What We're Writing Week - Julia looks for disasters

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Like Debs, I'm also traveling today; not, sadly, to the UK, but to Washington DC to help out my sister. I was originally going to lend a hand to her booth at a street fair tomorrow; Barb is a Realtor and will be offering passers-by free photos of your dog with Snoopy. My sister is the sort of woman who owns a full sized Snoopy costume, as well as a Minion and a Gingy (from Shrek) costume. (She is, no lie, one of the most fun people on the planet.)

However, I'm also staying because her family has been under some sort of voodoo curse. Two weeks ago, Barb fell at a Ravens game she was attending with her oldest boy, badly bruised her face, broke two teeth (!) and concussed herself. Then, a week later, her middle son fell and busted his wrist in two places. So along with handing out real estate into and signing folks up for her mailing list, I'm going to be helping with housework and holding down the fort while her son is in surgery Monday.

This Series of Unfortunate Events - you'd hardly believe it in a novel - got me thinking about the role of disaster in fiction. One of the things I always do while planning elements of my next book is to ask myself, "What's the worst thing that can happen to this character?" Some times it's physical - a character breaks a leg in the middle of a murder investigation, or becomes addicted to amphetamines and sleeping pills. Some times, it's emotional - two people who can't be together fall in love. Some times it's taking a character who is perfectly competent in her sphere and dropping her into an environment she's utterly unprepared for. That's what I've done to Officer Hadley Knox, former California girl, in this excerpt from AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY.

 

The next blaze was different; a straight peeled strip with a bit of bark dug out on either side, roughly cross-shaped. What did that mean? She bent over, shielding her face for a moment from the relentless snow, trying to slow her racing brain enough to picture the chief making the marks. It's the first one he made. They had come up the long, steep slope of giant pines and climbed over a stone lip. Van Alstyne had said something about marking the trail while Paul was writing directions on her arm. Which meant the edge was right in front of her, a stone's throw away.

She strode forward. If she could just get over that bluff and start heading down the mountain, the militia would have at least two directions they'd have to search. When she got to the bottom and turned onto the old creek bed, they'd have to split their search again. Every turning would force more choices for them, and less chance of being caught for her. Of course, there was the matter of her being able to tell east from west when she couldn't see more than a couple feet--

She stepping onto air.

She screamed, cartwheeling wildly, tipped forward and went down, back leg dragging behind her, thudding, rolling, pounding. She hit a massive tree with the force of a woodsman's axe, all the breath exploding out of her lungs. She lay there for a time, sucking in air and crying and hurting all over.

Eventually, she rolled to her stomach, got her knees and hands beneath her, and clambered to her feet. Her hat had flown off somewhere along the way, and when she carefully shrugged free of her backpack, saw she'd the two side pockets were empty. Her water bottle and the gun, gone.

Shit.

Dear readers, what are the in-novel disasters that stick out in your mind? 

 

THE MEMORY OF SNOW by Julia Buckley

Jenn McKinlay: One of my very favorite traditional mystery writers, Julia Buckley, is here today and I am just delighted to host her. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at her latest project Death at Castle Dark under the pen name Veronica Bond, and I have to say it's excellent! It was one of those books where I just couldn't wait to get back to it -- always the sign of an excellent mystery. But here she is to talk about her upcoming release in another of my favorite series. Take it away, Julia.

Julia Buckley

Julia Buckley: My latest Hungarian Tea House mystery  begins with snowfall. Not any snowfall, but one of those magical snows with big fat flakes that comes just once in a while and transports us to a fairy tale like setting. The mystery begins with a man Hana sees in the snow, and who seems somehow troubling in that context. Thus begins the tale . . .

But Hana’s experience got me thinking about the nature of memorable snows. I remember, of course, the giant snowfalls, starting with the big blizzards in Chicago, which stopped traffic on Lake Shore Drive and sealed people into their homes. My husband recalls dragging a sled to the grocery store with his mother, both of them straining through the drifts, only to lose a boot on the way home--a boot that was never retrieved from the massive mounds of snow. But there were other snow memories.

I went to college in Valparaiso Indiana, which is famous, my  meteorology professor assured us, for the most snowfall, the highest number of inches. He claimed that this made Valparaiso famous worldwide. I tended to believe him when I had to walk to class over a large field that we lovingly called “The Tundra,” the Midwestern Wind biting into every exposed bit of skin, the snow dragging at me with each step like some tenacious god of the underworld, bent on pulling me down.

Then there were the fun snows. I can recall many a snow battle in my own yard, with my brothers and sisters. I was the youngest, and my older brothers did not show mercy just because I was relatively small  and not as wily. I was routinely pummeled. When I took my high school entrance test on a snowy January day, my brother Chris (who was cute and popular, with his blond feathered hair) and his friends decided to attack me with snowballs on my way out of the building. They chased me down while I screamed with a combination of joy and terror, eventually collapsing into the snow drifts next to the parking lot, where a group of teenage boys scooped up snow and threw it on my prone body. I was yelling, and a big chunk of snow got into my mouth and choked me. For a few seconds i thought I would die of snow, there outside the high school I hoped to attend, but I was also conscious of the fact that four popular SENIOR guys had a acknowledged my presence enough to tease me mercilessly. The ice particles melted in my throat. I survived my hazing by snow, and they helped me to my feet. For some reason it is not a traumatic memory, but a funny one.

I met my husband in my junior year of college, on a BLIND DATE AT A FORMAL DANCE. That’s right--potentially the most awkward way to meet anyone, but we hit it off right away, and he would come to visit Valpo some weekends, including the snowy ones. Once we had a lengthy and invigorating snowball fight: my boyfriend, my roommate, and some of my dorm friends. There was strategy; there was running and hiding; there was a great deal of laughter, and a little bit of falling in love amidst bright white mounds of snow, glittering in the sun like diamonds.

I had a student once who had come to America from Africa sometime during grade school. When I asked students to write an essay about a  memorable thing, he wrote about the first time he saw snow--how magical it was to him, who had only heard of it but never seen it in person, never experienced the white, wet flakes that fell from the sky. He had never forgotten that moment that he went outside and saw that it was real--not a legend or a fantasy, but a real phenomenon; he had the joy of experiencing an American winter as a very excited child.

I try to imagine how it must have been for him, and I remember those snows of my own childhood--the truly special snows with the fat white flakes that took forever to fall and allowed that extra moment to appreciate their beauty, their shimmery whiteness, their symmetry and uniqueness. Those were snow-globe snows, and that’s the sort of snow Hana experiences in DEATH ON THE NIGHT OF LOST LIZARDS (available for pre-order now~).

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Though we’re about to experience a hot summer, this might be the best time to read a book set in a snowy world--a way to cool down as you sunbathe on your patio or deck or tiny balcony.  The novel taps into Hungarian Christmas traditions, but it is the snow that takes center stage. I remember a quote from Tennessee Wiliams’ The Glass Menagerie, a background image that read "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?"  (Where are the snows of yesteryear?) In this novel, Hana remembers her grandmother’s description of the snows in Békéscsaba, her hometown. Hana and the reader will understand that it is not the snows her grandmother remembers with such nostalgia, but the time in which those snows fell--her youth, her time with her family, her love of her homeland. I suppose our snow memories are a celebration of the same things.

How about you, Reds and Readers, what are your best snow memories?

More about Death on the Night of the Lost Lizard: Along with her mother and grandmother, Hana Keller has achieved renown serving tea and cakes with a European flair, but when a local professor is killed, she uncovers a serving of suspects instead…

Hana Keller is getting ready for a lovely holiday season. When she receives a rare tea set as a birthday gift, she decides to host a tea at her apartment for her closest friends. During the cozy get-together, one of Hana's friends gets word that a murderer is on the loose. Hana soon learns that the victim was Sandor Balog, a professor of Hungarian Studies at the local college.

With her growing psychic ability, Hana senses that she is going to be pulled into the investigation of  the professor's death somehow. With her sexy boyfriend Erik on the case, Hana finds the Tea House steeped in suspects. She studies the smiling faces celebrating the season, but the real killer is good at hiding the truth and putting Hana in the hot seat….

The entire Hungarian Tea House Series:

How cold is it?

HALLIE EPHRON: It's SOOO cold.

HOW COLD IS IT?

Here in Boston it was -6 overnight.  Apparently the coldest since an infamous Valentine's Day in 2016 (it was -9) which was the coldest ever since another Valentine's Day low, minus 3 degrees set in 1934. 

It's so cold that "sweatpants" seems like a wishful misnomer, and 
... the birds in the yard are puffed up like Nerf balls, and
... rhododendron leaves are curled up, tight as pencils.

My husband and I are arguing over whether to keep the upstairs bedrooms (where each room has its own radiator) open or shut. I say SHUT because HEAT RISES. He (the physicist) says OPEN because it's warmer in the upstairs bedrooms than it is downstairs... which I say only proves my point.

Here are some photos from my neck of the woods....

Bunny tracks... 

Rhododendren

Our bedroom window

Rooftop snow making a possibly political statement... remind you of anyone's hair?

So, wherever you are, HOW COLD IS IT?? 

HANK: Oh, here's where we are:

the shadows on the roof of the garage

And here is the view from the Attorney General's office where I was doing an interview. The Charles River is frozen. It's frozen in waves. The WAVES are frozen. And there you have our world.

SO as Hallie says:  HOW COLD IS IT?

Snow What?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  It's snowing in Boston. Yeah, I know, it's December, whaddaya expect? But (because we're home) it's so pretty, and no scary, and not blustery. Just a gentle sweet little dusting of decoration from Mother Nature.

Here's the cast iron colt we have in our side yard. He's life size, and my constant joy.

Hank's side yard

Is it snowing where you are? Or what's it like outside your window right now? 


LUCY BURDETTE:  Oh I'm envious of that first snow, does that sound silly? But I hated worrying about driving in winter--don't miss that at all.

The front is passing through Key West now--rain, wind, and a 20 degree drop in temperature. All the tourists on Duval St. were wearing their plastic garbage bag cover-ups!

outside Hallie's study

HALLIE EPHRON: Here's the view out my window - powdered-sugar snow. And it's coming down in big fat flakes like in a snow globe. 

First snow. Love it. Hasn't gotten old...yet. As long as I don't have to drive, and I'm not going ANYWHERE until it stops. I heard this storm brought snow to Texas(!)

JENN MCKINLAY: No snow in central AZ. I've only seen it snow twice here in the twenty plus years I've been here and then it never sticks. Snow is always magical to me! But since I can't have snow I settle for amazing sunsets and holiday lights - which I put up today! 

The view from Jenn's front porch!

HANK:  Wow. Amazing, Jenn. And look at this!  
By 8:30, the snow had not stopped! This is our back yard.

And the bird bath is about two inches deep..so that means...how many inches?

Hank's back yard--bird bath at 8:30

SO pretty, right?

Reds, what's the weather where you are?

((And the winner of Jessica Strawsers's ALMOST MISSED YOU is Mary C!  (Lucky you!) Email me at  h ryan at whdh dot com to  claim your prize!

Hurray for the Liv Constantine winners! Your books are on the way asap.)