Christmas Tree 2017

This year we were smart; we bought our tree before the first snowfall. It’s short and fat, and my husband hardly broke a sweat stuffing it into the trunk. For a guy who’s used to suffering much in the tree lot, it all seemed too easy. But I reminded him of the big tree he picked out a few years ago, the one that fell down and broke half my ornaments. We’ve had bigger, he retorted. Remember the Emily Street house? I didn’t answer. That house had vaulted ceilings, and the sky was literally the limit when it came to picking a tree.

Driving west toward Rapid City

Recently, I was traveling when someone asked me a question that took me by surprise: have you thought about moving? I’ve had plenty of time to think about the question, and I’m ready to answer it. Never mind it’s been weeks.

I wish I could say I was one of those glib people who can respond to the unexpected with a funny one-liner or an instant shutdown. I am not. I’m more likely to stutter or, worse yet, say nothing at all. I can’t remember if or how I answered the question, but I do recall saying something about Minneapolis, as if proximity to a big city justified my location. (Actually, Omaha would have been a better answer; it’s just two hours away.)

Last Friday, Passport to Murder, the second book in my Prof. Prather Mystery series, launched. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year since book one was published. The time has flown by. Immersed in the world of Copper Bluff, I’ve been living the dream I’ve had since I was a young girl: to write.

The crazy thing is I didn’t feel as if I had permission to write until I had a writing contract. Someone says you can write, so now you do. If only writers didn’t need permission, I wonder how many others would come forward. How many, like the women of Tillie Olsen’s Silences, remain unheard? Olsen reminds us, “We must not speak of women writers in our century […] without speaking also of the invisible, the as-innately-capable; the born to wrong circumstances—diminished, excluded, foundered, silenced” (39).

I like to buy books when I travel—books and awkward-sized souvenirs that my husband has to figure out how to transport home. Try as I might, however, I couldn’t talk him into buying a siesta man statue when we went to Arizona last week. At twenty pounds, it was just too heavy. But I did purchase four new books.

When I recently had an opportunity to sponsor a ghost tour at the Bullock Hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota, of course I said yes. It was for Wild Deadwood Reads, a writing conference in my home state. As a mystery author, I’m intrigued by ghost tours. Any event that might turn spooky always gets my attention. Besides, I like old hotels. My husband cringes when I say “bed” and “breakfast” in the same breath because I like eating with strangers in rickety old houses. Luckily for him, we stayed down the street at a chain hotel that had a continental breakfast. We would just be taking the one-hour tour.