Okay,
so the title is a misnomer. Since I live in Central Texas, we only
have two seasons: summer and winter. Winter is generally
mid-December to mid-February. Everything else is summer. We
consider our winters to be cold, which, of course, is a relative
term. Sixty degrees is cool, fifty-four degrees is cold, and
anything lower than that is, excuse the expression, freezing your
butt off. I know, I know, those of you who live above the
Mason-Dixon line are sneering as you read this. Fine. But before
you become too snarky, come spend an August with me, then we'll talk.
The
point of this is that this whole two-season thing can reek havoc on
the creative process, especially when one is writing about something
that happens in January while writing in July. It's sorta cold in
January in Austin, which one can easily forget while sweating away in
July. Which is why, two hundred and some odd pages into the newest
E.J. Pugh mystery, I've had to remind myself that, oops, where are
the jackets?
The
story takes place at the University of Texas when E.J.'s son, Graham
Pugh, comes back to school after the winter break. Yes, that would
be January. Then he's accused of the murder of his obnoxious
roommate. Just because he'd been thinking about doing it, doesn't
mean he actually did it. So of course E.J. has to come to Austin to
ferret out the true culprit and free her eldest child. And she
should probably bring a coat. Just saying. And just because I'm
writing in July when it's quiet plausible to forget about that wet
stuff that falls from the sky, doesn't mean it's not available in,
excuse the expression, winter. So maybe a raincoat. Okay, just an
umbrella. Never rain boots. No one over the age of six does rain
boots here. Maybe some ice? We had ice in 2006. It was scary. But
I just had an ice storm in my last Milt Kovak book (which was more
believable because he lives way up north in Oklahoma).
As
I sit here writing this and staring out my window at the relentlessly
perky sun, I'm reminded of something my late friend, the writer Nancy
Bell, once said to me in a depressed voice: “It's another
goddammed beautiful day in Austin.”
So,
it's off to the writing mines for me to add the winter stuff:
jackets, coats, a nice scarf, a little rain, you know, weather. We
don't have weather in the summer months. Just that relentlessly
perky sun. I need to go turn the air conditioning down.
Susan, sometimes it's hard to remember all the things we need to do to get the details right especially, as you say when you're writing something set in winter in the middle of July.
ReplyDeleteHa! For some reason, I was reminded of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel Aunt Julia & the Scriptwriter where the scriptwriter of the title dresses up as his characters as he writes about them... and I suddenly had the image of you putting on sweaters and jackets to get into the spirit of the season (the other season, I mean, of course). Good luck pushing ahead with all this!
ReplyDeleteIn Buffalo, if it's above 65 degrees, the natives think it's too hot to go anywhere or do anything.
ReplyDeleteI remember as a teen doing summer coursework at a Pennsylvania college. I was from the desert. We headed out one morning and the bank thermometer said it was 69 degrees. I about had a hysterical attack and none of the other teens on the bus could understand why. I kept saying, "But it's 69 degrees! And it's JULY!!" They were like, "whatever. that desert kid is weird." Of course, to me winters on the desert still felt cold. I sure as heck wanted a sweater that July morning, I can tell you that!
ReplyDelete