The Turnip Story by Susan Van Kirk

 

I can hear you thinking, “Well, it was bound to happen. Living alone. She’s finally gone out of her pandemic mind. Round the bend. Writing about a turnip on Writers Who Kill. This is a blog for mystery writers. Oh, I suppose she could somehow poison someone with a turnip.”

 

Not out of my mind. Well, not more than usual.

 

On my weekly pandemic trip to the grocery store, after checking the parking lot for a sparsity of cars, I happened to buy a turnip in the produce section to use in a recipe. When I reached the checkout counter, the teenage boy who was checking my groceries held up the plastic bag with one turnip and asked, “What is this?”

 

“A turnip.”

 

I thought the conversation would end there. Having taught teenagers for years and raised my own through that harrowing period of life, I figured he would check out the produce number and move it on through. End of story.

 

But no.

 

He looked up and asked, “I suppose you eat these, but how? Do you cook them?”

 

I felt my heart kick up a few beats. A teenager with curiosity. “Actually, you cook them, but you can also eat them raw.”

 

He held up the bag once again and examined the lowly root vegetable. “Not sure I’ve seen one before.”

 

When you’re a former teacher, you never miss an opportunity. (Here, my children are groaning.)

 

“Actually, my grandfather always had a garden. I think it was a habit learned from living through two
world wars. When I was young, he’d always plant a few turnips because he knew I liked them. I’d help him in the garden, and we’d pull a turnip from the ground and wash it off with the garden hose. Then I’d eat it raw, sitting right there on the grass. Some days, he’d sit beside me, eat a turnip, and we’d talk. It’s one of my favorite memories.”

 

At this point, I expected him to grab another item and, bored, keep working. But no.

 

“That’s cool. I suppose these turnips are vegetables?”

 

“Oh, yes.”

 

“Interesting. Learned something new.”

 

I drove home, thinking about his curiosity. This kid has a  future.

 

As Connie Berry wrote recently on Writers Who Kill, research is essential when you’re a writer, especially a writer of mysteries. Motives, means and opportunities come from curiosity. The study of human behavior helps in the creation of characters and dialogue. Odd, often unusual details catch your attention and lead to questions whose answers you’d like to know. Like most writers, I end up researching far more ideas than I could ever fit in a book. One thought leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. I must stop myself or I’ll never get the book written.

 

In researching my mysteries, I’ve become intrigued about subjects I would never have known about had I not decided to become a writer. Poisons, mitochondrial DNA, 19^th-century houses, domestic violence, stab wounds, genealogy, the Underground Railroad, other periods of time, art centers, and arson. That is a tiny—a very tiny—sample of the many topics I’ve researched to add accurate details to my books.

 

I left the grocery store and, once home, discovered turnips provide anticancer and anti-inflammatory benefits, stabilize our blood sugar, and increase our fiber intake. They give us vitamin B6, folate, calcium, potassium, copper, and manganese. Turnips are believed to have originated in middle and Eastern Asia.

 

That poor kid at the grocery store. Wait until I go back next week and buy kohlrabi.

*photo above is of my grandparents and me circa 1952

 

 

STARTING A NEW YEAR WITH WRITERS WHO KILL

All my blogs with comments in 3-ring binders

Last week I wrote my 223^rd blog with Writers Who Kill starting my fifth year of blogging here so this is my 224^th blog not counting the guest blogs I’ve done. The only members I started with who are still blogging here are E.B. Davis, Jim Jackson, Linda Rodriguez and Warren Bull. Warren and I are the only ones who still write a blog every week. I can understand cutting down to every other week or once a month because coming up with a new idea for a blog, writing, and often researching the topic I choose to write about as well as finding pictures to fit the blog takes time. And then there’s sending it for review and revising the blog as well as posting it.

Since I started blogging, I have written close to forty-five blogs on writing, but there is only so much to be said about the topic when it’s a topic also covered by other members of WWK. It hasn’t always been on writing mysteries, but also writing poetry, letters, and keeping a journal.

 

A blog about the amazing memory of elephants.

I’ve written blogs on animals like cats in cozies, dogs, bouts with a skunk and possums. There was one on bears and another on Bambi, a fawn I found in my woods. There were blogs on my chickens, ponies, horses, ants, spiders, butterflies, bees, and one on elephants and their memory.

E.B. Grace, Shari, me, Paula, and KM at Malice 2015

I’ve written about Malice, Bouchercon, Seascape, and writing events my SinC chapter NEOSinC has put on or specialists who visited us; an FBI agent, a cadaver dog and his handler, an arson inspector, as well as a visit to the morgue. We’ve had other events we put on, too. Hank Phillippi Ryan was our guest at one several years ago and in September we had Nancy Pickard.

I'm on the left with a nephew and one of my sisters.

I’ve also written on interests of mine as well as things I’ve done like gardening, backpacking, camping, book clubs, vacations I’ve gone on, daily walks in the woods, and delivering Mobile Meals to name a few.

For an Easter blog

 I’ve blogged on holidays and special days like New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, the Irish in March, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving.We don’t blog in December so I haven’t blogged about that holiday, but I did one on the anniversary of Girl Scout Day and a few other days like that. I got a lot of comments on the Girl Scout blog.

Beatrix Potter

I’ve blogged about famous people; Charles Dickens, Robert Frost, Pete Seeger, Dr. Seuss, Maya Angelou, John Muir, The Car Talk Guys when Tom Magliozzi died, Beatrix Potter and Woody Guthrie.  I’ve only done a few interviews and three of them were members of my SinC chapter and Judy Hogan, who I met at the 2^nd Malice I attended. We meet up every year there, and since we also both have small farms and write poetry we’ve become email friends.

A picture from my blog about ghosts

Because I have what could be considered a monkey brain that is fascinated by many things, when I hear something interesting on NPR or read something strange in the newspaper, I often decide to look into it deeper and Google it to learn more. So I wrote a blog on Entomophagy; a culinary revolution about eating insects and the movement to make them more appealing and available for people to eat this nutritious food. No, I haven’t tried any nor do I intend to. I also wrote a blog “Are You an Extrovert, Introvert or Ambivert?” When I wrote that I was more of an introvert, my Washington state sister and her husband found that hysterically funny because everywhere I go I strike up conversations with people. I wrote a blog “Are Ghosts for Real?” and a follow up “The Unexplained Revisited.” Both of them got quite a few comments.

My oldest son's grave

The comments I’ve received for my blogs vary from as few as three once up to over twenty, and I know some people follow me on a regular basis without leaving a comment because they’ve told me so. The most comments I've gotten was on “Life Changing Events” in which I wrote about how the death of my eighteen year old son led me to college and eventually to teaching and writing. “Finding a Body” about my finding a suicide hanging from a tree in my woods one morning also had a lot of comments. Another blog that had quite a few comments was “Bouncing Back or Not” about the resilience some have and others don’t after something bad happens in their life.

My daughter's cats are as curious as I am about many things.

I’m facing another year of blogs ahead of me because I’m not ready to give up my Thursday spot, and even though I have no idea what I’ll write about next week, I’m quite sure something will pop into this monkey brain of mine that will grab my attention and make me want to write about it. Yes, it takes away from my time to work on the seventh book I’ve started. However, I feel blogging is a mental activity that keeps my brain more active and at my age that is important. Also, I’m not big on promoting my books and this is a way to do so while at the same time enjoying the challenge of writing something new each week.

If you write a blog do you enjoy it?

Do you enjoy reading blogs?

Is there a blog of mine you remember?