Daughter Cherie and Granddaughter Leah on Lake Jeannette
Last week I visited our oldest daughter who recently moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. Her lovely new home is adjacent to Lake Jeannette. What a gorgeous setting!
What a great place for a murder. There's all those trees. And a body of water. And well, you know. .. Let's face it. My mystery series is set in Western Kansas. There's something about the Great Plains that is nakedly honest. It's a chore to hide a body out here.
However, I once did a historical article set in Montana. The subject was the pits to begin with: "The Harlem Renaissance in Helena, Montana." It was for anthology about African Americans in the West.
The article took forever for me to write. Not only was gathering historical information difficult, but I discovered that I knew nothing about the state. To write well about a locale, one has to know the history of the state, the topography, the weather, the way the birds fly, the grasses that grow. The list is endless.
The only way I could write about mysterious North Carolina would be as an outsider. Some of the best books are written from a stranger's point of view, but my heart would not be in it.
The call of Kansas is well known.
7 comments:
Charlotte,
Greensboro is just across the border from my hometown, Danville, VA. Greensboro is the nearest airport for folks in Piedmont Virginia. The characters in my Lizzie Stuart mysteries leave from that airport.
Let me know if you want to know something that your daughter, as a newcomer, might not know about history/culture of the area.
Charlotte, I haven't yet set a mystery here in North Carolina, but it has a lot of possibilities.
Hi to all! I'm in Williamsburg, VA, and have spent plenty of time on the Outer Banks and in Eastern NC. One of the greatest real mysteries of all is here... the lost colony of Roanoke Island. While a lot has been written about it, fiction and nonfiction, I think there are still tons of possibilities to wrap this into a mystery novel.
Frankie, thanks. I'm always interested in the history/culture of an area and my son-in-law Leah and I went on a tour of a distillery--Fainting Goats Spirits. North Carolina's liquor laws are even crazier that Kansas's.
Tanya--yes! What a great idea.
Thomas--Yes. Are you from NC? One of my daughter's colleagues is from New Mexico and she said she missed being able to see. My husband had the same reaction to the state. If he could have laid his hands on a chain saw there wouldn't have been a tree left standing.
Good luck with new locale, Charlotte. I felt the same way about New Hampshire that Don felt about North Carolina. Nothing to see but trees, and more trees, with a lake here and there, and suddenly--a mountain/
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