Keeping It Real
I've been away from the blog for quite a while because I was finishing Knit & Nibble #7, KNITTY GRITTY MURDER. I emailed the manuscript to my editor at Kensington two days ago and now it's time to catch up.
KNITTY GRITTY MURDER takes place in May and involves two murders in Arborville's community gardens. I started writing it in early February, which in New Jersey is pretty bleak, though this year we hardly got any snow. I try to give a sense of time and place in my books, and all the more so in this one with its garden setting.
It can be hard to imagine in February what May looks and feels like, and one of my special pet peeves when I'm reading is to notice that an author has daffodils blooming in August or ripe apples hanging on trees in April.
The internet, of course, comes to the rescue. With a few keystrokes one can summon up charts listing what's blooming when anywhere in the world.
I wanted to feature strawberries and rhubarb in the Nibble components of the book, and I was pretty sure a good crop of rhubarb could be harvested by mid-May, and that May was the peak season for strawberries that hadn't been flown in from the southern hemisphere. But I was happy to be able to verify my hunches, and to learn that May is actually National Strawberry Month.
Turning to a crop I wasn't familiar with at all--one of my characters (a murder suspect, in fact!) grows flax on her community garden plot. I had no idea of the optimum time for planting flax or what it even looks like growing. Early spring and spiky are the answers--and of course my web search turned up many many MANY pictures of flax growing. It gets a pretty blue flower--who knew? But the plants would still be quite small in May in New Jersey, with no flowers in sight.
Since the book wasn't due till mid-July, I was still writing when May rolled around and I was able to supplement some of my imagined description, of azaleas and rhododendrons in bloom, for example, with first-hand observation. I was also able to make sure I hadn't made the sun come up too early or go down too late--though those details can also easily be checked online.
KNITTY GRITTY MURDER will come out next spring. The cover has already been designed and I'll be putting it up on my website soon. It features a surprise character, Precious the Siamese cat. She belonged to the first murder victim and Pamela is enlisted to give her a new home.
KNITTY GRITTY MURDER takes place in May and involves two murders in Arborville's community gardens. I started writing it in early February, which in New Jersey is pretty bleak, though this year we hardly got any snow. I try to give a sense of time and place in my books, and all the more so in this one with its garden setting.
It can be hard to imagine in February what May looks and feels like, and one of my special pet peeves when I'm reading is to notice that an author has daffodils blooming in August or ripe apples hanging on trees in April.
The internet, of course, comes to the rescue. With a few keystrokes one can summon up charts listing what's blooming when anywhere in the world.
I wanted to feature strawberries and rhubarb in the Nibble components of the book, and I was pretty sure a good crop of rhubarb could be harvested by mid-May, and that May was the peak season for strawberries that hadn't been flown in from the southern hemisphere. But I was happy to be able to verify my hunches, and to learn that May is actually National Strawberry Month.
Turning to a crop I wasn't familiar with at all--one of my characters (a murder suspect, in fact!) grows flax on her community garden plot. I had no idea of the optimum time for planting flax or what it even looks like growing. Early spring and spiky are the answers--and of course my web search turned up many many MANY pictures of flax growing. It gets a pretty blue flower--who knew? But the plants would still be quite small in May in New Jersey, with no flowers in sight.
Since the book wasn't due till mid-July, I was still writing when May rolled around and I was able to supplement some of my imagined description, of azaleas and rhododendrons in bloom, for example, with first-hand observation. I was also able to make sure I hadn't made the sun come up too early or go down too late--though those details can also easily be checked online.
KNITTY GRITTY MURDER will come out next spring. The cover has already been designed and I'll be putting it up on my website soon. It features a surprise character, Precious the Siamese cat. She belonged to the first murder victim and Pamela is enlisted to give her a new home.
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