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Family archaeology

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

My project of converting my family's hundreds of 35 mm. slides continues. I'm starting to think of it as family archaeology. If I could go back in time and tell them something, I'd ask them to do a bit better job on identifying each slide.  Who, what, where, when, and why, people! Take the above slide. That's me with Grandpa Andrews my father's father. Almost positive it was taken at Jamestown Historical Park, in front of replicas of the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, the ships that brought the first settlers to Jamestown. But when? How old was I? I'd guess ten or twelve, but I don't know. I can probably figure it out roughly by comparing my haircut and glasses to my school pictures. And since the family habit of never throwing things away means I have decades of family letters, I can probably get the precise date eventually, if I want to. When I was that age, my grandparents didn't necessarily visit every year, partly because flying was still a big deal, and quite expensive--well, that hasn't changed--and partly because as far as I know Grandpa was still running a working wheat and cattle ranch. So not only would there be undated photos, there would be letters talking about the trip, and they'd usually be dated,

This photo also illustrates a family photography philosophy: if you're going to spend film taking a picture, get some people in it.It was a regular feature of family vacations and visits: lining up in front of some bit of scenery. Not always a particularly beautiful piece of scenery, but these photos will be valuable in the family archaeology project. At least it answers the question "where."

Not always very completely. Grandma and Grandpa Andrews in front of a museum of some sort:

By the Pacific, I suspect.

Okay, this one we definitely know where and when!

And this isn't as lugubrious as it looks--Grandpa was taking some family on a genealogical expedition, and John was an ancestor.

Curiously, so far I have found many more photos of my Kansas relatives than my Virginia ones. Or maybe not so curiously--the Kansas ones visited rarely, so we made a point of taking photos when they were here.This one, for example, taken when not only my Kansas grandparents were visiting but also my Aunt Mae (on the left). Yes, that's me in the red coat.

And a relatively rare picture of my parents with both grandmothers--Grandma Andrews, on the far left, and Mummaw, my Hornsby grandmother, to her right. Technically Grandma Andrews was my step-grandmother, but she was the only grandmother I'd ever known on that side of the family. Dad's mother died while he was in the Army during World War II, and he almost didn't get home on leave in time for the funeral. Grandma and Grandpa married after the war, almost doubling the number of aunts and uncles and cousins available for visiting on that side of the family, which was highly satisfactory.

And an even more rare photo that includes Pawpaw, my Hornsby grandfather, on the far right. Which means this was taken sometime before his death in November 1965.

We did sometimes have fun with photography. Grandpa and Anna Mae, clowning for the camera at Colonial Williamsburg

Still, I love the occasional shot that's either candid or looks that way. Grandpa on the ranch.

Dad showing his oysters to Grandpa.

Two generations

Now I'm impatient for the call from the photo shop to let me know batch 3 is ready for pickup!

 

Cool Girls Club--An Idea That's Time Has Come

By Joanna Campbell Slan for Femmes Fatales

 

View this photo

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments, and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud".

~*~

 

Just got back from visiting with a young friend who is gorgeous, sweet, and financially very savvy. She owns her own business. She owns property. And she has a boyfriend who is putting her down.

 In her heart of hearts, she knows she isn’t fat, stupid, or unfit to be a mother. But…he’s planted those seeds in her head, or worse yet, in her heart. He’s written them on her soul. She can’t claim her successes because he’s planted a seed of doubt in her. She’s not sure she’s worthy. She’s afraid that any “good” in her might really be a façade. She’s spiraled down into full blown imposter syndrome. There’s a lethargy about her now, a sense of being “less than,” and gosh, do I relate.

 We live in a time where we’re keenly aware of our imperfections. Where we women always feel too fat, too old, too ugly, too short, and too unlovable. We see perfect women on TV. We watch them in movies. We pick up magazines that promise we can be more. More thin, more young looking, more wealthy, more organized, more successful, and honestly, when are we enough?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’ve decided to do something about it. I’ve started the Cool Girls Club, a place on Facebook for women to support each other. We’ll have prizes and experts and inspiration and ideas for getting what you want and support and whatever you (yes, you) want, and it’ll be a place for women to cheer each other on. I’ve even gone so far as to have tee shirts made. They have a special logo with the letters CGC for Cool Girls Club.

I’m sick and tired of feeling “less than.” I bet there are other women out there just like me. I’m also angry when I hear a wonderful young woman put herself down. This garbage needs to stop. So…what do you think? Are you in? Am I right? Are you a Cool Girl?

Americana the Beautiful.

By the time you read this, I will be . . . in South Dakota.

We're going out for a bit of a drive, the scientist and me. From California to Boston to Florida and back. And if doing it is half as much fun as planning it, it's going to be the trip of a lifetime. 

These are the states we've been to already. There won't be many left unshaded by September

It's not really a road trip, though. I realised that much at a Fourth of July party when half a dozen friends weighed in on unmissable stops we just had to make along the way: roadside attractions such Hank Williams' death car, a full-size fibre-glass Stonehenge and the world's largest gallstone. That's just Alabama.

In one respect it's a road trip, mind you: there are going to be arguments a-plenty. The scientist has never in his life seen a roadside attraction he wanted to stop at. His usual modus operandi is to stamp down on the accelerator pedal and shoot past, saying "It looks closed".

Me? I've never seen a Funeral Home Mini-Golf (Illinois), a bronze statue mash-up comprising Abe Lincoln and Perry Como (Pennsylvania), or a building in the shape of a giant chest of drawers (North Carolina) that I could live without.

Friction is guaranteed. We've tried to avoid it. We've decided we each get three fibre-glass, world's largest, stuffed and/or pickled wonders that we can demand to stop at. No vetos. The scientist agreed suspiciously quickly to this. Turns out he thinks I'll use mine up before we're out of California on day one. (And since there's a dead tree carved into the shape of an octopus eating a steamship, who's to say he's wrong?)

Or maybe, since it's a dead tree, and he's a plant biologist . . .

Metaphor, the tree of Utah, is visible from I-80, so we'll be seeing that.

And there have been times in the past when a biological roadside attraction seduced my hard-to-get travelling companion. The redwood tree you can drive through on Highway 101 is still his gold-standard perfect tourist spot. And I quote: "It costs seven dollars, it's ten minutes from the road, it takes ten minutes to experience in its entirety and there's no gift shop." Besides, when we were there, there was the added treat of seeing a woman standing with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face complaining that she couldn't drive through it because her car was too big and she wanted a refund. That was pretty special.

And it's not like we're seeing nothing. We're stopping in Salt Lake City to see the temple. That's mutual. And because I'm going to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees in Boston he's coming to watch a musical on Broadway. He didn't know about Donna Summer: The Musical when he agreed, though. Broadway and disco! Poor thing. We're spending a mutually-agreed night in a "haunted" hotel in Savannah, going for a hike in the Grand Canyon, swimming in two bits of our beloved Atlantic, and we both wanted to have the last bit of the trip, home from Florida, be a drive-till-tired-and-find-a-motel adventure. The deep south struck me as the most promising bit of the country to wing it in. If there's not at least one night where the choice is between five stars and fear, I'll be sorry.

Some nights are dead certs. Next Tuesday, I'll be in Minneapolis, at Jess Lourey's house, with foster kittens laid on. And next Wednesday - if you're in the Twin City area - Jess, Jessie Chandler and I will all be at Once Upon a Crime at 7pm, talking about crime and comedy combinations. Details here.

It's just struck me that Jessie L writes about the giant fibre-glass sculpture of Chief Wenonga in Battle Lake MN and Jessie C had a bingo barge in one book. I need to make sure I've got some tip-top Americana up my sleeve by then for the Q&A, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

My time machine

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

That's my dad. And the black and silver object in his hands is the camera he carried around while he was overseas during World War II. This was probably taken in 1945 in the Phillippines. Could have been Hawaii, could have been 1944 or 1946. Since he was in ROTC when Pearl Harbor happened, he found himself in the Army pretty soon thereafter, but he had stateside assignments until sometime in 1944. He stopped off in Hawaii on the way home--maybe on the way over, too. I may never know. He died in 2004, and I only recently began the project of converting all the family's 35 mm. slides to digital format. Wish I'd done it while he was alive, so I could ask about some of them.

Still, even though in some cases all I know is what's in the frame, looking at them is like stepping into a time machine.

Did he get parachute training? Or did he only see it going on and decide it was a good subject to photograph?

And who's behind the camera when we see Dad standing in front of the scenery?

Probably from the Phillippines. Although who knows? Could be Hawaii.

This one's labeled "Chaplains with Papayas." Wonder what's the story behind that.

Dad's palatial quarters? Or did the officers have official offices?

Scenes from camp life

And they were surfing!

Although not Dad, apparently

Apparently tennis was more his style

Sunset over . . . ? I'll have to enjoy it without knowing.

 

Hanging at the Mall

By Elaine Viets

When I was a teenager, I'd go to the mall with my best friend Sue. We'd experiment with make-up at the cosmetics counters, try on cute clothes we couldn't afford, and eat an impossibly gooey dessert. We'd discuss life, love, boys and school.
We learned things at malls: I discovered I looked like a corpse in green eye shadow and White Shoulders perfume made me sneeze. We'd try on wigs and hats and personalities: sometimes we were sophisticated shoppers, other times we were giggling girls.
We'd meet friends at the mall. Sometimes, we'd even buy something.

So when I wrote Ice Blonde, my novella set in mythical Chouteau County, Mo., I assumed today's teens went to the malls just like I did.
Ice Blonde is the story of Juliet Du Pres, the daughter of a wealthy Chouteau Forest family. The sixteen-year-old sneaks out of her house to go to a high school party with her forbidden boyfriend, Dex, a low-rent mechanic's son. She wears only heels and a blue velvet dress in sub-zero Missouri weather. At the party are drugs, booze, and rivals for Juliet's dazzling blonde beauty. On the drive home, Juliet has a fight with her boyfriend, runs into the woods near her house and disappears in the snow. Was Juliet kidnapped? Murdered? Or is she hiding out with a high school stud?
And why did Dex disappear? Now two teens are missing.
Death investigator Angela Richman fights to find the missing girl and save a young man's life. To do that, she has to talk to Juliet's teenage friends, but they're isolated in their privileged world.
Angela sees a way in when her hippie handyman, Rick DeMun, says his sister Daisy is Juliet's best friend, and she needs a ride. I need to find out where teens hang out. I asked Big Al the pizza man. Al had two lively daughters. Also, as a pizza driver, he sees a side of teen life most adults never know.
Al gave me this shocking news: Kids don't go to the mall any more. Not like we did.

In Ice Blonde, Rick the handyman explains the facts of teen life to Angela this way:
"Daisy's car is in the shop and she wants to hang with her friends. I'd drive her, but Mother thinks I'm a bad influence. She won't lend Daisy her car, but she offered to drive her. Daisy would curl up and die before she'd be seen with Mother. But you, you've got a cool car."
"I remember being like that," I said. "Which mall does she go to?"
"Mall?" Rick took a long drink of coffee. "Kids don't go to malls much anymore. Sadly, these kids hang out at the Show Me gas station mini mart. Freaks me out."
"A gas station? What do they do there?"
"They vape, smoke, drink Polar cup refills, and meet up with their friends. Occasionally some pot gets sold on the back lot."
"I hate to sound like my grandmother, but kids nowadays. . . ."
"I know," Rick said. "They also hang at houses with the kind of parents who want to be friends with their kids. I did that, because I like weed, but Daisy doesn't partake. Daisy and her buds hang at the new Olive Garden."
I paused, the cup halfway to my mouth. "The Olive Garden? Do they bring two-for-one coupons?"
"Now, now." Rick grinned at me. "They love those all-you-can-eat bread sticks. I'll tell Daisy you're not bad for a grownup. It may take her a while to warm up to you, but she's dying to go to the Olive Garden."

Does Angela find the missing Juliet? What happens to her boyfriend, Dexter?
Read Ice Blonde to find out. Set in the dead of winter, it's guaranteed to be a chilling story on a hot summer day.

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Buy the Ice Blonde e-book here: https://www.amazon.com/Blonde-Angela-Richman-Death-Investigator-ebook/dp/B07BRZ4FT9/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The paperback is temporarily sold out at Amazon, but you can buy it here: https://www.ipgbook.com/-products-9781625673626.php

All in the Name of Research

 

 

I wrote a guest post for another blog last night about a man in the audience of a panel I sat on at ThrillerFest XIII. His tone of voice and body language suggested an agenda hidden behind his benign-on-the-surface questions. Intrigued, after the panel, I followed him to the bookseller's room and interviewed him. Sure enough, he had a fascinating backstory that explained his manner and his questions. (If you want the details, visit Mysteristas and read my post there. https://mysteristas.wordpress.com/2018/07/17/guest-post-alexia-gordon/ ) I joked that following him was research. (Really, I just wanted to see if my hunch was right.)

But, was it a joke? Our panel moderator, Heather Graham, asked us about our most unusual research. Since all of us panelists wrote paranormal fiction, you can imagine some of the answers. What have I done in the name of research? Eavesdropped, attended psychic fairs, gone on ghost tours, bought tarot cards and spell books. (Okay, I would have gone on the ghost tours regardless. “Research” is my cover story.) And what have I googled? Poison gardens, serial killers, art theft, forgery, guns, knives… I may buy one of those mugs that warns anyone looking at my browsing history that I'm a writer, not a serial killer, and get a medical alert bracelet requesting my browser history be deleted if I'm incapacitated or dead. Some writers have embedded themselves with hostage negotiators, trained rescue dogs, hiked remote mountain trails, done everything short of actual murder (I hope) to get the information they needed to make their story feel real.

How about you? How far would you go for the story? What's been your weirdest/wildest research?

Draft mode

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I am now officially in draft mode on my next Meg Langslow book, to be called Terns of Endearment. Since on the planner/pantser spectrum you'll find me solidly though not extremely in planner territory, this can mean one of three things—in descending order of desirability.

One: I have completed a synopsis of such blinding perfection that I sometimes have to pause and marvel at its splendor—a synopsis so detailed and inspired that fleshing it out into a full book will be a piece of cake.

This has actually sorta/kinda happened a time or two. Not usually. And not this time.

Two: I have a synopsis that will work. Some parts of it are fuzzier than others, and there's always a chance that along the way I will encounter parts that don't work out as well as I thought they would, although with luck I will find other parts to replace them with. But I have a plan, and ever better, I've run the plan by my editor and gotten his blessing. I'll get there.

This is more usual, and is indeed where I am this time. There is still a lot of hard work to do, but at least we're not in . . . .

Three: Calling what I have a synopsis would be like putting an unwashed head of lettuce on the table and calling it salad. I still have serious research to do, and I might not even know who the killer is going to be. I know what's going to happen in the first chapter, and I have a vague idea where I want to end up, and I wouldn't even think of starting to write except that eek! I have a freakin' deadline staring me in the face, and the only way I have a hope in hell of meeting it is to start now. Or maybe yesterday. Last week would have been even better. But I am a professional, and a professional meets her deadlines so gangway.

Not in that last option, thank goodness. I can write under pressure, and I doubt if most readers could tell which books I wrote with a detailed outline and which by the seat of my pants. I can't always remember myself. But still—I am very glad to be in the middle case with a tolerable outline. And my canine nieces, shown at right, are happy, because the middle option means I'm more likely to take a break in the middle of the day to walk them.

Draft mode is a very comfortable place to be, because as long as I complete my quota for the day, I'm allowed to call that day a success, no matter what else I failed to achieve.

The other great thing about draft mode is how productive I become. Not just on my book. Suddenly, I find myself strangely compelled to tackle tasks I have been avoiding for weeks. I have six pages to write today. Hey! Maybe before I start that, I should log in all my receipts from the first half of the year—that will make it so much easier at tax time. And it's so much easier to write in a clean, organized space, so maybe I should take everything out of the drawers and cabinets in my office and do a little purging and organizing. Even better—it's so much easier to find my tools now that I got the right kind of hooks to hang them on the slotwall--but I bet I could organize them even better if I spent a little more time, and then I could move on to the rest of the garage: that picture at left is what the tool wall looks like now--not bad, but there's room for improvement and it would be even nicer if the whole garage looked like that and--

Every time I begin a book, I marvel anew at the many ways our brains can find to distract us from what we really ought to be doing. It's called writing avoidance. And the most insidious kinds of writing avoidance are the tasks and projects that are really worth doing. It's not hard to see that you're goofing off when instead of writing you're, say, playing SimCity BuildIt, rewatching all three seasons of Rosemary and Thyme, or paging through Facebook to see what your friends are up to. Not that any of these activities are bad, mind you. But I try to save them for after I meet my quota. And when it comes to things that would actually improve the world or at least my small corner of it if I did them, I have to stop and ask: do I NEED to do this now? Or should I wait till AFTER I make quota.

I'd go on in greater detail—but did I mention I have a quota to make today?

What Happened at Midnight

 

 

The Femmes Fatales are enormously proud of our Femme emeritus, Charlaine Harris. After her Sookie Stackhouse Southern vampire series had a successful run as "True Blood," she has another TV series, "Midnight, Texas." But Midnight fans have been waiting for the news. Will the series be renewed? Here's what Charlaine has to say.

 

By Charlaine Harris

 

As most of you know, the NBC show “Midnight, Texas” had a great first season. Wonderful special effects. Great actors. Great sets. Good scripts.

And as I hope most of you know, too, this excellent show was based on my Midnight, Texas books, a trilogy.

If I can use a Texas-friendly analogy, this was not my first rodeo. I’d also had “True Blood,” based on my Sookie Stackhouse novels, and Hallmark Move and Mystery has been adapting my Aurora Teagarden mysteries as 2-hour movies for HMM. So I feel like I can spot a sure thing. The show was sure to be renewed, and I figured it would just be an automatic thing.

We waited. And we waited. By “we,” I mean the crew and cast and the producers and the writers and the directors. Even craft services, probably!

The new set had been built in Albuquerque for the last few episodes, and it was just as exactly like the actual street in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where the first episodes were filmed. (Due to Hollywood magic, it was exactly like. I visited both of them.)

The actors’ contracts expired. I gave up hoping. It was borne in on me that though I think I understand the publishing industry -– more or less -– the TV and movie industry remains inexplicable and mysterious, no matter how often I deal with it.

And then “Midnight, Texas” got renewed, months after we’d hoped and expected. BOOM! We’re all back in business. Well, most of us. Some of the writers and actors had to move on, and things had to be switched around.

I’ve read a couple of table-read scripts and I think the viewers won’t notice the difference. The writing is brisk and entertaining, and goes places I had never thought of going. We’re all happy again. But I’m not getting complacent. Now I know there’s a shark under the surface of the water. However, come October, we’ll be seeing more episodes of “Midnight, Texas.”

 Though we won’t be reading any more Midnight books, no matter how successful the TV show proves. Because I wasn’t asked to extend my contract for any more adventures of the Midnight folk. Business!

 Instead, also in October, you’ll get to read the first novel of my new series, set in an alternate America . . . and we’ll hope this series lasts for longer. And no suspense about renewal or new contracts.

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The new season of "Midnight, Texas" premiers Oct. 26 on NBC. Follow it here: www.nbc.com/midnight-texas

No Sex Please, We're Cozy

I think this post is probably one I posted several years ago, but given the discussion about cozies and their origins that seems to arise on a regular basis, I thought it bore re-sharing, with a few additions.

For one thing, the cozy mysteries that are being published these days, with hooks like sewing, cooking, baking, and crafts, among others, are a recent twist on what is a long-established form of the mystery, the (mostly) female amateur detective story. The first amateur female detective, the spinster Miss Amelia Butterworth, first appeared in 1897, in Anna Katharine Green's That Affair Next Door. She featured in two other books after that, along with Green's series policeman, Ebenezer Grice.

Later on, in the 1920s and 1930s, other spinsters rose to fame, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver. Miss Marple was an amateur, while Miss Silver was a paid professional. The crimes they investigated, however, were typical of those we find in these contemporary cozies. Characters like Miss Amelia Butterworth and her successors are the ancestors of today's cozy heroines. There were also amateur male sleuths, too, like Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and H.C. Bailey's Reggie Fortune (who was a doctor on the side). 

One of the hallmarks of mysteries on the cozier side is the lack of in-your-face violence and gore. Another is the conspicuous absence of explicit sex. Cozy writers leave that kind of thing to the hardboiled and noir crowd and to the romance writers.

Does the lack of sex scenes mean that characters in genteel mysteries have no passion, no romance, no “inner fires”?

Of course not. Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Emerson and her husband, eminent Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson, enjoy their “conjugal bliss” regularly – Amelia is rather endearingly coy about it – but everything happens behind a closed door. With the reader firmly on the other side of the door, naturally.

Cozy readers aren’t interested in the mechanics of who does what to whom in the bedroom in the pages of a mystery novel, but these same readers are generally happy when the main character in a series has an actual or potential romantic interest. Love is a basic human emotion, and cozy sleuths aren’t the alienated loners so prevalent in hardboiled and noir fiction. They actually understand how to make an emotional connection with another person.

The genteel mystery is all about the sense of community and the ability of the characters to get along with one another. When one of those relationships goes awry, murder happens, and the main characters struggle to bring back a sense of order and community, not only in the larger sense but on a personal level as well.

The focus is the relationship and its nuances. If the reader is in the bedroom watching who does what to whom, frankly the nuances can fade rapidly away. The anticipation, the tension, have gone flat. Maybe I’m terribly old-fashioned, but I liked movies much better when there was romance and sexual tension, not to mention comedy. Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in “Bringing Up Baby” or Grant and Irene Dunne in “The Awful Truth” are two of my favorite examples.

Mystery readers are well-equipped with imagination, and writers don’t have to spell out everything in a cozy novel. Particularly when it comes to sex. Amelia and Emerson are entitled to their privacy, after all.

The Story of A Story

Catriona writes: It's the second Monday of the month (last night, as I'm writing this) which means I'm just back from the pub quiz. One of the questions was: What city is the brightest in the world? We were divided on whether it was LA or Vegas but we knew it was nearby. So it's a treat to return to a fictional world I loved at first sight (reading the ARC) where darkness is celebrated and to a fellow writer I loved at first snark: the light, bright and sparkling (no matter what she's writing) LORI RADER-DAY.

 Lori writes:

This is the first post I’ve written for the launch of my new book, Under a Dark Sky. That means I’m still learning how to talk about the book, finding where the stories within the story are. The beginning seems like a great place to start.

I have started stories from characters. I have started them from what-ifs, from situations, from a neat-o job a character might have. A few years ago I heard a radio news story (probably NPR—bleeding heart liberal!) about a dark sky park being named by the International Dark-Sky Association, and I decided on the spot to make that gorgeous, pristine setting the site of a murder. A fictional one, obviously. I had never started a story from a location.

I’m here to advise you against it.

Let’s back up, because you’re probably wondering. What is a dark sky park?

A dark sky park is a national or state park that has been designated a dark sky space by the IDA for its efforts to keep light pollution at bay so that visitors can see the night sky as nature intended. With the sprawl of cities and the building up of even outlying areas, it’s becoming harder to see the night sky. But this isn’t a problem of visuals. Light pollution is in fact pollution—and it can cause harm to the human body as well our ecosystems and wildlife. The IDA designation rewards spaces that protect the night sky and, by the transitive property, us.

It’s not just parks and remote preserves that can claim IDA notice. Whole cities can be named dark sky communities, based on things like the kinds of street lighting they install. Flagstaff, Arizona, was the first dark sky community and first dark sky space, designated in 2001.

You’ve heard of Flagstaff, I’m sure. But odds are you’ve never heard of dark sky parks until now. I know, because every time I say I’m writing about one, I need to explain it. Even once when doing a book event less than a mile from an international dark sky park, the locals had not heard of them, or that they had one.

When I first learned about them, what I thought, obviously, was: “What a great setting for a murder mystery.” I checked around online to see if any crime writing compatriot had stumbled onto the same idea I had. As far as I could tell (and this may still be true), no one had yet written a novel with a dark sky park as the setting.

Some people, when they see no one has gone before them, decide they are trailblazers. Newbies, I think they’re called. A more seasoned professional might have wondered why no one had done it yet.

I’m mostly joking. Though writing about a dark place had its challenges, it has been a real joy to get to know more about the dark sky community and to write about a place I hope people will want to visit. With prior books—the ones started from characters and situations—I have not had the chance to lean in on a fun aspect of the book for promotional purposes. Why not? My first book centered around campus violence. Fun. The second one was set at a crappy motel. Oh, I should have had my launch party there!

The third one—you get the idea. With this fourth novel, I have been happily talking to people about constellations and circadian rhythms and space missions. Space is a vast topic, as well as being just vast. But of course the book isn’t about space or even about dark sky parks. It’s about the people who visit, who drag their own messy problems into the pristine beauty of nature.

In Under a Dark Sky, a young widow keeps the reservation her husband made before his death at a dark sky park, even though she’s developed a debilitating fear of the dark. She wants to get over his death a bit, air things out, and a getaway on Lake Michigan sounds like the thing for it. When she arrives, however, the house she thought she had to herself is teeming with twenty-somethings having some kind of reunion. And then, in the night, one of them is murdered.

Sounds all organized now that I’ve figured it out, right? Starting with a setting, however, meant that I was starting from a patch of ground and a pretty sky. I had to decide who might show up at the park, and why, and what trouble she might get into there, but also what trouble she might have packed into her suitcase to bring along. Who’s in her life but not with her? What’s the deal with all those characters I thought fit to put into the house? There are so many decisions a writer has to make about a book and, because I write standalones, each novel has to be conceived from the ground up. I don’t know about other writers, but I’m learning as I go, which leaves room for creativity, sure, but also mistakes. (For instance, a more seasoned professional might not have made her afraid of the dark, which took all that dark sky beauty I had planned to use and hid it away from the character and therefore the reader.)

What I’m hoping is that people who have never heard of dark sky spaces might take a chance. Visit the local observatory. Check out http://darksky.org/ for the nearest dark sky space. Think about what kind of outdoor lighting you’re installing. Any of it. These are little steps in a long journey, but then so is writing a book. So is everything.

Lori Rader-Day is a three-time Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee, winning the award in 2016 for her second novel, Little Pretty Things. She is the author of Under a Dark Sky, and of The Black Hour, winner of the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, The Day I Died, a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award, Thriller Award, Anthony Award, and Barry Award. She lives in Chicago, where she is active in Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and co-chairs the mystery conference Murder and Mayhem in Chicago.