Mr. January Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried

I met Todd Harra at a meeting of the Wilmington – Chadds Ford Writers Group. He is currently promoting his latest book, the mystery novel Grave Matters. Todd is a fourth-generation undertaker who enjoys writing in his spare time. His family has been in the undertaking business since the Civil War.

In 2008, Todd appeared in the Men of Mortuaries calendar as "Mr. January." He is a graduate of Elon University and the American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service. He works for the family business in Wilmington, Delaware, McCrery & Harra Funeral Homes and Crematory.

Todd’s humorous non-fiction books are Over Our DeadBodies: Undertakers Lift the Lid and Mortuary Confidential: UndertakersSpill the Dirt, both co-authored with Ken McKenzie.

Welcome, Todd. You certainly have an interesting background. Before we focus on your latest novel, Grave Matters, I want to ask about your two collaborative books. How did you and your co-author, Ken McKenzie, come to work together? What was the co-writing process like?

We met in California while shooting Ken’s Men of Mortuaries Calendar. The calendar is one of the ways he funds his breast cancer foundation, KAMM Cares. Ken later reached out to me with an idea he had for a book, what would eventually become MC:USTD, as an additional vehicle to fund KAMM Cares. I loved the premise, and saw the idea had real potential so I told him I wasn’t interested in ghost writing it, but was interested in co-authoring it.

We complement each other as a writing team because together we have the skills necessary to bring a good book to market. Ken collects the stories and then hands them off to me, I write the books, and then Ken does the lion’s share of the marketing. Ken is a promotional machine. Me, I’d rather write.

Let’s talk about your mystery novel, Grave Matters. First off, congratulations! You’ve produced a book that’s both entertaining and informative. You made a choice that surprised me, though. I expected the action of the book to take place in your native Wilmington, Delaware. Instead, it takes place in and around Charleston, South Carolina. Why there?

I wanted a location that was sexy and sophisticated, something Murder City is neither. Additionally, Charleston is unique in a geographic sense. If you look at a map, it’s essentially a peninsula formed by a confluence of rivers that flow together to form the harbor (of the Fort Sumter fame). Without giving anything away, those rivers are an important part of the plot, as are some important historical events that happened in Charleston.

Your protagonist, Tripp Clipper, is a funeral director like yourself. Anytime the protagonist of a mystery is something other than a police officer or a private detective, you have to justify why the lead character gets involved in the mystery.

Clip, as his friends call him, was a medic in the Army. When he gets a case that supposedly died as the result of a car wreck, his medical background tells him the injuries don’t add up. He brings this information to the attention of the coroner’s office, but it’s the usual politics. The coroner doesn’t want to reopen a case that’s been cleared. Clip may have let things go, but when the dead girl’s brother shows up fresh off the Afghan battlefields, it becomes a brother-in-arms thing. Clip decides to ask a few questions. What could possibly be the harm in that?

Grave Matters is written in the first person Point Of View. In that POV, the reader only knows what Clip knows, and Clip appears on every page of the book. While first person is traditional for a mystery, did you consider a different POV?

The original incarnation of Grave Matters I wrote in third person. It was a very different book. Thankfully, I had an editor smart enough to tell me to get my head out of my ass, and helped me hone in on my strengths, one of which is writing in first person. For some reason it’s a lot more natural for me. Everything I write is first person. I found writing a mystery in first person was quite a balancing act. Make the protag too smart and the mystery is solved in chapter two. Make him/her too dumb and mystery remains, well....you get the picture.

What’s next? Will we be seeing another Trip Clipper mystery?

Yes, hopefully soon if I can bring the cruise ship into dock. I have a few thousand words left on the first draft of Blackwater, but finishing a book is a lot like the fourth quarter in a football game: in theory it’s only 15 minutes, but the reality is it’s a lot longer. Blackwater finds Clip in the middle of a bioterror attack on Charleston where he’s pressed into service for DMORT. DMORT is a federal organization that responds to mass fatalities.

That sounds like a very different – but fascinating  – book! Let’s finish up with a process question. Most successful writers get into a regular pattern. Some write in the morning before they go to work, others at night. As a funeral director, you have a very irregular schedule – clients don’t die on a predictable schedule.  Sometimes you must have several days off in a row, while other days you probably don’t have time a write at all. How do you keep up with your writing?

Simply making it a habit. Even if I have a busy day, I try to sit down and produce for 10 or 15 minutes, just to stay in the groove of the story. It’s funny how some of those micro writing days are more productive than an entire day off!

Todd, thank you for your time.

You can follow Todd on Facebook at facebook.com/toddharraauthor or on his website at toddharra.com

Todd Harra will be signing copies of his books on Sunday 19 November, 2017, from 1 to 3 pm at the West Chester Book Outlet, 967 Paoli Pike (in the West Goshen

Shopping Center), West Chester, PA. The bookstore’s phone is (610) 430-2184.