What We're Writing--Debs Draws a Blank

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Happy new year and 2nd day of January, everyone! Time does march on but I am convinced that there are wrinkles in the fabric of the universe that somehow swallow chunks of time without our permission. At least that is what happened to me between Thanksgiving and this week.

The week before Thanksgiving week I was really on a writing roll. I hit my pages per day goals, I had a great conference with my editor, and I could see the end of the book, beckoning to me. Look, in this photo there are more pages in the manuscript pile! (As well as the Christmas cactus that didn't bloom. Sigh.)

And then time did its cute little tesseract thing. As I mentioned in a previous post, a few days before Thanksgiving, our dog got really sick and thus began many, many vet and emergency vet appointments. Also, it was the holidays along with lots of other stuff, including my blog week and two back procedures.

Which brings us to the new year and me staring down the barrel of January only a few pages further along on Duncan/Gemma 20. (I suppose I could tell my editor that the dog ate my homework?) Even the pages of my weekly planner, which normally contain all the color-coded minutae of my life as well as my writing progress are...blank.

This is so frustrating because I know more or less what needs to happen and how the scenes will be blocked out, and I know that the bits I haven't figured out will come to me as I'm writing. (Really, I'm sure they will...won't they?)

My editor (bless her) needs this manuscript finished before the publisher's February sales meeting, which means I have got to buckle down, get a grip on that maverick time, and write the bloody end! 

In the meantime, here is a hopefully not too spoiler-ish snippet for you. I love writing Doug Cullen and Melody Talbot's sometimes cantankerous relationship. They have been on the outs for several months in the gap between books, but now they are in cahoots over helping Gemma with her case. In this scene, Melody is staying in her parents' London townhouse and has invited Doug over for dinner.

“Sorry I’m late,” Doug said as she ushered him in. “And sorry I’m empty handed. I had to stand Kevin a second round and I ran out of time to stop for something on the way.” He smelled a bit beery, but didn’t seem the worse for wear.

“I won’t report you to the etiquette police. Kevin’s your mate?”

“Um, yeah.” Doug was peering into the ground floor rooms, eyes wide. “I know I’ve seen the country house, but this…”

“Yeah, I suppose it is a bit much.” Melody nodded towards the dining room with its table for twelve and the sitting room with its deep emerald green wallpaper traced with golden vines and birds. “But normally they don’t use these rooms much. Come on, I’ll show you where the real action is.” She led him to the back hall and down the bare Portland stone stairs into the basement kitchen/sitting room. Unlike the formal rooms above, these areas were designed for comfort. And utility, as her dad, especially, liked to cook. Even though her parents could certainly afford to have a daily chef, they preferred to organize their own meals or to go out.

Her mum, with her usual genius for color, had painted the walls in a soft color that was somewhere between taupe and mauve, with the cupboards and the base of the island in a deep aubergine. The soft furniture was done in pale neutrals, with scatter cushions and paintings providing splashes of color. When her parents were in residence stacks of newspapers and books would proliferate and that only added to the room’s hominess.

The French doors to the garden were open and the outdoor lighting had begun to come on, illuminating the clean contemporary landscaping. “Wow,” said Doug, going to the doors to look out. “The garden’s nothing like the country house, either.”

“No mixed borders here, and no roses,” Melody agreed. “But it works. I think Dad finds a calmer garden restful after the chaos of the paper.”

Having attempted her dad’s famous whitefish dip as an appetizer, she busied herself putting thin slices of baguette in the oven to toast.  She’d bought only one bottle of wine, a crisp white Bordeaux, and now she poured them each a half glass. Doug wasn’t a big wine aficionado, and she meant not to over-indulge.

Doug ran a hand over the veined marble top of the kitchen island. “This is bigger than my entire kitchen.”

“It doubles as a table.” Melody gestured to the well-padded barstools. “Have a seat. Cheers.” She clinked her glass against his. When the timer dinged on the toasts, she took them from the oven and slid them onto a platter, then removed the dip from the fridge and placed both before Doug.

“Wow,” he said again, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “I wasn’t expecting anything so fancy.”

“You should know better than to underestimate me, Doug Cullen,” Melody retorted, but she realized she was actually nervous. When he'd taken a bite, she said, “So, do you like it?”

Doug responded by piling a second baguette slice with dip. “It’s terrible. I’m forcing myself here.” He rolled his eyes. “Seriously, it’s delicious. Are you sure you didn’t buy it?” Then he grinned and if she’d had anything handy, she’s have smacked him.

Darling REDs and readers, does anyone else suffer from "time derailment syndrome," especially between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

P.S. Jasmine says to tell you that she is doing much better, and that she doesn't have to visit her pals at the vet for a whole week!! Her neck is finally healing, and maybe next Monday the vet will put in the last staples to completely close the wound. We are all crossing our paws and fingers! (She adds that it's nice to be out enjoying the return of some nice weather, even if she does have to wear a silly collar.)

P.S.S. Speaking of time derailments and tesseracts, is anyone else watching the last season of STRANGER THINGS? We have a couple of episodes to go (so no spoilers, please,) but I have loved all the references to A WRINKLE IN TIME in this series. This was such a momentous book in my reading (and eventually, writing) life, and I have to assume it was for the writers of the show as well.  But I also wonder if the references make sense to viewers who didn't grow up with the novel. What do you think, dear Reddies?

Mining Trivia Night for Story Gold by Lucy Burdette

 LUCY BURDETTE: Happy New Year Reds! May it be a great year full of good friends, good health, good food, good books...

Holidays aside, it's been a busy time! I received the copy edits for A DELICIOUS DECEPTION in December, so they took first priority once they landed. This time I learned that I insert "that" into many more sentences than need it. I will try to remember that lesson in the future! Meanwhile I finished two projects, a Key Lime murder mystery for the Friends of the Key West Library, and a short story for the upcoming anthology Key West Noir (which will be part of the Akashic Noir series.)  I find short stories so challenging! The writer has a short time (duh) do everything normally done in a long book—develop characters, present a perfect jewel of a plot, and produce a satisfying conclusion. Plus, the story had to be noir, as in dark. (I tried!)

We had to tell the editors ahead of time what part of Key West we were featuring, so the stories wouldn't overlap too much. I chose Mallory Square and the new Key West cooking school. I wrote it from Nathan Bransford’s point of view in the third person. He's Hayley’s husband and he often gets overshadowed by her and the other characters, especially Miss Gloria. To get the proper background, I convinced six friends to go with me to the Cooking School’s Monday trivia night. We did not win any prizes, but it was tons of fun, and I got good photos and took lots of notes. I’ll show you a few of those and then post a snippet of the story, now called A NOT SO TRIVIAL MURDER. 

they were good sports

isn't it gorgeous?

waiting for snacks, or inspiration?

the tally

Mallory Square, home of the nightly sunset over the Gulf celebration with its patchwork of street performers and purveyors of food and drink, was mostly dark and silent. Across the expanse of stone dotted with palms, he saw a brightly colored umbrella, lit up by the glow of a soft yellow lamp on a card table covered with a deep blue cloth. Lorenzo, a friend of his wife’s, was bent over a spread of tarot cards, explaining something to the client in front of him. Bransford headed in that direction, flashing his Maglite along the walls of the buildings lining the square, greeting a couple of the regular homeless types. Though this square wasn’t a hotbed of crime after sundown, the chief believed that a regular and reasonably friendly police presence functioned as a retaining wall between order and chaos. 

The woman sitting with Lorenzo leaned across his table to squeeze his hands and then got up to leave. Bransford figured he would check in. Though he wasn’t certain the fortune teller had access to a deeper understanding of the universe than most, he was an acute observer of human behavior. If trouble was brewing, Lorenzo would know. He approached the table and waved hello. “You’re working late.”

“I don’t like to rush my clients,” Lorenzo said earnestly. “They come in psychic pain and it’s my job to honor that.” 

Bransford hardly knew what to say, but in some happy twist of fate, his radio crackled before he had to answer. The police department dispatcher, usually unflappable, reported a problem at the Key West cooking school in a breathless voice. “EMTs have been dispatched to the scene. You’d better check in. The bartender was hysterical, so not clear whether someone is dead or dead drunk.” 

Sometimes in this town, it was hard to tell the difference. “I’m on it,” said Bransford. “Have a good night,” he told the tarot card reader and jogged off toward the redbrick building at the far end of the square.

He paused at the entrance to the school, which was located up the only escalator in Old Town on the second floor of the US Coast Guard building, now called the Shops at Mallory Square. The developers had spent a bloody fortune renovating the cooking school space, which he had not yet visited. Despite his own wife’s connection to food and the food world, he was an eat to live guy, not live to eat. Other than investigating a possible crime on the premises, he was not the kind of man who would attend a cooking school or even a single demonstration. Hard pass.

We’ll see how well I did with this—the anthology will be comprised of talented Key West and Key West adjacent writers (including SA Cosby, king of noir!) Of course I had that in my mind the whole time I was writing, which may or may not have helped. By the way, here's a photo of the winners, which became an important plot point.

Reds, do you read and enjoy short stories? Why or why not? How about trivia, want to join a team?

Rhys on Being in Limbo.

 RHYS BOWEN:  Best laid plans of mice and men etc... 

I had plans for the last week of the year. My Christmas company departed on Sunday morning. I had planned to work with Clare to do the final polish on Molly 24, so that we turn it in on at the beginning of the year.

Actually I had planned to work with Clare while she was with us for a week. But the day before the family arrived I came down with a horrible respiratory infection. Not Covid. Not flu or RSV. But coughing my head off and fatigue. It was all I could do to show up and look joyful all week.  John, meanwhile had been battling his own respiratory thing. We got through the holidays. My family was wonderful and did everything. Then on the day they left John ran a fever of 102.  I rushed him to emergency and he has pneumonia in both lungs. He's in hospital, having IV antibiotics, breathing treatments etc. And I'm siting in a cold hospital room, not able to do much.

So that's where I am. I have time. I have quet. I could be working more. I have to do final edits on the next Royal Spyness book, but I don't seem to have the energy.  So I thought I'd start my new stand-alone, which I've been looking forward to tackling. Then I had to make the decision: do I start it in the present, which is the main story line, or do I put in a teaser from the past, which will give clues to what we are discovering in the present?

The story is about an expert in atiquarian books who has been hired to value a library of an English stately home. She finds a book printed in 1460 which seems to have been written by a nun at the priory which stood on the land of the current house.  So we are seeing stories unfold in the present and in 1460.

So how do I write this? Write the whole of the 1460 story and then the other one, which is what I did for the Tuscan Child, or let both unfold as we go, which is what I did for the Venice Sketchbook?

I am asking for feedback. when you start a new book do you like to get a teaser, as I have just done for my upcoming stand alone, which is now called THE CASTLE IN THE GLEN.  

OR....

Do you like to plunge straight into the main story and get going with the characters we are going to follow?

Let me know.

And to remind you, this is how the Castle in the Glen begins...

From The Wild Girl, Inspector Melrose’s First Case.

By Iris Blackburn.

 The Isle of Skye, autumn 1932

 Flora was the name her mother had given her at birth, but her mother had died before the child reached five years, a wee scrap of a bairn, and in the village of Dun Akyn she was known only as The Wild Girl. Her father was a fisherman, out at sea long hours at a time and Flora learned quickly how to fend for herself. She helped herself to eggs from those who kept chickens. She begged a roll or two from the baker. The kind folk in the village left a bowl of soup out for her and their own children’s outgrown clothing. She went to school when she felt like it but was most often seen running barefoot across the heather, or splashing in the tide pools, communing with the wild creatures from seals to roe deer. It was whispered that Angus MacLeod was not her father at all, but that it was one of the fairy folk, or even a storm kelpie. Whatever was true in this regard she stayed clear of the well-meaning village women who tried to take her in hand, made no friends among the village children, and could seemingly vanish in the blink of an eye like the fairy folk.

                Either way she was destined to come to a bad end.

And then we move to a young woman in London in 1965.

Both stories unfold throughout the book.  Fun but challenging to write as for half the book I'm writing in the style of another writer, and what's more it's not her normal style.

Ah well.  Back to work. And please spare a thought for John who is gradually getting over the worst ( and for me).

And I've just realized: it's New Year's Eve. I'd completely lost track of days.

So wishing you all a very happy, healthy New Year!

Rhys