A Modest Proposal

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING

We live in dark times. No, I'm not talking about politics, or North Korean nuclear missiles, or the fact that every single man in a position of power seems to be a lecherous creep. I'm talking about the return of my nemesis, Standard Time. It's been a week since we "fell back"- how are you feeling about it? Me, I hate it.

In southern Maine, where I reside, the sun sets today at 4:22 p.m. Of course, when you live in a land completely covered by a) trees and b) hills, sunset is a pretty fluid concept. The last I usually see of the Helios' chariot (Look, Mom, my liberal arts degree at work!) is four-ish, with blinkered darkness swallowing up everything about ten minutes after the listed sunset. Yes, I know that "Civil Twilight" doesn't end for another hour. I'm pretty sure whoever comes up with those civil twilight designations is taking measurements at the flattest part of the Great Plains, where the tallest thing obscuring the setting sun is a gopher. Or ground hog. Whatever they are out in the golden west.

One of the worst aspects of Standard Time is knowing that the days are getting squeezed from both ends, like a dish towel being wrung dry. Right now we're down to nine hours fifty-one minutes of daylight (keeping in mind those trees and hills blocking the view) and it's all downhill from there. We won't be back to this length of day until February 1st, and at that point, we in New England will likely be entombed with snow and ice. It's difficult to kick back with a cocktail and celebrate the lengthening days when you're trying to make sure the pipes don't freeze in the walls. 

Yes, our friends and neighbors have it worse in Alaska. They count down to five and half hours of daylight at the winter solstice, and I'm pretty sure the giant mountains all over the place means they're actually seeing half of that, in a way not dissimilar to the sun creeping into the cell of the Man in the Iron Mask for a brief interlude. However, Alaskans do have the benefit of a) crazy long days in summer b) the sweet, sweet checks from the Permanent Fund and c) Dana Stabenow.

I have a proposed solution of this unfortunate state of affairs; one now within reach due to the March of Progress. I move we set the official time of sunset at 6pm every evening from October through March. It's true that in the past, our reliance on analog clocks meant that everyone in every time zone had to have their watches set in lockstep, so that, for instance, Lucy and I can look out our windows at five o'clock exactly, but I will see grim leafless darkness and she will see palm trees and sunshine (because her sunset today isn't until 5:42.) But let's be real. How many of us use clocks with hands to tell time anymore? We're all on our phones/tablets/computers, digital devices hooked up to the internet. Correcting two or three or four minutes a day in order to keep sunset always at six is child's play for our tech overlords.

Speaking of children, I can hear your objections. "But Julia," you say. "Think of the kids waiting for the school bus in morning! In the darkness!" In the first place, kids love the dark. You practically have to get them into bed by gunpoint every evening. Think how much they'll enjoy the thrill of being outside beneath the stars during morning recess! Secondly, I'm pretty sure the number of kids who get knocked over by cars while waiting for the school bus is greatly exaggerated. The sun doesn't rise until 10 a.m. in Anchorage in December, and the papers aren't full of stories of Alaskan students getting run over all winter long. To assuage parental fears, I will gladly donate to a fund to equip all students K through 12 with appropriate safety gear. After all, as the proverb says, it's better to light a single LL Bean head lamp than to curse the darkness.

Let us rise up, peoples of the north, and take back our evenings! We have nothing to lose but our seasonally adjusted depression!

A Funny Thing Happened To Me On My Way To Writing My first Novel ~ Or ~ Inspiration Comes From Where You Find It: a guest blog by Al Lamanda

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Dennis Lehane. Walter Mosely. Gillian Flynn. Al Lamanda.

--Wait. Al who?

This past year, I had the pleasure of being on the Edgar Award committee for the Best Novel of 2012. Best Novel is the Big Enchilada of the Edgars, a tight competition where the established greats of the mystery world meet with the most acclaimed up-and-coming authors.Veteran writers like Ace Atkins, and brilliant young novelists like Jesse Kellerman and Lyndsay Faye. And Al Lamanda.

--Al...what did you say that last name was?

Judges sign a pledge to not reveal the goings-on of their committee. But I don't think I'm giving away too much to say that when we received a book from the very small Gale/Five Star Press by an author none of us had heard of, we didn't expect it would stun us all with its chiseled prose, bullet-velocity plot and achingly vulnerable protagonist. SUNSET was a standout; literally - given the number of books we received and the number of final nominations - one in a hundred. 

It turns out, of course, that Al had been earning his stripes all along. He's the author of some twenty novels which have been getting rave reviews from Publishers' Weekly and Kirkus all along. Next up is SUNSET's sequel, SUNRISE (which I've read. It's terrific.) Today, Al's going to tell us how he set his feet on the path that led to the Edgar Awards Banquet.

I’m a born and raised New York City boy so naturally it came as quite an adjustment when my wife and I moved to a secluded area in Maine during the summer of ninety-seven. Oh sure, I had seen trees before, Central Park is full of them, but who knew they shed in November and you’re supposed to pick up their litter and haul it away? Up to that point, I’d never owned a rake, or a shovel, an ax or a hose and as I found out a few months later out of necessity, a snow shovel.

One thing my new home provided that the city did not was a peaceful, very serene setting, the ideal environment in which to write my first novel. For years I had wrestled with the burning desire to write a novel and now I was going to do it. All I needed was a plot, compelling characters, exotic settings and 75,000 words or so. I had yet to buy a home computer, but I did have a nifty Brother typewriter and a six-pack of white-out. And a ream of blank paper. That stayed blank for months. Devising a plot with compelling characters in exotic locations is a bit more difficult than you might think.

So my first winter in Maine rolled in and my ream of paper sat untouched. It snowed. A lot. My two front teeth weren’t on my Christmas list, but a snowplow for my 300 foot long, up hill driveway was. Then it did something funny. It quit snowing and started icing. Ice is supposed to be something you put in your glass and not on your windshield, but I guess Mother Nature didn’t get that memo. The ice storm lasted seven full days and nights. By the third day my driveway was a sheet of ice. I needed ice cleats and a long walking stick to check my mailbox, resembling Moses in cleats as I hiked up to driveway. Power went out and the secluded little area was thrust into total darkness. Fortunately for me my wife is a country girl and knew how to make a fire in the black thing in the corner that she called a wood stove. We put our food outside on the deck (note: use a cooler as I discovered small animals are lurking about and they like to eat what I like to eat) so it wouldn’t spoil and I cooked on the wood stove. Leaving the house was out of the question as my car wouldn’t make it up the long, ice covered driveway and it was a ten mile walk to the nearest store.

Then, on the fourth day of the ice storm, trees started to fall. I mean honestly, who knew that trees could just fall without the benefit of an ax, and a burly guy wielding it, but fall they did and on a regular basis for days on end. When that first tree fell, it made a sound like a baseball hitting a bat. A loud crack, followed by a loud crash. I ran to the window. A birch tree in the yard just missed the house. Then another and another came down and a news report on my portable radio said it was because the ice caused the trees to become brittle and the weight of the ice caused them to snap. So the snapping went on for a few more days and my yard resembled a giant box of Lincoln Logs tossed about.

On the morning of the sixth day of the ice storm, I looked out my window after another snap and crash and I spotted my elderly neighbor walking into my yard. A tree had just missed his house. To protect himself from falling trees and branches he had a giant spaghetti pot on his head. I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry at the sight of this man and his spaghetti pot and when I went outside to greet him he said, “This storm is a killer,” and an entire novel flashed before my eyes. Ice. Storm. Trapped. Trees. Danger. Seclusion. Killer.

And I sat down and wrote my first ever published novel, Dunston Falls. And if it weren’t for the ice storm of ninety-eight and a giant spaghetti pot I may never have written my Edgar nominated mystery novel Sunset.

So when people ask me what inspires me to write, I usually tell them life. That, plus a big damn spaghetti pot.

Want to talk about what inspires your writing, dear readers? Perseverance? Fifteen-year-long overnight successes? Maine? Join the discussion on the backblog for a chance to win one advance reader's copy of SUNRISE and one trade paperback edition of ONE WAS A SOLDIER by yrs truly.

You can follow Al Lamanda on Twitter, as @lamandaal and friend him on Facebook.