What We're Writing Week: Writing for Listeners as well as Readers

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you read JRW, you've heard a lot about what goes into the imaginative grist mill of a writer's mind. Travel to different places. News stories. Real historical events. And the ways we express ourselves: point of view, structure, outlining or organic. In short, there are a lot of items jostling for space on the author's To-Write list.

One of those items on my list is writing for the audio book. I love the audio versions of my series, performed by the wonderful Suzanne Toren, and thinking about how my words will be read has changed my writing in subtle ways. I try to leave off as many "he said," and "she said"s as I can, because when you're listening to the narrator, it's perfectly obvious who said what.

I try to give clues about the differences in people's speech without spelling it out, so instead of, "'I'm perfectly fine to drive myself,' she said in a haughty tone," I'll have "'I'm perfectly fine to drive myself.' Her voice made Russ think of the rich women on the North side of town." Let's face it, the latter is a much more interesting way to describe a person speaking, isn't it?

And because Suzanne is so good at accents, it's pushed me to make my cast more diverse, which, I confess, isn't anything I originally thought of. I know the area my Millers Kill is based on, and it's pretty goshdarn white, inhabited largely by people whose ancestors settled in the lower Adirondacks no later than the 1880s. But there's no reason I can't have a European doctor, or an assistant district attorney whose family came from Vietnam. Or characters who are Black or Iroquois or Quebecois. 

So when I knew I was going to introduce officer Kevin Flynn's family in Through the Evil Days, I decided to make Irish-American Flynn the son of an Irish immigrant father. (There's a whole history. I should write it as a short story some day.) Since one of the plot lines of my work-in-progress, At Midnight Comes the Cry, is the mysterious disappearance of Kevin, I couldn't resist the chance to bring his dad, Sean, back on the scene for a bit.

They had joked about Kevin Flynn being Irish, but Russ had no idea he was Irish-Irish until meeting his father. “This is it. Turn here.” Sean Flynn sounded like a tour guide from the auld sod, but instead of a castle in Limerick, they were approaching a street of small houses hard against the bank of the Seneca River in Baldwinsville. “Here 'tis.” Sean pointed to a small, neat house with a red door and green metal roof. No curb in this neighborhood; Russ parked at the edge of the frost-stricken lawn.

He figured he had been on the road to this house since Hadley Knox had asked him where he thought Flynn might be. Between his former officer and Clare's pointed comments, he decided to do the smart thing and surrender. He was glad he had, though, when he contacted Flynn's parents, who were so worried about their middle son's disappearance, Sean Flynn had volunteered to drive the three hours across New York state to let Russ into the rented house. “I know you'll want to keep it all on the up-and-up, and I have his key and his permission, and I suppose they're both still good, even if he gave them over near a year ago.”

Russ had turned him down, preferring to make the trip in his own truck, but Sean had come along for the ride. Russ grabbed his jacket from the back seat and got out. “Nice little place.”

“It's small, but the back garden runs straight down to the river, with stairs and a wee dock. I told him if he wanted to buy, we could expand toward the road here or raise the roof to put in a second floor...” Sean's voice died away. He pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the front door.

They walked into a mudroom space at the end of a galley-style kitchen. Everything was clean and neat. No clothing waiting in the stacked washer and dryer. He opened the fridge. Condiments, bottled water, a six-pack, but no food left to spoil. The freezer was stuffed with frozen meals and ice cream that had crystalized over.

“Does Kevin like to cook? Would he have milk and eggs and that sort of stuff?”

“He isn't much to make his own dinner, but he likes cereal and his sandwiches.” Sean paused beside Russ. “That looks cleaned out to me.”

“Me, too.”

“Is that a good sign?”

“Well, it means he probably left of his own accord, and he had enough time to plan his departure and get rid of everything that might spoil.” He shut the refrigerator door. The kitchen opened into a great room beneath a peaked roof, with a TV watching spot on one side and a desk and bookcases on the other. He could see the promised view of the river through a glass-fronted door framed with two wide picture windows. “Why don't you check his bedroom and see what clothes might be missing. I'll take a look at his desk.”

 

What do you think, dear readers? Do you "hear" accents in your head as you read a book, or do you wait for the audio edition? If you're a fan of the latter, who are some of your favorite narrators?

What We're Writing Week: Julia Spencer-Fleming and HID FROM OUR EYES

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My offering for What We're Writing week is a continuation of the scene I shared with you two weeks ago.  Kevin Flynn, formerly the youngest officer on the Millers Kill Police Force took a job with the Syracuse PD at the end of my last book, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS. This scene will be the first time we see him in HID FROM OUR EYES (Probably. Like Deborah said yesterday, the order of things are still in flux.)

One of the great pleasures of writing  series is seeing characters grow and change, and in my books, no one has grown and changed as much as Flynn. When we first meet him, in IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, he's barely twenty-two, and so new to the job of policing that he practically claps his hands in glee at seeing his first suspicious death.  We follow him through the next seven books as he gets older, gains experience, stops copying his elders and starts thinking for himself. He learns to doubt authority, even the authority of people he cares for and respects. He falls in love. He does some things he never, ever thought he'd do when he was still a rookie.

Now, at twenty-seven, he's left his home town and is breaking out of the limits of his previous position. And, of course, he's changed from being a gawky, too-skinny kid to being a very attractive man - which gives me another excuse to pepper this post with pictures of hunky redheads.

Kevin unfolded his legs and stood up, shaking his feet and arms loose, trying to look stiff instead of jittery. He took another drag, letting the nicotine work it's magic along his nerve ends. He had been surprised, at his first meeting at the DEA Central New York HIDTA, by how many of the cops and deputies and agents there smoked. After being part of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force for three months, he didn't wonder any more. 

 

“Oh. Hey. Here he comes.” Brock jumped to his feet, brushing grass off his backside. Kevin scooped his phone off the ground. “Just be cool, man. Don't, you know, speak unless spoken to.”

Kevin nodded. The man walking toward them was short, with a prison gym physique and, Kevin saw when he got closer, tats to match. Ink on his neck, probably from a sharpened paper clip and a ballpoint pen. Very painful, very hard core. The man stopped several feet away. Midway between the lights of the athletic fields and those of the running paths, it was just dim enough to blur his features. He stared at Kevin for a long moment before switching his attention to Brock.

“Frat Boy.”

Brock lifted his hand in a gesture that was half greeting, half surrender. “Easy. Thanks for meeting us.” He nodded toward Kevin. “This is my friend Irish I told you about.”

Kevin stepped forward. “My name's--”

“I don't want to know your name. And you don't get to know mine. What you don't know, you can't tell.” Easy turned toward Brock again. “This kid's an amateur.”

Brock shook his head. “He's a good salesman, man. Really good. He's been selling for me and I can't keep him supplied anymore. He goes places – well, you know. I don't feel comfortable everywhere.”

“You're a pussy, kid. I don't mind that, because you got good connections at the hospital.” Easy looked at Kevin. “He's selling so he can take a five-finger discount on the stuff for himself and to piss off Dr. Mom and Dad.” 

 

“Hey!” Brock objected.

Easy lifted his chin toward Kevin. “What's your story, kid?” 

 

“I was studying at t' university, but my money ran out.”

Easy's stone face cracked a little with surprise. “You're really Irish. I thought it was just because of the hair.”

“Yeah.” Kevin rubbed at his red beard. “Because I wasn't enrolled anymore, my student visa expired, so I can't work legally. I need to make money, a lot of it, and this is somet'ing I'm good at.”

“Why'nt you just go home?” 

 

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“T'ats my business.” He had a reason, if he had to give it, but it was better to keep something hidden. A fake secret to distract from the real one.

“You a cop?”

Kevin laughed. “No. Are you?”

Bonus Sam Heughan in leather and a kilt!

HID FROM OUR EYES and Hot Red-Headed Men; or; The Lazy Woman's Blog

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Yesterday was a long, long travel day. Getting in and out of Boston was complicated by 1)snow-clogged streets and highways 2) Friday traffic 3)Start of February school vacation in Massachusetts. I arrived at home late, tired, hungry and with NO idea what to blog about today. So guess what! You're getting a book excerpt from HID FROM OUR EYES! (And yes, the week after next is What We're Writing Week and you'll get one then, as well.) To prove exactly how tired and imagination-deprived I am, I'm illustrating this entirely with pictures of hot red-headed men. Please feel free to complain in the comments...;-)

“We should have brought beer,” Brock Smith said, stretching his legs out on the grass.

Kevin Flynn tucked his hair behind his ears. The sun was well on its way to setting, its long rays streaming through the very tops of the trees in Onondaga Park, leaving the walking paths and green places in a hazy blue twilight. The lights ringing the Little League fields were already on, brilliant flares against the violet sky.

It was swampy hot, without even a breeze across the park's man-made lake to cut the heat. For a moment, Kevin's mind went home to the mountains, where the winds would shift at twilight and begin blowing from the east. The streetlights of the town would be on, and they'd walk down to the river and swim in the cold, clean current, so different from the still-polluted Onondaga Lake--

Brock nudged his shoulder. “Irish? You're not losing it now, are you?”

Kevin snapped back to the here-and now, where his home was in Ireland, not the Adirondacks, and where he was going to scramble up the next rung of the prescription drug dealer ladder if he didn't blow the whole thing by getting distracted. “Nah. I was just t'inking. You're right, a beer would be good right now.” He glanced around. Nothing but joggers and dog-walkers on the path and a cluster of teens shoving a soccer ball around in a way that suggested they'd rather be texting. “Wouldn't want to be picked up for open carry, though.”

“God, you're paranoid.” Brock flopped back on the grass with the utter carelessness of boy whose parents were rich enough to get him out of any trouble. 

 

“Soon as I open my mouth, even a park ranger would be asking for my ID.” Mouth came out as mout'. One thing he didn't have to worry about was the accent. Until he emigrated to America to join his brothers in Boston, Kevin's dad had lived his whole live within a mile of Limerick's Treaty Stone. Kevin's slang might be a little dated, but the cadence of the Irish Mid-West was embedded in his brain from birth.

“Oh, man. Easy is gonna love you. He's always going on about, like, double and triple checking everybody.” Brock eased a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held it out. Kevin pulled one and picked up his lighter, laying on the grass next to his phone.

“T'anks.” He took a deep drag. Kevin-from-Millers Kill had never smoked in his life, but Kevin-from-Limerick did. It was alarming how quickly it had gone from being camouflage to being a pleasure. He tossed the lighter to Brock. “When's he going to get here?”

“He'll be on time. He likes to run it like a business, you know?” Brock sucked on his cigarette. “Swear to God, I'm learning more about enterprise economics and organization here than I am in B-school. It's all about distributors, supply chains--”

“Shrinkage.”

“Hey, I don't use up much of the stock. That's just a bonus.”

“He doesn't like it, though.”

“I'm the best distributor he's got. That's why he's letting me introduce you.”

“Yeah. I appreciate it, mate.” The reason Brock had become the top producer over the past two months was because Kevin, selling for him, had unloaded one hundred percent of the inventory at top price. To the Syracuse Police Department, a detail he had failed to share with the grad student. Kevin had no doubt he was going to be Easy's best distributor as well. As long as this meeting went well.