Thursday, November 1, 2018

Writing & Gardening Go Hand in Vine for Nancy Hughes


HALLIE EPHRON: There are so many apt analogies to what it's like to write a novel. Banging your head against a wall. Opening a vein. My favorite, from John Banville: "The novelist daily at his desk eats ashes, and if occasionally he encounters a diamond he is likely to break a tooth on it. Money is necessary to pay the dentist's bills."

Nancy Hughes, whose new mystery novel Vanished (the final book in her Trust trilogy) is just out, hits her stride and finds inspiration in her garden. 

NANCY HUGHES: Good morning, Jungle Reds! And thank you for inviting me to write a guest post. My delight is three-fold—To start many days with your delightful imagery. To reconnect with Hallie via Penn Writers, and to follow Hank, who was inordinately kind to me, a stranger, at my first Edgar Symposium ten years ago. I only share spare copies of your books, not those you signed with personal notes.

With the publication of my fourth novel, Vanished—the third in my Trust trilogy—I’m often asked questions about inspiration, which beg a truly original answers. Huh! Where indeed? Mine comes from snippets of people and places rolled into one single thought. I ask myself, what if? Suppose? And a single sentence emerges to drive a new story. 

From that summary sentence, the plot takes shape as a list. I woke one Saturday morning with the entire story for Vanished revealed to me in ten points. Ever the outliner, I went straight to my Mac. The book itself had to get in line and wait its turn behind three other novels, until I couldn’t leave it alone. Ultimately, the characters arrived, screaming to drive it, some by design and some uninvited.


I’m grateful for feedback. How else could I gauge my own work? Half my readers say I’m all about the plot; the others say it’s the characters. I believe that’s true of The Dying Hour.


The seeds for my mysteries germinate and grow as I garden. Literally!
While I dig, mulch, plant and weed, my mind will not shut up, and the stories takes shape. Scenes as crisp as new dogwood blooms take over my imagination, as if the characters’ stage is my lawn and I’m hovering nearby. The task at hand fades as my mind watches.


Writing in rural Pennsylvania, beneath a canopy of hundred-foot trees that backdrop my shade gardens
, sounds ideal for inspired writing. But it’s just as distracting to see deer munch my azaleas as hearing sirens and honking. And nature is itching to reclaim the land with poisonous tentacles, brambles, and hungry beasties.  

From April until October, I escape to my summer office, built from hundred-year-old barn boards by my husband who, silly man, thought potting shed. I wish you could see the view from my chair and footstool, Mac on my lap, gazing across an emerald expanse to a swath of azaleas fronted with impatience. Oh, the aaah power of flowers! The tranquility stills my overactive mind, inspiring quiet scenes and introspective characters.        

Fleshing out villains and their nefarious deeds fits perfectly with yanking entrenched poison ivy, trumpet vine and their ilk.
And fixing problems of my own creation. “Here,” a successful shade gardener said as I ranted about my failure with roses. “This will grow anywhere.”  And it did—everywhere—taking three years to eradicate. I attacked with sharp weapons while plotting murder and mayhem. Perhaps its flowers are poisonous?

In my garden, I can expunge negativity, be it what’s in the news or thoughts of bad people doing bad things to the innocent. It’s also where my left brain kicks in. While planting a tidy row of annuals, my peripheral mind nudges me about scheduling conflicts, too many characters whose names start with B, and did her eye color change between chapters ten and twenty?

Better ask my pathologist friend to skim the morgue scene for accuracy. Yes, I will fight for my beloved adverbs! And my dear editors—have I thanked them lately for tolerating my idiosyncrasies?


Ultimately, like typing ### on page 300, the killing frost comes, enabling me to put books and gardens to bed for the winter. In February the snowdrops will peek through the snow, and creativity will emerge, refreshed, in the garden.

HALLIE: I use my garden, too, but to get AWAY from writing. (Like laundry...) And while the same problem bangs around in my head unsolved in the office, miraculously as I'm outside sweating and pulling weeds, solutions emerge.

(Nancy, I hope in comments you'll tell me how to vanquish trumpet vine. Please.)

Writing is like... how would you complete the analogy.

ABOUT VANISHED
It was supposed to be the kidnappers’ last job, snatching the infant of a poor single mother for an unsuspecting wealthy client. But the kidnappers grab the wrong baby—Billy, the son of high-profile bankers, Kingsley and Todd Henning—from their employer’s secure daycare. Realizing their mistake, the kidnappers plant evidence to implicate the parents and dismantle their operation. No ransom call comes. Detectives, convinced the parents are guilty, interrogate relentlessly as they uncover planted evidence.

The parents can’t face the mosaic of guilt, blame, and despair or help each other. On day ten, they are called to the morgue. The deceased is not Billy—this time. Shaken, they recommit to each other and vow to find him themselves. They scrutinize the bank’s security footage for incongruities only insiders might spot and follow the flimsiest clues into the murderous underworld of illegal adoptions. As novice detectives, they are exposed to extreme danger, skirting the law while keeping one step ahead of the villains and the police.

But is it too late? Will the kidnappers eliminate all trace of the baby? Or are they no match for two angry, determined parents?

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45 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your new book, Nancy . . . I’m looking forward to reading “Vanished” to find out what happens to the baby.

    I’ve always imagined that writing is like putting together a puzzle, shuffling the words around and fitting all the pieces of the story together to create the finished picture . . . .

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    1. I think that's a good analogy for how to write a mystery novel - though sometimes we work backwards from finished picture to setting up the pieces.

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  2. I have never had a garden, but you make it sound so appealing! I did pull weeds with a friend once though, and no interesting story ideas came out of that. I'm not eager to repeat that experience, so I'll probably just stick with sitting at my computer!

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    1. I once spent an hour pulling weeds in an actual farm. Took my poor legs and back days to recover.

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    2. I spent a couple of hours putting the gardens to bed two days ago, Hallie, and my back still hurts... To think I used to farm full time!

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    3. Hallie typing for Nancy: - Inspiration is where you find it like cooking which is my short suit!

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  3. I'm also a gardener, Nancy, and have had similar experiences with stories emerging when I sit back and let them. The new book sounds thrilling - and scary!

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    1. From NANCY: I do murder people in my book but hopefully tastefully ;-)

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  4. congratulations on your new release! Gardening is like designing and maintaining a perennial bed: anticipation, excitement, the saggy middle (or August doldrums), what lives, what dies,(what works, what doesn't work), spending the fall shifting tall plants to the back, short plants forward, and then cutting everything back.

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    1. Love the August doldrums and saggy middle, but what about winter??

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    2. I just lifted dahlias which had gone black from the frost. Drying them in the basement. Anyone have experience of how to keep them over winter?

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    3. I woke up thinking about this exact same thing! Today is digging the dahlias day, and now what?

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    4. I’ve never managed to keep a dahlia, just but new ones in the spring. On the other hand, my sungold tomatoes seed themselves!

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    5. Lucy/Roberta: winter is for memories and expectations (revisions) and plotting anew.

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    6. FROM NANCY: I have a talent for planting tall stuff in the front and short stuff in the back. My husband teases me that I plant once and move twice.

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    7. FROM NANCY TO LUCY - I LOVE WINTER - because it's the only time when nothing is going on. The garden is frozen the holidays are put to bed and I can write to my heart's content.

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    8. FROM NANCY TO MARGARET: What I love about snow is that our lawn looks as good as anyone else's!

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  5. Although I don't write, I can see that gardening is a great analogy that must work for anything creative. The planting of seeds in the spring, the first dicotyledon peeking through, so many of them but only a few can survive to grow and flower and produce, and then the harvesting of the fruit/flowers/fallout. There is nothing sweeter than something nurtured in your own backyard.

    Just ask Hallie's bunnies

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    1. I've grown flowers from seed... and it's SO Hard when it comes to thinning or they'll strangle each other. Now there's an analogy for writing a crime novel.

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    2. FROM NANCY: I never had the patience to lift and save tubers - but I tried with canna lilies - I defied them not to die - they won (they died).

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    3. FROM NANCY: We have a problem with bunnies when the snow drifts they catapault into the yard - we let one cute little bunny stay in the yard one spring and it destroyed all my violets. Finally we trapped it in my have a heart trap with what the 4H kids call alfalfa salad. Poor Bunny he was transported to the country.

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    4. FROM NANCY: To Hallie it was a dismal failure here trying to grown flowers from seed. Not enough light. I've had better luck with seeds of ideas.

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  6. Welcome Nancy, what a beautiful garden and writing shed! You are fortunate to have a whole book come to you and then have to wait its turn...is Vanished part of a series?

    Hallie, I'd never heard the quote about eating ashes. so painfully true!!

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    1. I like the part about needing to pay the dentist's bill.

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    2. FROM NANCY: This summer we had nothing but rain and the shed turned too damp and moldy to work in. I was wiping green off picture frames...

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  7. Congratulations on the book, Nancy!

    To me, writing is like baking - or cooking. A little of this, a little of that, and you get a wonderful product. But overdo one ingredient, and things are likely to not turn out as well.

    Mary/Liz

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    1. Good analogy - because baking is fussy (unlike making a stew or a stir fry which can be more free form.)

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    2. NANCY TO MARY: Alas cooking and baking are my short suits.

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    3. NANCY OT MARY: Happily my husband will eat anything because he does not cook at all.

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  8. I think cooking, too, because you have to think of an idea, then find a proper ingredients in just the right order and amount , and have the fun of making it, and then the fun of seeing it turn out well, and then the fun of presenting it to someone you love, and then getting praised for it! A cake or a book, or stew, or cherries Jubilee! All the same.

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    1. AND because you can always start with LEFTOVERS! Can't tell you how often I've picked up an abandoned project and injected it with new life as an ingredient in work in progress.

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    2. NANCY TO HANK: Hank I can see why your books are as compelling as they are. The care that you take step by step.

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  9. And Nancy! What an extraordinary thing to say… I am so touched by your wonderful memory. Thank you! And my complete pleasure.
    I wish I could outline. I wish I could. Some days I long for an outline. But so far, the answer has been no. I am in the I need an idea stage, so opening my mind, and seeing what grows. Crossing fingers it is growing season.

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  10. Nancy, I think I need to break out all the Disney books from when the boys were little: "La la la, I can't hear you! And they lived happily ever after!" Because Vanished just brought back all the old thoughts that cross your mind--the what ifs? What if you dropped your baby off at daycare and they weren't there when you came to pick them up?? Now to find out that it could actually happen--talk about scary!

    Love the idea of a garden writing shed--I have the perfect spot back of the fruit trees.... For me, writing is like hiking. There's a great deal of preparation beforehand--and over-preparation can be just as bad as too little. You're moving along the trail and you find yourself struggling with your pack, and the sun is too hot, and your feet start to hurt.... But there are also those moments when you reach an unexpected vista--and you are totally engrossed in the moment, caught in the flow of pleasure. Or when the trail before you splits into two directions and you have to choose: take the easy way or challenge yourself with the unknown.

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    1. NANCY to FLORA -- You said what you said so beautifully!

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  11. Nancy, your garden looks amazing! I am not a gardener, and I live in a high-rise so my green thumb is limited to my indoor plants. I'm always curious about people who are avid gardeners: How did you become one? Did your parents garden? Did you start with one plant or a small yard, and your interest grew from there? :) Do tell!

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    1. Ingrid, my family in southern California had lots of fruit trees and berry bushes, but not a vegetable garden that I can remember. For me my love of gardening dovetailed with the rise of the Ecology movement, food coops, becoming a vegetarian, and getting really interested in growing my own food (all early 1970s). I started subscribing to Organic Gardening magazine. Kept lively compost piles. Dreamed of more. When I had a chance to own and run a small farm? I was all over it. Now I'm back to a small organic garden and just planted my garlic for the 35th year in a row. ;^)

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    2. What a great question, Ingrid. I look forward to reading the comments.

      So many relatives had fabulous gardens in my childhood. One grandfather was the sexton of the Catholic cemetery in my hometown, so he cared for plants all my growing up years, and grew wonderful tomatoes. My other grandfather had prize peonies and a spectacular border of four-o'clocks.

      When we moved to an aunt's house when I was nine, I took over taking care of her perennials, and it went from there. My mother had her hands full working full-time and raising four kids, so she encouraged my interest. Much later Mother had more time; she's also an avid gardener, although has slowed down a lot in her late 80's.

      Even when I have not had a garden I've had houseplants galore, starting with a terrarium in the 70's. Like Edith, I'm also about to plant garlic, from a strain I began with seven years ago.

      Two of my daughters have started both flower and vegetable gardens, and the other has houseplants and herbs in her tiny Boulder apartment. I love how this interest has passed through the generations.

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    3. Karen, I have one son who is a farmer, and the other tries valiantly to grow herbs in his hi-rise apartment windows!

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    4. NANCY to INGRID - My father was an avid gardener. He dug up some daffodil bulbs for me and then watched me planting them and asked "Dear are you planting them or burying them?" I was digging them too deep.

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    5. Nancy to EDITH: I can picture it, how beautiful. I envy your organic commitment.

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  12. Nancy, I envy your writing shed. At our farm we have a lovely outbuilding that used to be the tack shed. We had it moved closer to the house and to my garden to house my tools, because for nine months of the year here it's not practical to write in an unheated, uncooled shed with no electricity. And sharing with the mice and spiders was no fun, either.

    If weeding could inspire a story for me I could have thirty novels written by now. Alas, it does not work that way here. And what a great gift, to wake up with a whole plot!

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    1. NANCY TO KAREN: We are running an electric line to the shed - I keep trying to flip on a light switch and plug in the mosquito baffle.

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  13. Congratulations, Nancy, on your new book. Vanished sounds like a great read. I know that the police must consider parents in a child abduction case, but it must be hell to be suspected of doing harm to your own child when you're innocent.

    I am so impressed by your gardening skills. The gardening bug and gene skipped me, but it doesn't mean I can't enjoy a beautiful work of art gardening by others. Although I don't write books, in writing book reviews, I consider it as painting a picture, showing enough of a scene or story that draws one into a world where there is so much more going on before and after.

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  14. Congratulations on VANISHED's publication, Nancy!

    I have to admit, the inspiration I get from gardening is that I'm so eager to finish up and get back inside and sit down, I'm happy to tackle my writing!

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