Gloucester

 by Charlotte Hinger

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. Psalm 107, 23-24

The wedding of my grandson, John Crockett and Lucy Hadley took place in Gloucester, MA August 6, in an exquisite Episcopal Church. More about the wedding when the pictures arrive. For this post, I want to write about the town of Gloucester and the impact of setting upon writing. 

What an amazing place! I loved this memorial area dedicated to "They that go down to the sea in ships." I was especially touched by a large plaque that contained all the names of those who had perished at sea. The records went back to the 1600s. Occupations are concentrated around the sea and the historical records are carefully preserved.

I wonder how living in this town would affect a writer's psyche. I've always lived in Kansas, both Eastern and Western, and I find that the state is a character in my books. I'm deeply affected by frontier attitudes, both contemporary and historical. Our state motto is To the Stars Through Difficulties. If you can't or won't do things the hard way, you aren't really a Kansan. 

It was touching to me to see the plaque honoring men who had been destroyed by the forces of nature. Mourning for those who had been lost. I loved the massive houses topped by Widow's Walks and could easily imagine the lonely women looking out to the sea. Wanting for their husband to return. 

It breaks my heart that today's society has become so judgmental. When any tragedy occurs, we immediately look for someone to blame. Who started this fire? Whose fault is it? 

We spend precious little time consoling the bereaved. 

I'm Back

 Better late than next time. I've missed my last two Friday posts. With the last, I was returning from South Burlington, Vermont. Luck was on my side. The GPS worked, the ferry from Vermont to Essex, NY was on time, and the traffic was not as heavy coming toward Albany as it was headed north into the Adirondacks. But by the time I got settled and ready to write, it was after midnight and no longer my day to post.

I went to South Burlington because I really need a break. School was out and I needed to get my grades in. I also needed some sleep. Thanks to the staff in the Registrar's Office I was able to get my grades in. Thanks to the hotel I stayed at in South Burlington I was able to get two nights in a lovely king-sized bed in a junior suite. I was supposed to have had four nights there, but my recently discovered carpal tunnel syndrome slowed me down when it came to grading the papers in my two classes. I'm looking forward to my doctor visit to learn about the treatment so that I can focus on the manuscripts I'm working on. 

While I was in Vermont I had a chance to scout out the settings for the 1939 historical I'm working on.   was rainy, but much like New York. When the sun came out, it was warmer than when I arrived. The friend who I had joined for her trip to Vermont left a little before I did. We spent Thursday enjoying the food Vermont hat to offer -- including delicious maple ice cream. I had a few stops I wanted to make to do research for the Vermont portion of my book. With map and guide book in hand, I looked for buildings that were there in 1939. 

I enjoy doing that kind of research. I enjoy walking in my characters' shoes. I enjoy imaging how my characters with various backgrounds and experiences would respond to the same setting -- the food, the music, the people -- to something they have never experienced first hand. I try not to make that off the cuff. If my protagonist loves Southern accents and blues music, I want to know when she experienced both. Maybe her mother sent her to live with her grandparents and that was the first time she also experienced being cared for and living in a stable environment. Or, if another protagonist hates the South and wants to get on a train or plane and never come back, maybe that character has experienced something traumatic in that time and place. Maybe my protagonist is someone who has fled a small Southern town one step ahead of a lynch mob. Maybe when he arrives in New York City, he is like the young African American man in one of Rudolph Fisher's stories who looks around him in astonished delight when he finds his way to Harlem -- just as my Southern-born schoolteacher will. But she will not be delighted. As I tried to imagine Vermont in 1939, I knew it was only an exercise. But as I gave some thought to how my white Southern plantation owner felt about the snow and the ski lodge and the laughing, happy young men and women with jobs in the city, The ones who had been on the train that the senator's daughter who he was courting had taken. She had invited to come along. He might well have wondered if she had wanted him to be uncomfortable. But he had accepted the invitation and was  having the rare experience of being ill at ease, 

 His insight was mine. Or, rather, his lack of insight was a clue to the mystery of his childhood and his pride. That was important and it made the time I had put in doing general and not very focused research about America in 1939, both the South and the North, worthwhile. I've been thinking about what I could use for other characters. I always take my characters to the settings where they might get a clue -- and if I pay attention, I will get more than a clue about who they really are and how they see the world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Travel riches

In various ways, the past few Type M posts have been about setting. Airports, our favourite places to write, and visiting new parts of the country. I too have been thinking about setting. I recently returned from a trip to Russia, with brief detours into Finland and Sweden. It's why I missed my last Type M post. I had a fight with Google, who wasn't happy with my trying to log in on a different device (my mini-iPad) in the middle of the Baltic Sea. It was even less happy when I couldn't confirm my identity using the code they sent to my iPhone (which had a Russian sim card that didn't work on the ferry to Stockholm). It deemed me a security threat, and I had to wait until I was home to convince it otherwise. Clearly the tech world has not caught up with world travelling.

I love travelling the world and seeing different landscapes, cultures, city-scapes, and lifestyles. Admittedly, one can do little more than scratch the surface in two weeks, but even two weeks through the eyes of an eager stranger can be enlightening. In preparation for my trip to Russia, I started to read A Gentleman in Moscow, set in the decades following the Communist Revolution. The author's wry, charming observations on Soviet life provided a rich backdrop to the sights I was seeing, especially now that Russia is in the post-Soviet era, allowing me an even longer view of history. I visited the summer and winter palaces of the tsars, which rival le Palais de Versailles in opulent, gilt-dripping excess. It is this lifestyle that our hero in the book lived as a young Count, and it was fun to imagine him, if not in these grand halls, at least dancing in something similar. And it was sobering to imagine the struggles of the peasants on whose backs all this extravagance was built.

The Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg

I wasn't able to finish the book while I was there, so I finished it at home, and this provided another kind of enjoyment. I had walked many of the squares and streets the author described in the book, and I'd sipped champagne at the famed Metropol where the Count spent forty years under house arrest. I could picture the potted palms and the marble floors.

Champagne at the Metropol Hotel with Vicki Delany

I could picture the grandeur of Nevsky Prospect in Saint Petersburg and the bridges over the Fontanka Canal. I could picture the walk up from the Moskva River past St. Basil's Cathedral into Red Square. What fun to follow a character through streets in your mind!

St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

I have always made a point of visiting the settings that I write about, spending time there and trying to walk all the paths my characters will walk. I have travelled across Canada for each of the four Amanda Doucette books I have written so far, and have loved every minute of the exploration. Well, perhaps not the snowstorm in Calgary last fall I have learned so much about my country, and I hope that my books take my readers on a virtual voyage of discovery, even if they have never visited the places in reality.

I have also written ten books set in my own city of Ottawa, and I know how much local readers love buzzing around the familiar streets with Inspector Green. Here's a little hint of what is to come... An eleventh Inspector Green novel, which I have only just begun. Who knows what back alleys and elegant neighbourhoods I will drag into the spotlight this time!

Places Remembered

I've been thinking about setting -- particularly in the wake of the fire at Notre Dame. I was in Paris for the second time a few years ago. That time around I was traveling with my aunt and we were visiting her son and his family. We traveled from the house they had bought in Normandy to Paris. At the time I was looking ahead, scouting out the setting for a future book in my Lizzie Stuart series. I was already planning to send Lizzie and John Quinn to France on their honeymoon.

Lizzie, my history nerd, would walk through Paris with guidebook in hand. How could she not have gone to Notre Dame? Undoubtedly a scene would have happened there. Maybe she would have seen someone or heard something. Maybe had a glimpse of another character I already know will appear in that book.

That book isn't the next in the series, but the one after. I've been debating France, but it is the destination I've always had in mind if Lizzie and Quinn make it to the altar. I've also recently considered Ireland because of Quinn's family ties. But if they should go to Paris, I need to make a choice. The series is in the recent past. The honeymoon would happen during the first week of January 2005. So what about Notre Dame?  How does one handle a setting that has changed in an event that was deeply emotional for many people?

This gets to the larger question of recovering the past. As my fellow Type-Mers have discussed, setting is important. I, too, spend time in the field, exploring the places where my books and short stories are set. It is disconcerting to discover how much real-life settings change. This is less of an issue writing in the recent past or near future. Enough is there to have a sense of how it once looked or will look in an imagined future. But when the setting has only a marker and the surrounding area has changed, one is left only with photos.

I need to go to the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Knowing how little remains from the fair, I haven't rushed to make the pilgrimage. But I will eventually. Standing there, with map and photo book, I hope I will be able to get the "lay of the land".

And if  Lizzie goes to Notre Dame in 2005, I'll need to figure out how to treat the tragedy of the fire with respect while being true to what she would have seen and commented on.

For the sake of art

My current novel in progress has plunged me deep into unfamiliar territory. Literally. The prairies and badlands of Southern Alberta. I'm an eastern city girl born and raised in Montreal and living most my adult life in Ottawa. I spent childhood summers in the Quebec's Eastern Townships (Three Pines territory) and my recent summers at my lakeside cottage in rural eastern Ontario. I did suffer through a couple of years of grad school in Toronto, but that was before the city got interesting. I travel extensively, and have made a point of trying to go to the far corners of the earth, but that's different from knowing the soul of a place.

I wrote ten detective novels set in Ottawa, which I knew inside out, before deciding I wanted to explore farther afield. My choice of setting for my new Amanda Doucette series was very deliberate; I wanted to take the series across Canada and showcase the breadth and diversity of my magnificently complex country. Geographically, we go from craggy coastlines to vast inland lakes and forests to prairies and Rocky Mountains before reaching the Pacific. We go from the crowded, clamorous cities of southern Ontario to the windswept Arctic tundra of Nunavut. I wanted to bring readers along with me to visit all that.

It turns out to be a tall order. My novels are always deeply grounded in setting, which I try to capture vividly enough so the reader can see and feel it. Part of setting is the people, how they dress and talk, what they think and what they care about. I make a point of visiting the places and trying to do all the things Amanda would. Hence the winter camping in Quebec for The Trickster's Lullaby and the kayaking trip to Georgian Bay for Prisoners of Hope. Each book has given me lots of adventures, big and small, and it's been great fun as well as enlightening.

But in going west, I am starting to go farther from my roots and from the experiences that fashioned me. The Ancient Dead is set in Alberta, geographically and culturally a very different place. I have visited several times, most recently this past fall when I was specifically researching this book and trying to visit the exact locations and do the exact things Amanda would be doing. Now that I am back home writing the book, however, a thousand small questions keep cropping up. What time of the summer is the alfalfa crop harvested? What does the ICU at Foothills Medical Centre look like? How far north does the prairie rattlesnake extend? And what kind of curses would a farmer use? Writing each scene, I am either stopping to research the answers or putting in multiple question marks for a later time.

I do all this in the interests of authenticity, trust, and respect. Alberta readers will know if I get the alfalfa crop wrong. Calgarians will know I never set foot in the hospital there. Just as I hate it when cavalier writers get my home wrong, I don't want them turfing the book out because of a wrong note. If I have the audacity to venture into a place I don't know too well, I owe it to people to try my best to learn about it. As well, if readers know I got the small stuff wrong, how will they trust the truth of the bigger picture? Regional slang is particularly tricky. I've decided it's better not to use it than to use it wrong.

How on earth did we writers cope before the Internet? I wrote many books and short stories before the Internet was as rich and accessible as it is now, and I recall dragging home stacks of books from the library, making phone calls, and poring over maps and newspapers. I also remember just making stuff up. But the internet has put an extraordinary amount of detailed knowledge at our fingertips, and with that access has come an additional burden to try to get things right.

Bu the internet has its limits, especially when it comes to getting a feel for the culture. Reading local newspapers, biographical accounts, and blogs helps, but in the end I still have to make that extraordinary leap into my characters' heads and hope that, regardless of whether they grew up on the streets of Ottawa or on a ranch in Newell County, human concerns and desires – the stuff of crime fiction – are universal.

In praise of authenticity

I am sitting in a hotel room near the Calgary airport, waiting for my flight home to Ottawa in the morning. It's the last day of my two-week Alberta research trip, and as they say, "the best laid plans..." I had intended to spend most of the day at the Calgary Public Library, doing some last minute digging into topics that came up on my road trip, but Calgary has been hit by an unseasonal record snowfall and the roads are nearly impassible. Plus I have no winter boots to manage the snow on the ground, which is currently about ten inches but still falling.

So the library research is not to be. The joys of being a writer.

A couple of recent posts have alluded to the need for greater authenticity in modern crime writing. I have always been a fan of realism. At the core, of course, our stories are made up. Murders that didn't happen, characters that don't exist... But the trick, at least in my type of writing, is to take the reader on a trip that feels real, that has enough touchstones in their real experience that they can believe they are immersed in something that could happen to them. So although I create fictional characters, they are often amalgams of people I know, with traits and background experiences that can ring true. I borrow from friends, colleagues, and family shamelessly, although I always hope the resulting fiction is unrecognizable.

I believe the greatest authenticity has to be in the realm of character. Writers can develop entire fictional towns or indeed universes, with geography and climate that is utterly unfamiliar. But if the character doesn't seem real or relatable, if the writer hasn't fashioned him to be at once complex and yet consistent with what he's been through, if he doesn't do things that follow from who he is, then readers will just bail on the story. That's why I work so hard to ground my characters in the place that has fashioned them. That's one of the reasons I always try to visit and absorb the settings I write about. The flat, empty prairie fields are indeed different from the teeming streets of Toronto. The wide-open, sparsely travelled rural highways of Alberta are an entirely different experience than the white-knuckle kamikaze trips along Canada's busiest highway, the 401. The pace of life is slower and more peaceful, the chance to reflect and enjoy is far greater.

As a writer, I need to feel those differences to help create the characters. And then of course, there is the landscape itself. It becomes a character that I hope will seduce readers and take them on a journey far from home. Canada is a country of extraordinary diversity in geography as well as culture and history, and I want readers to experience that as vividly as I did. Neither photos nor my imagination could never do justice to the vivid textures of the reality, from the weathered grey of the abandoned homesteads to the rich gold of the wheat fields and the Mars-like hills and hoodoos of the badlands. I only hope the words I ultimately find will do them justice.

So authenticity is not just about avoiding the errors that yank readers out of the story or cause them to roll their eyes in protest. It's about drawing the reader deeper into a rich and believable story that will keep them nodding their heads as if they were right there at the character's' side.

That said, I don't plan to put this record snow storm into my next Amanda Doucette book about the Alberta badlands. In THE ANCIENT DEAD, it will be hot and sunny, with the brilliant, open blue sky for which the province is famous. But who knows? It's nice to know that Alberta's weather is unpredictable enough that if I need a snowfall– to hide a body or impede a rescue, say– I can put it in.

Setting and Social Issues

Yesterday in her post, Donis wrote, "Setting is important to characterization." I've been thinking about that because of a brief conversation that I had with a colleague a couple of days ago. She was talking with a group of other people and as she saw me walking by, she paused to tell me she had finished reading all five of my Lizzie Stuart novels and the two Hannah McCabe novels set in Albany. I was pleased when she said she'd enjoyed all the books -- and surprised when she said the fifth book in the Lizzie Stuart's series, Forty Acres in a Soggy Grave, had been her favorite.

If I had been asked, I would have suspected that the fourth book, You Should Have Died on Monday, would be the one most readers liked best. That book had an interesting cover, introduced Lizzie's mother, the femme fatale, moved from Chicago to New Orleans. That book got great reviews. The fifth book came out with little fanfare. I was worried that I might have offended folks on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. In the book, I'd use the real name of the location because it would have been obvious and because it was crucial to the book -- a barrier island, wildlife, farms, migrant labor, agribusiness, pollution, land-use issues.

I knew after my first visit that I wanted to set a book there. I loved Eastern Shore. I went back again as I was writing and spent another week at a bed and breakfast to make sure I was highlighting what made the peninsula unique. But the plot of my mystery was inspired by a  newspaper headline that I'd discovered from 2004, the year (in the recent past of my series) that the book was set. Starting there was probably not the best way to highlight the beauty of the setting.

In retrospect, after the book was published, I feared that I had gone too dark. Yesterday, I flipped through the book again, reading the last few chapters. I'll need to read it all in a couple of months when my editor at Speaking Volumes prepares the manuscript for the reissue. But I was curious about whether I had short-changed this literary child of mine. I think I did. It received fewer Amazon reviews than the other books in the series, but the reviewers generally liked the book. What they liked was the characterizations and the relationships.

This time around, I'm going to send Forty Acres out into the world with a hug and pave its way. I couldn't have written any other story. Setting and characters came together, and the clash was disconcerting, but important to the series. The ending was satisfying for me, and for the readers who understood it was the completion of a series arc that had begun four books earlier. Now, as I move on to the next book, the characters are in a different place in their lives.

Next stop, Santa Fe -- and that setting, too, is crucial.

The Places We'll Write About

I've been thinking about surroundings lately.  My own private space says a lot about me, and it's made me consider how important it is, therefore, to describe a character's environment a novel. You can learn a lot about him from the setting in which he is placed.

You know how it is when you buy a red Toyota, thinking you're all unique, and then every other car you see on the drive home is a red Toyota?  It's the same with what you think are original observations. Rhys Bowen said that when she begins a novel, she often doesn’t know the complete cast of characters, who’s going to get killed or how, or who did the deed, but she knows where the story will unfold.

The very night before I heard Rhys say this, I was reading  P.D. James’ book on writing entitled Talking About Detective Fiction, and came across this :  “My own detective novels, with rare exceptions, have been inspired by the place rather than by a method of murder or a character."    She then describes a moment when she was standing on a deserted beach in East Anglia.  She could imagine standing in the same place hundreds of years ago, until she turned around and saw a nuclear power plant, and “immediately I knew that I had found the setting for my next novel.”

Ms. James also observes that : "When an author describes a room in the victim's house, perhaps the one in which the body is found,, the description can tell the perceptive reader a great deal about the victims character and interests.

Setting is important to characterization.  Even if the murder unfolds the same way in two novels you'll have two very different mysteries if the victim is killed in a beach house in Thailand or in a prep school auditorium; if the suspects live on deep in the moors, or in Manhattan across from Central Park; if the detective lives in a fifth-floor walk-up on the south side of Chicago or in a mansion in Beverly Hills.

If Miss Wonderly had walked into Spade and Archer Detective Agency on the first floor of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, The Maltese Falcon just wouldn't have been the same.

Making A Real World

Great-grandfather's farm

After I read Vicki’s entry about location research, below, I commented that I’ve researched a lot of places using Google and imagination. But upon reflection, I have to admit that is not really true. I think that it’s incredibly helpful to experience a place before writing about it. My series is set in a place that I know down to my bones, because I was raised there. However, the place I write about and the place I was raised no longer exist, so I actually rely on memory—and use imagination to fill in the gaps.

Where I live now

But it’s true that there is no substitute for actually experiencing a place. I’ve been to Britain several times, and every time I'm reminded that we may speak a common language (kind of), but we are not the same. I get the same impression when I travel to different part of the United States. I moved  to Arizona thirty-four years ago and was quite surprised to find out that it's very different from Oklahoma. I did not recognize one native plant, tree, grass, bug, bird, or lizard. Who would have thought it? Both states are located in the American Southwest. You'd think the cultures and the landscape would be basically the same. But in my experience, keeping in mind that I am not an Arizona native and live in a giant metro area, Arizona is culturally like back door Los Angeles, but more conservative in attitude. Oklahoma, at least when I lived there and knew it best, is easily as conservative as Arizona, but the culture is like nowhere else I've ever been. Put Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Kansas in a blender and mix it well, and you may get an idea. I am quite politically and socially liberal, but I can't deny that I am marked by the values of the place I grew up. And it shows in the characters and themes I write about.

I was born and raised in Tulsa, a rich oil town located in the hilly bend of the Arkansas River. I came up among people in three piece suits, cowboy boots and stetsons. My father owned a construction business and raised quarter horses on the side. My mother ran his office. I rode horses every weekend. The picture at the top is my great grandfather's farm in eastern Oklahoma, where I spent a lot of time when I was a kid. I played in blackjack woods draped with wild grapevines, hot and sweaty and covered in cockleburs and chiggers. I picked up wild pecans off the ground by the bucketsful in the fall. At the time, I'd have rather stayed at home and read a book. I was not a lover of the outdoors. Now I look back on it through a golden haze of nostalgia. In fact, I write about it.

The author creates a universe with her choices and invites a reader in. If the writer is really good, the reader is enveloped in the story and moves through it without being quite aware that he’s in a made-up world. The writing is all-enveloping, but unseen.

I’ve quoted this before, but it is to the point. The very best writing reminds me of one of my favorite Zen sayings: The fish is not aware of the water it swims in.

That’s what we writers are shooting for.

A tale of two stories

Vicki's post about the importance of getting the setting correct got me thinking. I have always been a big believer in walking in the footsteps of my characters, so I could infuse the story with the real-life and often unexpected sights, smells, and sounds that they would experience. As Vicki says, not only does it add realism to the story but it helps to draw the reader into the magic. My Inspector Green novels are set in Ottawa, a city I know well after nearly fifty years here, and yet I always visit the specific locations I put in the novels to make sure I'd captured all the detail. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), this usually entailed a half-hour car ride.

Not so my Amanda Doucette books, all of which are set in different locales far from my home. Newfoundland, Quebec's Laurentians, and Georgian Bay. At least these could be reached by car, so I could throw my bags, my notepads, and my dogs into the car and set off to follow my imagination. The Newfoundland drive took three days, but it was entertaining.

But the next two in the series are planned even farther from home, necessitating a plane ride, a car rental, and a kennel for my poor pups. I can only afford to make one trip there, so I have to make the most of it. Ideally I would like to visit while I'm still at the "glimmer of an idea" stage, knowing the place itself will give me unexpected and unique fodder for my imagination and for the story I create. But if that trip gives me the idea, I won't know all the details I don't know I need until I am deep in the writing of the story. Normally that's when I would make another trip, but this time I will have to rely on books, the internet, and helpful friends and contacts. It's not the same as walking in the footsteps of the characters, but it will have to do.

Visiting the location gives you so much more than the smells, sounds, and sights of the place. It gives you the culture, the people, and the way they see the world. It gives you a glimpse of what moves them, angers, excites, and saddens them. It give you an idea what they celebrate. All this molds that "glimmer of an idea" into a story and enriches its development.

I am currently working on the third in my Rapid Reads Cedric O'Toole series for emerging, reluctant, or just plain busy readers. It's in an imaginary village, its setting left deliberately vague in the books. There is a wonderful freedom to writing about an imaginary place. I don't have to check police procedure or Tim Hortons locations. I can rearrange geography without anyone calling me out. I put farms and roads and lakes wherever I want.

Despite this, the setting is very clear in my mind, because I use the area of Eastern Ontario where my summer cottage is located. All the sights, smells, and sounds are vivid to me, as are the culture, the people, and the issues they care about. I think this is the key to inventing a place; use a real-life place (or two) as your blueprint, and the vivid detail will help to draw your readers in. And then put the churches and lakes and bars wherever you want. Just remember where you put them, for the next book.

Time and Setting

"Well, let me catch you up. It's now later the same afternoon. . ."

That's what Blanche on The Golden Girls says when Dorothy mentions it's been years since she read a certain slow-moving, long-running comic strip. Time hasn't moved quite as slowly in my Lizzie Stuart series. But it now four year later in a series that began in 2000. The series is now set in 2004.

The first challenge I'm facing is that I've forgotten the details. I'm about to write a book in which Lizzie Stuart and John Quinn, my sleuthing couple, fly off to Santa Fe to spend Thanksgiving with his relatives. This will be the first time Lizzie meets her future in-laws. Only thing, I've forgotten the bits and pieces of their lives from earlier books. I know Quinn's half-sister owns an art gallery. I don't know if I gave her husband an occupation. I don't remember if I mentioned the ages of their children. I know Quinn's mother and step-father are coming from Oklahoma. I don't remember what the illness was that had the step-father hospitalized in the third book. All those pesky little details that I've forgotten. And I haven't been keeping a series "bible" with information about the minor characters because my editor did that so well. But I won't have the same editor or publisher for this new book. I am going to have to go back and look for these details.

Actually, I may re-read the earlier books. I have never done that – read all of the books in the series. I was afraid of an encounter with passages that would make me cringe. But much has changed in both Lizzie's life and my own since we began sixteen years ago. At this moment in her life when she is only two months away from her wedding day at the age of forty, we should look back at how she got there. Since she is not going to do that in the midst of the awful situation that I'm about to put her in, I should do it for her.

Also, re-reading could help me with the warm-up exercise that I always have to do with a new book. I've been writing about another character, Hannah McCabe, for the past few years. During those years, I wrote one short story about Lizzie. I was thrilled when that story was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, but I didn't immediately return to the series. A reader asked if the short story was a set-up for the next book. I said "no". But as I began writing the new book, it occurs to me that one of the characters in the short story was in Paris during World War II, and Lizzie and Quinn are supposed to go to Paris on their honeymoon. The short story was complete in itself. A passing episode in Lizzie's life as the director of the Institute for the Study of Southern Crime and Justice, but there is that tantalizing mention of Paris. Who knows what . . . but getting back to the book I'm working on now. First, Lizzie has to meet her future in-laws.

I've never been to Santa Fe. Reminding myself that research trips are tax-deductible, I'm going to New Mexico later this month. A whirlwind three-day trip to try to imagine what Lizzie would have seen when she was there in November 2004. Last night I had dinner with a wonderful woman whose son lives in Santa Fe. She brought along a magazine, a map, and tips about "must sees" in downtown Santa Fe. While we were talking about where Quinn's sister and her family might live, she texted her son for more information. The pal who is coming along with me on my research trip had her travel guide to Santa Fe on hand and we discussed short trips Lizzie and Quinn might take – keeping in mind that they need to spend time with his family because that's why they are there. Thanksgiving dinner, football, conversations – except Lizzie is distracted by that missing woman back home in Gallagher, Virginia. . . the woman that she last saw changing a tire on the side of the road.

Because I'm description-challenged I need to go to the place I'm trying to describe. Yes, even if that means going to Santa Fe in this book and to Paris for the next. Those of the hardships of being a writer. But I hope that going to Santa Fe will allow me to see the city through Lizzie's eyes. She is a first-person narrator. Reading a guidebook and watching YouTube videos will not suffice. I will read books about Santa Fe history because Lizzie is a crime historian and she will read those books. I'll do research on art and culture in Santa Fe because Lizzie will want to be able to have an informed conversation with her future sister-in-law, the art gallery owner.

As I gear up for my trip to Santa Fe, I'm reading Mary Buckham's A Writer's Guide to Active Setting: How to Enhance Your Fiction with More Descriptive, Dynamic Settings (2015). I plucked this book off the shelf at a local bookstore. I brought it home and put it on top of a pile of other books that I hoped to read at some future date. Last week when I was thinking about Santa Fe and what I needed to know, I happened to spot Buckham's book. Buckham emphasizes the importance of getting inside your character's head when it comes to describing the setting. Whether it's a city street or her own bedroom, what a character focuses on should reflect both personality and mental state. Buckham analyzes passages from well-known writers to demonstrate how to use setting to strengthen depiction of character.

Lizzie once complained about New Orleans – didn't love the place and couldn't get into it – but she was there to find her long-lost mother and things were not going well. I want to go deeper with my settings, make every description work harder. That means I need to get out of my author's head when I visit Santa Fe for the first time and get into Lizzie's. I hadn't intended to write those earlier scenes in the book yet – the before-the-trip scenes when she encounters the woman who is later missing – but it seems I must. When we arrive in Santa Fe, Lizzie needs to be worried and anxious . . . and we need to be back in 2004.

Characters, Ideas, and Settings

The posts by my colleagues this week has been so thought-provoking, I had a hard time deciding what to blog about today. Characters who take over? Where ideas come from? Setting as character?

I have experienced that phenomenon of a character who refuses to do what he or she was intended to do. In my third Lizzie Stuart book, Old Murders, the character who was to have been the killer refused that assignment and insisted on having a subplot. In the fourth book, You Should Have Died on Monday, Lizzie's mother, Becca, made an appearance that threatened to upstage Lizzie, my first-person protagonist. Becca is still out there and now that I've returned to the series for a new book, I'm sure she will be making another appearance. I hate to have her ruin Lizzie's wedding, but I'm pretty sure she will show up during the honeymoon. And when she reappears, I will be torn. She is the most take-no-prisoners character I have ever created. A femme fatale who disrupts Lizzie's life, but shouldn't overshadow her.

The idea for my historical mystery came to me when I was thinking about 1939 and the events that symbolized the struggle in America between past and present, inequality and justice. In 1939, Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, the New York World's Fair opened that summer, Billie Holiday performed "Strange Fruit," a song about lynching, at Cafe Society in NYC, and that December, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. This idea -- even more than most of my ideas -- has required a lot of thought to get to workable plot.

On the other hand, the idea for my sixth Lizzie Stuart book, now in progress, came to me as an image of a woman running out of her house toward her car. I wanted to try my hand at a flash story for the New England Crime Bake contest. It wasn't a great story -- I needed more words -- but I did discover where that woman was going. She drives up into the mountains to rescue her child, who is being held hostage by an old enemy. The story was pure noir. In my head it played out like a graphic novel. And my protagonist Lizzie Stuart was nowhere in sight.

But that dark, rainy night wouldn't go away. When I was ready to start my new book, the plot changed and the characters changed. But the book begins with Lizzie, driving home on a rainy night in Gallagher and coming upon a car by the side of the road. A woman is trying to change a tire. . .

The book begins there. But the next day, Lizzie and her fiance, John Quinn, fly off to Santa Fe to spend Thanksgiving with his family.

Lizzie has never met his family and wants to make a good impression. But now she is distracted by what is going on back in Gallagher. A woman is missing. Her car was found by the side of the road. . .

Since the murder mystery is back in Gallagher, I might have done some reading about Santa Fe and watched some YouTube videos. But my Thanksgiving gathering -- when Lizzie meets Quinn's family, all of whom have been mentioned in earlier books -- is important to readers who have been following the series. I'm curious about Quinn's family, too, and I want to do those scenes justice. Lizzie and Quinn will soon be on a plane back to Gallagher, Virginia, but I want the family gathering to ring true. So I'm going to Santa Fe for three days in November to find the neighborhood that Quinn's half-sister lives in and the street where her art gallery is located. I'm going to do the tour of the area that Lizzie will have when she goes there. I want the setting to have as much significance in the story as Gallagher.

I have one other idea that I'm playing with, but need to work out. I need to resolve a series arc from my two Hannah McCabe police procedural novels set in Albany. The two books, The Red Queen Dies and What the Fly Saw, are set in 2019 and 2020, respectively. My Lizzie Stuart series is set in the recent past. The year in the sixth book is 2004. But Lizzie is an alum of the University at Albany, School of Criminal Justice. I've been thinking of a cameo appearance by a professor in Gallagher, Virginia, who Detective McCabe contacts to ask a key question about the threat that she is facing in Albany, NY in 2020. Lizzie would be in her 50s, and I wonder what would be going on in her life and how she would be different in McCabe's alternate universe. Just playing with the idea. . .

The inspiration of setting

Barbara here. Aline's post about how spectacular settings inspire an author's imagination is very timely. I am in the very initial stages of imagining my next book and I know almost nothing about it besides its setting. A lot is made of character and plot in the creation of a successful story, but setting is the third pillar upon which great story telling rests. Setting is the cradle of a story, background to the sparkle of characters and action but the supports that hold the story up to the light and allow its facets to show through.

A setting is more than just a place; it is the season, the time period, the weather, the people, and the history. Story grows out of such fertile soil. In fact, a great story could not truly have been told in another place and time.

In my Amanda Doucette series, I deliberately chose to change the setting for each novel in the series. The first, Fire in the Stars, is set in the rugged, beautiful wilderness of Newfoundland, land of brooding forests, crashing surf, soaring cliffs, and stubborn, feisty island people who take on the world their own way. The second novel, The Trickster's Lullaby, is set in Quebec's Mont Tremblant during the winter, and the cold, the blizzards, the stunning monochromatic beauty of winter wilderness are like characters in the story, challenging the players and directing the course of the action.

The nitty-gritty of winter camping

This latest book was just submitted to the publisher this past weekend, and so now I turn my thoughts, and my imagination, to the third book in the series – Prisoners of Hope. It is set during a summer kayaking expedition in the gorgeous granite islands of Georgian Bay. I have some vague plot ideas – wealthy island mansion owners, domestic foreign workers, local villagers, frightened fugitives washing up on remote island shores – but beyond that I will have to explore the setting to find the essence and shape of the story I want to tell. I have topographical maps, maps of Killarney Provincial Park, and several pamphlets about the area spread out on the dining room table. During the long winter, I will immerse myself in them, and in the memories of a previous kayaking trip made to the Georgian Bay Islands some summers ago.

The granite shores of Georgian Bay

But although the internet, maps, and books can tell me a lot about a setting, I believe there is no substitute for visiting the location, ideally in the season I am writing about, because without wandering the place, seeing the sights, listening to the sounds and feeling the breezes, I don't feel I know its secrets well enough to write about it. Visiting the locale is about more than feeding the five senses; it's about finding inspiration. From standing on the top deck of a fishing boat, I get inspiration for a scene in my book, and nothing creates a feeling of authenticity like sharing the same footsteps and struggles as your character.

For Fire in the Stars, I spent weeks in Newfoundland and walked many of the same paths as Amanda. If I hadn't done that I would never have discovered the tuckamore forests which played an important role in the story.

Tuckamore forest with its secret opening into its underworld

For The Trickster's Lullaby, I even took a winter camping expedition. In preparation for Prisoners of Hope, I visited Georgian Bay this summer and walked its pink granite shores, its marinas, and its little villages. In the spring I will make another visit and probably a kayaking trip for further inspiration.

For me, I love exploring setting, bringing it to life, and travelling to distant locales while I write. I hope readers will enjoy the trips too!

Characters and plot in search of setting

Barbara here.Today I want to continue the fascinating topic of muses that was raised in Aline's and Rick's two previous posts. Aline zeroed in on "motive" or rather the whole picture of what drives that particular killer to kill at that moment in that way, which forms the whole underlying question of the story. Rick addressed starting points--that germ of an image or idea that pops out of nowhere and starts the writer's mind on its creative journey.

Both of these are key elements to storytelling. One provides the initial spark and the other guides us in the weaving of the story flowing from that spark, just as an oyster slowly builds a pearl out of a grain of sand. I want to talk about setting, because that is foremost on my mind right now, and in the case of my Amanda Doucette novels, I can't begin the story until I have some idea of the setting. Each novel in this new series is set in a different iconic location in Canada, with the view that by the time I wrap up the series, I will have touched on Canada's beautiful, varied landscape and culture from coast to coast to coast.

Book One, Fire in the Stars, is set in the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, a wild and beautiful land of crashing oceans, craggy mountains, icebergs, and little fishing villages. It is already written, and due for release in early September. I have visited Newfoundland several times and have roots there, but I made two research trips to make sure I got the right feel and detail for the exact places I was writing about. Book Two, The Trickster's Lullaby, is set in Quebec's Laurentian Mountains just north of Mont Tremblant, and although I went there often for skiing and summer fun, I still made two short trips once I was writing the book in order to get the detail right. The setting needs to match the story I want to tell, and sometimes this means massaging the story a bit and other times changing the exact locale I had in mind.

Setting means not just physical surroundings but also season and weather. My third Amanda Doucette book is set in Georgian Bay and involves kayaks and rich island mansions. During these hot summer months I am finalizing the winter camping story in the Laurentians, and I will be writing the first draft of the summer Georgian Bay story in the dead of the upcoming Ontario winter. So I changed my writing schedule to do some location setting this summer, to figure out exactly where to set Prisoners of Hope. What a fun trip it was, driving the length of the eastern shores of Georgian Bay, exploring little villages and shoreline roads, and ending up in the village of Killarney at the northern tip of the bay, where the dogs and I took a lovely walk along the pink granite shore to the lighthouse.

The villages and shores themselves provided inspiration and plot ideas as well as dramatic atmosphere, and a long talk with the local outfitter helped me to plan the fictional trip my characters will take. None of that would be possible without a hands-on visit. Once I start writing the book, I know I will have many more questions about the setting, and will scour the internet for answers as well as keep a running list. When next summer comes and the first draft is hopefully mostly written, I will make another trip to Georgian Bay to get my final answers.

Even better than visiting the setting is walking through the experiences the characters will have. Thus in Newfoundland, I took hikes through the woods and along the ocean cliffs, took the whaling boat trip that my characters take, and ate in the restaurants. For the Laurentian book, I actually took a four-day winter camping trip. I would love to take a Georgian Bay kayaking trip, and am currently trying to see whether I can fit it into my schedule this fall. Stay tuned!

Maine Chance

My grandson graduated from Colby College last Sunday. It has an excellent reputation for academics and was easily the most peaceful campus I've visited.

All the visiting relations stayed in Belfast the night before. My daughter, Michele, and son-in-law, Harry and his mother, June Crockett were treated to a great tour of the town by Murray and Margot Carpenter.

Belfast was fascinating and the town was one little hilly street after another. That surprised me and in a very short time all the muscles in my legs rebelled. By the bay the terrain was relatively flat and I was intrigued with the commercial aspects of shipping and ship-building. Besides, standing still and asking questions is a sly way to distract attention from a pained expression. These were serious hills. In town, yet!

I didn't know a thing about Maine. I've never been a huge supporter of the "write what you know" idea, but when it comes to setting, I think it's essential. No amount of Googling would have substituted for the couple of days in Belfast.

Streets in Kansas are wide and broad and in Maine they were narrow and winding. One could not zip right along.

From Maine we went to Manteo, NC where my granddaughter will be married Sunday. The family has gone to NC a number of times and I'm a little more familiar with that state.

But still! The chances of getting nearly everything wrong are sky high when writing about an unfamiliar setting. You'll have the flamingos going "eek" instead of "awk" and the wrong kind of flowers blooming at the wrong time and the wrong kind of grocery store chains.

However, there is a way of working around some of this if the protagonist is not writing from the viewpoint of a native. Write as an outsider. I did this with a couple of short stories that had a trucking background.

The outsider viewpoint is very useful for inserting background information. For instance, in my mystery series, Lottie Albright has moved to Western Kansas from Eastern Kansas and she often compares the two halves of the state

There is nothing wrong with using any setting you choose if you are willing to do the work. Visits, historical societies, and leg work can take you a long ways. As for me, I still enjoy writing about my native state.