional presses. For these books, Joe and I decided to publish them ourselves. And it was the best decision I ever made. It’s been great to have full control of everything from the typeface to the covers to the titles to the marketing. And so far, they seem to be selling well.
As for the second question. Oh, yes, the next three books were so much easier and quicker to write. And frankly, I think they are a little better paced than the first. By then I had learned to trust the history and ground the stories in real events even if I did have to invent certain plot elements. Also I knew my characters and felt really comfortable with them by the time I started the second book.
DM: What traits allow your two main characters, Louisa Delafield and Ellen Malloy, to work well together? What does each bring to an investigation?
They genuinely like each other. Louisa is an only child and Ellen is sister to three brothers, so they each fulfill that sisterly role in each other’s lives. Louisa knows how society operates, and as a reporter she’s able to enter a variety of situations. Of course, Ellen has a more jaundiced view of society than Louisa does, and her outspokenness helps Louisa remove her blinders and see the people she admires as they really are. Louisa is well meaning but she’s sometimes clueless about the struggles of other people, so Ellen and Suzy, the housekeeper, help Louisa discover that there’s a certain level of unfairness built in the system.
DM: What are you working on next? Are you done with Delafield & Malloy Investigations?
I have just finished a short novel called Battle Annie, which I will be giving to future newsletter subscribers and that has been so much fun to write. It’s a spin off of one of the characters in The Whispering Women — the female gangster who was known as the Queen of Hell’s Kitchen in the 1880s. And now I want to write more about the various queens of the Underworld in 19th-century New York. So there will be more of those, for sure. Next I’m writing a stand-alone novel about Theda Bara, the silent film star of the 1910s who was said to have “the wickedest face in the world.” I’m excited that the first three chapters of that book are a finalist in the Historical Novel Review’s “First Chapters Contest.”
Then as soon as that is done, I’m going to back to Louisa and Ellen. I’ve had so many readers tell me they want more Delafield & Malloy. It was always my intention to take them to 1918 and then jump a couple decades so I’ll be pretty busy for the foreseeable future.
DM: Thanks for taking the time to talk to Southern Literary Review, Trish. We look forward to more of Delafield and Malloy.
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