ROSEMARY AND LARRY MILD,
cheerful partners in crime, coauthor mystery, suspense, and fantasy fiction.
Their popular Hawaii novels, Cry Ohana and its sequel Honolulu Heat,
vibrate with island color, local customs, and exquisite scenery. Also by the
Milds: The Paco and Molly Murder Mysteries: Locks and Cream Cheese, Hot
Grudge Sunday, and Boston Scream Pie. And the Dan and Rivka Sherman
Mysteries: Death Goes Postal, Death Takes A Mistress, and Death
Steals A Holy Book. Plus Unto the Third Generation, A Novella of the
Future; and three collections of wickedly entertaining mystery short stories—Murder,
Fantasy, and Weird tales; The Misadventures of Slim O. Wittz, Soft-Boiled
Detective; and Copper and Goldie, 13 Tails of Mystery and Suspense in
Hawai‘i.
ROSEMARY, a graduate of Smith
College and former assistant editor of Harper’s, also delves into her
own nonfiction life. She published two memoirs: Love! Laugh! Panic! Life
With My Mother and the acclaimed Miriam’s World—and Mine, for the
beloved daughter they lost in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland. On her lighter side, Rosemary also writes award-winning
humorous essays, such as failing the test to get on Jeopardy; and as a
writer for a giant free-spending corporation on a sudden budget: “No new pencil
unless you turn in the old stub.”
LARRY, who was only called
Lawrence when he’d done something wrong, graduated from American University in
Information Systems Management. In 2019 he published his autobiography, No
Place To be But Here: My Life and Times, which traces his
thirty-eight-year professional engineering career from its beginning as an
electronics technician in the U.S. Navy, to a field engineer riding Navy ships,
to a digital systems and instrument designer for major Government contractors
in the signal analysis field, to where he rose to the most senior level of
principal engineer when he retired in 1993.
Making use of his past
creativity and problem-solving abilities, Larry naturally drifted into the
realm of mystery writing, where he also claims to be more devious than his
partner in crime and best love, Rosemary. So he conjures up their plots and
writes the first drafts, leaving Rosemary to breathe life into their characters
and sizzle into their scenes. A perfect marriage of their talents.
THE MILDS are active members
of Sisters in Crime where Larry is a Mister in Crime; Mystery Writers of
America; and Hawaii Fiction Writers. In 2013 they waved goodbye to Severna
Park, Maryland and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they cherish quality time
with their daughters and grandchildren. When Honolulu hosted Left Coast Crime
in 2017, Rosemary and Larry were the program co-chairs for “Honolulu Havoc.”
Over a dozen worldwide trips
to Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Great
Britain, France, Italy, Israel, Egypt, and more have wormed their way into
their amazing stories. In their limited spare time, they are active on the
annual Honolulu Jewish Film Festival committee, where members screen 100 films
a year; Larry is the statistician and recordkeeper for their film ratings.
Mayra Calvani: Please tell
us about Copper and Goldie, 13 Tails of Mystery and Suspense in Hawai‘i, and
what compelled you to write it?
LARRY: Copper and Goldie
is about Sam Nahoe, a native Hawaiian whose career as a Honolulu police
detective is interrupted when he take a bullet in his spine. His sudden medical
termination disrupts his marriage. Divorced and lonely, Sam takes up a new career
as the independent driver of a Checker Cab. He takes on a canine partner, a
rescue golden retriever named Goldie, and together they cruise the island of
Oahu for fares. Each of the thirteen short stories features a crime they
encounter and solve. They encounter kidnappers, vengeful wives, bank robbers,
and murderers, compelling Sam to get his PI license. Many of the stories
include help from his young daughter, Peggy, during their Sunday visitations.
Sam, Kia, and Peggy still have high hopes to reunite the family.
We wrote the original Copper
and Goldie stories for an online e-zine. Each story appeared only once. And
poof! They were relegated to the archives and gone from view. We wanted to give
them permanence in a collection.
MC: What is your book
about?
LARRY: Our move to Hawaii not
only gave us an exciting setting, but the need for a local name, which became
Sam Nahoe. Resolving why Sam became an ex-cop, we gave him my own spinal
infirmities—his from a gunshot wound and mine from calcification and
deterioration. Together we ski-walk around on two canes called Cane and
Able—no, not the biblical spellings. One of our characters calls them giant
chopsticks. Goldie, a rescue golden retriever, rides around town with him
harnessed in the shotgun seat of his Checker Cab. We chose a golden because
they figured prominently in Rosemary’s family and in our first mystery, Locks
and Cream Cheese.
MC: What themes do you
explore in Copper and Goldie, 13
Tails of Mystery and Suspense in Hawai‘i?
LARRY: What happens when a
major catastrophe suddenly alters your life? How do you learn to cope? How does
it affect those around you? Can you find a new and satisfactory life afterward?
MC: Why do you write?
LARRY: I’ve always had ideas
running through my head. Since I retired as an electrical and digital design
engineer, it’s mainly stories wriggling around up there. I have a strong need
to get them on paper where they belong so I can share them with others. I’m
also handicapped, which affects my mobility, so writing gives me purpose,
something to look forward to every day.
MC: When do you feel the
most creative?
LARRY: The morning hours, right after a good night’s
sleep and a good breakfast. I write five to six hours a day, five to six days a
week. A late afternoon nap works well after a productive day’s writing. I look
forward to my writing each day, unless I have a serious plotting problem. You
can’t run away from it. Some part of it is always in your head.
MC: How picky are you with
language?
LARRY: On a scale of one to ten; I’m about a five.
When I can’t find the word I’m really after, I insert several words
approximating its meaning. When the precise word eventually surfaces, I replace
the substitutes. I try to avoid sophisticated words and use straight-forward
language wherever possible. That doesn’t mean that I won’t use figurative
language; a simile here or a metaphor there if it truly befits a mood or an
image I want. The double entendre is a favorite. I also try to use first
dictionary meanings whenever I can. Occasionally, I’ll turn a noun into a verb;
shame on me.
MC: When you write, do you
sometimes feel as though you were manipulated from afar?
LARRY: The forces are not
from afar, but from within. Our characters have been endowed with a certain
power of their own, a power to move story direction. The same is true with
plotting events. They seem to affect other events down the road. These forces
have silent voices that say, “Go here, go there, do this, do that, or maybe
don’t.” Such forces are dissolved in the creative juices.
MC: What is your worst
time as a writer?
LARRY: When I’m deeply mired
in the proofreading process, reading forward and backward, reading with a
ruler, reading to each other with my partner in crime, Rosemary. It’s gotta be
done. If doctors bury their mistakes and engineers build monuments to theirs, then
writers are doomed to advertise them for all to see.
MC: What is your best time
as a writer?
LARRY: When that first order
of books finally arrives and you can hold a tangible product that you believe
you did your best on. When someone you don’t know from Adam appears and tells
you that they enjoyed your book. When someone trusts you enough to ask your
advice on writing.
MC: Is there anything that
would stop you from writing?
LARRY: It would have to be
illness, loss of sight, care-giving, or death, because there are no signs of
the well going dry. I enjoy writing, and it gives meaning and structure to my
life. God forbid, my computer could crash, but even that would only be
temporary.
MC: What’s the happiest
moment you’ve lived as an author?
LARRY: It is hard to identify
any one moment. We’ve won some awards, we’ve received some great kudos, we’ve
enjoyed writers’ conferences and conventions. Rosemary and I spend wonderful
times together coauthoring our books. I think we make all the right choices. I
wouldn’t change any of it.
MC: Is writing an
obsession with you?
LARRY: Almost.
ROSEMARY: We do have another
life. Actually, we’re funny. We’re on a “busman’s holiday” every day doing big
crossword puzzles together at the kitchen table—the Sunday New York Times and
Midweek’s Los Angeles Times. Of course we love to read. Larry has a much
longer attention span than I do. I’m a high-energy person. We live in the heart
of Honolulu, so I walk everywhere for all our daily stuff. The huge ethnic
market around the corner; Ala Moana Center, the biggest mall in Hawaii; the
bank; Sam’s Club for our prescriptions and their meat (Larry’s a carnivore). We
have six delightful, loving family members here and have dinner together once a
week. We’re also super-active in our synagogue, enjoy lunches with friends, and
watch lots of TV at night, like Masterpiece Theatre, Blue Bloods, and
Netflix. When we’re watching a movie together I always feel like I’m on a date
with Larry. I insist on Wheel of Fortune during dinner because it’s not
a crime show where I might lose my appetite. We’re also obsessive NFL fans. Go
Redskins!
MC: Are the stories you
create connected with you in some way?
LARRY: Of course, but only in
bits and pieces. We write about what we know, where we’ve been, and the people
we’ve met. We’re constant students of human nature and we reflect these diverse
emotions in the characters we draw and the scenes we create. Our dealings with
family, friends, and colleagues all are key to our writing. It’s fun when one
of them doesn’t recognize him- or herself.
ROSEMARY: A few examples: Locks
and Cream Cheese is a portrait of my psychoanalyst father and his
goofy but shrewd housekeeper/cook, whom we call Molly. Hot Grudge Sunday is
based on our own tour of the national parks out West; we added a hair-raising
scene at every site, including the Grand Canyon. Our Dan and Rivka Sherman characters
have temperaments like ours. They’re a Jewish couple in their fifties who buy a
bookstore with shocking consequences. Dan is a soft-spoken problem-solver,
Rivka is feisty; she came out of the womb arguing. Death Steals A Holy Book
is based on a rare volume Larry actually inherited: a nineteenth-century Yiddish
translation of the Menorat ha maor (“Candlestick of Light”), a guide to Jewish living in the Middle
Ages.
MC: Ray Bradbury once said
you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
LARRY: When your writing
takes you to a fantasized, sci-fi otherworld, you have to stay with it, live in
it, and breathe it or you will lose your credibility. Whether it’s drunkenness
or dreaminess or wistfulness, “drunk” is merely an appropriate choice of words.
ROSEMARY: In The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury follows
his own advice. His fantasy story “The Crystal City” is a brilliant omen. The
inhabitants take tender care of their fragile city. Then humans from planet
Earth come—and destroy it. Just as we are destroying our own planet today by
ignorance and greed.
MC: Do you have a website
or blog where readers can find out more about you?
LARRY: https://www.magicile.com can take you to all our books in a dynamic display.
Currently, fifteen of them include two three-book mystery series; a two-book
adventure/thriller set; a sci-fi novella; three books of short stories; two
memoirs by Rosemary; and my autobiography. But there’s more—book descriptions,
partial chapters, some excellent reviews, Rosemary’s blog, and, of course, more
about the two of us.
