A Stitch in Crime

All of a sudden I realized A Stitch in Crime comes out this coming Tuesday. That’s the problem with living in the moment, the future shows up and surprises you.

I can’t believe my fourth book is about to be released. Each of them have been special in their own ways.

I really enjoyed doing the research for A Stitch in Crime. The crochet part is always great. I love the challenge of coming up with a pattern and trying it out. I can justify my time spent in yarn departments and crocheting as work.

In this book Molly Pink and the Tarzana Hookers head up to the Monterey Peninsula for a creative retreat. So travel became part of the research. Although I had been to the Asilomar Conference Center where the fictional retreat takes place, it didn’t take much to convince me I really out to go there again.

Asilomar is rustic and moody and a great place to set a murder. Terri can vouch for that. My biggest problem was not to slow the story down with too much description. But there is just so much about the place to describe. The way the air smells of wood smoke, pine and ocean. The fact it was built as a YWCA camp and some of the weathered wood sided buildings are from the early 1900s.

The funny part is that though the area is right up there on my list of favorite places, it didn’t start out that way. The first time I went to Asilomar was for a California Writers Club conference. I made the mistake of letting them set me up with a roommate. The room we were to share was small, and the interior all dark wood. My roommate started talking the minute she walked in and didn’t stop. She took over the room, insisting on the curtain being closed, along with the windows. With all that dark wood and everything closed up, I felt like I was stuck inside a box.

I didn’t sleep and she awoke at 5:30 and started talking again. Incessant chatter, mostly about herself and how her husband decided not to come. Hmm, I wonder why. The final blow came when she followed me into the bathroom. The teeny tiny bathroom that just had a toilet and shower (the sink was in the room). I was going to use the shower. You can figure out what she was planning to do. I opted out of the shower.

Bleary eyed from not sleeping and worn down from her babbling, all I could think about was leaving. I didn’t notice how silky white the sand was or how wonderful the air felt. I didn’t enjoy the friendly meals in the dining hall or any of the workshops. By noon I was headed back to L.A., muttering under my breath how much I didn’t like the place and I was never coming back there again.

Flash forward a couple of years to a family trip up Highway 1. We stopped in Pacific Grove and ended up staying at an Inn across the street from Asilomar. Without the roommate from hell and with some sleep, everything looked different and I fell in love with the area.

The cool part was that all the time I was writing the book, I was smelling that pungent air and feeling the ocean breeze in my head.

Setting

I’m ending the week of writer’s information by writing about setting. Setting is where your story takes place. The where. The best way for me to write about setting is to talk about how I used setting in A Stitch in Crime which comes out in February.

In this installment of the crochet mysteries, the group has gone on a retreat on the tip of the Monterey Peninsula at a place called Asilomar Conference Center. I personally love Asilomar and have been there numerous times, but went again while I was working on the book. Not that I really need an excuse to go to that area. Just writing about it now makes me want to pack my bag.

Asilomar is somewhere between a camp and a resort. It was originally built as a YWCA camp and designed by Julia Morgan who also designed Hearst Castle. The original buildings were built between 1913 and 1928. They are Arts and Crafts style which means lots of weathered wood shingles and stone from the area. Between the buildings the grounds have been left wild. The tall scrawny Monterey pines are native in a only two other areas outside the Monterey Peninsula. Fallen trees are left where ever they land. The other trees I associate with the place are the Monterey Cypress. The have gnarled trunks and the constant wind makes their foliage grow horizontally. To me they look like old men running away with their hair blowing in the breeze.

I had my characters stay in a building called Lodge which was built around 1917. I’ve stayed there myself and the accommodations are spartan. There are no phones or televisions, but the building has a common living room with a fireplace that’s usually going.

The beach is a short walk away and a lot of the action in the book takes place there. The sand is silky soft and very white and comes from the wave abrasion of local granodiorite rocks. The waves are rough and the water actually is sea foam green.

Food is served in a dining hall which was a great way to get all my characters together. There is an outdoor spot with fire pit where my characters met to roast marshmallows.

In addition to going to Asilomar, I bought books on the area and collected all kinds of printed material. I wanted to be able to mention the names of things, along with describing them. I ended up with much more information than I needed and had to cut out some sections that seemed to much like a travelogue.

There is a brooding moodiness from all those dark buildings and the almost constant fog that works nice with a murder. I blew in more fog for the story than I’ve ever seen there, but then it is fiction. I also played up the sense of isolation since Asilomar is literally located on the end of the continent.

I tried to include the smell of the place which is a combination of smoke from the fireplaces mixed with a strong pine scent and the damp ocean air.

And after all my work the Berkley art department did a great job of capturing the setting on the cover.

What Dreams Become

Earlier in the week I went up to Northern California to refresh my memory for the fourth crochet mystery that I’m currently working on. The specific spot is called Asilomar Conference Center and it’s located on the outmost edge of a peninsula situated between Carmel Bay and Monterey Bay.

Asilomar is somewhere between a resort and a camp and is set in a forest of Monterey Pines and bordered by plant covered sand dunes. The beach is a short walk away. The sand is silky and white and the waves are huge and sea foam green.

My first trip there was also the first writer’s conference I’d ever gone to. The California Writers Club used to sponsor a yearly long weekend there. All together I went three times. As I walked through the grounds this visit, I was filled with memories of those conferences. I passed the wood framed building where I’d heard some guy speak about a blueprint for writing the best selling novel. If only it was that easy. As I walked the grounds thinking of what I’m writing now, I saw shadow memories of myself sitting in the living room of the Scripps building listening to Ruth Cohen talk about finding an agent. Another shadow of me was in Merrill Hall, the auditorium, hearing Olivia Goldsmith describe her bitter story of how she’d gone from living off her credit cards to being the best selling author of books like First Wives Club. I pitched agents and yawned through a late night session on the inside dope from a Hollywood producer.


As I was taking photos of the dining hall and taking notes about the pine scent in the air and the way the wind feels on your face, I was suddenly stuck with the wonder that the dreams of that yesteryear me had come true. My young adult mystery found a publisher. Two crochet mysteries out already, with another due out in June, and another I’m busy writing, and more after that.

All I could so was smile.