Whether the Weather

 RHYS BOWEN:  It’s fall, start of the rainy season in Marin County, California.  I’ve just returned from an event with Julia and Jenn at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, where it rained every day I was there. Yes. Arizona. Supposed to be warm and sunny. Who knew?

Anyway, the weather now becomes headline news on the TV. I’m sure in other parts of the States (I’m thinking Julia in Maine) there is weather news every day, unless they say "It's going to be cold" until April. But in California all summer its going to be foggy at first then sunny. Or sunny and then sunny for the whole summer. Boring.

Now the weather men are getting quite excited, and dramatic. This is when they come into their own.  They say, “An atmospheric river is heading toward Northern California.”

I grew up in England. You can’t scare me. What is an atmospheric river in California is Wednesday in England. “It’s starting out dry but we may have some rain later.”

Unfortunately even England this fall has had what might be described as an atmospheric river. There has been bad flooding in various parts of the country, but this is abnormal. Normal weather throughout the year in England is if it’s fine early it will rain later. I remember vacations in Wales, taking miserable forced strolls along the sea front with the wind whipping at my raincoat, and that was August. I remember Wimbledons being rained out.  It rains a lot.

I always thought that the easiest job in England was TV weatherman. They are hardly ever right and every day they can say “It may rain later” and even if it doesn’t nobody bothers. And they never get fired.

The main topic of British conversation is the weather. Standing at a bus stop you’ll hear: “Good morning. Nippy for the time of year, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but the frost is good for the cabbages.”  (the other main topic is gardening.)

“It’s been milder than last November, hasn’t it?”

“It certainly has. My begonias bloomed until a week ago.”

That, my dears, is the extent of English small talk.

The only thing they can’t handle in England is snow. A few flakes land and buses stop running, children are kept home from school, trains are hours late. I’ve Canadian friends who laugh themselves silly. I do remember the great freeze of 1963 when the snow lay on the ground for several months, but it hasn’t happened since. I hear it’s snowing this week. Maybe it will be the great freeze of 2025.  It will give everyone something to talk about.

How about where you live? What is the attitude to weather there? Do you take it seriously?

I Surrender! by Jenn McKinlay

Okay, I give. I can't take it anymore. It is officially TOO HOT here in AZ. 🔥🔥🔥

In fact, it's so hot that our Julia (ME) emailed Debs (TX) and me to see if we were okay. The Jungle Red sisterhood -  love it! I was okay the day she emailed because my deadline kept me indoors chained to my laptop but once I finished and poked my head outside. Mercy, what hellscape is this?

Last night I took the dogs into the pool - this has become our exercise when the temps are over 110 (high) and 93 (low) and walks are not an option. Still, I could not cool any of us down. So, I drove to my local DQ for a sundae for me (Hub was at a gig) and pup cups for the pooches, naturally. 

It helped, but the forecast is looking rather grim for the foreseeable future. 😭😭😭

So, chime in Reds and Readers, how are the temperatures where you are? How do you stay cool when the summer turns mean?

What to Take in a Hurricane

LUCY BURDETTE: Honestly, hasn’t this been an unbearable week news-wise? It’s a little hard to maintain a person's optimistic equilibrium. And then I woke last Friday to see the above prediction on my weather app. 

We kind of expect the worst storms in Key West, but occasionally they come to our summer spot, Connecticut. I freak out no matter which place is in the bullseye. I don’t want to live through a scary hurricane, I get nervous with a lot of wind and a bad thunderstorm. We live in a low lying neighborhood that has been flooded more than once, suffering damage and long blackouts during both Sandy and Irene.

And besides, our town‘s first selectwoman had emailed, texted, and Robo-called us to say we needed to evacuate by 8 PM Saturday. Why would I argue with her?

 John, being a more phlegmatic personality, would have been happy to ride out the storm. Then some good friends who live 40 minutes inland invited us to stay along with the animals. The writing was on the wall. The only question left was what to pack. 

Several of our neighbors were declining to evacuate, even though by this point the fire department had also come through all the streets to suggest that we leave. One neighbor, with anxiety even greater than mine, had packed up all of her important stuff including birth certificate, marriage certificate, and insurance papers. We both packed plenty of pet food. Lottie would be happy eating people food if her kibble ran out, but T-bone is particular. Prescription medication for everyone who needs it, of course.

Here are the furries hunkered down in their hurricane shelter quarters, both a little nervous.

I also packed my computer with pretty much my life on it, including the book that is due on Tuesday, A DISH TO DIE FOR. And my phone and iPad with multiple chargers. But what about books? John would point out that my Kindle app is loaded with more books than I’ll ever finish in my lifetime, but I also have a marvelous stack of hardcover and paperbacks that I’ve been collecting over the summer. Was I going to load them all into the car? I whittled it down to two.


Here are my furries after we'd been at our friends' place for an hour.

As it turned out, the storm was a bust, thank goodness. So was I sheepish? Not really, we had a nice visit with our friends, and I would do the same thing next time. I can write my characters into all kinds of scary situations, but I don't have the nerve to stick out weather danger myself.

How about you? Are you an evacuator, or someone who will hold the line against any kind of weather? If you were leaving and had a little time to prepare, what would you take?

Clothes Make the Woman

RHYS:

As I write this I am in the middle of jetting around the country, speaking and signing books.

I am told that some people fear public speaking so much that they would choose death over getting up in front of an audience. Speaking in front of people has never been a problem for me. I was sent to ballet school at three so I grew up used to performing in dancing competitions, acting in plays. And I’m a natural extrovert!

However when I have a book tour or convention coming up I lie awake and anguish about what to wear! I always feel that I am wearing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Like the time I attended a cocktail party given by my then-agent at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The party was for my European agents to meet me. I bought a stunning sapphire blue silk jacket. And when I entered the room everyone else was in black. I mean it. Everyone. I felt like a peacock that had inadvertently stumbled into a hen house.

I was once at a convention in Toronto and didn’t find out until I got there that the convention banquet was a formal affair. As in cocktail dresses. I had only pants and jackets with me. Nothing fancy at all. I had to rush out and try and find something suitable. But it was summer and the stores had shorts/short sundresses. Nothing suitable for a banquet. Mortifying.

And another fear is that I’ll be on book tour and someone will come up to me with a photograph. “I took this picture of us the last time you visited here three years ago,” she’ll say. AND I’M WEARING THE SAME JACKET!  She’ll think I only own one jacket!

And then there is the matter of weather. Last week I was scheduled to speak in Indianapolis. I thought Indiana, February. Cold, right? And accordingly I brought a fur vest with me when I traveled from California to our condo in Arizona. And two days before the trip I check the weather in Indianapolis. 70 degrees. That is simply not fair. My smart 70 degree clothes are hanging on a rack in California.

So I arrived wearing a light outfit. The next morning I woke up and guess what—it was snowing. Wind chill in the teens. Luckily I had carried my one winter coat onto the plane.

The trouble is that I like to travel light. No huge suitcases to drag around and put my shoulder out. So I don’t want to take a selection of clothes suitable for all eventualities. I have learned to take an extra pair of black pants and an extra white turtleneck, just in case I spill coffee on myself (which certainly has happened) or as in the time I was on a midday TV show and in the segment after mine the chef cooked his grandmother’s favorite spaghetti sauce (bright red) and gave some to me to taste, on camera, wearing a white shirt. I still sweat at the memory of it!

And about the time the back of my long cardigan inadvertently dipped into the toilet… well, I won’t go there!

When you read this I’ll have just returned from Houston. I used to live in Houston. I know that the temperature can change 40 degrees in an hour so any trip in that direction means a choice of clothing ranging from Artic to tropical.

How I wish I could be Hank and look fabulous in a black suit.Or my friend Cara Black in her draped Paris-style black clothes.  Alas black is not my color. I look as if I am heading to a funeral, probably my own.  I realize that most people come to see me and don’t care what I’m wearing. I tell myself this. So why am I staring at the ceiling at 2:30 a.m. wondering what to wear at my next speaking engagement? 

Reds and Readers: do you agonize over what to wear or do you just open your wardrobe and grab something?

How's the Weather?

Photo by Mark Reinholt

LUCY BURDETTE: A very fast storm clipped Key West last week. We were out to dinner, on a porch overlooking a dock, when the sky grew intensely dark, and then a waterspout took shape. We barely had time to grab our plates and run inside. (The photo was taken by a friend, an incredible photographer—isn’t it ominous?)

Anyway, this got me thinking about severe weather in general, and how I tried to use it to up the ante for the characters in my upcoming KILLER TAKEOUT. When I meet a long-time resident of the island, one of my first questions is: What do you do about hurricanes? Stay or go? Leaving is no picnic, because there’s only one road off the islands and the congestion can be overwhelming. Besides, how do you know where the storm’s headed next? The hard-bitten native conchs just hunker down and hope for the best. But there are lots of horror stories about staying too—Hurricane Wilma for example, didn’t do a great deal of damage, but the storm surge after was very destructive.

I haven’t lived through a hurricane in Key West and I hope to skip that experience. We have lived through Hurricanes Irene and Sandy while in Connecticut, and that was no picnic. Let’s face it, I’m a weather wienie!

Reds, what’s the worst weather you’ve experienced? Do you enjoy the pageantry of nature or would you rather skip it? How have you used weather in your writing?

HALLIE EPHRON: A waterspout? Yikes. That same night in Boston we had high winds, rain and lightning that went on booming and crashing for hours. I unplugged the computer, stuffed my ears with Kleenex and tried to sleep, because what can you do except survey the damage in the morning? Fortunately all we lost was a tree limb and it didn’t fall on the car.

Outside Hallie's House

Worst weather I’ve been through ever is last winter’s snow. In January/February 2015 we got 110 inches without a thaw. I didn’t leave the house for weeks unless I absolutely had to. Roads were narrowed to one lane and you took your live in your hands just pulling out of the driveway. The car horn got used more than the brakes. It was May before the snow was all melted in the yard, and the silver lining was an absolutely spectacular spring. EVERY spring-blooming thing burst into bloom at the same time.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: My family and I were caught on a bus in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in a tornado! Toto, we're in Brooklyn, Not Kansas! Someone recorded it and put it on YouTube—here's the link:  It was surreal — green, murky, insane winds. We saw a hundred-year-old tree ripped right out of the ground from the bus window.

Overwash by Don McCullough

We also weathered Hurricane Sandy in Brooklyn. That was less scary, personally, because we live at a high elevation (so no flooding) and also in a sturdy Victorian brick building. Still we taped up our windows, just like the Brits did during the Blitz, and I prayed for everyone affected—and also that our oversized windows would hold. Which they did. Afterwards, gave blood, took blankets and canned food to a relief center a few blocks from us (the local YMCA). It was a crazy storm and people in the hardest-hit areas are still in recovery.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Massachusetts! Where there's never a dull weather moment. I've covered hurricanes on Cape Cod, certainly, where the winds are more than 90 mph, and the sand hits your face like a million straight pins. And ice storms, where the trees, and everything, are completely coated. Beautiful, and deadly.  And yes, last year the snow was so high it was over the cars--seriously, there were cars parked on the streets and you couldn't see them.  But a few days ago, I woke up to HOWLING winds. And I thought, wow, we're going to have some fallen branches. Woke up the next morning to see Jonathan standing over me. He said, "Sweetheart, we have a situation." Our back fence had blown down! Like--WHAM. Flattened.


RHYS BOWEN: We lived in south Texas for three years where weather was always dramatic. Summer thunderstorms spawning tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning that lit up the whole sky and brought all four kids scurrying into our bed at night. I once flew into Chicago after a blizzard and the snow was taller than me beside the road. Didn't like that much, either. I'm currently in Arizona where we've had perfect temps and sunshine for weeks. My kind of weather! But I have to agree, Lucy, bad weather can enhance the drama and suspense in a novel.

Photo by Paul VanDerWerf

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, I love "We have a situation." Such a calm way to introduce major property damage! I'm pretty well known for the bad weather in my books - I maintain there's nothing like nature's fury to elevate the suspense and the stakes. After all, didn't Dame Agatha trap everyone on the island with bad weather in Ten Little Indians?
Spending my teen years in upstate New York's snowbelt and my adult life here in Maine, all my bad weather is snow, ice and cold. There was the Christmas eve when we left midnight mass to discover two feet of snow had fallen and my dad had to wait for a plow to follow to get us all home. There was the time Ross and the kids and I left Hudson Falls, NY with a light scattering of flakes that turned into a blizzard as we we drove through the Green Mountains. Snowpocalype '14 - '15 was unrelievedly awful; we had something like 100 inches of snow and the coldest February since 1895. But for me, personally, the WORST weather was the ice storm of '98. Power lines down everywhere, roads impassible, walking on glare ice outside and we were without power on my street for NINE days. Nine days with no running water, no phone service (we didn't have a cell phone until '02) no electric lights, no heat except the fireplaces and woodstoves, and two kids, four and five, underfoot. The silver lining? I used an ice storm just like it is as the background for my last book, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS.



DEBORAH CROMBIE: On the day after Christmas this year, we had nine tornadoes sighted in the DFW area. NINE! The strongest struck the town of Garland, just a few miles to the east of us, and was rated an EF4--the first EF4 since a tornado struck Lancaster, south of Dallas, in 1994. This was the first EF4 tornado reported in the United States since 2000. There were eleven fatalities and the damage was staggering. Here's a photo of just one of the tornadoes.

We live in tornado country--we know this can happen. We have go-bags and a safe spot and a plan, but, really, you're never prepared. This time, we thought the storms were coming straight for us, but at the last minute they shifted direction. I spent an anxious hour huddled in our hall bathroom with flashlight, phone, radio, and the two German shepherds. Then we spent the rest of the evening watching the terrible damage reports on the news as they came in.

I much prefer my weather in books. I think my favorite use of it was the snowstorm that traps my characters in Crystal Palace in south London in The Sound of Broken Glass.

But I think my personal "scariest weather ever" moment was about twenty years ago, when I drove halfway across England in a hurricane. I hope never, ever, to do anything like that again. 



LUCY: Yes, Julia, you are a master at using the weather to best advantage, starting with the first line of your first book! It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby.

Reds, tell about the worst weather you survived--or a book you remember using bad weather to great effect...

Terry Shames talks about the weather, Texan style, that is.

RHYS: When I first met Terry Shames at an MWA meeting she was a new writer, hoping to get published. Now I'm celebrating with her the publication of her fifth book in the best-selling Samuel Craddock series, set in a small Texan town. Terry is a Texan girl herself, although you wouldn't know it because she doesn't say y'all or howdy or anything of the things one expects Texans to say.

I spent three years in Texas when my kids were growing up and what I remember more than anything was the weather: actually an excess of dramatic weather--tornadoes and hurricanes and ice storms and sizzling heat. Texas does nothing by halves. So it made sense that Terry should choose weather for her topic.

Welcome Terry.

TERRY SHAMES:  I’m thrilled to be visiting Jungle Red Writers today talking about (wait for it) the weather! This year people on the east coast were baffled by a balmy Christmas while those on the west coast were shivering. The fact that both of them were having 50-60 degree weather shows that people are used to their own brand of weather—or it may mean that people in California are wimps. 

But if you want to talk crazy weather, try Texas. I was in Austin visiting my family for the holidays. The day before I arrived, it was 80 degrees. The day after I arrived, it was 30, with overcast skies and icy, bone-chilling wind. By the time I left two days later it was warm again. Texas epitomes the old saw, “Don’t like the weather? Stick around for a few minutes and it will change.”

My Samuel Craddock series is set in Texas, and I make liberal use of the variables as metaphors or portents. When things are heating up in the plot, things start to get hot weather-wise as well. When I describe storm clouds, look out, things are about to get turbulent. In The Last Death of Jack Harbin, Samuel Craddock says:

“Off to the west a few puffy clouds are piling up on the horizon, as if deciding whether to collect into something more serious.” In the next scene, the book takes a serious turn.

In the novel I’m working on now someone gives Samuel Craddock an unexplained cold shoulder. Samuel observes, ”To the north the sky has darkened. We’re going to get our first ‘norther’ of the season.” A half hour later, “in the past ten minutes the temperature has dropped thirty degrees. The ’norther’ is like a wall of cold air that moves forward, sweeping away the heat.”

I love to read novels in which the weather is presented as a character. Craig Johnson (The Cold Dish) and Martha Cooley (Ice Shear) both use bitter cold to great effect in their novels. They portray a world in which the cold is a metaphor for being frozen out of life. How much more determined a detective has to be if every step involves lots of clothing and the possibility of frostbite.

Heat is just as debilitating, rendering people unable to move without great effort. Combine it with rain, and as Tim Hallinan notes in The Hot countries, “After the air-conditioning in the Expat Bar…the rain feels like a hot shower.” And, hey! Texas has that, too.

For me, a book is enhanced by references to weather. I’ve been to Scotland and I know it’s cold all year round. I want to know how that affects people who live there. In the Caribbean, I want to feel the sun beating down, feel the cool ocean breeze and the hurricane winds. In Africa, I want to experience the drought or the refreshing rain that follows.

I’m curious to know if other writers use weather intentionally, or if it creeps in without your thinking about it. How does it affect your characters and your plots? In our everyday lives weather can be motivational. Is that true in novels as well?

RHYS: So what about you, Reds and readers? Is weather important in your books? When you are reading do you like to experience heat, cold, rain?

 Terry Shames writes the best-selling Samuel Craddock series, set in small-town Texas. A Killing at Cotton Hill won the Macavity for Best First Mystery, 2013. The Last Death of Jack Harbin was a Macavity finalist for Best Mystery, 2014. Mystery People named Shames one of the top five Texas mystery writers of 2015. Her fifth Craddock mystery, The Necessary Murder of Nonie Blake launches January 12, 2016. It is a Top Pick for January in RT Bookreviews.   www.terryshames.com. 

Terry will be giving away a copy of her brand new book to her favorite comment of the day.

Appy Together?

LUCY BURDETTE: I was looking at my iPhone the other day and started thinking about the apps on the homepage. Of course, there are some that I downloaded when I saw them and have never used. And then there are those that I use all the time, like mobile apps of twitter and Facebook and mail. But I thought wouldn't it be fun to see if we could use our apps as a kind of Rorschach test for our current interests. Two things you can tell for sure about me from this page, I'm obsessed with the weather. And I am obsessed with food in Paris.
And here's one more page. This one shows you how much I have gotten into iPhonography. And more stuff that has to do with traveling—I’m always looking for the perfect travel organization app. (by the way, have you found one?) And of course apps to do with writing. How about you guys? What’s on your screen?

HALLIE EPHRON: What you can tell absolutely and definitively from my apps is that I rarely use my phone. I message and facetime with my kids. Use Google Maps. And I've got all the airlines and Amtrak apps loaded. Yelp in case I need a restaurant. I've got Dragon Dictate because of the blog Lucy posted awhile back saying that it helped her write fast. I used it twice.

What I need right now is an app that will take a selfie of my cell phone screen... and you know what, there isn't one.
RHYS BOWEN: Apart from the obvious ones like Facebook, Twitter, Kindle and the various airlines I use I seem to have an eclectic mix. At the top of my list is Evernote, which is brilliant for all kinds of note-taking, snagging pages from websites etc. I also have a Zen garden with chimes or birds, an aquarium (different aquariums on my iPhone and iPad--the one on the phone lets me feed my fish, which I like!)

I have Scrabble and a addictive game called Wordpops, I have Dragon that I rarely use, Password vault that I've never used, but Apps for tennis tournaments and ESPN--revealing I'm a sports-loving workaholic who calms down by feeding fish and visiting a Zen garden.

LUCY: Rhys, what’s truly frightening about your photo are the 829 messages—yikes!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ha. I am so happy it's not just me. Lucy, when you suggested this topic, I thought: great! Then I thought--but HOW am I gonna get a photo of the front of my PHONE? Because I need the phone to take a photo of the phone, so it'd be impossible to...worry worry worrry.
And then I burst out laughing. Get Jonathan's phone. Take a photo with that one. HA.

Although I do think you can take a screen shot, I just don't know how.)

Anyway, I am app-light. I have Scrabble, and flashlight, and Uber, and Audible, and Evernote, and podcast, and Soundhound, and Songify. (Do you know Songify? It makes anything into a song. VERY cool. I have used it a million times, but all on the first day I got it. ) I have Epicurious, and Open Table.  I think this shows I am a very practical person who is sometimes interested in recipes , but would rather have a  black car take me to a restaurant while I read or listen to music or look for stuff in the dark..

LUCY BURDETTE: I take a screenshot with my assistive touch button, which I discovered accidentally when I dropped the darn phone and my home button QUIT WORKING. Ack! Here's what came up on Google:

Here is how to turn the Assistive Touch feature on, allowing you to use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that has a nonworking Home button:

    Open “Settings” and go to “General”, then tap on “Accessibility”
    Under “Physical & Motor” tap on “Assistive Touch” and then flip the switch to ON

My home button miraculously resuscitated itself, but I still have this other button. Just In Case.

Now I have to go try Hank’s Songify…

HANK: Ah...bwa ha ha. I don't even understand that. I kind of don't even want to. I am getting Jonathan's phone.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Lucy, you just made my eyes glaze over... And I don't even have an iPhone. But now I wonder if I can take a screen shot on my Galaxy? Hmmm. Apps? Oh, geez. I don't just have apps, I have folders of apps. Rick really likes apps so keeps finding them for me. How many do I actually use? Google. (Does that count as a app?) Facebook. Kindle. Weather, astronomy, photo gallery, Evernote. I have Zite and Flipboard but don't use them much.

And I have the coolest bird watching app called iBird Pro, but it takes up a lot of storage space. Oh, and I love my music player, which is called Rocket Player. The only games that tempt me are Bejeweled and Words with Friends.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Okay, I am about to out myself as the Luddite of the group. I don't have a smart phone. We have five people on a family plan, and until very recently, my service only offered an upgrade if EVERYONE got an upgrade - and frankly, I didn't want to pay the $$$ that would entail. Ross and Youngest got Kindle Fire HD 7s for Christmas (there was a great sale on earlier generation HDs in October, when the latest ones came out) and I'm pretty sure hers is already loaded with God-knows what. I helped Ross load apps onto his, which mostly consist of ESPN, CBS SPORTs, apps major league baseball, NFL football and college basketball. Oh, and weather. Yes, we have reached the "weather years."

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Lucy, I can't even make sense of that! I have an iPhone with FreshDirect, our grocery service, so I can add items to my "cart" from the phone when I have a sudden epiphany (Glass cleaner! We NEED glass cleaner!).

Also have grub hub for ordering delivery (yes, sushi will magically arrive if you press enough buttons and YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN BEING!). Then all the social networking apps, Pandora Radio (although everyone tells me Pandora is "so over" and it's all about Spotify now....), Netflix, and mahjong. Kiddo loves to download games to my phone, so I have ones like "Clumsy Ninja" and "Cake Maker." I could probably live without everything except Google Maps — what a timesaver. Seriously. How did we get around before?

ON DARK AND STORMY NIGHTS

Maycomb was ...a tired old town. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow it was hotter then....men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.


****To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

RO:
Maybe I'm obsessing about the weather because its May and I'm still freezing, but I can't help but notice how seamlessly some writers weave weather details into their stories. Since my amateur sleuth is a gardener, a certain amount of weather info is integral to the story, but I'm very self-conscious when I do it. As if it's something I learned in Writing 101, "always put the weather in." Without a legitimate narrative reason for it (i.e., story revolves around a storm, flood, etc.)do you generally use weather to help create a mood in your books? And how do you do it, so that it doesn't sound like an interruption, or latebreaking news from The Weather Channel?

HANK:
And do people just skip the weather parts? Reporters--like my main character, and (cough) like me--always have to know what the weather is. So she checks to see if it's going to rain during her live shot, making her mascara run and blowing her hair around so it sticks to her lipstick, or if she needs snow boots, or whether the sun is going to be a lighting asset or detriment. Hallie says to plague your characters with discomfort (See Hallie? I use your book every day...)and the weather can be a cold wet stormy windy obstacle. ((And let me just say: if you had the idea for an all-weather channel, say, ten years ago, would you have thought it could possibly work? Do people really sit and watch the weather?))

RO:
That's right..I remember her saying that at her workshop at Crimebake. I did buy the book Hallie...btw I loved that workshop. Really got a lot out of it.

HALLIE:
I think weather is great when it's part of the plot, or when you use it show something about your character (Hank's example) -- in other words, it's there for a reason...also useful for showing the passage of time in an artful way ("the rain had stopped and stars twinkled...") But woe to those who forget Elmore Leonard's writing rule #1: "Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people." (see http://www.elmoreleonard.com/) On the other hand (there's always one in writing)...for a great weather opening, see Tony Hillerman's "Listening Woman."
It is hard, as Ro points out, to write it so it's not a cliche or a news bulletin.

JAN:
I agree with Hallie. Unless the weather is a part of the plot or critical to character, it's incidental. IE. boring. I struggle to put it in sometimes, too, because I'm trying to make the environment real. But most likely, if it's a struggle, it doesn't belong there.

HANK:
But when it's real, people love weather. What it's going to be like tomorrow? What's the weather where Mom is? I read somewhere they have a computer program that will flawlessly predict the weather. Problem is, its so complicated that by the time it makes the prediction, the weather has already happened. (Off the topic, I know.) But you know, I've edited several books for fellow authors. And I'm always writing in the margin-is it hot? Cold? Raining? Remember, it's July. Or something like that. So we miss it when it's missing.

RO: I'm still cold...maybe I should set my next book in the Virgin Islands instead of Connecticut.