My Weblog: The Good, the Bad, and the Emus

by Donna Andrews

Tomorrow's my pub date. Tuesday, July 8, 2014. I know some of you have already gotten your hands on a copy of The Good, the Bad, and the Emus--enjoy! For those of you who haven't--now's the time!

I'm doing two signings this week. If you want a signed--or signed and personalized copy--I'm sure both stores would be delighted to help you:

Thursday, July 10, 6:30 p.m. Chester County Book & Music Co. in West Chester, PA.

Saturday, July 12, noon-3, Mystery Loves Company in Oxford, MD.

I'll also be running some contests, here and on Facebook, so stay tuned.

But for right now, I want to share a little bit about how the book came to be.

The emu part was easy. A writer friend, Ashley McConnell, told me that there were feral emus living in the mountains of Virginia. I did some research and found that there are quite a few places in the country where emus have either escaped from commercial emus farms or been turned loose when the farms went belly up. I haven't been able to find much information about how well the emus are surviving, but--and here I will quote Meg Langslow's grandfather, Dr. Montgomery Blake, the eminent biologist, environmentalist, and animal welfare activist:

“Well, we have no idea how well they’re surviving,” Grandfather said. “It’s possible that they’re hanging on, but not thriving, in which case we need to rescue them and rehome them in a place that can give them proper care.”

“And if they’re doing just fine on their own?” Stanley asked.

“Then they’re probably having a detrimental effect on the native ecosystem, in which case we need to capture them and confine them in a place that can care for them without damaging the environment.”

I liked the idea of an emu roundup. But how could I add a murder to the roundup. And not just any murder, but a murder that Meg would feel compelled to solve--which means a murder that somehow affects one of her friends or family members. Because for me, that's the only sane reason for an amateur sleuth to risk life and limb doing something that the police should be doing.

And then I remembered one of the biggest loose ends I've left dangling in my series--deliberately, mind you. Meg's grandmother. It's part of the family history that Meg's father was found, as an infant, in the fiction section of a Charlottesville library. In The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, Meg learns that Dr. Blake is her grandfather, and her grandmother was his college sweetheart, Cordelia.

What happened to Cordelia?

What if Meg's grandfather finally became curious enough to try to find Cordelia, and hired Stanley Denton, the local PI, to do so. And what if Stanley found out that Cordelia had been living less than an hour away until six months ago when she was killed. Possibly murdered.

Now that's a murder Meg couldn't resist trying to solve.

And that's how The Good, the Bad, and the Emus came about.

Comments

I'm really looking forward to reading the latest installment in the Meg Langslow series.

This strikes a chord with me as years ago, while visiting my mother in western Pennsylvania I thought I was hallucinating when I saw an emu in her back yard, but there it was as big as life. I don't know if it was an escapee or feral, but it definitely was there. Can't wait to see what happens with Meg's emus.

Posted by: Cathy M | July 07, 2014 at 01:30 PM