Friday, September 9, 2011

CRIME ON MY MIND

Getting back to reality...




I'm through stashing bodies. It's been fun, alright, in a ghoulish kind of way, but also very enlightening. When you travel through a new city it's easy to be blown away by the awesome sights -- the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the incredible beauty of the cathedrals -- but that's only one level of the city.
It pays to look beyond and deeper. If you're playing tourist with a writer's eye to locations, you notice a different aspect of the place. The carved caverns on a hillside, the stillness of a turn in the river even with traffic zooming past only a few blocks away, the innate detail of a passageway beckoning the viewer into the unknown.

The mind takes flight, the ideas flow, and the city becomes a more complete entity.
Of course, there's also that urge to toss someone into that river or through the passageway...on paper, of course.

I doubt I'll ever set a novel in France. Well, certainly not my current series anyway. Ashton Corners, Alabama will never meet Lyon, France. However, the images are stashed in the brain and might surface in a short story or perhaps a flight of fancy for a protagonist in the future.

Time to get back to work and start in on book #3, which is due in 9 months. Yikes! I'll leave the travel and those inquiring thoughts until the next trip. Or, maybe not. It's to the Dominican Republic and I'll be there as the mother-of-the-groom. The two might not mix.

Or maybe they will.

What far away places are beckoning you?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

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