Stories are the Spice of Life by Leslie Budewitz

 JENN MCKINLAY: One of our favorite writers Leslie Budewitz is with us today and she has a delightful post about the joys of traveling through the written word and how it inspired her latest. LAVENDER LIES BLEEDING.

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LESLIE BUDEWITZ: One of the joys of reading is armchair travel, right? You get to visit a place you’ve never been, or return to a place you’ve loved, with the author. Maine, with Julia. Key West, with Lucy. England – and France, Italy, and even Australia, oh and New York City – with Rhys.

 

With me, it’s Montana, where I was born and raised and still live. And Seattle, where I went to college and lived and worked as a young lawyer. I fell in love with Pike Place Market at eighteen, not long after the voters saved it from “urban removal.” Fun and funky, it was, and thanks to those voters and the historic preservation district they created, it retains its charms.

 

If, like me, you think of cobblestones, flying fish, and tales of the long-dead, top-hatted market master dancing in the upper windows of the Economy Building charming.

 

With the 9^th book, Lavender Lies Bleeding, coming out next week, I’ve been remembering a few of my favorite discoveries about the city, from living there and from researching and writing about the place. (I always say that by research, I mean eat, but as my research assistants, my BFF and Mr. Right, can attest, it also means walking. A LOT.)

 

One of the first things you see when you walk into the Market at First and Pike is Rachel, the four-foot-high bronze pig and Market mascot. She’s a piggy bank, of course, as well as a photo opp, and all the money deposited in her goes to the Market foundation for community services—emergency loans to vendors, the senior center, and more.

 

On one visit, Mr. Right and I were snooping around – with my sketchbook as my excuse, I’ll go down any ramp, hallway, or staircase in the Market. We came around a corner and saw a store room, its door open. And inside?

 

Spare pigs.

 

Big ones and little ones. On all fours like Rachel, or seated. Bronze or silver toned.

 

Turns out the spare pigs are often displayed in the Market itself. But they also travel, to pop-up Farmers’ Markets around downtown and to other regional markets and events.

 

I love public art, and it’s everywhere in the Market. These tile figures outside the restrooms at the foot of the stairs just behind the main entrance evoke the Market’s early years—it was founded in 1907 and is the oldest continuously-operating farmers’ market in the country. So when I needed a spot for a confrontation in Lavender Lies Bleeding, that staircase and these figures popped to mind.

 

Along with the cattle ramp—and Market staff confirmed to me that it was once used to bring cattle and pigs, Rachel’s flesh-and-bacon ancestors, into the Market. I first discovered it while location scouting with my BFF, and finally had a chance to use it in Lavender.

 

In my student days, I loved exploring the city’s neighborhoods. I still do, and try to take Pepper to a different one in each book. She often returns to her childhood home, where her BFF, Kristen, now lives, on Capitol Hill. In The Solace of Bay Leaves, she visits the adjacent neighborhood called Montlake. One rainy summer day, my BFF and her teenage daughter spent an afternoon sipping coffee and wandering Montlake’s streets and parks, looking for exactly the right spot for Pepper’s old frenemy, Maddie, to get into trouble. We found it—and I just managed to avoid backing into a car while taking a picture.

 

The Fremont neighborhood, probably the city’s funkiest, proudly declares itself the Center of the Universe, and since no one can prove otherwise, the King County Council officially agreed. I explored it on the pages of To Err is Cumin—a bakery I remember fondly, an underground vintage mall where Pepper finds clues in old treasures, and the Sunday Market where vendors and growers hawk their wares and bicyclists ride wearing only body paint, helmets, and shoes. Which catches Pepper quite by surprise when she finds herself taking an unexpected swim in the Ship Canal that runs through Fremont and is rescued by a pair of men in green and blue and nothing else.

 

The Market’s Flower Ladies have always made me smile. Mostly Hmong, they grow incredible blooms that always draw attention, even from visitors who can’t take a bouquet home. The action in Lavender Lies Bleeding goes between the Market and Salmon Falls, a farm town outside the city that is home to several Flower Ladies and to Pepper’s vendor pal, Lavender Liz. I got to weave together what I’d seen in the Market over the years with my experience living in a rural community, to create a new place that lives only on the page. We can call it Story Land.

 

After all, as I’ve learned after all these years with Pepper and the Spice Shop crew, stories are the spice of life.

 

Readers, where have you been on the page lately, and what did you discover about the setting that surprised or delighted you? Tell us the book and author, too, if you can, so we can enjoy a little armchair travel with you.

Lavender Lies Bleeding (Seventh St. Books, July 15, in pb, ebook, and audio)

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, is shocked when vandals destroy the greenhouse at her friend Liz Giacometti’s lavender farm. But then Liz is killed, and Pepper digs in to solve the crimes. As her questions threaten to unearth secrets others desperately want to keep buried, danger creeps closer to her and those she loves. Can Pepper root out the killer, before someone nips her in the bud?

 

Leslie Budewitz writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers' Village mysteries, set in fictional Jewel Bay, Montana, based on the small town where she lives. As Alicia Beckman, she writes standalone suspense set in Montana and the NW. Her latest books are Lavender Lies Bleeding, the 9th Spice Shop mystery, and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection. A national best-seller and three-time Agatha Award winner, Leslie believes that stories are the spice of life. 

 

Read excerpts and more, and find buy links, at www.LeslieBudewitz.com