Deborah Crombie Marathon

I am thrilled to report that I have finished reading through Deb Crombie's entire series, except for The Sound of Broken Glass, which released last week.

I hope you'll do the same. I had read one or two of her books in the past. But with a long series - and this one started in 1996 with A Share in Death - it's really worth it to read it start to finish. You see how the characters develop over time, you experience how the author deals with loss and love and deepening relationships. Most of all, you totally fall in love with Scotland Yard officers Gemma James and Duncan Kinkaid, and with London through Crombie's eyes.

While Crombie lives in Texas, she has said that she always felt like she should have been British. She travels to England and other parts of Great Britain every year and has lived there in the past. When you read her writing, she certainly sounds British. She gets the dialect, both in dialog and in how observations about life are expressed. She makes you feel like you are walking the streets of Notting Hill or shopping at the Columbia Road flower market. Here she is on her recent US book tour with an actual Brit, her fellow blogger Rhys Bowen, whose Molly Murphy series I love and want to enact a marathon on, too!

Crombie is one of the regular bloggers over at Jungle Red Writers where I drop in first thing every morning and often leave a comment. I was really excited recently to hear that my randomly selected comment made me the winner of a copy of  The Sound of Broken Glass. I can't wait to get it, except that I know after I finish reading it, I'll have a year or more to wait for the next one. As a writer myself, I know how long it takes to finish writing an entire book, and how hard it is. But as a reader, and a fast reader, I'm appalled at how quickly I can finish reading a work that took so long to produce!

I did a couple of series marathons before, with Julia Spencer-Fleming (also a Jungle Reds blogger) and Louise Penny, but now I'm reduced to eagerly waiting for their next book.

And right now, as before, I'm in withdrawal. Sure, I have other books to read, and am greatly enjoying Toni L. P. Kelner's Blast from the Past, with Wicked Eddies by Beth Groundwater and One Hot Murder by Lorraine Bartlett queued up behind. But what I really want is The Sound of Breaking Glass!

What series have you read start to finish? Do you think a series marathon is a good idea, or would you rather read the books as they come out, one per year (or so)? Which stand alone novel did you wish would become a series?

Out in the World

Writing-related musings on being out in the world, after a few days sick at home.

I have an Author page on Amazon. On Amazon! Makes it seem real.

I had the chance to visit Turkey Shore Distilleries recently. They're down the street in Ipswich, and they make a line of hand-crafted rums with table-grade molasses from Louisiana sugarcane and a custom-built 250-gallon copper still built in Kentucky. They aim to produce rums like those made in Ipswich several centuries ago. They handed out tastes in little plastic cups.

Since I had only ever tasted pretty low-level rums, I was amazed. It was smooth, it had flavor, and you didn't even need sweet stuff to mix with it. I could imagine sipping it straight in front of the wood stove on a snowy night (if this winter ever gets snowy). So I trotted right home and added that vendor to the Locavore Festival scene I was in the middle of writing, despite the fact that the molasses Turkey Shore uses isn't local.

With reluctance I canceled my registration to Malice Domestic for this year. It's a fan tastic conference geared toward mystery readers. I went last year for the first time. I greatly enjoyed seeing fellow writer buddies and some fans, meeting the great and gracious Louise Penny, heading south at the start of spring to a warmer clime with flowers in bloom. But since I don't have a book to sell this year, I decided to conserve my resources and go next year (and the year after and the year after!). I'll miss my pals and a chance to see my son who lives in the area, but there will be other times, Goddess willing.

The Chocolate Challenge is this month and I decided to join up. It's a bunch of Guppies who try their best to write as many words as they can. We provide mutual support, and whoever writes the most words gets the prize - all the other Gups send her chocolate. Now that's a prize. I doubt I'll win, since I have the pesky matter of the day job, but I'm going to do a big push on getting another third of the way through A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. Two years ago I managed to write 28000 words in the month. This brought me to the point of typing THE END at the end of Speaking of Murder, which was a huge thrill.

Weather and Murder

We have over a foot of fresh snow on the ground, with more falling. We've had blizzard conditions (defined as "Less than 1/4 mile visibility and winds at more than 35 mph for three hours") overnight. It's beautiful, transformative, and dangerous. Later, when the sun comes out and we shovel the walks and driveway, it will invite sledding, snowball fights, cross-country skiing. But for now it's still frigid. The biting wind threatens exposed skin. Wires are at risk of collapsing and leaving people without power.

One of the 'rules' of writing is Don't Begin with the Weather. But conditions like this just beckon for a crime story. I'm particularly in mind of winter murder since finishing Louise Penny's Dead Cold recently. It takes place in small-town Quebec, a setting I am well familiar with. I have visited my sister Jannie in exactly that setting frequently over the decades. Penny describes the weather and the cold, snowy setting almost as a character. Because she's such a good writer, you don't realize it, but after you finish reading the book, the mind-pictures of the ice and bitter temperatures remain vivid.

I have set stories in every season except deep winter, and I haven't written a murder story involving blizzard conditions yet. This weather just might kick-start a few ideas. How would you stage a snowy murder?