Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marjorie Mccown. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Marjorie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you have an agent or someone (or a team) that helps you secure opportunities and compensation for your creative work? How did you meet you, why did you decide to work with them, why do you think they decided to work with you?
My literary agent, Ann Collette, was instrumental in getting my first book FINAL CUT published by Crooked Lane Books (June 6, 2023). FINAL CUT was also recently released in paperback (October 8, 2024).
I was incredibly fortunate to meet Ann at one of the California Crime Writers Conferences in Los Angeles (sponsored jointly every 2 years by Sisters-in-Crime and Mystery Writers of America). I entered a program offered by the conference whereby aspiring writers could pay a nominal fee ($50 at the time) and have 5 pages of a work in progress critiqued by an industry professional, which might be an editor, a publisher, a literary agent, or an established writer.
Ann happened to be assigned my 5 pages, and when we sat down to talk about my writing, she asked me if I had a completed manuscript. I told her that I did. She said she’d like to read it, and if it was as promising as the 5 pages I’d submitted for her critique, she’d like to offer me a contract for literary representation. I was floored and ecstatic to get an offer from such a well-respected agent.
Signing with Ann changed everything for me and is one of the best professional decisions I’ve ever made. She has guided me every step of the way on my journey to publication, and she opened doors for me with editors at publishing companies that I couldn’t have opened for myself. She’s the one who advised me to set my books behind the scenes of the Hollywood film industry, where I’d worked for many years as both a costume designer and key costumer. That’s when I wrote FINAL CUT, and Ann sold it to Crooked Lane Books on the first round of pitches.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
For the past few years, I’ve worked full-time as an author of mystery novels. The books in my Hollywood Mystery series, FINAL CUT and STAR STRUCK, are set behind the scenes of big budget feature films in Hollywood, which is where I made my living for 27 years. The main character is a movie key costumer named Joey Jessop.
In FINAL CUT, Book #1, Joey stumbles over the body of a murdered coworker on the Malibu beach where they’re shooting a movie, and she immediately becomes a suspect, not only because she found the body but also because the victim was seeing Joey’s ex.
In STAR STRUCK, Book #2, Joey is working on a movie with two of the biggest box office stars in the world, although the leading lady, Gillian Best, is known more for her lifestyle brand than her acting. After a fatal traffic accident near the movie set, Joey realizes the car involved belongs to Gillian, and she begins to wonder if the actress has more to hide than her Botox appointments.
FINAL CUT was chosen as an Amazon Editors’ Pick in the Best Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense category and was named one of the Best Cozy Mysteries of 2023 by Deadly Pleasures Magazine. FINAL CUT was also chosen as a Top Pick in the Cozy Mystery category by Killer Nashville.
I always say I’ve spent my entire professional life in the story-telling business, though I started out on the visual side of the craft as a costume designer. I earned a BA in Theater from the University of Virginia and an AAS in Fashion Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City where I began my career designing costumes for theater and opera companies all over the country, including the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.
But after 10 years of working exclusively on stage productions, I began to be curious about the possibilities in the world of film design. So I decided to move to Los Angeles on a provisional basis to see how that might work out for me. Within two weeks of landing in LA, I’d landed a job as the assistant costume designer on the first Addams Family movie, and I worked in feature films for the rest of my costume career on a string of wonderful movies that includes Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, A Bronx Tale, The Firm, Wag the Dog, The Aviator, Hairspray, Angels and Demons, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and X-Men Days of Future Past.
I’ve written all my life for my own creative fulfillment, and when I retired from film, I decided to concentrate on the craft of writing. And because I love reading murder mysteries for my own entertainment, that became my genre of choice as an author.
My years working in film provide the inspiration for my books, although setting the stories in the Hollywood film industry wasn’t my first instinct. As I mentioned in the previous question, it was my literary agent who convinced me to use the movie business for the setting. After all, she remarked, I’d already done all the necessary research. And quite honestly, I’ve thought for a long time that a big movie would be the perfect setting for a murder mystery because a movie company is its own unique community, like a very specific kind of small town with its own set of relationships — and always plenty of drama behind the scenes. Plus, a Hollywood film set is wide open in terms of story possibilities because the movie industry is full of fascinating people and it’s the sort of place where almost anything can happen.
I also like taking readers on an insider’s guided tour of the everyday world of a movie in production, which is a whole different view of Hollywood than they typically see on the red carpet. When I hear from readers who say they not only enjoyed the books, but learned so much about the way things work in the film industry, that makes me very happy! I also feel gratified when I hear from readers who are film industry professionals and they say the books authentically capture the locations, activities and ambience of the working world of movies.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I began my costume design career in theater right after I finished my formal education. At that point, I was fortunate enough to get a job as an assistant to a Broadway designer named Patricia Zipprodt, who designed the costumes for the original productions of Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Chicago, Pippin, and also the movie The Graduate. Working for Patricia was like my graduate school because that was my first experience with real professional theater. And after a couple of years assisting Patricia, she began recommending me for jobs, and that was the beginning of my career as a professional costume designer in my own right. Before long I was very busy, often working on 3 or 4 projects at the same time — in design meetings for a play at Theatre Virginia in Richmond, sketching designs for a production of Tartuffe at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and doing costume fittings for The Turn of the Screw at the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. I traveled all over the country and worked every day of the year, all of which was more than fine with me. But two aspects of this situation were not satisfying, as an artist and as a business person. I began to feel that creatively, I was spread a little thin, especially since my projects were located all over the country. And unless you have a hit Broadway show with lots of touring companies sprouting from the original show, you’re not making a lot of money compared to the number of hours you’re working. Again, to an extent I found that acceptable because I was doing work that I loved. But as I got older — and as a single woman who needed to support herself — I started to think about my options.
That’s when I decided it was time to explore the possibility of designing for movies. And I decided if I was going to do a deep dive into the profession, I wanted to do that in the city where the movie industry was born over 100 years ago. So I sublet my New York apartment, flew out to Los Angeles, bought a used car and rented a small apartment on a month-to-month basis. Before I made the move, I wrote to 5 movie designers whose work I admired, all of whom had backgrounds in theatrical design — because I thought they’d be most likely to value my own background and experience.
One of the designers, Ruth Myers, was prepping the costumes for the first Addams Family movie, and she invited me to meet her at the studio where she was working. We talked for a while and she looked at my theatrical portfolio. Then she said, “I need an assistant costume designer. Can you start tomorrow?” The movie was a union signatory production, so Ruth called the Costume Designers Guild, the union for designers on the west coast, and asked them to interview me for membership, which they agreed to do. On the basis of that interview, the fact that I belonged to their sister union, United Scenic Artists on the east coast, and — no small piece of the decision — the fact that Ruth wanted to hire me immediately, I was invited to join the union. I took this incredibly fortunate chain of events as a sign I’d made the correct choice by moving to LA to work in film. And I’ve never regretted that decision.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I had to shed some early training in social etiquette to function more effectively in a professional setting, particularly a business as competitive as film. I grew up in a small Midwestern town in the 60s and 70s, and though my parents were educated and well-traveled, they were conservative and “proper.” Money was not a topic that was appropriate to discuss. My father was the States Attorney (the Midwestern equivalent of a District Attorney) for our county, and he insisted his children’s public behavior be the squeakiest of squeaky clean. Society’s code of conduct for girls was even stricter than that for boys at the time. I was taught that young women should be polite, humble, educated but quiet about it. I even had one “good friend” who suggested to me in junior high that I avoid using big words because then “boys wouldn’t like me.”
I knew when I grew up that I wanted to make a life someplace where I could find more diversity — socially, culturally, and politically. But old habits are hard to break, and it took me years with many difficult learning experiences along the way to understand that I need to be my own strongest advocate, both in terms of the way I present myself in the workplace and just as important, in the way I think about myself, my abilities, skills, and potential. I learned to stand up for myself in a professional setting — and that it’s possible to be assertive about one’s opinions and knowledge without being disrespectful — whether it’s an issue involving the logistics or content of my work product or my financial compensation.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://marjoriemccown.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marjoriemccownbooks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarjorieMcCownBooks/
- Twitter: https://x.com/eastlamm
