Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger Featured Authors
July 1, 2023 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month, Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as 1950s Crime novels, Author Interviews, Chatting with Authors, Janet Elizabeth Lynn, The Skylar Drake Murder Mystery Series, Will Zeilinger
July Featured Authors
Janet Elizabeth Lynn was born in Queens and raised in Long Island, New York. She is the author of murder mysteries, cozy mysteries and with her husband Will Zeilinger, 1950s hard-boiled detective mysteries.
Will Zeilinger has lived and traveled the world and has been writing for over ten years. His novels range from mystery to romantic comedy and those 1950s hard-boiled detective mysteries with his wife Janet.
Partners in Crime
Together Janet and Will write the Skylar Drake Mystery Series. These hard-boiled tales are based in old Hollywood in 1955. They have an E-book How it Began: The Skylar Drake Mysteries available from Smashwords.
Their world travels have sparked several ideas for murder and crime stories. In their next adventure, they will team up using the penname E.J. Williams for a new mystery series set in the 1960s. Their first novel in the International Crime Files, Stone Pub is in the works.
Chatting With Authors
In addition to writing novels, Janet and Will have a YouTube Channel, Chatting with Authors featuring informal Zoom interviews with authors of various genres. We encourage readers to check out all their videos.
This creative couple lives in Southern California . . . and yes, they are still married, and they even blog together at The Married Authors.
The Skylar Drake Mystery Series
Creating Composite Characters from People You Know
June 3, 2023 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger
As far as composite characters go, take Don Draper from Mad Men. He’s widely thought to be created as a composite of several advertising execs from the mid-century. His name was likely from Draper Daniels, a Chicago ad executive, as well as Albert Lasker, Emerson Foote, and George Lois.
Of course, there is Ebenezer Scrooge, who was based on politicians and businessmen of Charles Dickens’ time.
Many of us unintentionally create characters in our books that are based on ourselves, family members, co-workers, or friends. After all, who do we know best?
However, when it comes to deliberately writing about those people in our lives, we want to make them into believable characters yet disguise them enough that they are not just “cut and paste” copies of actual people. The point is to capture their essence and incorporate them seamlessly into our book.
You may think that person has a particular personality quirk that makes for an interesting addition to your cast of characters, but if you think they wouldn’t like it, make sure you make them different enough to be unrecognizable, or you may lose a friend or even open yourself up to a lawsuit.
Perhaps you’d like to use a historical figure or a famous celebrity of today. Make sure to do your homework before you write about them. In this day of social media and “fake news,” it can be all too easy to be misled by incorrect information. You don’t want any backlash when you release your work. Being careful will prevent any legal action. Remember that readers are very intelligent and inquisitive people. They WILL know if you got something wrong, and that will ruin the believability of your story.
We fall in love with many fictional. They’re exciting and engaging, beautiful and dangerous, mysterious, and sometimes evil to the core. Don’t rely too much on a real person to capture your readers’ attention. This can be a very dangerous game, indeed.
There is no reason why you shouldn’t use people you know to help you conjure up the characters in your stories. Just remember that doing so successfully takes time and effort to get right!
After all – what better way is there to honor or get revenge on someone in your life than to make them a character in your book?
The Skylar Drake Series
SCANDALS: FLORENCE HENDERSON and BARRY WILLIAMS
May 3, 2023 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as Barry Williams, hollywood scandals, The Brady Bunch
A rumor began during the run of the 1970s TV show The Brady Bunch. It was that 36-year-old Florence Henderson and co-star, 16-year-old Barry Williams, who played the oldest son Greg, dated and had an affair. This shocking bit of scandal haunted Henderson long after the show ended.
At the time the show was airing, Henderson was a happily married mother of four. But she was forever associated with her role as Carol Brady.
Williams confessed that he admired Henderson and said during an interview that he fantasized about being with her. He admitted that he once took her on a date to discuss their mutual interest in music. At the end of the date, he fulfilled his dream of planting a kiss on her cheek.
Henderson opened up about her supposed date with the younger Williams, which had almost ruined her reputation, as it looked like she had an affair with a teenage boy.
Williams once told a radio station, “From the time that I met her, I had a great affinity for her and then an attraction to her. She’s played so many different roles in my life as a mother, as a professional, as a mentor and she was inspiring to me as well.”
In her book “Life Is Not a Stage,” Henderson recalled the moment she went out with Williams, noting that she would have done it with any older children if they had asked as she saw herself as a mentor.
Florence noted she understood Williams was entering adulthood, and she did not want to discourage him by turning him down. She saw his request as innocent.
The duo was driven on the date by Williams’ brother since he was too young to drive at the time. Henderson explained that the night was purely innocent, including the goodnight kiss, which was blown out of proportion.
The late actor noted she was aware of Williams’ crush on her and played her part to help him get past it. After leaving the show, both stars remained friends and shared a good bond. Henderson remained loved as the beloved Carol Brady until she died in 2016 at age 82.
“She knew the respect that people had for her character,” Lloyd Schwartz, son of program creator, Sherwood Schwartz, said to Variety. “Whenever anybody came up to her to say anything about the show, she was as warm as could be–I saw it a million times.”
The Skylar Drake Series
1950s Life & Times of the Rich and Famous in Los Angeles
April 3, 2023 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.
The Skylar Drake Series
Scandal
March 3, 2023 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Book Research, Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as Hollywood, Scandals, Twilight Zone, Vic Morrow
Safety Working Conditions in the Hollywood Film industry
The civil and criminal actions lawsuit that came after the accident, during the filming of Twilight Zone, was the result of negligence. It was scandalous as the film’s director, John Landis, was charged and tried for manslaughter, along with other members of the film crew. They were eventually acquitted in terms of criminal liability, but civil penalties were assessed. Landis continued his career with little negative impact, but he found several of his long-term friendships with other filmmakers ended as a result of his “condescending attitude” towards the accident.
Millions of dollars were awarded to the families of the victims, mostly paid by insurance companies. Landis deflected the blame for the accident, claiming that the cause of the accident had been in part a special effects fireball detonated by error.
The television series The Twilight Zone was a popular weekly program from 1959 to 1964, the brainchild of writer and director Rod Serling. Its popularity resulted in a demand for reruns for years, and eventually was adapted as a full-length motion picture.
During the filming of the motion picture verson, an accident involving a helicopter killed actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, with multiple injuries to the helicopter crew and film personnel onboard. Morrow and one of the children were decapitated by the helicopter’s rotor; the other child was crushed. The accident brought to light unsafe working safety, particularly for children on film sets, and years of litigation which kept the story on the front pages for a decade.
On July 23, 1982, Morrow, 53, and two child actors, seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California, in an area that was known as Indian Dunes, near Santa Clarita. They were performing in a scene for the Vietnam sequence, in which their characters attempt to escape from a deserted Vietnamese village from a pursuing U.S. army helicopter. The helicopter was hovering at approximately 24 feet above them when the heat from special effect pyrotechnic explosions delaminated the rotor blades (the blade material fractures into layers) causing the helicopter to plummet and crash on top of them, killing all three instantly.
Special-effects explosions on the set caused the pilot of the low-flying craft to lose control and crash into the three victims. The accident took place on the film’s last scheduled day of shooting.
Co-director John Landis and four other men working on the film, including the special-effects coordinator and the helicopter pilot, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. It was the first time a film director faced criminal charges for events that occurred while making a movie. During the trial, the defense maintained the crash was an accident that could not have been predicted while the prosecution claimed Landis and his crew had been reckless and violated laws regarding child actors, including regulations about their working conditions and hours. The trial lasted ten-months with the jury acquitted all five defendants in 1987. The families of the three victims filed lawsuits against Landis, Warner Brothers, and Twilight Zone co-director and producer Steven Spielberg who settled for undisclosed amounts. Twilight Zone: The Movie was released in the summer of 1983. The film received mixed reviews.
Click here for the news report of the accident.
Janet and Will’s Skylar Drake Mystery Series
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