Annelise Ryan

Annelise Ryan is a pseudonym for the author of the new Monster Hunter Mystery series, the first of which, A Death in Door County, is out this month.

Ryan also penned the often hilarious 12-book Mattie Winston Mystery series featuring the adventures of a wryly cynical nurse-turned-coroner in a small Wisconsin town.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title of my most recent book, A Death in Door County, certainly gives the reader the setting if they know Door County, Wisconsin at all. If they don’t, they may well have heard of it and know that it’s a popular, idyllic vacation spot, so a death there takes on extra interest. If they haven’t a clue about Door County, I provide plenty of history and description.

My first title for the work (the publisher changed it) was A Monster At Death’s Door, and I did like this title a lot because it conveyed more of what the book was about: the possibility of a homicidal Loch Ness-type monster lurking in the waters of Lake Michigan, and the treacherous waterway that divides Green Bay and Lake Michigan at the tip of the Door county peninsula, which is known as Death’s Door. It earned that moniker because of all the shipwrecks there—literally hundreds of them—thanks to the underlying geography and unpredictable, deadly storms that brew up with little warning.

What's in a name?

My main character’s first name is Morgan, which means water born. And since she was born on a boat on the waters of Loch Ness while her cryptozoologist parents were hunting for Nessie, it seems appropriate. Morgan’s main sidekick is her huge rescue dog, Newton—Newt for short—who dropped into her life one day, kind of like Newton’s apple. Hence the name. Morgan’s police sidekick and potential love interest is named Jon Flanders, a name that befits the original settlers to the area and that also allowed me to use the nickname Flatfoot Flanders, a moniker that popped into my head in the middle of a shower one day.

As for my name, it’s not Annelise Ryan. I spent nearly 50 years working as a nurse, the last 20 in an ER setting. As a mystery writer, using a pseudonym came in handy because I didn’t want my patients knowing I spent my spare time thinking up clever ways to kill people.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Probably not very. I’ve always loved puzzles, mysteries, romance, and adventure, and A Death in Door County has all of these. I grew up reading what I now write. I’ve also always been fascinated by the strange, the odd, the unexplainable, which is why I made my main character Morgan a cryptozoologist—someone who hunts for creatures rumored but not proven to exist, like Nessie and Bigfoot.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I always know my starting point. I love to toss my characters into intriguing/dangerous/mysterious/funny situations and then see what they do, where they go, and where they take me. I often think I know who the bad guy is when I start a book and yet by the time I’m done, I realize it’s someone else. When I go back to add in clues for the reader, I discover they’re already there. It’s like my subconscious knew all along.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

There are bits of me in every character I create. Even the bad ones. They all come from my mind, after all. But all of my characters are amalgams, Frankenstein-ish creatures pieced together with details from all kinds of people I’ve encountered during my lifetime.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

The world of science, medicine, and the paranormal have always been fascinations for me. My books contain carefully researched facts and scientific principles even when they deal with ideas that are unproven. My goal is to make those ideas believable, or to use the phrase my character uses in A Death in Door County, to create “plausible existability.”

My career in medicine was a varied one. I literally worked everything from birth (obstetrics) to death (hospice) with two decades in ER settings. it gave me ample opportunities to observe people under the best and worst of circumstances and I think that has helped me to create more realistic characters. It has also given me a great deal of knowledge about how fragile the human body and psyche can be.

The other circumstance that I think greatly influenced my writing was my family’s mobile lifestyle. We moved a lot. And each new place meant trying to make new friends and fit in. I learned to lie a lot, making up stories to make myself and my life seem more interesting. When I got older, I simply made a career out of it.

Visit Annelise Ryan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue