Inspired the past Alicia Beckman on BLIND FAITH #Bookgiveaway

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Long buried secrets… For mystery writers they're the golden threads woven into our novels.

Today we’re delighted to host three-time Agatha award winner Leslie Budewitz, writing this time out as Alicia Beckman, with a just-published novel that began with her own golden threads.

Alicia Beckman/Leslie Budewitz: Fifteen books and I’m finally going home again, on the page.

Blind Faith, written as Alicia Beckman, is my fifteenth book and second standalone suspense novel. And in all those words on all those pages, only once before, in a short story, have I set anything in the town where I was born and raised, Billings, Montana, even though it’s a place I love and home to many stories.

An oddity of publishing is that by the time a book comes out, an author has usually written another book and is well into a third. I started Blind Faith in the summer of 2016, thought it was finished in early 2019, then revised it yet again in 2020. I worked on it between other projects and honestly can’t tell you how many other books and stories I’ve written since starting it. So I’ve been going back over my book journal to remind myself of the process. (Thank you to the late Sue Grafton for the brilliant tip to keep a journal for each book, to keep track not only of story ideas but your own doubts and questions.)

Boy, was I surprised by what I discovered, especially the process of overcoming doubt and finding the story. Though I’ve been practicing law for decades, I’d never written anything with a lawyer as a main character. (Corpse, yes, but that doesn’t count.) As this story emerged, I knew it was best told through multiple points of view and a dual time line, a contemporary cold case investigation interspersed with scenes from the past. Could I pull that off? Could I find the right factual twists to unearth the deep emotions that drive psychological suspense?

And I found lists of things I remembered from childhood, like this one:

Let me explain that last one. For many years, my parents bowled on Saturday nights at an alley not far from our house. It was a family-friendly place, with a kids’ play area and a lunch counter run by one of the bowlers. When he was in a good mood, he’d mix cherry Cokes and Green River sodas for the kids.

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who knew what a Green River was, so maybe it was a regional treat or Mr. Tollefson’s own invention, taking its name from the thick green syrup he mixed by hand with flavors, then added carbonation to create a lemon-lime soda.

The bowling alley also had a bar, called the Jubilee, and occasionally my parents would stop for a drink with other bowlers after the last pin fell. Kids were—still are—allowed in bars in Montana, and I enjoyed sitting in the curved leather banquette, the neon beer signs flickering in the windows, and listening to the adults talk. It was the late 1960s and talk covered the range of issues burning across the country.

One thing they did not talk about were labor unions, particularly the United Mine Workers, despite the union’s strong presence in the state and the national ruckus over allegations of corruption, rigged elections, and misuse of power and influence by union leaders, namely its president, Tony Boyle. Why? Because the head of the local, a kind, nondescript man who bowled in the same league as my parents, was Tony Boyle’s brother. A few years later, Tony Boyle was charged with embezzlement and later with conspiracy for the murders of a rival, his wife, and daughter, and was convicted. He died in prison.

Is that not fascinating, how one brother’s ambitions focus on the ten pin while the other plots a gruesome murder for hire?

When I started Blind Faith, I wanted to write about Tony Boyle, but he was too old to be connected to the key events, involving two teenage girls who meet in 1981 and again in 2016 as middle-aged women. But I could take what I perceived as his ruthlessness, his seeming talent for using people against each other, and the determination to escape the hardscrabble life of a mining family, and play that out on a local stage.

Then I read a lengthy newspaper feature about the Rainbow Bar in Billings, still owned by the same family that founded it as a beer hall shortly after Prohibition. The Jubilee was long gone, but after a dip into divedom and a thorough scrubbing, the Rainbow thrives. I hadn’t been in it in years, but could easily picture the block, a long row of two- and three-story redbrick buildings facing the railroad tracks on the edge of downtown.

I could see one of those women, lawyer Lindsay Keller, walking down the street, passing under the curved neon sign, and reaching for the old brass door handle.

While nothing on that list from the early days of Blind Faith except the school and the pop made its way into the book, those lists set my conscious and subconscious wheels turning. A lake. Brothers. A ruthless man. A fast car and a forbidden party. A murdered priest. A lawyer haunted by her choices. And a bar, where an old man mixes Green Rivers and whiskey-and-sodas with equal ease.

Readers, is there a notorious crime or criminal from your childhood that still haunts you? (Or maybe a sweet treat, lost in a childhood memory?)

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books, one lucky reader will win a copy of Blind Faith. (US addresses only.)

Alicia Beckman writes moody suspense, beginning with Bitterroot Lake (April 2021) and continuing with Blind Faith (October 2022). As Leslie Budewitz, she’s a three-time Agatha-Award winner (2011, Best Nonfiction; 2013, Best First Novel; 2018, Best Short Story) and best-selling author of the Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, inspired by Bigfork, Montana, where she lives. Leslie is a practicing lawyer, a national board member of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of Sisters in Crime.

5 Amazing things "Alicia Beckman" learned writing BITTERROOT LAKE #bookgiveaway

HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm so pleased to welcome back Leslie Budewitz, an old friend of the Jungle Red Writers, but you might not "recognize" her because she's sporting a new name (Alicia Beckman) and diving into a new genre (suspense). She's making her suspense debut with BITTERROOT LAKE.

Writing as Leslie Budewitz, she’s a three-time Agatha-Award winner (2011, Best Nonfiction; 2013, Best First Novel; 2018, Best Short Story) and best-selling author of the Spice Shop mysteries and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries.

She's here today to talk about tackling a new genre, and the five amazing things she learned along the way.

LESLIE BUDEWITZ/ALICIA BECKMAN:
1. Every writer needs a friend who is descended from packrats. As Bitterroot Lake begins, Sarah McCaskill Carter is a new widow who comes back to Montana from her home in Seattle to help her mother clean out the family’s historic lakefront lodge.

The main plot is contemporary, but when Sarah finds an old trunk filled with journals, albums, and letters from the 1920s, she’s confronted with the implications of a pair of tragedies she’d known little about. I’d seen enough old scrapbooks and albums to picture (sorry) the white ink on black pages, the black-and-white photos held with black paper corners. But I’m way down the line of descent in my extended family and half the continent away, so when I decided I had to get hands-on, I called my friend JD, keeper of a vast family collection.

Oh, my goodness. Her great-grandmother’s scrapbook, begun when she was first married and living in a logging camp. (Did I mention McCaskill Land and Lumber Company, started in the 19 teens?) Boxes and boxes of photographs and letters. And the baby books. The McCaskills lost a young daughter in 1926. When I found JD’s mother’s baby book and the baby book for the baby girl who died in 1924 at fourteen months, I felt slugged in the heart. I’d already turned in the manuscript—Covid kept us from getting together earlier—but in revisions, I was able to add the baby book, describe what the albums were made from, and sharpen the sense of discovery.

Those details helped me ground the story in reality and create a stronger emotional connection for the reader. That’s why we read fiction, right?

I’m grateful to have spent a few hours with JD’s collection, but I’ll confess, I’m equally grateful that I’m not the one who has to figure out what to do with it.

2. The freak-out in the middle is apparently part of my writing process. I’m writing away, sure I know what the story’s about—not just the plot, but what’s it’s really about, the emotional core—then at some point in the middle, it all becomes a hopeless squiggle.

I torture myself with too much thinking, make too many notes, take long walks, drink wine, talk to myself and poor, tolerant Mr. Right, and then, it hits me. I know what the story is really about. And the rest of the draft flows.

For The Solace of Bay Leaves, that meant tossing an entire plot line and acknowledging that Pepper’s friendship with Maddie wasn’t incidental but the heart of the story. For Bitterroot Lake, it meant recognizing the central role of Sarah’s family history.

It’s painful as heck, but apparently I have to write half the book before It All Becomes Clear. I’m hoping that starting the WIP with a stronger sense of the emotional conflict for both sleuth and killer shortens the process. I’ll let you know in a week or two.

3. Toilet tissue was invented in 1857. In the trunk, Sarah finds a dried rose on top of a little girl’s dress, tucked away in 1926. Wrapped in what? I asked my friend Google when tissue paper was invented. This was right when the pandemic started and Google was fixated on toilet tissue, not what I had in mind.

When I changed my search to wrapping paper, I learned that the two are related. In 1863, Ebenezer Butterick began using tissue paper for his newly-invented graded sewing patterns, and its use for gift-wrapping began a few years later.

4. Phyllis Ramey loved baseball. As she’s unraveling the mysteries from a century earlier, Sarah visits a cemetery in the fictional town of Deer Park. I pictured a weeping willow and a stone lamb on the grave of a child, but before writing the scene, I wanted a deeper sense of the place. So, on a clear blue day last May, desperate to leave home for a few hours, Mr. Right and I made a field trip to two historic cemeteries not far away.

Old cemeteries are fascinating, each grave a story. I will never know why long-ago descendants emblazoned MOTHER in gold on a massive boulder in the cemetery at the University of Notre Dame—or how she would have felt. And the story of the fourteen-foot high statue of a young girl standing beside a woman in a wheelchair at Lakeview Cemetery in Seattle seems lost to the ages. But I know, from a flat stone in the cemetery in Creston, Montana, decorated with a photo and the image of a baseball, that Phyllis Ramey loved the game.

I never met her, but that stone made me love her so much.

5. The first thing everyone wants to know—and so, perversely, the last thing I’ll tell you—is who is Alicia Beckman? My publisher asked me to use a pen name to distinguish Bitterroot Lake from my cozy mysteries. It’s moodier, for sure—the cover and copy tell you that—but it’s not like I’ve gone from being Jessica Fletcher to Hannibal Lecter.



My books all stem from the events of women’s lives, with crime, and this book is no exception. My mother’s name was Alice and my father often called her Alicia. The Beckmans were my maternal great-grandparents and I kept a picture of them on my desk as I wrote; they are my visual image of Sarah’s great-grandparents, though their lives were nothing alike. Odd as it sounds, I like thinking of them watching me, wondering what on earth this crazy great-granddaughter is up to.

Hey, I wonder that myself sometimes, especially during that squiggle in the middle.

Readers, learned something fun or intriguing from a recent read? I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books, one lucky reader will win a hardcover copy of Bitterroot Lake. And if you buy the book and would like a signed bookplate, drop me a line with your mailing address (leslie@lesliebudewitz.com)


ABOUT BITTERROOT LAKE: When four women separated by tragedy reunite at a lakeside Montana lodge, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the terrifying accident that tore them apart, in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman's suspense debut.

Twenty-five years ago, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah's guilt over having ignored the warning in her dreams devastated her. Her friendships with her closest friends, and her sister, fell apart as she worked to build a new life in a new city. But she never stopped loving Whitetail Lodge on the shores of Bitterroot Lake.

Now that she's a young widow, her mother urges her to return to the lodge for healing. But when she arrives, she's greeted by an old friend--and by news of a murder that's clearly tied to that tragic day she'll never forget.

And the dreams are back, too. What dangers are they warning of this time? As Sarah and her friends dig into the history of the lodge and the McCaskill family, they uncover a legacy of secrets and make a discovery that gives a chilling new meaning to the dreams. Now, they can no longer ignore the ominous portents from the past that point to a danger more present than any of them could know.