The eminent crime writer Lawrence Block also has written several worthwhile books about writing fiction. One of them is titled TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT. I can vouch for the notion that writing a novel is fun, even if at times it’s frustrating. Profit—well, that’s more elusive. And telling lies? For a fiction writer that’s a given. The very definition of the word lies boils down to “the author made this stuff up.”

The readers’ role is to collude in the falsehood. The author’s job is to spin the web of the story so skillfully that readers are glad to buy into the idea what happens in the story is true, even when he knows that this whole thing is a fake.

This is what’s called the willing suspension of disbelief. 

It’s hard enough to write a convincing novel when the story is a realistic tale set in the world as we know it. But then toss in a fantasy element. It adds to the challenge and, yes, to the fun.

That’s what I discovered in writing HOUSE OF WHISPERS, the first of my Claire Scanlan haunted house mysteries, and the new one, HOUSE OF DESIRE, which came out in June. Claire is a real estate agent and reluctant psychic, who has strange encounters when she goes into certain houses—experiences no one else shares. 

In 1817 when English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined his famous phrase “willing suspension of disbelief,” he explained that he was speaking of an author’s need to depict “persons and characters supernatural” with “a semblance of truth”—to make readers believe in “these shadows of imagination” well enough to become immersed in the story and keep turning the pages to the end.  

HOUSE OF WHISPERS is a ghost story, in which the spirit of a murder victim reaches out to Claire—having failed in efforts to connect with anyone else. The killing is a closed case, and the spirit needs to let Claire know that the police’s conclusions are wrong, the culprit is still at large, and other people are in danger.

HOUSE OF DESIRE has not just a ghost, but time travel as well. At a gala fundraiser to save a grand San Francisco Victorian called the Burnham Mansion, Claire sees a mysterious young woman, Roxane, who is invisible to everyone else. Roxane is a “soiled dove” plying her trade in the mansion in 1896. She has discovered a secret portal that lets her slip into what she calls the Future House when she needs to escape the cruelest of the men who buy her favors. When the party ends, its host is murdered, and Claire’s brother-in-law is accused of being the killer. To clear his name she must find the sole witness—the elusive Roxane, who has fled back to her own time.

Readers know that ghosts and time travel aren’t real. How could I make them suspend their disbelief until they reach the end of the book? I decided on two strategies.

First, I tried to create characters and situations that are compelling enough to make readers keep turning the page to find out what happens. My hope is that Claire, Roxane, and other key characters will have enough semblance of truth to be convincing and intriguing.

Second, I had to figure out how the paranormal elements of the story worked, so I could present them consistently and believably. 

In my stories, the ghosts are tied to the place where they died; they can’t go out haunting willy-nilly. They remain there because they have unfinished business that they must settle before they can move on to the afterlife. The ghost in HOUSE OF DESIRE is Josephine, who was born in the mansion on the day of San Francisco’s great earthquake in 1906 and lived there more than a century. She is waiting for her long-lost lover to come and guide her to the Place Called Forever. Josephine’s story of her long life in the Burnham Mansion provides the link between the 1890s bordello and the house that the heirs are battling over today.

Many of us suspect we’ve encountered a ghost at some point, when a flicker of light or peculiar sound can’t be explained. So we may be somewhat willing to buy into a spectral tale. 

Time travel, though—that seemed like a harder sell.

First I had to figure out how the mechanism worked. There were so many details to consider. What device or trigger allows Roxane to move from one century to another? How does she discover it? Can other people use it too? Why is she invisible when she reaches the twenty-first century, and why can Claire, but no one else, see her anyway?

Answering those questions myself, as the author, seemed cumbersome, and it might break the spell I was weaving. So I came up with one more “person or character supernatural” to provide the explanations. Mr. Stregoni is a magician, a wizard, and he is the only true gentleman that Roxane has ever known. The scenes between the two of them were definitely fun to write.

Yes, the author made this stuff up. My goal was to present these shadows of my imagination persuasively and entertainingly. If you visit the HOUSE OF DESIRE, I hope you’ll happily suspend your disbelief and have a good time.

Margaret Lucke flings words around in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes tales of love, ghosts, and murder, sometimes all three in one book. Her Claire Scanlan Haunted House series includes HOUSE OF DESIRE and the just released HOUSE OF DESIRE. She also writes mysteries featuring artist and private investigator Jess Randolph, the latest of which is SNOW ANGEL. Margaret is the editor of Fault Lines, a short story anthology published last year by the Northern California chapter of Sisters in Crime, and is a former president of the Northern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. She teaches fiction writing classes and workshops, and has written how-to books on the craft of writing fiction. 

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