What I'm writing: Julia Spencer-Fleming

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I get the anchor spot because I'm still touring for THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS (but I'm almost home!) Touring for the newly-published book while working on the next one puts my head in an odd place: by day, I'm deep into the events of HID FROM THEIR EYES (working title for the 9th Clare and Russ book) and by night (or afternoon, if I'm doing a tea-time appearance) I'm talking about the writing of the last book. Sometimes I get confused, but no one can tell because confusion is my normal state.


So: HID FROM OUR EYES. It's a book about fathers and sons,  real and replacement, and the way young men look up to and model themselves on their older mentors. It's also about a series of deaths occuring in 1951 and 1972 and the present day (which is 2006 in the series) all of which appear to be identical. And of course it's about Russ and Clare and the tangled, angry relationship between officers Hadley Knox and Kevin Flynn. Here's a no-spoiler excerpt: 

     He had parked his cruiser in the muddy verge of the county highway, a little way from the circus that was going on up the road. That gave the Millers Kill chief of police the chance to surreptitiously twist and crack his back and flex his knees, which felt every one of his fifty-odd years after being hauled out of bed at four am. He never could have survived being a dairy farmer, that was for damn sure.

     He checked around to make sure no one had seen his display and tugged his wool cap down around his ears. His own cap, not MKPD-issued. He was here on courtesy, not on right, and he had tried to parse the difference with his clothing: his winter uniform blouse and departmental coat over heavy twill pants and his old boots.

     The state police had cordoned off the road coming and going and had two enormous lamps illuminating the crime scene. He trudged up the side of the road, past the other cop cars and the mortuary van, his footsteps uneven on the rutted, half-frozen mud. They had had a thaw the past few days, which he was experienced enough to know wouldn't last, and the bright fluffy snowbanks of January had shrunk into dirty hard obstacles, turning every patch of bare ground into a morass of slush and mud.

     He ducked beneath the tape and approached the scene. Two evidence officers: one the camera man, the other bent over searching for anything that might prove useful in the investigation. Which wasn't ever much – ninety-nine out of a hundred crimes were solved by knocking on doors until someone talked, in his experience. Two detectives in overcoats that made them look like they were headed for the executive offices at General Electric, smoking and talking. One uniform, the first man on the scene.

           “Hey!” A detective spotted him. He recognized the man; Stan Carruthers, a hotshot from downstate who was disgruntled by his exile , as he saw it, to the hinterlands of Troop G. “What're you doing here?” Carruthers glared at the uniform, whose charge was securing the scene and who should have stopped anyone from crossing the line. The trooper tried to appear innocent, and mostly got it right, since he was so young he looked as if he ought to be home sleeping in his mother's house, not guarding a corpse.

           “Who's this?” the second detective asked.

           “Harry McNeil, Millers Kill chief of police.” Harry held out his hand and the the other man shook it automatically. “Pleasure to meet you.”

           “There's no need for you to be here, McNeil.” Carruthers sounded more bored than upset. “We're almost finished up.”

     Harry got his first good look at the body. A young woman, barely more than a girl, sprawled face-forward in a tangle of limbs and hair. She was wearing a fancy dress, a party dress, with petticoats frothed up over her back. Bare feet. No stockings. It looked as if she had collapsed while walking down the road and fallen asleep. 

           “Any idea as to the cause of death?” Harry directed his question to the evidence officer.

     The man shook his head. “No signs of violence from here. We're about to move her, though, so maybe we'll see something from the front.”

           “It's obvious,” Carruthers said. “Some good-time girl, got liquored up and passed out and froze to death. I've seen it before.”

           “In Cossayuharie? In the middle of Route fifty-seven?” Harry looked around. On either side of the two-lane road, fields rolled away in silent darkness. To the west, the first Adirondack hills that would gather and crest a hundred miles away in the High Peaks showed black against the faint starlit sky. Not a single farmhouse light relieved the gloom.

     Carruthers waved his cigarette. “Maybe her john wouldn't pay up. They had a fight, she stumbled out of the car to show him what's what, he took off.”

           “Without her shoes and stockings. Or coat.”

     Carruthers frowned. “Drunks do stupid things, McNeil.”

The mortuary men had left the comfort of their wagon and were placing their stretcher next to the body. “Okay boys,” the evidence officer said. “Nice and easy.”

     They rolled the corpse over, depositing her neatly on her back. Everyone moved closer to get a look. Pretty. Young. No blood, no bruises, no scratches or ripped fabric or anything to indicate she might have been attacked.

           “See?” Carruthers took a last drag and flicked his stub away, a sure sign that he no longer considered this a crime scene. If he ever had. “She passed out and died of exposure.”

     Harry looked at the evidence man again. “Have you found anything? Shoes and stockings? Handbag?”

     The officer shook his head. “Nothing. And I did a thorough search, up and down the road.” His tone was bland, but his eyes shifted to the detectives for a moment. Harry could picture Carruthers yelling at the man to stop wasting his time and for God's sake just get the body bagged already. “Either side of the road as well, although we ought to go back over it in daylight to make sure.”

           “Oh, for Christ's sake. Can one of you geniuses give me any other reason she'd be here like this?”

     There was a pause as Harry turned the picture over in his head.

           “Murdered and dumped.” Everyone turned toward the speaker. It was the responding trooper.

           “Oh, great,” Carruthers said. “Now even the traffic cops are detectives. What's your theory of the crime, Sherlock?”

Reality or Fiction?

LUCY BURDETTE: We've probably talked about this before (what haven't we talked about??)--but it's on my mind as I scramble to the finish line for Topped Chef. I like to use real places in my books. In the case of the food critic mysteries, this means real Key West restaurants and even some real characters. I can wallow in chocolate crepes at La Creperie or shrimp and grits at Louie's Backyard because it's critical research.

I do have a couple of guidelines: I won't pan places that I dislike (because who needs bad publicity and lawsuits) and I would never poison someone in a real restaurant! There are drawbacks--like people pointing out little mistakes in my geography, and shops disappearing by the time the book hits bookshelves. (In AN APPETITE FOR MURDER, I mentioned Voltaire Bookstore, whose bones are sadly now interred in a bookstore graveyard!)

On the other hand, readers seem to like the realness of the series. Here's an email I got last week from Sharon Porter: "I enjoyed your descriptions of Key West.  Because I've never been there, I used street-view in Google Maps to locate the eateries and other locations you used as background.  It was great fun and made me feel as though I was there with Hayley in the story!"

I loved hearing that! So how about you Reds, how much of what you write is real? And for readers, do you like your settings real or imaginary?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Whenever I ask my husband a question and he answers "Both!" I want to scream - but I'm about to do the same. I do both. My first three books were set in the fictional town of Springfield, CT - somewhere in between Boston and New York and light years from both. I thought it was safe to create a fictional town and I would be spared the research on non-critical details that were not germane to the story. Not so. Someone complained on Amazon that the town was not in southeastern CT (It is if I say it is...)and someone else wrote to the publisher to say there was no mountain in CT as high as one I describe. Cripes! It's not as if I said Everest was in Fairfield County.

So I write an amalgam of real and fiction. Slugfest is set at a legendary northeast flower show which was originally supposed to be the Philly Flower Show, but I quickly realized that I'd hurt feelings - and possibly never be invited back - if I didn't move it. I don't think the story suffered and the folks at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society promoted it on their blog so that one turned out okay!

HALLIE EPHRON: The idea for Never Tell a Lie came to me at a real yard sale at a real Victorian house around the corner from me. The wonderful house that David and Ivy own in the book is in the same exact location as the yard sale house. But the details and interior are a fabulous Victorian that my husband and I bid on when we were house hunting years ago. The people who bought that house found a hidden room which of course I had to put in the book.

I'm taking a risk with my next book ("There Was an Old Woman") which is out in April, setting it in a completely fictional neighborhood (Higgs Point) in a real geographic location (the Bronx near the end of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge). I've made up everything about this neighborhood except its location, its view, and its history. Hopefully those who know better will be kind.

And Lucy: I think you should organize a Snow food tour of Key West - I'd come!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: THE OTHER WOMAN is set in Boston. Real Boston. A big scary scene takes place on the Esplanade--you know, the field by the Charles River where they have the fourth of July fireworks? But there are things I just don't want to do--like have someone killed in a real place. And there's a campaign headquarters in a real building--I can picture it and know right where it is--but I change the name of the building. Jane Ryland lives in Brookline in a place I know very well..but I changed the name of the street.

So I add places that don't exist, and then in the acknowledgments, say: I've taken some liberties. If you weren't familiar with Boston, though, you'd never know.

RHYS BOWEN: I have set myself the daunting task of setting my books in a real place and time. The Molly Murphy series in New York City, early 1900s. Molly lives in a real house (and I had the joy of the present owner writing to share pictures with me, inviting me to their block party). So everything has to be right. She buys a hair ribbon from a real dry good store. She dines in a real restaurant. Luckily this was the age of the Brownie camera so I can find a photograph of almost any street and see the name of the tailor's shop. This pays off as I've got many letters from New Yorkers telling me how I remind them of their early childhood.

All this work might not be necessary but if I use names and places that people know to be real, it affirms the reality of the story.

In the Royal Spyness books I have to be more careful as much of the story takes place in London--which I think I know well and thus don't double check. I made one awful mistake when I put Claridges on the wrong street (and my parents lived next door to the night manager of Claridges. How can I live that down?)
So now I am more careful.

JAN BROGAN -I've approached it both ways.  Both  Final Copy, which was Boston, and the  Hallie Ahern series in Rhode Island made good use of reality  - and I think most readers get a kick out of knowing the street where Hallie lived or the restaurant where she ate or the lake where the dead body was dumped.   But I also wrote a novel called The Devil In Waverley, where the town of Waverley was a fictional seaside town that the tourists passed as they sped by on the highway on the way to Cape Cod. The town itself became so much a character that I had to make up everything from its whaling history to its crazy annual Fourth of July display to the tradition it had for burying its most prestigious citizens. And I have to tell you, I don't know if I've ever had so much fun.

Now, I'm back to reality- st least reality in 1860. As Rhys had already pointed out, it's another layer of challenge getting it all right when everything looked so much different back then.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I love historical fiction, but honestly, I don't know if I could do the kind of research Rhys and Jan have committed to. I've heard readers are even more unforgiving of historical errors than they are of firearms...and we all know what happens if you get a gun wrong in a book!

I made Millers Kill, the scene for my novels, fictional precisely to avoid people telling me I got this street or that shop wrong. On the other hand, I know that part of New York State very well, and the three towns covered by the MKPD are based on real places: Hudson Falls, Argyle and Fort Edward, NY. I try to create a sense of reality by having the people in Millers Kill interact with real things in the area: they read the Glens Falls Post Star, they listen to WAMC, they go sailing in Lake George and shopping in Saratoga.

Of course, I didn't know when I started out that eight books in, I was going to have a four page name bible so I could keep all my made up streets, highways,
 neighborhoods and businesses straight!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I take pretty much the same approach as Lucy. Most of my settings are real.  You can walk down the streets in Notting Hill, and although I never say exactly where Duncan and Gemma's fictional house is, you can probably find it (Although theirs is actually quite different from the house in that spot.  I love using real places and hopefully making them come to life for the reader.  However, I do NOT say negative things about real establishments. And sometimes I change a name of a place I do like because I've put in characters that are, of course, fictional. In the new book (The Sound of Broken Glass, out in February) I've called a real pub, The White Hart, The White Stag. The White Hart is a very nice pub, and you can easily find it on the map from the description in the book. But I've given the fictional manager a name, so just felt more comfortable giving the pub a fictional name as well. So it's just little tweaks like that. Keeps you guessing...

And for fans of the series, if you do a walking tour in Notting Hill, you won't find Otto's Cafe.  It's magic--it only appears for the characters.

How about you Jungle Red Readers--reality or fiction in your fiction?

An Original Millers Kill Short Story: Away in a Manger

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here at Jungle Red Writers, we discuss about as wide-ranging set of topics as you might hope to find. But let's face it, a certain amount of blogging time will be devoted to pushing our novels. In my case, my publisher is reissuing my backlist - my old books - in spiffy new trade paperback editions, complete with new artwork, interviews, reading group guides, etc., etc. The first one, In the Bleak Midwinter, is releasing January 3rd.

To help spread the word, Minotaur is also offering In the Bleak Midwinter in ebook format for only $2.99. Then at the end of January, they're offering the second in the series for $2.99 as well. At the end of February - you got it, the third ebook gets marked down to $2.99. This is a shameless ploy not dissimilar to the cigarette companies giving away thousands of packs of free smokes to the GIs during WWII. Their goal, and mine, is to turn you into slavering addicts, eager to rush out and buy every book in the series. (The only health warning attached to my mysteries, of course, is that you risk staying up all night if you start a book in the evening.)

But if the ebook sells the trade paperback, what sells the ebook? How about a free, original short story, set in the fictional Adirondack town of Millers Kill? I've been releasing a series of Christmas-themed flash fiction on my personal blog (you can find the first two here and here.) Yes, Christmas day is over, but good Episcopalians like the Rev. Clare Fergusson know Christmas is a season that runs until January 6th. So: set after my fourth book, To Darkness and to Death:

Away in a Manger
by Julia Spencer-Fleming

The fourth Sunday in Advent. The last of the four weeks of preparation before the feast of Christmas. The vestment and altar colors are Sarum blue or purple. The collect begins, “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation...” And in St. Alban's, Millers Kill, it was time for the Christmas pageant.

“Sydney, hold still.” The Reverend Fergusson struggled to tie a donkey-eared hat beneath the chin of a wriggling three year old.

“I want wings!” the little girl yelled. “I want angel wings!”

Ned Donovan, who had taken on the thankless job of directing the pageant, leaned down. “Sydney, you didn't learn the angel song. You learned the animal song. Won't it be fun to sing it right up next to baby Jesus?”

“I want wings!”

Clare Fergusson looked over to where the last of the angelic choir were suiting up in satin sacks and tinsel halos. “Can't you stick her in an angel costume? It doesn't really matter if she sings or not.”

He sighed. “Sure. Whatever. Come on, Sydney, let's get you changed. You can be an angel.”

“No!” The child's shriek was even louder. “I'm a donkey! With angel wings!”

Ned looked at Clare and spread his hands.

She nodded. “Jesus is a Bitty Baby doll and two of the three kings are girls. I don't think a winged donkey will be stretching it too much.”

“Okay, then. Come on, Sydney. Let's get your wings on.”

Clare left the other volunteers – mostly moms – to herd the cast out of the Sunday school room and into the church for their final rehearsal. She sprinted ahead to the sanctuary, where two dads were muscling the stable roof onto its cross-barred supports. The manger was already in place in front of the altar, with two bales of real hay thoughtfully provided for Mary and Joseph to sit. One of the benefits of being in a small, rural town. She was checking to make sure the two microphones were turned on when she spotted the tall man coming through the narthex doors.

It was Russ Van Alstyne.

Her stomach bottomed out. She replaced the mike in its stand and walked steadily down the aisle. He was in civvies, instead of his police uniform. “Chief Van Alstyne,” she said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

“Reverend Fergusson.” He paused, then looked past her, frowning. “I didn't expect so many people here.”

“It's a church. At Christmastime.” He gave her a look, and she relented. “This is the day we have our Christmas pageant The kids do a dress rehearsal at nine and perform it at the ten o'clock Eucharist.”

“Ah.” He glanced around at the stone pillars and arched windows of St. Alban's. “No Christmas decorations?”

“It's still Advent. We'll green the church later this afternoon. Did you come here to check out the holiday décor?” She tugged Russ to one side as Nathan Andernach pushed his way through the narthex door. She smiled and waved at the verger. “Perhaps I can get you a schedule of the services?”

“I'm not going to be in town for Christmas.”

“Oh. You're--” her voice faltered. “You won't?”

Russ looked around again. The pageant kids were shuffling in the side door to the church, in roughly their order of appearance. They would process down the north aisle, up the center of the sanctuary, and take their seats in the front pew, hopefully without the youngest getting distracted or taking stage fright. “Is there some place we could go for a little privacy? Your office?”

She shook her head. “I need to be here.” She swallowed. She had a feeling she didn't want to hear whatever it was he was going to say. “Could we meet after services? I have an hour or so before the greening.” She paused for a moment, because she rarely invited him into her home, but if he needed privacy-- “You could come to the rectory.”

He looked down at his boots. “God. I wish I could. But I'll be gone. I'm leaving—we're leaving for Montreal. I have to be at the train station in an hour.”

“Montreal.” With his wife. Of course.

“We're going for a week. Linda has this idea--” he turned and faced her for the first time, “--you know we're in marriage therapy.”

Clare nodded.

“Linda has this idea that we need time away together. Sort of a...” his voice trailed off.

“A second honeymoon.”

His lips tightened. “The therapist says it's a good thing, to break out of our usual rhythms.”

“Yes.”

“Montreal will be beautiful at Christmas.”

“Yes.”

“We've got Duane and Tim coming in to cover the extra patrols. So they won't even notice I'm gone at the station.”

“Yes.”

“I don't want to go.” His voice was a whisper. “A whole week without seeing you or talking with you--” he removed his glasses and wiped his hand over his eyes. “Christ, I sound like a whiny little kid, don't I?”

The real little kids had assembled in their pews. Mary and Gabriel were taking their places as the narrator – one of the teens in the youth group – read, “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth...”

“No,” Clare said. “You sound like a man gearing up to do the right thing.”

“I want to fix my marriage. I swear to God I do. But I can't just turn off these feelings.” He reached toward her. “Clare, I--”

“Don't say it.” She wrapped her arms around herself, “Please don't say it. It doesn't help.”

He let his hand drop.

In front of the altar, Gabriel spread her wings flamboyantly. “HAIL, oh FAVORED one, the LORD is WITH you!”

“That's great.” Ned Donovan's voice drifted up the aisle toward them. “Maybe a little less...dramatic?”

Russ snorted. “Sounds like she's understudying for Evita.”

Clare smiled a little. “The angel of the annunciation and the Fear-not angel tend to be played by the less, um, reticent children.”

“Did you do this when you were a kid?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What part did you play?”

She smiled outright at him. “All of them. I started as a cow and worked my way up through shepherd, angel choir, king's page, king and both speaking angel roles to reach the pinnacle of Christmas pageant success – Mary.”

“Where do you go after you've been Mary?”

She gestured to her black clericals. “As you see, I had to enter the priesthood.”

He smiled a little. “God, I love you.”

Clare shook her head. She felt a hot pricking behind her eyes. At the front of the church, Mary stood up. Bits of hay stuck to the backside of her blue robe. “Behold,” she said. “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

“It doesn't matter what you feel or what I feel.” Clare kept her eyes on the rehearsal. “What matters is what we do. I'm going to get through the fourth Sunday of Advent and two services on Christmas eve and another one on Christmas morning. You're going to go to Montreal with your wife and put all your effort into closing the gap between the two of you.”

She glanced at him. He was facing the rehearsal as well. He nodded, a sort of jerk of the chin. “Yeah. You're right.”

A four-foot-high centurion marched to the center of the aisle and unrolled a scroll. “A decwee fwom Caesah Augustus and Quiwinius, govewnah of Sywia. All the wowld shall be taxed.”

“Low bar for auditions?” Russ said.

“No auditions. Everybody plays a part if they want to.”

“Yeah.” He turned to her. He did not touch her. “Merry Christmas, Clare.”

She didn't try to smile. She could at least be honest with her face. “Merry Christmas, Russ.” She didn't watch him as he left, but she felt the push of cold wind at her back when he passed through the narthex. At the front of the church, the animals gathered by the manger. There were two cows, a dog, a cat, one duck and something striped that was either a zebra or a tiger. And there was a donkey. With wings.

“Away in a manger, no crib for his bed.” They were in tune, more or less. “The little lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.”

Clare started down the aisle. It doesn’t matter what you feel. It matters what you do. “The stars in the sky looked down where he lay,” she sang. “The little lord Jesus, asleep in the hay.”

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