by Julia Spencer-Fleming
I have a superpower as a writer. Since my last Clare
Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne book came out in 2020, you can tell it’s not
terrific speed. It’s not laser-like focus, either: I’m a late-in-life diagnosed
ADHD person which explains why I tend to start one task, switch to another, and
somehow wind up scrubbing my shower when I should be scheduling events.
No, my superpower is manifesting my plot elements. “Well,
Julia,” I can hear you say (superhearing is another power of mine, except in my
right ear, where I’m a tad deaf.) It’s not that hard to be timely as long as
you pay attention to the news, right? Yes, but here’s the thing – I tend to
come up with the plots for my novels years ahead of their publication.
I first learned one of the largest official offices of the
American Nazi Party is in Syracuse, NY back in, I don’t know, 2016? I went to
high school in a town right next to Syracuse, a town where my parents lived for
40-plus years. Trust me when I say Nazis are NOT what you think of when you
think of Syracuse. Basketball, yes. Insane amounts of snow, yes. Fascism – not
so much.
Then, a few years later, there was a lot of news here in
Maine about a group of white supremacists who decided to relocate to the
sparsely-populated northwestern reaches of the state and take over a local
small-town government. I guess their idea was it’s easier to create a
pale-people paradise in a spot that’s already well over 90% Caucasian. Much to
their surprise, the locals did NOT agree with their sentiments (Mainers don’t
take kindly to out-of-staters coming in and telling us how to live) and the group
was basically run out of town.
These factoids sloshed around in the cocktail shaker that is
my brain, and as I was finishing my last novel, HID FROM OUR EYES, I was
already coming up with the basic outline of AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY. I wanted
to do a Christmas book – everyone loves a mystery set during the Christmas
season, right? And what goes better with the holiday than a white supremacist
militia group bent on spreading their message through violence? (There is also
tree decorating, hot cocoa, and Santa.)
Did I have any idea domestic terrorism and political
violence would be major news items the same fall my book was coming out?
Absolutely not, and I wish to heck it wasn’t so! Did I think I was going to get
invitations to speak on radio talk shows because of my timely fiction? Again,
no! I would prefer the biggest issue of the moment to be Taylor Swift’s new
album. (Is it really as bad as critics are saying?) But you know, when you’re
given a superpower, you don’t really control how you use it. Maybe for my next
novel I can manifest a relaxing summer at a beach house…
Julia
Spencer-Fleming (@jspencerfleming.bsky.social) — Bluesky
Julia
Spencer-Fleming/ jspencerfleming.bsky.social (@JSpencerFleming) / X
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