Meet Skyler Foxe LGBTQ Author…ME

Q: Haley Walsh, tell us about the Skyler Foxe Mystery series. Where did the idea for the series come from?

Haley: It came from several directions. Sometime in 2005 I stumbled upon M/M romance/erotica and wondered where the hell THAT had been all my life. I was thus challenged by my gay friends to do better. At the same time I was working with a lot of kids in my part time job, including high school kids. My own kid was in high school at that time as well, so I had plenty of research opportunity about teens and teen angst right in my face. AND there was some unbelievable and illegal shenanigans going on at my son’s high school that made the newspapers. All of these factors combined for me to develop the first Skyler Foxe book which I initially felt might be only a trilogy.

I wrote the first book, FOXE TAIL, offered it to my agent, and he declined to represent it. Mostly because the market for LGBTQ books had fallen off precipitously. Imprints from the Big Five publishers had closed their doors. Gay bookstores were closing because the emerging market of digital books were taking over. And after fourteen years of rejections for my historical novels, he had finally sold my medieval mystery series to one of the Big Five New York publishers and he wanted me to concentrate on that. So I set Skyler aside and wrote medieval.

Fast forward to 2010. I wasn’t breaking any records with my medieval mysteries and frankly, I was looking for more revenue streams. Since my agent wasn’t going to hawk the Skyler book I decided to find small publishers myself who would take submissions without an agent. I had been friends with author Neil Plakcy for years after I started reading his Mahu series and for years asked his advice about selling and marketing LGBTQ mysteries. I also wanted him to give me a blurb for the book so I would have one when I went out there to pitch it to publishers. By the time I finally sent it to him in 2010 for that blurb, he came back to me to tell me he was doing freelance editing work for MLR Press and instead of giving me a blurb, he wanted to be the editor for the book. I was shocked! Basically, all I did from there was email the publisher with my query and the next day I was emailed a contract. After my other fourteen year struggle to get published, this was an incredibly pleasant surprise.

By then I had decided that I was going to write more than three books, but I would style the first three books like a pilot for a TV series. Each book would have its own mystery to solve, but there would be another overarching mystery spanning the first three books, very much as I had observed watching the Veronica Mars series. That concept was new in those days, to have a story continue throughout the season but have each episode also have its own story. So I stole the idea. I took those shenanigans going on at my son’s high school and made that the background mystery, while giving my amateur sleuth something to detect in each book and in each subsequent book thereafter.

I published several with MLR Press, but then I decided to get my rights back and self publish the entire series.

Q: Tell us about the amateur sleuth aspect. It can get dicey.

Haley: It certainly can. A certain suspension of disbelief has to happen for the reader to swallow that load (heh) because if it happened to you or me, we’d discover the body, scream, call 911, and that would be the end of it. There has to be a logical and compelling reason for an ordinary untrained person to investigate a murder and possibly get themselves into peril each time. The victim or the one accused of the crime have to be someone the sleuth knows or has a vested interest in. And if the series goes on a long time, you fall into the “Jessica Fletcher Syndrome.” Jessica Fletcher, you will recall, is the Angela Lansbury character in the TV show Murder She Wrote, where a mystery writer solves real crimes (let me tell you, most mystery writers are NOT capable of solving crimes. We have months to write books and at least that much time to come up with not only the clues but the way to discover those clues. Plop me in the middle of a cruise ship where people are being murdered left and right and you will get no help from me). Anyway, the Jessica Fletcher Syndrome is everyone in that small town being murdered just so she can solve the crimes. Even when she goes out of town. After a while, you begin to suspect her.

I also like to fill the book with all sorts of other things besides mysteries: the characters’ lives, their problems, the problems with their students, a little erotica (none of it involves students with adults, by the way), all sorts of other distractions for those clever readers who figured out the mystery early on.

 

Q: Tell us about the character of Skyler Foxe.

Haley: Skyler Foxe has a lot of me in him. He’s a little bit of a know-it-all but with a playful spirit. He’s a reader, loves literature, and that is where we part company, because I’m not overly excited about hanging out with kids. Don’t get me wrong. I love my son, loved all the stages of his life growing up, and I loved his friends because they were always interesting and talented people just as he is (he is a writer now, too, working on a screenwriting career!) but I generally don’t like other people’s kids (“get off my lawn!”) So Skyler’s love of teaching is strictly his own.

 

I like to give my character quirks and likes opposite my own, just so I can really think about why they like those things. For instance, Skyler loves Motown music. I can take it or leave it. He loves Hawaiian pizza. I think it’s an abomination. Stuff like that.

I like adding little details that readers don’t necessarily notice but that gives a character realism that he really is in the world we know. His circle of friends act as his surrogate family, his dance buddies when he goes out clubbing, and his Scooby gang when he investigates murder. They each have their own quirks and personalities and he relies on each of them for different kinds of moral support, just as one does with one’s own friends. He also has a different face for the different aspects of his life. He’s the perfect twink in the clubs, the respectful son to his divorced mom, the confident teacher/authority figure to his students, and unsure-stumbler when it comes to his first real relationship. I made him a player, someone who never experienced a serious relationship, so that the one he gets in the series will have a bigger impact on him.

 

Q: The books are funny.

 Haley: Lord yes! Not that we don’t deal with some serious issues—murder, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (these were written a while ago), coming out, homophobia—but there is enough serious LGBTQ literature out there. I wanted these to read like a sitcom, something relatively angst-free, something someone can sit on the beach with and read and laugh out loud and really feel good about. With murder. There is always a happily ever after in the Skyler books. No one smokes, does drugs, or gets HIV. I COULD have dealt with those issues, but I also didn’t want them to become “issue books.” There are other books that deal with those things rather effectively. This is for pure fun, to take you away from your troubles, to entertain.

 

Q: Where can readers find you?

Haley: Well, since my real name is Jeri Westerson and I also write historical mysteries and paranormals, it’s all under the “Jeri Westerson” umbrella, so please step on over to JeriWesterson.com. And by the way, the Skyler series is complete with seven novels and three novellas.

Check out the book trailer, narrated by the audiobooks narrator.