On the QT | The Official Newsletter of GWA November-December 2017 | Page 12

MEMBER PROFILE
DEBRA PRINZING
Marty Wingate – From Garden Writer
to Mystery Novelist
“WHO-DONE-IT” GARDENING BOOKS
INTRIGUED MARTY
How did this popular garden writer, who
has authored five garden titles and whose
byline continues to appear in Country Gardens,
American Gardener and other publications,
become a successful mystery writer? So many
self-employed garden communicators are
interested in diversifying their careers into
“crossover” platforms such as culinary, travel,
health and wellness or floral (that would be
me). And yet, why not fiction?
Marty explained, “I enjoy reading mysteries
but I don’t necessarily like crime and thriller
books (although Ian Rankin’s books are an ex-
ception). I do enjoy mysteries where character,
scene and storyline are very important and the
body is perhaps partially hidden.”
She said that her own move into mysteries
began with a friend’s suggestion. “She kept
12
Garden writer Marty
Wingate digs a new career
as mystery writer.
Armed with a
master’s degree in
Urban Horticulture
from the University
of Washington—not
to mention being a
bonafide King County
(Washington) Master
Gardener and a Seattle
gardening personality,
who for years wrote a
weekly newspaper column and appeared on
the local NPR radio station—Marty Wingate
knows how to diagnose dead plants.
And now, after penning her 10th murder
mystery and being named a USA Today Best-
selling Author, you could say that Marty also
solves mysteries about dead characters.
The threads connecting these different
chapters of her life tie together Marty’s skill for
storytelling, her Anglophile tendencies and her
love for all things botanical. She leads garden
tours to England, Scotland and Ireland and is a
member of the Royal Horticultural Society. In
addition to being a longtime GWA member, she
is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sis-
ters in Crime and the Crime Writers Association.
saying, ‘You should write a garden murder
mystery.’ My friend isn’t a writer, but she’s a big
reader. There are all sorts of themed myster-
ies—dog mysteries, cat mysteries; even series
about coffee shops and scrapbooking—so I
finally thought, ‘What better theme could there
be than garden mysteries?’ ”

ON BECOMING A MYSTERY NOVELIST
According to Marty, “I started getting ideas
about a protagonist who is a gardener. I wanted
her to be an American gardener because that’s
what I knew, but I wanted the story set in
England, which is where I love to go. From that,
storylines and characters just seemed to appear.”
With the concept of her first book already
developed, Marty ventured into the unknown
world of fiction in 2011, attending the Pacific
Northwest Writers Association summer confer-
ence. “My goal was to meet with agents. Each
attendee was able to pitch two literary agents.
I found an agent interested in my ideas. But
equally important, I found my writing group.”
Marty credits her fellow writing group
members for helping her develop a successful
first manuscript that earned accolades from her
editor. “I’ve stayed in my writing group. It’s like
having a tableful of extra editors. And along with
friends who read my early manuscripts, having
that feedback is necessary.”
Through a series of events (the unfortunate
death of said agent, followed by a second agent
stepping in to adopt her clients, including
Marty), Random House’s Alibi imprint commit-
ted to publishing the first three books in “The
Potting Shed” series. In 2014, The Garden Plot, the
first book of the series that features Pru Parke, a
middle-aged American gardener transplanted
from Texas to England, came out. Murder has a
way of finding Pru—wherever she gardens. The
sixth title in this series, Best La id Plants, was just
released October 17.
After her stories about Pru were well under-
way, Marty’s editor suggested she dream up a
new protagonist to engage the birding crowd.
Julia Lanchester, a bird lover who runs a tourist
office in a Suffolk village, was born. She is part of
the “Birds of a Feather” series, with three books
out and a fourth (Farewell, My Cuckoo), sched-
uled for April 2018 publication. Marty’s books
are available on tablets and smart readers: fans
have downloaded more than 120,000 books in
just four years.
Marty explains that her two series are consid-
ered traditional or “cozy” mysteries, a subgenre in
which the protagonist is often an amateur sleuth
rather than a detective or police inspector.