Showing posts with label Nighthawks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nighthawks. Show all posts

Friday, August 21, 2020

What You Don't Know

Sorry to be so very late today. Classes begin on Monday, and this morning we had orientation for incoming grad students -- virtual orientation with each faculty member taking 3 or 4 minutes to introduce ourselves to the students who hadn't met up during PhD student weekend. 

I was thinking about my first classes of the semester on Monday and Tuesday and the work I still need to do on my online courses when I remembered today is my day to post. 

 I was up really late last night and up early this morning. The first thing I thought this morning was the short story that I have due (for an anthology) at the end of the month. The theme is the midnight hour. I had nothing -- no ideas. Then while Googling for images from 1939 (as I thought about a scene in my historical thriller), I came across one of Edward Hopper's 1942 painting. On of my favorite paintings by him, called "Nighthawks," The nighthawks are three people and a counterman in a diner. This painting always makes me think of Ernest Hemingway's short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," and of the movie based on his short story, "The Killers." 

I saw the painting, and I knew my short story would be set in a diner. I couldn't decide who my sleuths would be -- whether it would be a Lizzie Stuart mystery featuring my crime historian and her fiance, John Quinn, a former homicide detective. Or maybe a Hannah McCabe story, with my Albany homicide detective and her police partner, Mike Baxter. 

Because of a series of unexpected events -- including conversations I had with two baseball fans -- I'm now writing a Lizzie Stuart story. I have already established that Quinn is a baseball fan. And it seems that the year of the story -- the series, including my 6th book in progress, is now up to 2004. As I was informed that was a landmark year in baseball. That Red Sox curse that I then remembered. It makes sense that Quinn would stop to watch the game that he has been listening to on the radio. It's late, and he needs  a cup of coffee and something to eat after driving back to Gallagher from the airport. 

I discovered a few minutes in one of the games -- I happened on it in a video -- when play stops because one of the players is hit with a ball. That is the perfect moment for my killer to strike -- while everyone is looking at the television screen. And Lizzie, who Quinn calls from the diner decides she really wants a hamburger and fries and will sleep a lot better if she gets out of the house after spending  the day trying to finish a paper that is due. She gets to the diner just before or just after the murder.  . . 

I think it will work. But I know next to nothing about baseball. I have never been to a baseball game. I have never even seen an entire game on television. I do know a bit about the history of the game -- the 1919 Black Sox scandal, the Negro baseball league, Babe Ruth, baseball movies and documentaries. But Quinn is a fan because my friend -- with whom I talk through my plots-- convinced me that baseball is a thinking person's sport. A sport that Quinn would appreciate.

Thankfully -- one of life's blessing if you're a writer-- people who know about a topic are always willing to share their knowledge -- love sharing their knowledge. My thanks to my two guides through the 2004 baseball season.