Our Stories Never Die, They Just Reinvent Themselves

  by Tina deBellegarde

 

Please welcome debut author Tina deBellegarde to Writers Who Kill to tell us about her new release, Winter Witness!

 

How Far Would You Go to Avenge the Death of a Stranger?

 

When a beloved nun is murdered in a sleepy Catskill Mountain town, a grieving young widow finds herself at the center of the turmoil. Bianca St. Denis is searching for a job and seeking acceptance in her new home of Batavia-on-Hudson. Agatha Miller, the nun’s closest friend and the ailing local historian everyone loves to hate, shares her painful personal history and long-buried village secrets with Bianca. Armed with this knowledge, Bianca unravels the mysteries surrounding the death while dealing with the suspicions of her eccentric neighbors. 

However, Bianca’s meddling complicates the sheriff’s investigation as well as his marriage. Can Sheriff Mike Riley escape his painful past in a town where murder and infighting over a new casino vie for his attention?

Danger stalks Bianca as she gets closer to the truth. Can the sheriff solve the mystery before the killer strikes again? Can the town heal its wounds once the truth has been uncovered?

 

***

 

Winter Witness, my debut novel, was born out of a lost story, literally. Many years ago I wrote a long short story or a short novella. Much of it was in free verse – that’s just the way it came out. It was the first time I had actually attempted more than journaling. I wrote it, shared it with one encouraging person and put it away. Life happened, but no more writing happened. Then I moved. Twice.

 

When I finally decided to write Winter Witness, the decision was made in the comforting knowledge that the old story existed. My intention was to find it, polish it, and expand it into a novel. I looked for it for weeks. I searched my computer, my laptop, all my flash drives. Nothing. I looked in file cabinets and boxes and still nothing. I almost gave up the project. For some reason I believed that I had lost the ability to write this story now that the original manuscript was lost. I mistakenly believed that losing the manuscript had meant losing the story.

 

I eventually sat down to the arduous task of recreating my original work, but that’s not what happened. Instead, a nugget that was particularly vivid to me surfaced and I built around that nugget. What I created was something different entirely.

 

I learned that there is no one way to make a thought or a sentence sing. My two stories are the same and yet different. You can express the same feelings in so many ways. I now believe that if I had found the original it would have stymied me. I would have gone back and not forward. I would have regressed instead of allowing myself to grow as a writer. Even now that the book is complete, I am sure that if I scratched it all and started again that I would write a different story the third time around as well. We are not static as writers. We are evolving, so our stories evolve with us. The benefit of writing a series is that I can continue to grow alongside my characters. Dead Man’s Leap, Book 2 in my Batavia-on-Hudson mysteries, feels even truer to the characters who inhabit the series because I know them better.

 

What I learned is that words are never lost. Even words written but intentionally discarded are not wasted. They are our necessary exercise and practice. We wouldn’t think of performing a musical instrument or running a marathon without limbering up. This is also the case with writing. All writing is good writing. It all serves a purpose and furthers our writing practice and polishes our style and voice.

 

In the end, I wrote something different from the original work. It is not an expanded version. It is something else entirely. The stories we have inside us are endless.

 

PS: After turning in the final manuscript of Winter Witness to my editor, I found the long lost story in a box in the attic. It wasn’t on any hard drive or flash drive. I found it in a folder with a handwritten version, a typed version, and, wait for it…a floppy disc.

 

***

 

Tina deBellegarde lives in Catskill, New York with her husband Denis and their cat Shelby. Winter Witness is the first book in the Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery Series. Tina also writes short stories and flash fiction. When she isn’t writing, she is helping Denis tend their beehives, harvest shiitake mushrooms, and cultivate their vegetable garden. She travels to Japan regularly to visit her son Alessandro. Tina did her graduate studies in history. She is a former exporter, paralegal, teacher, and library clerk.

 

Visit her website for more information www.tinadebellegarde.com.