I Love Surprises and Clues

I watched a commercial on television recently that was about people enjoying surprises. I’m one of those who loves a good surprise, and mysteries generally hold plenty of them, although not always good ones.

For the purposes of this week’s blog, I’m going to talk about clues, or what could be considered clues.

I’ve mentioned a few times in recent blogs that my house is for sale.  Being the positive thinker that I (sometimes) am, I’ve started packing already. When the house finally sells, I’ll be ready to go.

It’s been interesting. There are a number of boxes that have been stored rather than unpacked. Now I’m having to go through the boxes to sort and throw out or repack. I’ve always been a “saver”, and there are plenty of things I’d forgotten I had. I’ll open a box and think, Wow! I forgot I had this. Other times I’ll think, I wonder why I saved this.

I’ve watched several television shows having to do with forgotten items. I used to watch If Walls Could Talk. People would buy an historic house or building and find amazing things in unlikely places. Recently I watched a show called Attic Gold which involves a small company who will clean out an attic, free of charge, but they keep what they find and remodel the attic. I’ve watched some of the shows where people purchase the contents of storage units and find amazing things. I realize that some “finds” are staged. After all, this is television. However, I also know that there really are some surprises out there.

I remember a show I watched a long time ago where the new owners were going to renovate an older house, and they found old movie posters that had been used as insulation in the walls. They were in pristine condition and valuable.

Where a mystery is involved, people will hide things in the most unlikely places. When a writer is developing a story, they can create a scenario wherein a character might find something of historic importance, or they might find something recently hidden – clues.

I wrote Old Murders Never Die, which had to do with finding a ghost town that no one had seen since the late 1800s. All Sandi Webster had to work with were things she found in the town. The people had left suddenly and many homes and businesses were found just as they were left, with plates still sitting on dining tables and merchandise still in the general store. It was fun to dream up what a modern day person might find and coming up with an old mystery. The clues were all there, just waiting for her.

I found a letter that a soldier had written to my grandmother during World War I. He wrote it on Armistice Day and described what was going on. He was in the Argonne Forest when this took place. Fascinating. He included a few comments about what was going on in her life, which made it even more personal and interesting. (She’d recently been in an industrial accident and lost her arm. This would have been in 1918. It’s difficult to know how long it took her original letter about her arm to reach him.)

Another unexpected, and shocking, find was a photograph that was mixed in with family photos. I know I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but it’s difficult to forget. My grandmother gave me a large trunk filled with photos dating back to the 1800s through around 1980. There were so many to sort through, and as I looked at them I found a photo of a firing squad shooting people. The Officer in Charge sat astride a horse, the troops were in the background, and you could actually see the smoke coming out of the rifles. The people being shot appeared to be starting to fall. For clarification, no one involved was American. I sent the photo to a retired military historian and he believes these were possibly Asians. Even more startling, or to add to it, it appears that my grandfather took the picture. This would have been between 1904 and 1907. I won’t include the photo in this post because it would shock too many people.

Clues? They can be found in the darnedest places. Maybe you’ve found something of interest mixed in with the ordinary, everyday things. Tell us about your most surprising find.

Until next time, try sorting through some of those old boxes that have been stored and forgotten. You may find things that make you smile, or that make your mouth pop open in surprise.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

It's All in the Telling

My apologies, but there is no new post this week. Thank you for stopping in.

In the past I’ve written about all kinds of things, including where in a mystery the murder(s) should take place (anywhere in the book, for the most part), dogs adding humor to a story, humor in general, and that life has enough drama without adding more.

However, as I say on my website, there’s nothing funny about murder, but you can find humor in the characters and situations involved in solving the crime. I love reading a good book that’s lighter with some humor. However, the simple fact is that not everything is, or can be, funny.

In Old Murders Never Die, you’ll find Sandi Webster and her partner, Pete, stranded in a ghost town along with her half wolf/half Golden retriever dog, Bubba. Being stuck in a ghost town actually does leave room for some humor, but in the process of discovering this town, Sandi also discovers some old crimes – and they aren’t at all funny. In fact, they’re heartbreaking. So how does a young, female private eye solve old crimes and move from drama to humor? Carefully, but I guess you’d have to read it to figure that out. Who’d like to visit an old ghost town that no one has laid eyes on in over a hundred years? Me, for one.

One of the most difficult parts of writing a lighter murder mystery is moving from humor to drama and back again. For the most part, the motive for the crime isn’t going to be funny. Frankly, I wouldn’t want it to be. Life is too precious to laugh at the loss of someone’s life.

In Bubba’s Ghost, Sandi discovers some deep, dark secrets about the victim, the killer, and another character. After she learns about the background of some of the people in the story, she has to deal with it and then try to get on with her own life. She does so, I think, with grace. In some professions you have to grow a thick skin or you won’t last. Sandi’s working on it, but she still feels sorrow over sad stories. She bounces back with help from the people in her life.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. If you’ve ever seen Steel Magnolias, there’s a scene at the cemetery where five women are quite upset. One of the women talks about being so angry because of the death of her daughter that she’d just like to slap someone. Another character pushes one of the other women forward, offering her as the sacrificial lamb. It was so unexpected that it was funny. That was a good example of moving gracefully from drama to humor.

I’ve read books where the manner of death, or where the body turned up, was humorous. It can be done if it’s handled correctly – it can also be the death of the book if it isn’t. Sometimes authors walk a fine line, and we have to be very careful about how we write humor.

In the meantime, Sandi and Pete tend to look at the lighter side of life as often as they can.

In the Bogey Man series, Chris and Pamela are amateurs when it comes to solving a murder, and that leaves plenty of room for mistakes which can elicit a laugh from the reader. Their latest adventure, How Now Purple Cow, involves senior spies and purple cows.

It’s all in the telling of the story.

Until next time, I hope you have a week full of laughs, and that no drama stealthily creeps into your life.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

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Abandoned but Not Forgotten

I read two blogs today that made me think about history and abandoned buildings. You might want to check out Marilyn Meredith’s post at http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/ about an abandoned house and M.M. Gornell’s blog at https://mmgornell.wordpress.com/ about the Barstow-Daggett Airport.

A couple of years ago I visited my daughter in Washington state. We went for a drive in the mountains because she wanted to show me an abandoned grist mill. On our way back to town I saw a path leading into the woods, and I wanted a picture of it. Washington is a beautiful state and this was a picturesque trail. I talked her into stopping so I could take my picture. I walked a little way and took a few pictures. As I turned to the right, to head back to the car, I saw an abandoned house. You couldn’t see if from the road and if I hadn’t wanted a picture of the path, we would have missed it.

I seriously thought about climbing through the overgrowth to explore it, but something moved. Well, I have no idea if Washington has snakes in the mountains so I decided against it. I suppose it could have been a mountain lion or something, but whatever it was, this Chicken Little wasn’t taking a chance. One day the house may go in a book. You never know.

 

The Path

 

The Abandoned House

  

The cover of Old Murders Never Die is interesting, too. The background is buildings from Bodie, California, a ghost town. However, the picture of an abandoned house in a frame is actually from Nevada, and the house, along with some old stories I’d heard about an abandoned town inspired a whole book.

Not all abandoned buildings are part of a ghost town. You find them when you least expect it. Nevada has buildings in the Middle of Nowhere, so to speak. So does Arizona. I’ve never understood why people would build a house in the wilds of the desert, and I do mean in the desert – not in a town.

Of course, both states have mining as part of their history. Who knows? Maybe the houses were built to be lived in while someone searched for gold, silver or copper. That’s a more romantic theory than assuming they were loners and didn’t want to be bothered by other people. I guess there could be a story in that, too, though.

I can’t help but wonder who might have lived in these houses. I wish I knew the history and I wish there were people to talk to about the buildings. Unfortunately, not only are the people long gone, but so are any clues to who they were and what they were doing so far away and alone.

In Old Murders Never Die I added a history where there was none. Many years ago I worked in law enforcement and I recalled a story my Sergeant told about his cousin. He went on a hunting trip in the mountains. All of a sudden, in the Middle of Nowhere, he found an abandoned town. People had left in a hurry. Everything was still in place, with dishes on the tables, pots and pans on the stoves, and clothes in the bedrooms. Furniture, although falling apart, still sat in the rooms.

This cousin was astonished. He made his way back down the mountain and made the mistake of going to a local bar where he imbibed a bit too much and bragged about what he’d found. Uh oh. A few days later he returned to the abandoned town, thinking there must be some valuables there, only to find someone had beat him to it. Someone, apparently from the bar, had cleaned the place out.

My husband and I once took the truck and camper and traveled through the deserts of Nevada with friends. We found a one-room house built out of rocks, and surprisingly, the ceiling consisted of roots. I don’t know what kind of roots they were, but still… Roots?

So when you travel, be sure to have your camera handy. Any of these things can inspire a story. Add a little history to your mystery and season it with supposition. You never know where your imagination might take you.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve run across quite by accident?

Until next time, if you can’t travel, then read. You’ll visit all types of interesting places through the eyes of the author.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com

Fact vs. Fiction Raises Its Head Again

Before getting into a story about reality vs. fiction, I have an offer to make. If you leave a comment, I’ll randomly select two to receive “gifted” copies of the audio version of A Well-Kept Family Secret. The blog will be up for a week and the winners will be announced on Monday, October 20th. Take a chance. Leave a comment.

~ * ~

Many times I’ve heard authors say if you find a current event that has something to do with one of your books, make the most of it. Well, the other night my daughter called and read me a headline she’d found on the Internet. 

“Hiker Discovers an Abandoned Town Inside Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains National Park.” (Huffington Post) (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roadtrippers/hiker-discovers-an-abando_b_5927164.html) 

I immediately thought of Old Murders Never Die where Sandi and Pete discover a fictional ghost town in the mountains of Arizona, and where they become stranded. My next move was to read the article. There were a number of interesting similarities, and some definite differences.

Jordan Liles discovered Elkmont in May of 2013, a town built around 1912, in the Great Smoky Mountains. Wolf Creek, the fictional town in my story, is considerably older, but there were those similarities staring me in the face. By the way, the book was released in July of 2013.

There’s a river by Elkmont. Wolf Creek had a large creek nearby. The real town was located in the woods. The fictional town was located in the woods. The real town had a hotel, and the fictional town had a saloon/hotel. Many of the pictures Mr. Liles shared reminded me of my idea of Wolf Creek, including some houses that were overgrown with foliage.

One of the differences? Although the real town had buildings still standing, they weren’t in safe condition. I can understand that, being located in Tennessee with more moisture and humidity. The fictional town was located in Arizona where the weather is arid and dry. In the book, most of the buildings were relatively safe to explore. 

Another difference is that Elkmont had electricity. Wolf Creek didn’t because it was a much older town, abandoned shortly after 1880.

If this makes you curious about Elkmont, check out the video Mr. Liles made as he walked through the town. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfaTpunhJRs)  It’s quite interesting. Be sure to take a look at his website, too, at http://www.jordanliles.com/blog/.

Along these lines, I was contacted by a woman who’s been a steward for ghost towns for a long time. She said she was enjoying the story partly because the way I described Wolf Creek would be what you might actually find in a deserted town, with one notable exception. A real town would have been a lot dirtier. Well, I didn’t want Sandi to spend the entire story cleaning, so I downplayed the dirt and limited her to cleaning one house – the place where they would stay while stranded.

The background on the cover of Old Murders Never Die is actually Bodie, California. The house featured on the middle of the cover is an abandoned house found in Nevada. It has no special significance, except that it’s the basis for the Wolf Creek adventure. Hmm. So I guess it really does have significance.

Many people don’t realize how much unexplored land is still left in America. There are, I’m sure, other towns waiting to be discovered.

Take a hike sometime in an area where there’s not generally a lot of foot traffic. You never know what you might find. Another Wolf Creek, only the real deal, or maybe another Elkmont area?

Thank you Jordan Liles for sharing your story.

Until next time, check out some historic homes and sites in your area. You might find some fun exploring ahead of you.

CLICK HERE to visit Marja McGraw’s website

CLICK HERE for a quick trip to Amazon.com