Often but not always, when it\u2019s time for schools in the Seattle area to start up after Christmas vacation, Mother Nature lends a hand by delivering a storm that will add an extra snow day or two to their wintertime break. Having never met a snow day during my own school days in Bisbee, Arizona, I found this to be both interesting and inconvenient. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m someone who writes fiction, but I\u2019m too lazy to make up everything. If I wanted to invent a separate universe, I\u2019d be Frank Herbert and write something like Dune. Instead, I use real but fictionalized locations where I\u2019m familiar with the landscape, the flora and fauna, the distances between one point and another, the traffic patterns, and \u2026 well \u2026 the weather.<\/p>\n
For all the reasons listed above, the Beau books are set in Seattle. In the late eighties, when it was time to start Beaumont #9, Payment in Kind<\/em>, the action commenced in an icy cold Pacific Northwest January, complete with widespread school closures. The writing process on any given book is generally finished a year to a year and a half before the actual publication date, so it\u2019s likely I was doing the actual creation on the story during one of Seattle\u2019s long hot summers when writing about winter weather was a welcome break from living in an AC-free environment.<\/p>\n The book’s pub date turned out to be sometime in January or February of 1991. While doing an event at a Target in Lynnwood, someone approached the signing table and said, \u201cYou\u2019re real fast, aren\u2019t you.\u201d What? I wasn\u2019t at all sure what she meant. I must have looked puzzled so she added, \u201cThat snowstorm just happened six weeks ago.\u201d Sure enough, 1991 was one of those years that started off with local school kids having an extra couple of snow days at the end of their Christmas vacations. I tried to explain that I had written the book long before the snowstorm in question arrived in the area, but I\u2019m not at all sure she believed me.<\/p>\n A year or so earlier, when writing Beaumont #7, Dismissed with Prejudice<\/em>, part of the plot had to do with a Samurai sword that had been brought back to the States as a trophy in the aftermath of World War II. Within weeks of the pub date, some Japanese businessmen arrived at a hotel here in Bellevue and began buying up trophy Samurai swords in order to return them to Japan. That one gave me goosebumps.<\/p>\n Now we fast forward to 2025. (It\u2019s still hard to remember we\u2019re not in 2024 anymore!) It\u2019s time to write the next Ali book. I haven\u2019t written a single word of it, but the baby has a name. Ali # 20 is currently named Smoke and Mirrors<\/em>. In order to write it, I\u2019ve spent the last several days revisiting the beginning of the series by rereading Ali # 1, Edge of Evil.<\/em> I wrote it long enough ago, that I remembered most of it, but not all.<\/p>\n One passage really struck me. In it, Ali receives a greeting card from Reenie Bernard, her best friend from high school, shortly after already learning that Reenie is deceased. This is the paragraph that took my breath away:<\/p>\n Eager to read Reenie\u2019s message, Ali tore open the It\u2019s as though my writing self had peered into a crystal ball and glimpsed the Christmas decoration my childhood friend, Pat Hall, would send me some twenty years later\u2014the one I mentioned a blog or two ago. It\u2019s the same two girls, one blonde and one brunette, sitting side by side. On the Christmas decoration, they\u2019re looking at a Christmas tree. In the book, I didn\u2019t say what they the girls were staring at, but, all things considered, I suspect they were looking into the future.<\/p>\n Now I need to go back reading to Ali # 2, Web of Evil<\/em>, to find out what else I need to know before I start writing Smoke and Mirrors<\/em>.<\/p>\n Wish me luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Often but not always, when it\u2019s time for schools in the Seattle area to start up after Christmas vacation, Mother Nature lends a hand by delivering a storm that will add an extra snow day or two to their wintertime break. Having never met a snow day during my own school days in Bisbee, Arizona, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-PY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3222"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nenvelope, leaving behind a jagged edge of paper and
\na tiny paper cut on her index finger. Inside was one
\nof those black-and-white greeting cards, the ones
\nthat feature little kids in old-fashioned clothes. This
\none showed two cute little girls, a blond and a
\nbrunette. Four or maybe five years old, the two girls
\nsat side by side, with their arms slung over one an-
\nother\u2019s shoulders and with their smiling faces aimed
\nat the camera. Inside the card said, \u201cSome friends
\nare forever.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n