Killer Matchmaker, or Is He?

By Lisa Alber

I’d planned to respond to Christina’s post about her dark-man dreams, but then I remembered that I haven’t mentioned my debut novel (March 2014! Yay!) on the ShadowSpinners blog yet. Self-interest trumps soulful introspection this week.

My novel, KILMOON, features a dark man, but he hides behind a charismatic smile and his role as a celebrated matchmaker in Ireland. He’s not your warm and fuzzy matchmaker, that’s for sure, and that’s what I love about him. In literary parlance, he goes “against type.” I didn’t set out to do this. I didn’t say to myself, Hey, I need to turn a stereotype on its head so that my story will stand out, be original, and answer the question, What’s special about your novel?

Pfft. I liked the idea of a purveyor of love and matrimony and happily-ever-afters who has a murky past, who might be guilty of something, who might tend toward sociopathy.

Or maybe he’s just a flawed man with a tattered but good heart. I’m not telling.

The notion of a dark-man matchmaker got me started on the novel, and I’d forgotten about that until I read an essay about one-sentence elevator pitches. I was intrigued by the essay writer’s #1 tip for creating an elevator pitch: try to remember what originally excited you about the story. Your original idea before the story took on a life of its own.

It’s basically the “What if…” question. For me, the what-if began in Ireland. I happened to be in Lisdoonvarna village for its annual matchmaking festival. Talk about randy, Guinness-drinking Irishmen. It took me awhile to discover that most of them were about the unencumbered shagging, not the matrimony. That said, the matchmaker was, probably still is, a celebrated figure in County Clare.

It didn’t take long for my thoughts to wander to the dark side. What if the matchmaker had a murky past? What if he wasn’t what he seemed? Bingo! The matchmaking festival might have inspired another novelist to write a tale of romance or maybe women’s fiction. Not me, no, I’ve gotta get a little of that sociopathy in there.

So what’s my elevator pitch for Kilmoon? Hah! You kidding me? There’s nothing more excruciating than creating an elevator pitch. But, OK, off-the-cuff? Here it goes:

Desperate to mend her troubled past, Merrit Chase seeks out a celebrated Irish matchmaker–the father she never knew–only to get ensnared in his deadly past instead.

For a proper description of Kilmoon, check out this page.