Daffodils in September
Martha Stewart with murders. That’s one way I imagine my Knit & Nibble mysteries. There’s the food, of course, and the knitting, and my characters live in a charming New Jersey town where the charming old houses feature charmingly landscaped yards.
So if a mystery is set in the fall, for example, I like to invoke the red and amber tints of the autumn foliage. A mystery set at Christmas, like SILENT KNIT, DEADLY KNIT or one of the Knit & Nibble novellas in Kensington’s holiday anthologies, includes descriptions of holly bushes brightening snowy vistas.
Then there’s spring, which is on my mind at the moment—not only because it’s spring right now, at least in the northern hemisphere, but also because Knit & Nibble #9, IRISH KNIT MURDER, will be released a year from now, and with its St. Patrick’s Day theme, it’s set in the spring. The murder that galvanizes my sleuths into action takes place right on March 17.
I started writing it last summer, however, and the deadline for submission was January 31. In an environment, first, of sweltering heat, then crisp fall days and changing leaves, and finally bare trees and icicles, how to evoke spring in the pages of my in-progress manuscript?
I had a pretty good recollection of when shoots start to poke out of the earth and when the first blossoms appear on flowering trees—and there’s always the internet (thank you, Brooklyn Botanic Garden website).
First come the really little bulb things, like crocus and snowdrops, and then the forsythia explodes in bursts of bright yellow, followed by daffodils, also bright yellow, and then the flowering trees blossom, and by May everything has come alive.
So for a story that starts in mid-March and extends till nearly the end of the month, I decided that outdoor settings could feature crocus, snowdrops, and forsythia, but that lawns would still be a sad yellowish-brown.
The manuscript was already submitted when March 2022 rolled around, but starting on St. Patrick’s Day, I paid careful attention to the state of things outdoors.
Yes, there were crocus and snowdrops, and I had been right about the forsythia, which began to bloom a bit after the 17th. Daffodils, however, arrived sooner than I recalled, and I made a note to slip a few daffodils in when the copyedited manuscript comes back to me for checking.
You might be wondering whether it’s necessary to be quite so scrupulous about accuracy in this regard. It probably isn’t, but that’s just me. Would a reader hate the book because she knows that daffodils are all over the place in mid-March and I mention nary a one in IRISH KNIT MURDER? I hope not. But details can be distracting when they’re not right.
I once read a novel in which the writer enthused about the fragrance of azaleas. Pretty as they are, the ones in my yard are completely scentless. I’ve forgotten the novel’s title and the author’s name, but I still remember those inauthentic azaleas.
So if a mystery is set in the fall, for example, I like to invoke the red and amber tints of the autumn foliage. A mystery set at Christmas, like SILENT KNIT, DEADLY KNIT or one of the Knit & Nibble novellas in Kensington’s holiday anthologies, includes descriptions of holly bushes brightening snowy vistas.
Then there’s spring, which is on my mind at the moment—not only because it’s spring right now, at least in the northern hemisphere, but also because Knit & Nibble #9, IRISH KNIT MURDER, will be released a year from now, and with its St. Patrick’s Day theme, it’s set in the spring. The murder that galvanizes my sleuths into action takes place right on March 17.
I started writing it last summer, however, and the deadline for submission was January 31. In an environment, first, of sweltering heat, then crisp fall days and changing leaves, and finally bare trees and icicles, how to evoke spring in the pages of my in-progress manuscript?
I had a pretty good recollection of when shoots start to poke out of the earth and when the first blossoms appear on flowering trees—and there’s always the internet (thank you, Brooklyn Botanic Garden website).
First come the really little bulb things, like crocus and snowdrops, and then the forsythia explodes in bursts of bright yellow, followed by daffodils, also bright yellow, and then the flowering trees blossom, and by May everything has come alive.
So for a story that starts in mid-March and extends till nearly the end of the month, I decided that outdoor settings could feature crocus, snowdrops, and forsythia, but that lawns would still be a sad yellowish-brown.
The manuscript was already submitted when March 2022 rolled around, but starting on St. Patrick’s Day, I paid careful attention to the state of things outdoors.
Yes, there were crocus and snowdrops, and I had been right about the forsythia, which began to bloom a bit after the 17th. Daffodils, however, arrived sooner than I recalled, and I made a note to slip a few daffodils in when the copyedited manuscript comes back to me for checking.
You might be wondering whether it’s necessary to be quite so scrupulous about accuracy in this regard. It probably isn’t, but that’s just me. Would a reader hate the book because she knows that daffodils are all over the place in mid-March and I mention nary a one in IRISH KNIT MURDER? I hope not. But details can be distracting when they’re not right.
I once read a novel in which the writer enthused about the fragrance of azaleas. Pretty as they are, the ones in my yard are completely scentless. I’ve forgotten the novel’s title and the author’s name, but I still remember those inauthentic azaleas.
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