A Book Signing

image from tatteredcoverbookstore.blogspot.com

Diane Mott Davidson 

Diane Mott Davidson, writer of culinary mysteries, signed books at Mountain Books in Conifer, Colorado, October 2.

She is gracious, delightful, and entertaining whether you're listening to her speak or reading her stories. And she makes a mean batch of Scout's Brownies from her book, Dying for Chocolate. 

That's the first book of hers that I read. Her main character Goldy is a mother, a good friend, a domestic abuse survivor, an amateur sleuth, and a caterer -- in that order of importance. As the series continues she adds wife to that list -- I would say tying for slot number 1.

In Dying for Chocolate, we meet all the main characters. Goldy, of course. She is happily divorced from The Jerk whose only positive contribution to her life is their son Arch. She has turned her passion for food into a career as a caterer. 

Marla is the Jerk's second ex-wife and Goldy's best friend. Marla has an extraordinary talent for collecting the town gossip which proves invaluable to Goldy's avocation as amateur detective solving local murder mysteries.

You know that info on the back of books? I seldom read that. Or book reviews. I read books because a friend recommends it or I hear an interview with the author on National Public Radio. But Dying for Chocolate I saw in the library and being notoriously addicted to chocolate, I checked it out based solely on its title.

Like all of her mysteries, it's set in the imaginary town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado, which is very like her town of Evergreen.

I was innocently reading along when I turned a page and there, in the middle of the murder mystery, was a recipe. That was on page 75. Then on page 98 there was a recipe for Scout's Brownies. To the kitchen! Murder mystery on hold, I baked them. They were delicious. 

Lucky for me because I lived in Oklahoma at the time, Ms. Mott Davidson had amended her high altitude recipe for us low altitude readers. I didn't find that out until the book signing. 

I've read all her books since. She inspired me to write Murder on Ceres. I took her a copy of my book as a gift.

I found out on Monday about her Friday scheduled book signing at Mountain Books in Conifer (from Colorado Public Radio, our local NPR station) and, of course I had to go. I'd never been to Conifer. I knew it was in the mountains and it would likely be dark when it was over, so I set about trying to enlist people to go with me. Daughter had to work. Husband had to work. Friends had other commitments. Well, shoot.

Conifer, Colorado. Google said thirty minutes away from my house. Four-lane highway. How bad could it be?

I left home at 4:00 pm to be sure I'd have plenty of time to find the book store and a parking place. After all, I clearly remembered my experience in February at Neil Gaiman's book signing in Ft. Collins,

There was a bit of rush hour traffic. It always amazes me how many people live up in the mountains and commute into Metro Denver for work. Needless to say, it was all uphill and curvy. Exits marked roads named "Raven Gulch" and "Sourdough Drive" and "Alpine Meadow." Of course they did.

The drive up? No problem at all.

Mountain Books is a wonderful bookstore. It's small and stuffed to the gills with books, new and used. Jesse, the owner, has been in this location for 18 years. His space is divided into categories -- Science Fiction, Mysteries, Religion, etc. and the books are shelved within those categories alphabetically by author. That pleases my library-trained heart.

His dog Sasha welcomes customers and keeps an eye on everything. Of indeterminate ancestry, she's a mature dog, about 30 pounds, mostly white with a lovely black patch over her right eye. Her coat is medium length and her tail is elegantly feathered. Most of the customers are local and they obligingly toss her ball for her to fetch.

Jesse suggested I walk over to the shopping center where there are several eating establishments. Of course he did. Everybody in Colorado walks. I'm getting used to it.

Weather Underground  forecasted possible thunderstorms for Conifer. Clouds were building, but to the east. 

They might drop rain out over the prairie but it wasn't likely I'd see anything from those clouds. And the aspen are responding to our changing fall daylight, their leaves bright as sunshine shimmering in the wind.

I bought Mott Davidson's latest, Goldy's Kitchen Cookbook, a collection of the recipes from her culinary mysteries, and sat down to wait. 

More fans filtered into the bookshop and we visited. One lady told me I was brave to drive in the mountains after dark. I decided to see what other books of interest to me Jesse might have. I found a Stephen Jay Gould I didn't have and one by Neil deGrasse Tyson -- both used for only $5 each.

One of the ladies said she got to hear Tyson speak at Colorado School of Mines a couple of nights before. How cool is that!

Another woman said I should be careful driving after dark because of deer on the highway. And elk are bigger than deer. Another said she'd seen a bear dead on the road the night before. Several agreed they'd heard someone hit a bear. "Do you know who?" they asked each other. "A bear?" I asked. "But they're not as dangerous as hitting a deer," they reassured me. Or an elk "because deer and elk are so tall, they'll come right over the hood into your windshield." 

Which brought on one woman's husband's experience with a deer leaping through his pickup truck's side window and going halfway through the windshield. "It was dead, of course." Of course, I thought. Then someone offered the wisdom that it would have been more dangerous if the deer had not died -- "flailing around in the moving truck."

Deer and elk and bears, Oh my.

To my relief, Diane Mott Davidson arrived bearing freshly baked Scout's Brownies. And signed our books. She talked about who inspired her villains -- which brought to mind Twain's warning that you ought not start a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. She explained that her husband Jim is nothing like the Jerk. And Arch is so believable because she has her three sons to draw on. 

Her husband is an aerospace engineer and has worked for NASA. She thinks he'll enjoy Murder on Ceres. Not only a wonderful writer, but she's kind, too.

And then it was time to drive home. In the dark.

When you see those yellow diamond highway signs showing a downward tipping truck above the percent grade you're coming to, you know you're in the Rocky Mountains and it's going to be steep. And yes, I do know to take those long, steep hills in Low gear, so my brakes don't overheat and fail.

After a half mile of 5% grade, (Doesn't sound like much, does it? But it is very steep.) I encountered an official Department of Transportation sign that read "ALL DRIVERS DON'T BE FOOLED 5% GRADE AND SHARP CURVES NEXT 5 MILES." Scared me, I'll tell you.

But then, it's like my husband says, it's not quite so scary when you can't see how far down it is. And in the darkness I couldn't see anything past the edge of the road. That's because the ground fell away to my immediate right and there was nothing there to be caught in my headlights.

At least I didn't have to worry about a deer or an elk or a bear leaping in front of the car from that side of the road. I just had to keep reminding myself that if one of those critters did come out of the darkness to my left, I should probably not swerve right to miss it.

I was relieved when I saw the 65 MPH speed limit signs. I knew I was out of the mountains and almost home.

Red Rocks -- A Day Trip

July 27, 2015
from center front clockwise: Silas, John Riley, Sonja,
and John Ryan

That's my son, his lovely wife, and their two brilliant sons. They live in Texas, so they particularly enjoyed our relatively mild mid-day temps. Their daughter was in Alabama for a mission trip. We missed her, but maybe she can come up later this year.

Red Rocks was 'discovered' in 1820 by a U.S. Army expedition. (The Ute apparently knew it was here long before that.) The Beatles played Red Rocks 51 years ago this month on their first American tour. And, after living 6.5 miles from it for almost four years, we've added it to our list of favorite day-trips. 

Running the steps in the amphitheater is a popular pastime with the locals. I make do with hiking the trails and taking too many photos.

And maybe sometime soon I'll add it to night trips. (Movies on the Rocks--live music, a comedian, and a classic movie. All for $12. BYOP--Bring Your Own Picnic.) 

The Rocky Mountains are primarily granite,    but scattered about in Colorado are magnificent  outcroppings of sandstone, testifying to the area's ancient history as a great inland sea.


And yes the sky is exactly this blue. 

Because we are in the rain shadow of the Rockies, our climate is that of a high plains desert.

And our native flora are often as architectural as the mountains. 
This is Common Mullein and, although it was the
end of July, it was not yet in bloom. That tall, leafless bit
at the top boasts brilliant yellow blooms now.

Many of our other wildflowers were showing the wear and tear of our fierce sun
and sporadic rainfall.

Pineywoods Geranium                              Toadflax                                     Dwarf Golden Aster

This year is being considered a 'wet' year. Keep in mind, however, that even during our wet years we measure rainfall in fractions of an inch and rain events rarely last longer that 20 or 30 minutes. 

While we were in the park we met a young man from Illinois. I explained about our arcane water laws. By interstate compacts with our downstream U.S.neighbors and international treaties with Mexico, we may keep only one-third of the water that falls on Colorado. It is illegal to catch and hold rain water that falls on our property. It is illegal to dig a water well without permission. That water is all spoken for.

And, this year in particular, our neighbors in Utah, Arizona, California, and Northern Mexico are in particular need. The young man from Illinois could not understand. When it comes to water, his home state is a land of plenty. The Southwest United States is not.

This is as close to lush as we come,

and we love it.

Don’t Open with a Weather Report

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

How many of you out there have writing teachers, coaches, mentors, whatever, who admonish you against starting your Great American Novel with a weather report? Yeah, me, too. And I think they’re probably right.

But weather certainly has a place in our world and in our work.

I grew up in Oklahoma and learned early-on that watching the weather can be a matter of life and death.

For a while, I lived on the edge of a vast wheat field and was privileged to watch combat between man and weather. Combines clanked and roared their way back and forth across ripe wheat trying to get the crop in before the weather hit. In this case, the weather was rain and hail bearing down on the men and their machines. And threatening their livelihood.

Storms on the prairie (and, for that matter, on the Gulf of Mexico) may not always be big enough to have a name, but they have a face, a front edge that you can see for miles.  

Here on Colorado’s Front Range, the weather is seldom intense. From my chair at the computer, I cannot see the glorious Rocky Mountains because of The Foot Hills. They block my view. But far from resenting their intrusion, I love them.

They teach me about the weather here. When the morning light shows them clear and bold, I’ll have yet another of the many sunny days. A wave cloud can mean a dreary day, because it usually spreads toward Denver out on the prairie to our east and blocks the sunshine until that short, amazing time when the sun blazes from below the cloud before sinking behind the hills.

And on days like today, when the foot hills are shrouded in roiling blue-gray, I know the weather is very close. There is no face, no edge to see, just the knowledge that it, whatever it is, is very near and very soon.

Like the dark moors of the Brontë sisters and Arthur Conan Doyle’s London fog. And that saddest of rains in A Farewell to Arms. It is coming.

So, unless you have a damn good reason to, don’t open your story with a weather report. But, if it helps you tell your story, use it.