LUCY BURDETTE: Today the blog welcomes back longtime friend Sherry Harris with her new book. Don't forget to leave a comment to be entered into a drawing for a copy!
SHERRY HARRIS: Thanks Lucy and Reds for having me back to celebrate the release of A Time to Swill, the second book in my Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon series which is set in the panhandle of Florida. Authors get ideas for books from so many different places and the origin story for A Time to Swill is no different.
I have visited Destin, Florida many times since 1988 and lived in nearby Shalimar for three years. One of my dear friends from there, Clare Boggs, helped me research for the series. We went to beach bars (such tough research!), drove by houses to find the perfect one for Chloe, picked out her car, and spent hours talking about what Chloe’s life would look like. Sadly, Clare died unexpectedly in 2019. As I write this series (I’m now writing the fourth book) I think of Clare and call her the angel on my shoulder.
Clare also gave me a file folder of articles she’d clipped from the local newspaper. She thought they might be helpful for story ideas. When I preparing to write A Time to Swill last year, I picked the folder back up and went through the articles. One was about an old house that was being moved from one location to another. Hmmm, that had a lot of possibilities. Another article was about a phantom ship that had washed up on the beach, washed back out, and then back onto the beach near the bar I ended up using as a model for the Sea Glass Saloon.
That story caught my imagination. First, I discovered a phantom or ghost ships as they are called don’t have any paranormal activity occurring. They are abandoned ships or boats adrift at sea. Second, I did what all authors do in one form or another and thought, “what if?” What if Chloe got on the boat? What if while she was on it the boat went back out to sea? That was the kernel of the idea the opens the story.
Chloe runs almost every morning. What if it’s foggy and she spots this sailboat bobbing at an odd angle near one of the sandbars that runs along the coast in Destin, Florida—the town near my fictional town of Emerald Cove. But why would she get on the boat? There must be some compelling reason. Ooohhh, I thought, what if she heard a baby cry and what if when she calls out, but no one answers. Chloe must take action—right after calling 911 to report the whole thing.
The actual boat that ran aground in Destin was named The Phantom of the Aqua – isn’t that perfect? A man was sailing the boat from near St. Petersburg, Florida to the U.S. Virgin Islands. He got caught in a tropical storm, his sails ripped apart, and his engine died. He had to be rescued by the Coast Guard in a helicopter. The man assumed the sailboat sank, until he heard the news two months later that it turned up in Destin hundreds of nautical miles away from where he abandoned it. Here’s a link to the news article. The photos of the sailboat are amazing.
While Chloe is on the abandoned ship she finds a cat not a baby, but she also finds a skeleton. The remains connect back to her friend Ralph. His wife had disappeared twelve years earlier with three other people when they went out sailing. Ralph has always been a suspect in her disappearance. And now old wounds in Emerald Cove have been ripped back open. Chloe must figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth.
Readers: Do you let your imagination run wild when you read an interesting story? I’ll give away a copy of A Time to Swill to someone who leaves a comment.
Bio:
Sherry Harris is the Agatha Award nominated author of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mystery series and the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mysteries. Sherry is a past president of Sisters in Crime, a member of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, the New England Chapter of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. Sherry loves books, beaches, bars, and Westies — not necessarily in that order. She is also a patent holding inventor.
Blog: https://wickedauthors.com/
Twitter: Sharrisauthor
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Website: https://sherryharrisauthor.com
