Keeping Up With the Whales

This week our topic is what we do to keep up with what’s happening in our craft. I read all the crochet magazines and belong to a group of knitters and crocheters. I also like to check out yarn stores wherever I go. So, when I was in Pacific Grove this week, I made sure to go into the Monarch Knitting and Quilting store. Even thought crochet isn’t in there name, there is a sign on the door saying they are crochet friendly.

Stores like Michael’s and Joann’s don’t sell the same kinds of yarn independent stores like Monarch does. Monach had beautiful handwoven yarns, and hand dyed yarns you would never find in one of the chain store. I could have dropped some heavy money if I hadn’t remembered that my stash has become ridiculous. I did buy some eyelash yarn to play with. I’ve never used it and wanted to see what it was like to crochet. Basically it is a thin strand with long fine multi colored pieces hanging off of it. I still have some things to try with it, but so far it has been difficult to keep track of the main strand.

It was the first time I’ve been back to Pacific Grove since A Stitch in Crime came out. The book takes place at the Asilomar Conference Center which is in Pacific Grove, so it was fun to go around the area and picture things that happened in the book.

It was more like stockpiling experiences which could come in handy in some future story than keeping up with crochet, but I went whale watching while I up there. I was a little nervous before we left. I worried about getting sea sick or getting scared. The boat wasn’t that big and you go out in the Monterey bay to an area where there is an underwater canyon so deep, the experts don’t even know how deep it is. And it’s supposed to be bigger than the grand canyon. But I also really wanted to see whales up close.

There was a bit of chop as the person steering the boat put it. We seemed to be going against the waves and when we hit them, the boat went up and then down. It was cloudy and chilly as I watched Monterey get smaller and smaller as the boat went further and further out.

Two young men started getting kind of green around the gills and eventually threw up over the side of the boat. Since things are supposed to travel in threes and they were right next to me, I got a little worried. I also got a little worried when we seemed to be way out and there weren’t any whales. Would we be the boat that didn’t get to see any?

Then the marine biologist who had the microphone and was on the top level of the boat saw a blue whale on one side of the boat. The side I wasn’t on. By the time I along with the other people on my side got to the other side, the blue whale had gone for a deep dive and she said probably wouldn’t come up for awhile.

The boat was really rocking now and we were repeatedly told to hold on to the rail. I would have done it even if no one told me.

And then two humpbacks showed themselves. They came up to breath, but also to to eat. They feed on krill, which are tiny sea creatures that particularly like the cold water of the deep canyon. The whales force the krill up and then open their mouths above the water to take them in. Then the whales go back underwater with a wave of their tails.

From no whales we went to being surrounded by them. Every few minutes another one or two would make an appearance. The humpbacks seemed to travel in pairs. The blue whales were more solitary. In the distance I saw water shooting up from other whale’s blow holes. Close by I heard the sound of one shooting the water out of its blowhole.

Our boat was 75 feet long. The blue whales are close to 100 feet long. Their tongues weigh in the tons. Their hearts are the size of a VW bug. Their arteries are big enough for a child to crawl through. It was weird to think that these creatures were bigger than the boat.

I was so busy going from one side of the boat to the other to see all the whales, I never had time to think about being scared. As for seasick. I guess things don’t always travel in threes. Not even a twinge.

And then it was time to go leave the whales. As we headed back I got a wonderful view of the Monterey Peninsula. When I was writing A Stitch in Crime I always thought about looking out at the water, never from the water. It was neat to see Asilomar, the beach, the Pacific Grove lighthouse and the 17-Mile drive through Pebble Beach from a different perspective.

Have you ever seen something familiar from another perspective, like recognized buildings when you were in a plane or looked down on your house from a hill?

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.