Archive for December, 2023

My Books

Revisiting the Vanishing Visitor

When I wrote Case of the Vanishing Visitor, it was inspired, in part, by the story about Agatha Christie’s disappearance during the 1920s. Her car was found wrecked in a remote place, her suitcase and driver’s license were in it, but she was nowhere to be found. There was a massive search for her, during which it came out that her husband was having an affair and leaving her for another woman. She was later found in a spa hotel about 200 miles away, registered under a different name (using the last name of her husband’s mistress). She claimed that she’d lost her memory, didn’t remember the accident or how she got to the hotel, and for much of the time she was there she didn’t even know who she was.

I was intrigued by this idea and thought it would be particularly fun to do with a sleuth who could see and talk to ghosts. At the time, my snarky theory was that Agatha had set it up to out her husband’s bad behavior and possibly even frame him for murdering her — or at least get public attention focused on his behavior so he’d look shady. Making your cheating soon-to-be ex look bad while having a spa vacation sounds like the perfect revenge.

But last night I watched this documentary about that incident, with new research into what might have happened. (You should be able to watch this video in the United States until around Christmas 2023, but you will likely have to be a PBS member after that. It may be available on the BBC site for those in the UK. And I’m sure there will eventually be a bootleg on YouTube.) Historian Lucy Worsley (my TV BFF — from following her on Facebook and watching her stuff, I bet we’d get along really well) talks to experts in psychiatry and digs into Christie’s books to get clues as to what might have happened. She’s also written a book on Christie, so this information may be included in the book.

Her conclusion is that I was wrong about it being a clever revenge scheme. A psychotherapist said it sounded to him like a fugue state. Christie did apparently see a specialist in London, and Worsley tracks down the specialist it might have been. There’s a description of a character in one of Christie’s books getting hypnotherapy, and the description of the doctor fits this one specialist. There was a lot of trauma in her life around that time, and the news about her husband might have caused her to snap. She did do an interview years later in which she discussed the incident, but it didn’t get nearly the attention the whole search and all the speculation around it did, so what she said about it isn’t as widely known as her disappearance and what people thought was happening at that time.

What I hadn’t been aware of is that Christie wrote non-mysteries under another name. They sound more like what we’d call “women’s fiction” now, dealing with issues in a woman’s life, with maybe a romantic subplot, and no murder. It’s these books that contain a lot of plot elements and characters that can be traced to this particular incident. She seemed to have used this pen name to deal with her issues. My library has some of these, shelved under Agatha Christie’s name, so I’ll have to read some. I’m curious about her writing without murder in it.

But I won’t worry about this info undermining my book because I just used it as inspiration and a jumping-off point, combined with some elements from the movie The Lady Vanishes and all the stuff I’d set up in my series.

I’m planning to take the next couple of weeks as semi-holidays (I may do some writing work, but I’m trying to spend less time on the computer), so I’ll resume blogging in the new year. In the meantime, have a happy holiday season.

Books

Recent Reading: Another Road Trip

I recently found a fantasy book that falls into that “romantic fantasy road trip” category. It doesn’t fit the plot pattern I identified for that kind of movie, but it’s definitely that “people fall in love along the way when they go on a mission/quest through a fantasy world” thing I love.

The book is Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn, and it’s the first book in a series. I’d read Shinn’s Archangel in a book group a couple of decades ago, but I hadn’t read any of her fantasy. I really enjoyed this one. The story involves an intelligence gathering mission for a king who’s worried there may be trouble brewing in the kingdom. He sends out one of his top agents, a woman with mysterious powers, and sends two of the king’s Riders, his loyal soldiers, to escort her. Also along for the journey are a young noblewoman with shapechanging powers and her friend with similar powers, and they pick up a young man with mysterious abilities along the way. A lot of people in the kingdom are leery of people with magic, so the mystics in the group and the Riders don’t get along at first, but the chief Rider and the agent gradually realize that they have a lot in common, aside from this difference.

It looks like this series is a hybrid between the romance series structure, in which there’s a different hero and heroine in each book, and the fantasy structure, in which there’s an overarching plot that spans books. There’s the big-picture plot about the scheming going on in the kingdom, but each book seems to focus on a different romantic couple.

I loved the characters in this book and I definitely want to spend more time with them. The romance is very subtle and slow-burn, so it’s more fantasy novel romance than romance novel romance. The main focus is on the mission and how this group learns to work together and use their various abilities as a team. It’s mostly a fantasy adventure story with a subtle romance that gradually comes to the foreground.

The only problem I have is that I got this book from the library and my library system doesn’t have the second book (it does have the rest of the series). I’ll have to put in a request for them to add it to the collection and fill out the series. This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for.

Life

Breaking Habits

I will confess to being a bit of a creature of habit. I don’t know how much of that is stubbornness and liking routine and how much is because once I find something that works I don’t see a reason to change it. That can sometimes mean I get stuck in a rut or don’t realize when things have changed so that this isn’t the best thing for me now. I’ve found a good example of that in the past couple of weeks.

When I first started working from home for my public relations job more than 20 years ago, I got in the habit of watching the local midday news on TV while I ate lunch. That kept me on a good schedule, since the news was on at noon, and they did the health news usually starting around 12:25 (I was still doing some medical writing then). That meant if I turned on the TV at 12:25, I could catch the health news, then the bottom-of-the-hour repeat of the top stories at 12:30 and get the weather forecast, along with any entertainment news that they put at the end, and I’d be back to work at 1.

Then about four years ago they moved the midday news to 11, which didn’t fit my lunch schedule. I got the bright idea to set a season recording on my DVR, and then I could start lunch whenever I wanted and forward past commercials or any stories or segments I didn’t care about. This meant I ended up spending more time, since I was often watching the whole newscast instead of half of it, and I wasn’t keeping to a steady schedule anymore. But I never questioned whether I needed to make any changes.

Until a couple of weeks ago. My DVR runs on Android TV, and Google did its usual thing of discontinuing an application, rendering the device that runs on it useless. The application that gives the program information is no longer updated, so the DVR season recordings don’t work. It can get the program info for the channel it’s set on, so a couple of hours before something comes on you can manually set a recording. It finally occurred to me to wonder why I should bother. I read the newspaper and then I watch the national and local news in the evening. I don’t need to repeat the same news throughout the day. I’ve started watching videos on writing, history, and other things that are moderately educational while I eat lunch, and after two weeks I already don’t miss the news at all. I’m learning something, am less stressed (without all the doom and gloom from the news), and I’m spending less time on my lunch break. The TV station has most of the individual segments on their app and YouTube channel, so I can get the weather report or anything else I want to see without watching the whole newscast.

So far, I’ve already gone through a series of writing workshops and a few history documentaries. Or, if it’s a nice day, I take my lunch outside and just read. I guess I could bring out my tablet and watch videos outside while I eat lunch. I feel rather liberated by removing this bit of routine. I suppose this means I should look at other things I could change, but I don’t want to shock my system too much.

movies

The Holiday Movie Onslaught

I’m almost ready to start dealing with the holiday season. I’m planning to put up my decorations and start my holiday movie viewing this weekend. For some reason, I’ve developed the kind of reputation for being a Christmas movie fan that has people tagging me on posts about Hallmark movies and sending me memes, but I should clarify that I like some holiday movies. I’m actually pretty picky about them unless I’m hate-watching to snark on them. This is one of those things where I like the idea of them more than I like the actual things. I like the idea of a romantic comedy, especially with a touch of magic, in a holiday setting but I’m generally disappointed by what I see.

I’ll confess that I’m not a huge fan of any of the Hallmark movies, especially the ones from the past eight or so years — when they took over the holiday movie trend and theirs all started following the same pattern, with the person from the city going to the small town and falling in love with the small-town person. While I’m currently planning to move from the city to a smaller town, the town I’m planning to move to is more than five times as big as the small town where I went to high school and it feels like a city (though I’ll admit that this town is right out of a Hallmark movie). And since this isn’t a town I’m from, I won’t have to worry about getting back together with my high school boyfriend (definitely not high on my list of romantic fantasies, plus I didn’t have a high school boyfriend) or keeping my family business running.

I prefer the movies with a touch of some kind of paranormal element, though not the “Santa is real, and he/his son/his daughter is hot!” storyline. I’m a little creeped out by any story that requires an adult to believe in Santa Claus. I’m more up for the Sliding Doors or Groundhog Day kinds of stories, or things that make wishes come true, various versions of A Christmas Carol, that kind of thing. About the only “Santa is real” movie I’ve liked was one in which a woman got her hands on the Naughty List and started out using it to get revenge on people who’d wronged her (Naughty or Nice, currently available on Prime Video).

I’m also not a fan of the royalty movies in which our main character ends up with a prince/princess/duke, etc. That works in fairy tales in fantasy worlds, but that’s not a fantasy I can buy into in the real world today. It seems like all the obscure royalty comes crawling out of the woodwork during the holiday season, based on the number of “Christmas prince” type movies.

I think the first TV Christmas movie I noticed and found myself thinking “I like this!” was one called The Christmas List that aired on what was then called The Family Channel (now Freeform) in the 90s, in which a department store employee made a wish list just for fun, then her co-worker stuck it in the mailbox in the store’s Santa display as a joke — and then all her wishes started coming true in weird ways that ended up complicating her life (this doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere, but there are bootlegs on YouTube). Some of those early movies were really out there, like one that involved a frantic mom crawling through her clothes dryer into an alternate reality where she was a single woman. Lifetime got involved somewhere along the way, and that was when we got more of the regular rom-com style. A lot of these could have been romantic comedies that took place at any other time, but they were set at Christmas. I remember one year when I still had cable when I found Lifetime’s schedule and figured out which ones to watch when. Then Hallmark made it their brand, and the other channels seemed to back off and produce fewer movies. They became depressingly unoriginal and cliched.

Probably my favorite Christmas rom-com type movie is The Holiday, though it’s actually more about the time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It kind of skips over Christmas itself. I think I mostly enjoy the idea of spending a vacation holed up in a cozy cottage with a stack of books. I do like that the holiday content is mostly to provide the situation and some emotional stakes without it being rammed down your throat.

I’ll need to scroll through the menus of services I get to see what I want to watch this year. One of my favorites, The 12 Dates of Christmas (basically a Groundhog Day story) is on Prime, and I’ll have to re-watch it. I haven’t watched While You Were Sleeping in a long time, but I think that’s one for between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Any recommendations for things currently on Prime Video? I don’t have Netflix, so don’t even think about recommending something there.

Twice Upon a Christmas cover showing couple in a holiday setting reflected in a shop windowMy book Twice Upon a Christmas actually started as my attempt to write a screenplay for one of these movies. I decided I didn’t want to deal with trying to figure out how to get a film agent and sell the screenplay, so I rewrote it into a novel. Every year or so my agent gets a nibble from a production company, but nothing’s ever come of it. I was targeting Freeform, and they’re one of the ones that nibbled, so I figure I was on target. I keep saying I need to write another one, but I only really want to write that sort of thing around the holiday season, so it takes planning my work schedule in advance. This year, I’m working on a different project, but maybe I’ll plan next year to write a Christmas rom-com, and then it’ll be ready for the year after that.

Life

Holiday Resistance

It’s the time of year when I usually gripe about not being ready for the holidays. I may be better about that this year since I got to experience actual autumn in October this fall by going to Virginia (and driving through the mountains of Tennessee on the way). I think a lot of my holiday resistance usually has to do with it finally feeling like fall here around Thanksgiving, so I don’t get to experience the autumn vibes before the holiday stuff hits.

But I’m still not ready for all holidays, all the time. The trees just started turning fall colors, which makes it hard to make the mental switch. The classical radio station I usually keep on in my office switched to all holiday music the day after Thanksgiving, and I’m not up for that. I’d have preferred a more gradual transition, like start with most of their usual programming and then add in some holiday pieces, increasing the proportion of holiday content as the season progresses. As it is, I’m already sick of some of the holiday pieces not quite a week in, with me just listening while I eat breakfast, read in bed at night, and drive. I can’t listen to Christmas music while I work. Most of that music has words that I know, so even if it’s instrumental my brain tries to sing along, which distracts me from work. Even worse, I’ve performed a lot of the music, so it catches my attention even more.

On the other hand, I rack up the score on the little “six degrees of classical music” game I play when listening to the radio. I get points for a piece I’ve performed, a piece I’ve seen live in concert, a recording I own, or a performer (individual artist, conductor, or group) I’ve seen in person. As a veteran choir member, I’ve performed a ton of Christmas music. I get a lot of points from John Rutter. I’ve sung most of his Christmas music and have seen him conduct in person, and I have his Christmas album, so I own most of the recordings they use on the radio, which gives me triple points. I’ve sung Messiah. They play a lot of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas stuff, and I’ve been at a choir workshop with the former director who’s the conductor for most of their recordings and have been conducted by him, so I get points there. They play a lot of things by ensembles I’ve seen in person, like the Dallas Symphony, Boston Pops, Turtle Creek Chorale, and Baltimore Consort (and I have their Christmas album, so double points). But all that means I can’t listen while I work. My brain zooms in on the music and puts words to it, which clashes with the words I’m trying to create in my head.

Our neighborhood tree lighting is this weekend, and I may go to that, which could help me kick off the season, and then I may get around to putting up my own decorations. I’ve told myself I’m taking a staycation when I finish the book I’m working on, and then I’ll really indulge in the holiday vibe. I’m putting together a “bucket list” of local holiday things I want to do in what may be my last holiday season in this area. Next year, I may be in an entirely different place. The seasons seem to line up better there, so maybe I’ll be more ready for the holidays next year.