The China Bayles Series: The Backstory

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When people ask me, ‘Why herbs?’ I give them the short answer: ‘Because plants don’t talk back.’ When they ask, ‘Why Pecan Springs?’ I reply, ‘Because it seemed so crime-free and peaceful.’ —China Bayles in Queen Anne’s Lace (2018)

The twenty-ninth mystery in the China Bayles series just came back from the layout editor. The text has been copyedited and the cover artist has done her work. Early next month, I’ll send it to Greenleaf, the company that prints and distributes my books, for May publication. Meanwhile, you get the very first look at the cover

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I know that many of you have read every book in the series (maybe more than once, bless you). Some are recent readers, while others have been with the series since the early 1990s. And since Marta McDowell recently featured China in her wonderful bestselling book, Gardening Can Be Murder, I thought this might be a good time to share some of the backstory for this series.

Choices. When Thyme of Death was published in October, 1992, it was (as McDowell notes) something of a literary groundbreaker. Plants had often been used to poison people in books, as well as in real life, and other detectives—Brother Cadfael, Miss Marple, Nero Wolfe—had been gardeners. But plants and gardens were not a central feature of an American mystery series until China came along. I chose to make her an herbalist because I had a special interest in growing and using herbs that dated back to graduate school, when I was monkeying around with medieval manuscripts and had to learn about the many herbs that writers mentioned. Like people, plants have stories, and I thought it would be interesting to weave those stories into mystery themes and plotlines—not just as gimmicks to pad out the narrative, but as important story elements. I have to admit, too, that the names of herbs were enticing. Bloodroot, for instance. Nightshade. Wormwood. The plants might be innocent enough, but to me, the names spelled m-u-r-d-e-r.

Plenty more up-front choices went into this series, most of them before I even started writing. I chose to give China an herb shop (Thyme & Seasons Herbs) because thought it would be a good idea if she had something to do besides garden and solve mysteries. I chose to set the herb shop in the fictional Texas town of Pecan Springs, halfway between Austin and San Antonio, because I had lived and worked there. I loved the Hill Country, its history, its people (but not, definitely not, its politics). I also wanted to show a small town that isn’t a Utopian-sweet-tea-cozy. Pecan Springs has its share of bad guys, like any big city. In the early 1990s, this regional setting was a New Thing in mysteries. The only other Texas series featured a male: Bill Crider’s Sheriff Dan Rhodes. Now, there are dozens.

I chose to make China a former criminal defense lawyer because I thought that background would give her both a trained legal mind and experience in dealing with cops and bad people. I had recently left my academic career and had written a book about women career-leavers (Work of Her Own). I wanted to show that a woman could achieve in a male-dominated profession and could also choose to leave that profession in order to create a richer and more satisfying life in work (gardening, cooking, crafting) that was female-coded and devalued. But I didn’t want China to be a hobby-herbalist. I wanted to showcase women-owned businesses, hence her herb shop. Here again, she was a first: while there were female PIs (books by P.D. James, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller) there weren’t yet any female ex-lawyers playing amateur detective, bridging the gap between cozy mystery and thriller.

I almost didn’t choose to make China a lawyer because I don’t have any legal training and worried about making mistakes. (China is much smarter than I am, which sometimes gets both of us into trouble.) But I do as much research as I can—easier now, with the internet. While I know I’ve missed many opportunities, no lawyer has written to let me know that China got something wrong. Yet.

I chose to make China’s sidekick, Ruby Wilcox, a psychic. Ruby owns a New Age shop (another woman-owned business) where she sells crystals, dream catchers, tarot decks, rune stones, and books on “woo-woo” subjects. I wanted to pair her intuitive, creative right-brain thinking with China’s inexorable left-brain logic when it comes to problem-solving. With all due respect to practitioners of the Sherlock-Holmes school of detection, rational thought does not always produce a complete answer. When China can’t figure it out, Ruby can riddle it out. And in some of the books (in Indigo Dying, for instance, and Widow’s Tears), Ruby’s intuition takes us even further into the dark heart of the mystery than China’s logic. But like China, Ruby is a business owner, and a savvy one, at that. The two women have a lot going for them in their corner of Pecan Springs.

Publishing history. I wrote the first book, Thyme of Death, in 1990, along with proposals for Books 2 and 3. My agent spent most of 1991 unsuccessfully shopping the series. Finally, at Thanksgiving, Suzanne Kirk at Scribner’s bought the hardcover rights to the first three books, and was followed by Natalee Rosenstein at Berkley, who bought the all-important paperback rights. I was incredulous—Scribner’s and Berkley! Such amazing luck! You can bet we did some celebrating that memorable holiday season.

The first books got good reviews (and two important prize nominations) and sold well enough to warrant a bid to renew the series. So I put together a proposal for Books 4, 5, and 6 and sent it to Berkley, which could publish both the hardcover (for libraries and collectors) as well as paperback. That was the pattern we followed for the next 25 years—three books at a time—until my editor at Berkley retired. At that point, I’d already begun publishing my Hidden Women and Darling Dahlias series independently. So I moved China Bayles to my imprint (Persevero Press), where I published A Plain Vanilla Murder (2019) and Hemlock (2021). And where I’ve also published starter-sets of novella series featuring Ruby (The Crystal Cave Trilogy) and crime reporter Jessica Nelson (The Enterprise Trilogy).

Series Arcs. When I wrote the first three books, I imagined them as three separate books, connected by continuing characters and settings but with no continuing plot. However, when I wrote the proposals for Book Four (Rosemary Remembered), Five (Rueful Death), and Six (Love Lies Bleeding), it was clear that this was going to be a continuing series, and that the characters needed lives. Real lives, with friends and lovers, pasts and futures, that extended beyond the mystery they were tasked with solving in each book.

That meant constructing several narrative arcs that would link the books together, give the characters room and reasons to grow, and allow readers to imagine them as real people living challenging lives under changing circumstances in a real place. So, after Rosemary Remembered, every book is a chapter in China’s story (from single woman to married to mom and more), and Ruby’s story (romantic ups and downs, growth in her paranormal abilities, changes in her immediate family). The books are also chapters in the story of China’s husband, Mike McQuaid, who begins the series as an ex-cop turned criminal justice professor and becomes a private investigator. And there are other important characters, like police chief Sheila Dawson and crime reporter Jessica Nelson, both of whom have their own story arcs. It’s important to remember that series arcs were a new thing in the 1990s. Until that time, most series books could be read in any order. When a series arc links the books, order matters.

What’s next, short-term? In January/February, here on Substack, you’ll be reading “The Rosemary Caper,” a six-episode China-and–Ruby mystery. In May, you’ll have Book 29, Forget Me Never. Will there be more China novels after that?

To be honest, I don’t know. I’m enjoying the challenge of building short fiction, which I can publish in serial format here on Substack. And China and I are already thinking about some more Pecan Springs short stories, like the recent “Fannie and the Back Fence Gang.” These fit easily within the Substack publishing model. If there’s enough good work, I can put it into book form later.

I’m grateful for the strong start and the long-term support that Berkley gave me. But these days, the Big House publishing model isn’t the only option. If you’ve got a story to tell, there’s no better time to tell it. And plenty of ways to find readers.

This is the last post of 2023. I will be back on Monday, January 1, with the first of 2024’s “All About Thyme” monthly calendars from China Bayles. Until then, be safe and have a totally wonderful holiday!