Seven Deadly Samovars: an interview with author Morgan St. James

Follow-up to the award-winning mystery, Corpse in the Soup, Seven Deadly Samovars is the second installment to the Silver Sisters Crime Caper series by real-life sisters Morgan St. James and Phyllice Bradner. The third book in the series, Vanishing Act in Vegas, is in the works. 

Now, you might be wondering what a samovar is, let alone a deadly one. Prior to reading Seven Deadly Samovars, I had no clue. To me, seven deadly samovars sounded like a squad of android samurais, a hybrid samurai/ninja killing crew who, for whatever symbolical reason, only hung around in deadly groups of seven. 

Man, was I ever wrong? Turns out, a samovar is actually a kind of fancy teapot or tea urn used in Russia and Eastern Europe and other places around the world where people drink a lot of tea. Often beautifully crafted, samovars can also be elaborate works of art prized by collectors, especially if they’re antiques. 

And that’s where our story begins, in the Silver Spoon Antique Shoppe in Juneau, Alaska, owned and operated by Goldie Silver, an aging flower child and twin sister of Godiva Olivia Dubois, who couldn’t be more different than Goldie (more about her later). Goldie is trying to track down a lost shipment of imported Russian samovars, one of which is supposed to be a departing gift for a local retiring priest. Unfortunately, the priest’s replacement is murdered before the gift is ever delivered, becoming one of two big stories swirling around this normally quiet and peaceful community.

The second big story around town is the arrival of Goldie’s sister, Godiva Olivia Dubois, a wealthy and manipulative nationally-syndicated advice columnist from Beverly Hills, and her handsome celebrity-chef boyfriend, Cesar Romano, who arrive just as the lost samovar shipment reaches Goldie’s shop. The samovars, much more beautiful and elaborate than what Goldie had ordered, sell quickly and even more quickly earn their deadly title as one customer is murdered and the others are attacked and their samovars are stolen. 

Despite what seems an obvious connection between samovars and the unusual crime spree, the police are not convinced and arrest an innocent local drunk who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. What follows is a clever and very funny adventure, from Alaska to Seattle to Los Angeles, as Goldie, Godiva, their eighty year-old mother and uncle, Flossie and Sterling, former vaudeville magicians, attempt to save an innocent man and warn the remaining customers (including Cesar Romano) who have no idea of the danger they face – not to mention picking up Flossie’s husband’s lifetime achievement award and meeting Godiva’s column deadlines. 

What I really like about this book is the long list of zany characters who we meet along the way, a recurring motif about doubles and twins, and the fact that no one, on the surface, is who they seem to be. 

You can purchase Seven Deadly Samovars by Morgan St. James and Phyllice Bradner at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com or SilverSistersMysteries.com in paperback, audio and eBook formats.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Morgan St. James about her book and her life. Please take a few more minutes to read the revealing interview below.

Q. Seven Deadly Samovars is part of your Silver Sisters Crime Caper series. Can you talk about this series and how your latest book fits into the mix?

A. When my sister Phyllice Bradner and I conceived the Silver Sisters we wanted them to be zany, fun and come from a loving but over-the-top family. We grew up in a family like that and both of us love funny mysteries, so we determined that some of the schemes the twin Silver Sisters and their eighty-year-old mother and uncle, former vaudeville magicians, cooked up would backfire. We also agreed to give them professions that would allow them to move around instead of having every crime happen in the same town. Seven Deadly Samovars begins in Juneau, Alaska then goes to Seattle and winds up in Los Angeles. The book we are finishing now is called Vanishing Act in Vegas. That should be a good clue.

Q. The Silver Sisters books are co-authored by your sister, Phyllice Bradner. The writing, however, is seamless and readers won’t notice any shift in writing style. What’s your writing process like, and how do you and your sister collaborate together so well?  

A. We decided in the very beginning that we needed to do two things: utilize our strengths and not quibble about plot points. Phyllice is a trained editor and was a journalist and advertising copy writer. She won four Alaska Press Club awards and many other kudos. I wrote magazine articles and a few news feature stories, and placed a few times in the Writer’s Digest contests. I am an “A” type and she is a self-described “C”. I write fast…she analyzes every word. 

Therefore, we plot the story together. Then I write the first draft of every chapter, unless it takes place in Alaska and needs that special “insider’s” view. Phyllice lived in Alaska for over thirty years. We do almost everything via phone and e-mail since we live in different states. I send the draft to Phyllice, she edits it and adds her quirky sense of humor, then sends it back to me. If we agree, it is pasted into the first draft manuscript. If not we make another minor edit. When it’s all done, we read the whole manuscript aloud to each other, hopefully during one of our in-person writers’ retreats, but over the phone if that doesn’t work. We do two of those read-throughs, making edits as we go along. Actually we’re right in the middle of our editing process at the moment.

Q. You’ve said that writing these books with your sister has really strengthened your relationship. Can you discuss how this project has helped your relationship and how you two decided to work together? 

A. Phyllice moved to Alaska when she was twenty. I’m five and a half years older, so we never really formed an adult friendship. Our mother was the conduit, telling each of us what the other was doing. When Mom was close to ninety she had mini-strokes and Phylllice had to come to L.A. so we could decide how to manage Mom’s health. During that trip we discovered that, while we are very different in many ways, we also have an amazing amount of similarities and likes, including funny mysteries.

Both published writers, we decided to try our hand at writing our own series. As we based characters on ourselves, composites of family members and friends, we had so much fun and so much interaction that we became best friends in the process. Now when people see us together we are invariably asked if we are twins.

Q. In Seven Deadly Samovars, there are a lot of great side characters who seem very authentic to me, as if they were based on real people in your life and in your family. Where do all of these great characters come from? 

A. Goldie and Godiva are actually based on Phyllice and me. Phyllice did own an antique shop in Juneau at one time and is a “salt-of-the-earth” former flower child type. I am not as selfish as Godiva, but admit to being very manipulative and a “fashionista.” I don’t live in Beverly Hills, but did live two houses outside of BH at one time and don’t write an advice column but people always ask my advice. By the way, we would love to launch a sassy “Ask G.O.D.” or “Ask Godiva” column like the ones in our books some day. Other characters are composites. Flossie is a combination of our mother and beloved Aunt Edna along with some quirks from one of my best friend’s mother. Sterling is also a composite of an uncle and a friend. Other characters are simply results of our imagination, but I’m sure friends or family lurk somewhere in those characters.

Q. There are quite a few surprises in your latest book, right down to the very end. This begs the question, do you know from the beginning how it’s all going to work out?  

A.  I wish I could say yes, but the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. We actually added an additional twist at the end of A Corpse in the Soup and Seven Deadly Samovars after they were submitted to our publisher. 

We managed to catch the publisher before typesetting or galleys were done, so they were able to insert the expanded endings. In Seven Deadly Samovars we even changed one of the final culprits, but I don’t want to give too much away. The same thing happened with the two new romantic/suspense novels I wrote on my own under the pen name Arliss Adams, to be released later this year. Devil’s Dance, scheduled for August release, and The Devil’s Due, to be released in September, are part of my new “Twist of Fate” series andalso had elements added after the fact. Someday I’m going to get caught by these eleventh hour epiphanies, but I always keep an open mind.

Q. How did you break in to publishing, and what advice would you offer to aspiring writers looking to make it in today’s tough publishing world? 

A. Whenever I’m asked that question I say I’m an “accidental” writer. When I was co-owner of an interior design studio, a prestigious West Coast design magazine asked my partner and me to write an article about a unique floor we had designed. Of course we said “yes,” then realized we knew nothing about writing magazine articles, or anything for publication for that matter. As the deadline approached, the magazine had already sent their photographers, and now waited for the manuscript. We had nothing. 

After a few glasses of wine, around midnight of the evening before the submission deadline, we wrote the article as a tongue-in-cheek noir mystery instead of a techie “how-to” piece. After we submitted it we figured we were literally dead meat, but the editor loved it and ran it as the first piece in the magazine. She later asked us to write more articles. My partner didn’t want to but I did and that’s how I started.

As for advice, make sure your work is the very best it can be before submitting it. Take classes, attend conferences and workshops and don’t be possessive of your masterpiece. There is always something more to learn. There is also a point where you must stop editing, and you’ll know when you’re there. Once you reach that point, don’t give up. Believe in yourself. Despite having other novels and stories published, it took fifteen years and seven major edits for my first attempt at fiction to finally become Devil’s Dance and The Devil’s Due. They had seven different names, many revised character names, with a new one created for each of the rewrites. They have been written in first person, first and omniscient, present tense, past tense and as it stands now, it became two books instead of one massive tome with a combination of first person and third person. Until the current manuscripts were created I knew it wasn’t ready.  Then after so many years, it clicked. This set of romantic/suspense novels is filled with tension tempered with tenderness. What a learning curve.

Q. You are one of the busiest writers that I know, promoting your work and the works of so many other writers in the community here and in Las Vegas. Can you discuss some of the activities and organizations you support in the literary world?  

A. Wow. I write on my own and with co-authors. In addition to Phyllice and the Silver Sisters series, I’m writing another comical government embezzlement fiasco with Meredith Holland under my pen name Arliss Adams, working on a funny “murdering the English language” book with co-author Mike Dennis, writing two novels and two how-to books on my own, and I write a column about writing for the Las Vegas edition of Examiner.com. 

I helped launch the Southern Nevada chapter of Sisters in Crime and edit the newsletter, On the Prowl, as well as belonging to Henderson Writers Group, Public Safety Writers Association, Las Vegas Writers Group and Sisters in Crime/Los Angeles.

I’ve developed a menu of workshops that I present to conferences, groups and private organizations. Oops…gotta stop…I’m making myself tired! 

Q. If you could only own three books for the rest of your life, what books would you choose? 

A. I thought I would pick some great works of literature. However, after careful consideration, these three may surprise you. They surprised me. A Corpse in the Soup, because it is my first published novel and is reinforcement that I can do what I set out to. I’ve just begun to re-read a true crime book entitled Till Death Us Do Part by Vincent Bugliosi, originally released in 1966 and read in 1967. It was re-released in 2004. It reminds me to be thankful, because I lived several pages of that book as Paul Perveler’s girlfriend (the real name of the man convicted of murder) and Roget’s The Synonym Finder because I constantly refer to it when I’m writing.

Q. Are there any writers you think deserve more attention than they currently receive? 

A. There are so many fine writers who struggle to find an agent and publisher it is difficult to single out one over the other. Even after works are published the next challenge is to find the audience, and whether published by large or small traditional presses, self-published or only published electronically, I continually discover new authors I like. That’s one of the reasons I Spotlight them in my Tuesday Examiner.com column. Every interview adds one more opportunity for the public to learn about them. 

Q. What’s next for Morgan St. James?

A. Have you got a few days? The list is long. Being a multi-tasker, I’m working on several books and short stories at the moment, an anthology I’ve entitled “Women on the Edge” which I plan to self publish on Kindle soon, and more talks and workshops to add to my growing list.

Besides all the things I haven’t thought of doing yet, I want to spend time with my husband and family. It’s a bit difficult because although my granddaughter lives in Las Vegas, my youngest son and his wife live in New Jersey, my daughter, son-in-law and two British grandsons named Texas and Tennessee live in England and my oldest son and his wife live in Australia. Ah, travel!

You can learn more about Morgan St. James and her writing at her website and her column called Las Vegas Writing Examiner.

Read Morgan's review of The Brubury Tales by Frank Mundo, the LA Books Examiner.

Read more author interviews from Frank Mundo, the LA Books Examiner.