What We're Writing: Julia Closes In on The Finish Line

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I kid you not, dear readers. I'm now in the fourth and shortest act of AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY, and there's just not that much left to go. Well, my heroes have to save the day, and tie up all the loose ends, and we have to see what happens  - or doesn't happen - in the romance department. Honestly, if I hadn't basically taken off the entire month of December (please don't murder me, Hank and Jenn!) it would be done by now.

I'm feeling excited and impatient and more than ready to buckle down and put this baby to bed. We've got our first big snowstorm moving in tonight - six inches to a foot predicted for my area. Sounds like great weather for starting a roaring fire, keeping the tea kettle on, and writing!

 Here's an excerpt from the beginning of that fourth act - Clare, Russ and Hadley are on their (unofficial) way to what may be a hostage situation...

 

 

“Could we please hurry a little more?” Clare looked out the window. “I swear I saw a one-legged man pushing a wheelbarrow pass us.”

“And this is why I'm driving.” The chief resettled his hands in the classic two-and-ten position on the steering wheel.

 

 

A good thing, too, Hadley thought. The last Sunday before Christmas was as busy a day for traffic as they'd see until the Fourth of July holiday. She had heard about Reverend Clare's lead foot, and she had no interest in seeing how fast she could speed through the bag- and package- laden vehicles around them.

“What's the plan?” she asked.

“You and I should go in first.” Clare twisted in her seat to talk to her. “He's never seen you, and you don't look like a cop.”

“So you want to give him two more hostages?” Van Alstyne shook his head.

“Just long enough so I can see if Tiny and the baby are there. Then you and Lyle can come in with guns blazing.”

“Oh, yeah, that would make the set-up even better. You and this woman and an infant caught in a crossfire. And what if March just shoots you on sight?”

“He doesn't want to kill me. At least not right away. He wants to humiliate me. He wants to see me scared and weak.” She turned around again to face Hadley. “Right?”

She sighed. “I know the type. Men who don't feel tall unless they're standing on a woman.”

 

The other exciting news you've been hearing about is our members-only group, Reds and Readers. I have a video up today, taking advantage of the fact that the Feast of the Epiphany is still considered part of Christmas to show off my decor. And yes, there's a prize to be won as well! Please consider joining us.

 

Dear readers, how do you feel when the end of a major project is in sight?

Photos by Pexels and CatCampbell from Freerange Stock

What We're Writing Week: Julia Gives You What You Want

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Fan service. Do you know the phrase? It comes out of Japanese manga and anime, and originally meant to give the fans of these genres "what they want" - usually cartoon girls in very, very skimpy clothing. Seriously, don't Google images of the term.

But it's come to have a much larger meaning in contemporary fiction, television and movies, which have become increasingly serialized over the past two decades.  When readers or viewers spend a long time in a fictional universe (another term that's become popular to describe this serialized phenomenon) they come to know the many characters, large and small, that make up the world. They remember events that took place eight books and five movies ago. They develop insider knowledge and appreciation - they become fans.

The readers impatiently waiting for Jenn's next Library Lovers Mystery (November 2, y'all!) know everything there is to know about Briar Creek, CT. Actually, it's been my experience that passionate readers may remember more than the author does about her own creation! The audience for the Marvel Cinematic Universe's twenty five (and counting) movies may not know everything, because there are lots of, shall we say, special areas to hang out in, depending on whether you follow The Avengers, Spider-Man and/or The Guardians of the Galaxy. But I guarantee you the get the backstories, and the colorful secondary characters, and the overarching mythos. 

What do those readers and audience members want? Fan service. They want to see characters popping up again to say hi later in the story. They want references and nods to previous events that only they know about. On screen, they want to see actors who were important to earlier iterations of the story pop up in different roles - really, the best part of Wonder Woman '84 was seeing Lynda Carter's cameo. 

Sometimes, yes, fan service can be WAY overdone. If you saw Avengers Endgame, you might have cringed a little at the brief spotlight inclusion of every. Single. Lead. Character in the final battle. In Star Trek, the fans loved Khan Noonien Singh so much they dragged the guy back for two sequels, and I'm pretty sure Ricardo Montalban would have played him the third time if he hadn't happened to have passed away at the ripe old age of 88 four years prior. (By the way, if you've seen the wonderful Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan? Montalban was 62. He could, as the youths say today, get it.)

All this is to confess I'm offering up some fan service to my long-time readers. Since the plot of AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY revolves around small-town white supremacists, I wanted to let people know this small town was also home to some migrant workers and immigrants. How to show this briefly? Well, I happened to have a couple who were central to I SHALL NOT WANT. Why not catch up with them and see how they're doing, in a visit to an interfaith Christmas donation drive?

 

 

“Father! We caught you!” The accented voice caught her attention.   A short, dark man in a heavy barn coat crossed the parking lot, a toddler perched on his hip. A visibly pregnant blonde was at his side. “We wanted to make a donation.” The man noticed Clare and smiled broadly. “La Reverenda!”

“Amado! Isabel!” Clare and Fr. St. Laurent had married Amado Esfuntes and Isabel Christie two – no, three – years ago. “Is this Octavia? She's so big.”

“I'm two.” The girl held up two fingers, just to make it clear. “I'm going to be a big sister.”

Clare laughed. “I can see that. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” The girl's grave demeanor and dark coat made her look like the world's tiniest supreme court judge.

Her father slid her off his hip and handed her an envelope. “Do you want to give the gift to Father?”

“Yes, please.”

Fr. St. Laurent squatted down. “Mil gracias, Octavia.”

“El placer is mío, Padre.”

Clare raised her eyebrows. “Polite in two languages. I'm impressed. My son is still at the babbling stage.”

“She started talking early,” Isabel said, “but she really took off after her second birthday. Our pediatrician thinks it might be because we're raising her with both Spanish and English.”

“Or it might be because she's a genius!” Amado held his arms out and Octavia let herself be hoisted back into the seat of honor.

“Amado.” Fr. St. Laurent looked up from the envelope. “This is too much.”

Amado shook his head. “What we have to share, we share. The farm has run a good profit this year, thanks to God--”

“Thanks to hard work,” Isabel amended.

“--and I know this helps those who need help. Including other immigrants.”

“Although Amado's not an immigrant anymore. He's an American citizen.”

The smile Amado gave his wife was slanted. “In some people's eyes, I will never not be an immigrant.”

Isabel snorted. “Well, those people are assholes. Sorry, Father. Reverend.”

 

What do you think, dear readers? Do you like a little fan service now and again? And is Lynda Carter actually secretly an Amazon? Because it doesn't look as if she's aging along with the rest of us humans.

What I'm Working On: Julia Spencer-Fleming

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm a big believer in intertwining physical description with character. A lot of what I do in my books involves setting, whether it's the Adirondack mountains in a storm or the St. Alban's meeting room during a vestry conference. Descriptions of the setting, like everything in the story, should reveal character or advance the plot. (Literary writers, YMMV.) 

In this scene from HID FROM OUR EYES, Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne is checking out an abandoned house that may have seen some recent activity. I set this during a pleasant summer afternoon, but I may go back and recast it at night if I want to give the moment more of an ominous edge.                               

He decided to check out the old Cunningham house himself. He might have sent one of his officers, but it was on the way to his mom's and he could stop in and assure Mrs. Guthrie that no, the farmhouse up the road wasn't being used as a drug depot, or biker gang headquarters, or brothel. Actually, that last was a possibility, in that some teenagers might have discovered the shuttered house was the perfect sheltered spot to play a little slap-and-tickle.

There was no car at the end of the long drive, but the house had clearly been opened recently. Several windows were propped open with squared-off sticks, and old sun-faded drapes were puffing and flapping in the warm summer wind. One of the front steps had been pried clean off, the punky boards tossed in the grass next to a hammer and a can of nails. Russ tested the step above before putting his weight on it. The porch planking had also been decimated, empty spaces gaping, a hand saw left near the edge. Russ could see fresh cuts where someone had been sawing off the ragged, pulpy ends of the still-intact boards.

 

Balanced between the gaps, he knocked on the door. No answer. He tried the handle. It turned. He swung the door open onto a wide center hallway that was a hell of a lot cleaner than it should have been in a house that had been empty for over a decade. 

 

Either the place was the hangout of a gang of super-neat Girl Scouts, or it had been sold. He'd tell Mrs. Guthrie and she could come over with one of her god-awful pies and meet the new folks. When he got back to town, he'd double check with Roxanne Lunt – if the Realtor hadn't sold the property herself, she'd know who had.

He was stepping out of the house, watching his steps to keep from falling through, when he heard the voice.

“Hey, there. Find what you were looking for?”

Russ almost stumbled. He glanced up just long enough to see an old man in jeans and a plaid shirt. Keeping his eyes on his feet, he crossed the remains of the porch. “Sorry to trespass. Your neighbor up the road saw some activity and asked us to check it out.” He jumped off the steps and headed toward the man. “I'm Russ Van Alstyne, chief of--” The old man was grinning at him. Washed-out blue eyes, heavy grooves, thick-set shoulders - “Chief Liddle!” Russ felt himself straightening like a rookie at parade drill. 

 

“Nice to see you again, Russell.” Liddle shook his hand. “Nice to see you in the uniform. Suits you.”

What sort of fictional settings have you felt revealed the characters?

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?”

It's "What We're Writing" Week! Hank Tuesday

Continuing our new feature on Jungle Red: a week of posts on "What We're Writing." 

Hear the latest from:
Hallie Ephron Monday
Hank Phillippi Ryan Tuesday
Rhys Bowen Wednesday
Lucy Burdette Thursday
Deborah Crombie FridayJulia Spencer Fleming Saturday

Susan Elia MacNeal Sunday 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I'm trying to remember whose brilliant idea THIS was.  Showing our works in progress? I certainly would ever have agreed to...well, okay. Because we're among friends. And remember, this is a first draft.

You know I'm a TV reporter in--I almost said "real life"--and the main character of my books is  a newspaper reporter. Well, now she is--after she got fired from her TV job for protecting a source. People ask me--does your crime fiction come from your day job? 

Yes. And no. What happens to Jane Ryland is not my non-fiction life made into fiction. But her stresses, her passion, her complications, her experiences, her desire for a great story and for justice--all that's true.

I've done many stories about the housing crisis--in fact, our investigations have resulted in people getting their homes out of foreclosure (that one won an Emmy) and millions of dollars in refunds. Hmmm. This new book, TRUTH BE TOLD, takes the knowledge I gained from that research--and polishes, twists, expands and imagines.

How far would a person go to keep their home? What would if feel like if someone tried to take it? Or DID take it? How much of ourselves is wrapped up in that place that houses our families and our possessions and our histories? 

That's what I thought about while I was writing TRUTH BE TOLD.  
(Can you picture this scene? And in line 2, do I need "tall"?) 

    

                           TRUTH BE TOLD 

“I know it’s legal. But it’s terrible.” Jane Ryland winced as the Sandoval’s wooden bedframe hit the tall grass in the overgrown front yard and shattered into three jagged pieces. “The cops throwing someone’s stuff out the window. It’s right out of Dickens, you know? Eviction? There’s got to be a better way.”
Terrible facts. Great pictures.  A perfect newspaper story.  She turned to T.J. “You got that, right?”

T.J. didn’t take his eye from the viewfinder. “Rolling and recording,” he said.

A blue-shirted Suffolk County sheriff’s deputy--sleeves rolled up, buzz cut-- leaned out a front window, taking a swig from a plastic bottle. He shaded his eyes with one hand.

“First floor, all clear,” he called. Two uniforms comparing paperwork on the gravel driveway gave him a thumbs-up.  The Boston cops were detailed in, they’d explained to Jane, in case there were protesters. But no pickets or housing activists had appeared. Not even a curious neighbor. The deputy twisted the cap on the bottle, tossed the empty out the window. The bottle bounced on top of a brittle hedge, then disappeared into the browning grass.

“Oops,” he said. “I’m headed for the back.”

“That’s harsh,” T.J. muttered.

“You got it though, right?”  Jane knew it was a ‘moment’ for her story, revealing the deputy’s cavalier behavior while the Sandovals—she looked around, making sure the family hadn’t shown up—were off searching for a new place to live. The feds kept reporting the housing crisis was over. Tell that to the now-homeless Sandovals, crammed, temporarily they hoped, into a relative’s spare bedroom. Their modest ranch home in this cookie-cutter neighborhood was now an REO—real estate owned by Atlantic & Anchor Bank. The metal sign on the scrabby lawn said “foreclosed” in yellow block letters. Under the provisions of the Massachusetts Housing Court, the deputies were now in charge.

“Hey! Television! You can’t shoot here. It’s private property.”

Jane felt a hand clamp onto her bare arm. She twisted away, annoyed. Of course they could shoot.

 “Excuse me?” She eyed the guy’s three-piece pinstripe suit, ridiculous on a day like today. He must be melting. Still, being hot didn’t give him the right to be wrong. “We’re on the sidewalk. We can shoot whatever we can see and hear.”

Jane stashed her notebook into her totebag, then held out a hand, conciliatory. Maybe he knew something. “And not television.  Newspaper.  The new online edition. I’m Jane Ryland, from the Register.”

She paused. Lawyer, banker, bean counter, she predicted. For A & A Bank? Or the Sandovals? The Sandovals had already told her, on camera, how Elliot Sandoval had lost his construction job, and they were struggling on pregnant MaryLou’s day care salary. Struggling and failing.  

“I don’t care who you are.” The man crossed his arms over his chest, a chunky watch glinting, tortoise-shell sunglasses hiding his expression. “This is none of your business. You don’t tell your friend to shut off that camera, I’m telling the cops to stop you.”

You kidding me?  “Feel free, Mr.--?” Jane took her hand away. Felt a trickle of sweat down her back. Boston was baking in the throes of an unexpected May heat wave. Everyone was cranky. It was almost too hot to argue. “You’ll find we’re within our rights.”

The guy pulled out a phone. All she needed. And stupid, because the cops were right there. T.J. kept shooting, good for him.  Brand new at the Boston Register, T.J. Foy was hire number one in the paper’s fledgling on-line video news department. Jane was the first –and so far, only--reporter assigned.

“Here’s a chance to show off your years of TV experience,” the Register’s new city editor had insisted. “Make it work.”

Pleasing the new boss was never a bad thing, and truth be told, Jane could use a little employment security. She still suffered pangs from her unfair firing from Channel 11 a couple of years ago, but at least it didn’t haunt her every day. This was her new normal, especially now that newspapering was more like TV. “Multi-media,” her new editor called it.

“We’re doing a story on the housing crisis.” Jane smiled, trying again. “Remember the teenager who got killed last week on Springvale Street? Emily-Sue Ordway? Fell from a window, trying to get back into her parents’ foreclosed home?  We’re trying to show--it’s not about the houses so much as it is the people.”

“‘The people’ should pay their mortgage.” The man pointed to the clapboard house with his cell phone. “Then ‘the cops’ wouldn’t have to ‘remove’ their possessions.” 

Okay, so not a lawyer for the Sandovals.   But at least this jerk wasn’t dialing.

“Are you with A&A? With the bank?” Might as well be direct.

“That’s not any of--”

“Vitucci! Callum!” The deputy appeared in the open front door, one hand on each side of the doorjamb as if to keep himself upright. He held the screen door open with a foot. His smirk had vanished.  The two cops on the driveway alerted, inquiring.

“Huh? What’s up?” one asked.

“You getting this?” Jane whispered.  She didn’t want to ruin T.J.’s audio with her voice, but something was happening. Something the deputies hadn’t expected.

“Second floor. Back room.” The deputy pulled a radio from his belt pouch. Looked at it. Looked back at the cops. His shoulders sagged. “Shit.” 

****************************************************

HANK: So it's at my editor now, and I'm waiting (with fingers crossed) for her thoughts. She always has terrific suggestions about how to make it better--and I cannot wait to hear them. Sidebar: I'm hearing from a couple of people that they loved THE WRONG GIRL--but had been apprehensive about reading it, since they were adopted or had family who had adopted--and thought it would be too disturbing. Did any of you think that?  Hey! No worries. It's true and honest and you'll like it. Really.