Ellen Byerrum has the wow factor. She’s succeeded in a number of impossibly tough careers and is still looking for new challenges.
You’ve enjoyed a remarkable writing career, including a stint as a Washington, DC journalist, a successful mystery novelist whose books have been made into movies and a published playwright. How did all this happen? Was this all part of a plan or has fate (and your own considerable talents) guided you in this direction?
First of all, thank you! Writing looks much better from the outside-in, without those dark nights of the soul. I was 12 years-old when I decided to be a writer. I started writing stories for myself in those miserable teenage years and it was a comfort to transport myself out of the dreadful ordinary. I went to journalism school and worked at small, ridiculous newspapers in search of stories to tell.
I loved the Crime of Fashion Mysteries and I wondered if Lacey Smithsonian was based on a real person in DC?
Lacey is very real in my imagination, but she isn’t based on any one person. Lacey Smithsonian arrived after I read a ton of mysteries with female characters who were rough and tough and could fight and could solve crimes. But they all quavered when it came time to dress themselves. They celebrated the black polyester dress. I remember thinking I wanted a hero/heroine who could do all that and still know how to dress herself stylishly.
I read that you actually became a licensed investigator to further your knowledge of crime scenes and forensics. What was it like to take classes and exams in a challenging subject like forensics?
It was the most fun thing to do at the time! I took a Private Investigation course in Virginia and received my PI registration. (Businesses are licensed, people are registered in Virginia, at least at the time I took the course.) I simply wanted to be able to get things right factually instead of really wrong, instead of going with the things I thought I knew from tv, books, and movies, which can be very wrong. The classes provided an overall look at investigation, keeping up with changing laws that affect things like investigation and privacy, learning and practicing surveillance, and other skills.
Classes were both fascinating and funny. For example, one of our classes did such a bad job at the three-car surveillance that we had to take remedial surveillance, “You are the worst bunch of lousy would-be PIs I have ever seen …” according to instructor Sergio. I took classes with a friend who got into a lot of arguments with Sergio. She annoyed him by buying all kinds of PI gadgets like wrist-watch cameras and surveillance vests. The two of them were screamingly funny and all I had to do was take notes. The PI classes gave me a window into the profession, without being dry and dusty.
KILLER HAIR and HOSTILE MAKEOVER were both made into Lifetime Movies and I understand that you flew to LA and “took meetings” with Hollywood movers and shakers. Daunting, but maybe not for a journalist with your street cred.
That makes it sound more seamless than it was. I attended a Sisters in Crime Conference on How to Sell Your Book to Hollywood, which was wonderful. However, the story for me started about six months before when I first got the e-mail about the conference. I was at work. My immediate thought was I couldn’t afford that. Yet I couldn’t get it out of my mind. And then I heard a voice inside (call it what you will, instinct, intuition, guidance), which said, “Ellen, if you go, something will happen.”
Conference attendees attended a session on how to pitch our projects, took a studio tour, and met people in the industry. On Sunday, last day of our event, I had my pitch session with two producers, Rona Edwards and Monika Skerbelis, I had five minutes – an eternity in Hollywood time – and I felt the exact moment that we “clicked.” However, it still took two years for anything to happen.
How did your playwrighting career come about? Were the plays produced in DC?
In D.C., the Source Theatre Festival – sadly no more – was instrumental in producing some of my plays as well as workshopping several plays.
Your ninth Crime of Fashion Mystery has just been released as an e-book and that’s quite an accomplishment. What lies ahead for the series?
VEILED REVENGE was the last book, 9th in my backlist and I’m delighted it’s been published as an e-book. I have published two more, LETHAL BLACK DRESS and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DRESS and a prequel which takes in 1943 in Washington, D.C.
It’s interesting that your eighth Crime of Fashion Mystery takes place in Colorado. Why did you decide to do the “fish-out-of-water” theme? And why Colorado?
I was born and raised in Colorado and it felt as if it were time for Lacey to be pulled back. It explains a lot of backstory, which was inspired by my first, rather ghastly newspaper job.
CROOK TALES FOR TWO is the first in your new Art Deco Mysteries set in 1934. You chose an exciting time in Manhattan, full of Broadway, gangsters and private eyes. Why did you turn to an historical? It sounds fascinating.
CROOK TALES was pure pleasure in a way that none of my other books have been. The very first chapter came to me in a dream. It simply wouldn’t let go and I’m hanging on for the ride.
Where can readers find you online? And where they can meet you in person and have their books autographed?
I’m pretty much on the usual suspects, but I post most often on Facebook. I also am on Instagram and Linked In. I post videos on YouTube, have dipped my toes in on TikTok and might attend the next Malice Domestic conference.
Thanks so much for sitting down and giving an update on your amazing career!
About Ellen Byerrum
Ellen Byerrum is a journalist in Washington D.C., a produced and published playwright, and she holds a Virginia private investigator’s registration. A Colorado native, she lives in Virginia with her husband.
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About Mary Kennedy
Mary Kennedy is a licensed psychologist and the author of the Talk Radio Mysteries and the Dream Club Mysteries. She’s written nearly fifty novels and has four million copies in print. Her first thirty-five books were young adult novels published by Scholastic nationwide and in several countries. She lives in the northeast with an eccentric cat. She’s tried unsuccessfully to psychoanalyze him but she remains optimistic.
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