Too much research?

by Carola

How much research is too much?

I'm presently writing about a car chase across Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. I have two old Ordnance Survey* maps, 1/2" to the mile, of the area. They're really useful to show the roads the way they used to be, before they were straightened and widened. They also show the contours, so I can tell whether a road goes uphill--in general terms--or downhill. One has contour lines at 50 foot intervals. The other is tinted from blue (sea) through greens to various shades of brown, making it more intuitive but less precise. They show every tiny hamlet, with its name, and even many farms.

 
 And I have Google and Bing maps and bird's eye/satellite views, and in some places (but by no means everywhere) "street view." These maps tend to ignore narrow lanes, while the satellite pics don't show them when they run beneath trees. They don't show tiny places.

 But for some places they show you exactly what's there.

So both types have their uses. The question is, do I really need all that information? I've heard from a few readers who get out a map and follow the tracks of my characters, but for most people a few evocative village names and a few words of description of the scenery and the state of the road are sufficient.

Nonetheless, I find myself obsessively checking whether there's a crossroads between villages A and B, and whether the chasing car at point A would have a view of the quarry when it reaches point B. Too Much Information available!




*https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/overview/history.html

Mystery bird

by Carola Dunn

We had an amazing afternoon's birdwatching in my son's California garden. It's not huge about 1/3 acre, but it's a bit of a jungle. He's had a bees' nest under a shed for years. The bees are very busy pollinators, helping to produce wonderful harvests of avocados every year. Right now the avocado trees are smothered in blossom and his loquat tree is weighed down with fruit.

There's a dead palm tree that hasn't been cut down because a)something more urgent always turns up and b)a woodpecker has been busy trying to make a big enough hole for a nest. We went outside armed with binoculars and a bird book to try to work out what kind of woodpecker it is. It didn't take long to decide it's a Nuttall's. Now we're hoping it will succeed in nesting and bring up a family.

While we were watching the woodpecker we saw a pair of house finches, a common bird at my feeders in Oregon. A hummingbird zipped past. A phoebe, a small black and white flycatcher, perched on an overhead cable and darted out to catch flying insects, returning to its perch each time with its cry that sounds to some people like "Phoebe, phoebe," (more like Fifi, if you ask me).

Way high in the blue sky sailed two hawks, one pale, one dark, neither of which we managed to identify, though one came quite close before being driven off by crows. A mockingbird sang its beautiful, ever-varying song, until chased away by a rival.

Then we noticed a bird none of us had ever seen before. Several more of the same came to perch in a couple of palm trees. They were about the same size as the mockingbirds and had pale yellow undersides, darker backs. As we pored over the bird book, focused and refocused the binoculars, we realized that they were behaving like the phoebe, only instead of catching almost invisible bugs the intrepid creatures were picking off bees. The bees started to get angry and clouds of them buzzed up, not too close to us luckily. The birds were in a feeding frenzy. We still couldn't figure out what they were. It was a good half hour later that I flipped through the book one last time and happened to spot a photo that matched: the Western Kingbird.

What with one bird and another, they kept us amused half the afternoon.

Birds appear quite often in my books. In my Cornish mystery series, herring gulls are frequent visitors, as they're ubiquitous in Cornwall.  They're as much a part of the scenery as cliffs, moors, the ocean, and the wildflowers, adding to the sense of place. And then there are the buzzards, always on the lookout for dead bodies...

http://caroladunn.weebly.com/cornish-mysteries.html

Cornish mysteries on Amazon

Cornish mysteries at Barnes & Noble

(photos not taken by me--I'm hopeless at bird photography)

The Valley of the Shadow: out at last

by Carola Dunn

The Valley of the Shadow, my third Cornish Mystery, is out at last.

I'm happy to say that it was picked up from the Indie Next booksellers list by USA TODAY, and is one of their BOOKS: NEW AND NOTABLE.

Lifeboat--the book is full of them!

Besides several signings, I've been doing a bunch of guest blogs. Don't be alarmed--none of them is very long. Here are some links:

Two excerpts from the book
http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-valley-of-shadow.html

http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-valley-of-shadow-out-at-last.html


A chatty letter from Eleanor 
https://notesfromme.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/eleanor-trewynn/

A "cozy" writer's dilemma:
http://damesofdialogue.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/what-happens-when-a-serious-subject-grabs-a-cozy-author-by-carola-dunn/

Here's one about dogs in my books:
http://sheilaboneham.blogspot.com/2012/12/guest-author-carola-dunn-on-doggin.html

And one I wrote for Seattle Mystery Bookshop
http://seattlemysteryblog.typepad.com/seattle_mystery/2012/12/dog-day-at-smb.html

Handicrafts in my mysteries? I didn't think so, until I started looking, for Lois Winston's craft blog:
http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2012/12/book-club-friday-guest-author-carola.html

The Valley of the Shadow is available from all booksellers and ebook sellers. Support your local independent bookseller!

The Valley of the Shadow Dec. 11th

Carola Dunn

The Valley of the Shadow, my third Cornish Mystery, comes out on December 11th from Minotaur, in hardcover, e-book (Kindle, Nook, and others), and Mystery Guild--large print and UK editions to come. 

 Reviews:

 Dunn lives up to her reputation for cozies that take on serious stuff, allowing her ragtag bunch of investigators to unearth a story with roots deep in international politics...
 Publishers Weekly
 

http://news.bookweb.org/news/december-2012-indie-next-list-preview

 “The sights and sounds of the coast of Cornwall come alive in The Valley of the Shadow.
 The rescue of a drowning Indian man leads to a race against time to 
rescue his family, trapped in the smugglers’ caves on the rocky shore. 
Feisty retiree Eleanor Trewynn enlists her fellow villagers in tracking 
down those responsible for abandoning the refugees — but will the 
smugglers find her first? Dunn gives us a thoroughly enjoyable, cozy 
suspense novel — one with a social conscience.” —Carol Schneck Varner, 
Schuler Books & Music, Okemos, MI

     ...the author introduces several village characters and draws the reader 
into the small, cozy world of Cornwall. The action moves in a leisurely manner but it 
kept me turning the pages. As the police-procedural aspect of the story kicks in, Eleanor 
and Megan make a good mother-daughter team.
      The denouement is both wild and funny, and the author ties up all the threads in a 
surprising but satisfactory ending.
      I loved this Author’s Note: “Port Mabyn is a fictional village in a fictional world 
lurking somewhere in the 1960s and ‘70s, between my childhood memories of Cornwall and 
the present reality. <snip> For information about the real Cornwall, I refer the 
reader to countless works of nonfiction, or, better still, I suggest a visit.”
Pat Browning

 You can see pictures of the setting here:
http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-valley-of-shadow.html

and read an excerpt here:
http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-valley-of-shadow.html

The Valley of the Shadow

by Carola

My third Cornish Mystery comes out in a couple of weeks in hardcover from St Martin's Minotaur. The Valley of the Shadow already has some nice reviews and has been picked for the Independent Bookstores Great Reads list for December.

Eleanor Trewynn is a widow who worked all over the world before retiring to a Cornish fishing village. Her retirement has turned out rather more exciting than she expected.

In The Valley of the Shadow, she and her Westie, her next-door neighbour Nick, and her niece Megan, a police detective  go for a walk down a narrow valley opening between cliffs to the sea.In the inlet a man floats, barely alive when Megan and Nick manage to haul him from the water. He's an Indian. He mumbles incoherent words which suggest his family is trapped in a cave somewhere and his mother is dying.

The hunt begins for the family--if they exist--and for the heartless villain who left them to die.

These are pics of Rocky Valley, on the North Coast of Cornwall, which inspired the beginning of the story:

(The cover art is more suggestive of Falmouth, where the story ends.)


The first two books in the series are Manna from Hades (just out in paperback) and A Colourful Death. All available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favourite independent bookstore.

Going places

Detail of the exterior of the church of St Mary Magdalen in Launceston, Cornwall. This is the town where the police headquarters are, where my young detective, Megan Pencarrow, works. She's the niece of the main protagonist of my Cornish mystery series.

Having at long last succeeded in signing in to the blog, I'm still figuring out how to format, so excuse the confusion please! These pics were supposed to come at the end of my post...

A shop in Port Isaac. Eleanor Trewynn, the main character of my Cornish mysteries, has a charity shop on the ground floor of her cottage, though I haven't given her bow windows.

The tor on top of Rough Tor, second highest spot on Bodmin Moor, with the highest, Brown Willy, in the background. These landmarks make frequent appearances in the books.

Last Saturday, I was invited to give a talk to the Pacific Northwest Cornish Society. To be frank, I'd never heard of them. They're a group of people who have traced their ancestry to Cornwall, and they get together three times a year to talk genealogy and celebrate their heritage. Their president had read my Cornish mysteries, Manna from Hades and A Colourful Death, and decided the members would be interested in hearing about my Cornish roots.

Alas, as far as ancestry is concerned, I have none. My familiarity with and love of Cornwall come from annual summer holidays on the North Coast in my childhood, and visits to my sister on the other side of the duchy in the decades since she went to live there.

So, unable to interest them in my family tree, I resorted to showing pictures from both my childhood and my research. I'd like to share some of them with you, too.

Port Isaac

Boscastle

Port Isaac harbour

Boscastle Harbour

Boscastle and Port Isaac are the two small fishing ports I combined to create my fictional village, Port Mabyn.

Well, that's that for now, so now we'll see if it actually posts when I tell it!

Cheers,

Carola Dunn