A Mystery Writer's Notes From Tahoe:
Where the water is pure, the air is cool, and the bad guys all get caught...
The Library of Congress is the closest thing we have to a National library. Its location is off the east end of the national mall. It serves congress, but that is only part of its job. It is often considered the world's largest library.
Among a thousand duties, the library of congress issues cataloging numbers to books it deems sufficiently significant. I'm lucky in that it considers my books in that category.
The building and its rooms are spectacular. What a wonderful monument to books!
I'm excited to announce the next Owen McKenna (#19). It's called TAHOE JADE, and it will be published August 1st.
Here's the description:
A Letter From Abe Lincoln
In the fall of 1861, President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to the new governor of California, Leland Stanford. Lincoln sent the letter by Pony Express, which went through Tahoe. The letter from Lincoln was intercepted, and it never reached Stanford.
An Assault, A Fire, A Kidnapping
160 years later, Firefighter Jade Jaso was assaulted in Sacramento. The next day she nearly died in a warehouse fire. A short time later, her rancher father was killed in a fall at Lake Tahoe. Then Jade disappeared.
A Coded Message
When Detective Owen McKenna is brought on the case, he finds Lincoln’s letter hidden in the personal effects of Jade Jaso’s father, who was a collector of historical memorabilia. The letter contains a coded message. McKenna learns that the message refers to a treasure Stanford had mentioned to Lincoln. Unfortunately, Jade’s father made the deadly mistake of talking about the letter. The information came to a brute of a man who would kill and torture anyone who got in the way of finding that treasure, including Jade and her father, as well as Owen McKenna and McKenna’s girlfriend Street Casey...
TAHOE JADE should be in bookstores come August.
If you prefer ebooks, Amazon just put up a Kindle preorder page, which you can visit to see the cover:
For me, February through April is editing season. My new book is off at my 4th editor. In case you don't know, for most writers, editing and the subsequent rewrites are the most important part turning a rough draft into a competent novel.
Many writers think they can do the editing themselves. Most regret that impulse, for it leads to endless embarrassment in addition to nasty comments in reviews and the resulting poor sales. The reason you can't edit your own work is that you only see what you think you wrote. Whereas an editor sees what you actually wrote.
Because my new book has already been edited multiple times, and because I've rewritten the book after each previous edit, I sometimes suffer the delusion that I've sent my 4th editor a book with very few problems. Ha! It is a joke among us, me and the editors. One small reason is that different editors catch different problems. One big reason is that, when I rewrite to fix past mistakes, I create numerous new mistakes. It never ends.
When I rewrite my final time, I'll send it off into the publication pipeline. And when the finished, printed book comes out, it will, alas, have more mistakes. But, hopefully, they will be few.
I've said before that done is better than perfect. Meaning that you can continue to fix a book forever. If you don't finally decide it's done, you will never have a published book.
Winston Churchill's comment on the subject was (in so many words), "Your book begins as dream, morphs to an infatuation, and possibly moves into the category of mistress. But eventually, it becomes a tyrant. When that happens, you have to open the door and fling it out into the storm."
Good advice. Done is better than perfect. But don't be "done" with it until it's had multiple edits and rewrites.
Are you a hiker? Are you coming to the South Shore? If you want a place to go for a nice long walk that isn't buried in snow and has gorgeous views, come to the Tallac Historic Site. There are very few tourists this time of year, and the views across the lake are grand.
How to get there?
At the "Y" intersection where Emerald Bay Road turns north from Lake Tahoe Blvd., drive northwest out Emerald Bay Road. About three miles out, look for signs for Camp Richardson. There's a General Store, a classic old hotel, lots of cabins, etc.
When you go past the General Store on the right, continue a quarter mile or so and watch for the sign to Valhalla, again on the right.
Just after the turnoff (which is closed) to Valhalla, there is a gravel parking lot on the right where you can park. (There are also many other places where you can simply pull off the highway and park.)
From wherever you park, you will find numerous trails and paths and roads that head north to the shore of Lake Tahoe. When you get to the lake (about a quarter mile) head west along the shore. Take your time exploring. You will find the Heller Estate: https://valhallatahoe.com/valhalla-grand-hall/ , the Pope Estate, the Baldwin Cabin, multiple beaches etc.
Enjoy the old-growth Ponderosa Pines at Valhalla, monster trees that are 7 feet in diameter. Check out the spectacular view of Mt. Rose and the surrounding mountains, 30 miles north. And of course, there is nearby Mt. Tallac, the tallest mountain that sits directly on Lake Tahoe.
You will find miles of snow-free trails and beaches worth exploring. This time of year, you can enjoy these places like locals, unencumbered by the hordes of tourists that will descend come July.
TAHOE HERALD
News Flash
Byline: Glenda Gorman
Here's an interesting bit of trivia (to me, anyway) about snowfall in the Tahoe region.
Everyone knows that Tahoe gets tons of snow. Does more snow fall because Tahoe is at 6,250 feet above sea level? How about nearby areas like Kirkwood at 8000 feet?
Yes, but not for the reason you probably think!
When storms push off the Pacific and rise up the Sierra, the clouds cool, and they can't hold as much water vapor. So they drop their moisture as precipitation. Here comes the surprise trivia.
By the time the storms have come up over the Sierra crest at 8000 to 10,000 feet, they've already dropped the majority of their moisture!
This moisture generally falls as rain on the West Slope of the Sierra. As the storms get to the higher mountains, the air has cooled enough that the remaining precipitation usually falls as snow. And because Tahoe is colder, that snow usually sticks around and accumulates into a deep snow pack.
Once in awhile, the storms stay cold enough that the foothill precipitation comes as snow down to 3000 feet or even lower. When that happens, the greater total moisture in the foothills means that the higher foothills can actually get more snow than Tahoe!
Tonight, we are supposed to get a moderate storm. It will be cold. As I write this, Tahoe is expected to get up to 8 inches at 7000 feet and up to 12 inches on the Sierra crest. But the higher foothills are expected to get up to 18 inches!
Because foothill temperatures are generally warmer, their snow will melt and Tahoe's snow will remain, adding to the perception that Tahoe gets all the snow. The bottom line is that the foothills get more total moisture than Tahoe. When it's very cold, that occasionally translates into more snow.
This happens a couple of times a year.
Phew! You probably couldn't get through the day without knowing that, huh?
I've learned to pay attention to ideas I get in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.
If I've got the energy, I get up and write my idea down. If I don't, I often won't remember it come morning. Sometimes, I just mouth the idea to myself as a memory help so I don't have to get up. That trick often helps me remember the great idea.
Last night, I had a truly great idea that I knew would solve a particular problem in the scene I'm writing. I could have my character eat chicken ice cream.
Of course, come morning, I realized it was idiotic. I guess I wasn't so awake after all!
Ah, another revealing look into the lofty world of writers.
I was in the supermarket parking lot and saw one of the employees come out and begin gathering the shopping carts. She was clearly depressed, stooped, bundled up against winter cold, walking with no energy. She looked like it would take a miracle for her not to turn in her resignation in the next five minutes.
She saw a wayward cart over at the far edge of the parking lot and began trudging her way over toward it.
There was a man with a German Shepherd on a very long leash. The dog saw the woman and pulled toward her. The woman saw the dog and veered toward it. The dog and woman met and touched, then hugged, then romped. It took about 60 seconds for the complete transformation.
The woman became joyous and light on her feet. She smiled and gestured, hugged the dog some more. She did a pirouette in her snow boots. She attempted to move away to get the cart, then turned back and went back to the shepherd for another dog fix of love and happiness.
Eventually, she succeeded in separating herself from the dog. As she came a good distance from the dog, she came near me. I couldn't help noticing that the sad woman was now happy. Instead of frowning, she was grinning to herself. She turned for a moment and glanced back at the dog. When she turned back to the cart she was smiling even more.
It was a profound example of what dogs do for people. A strange dog transformed this woman's life. Maybe for five minutes, maybe for five hours, maybe for five days.
If you look at lakes on the map of the United States, you'll see five big ones stand out. The five Great Lakes are big by any measure. Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Ontario, and Erie. In addition to surface area, those are the five biggest U.S. lakes by volume as well.
So what lake comes in at number six by volume? A glance at the map shows dozens of possibilities. You know the answer of course, because you're reading my blog.
Lake Tahoe isn't huge by surface area. But it is DEEP, the 10th deepest freshwater lake in the world. And it is the second highest big lake in the world.
As for volume, Tahoe contains 36 cubic miles of water. Nothing compared to Superior. But it's kind of amazing to look at the U.S. map and realize that after the five Great Lakes, Tahoe has more water than any other lake in the U.S.!
Ever wonder where all this lovey dovey Valentine celebration stuff came from?
There are several competing stories, most involving men named Valentine. One of the more likely seems to be about a clergyman named Valentinus. who lived in Rome back in the third century. Christians weren't very popular back then. But Valentine was supposedly nice to them. And he even performed marriage ceremonies for Christians, or so the story goes. (Medieval stories are notorious for being just that. Stories.)
But the whole marriage-of-Christians concept had the kind of nice ring to it that allowed the story to flourish. Anyway, for whatever reason, the Romans in charge sentenced him to death for his crimes, and he was beheaded on Feb 14, 270. Centuries later he was made a saint.
The idea of celebrating Valentinus's death with symbols of love didn't take hold right away. By some accounts it wasn't until the Italian Renaissance in the 14th or 15th centuries that people started celebrating love. (It took over one thousand years for love to take hold in the popular culture!)
In the meantime, it's always a good idea to do something sweet for your love, whether on Valentinus's birthday or not.
My wife is doing the first of four edits on my new book. In it, El Dorado County Sheriff's Office Sergeant Bains is featured, and what he looks like is described. My wife said, "I don't remember reading what Bains looked like in past books."
"That's because I don't think I've ever described him before," I said. (If I have, I forgot about it, and I'll get emails from people telling me I got him wrong!)
When writers begin writing novels, we often assume we have to say what all the characters look like. But it isn't necessary.
The first book in the Owen McKenna series was the fifth novel I'd written (those books are unpublished).
Owen McKenna's sidekick Spot
I'd described a lot of characters by the time I began Owen McKenna. With this new series, I decided I wouldn't describe what McKenna looks like other than to say he's 6' 6" and weighs 215. And, just once, Glennie, the reporter, refers to his blue eyes.
But mugshot stuff? Nada. Nothing about his looks.
There's no rule about this. If you want, you can describe a character down to the hair on their knuckles.
What happens when you don't describe characters? Readers fill it in. I can't count the number of times readers have referred to McKenna's looks. When I say that I never described them, they tell me I'm wrong. They know I'm wrong because they know exactly what McKenna looks like. Which is, apparently, proof that I've thoroughly described him!
Same for Sergeant Diamond Martinez of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. All we know about him is that he's got brown skin (he's a Mexican immigrant). Yet readers seem to know exactly what he looks like as well. They even think he's handsome. I know this because I've gotten quite a few emails from women proposing marriage to Diamond. (I know - I didn't see that coming.) In their surprisingly earnest proposals, they make it clear he's an attractive guy.
Incidentally, I do describe other characters like Street Casey and FBI Agent Ramos and of course Spot, and many many bit characters.
Stay tuned... The next McKenna (#19) is due out this coming August. You'll know what Sergeant Bains looks like then!
