Featured Author:
Lilian Jackson Braun
Lilian Jackson Braun wrote the Cat Who… series, which may well be the progenitor of the modern cozy mystery. At the very least she was one of the first to write about cats being involved in solving crimes.
Agatha Christie was at the forefront of the traditional mystery, which birthed the entire amateur sleuth genre. Lilian Jackson Braun’s mysteries, first published in the 1960s and later from the 1980s until the early 2000s, turned them in an even cozier direction.
Braun’s stories featured a newspaper reporter turned amateur detective who found clues in the small town he lived in, and the cats he lived with helped guide him to solve the puzzles. After Braun’s success there was a boom in the modern cozy genre. But, as we will see, it almost didn’t happen at all.
Lilian Jackson began work as a copywriter, then public relations director, before moving to the Detroit Free Press as an editor, where she began writing the Cat Who series on the side. Her husband at the time, Louis Paul Braun, encouraged her writing, but after three novels were published the publisher asked for a different direction, with more sex and violence. Lilian wasn’t willing to do so, and the fourth book languished in a drawer for many years.
Returning to the series
A decade after Louis’s death, Lilian remarried, and her new husband, Earl Bettinger, read and loved the manuscript for book four. He encouraged her to have it published, and it was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. This began two decades of writing at least one book a year in the series. Lilian dedicated each book to Earl, “The Husband Who…”
“She ultimately created a whole new chapter in the American mystery,” her longtime editor, Natalee Rosenstein, said.
Lilian Jackson Braun died in 2011 aged 97.
This is an imagined interview between CozyMystery.com (CM) and Lilian Jackson Braun (LJB). It has been synthesized from various interviews with Lilian Jackson Braun over the years. All quotes from Lilian Jackson Braun are her own words. Items in square brackets are where we have altered her words for clarity or to avoid spoilers. Please see the end of the article for source credits.
Early Writing
CM: How did you get started telling stories?
LJB: [My mother] was a born storyteller. Every day at the dinner table, she would tell us what had happened to her, and we were encouraged to relate our experiences. I really think I learned how to describe situations, events, people, and scenery through that early custom in our family.
CM: When did you begin writing?
LJB: [My grandmother] would write letters to me, and my mother would read them to me. Then I would dictate the answer. I wanted to write my own answers. So my mother taught me to write. She encouraged me all my life.
Cats
CM: You didn’t even have a cat for many years.
LJB: I was forty years old when my first husband gave me a Siamese kitten for a birthday present. I really flipped over that cat. I named him Koko, after a character in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado. I adored him and he adored me. I consider this whole The Cat Who… series a memorial to that first Koko.
We found out that a Siamese cat who is solitary is apt to be neurotic. So we decided to get two cats. The first pair of Siamese were called Koko and Yum Yum. Koko was actually Koko II, but I called him Koko the Great because he was a remarkable cat. His exploits really inspired the Cat Who series. He talked, and he knew what I was thinking. He put ideas into my head. He was almost psychic.
CM: And he inspired you?
LJB: I don’t believe I could write the books without my cats. Every day, every cat I have had has done something to give me an idea. I have a barrel full of notes I’ve taken.
CM: Did you ever think about other animals, or was it always cats?
LJB: Some people like all animals and some people prefer one or the other. I personally have more experience with cats, but I know other people’s dogs and I am starting to incorporate dogs into minor roles in my stories because I know people love them.
Are cats psychic?
I started out writing about cats because I wanted to write about cats because I think they are terribly interesting. One thing that I feel about my own cats is that they are psychic. They know when I go to the fridge to get food, they must be psychic. I thought here is a good twist for a plot. Although it is a tongue in cheek theme, that is my premise: that cats are smarter than people, take it or leave it.
CM: Do you talk to them?
LJB: I firmly believe that and not only I, but some experts have said that the more you talk to a cat, the smarter he becomes. And I find it true. I have noticed that the cats in which the owners don’t speak to them are entirely different animals.
CM: And you made them the stars of the series.
LJB: As subjects for mysteries, cats are clever, funny, independent, subtle, wily, profound, inscrutable and — yes — mysterious. And there are no two alike.
The Cat Who…
CM: So how did you create The Cat Who… series?
LJB: I don’t know what I was doing, but all of a sudden I thought, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. Out of the blue. There had been The Man Who Came To Dinner, and I guess I was doing a take-off of that. The Cat Who instead of The Man Who.
CM: And you wrote three books, then stopped?
LJB: By the time I had written the fourth one, tastes in mysteries had changed. They wanted sex and violence, not kitty-cat stories. Gore was not my style, so I just forgot about “The Cat Who.”
CM: Then almost twenty years passed, and you showed the manuscript for book four to your second husband.
LJB: [I said] you’ve never read the fourth book, the one that wasn’t published.
CM: He loved it, and urged you to write more?
LJB: I had my original notes, which I’d never thrown away. I plunged back into my old system of observing the cats and keeping notes.
Mysteries
CM: So now you have cats, but you don’t yet have mysteries.
LJB: Not all mystery lovers like cats but it seems most cat lovers like mysteries.
CM: How do you come up with the stories?
LJB: In the beginning, when I wrote my first book, I thought, “It’s got to have a cat in it. Who’s the protagonist?” Well, I was working for a newspaper, so it was logical to use a newsman or woman. I didn’t want a woman reporter, because then people would say it was autobiographical.
CM: His name is unusual.
LJB: I wanted to give him a name that was a little different. I wanted something that begins with a “Q.” I interviewed a Danish potter, Quillan, and he said that the name was quite common in Denmark. So I called him Qwilleran, spelled with a “w” and “er.”
CM: And the style is quite different to what was being published, too?
LJB: My stories are called character mysteries because the people are as important as the mysteries. I really have to work hard at the murder, drag the mystery in by its heels, because I don’t really think along those lines. I love my characters. They’re what I’m interested in. People are simply tired of all the blood. I write what is called the classic mystery.
Travels
CM: The series is mostly set in northern Michigan, which is where you live.
LJB: We live [t]here six months out of the year and in North Carolina in the winter. [Moose County] is a composite of all the places I have lived, visited, heard about, etc. Just as all my characters are composites of people I know or have observed. That is how all my characters are. They are like a patchwork quilt of all the people that I have known.
CM: And you’ve traveled, and brought some of that into the books?
LJB: Every time I go somewhere, Qwilleran has to go, too. When I moved to the country, Qwilleran had to move to the country. The poor guy has to go where I go. One writes about what one knows and is enthusiastic about, and right now I like small towns.
CM: And even on vacation?
LJB: Earl and I went to Scotland to do research and have a little vacation this past summer. So the question is: if Qwilleran goes to Scotland and foul play occurs, how is the cat going to solve the mystery? What was exciting was trying to work it into a mystery. Because, after all, Koko was not there. I had to use a lot of ingenuity to work it in. In a way that it really belonged in a cat mystery.
CM: You research a lot, with your husband’s assistance.
LJB: In the book about Scotland, I wanted to mention the tune that the bagpipers always play. [Scotland the Brave]. So [Earl] went to the store library and sang it for them. [T]hey found someone who knew the name of it.
Writing Process
CM: Let’s talk about your writing process.
LJB: I have a different way of writing each book. I don’t have any particular plan, so it’s hard for me to say why I do what I do. I start with the title now. I always think of a good title, then think about a good story to go with it. [For the first book] I couldn’t really get excited about it. Then I thought of the title. As soon as I knew it, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, then I got excited about it. So now the title comes first.
CM: So there’s no planning, you just write what the characters are doing?
LJB: I don’t know what is going to happen book to book. The characters walk around in my head, and I don’t exactly know [what they will do in the future]. I just think about my book and I start writing my first page and the story develops. It is not the right way, but it is how I do it. I never learned how, so I just do it the way that comes naturally.
CM: And when you get stuck?
LJB: [If] you have some problems to solve and you think about it before you go to bed, your subconscious will work on it overnight. In the morning, you’ll have the answer. I have a pad and pen by my bedside if I wake up in the night with ideas.
CM: Is any part easier to write?
LJB: The most difficult part of any of my books is figuring out what a cat can do to alert Qwilleran to solve the mystery. When I know that, I’m all set.
Deadlines
CM: How hard is it to produce a new book every year?
LJB: Writing can be a very selfish and demanding occupation. Particularly if you have a deadline to meet. If I had to have something by the end of the month, I’d try everything I could to make it. It’s the newspaper training, I guess. I just sort of set my own deadline.
CM: Do you write every day? Do things have to be just right for you?
LJB: No particular amount of time each day, no number of days each week. I’m very casual about the whole thing. If I really wanted to make a business out of this, I’d structure my time, but, since I’m officially retired from the workplace, I think when I get up in the morning I should do what I feel like doing. A week will go by when I do nothing. Then, maybe it rains for a week, and I stay in and write eight or 10 hours a day.
CM: And remembering details about characters between books?
LJB: I wish I had some easy catalogue, so I could look up a character to see how tall he or she is and what color eyes they have, but I don’t…. I have a pretty good memory and I dredge up the necessary information when I am ready for it.
CM: Any tips for aspiring writers?
LJB: Good writers read a great deal, but the important thing is to write, write, write.
And finally…
CM: Any last thoughts you’d like to pass on?
LJB: I’m very lucky. My cats have changed my life.
Do you have anything to say about this article? Agree or disagree with what we have to say? Let us know in the comments below.
Credits
The following items were used in the creation of this article:
Braun, Lilian Jackson. “Why Cats?” The Cat Who Club, https://thecatwhoclub.tripod.com/whycats.html, accessed August 4, 2022.
Christensen, Wendy. “Life with Lilian Jackson Braun,” Cat Fancy, November 1994.
Johnson, Maria C. “Imaginary felines keep their paws on Lilian Jackson Braun,” Greensboro (N.C.) News and Record, May 25, 1991.
Kaufman, Joanne. “The Cat Woman Who Writes Mysteries,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2006.
Murphy, Sandra. “Lilian Jackson Braun 1913-2011: Author of the Cat Who Books,” Kings River Life Magazine, https://kingsriverlife.com/07/16/lillian-jackson-braun/, accessed August 4, 2022.
Nelson, Catherine. “The Lady Who…,” The Armchair Detective, Fall 1991.
“Interview 1,” The Cat Who Club, https://thecatwhoclub.tripod.com/id201.html, accessed August 4, 2022.
“Interview 2,” The Cat Who Club, https://thecatwhoclub.tripod.com/id202.html, accessed August 4, 2022.
“Lilian Jackson Braun, author of ‘The Cat Who …’ series,” Boston Globe, June 8, 2011.
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