Life and Times of 1950s: Traveling…in a Plane
September 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as Janet Lynn, Life and times of the 1950s, research, Will Zeilinger
My husband and I co-write the Skylar Drake Murder Mysteries, a hard-boiled detective series. Since the stories take place in 1955 we have researched a great deal of that era.
In the second book of the series, Strange Markings, Skylar is hired to investigate the missing nephew of a Los Angeles matron. Clues takes him to pre-statehood Hawaii (1955). As a result, we looked into commercial airlines of the ’50s.
We learned that the Pan American Airlines made frequent flights to Hawaii using 377 Stratocruisers. We also found something called Sleeper-ettes, and early first class attempt to provide comfortable sleeping arrangements for their passengers. Lobster counted as first class airline food. I found an old ad from TWA mentioning a, “full meal to be served in-flight”. That would have included: soup, salad, meat, vegetables, and dessert. And drinks was served in glassware!
Our fourth book in the series, Spike Hill, will be released February 2018, and yes… we are still married.
Janet
Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger
Published authors Will Zeilinger and Janet Lynn had been writing individually until they got together and wrote the Skylar Drake Mystery Series. These hard-boiled tales are based in old Hollywood of 1955. Janet has published seven mystery novels and Will has published three plus a couple of short stories. Their world travels have sparked several ideas for murder and crime stories. This creative couple is married and live in Southern California.
www.janetlynnauthor.com
http://www.willzeilingerauthor.com/
www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
Co-writing: A Wonderful Partnership by Janet Elizabeth Lynn
August 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as co-writing, Janet Elizabeth Lynn, research, Will Zeilinger
My husband, Will Zeilinger, also a published author, and I decided to come together and write a 1950’s hard-boiled mystery, the Skylar Drake Murder Mystery series.
Having a research buddy makes all the difference in the world when deadlines loom for a manuscript. Alone, research can be a bear. But with two it goes faster and more comprehensive. This can include traveling, libraries and investigating 1950s style restaurants (and food). Splitting the work up and deciding what fits in the story works better with two brains and four eyes.
The results? SLIVERS OF GLASS, STRANGE MARKINGS, DESERT ICE and SPIKE HILL (to be released 2/2018)…and yes, we’re still married.
Website: www.janetlynnauthor.com
Blog: www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
Janet Elizabeth Lynn
How TV Changed Hollywood
July 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as 1950s, Hollywood, Janet Lynn, Will Zeilinger
Researching our stories which are set in the mid 1950s led us to discover the huge changes that came to Hollywood. Television was stealing customers from theaters and color TV was coming into the mainstream. So what did the big studios do?
The movie screens got wider, the color got more vivid, and they even tried 3-D! Drive-in theaters were going strong, but the fact you could stay home and watch a variety of different programs for FREE made competition for customers fierce.
Many actors who had staked their careers in the big screen movies were, at first leery of the little box with the small screen. Some thought it was only for game shows and low brow comedy. It didn’t take long to see that was where steady work and the money was.
What about books? Books were doing great, and many stories were adapted to both movies and television. Take Perry Mason for instance. Erle Stanley Gardner was a well known mystery writer, but when his stories came to television, he became rich!
Will
SLIVERS OF GLASS
Southern California 1955: the summer Disneyland opened, but even "The Happiest Place on Earth" couldn't hide the smell of dirty cops, corruption and murder.
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Published authors Will Zeilinger and Janet Lynn had been writing individually until they got together and wrote the Skylar Drake Mystery Series. These hard-boiled tales are based in old Hollywood of 1955. Janet has published seven mystery novels and Will has three plus a couple of short stories. Their world travels have sparked several ideas for murder and crime stories. This creative couple is married and live in Southern California.
http://www.willzeilingerauthor.com/
www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
0 0 Read moreHE SAID, SHE SAID: HOW WE MADE TWO WRITERS SOUND LIKE ONE
June 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as co-writing, Janet Elizabeth Lynn, mysteries, partners, Will Zeilinger
My wife, Janet Elizabeth Lynn, and I have been crime writing fiction for several years. In the beginning, Janet was the first to take a of couple classes and workshops. That was after we discovered we didn’t know what we were doing. I was a bit reluctant because the whole writing thing was foreign to me. But she came home with tools and information that opened my eyes.
When Janet was writing solo, she would often ask me to read some of her work. I’d make comments like, “A guy wouldn’t care what brand of shoes a woman was wearing” or “A guy wouldn’t say/think that.” It got to the point where one day Janet was writing and said to me—“Will, if you were a guy…” to which I replied, “What?”
Thus began our co-writing partnership. I would tweak many of the male characters’ voice styles while Janet handled the female roles. We’d brainstorm the plots, discuss our characters’ quirks and make sure the characters’ voices sounded different enough while maintaining the voice of the story. Next, we read aloud to each other. Sometimes one of us would fall asleep during the reading, but that just meant we had to fix that part. If it bored us, it would surely bore our readers.
The result is that our writing had become a true partnership in authorship and our stories sparkled (in our eyes.) We now take turns polishing and refining our work before handing the manuscript over to our editor.
And after all that… we’re still married.
Will
STRANGE MARKINGS
The Pacific breezes blow many things in from the ocean, this time its power, greed, and murder.
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Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger
Published authors Will Zeilinger and Janet Lynn had been writing individually until they got together and wrote the Skylar Drake Mystery Series. These hard-boiled tales are based in old Hollywood of 1955. Janet has published seven mystery novels and Will has three plus a couple of short stories. Their world travels have sparked several ideas for murder and crime stories. This creative couple is married and live in Southern California.
http://www.willzeilingerauthor.com/
www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
6 0 Read more1950s Life & Times of the Rich and Famous in Los Angeles
May 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger, Writing tagged as 1950s, hard-boiled mysteries, history, Hollywood, The Skylar Drake Murder Mystery Series
While researching the 1950s, we came across memoirs of Los Angeles. Since our Private Eye character, Skylar Drake, moonlights as a stuntman for the movie industry, the Hollywood scene during that time is an intricate part of each book.
The regular family life of the rich and famous was not at all typical of everyday life. In fact, it was pretty exhausting! The executives were in constant fear of making the wrong decisions and losing their position (lots of backbiting). There were endless days of being “on” for the public. They were forever giving lunches, dinners, and cocktail parties at their homes for celebrities or visiting dignitaries. Their dinners were lavish and beautiful, as were their homes. Entertaining was constant with little private time.
The regular family life of the rich and famous was not at all typical of everyday life. In fact, it was pretty exhaustin
g! The executives were in constant fear of making the wrong decisions and losing their position (lots of backbiting). There were endless days of being “on” for the public. They were forever giving lunches, dinners and cocktail parties at their homes for celebrities or visiting dignitaries. Their dinners were lavish and beautiful, as well as their homes. Entertaining was constant with little private time.
I found stories of lunch with Barbara Hutton (heiress of the Woolworth’s chain) at the lavish garden of Merle Oberon, or a candle light dinner at the home of Edie Goetz, (daughter of Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of MGM.) And don’t forget entertaining royalty, moguls, and titans of the day. You couldn’t just throw hamburgers on the BBQ, 
whip up a potato salad and lounge by the pool!Tent parties in which the pool was covered to create a dance floor were a regular Saturday night event in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. On Sundays,
Tent parties in which the pool was covered to create a dance floor were a regular Saturday night event in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. On Sundays, church was not like your typical worship services. The Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills was nicknamed Our Lady of the Cadillacs du
e to the expensive cars that filled the parking lot for 10 am Mass.
Incorporating Skylar Drake’s assigned visits by his agent or the studio or working security into the stories has been fun. We’ve enjoyed dressing the characters, describing the gardens and homes, and the food served by the rich and famous of Los Angeles, 1950s.
Janet Elizabeth Lyn
My husband, Will Zeilinger and I, co-write the Skylar Drake Murder Mystery series. These hard-boiled tales are based in old Hollywood of 1955. Our third book in the series, Desert Ice, was released in January of this year.
www.janetelizabethlynnauthor.com
http://www.willzeilingerauthor.com
www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
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