This One is Special: Guest Post by Erica Miner

When I started writing my first murder mystery, I thought it was a one-off. It was based on a screenplay I was writing in the same genre, and I was having one heck of a time making it work. Even though it took place in familiar territory, the Metropolitan Opera, where I played violin for 21 years, I was learning the hard way that the mystery genre was the most difficult to write. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle: 

All the pieces have to fit together perfectly or it falls apart.

 

Then it occurred to me that if I wrote the story as a novel, I could include details that I couldn’t use in the very restrictive screenplay format. Implementing that plan would help me put together the pieces 

to the tricky brain teaser that is the mystery genre. I wrote both of them in tandem and ended up completing them at about the same time. It worked! Aria for Murder was born and my Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series along with it. My protagonist, gifted young misadventure-prone violinist Julia Kogan, admittedly is my alter ego: based on myself when I first started out at the Met, but far more courageous than I ever could be.

 

It never occurred to me that Aria for Murder would serve as the first in a series. I was just happy I had managed to write, by most accounts, a successful tale in this challenging genre. I never had considered penning new adventures for Julia until a rabid fan (don’t you just love those?), one of the most opera-savvy people I know, requested a sequel and virtually insisted that I set it at the Santa Fe Opera. Santa Fe is unique among opera companies, with its performance venue an outdoor theatre that’s one of the most awe-inspiring theatres in the opera world of. The city of Santa Fe, the second oldest in the US, is unlike any other. Et voilà: enter Prelude to Murder, where Julia finds oodles more trouble.

 

As I was researching in Santa Fe, I met with a friend from San Francisco Opera who suggested I continue my series with a mystery taking place there. He would provide me with access to the entire War Memorial Opera House and its archives. Book 3, Overture to Murder, was on its way.

 

Overture to Murder is special to me for several reasons. I have a history and personal connection with San Francisco Opera. Over the last several decades, I paid numerous visits to this amazing city and to 

its War Memorial Opera House to visit  family members who both lived in the Bay Area and worked at the opera. San Francisco and its opera are in my blood.

 

When I started exploring the opera house with John Boatwright, who had been House Head there 30+ years, I was blown away by the theatre’s history, its traditions, and the level of its prestige. After the Met, this company is the most highly regarded in the US. But I wasn’t prepared for the eccentricities 

of its theatre.

 

The War Memorial Opera House is by far the creepiest I had ever seen. Built in 1932, it is older than 

the theatres of the Met and Santa Fe. As I toured the place, I found myself cringing at some of the ancient-looking equipment, from the eerie basement to the rafters, where I shuddered at the 100 foot height of the catwalk over the stage: the very location of some of Goldie Hawn’s most frightening moments in her famous film Foul Play. 

 

That was a mere trifle to what I experienced in a far-off corner of the upper reaches of the theatre. One of the stagehands who was there during my visit told me the story of a previous stagehand who, after a performance, was responsible for waiting for the stage lights to cool off before he could close the theatre. He knew he was the only one left in the theatre, but he thought he saw someone lurking in the shadows. When he approached the guy, intending to question him as to why he was still there, he found that he could walk right through him! He fled the scene and subsequently searched for every excuse he could think of never to return. It turns out this was not the only ghost in the theatre. John told me the stagehands place a “Ghost Light” onstage after performances so that the resident spirits would not be frightened when the theatre was empty at night!

 

How could I not write about this? It was just too good to pass up. Many other creepy details made this the perfect atmosphere for mischief and mayhem. Opera houses in general are ripe for that, but this opera house outdid them all.

 

Ghosts, creaky equipment that makes noises in the night; a grisly murder (or two); and the determination of a protagonist who does not hesitate to place herself in jeopardy to find the perpetrator. Julia outdoes herself in this book, which is dear to my heart. With a cover that already has gotten multiple kudos on Facebook, combined with a slew of opera-related mishaps, Overture to Murder is now ready for its closeup. 

 

Enjoy.

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Award-winning Seattle-based author, lecturer, screenwriter and arts journalist Erica Miner believes opera theatres are perfect places for creating fictional mischief! Drawing on her 21 years as a violinist 

at the famed Metropolitan Opera, Erica balances her reviews and interviews of real-world musical artists with fanciful plot fabrications that reveal the dark side of the fascinating world of opera, guiding readers through a dramatized version of the opera world in her Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series.

Erica’s young violinist sleuth, Julia Kogan, investigates high-profile murder and mayhem behind the Met’s “Golden Curtain” in Book 1, Aria for Murder (2022), finalist in the 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Awards and Chanticleer Independent Book Awards. In Book 2, Prelude to Murder (2023) (‘A skillfully written whodunit of operatic proportions’—Kirkus Reviews https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/erica-miner/prelude-to-murder/, Distinguished Favorite, 2024 NYC Big Book Awards, further operatic chaos and ghostly apparitions plague Julia at the Santa Fe Opera. In Overture to Murder, releasing today, October 22, 2024, Julia finds herself in jeopardy once again at the San Francisco Opera. 

 

Erica’s debut novel, Travels with My Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. Her screenplays have won awards in the Writer’s Digest, Santa Fe, and WinFemme competitions. When she isn't plumbing the depths of opera houses for murderous mayhem, Erica frequently contributes reviews and interviews for the well-known arts websites www.BroadwayWorld.com, www.bachtrack.com, and www.LAOpus.com.

 

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