Do You Believe in Serendipity? - By Judy L. Murray

…In good karma? Or is it just coincidence? Jane Marple considers coincidence suspect, often deliberate. Yet I’ve decided as writers we experience ‘accidental’ moments quite often.

Last week my husband and I took a quick two-night trip. We were hungry for a bit of adventure before a big surgery. I picked a large historic B&B in Connecticut. It turned out to be the perfect choice. Charming, immaculate, and with delightful touches. But within hours he was under the weather. I was left to myself while he slept through the two days.

Restless and alone, I tucked into a tiny side room on the B&B’s first floor when a small dark-haired woman looked in. “I’m sorry, I was curious about this spot. I didn’t mean to intrude.” She smiled. I smiled back. “Of course not,” I replied. “My husband is sleeping. I’m returning a few calls.” The woman lifted two wine glasses in her hand. “My friends and I are in the fireplace room. Do you want to join us?” I began to protest, then stopped. “That’s so nice of you. I think I will.”

Which leads me to the subject of ‘community’ and how karma can pull us together at just the right time. The definition is ‘a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society’.

In mysteries, authors tend to place their protagonist within their own imagined community. It might be Port Anne, a small Maryland town on the Chesapeake in my series. Perhaps a community is like the famous Jane Marple’s St. Mary Mead or Jessica Fletcher’s Cabot Cove. It’s not just geography. Community incorporates characters’ work, personal hobbies, the styles and ages of their houses, even the weather. It becomes a shared commonality that binds residents together or perhaps drives them apart.

The term community is an important means for building reader attachment. Good writers inspire their readers to feel emotionally connected to their characters. Certainly in a series, fans anticipate the next book because of their evolving affection for a circle of characters. We laugh at the silly ones, root for those fighting crime, and cheer at the conclusion.

Writing can feel lonely. Yet we also know our characters become our special community of friends while we create their story. And the real people we meet when we’re out and about can provide us encouragement. Readers send me photos of my books on coffee tables, book shelves, beach chairs, and tote bags. They drive an hour and a half from home to purchase their signed copy at a signing. Their efforts to reach out touches my heart. It leaves me grateful. They become a vast community that keeps me writing.

Do you have an incident where karma or coincidence evolved into building your readership community? I wonder if our readers know how important they are to us or influence our stories.

Judy

Author, The Chesapeake Bay Mysteries Series

Serendipity

By AnnetteDashofy

Serendipity: Noun. The occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

I’m always in awe of my fellow authors who pound out two, three, four, or even more books each year. I wish I could be that productive. But I’m too easily distracted—squirrel! Or too intent on making sure every detail is accurate, hence a day spent on research. Or too…fill in the blank.

My contract calls for a book every eight months, and that’s about all I can handle. The weeks where two books are in different stages of creation generally have me tripping the fine line of madness. Currently, I’m drafting the tenth in the Zoe Chambers series and working on edits on the ninth one. I spend mornings drafting #10, afternoons revising #9.

Which book am I working on? That scene happened when? In what book?

Most of the time, I gnash my teeth and refer to my series bible and my outline in Scrivener to keep things straight.

The first draft is coming along. Slowly. The revisions are coming along as well and moving forward at a nice clip. Or were, until I hit my freelance editor’s notes for chapter ten.

Without giving anything away, one of my secondary characters, a reporter, knows things thanks to a “source.” Zoe questions her about the identity of this informant, but the reporter smugly avoids answering.

I didn’t feel the identity of her source was vital to the story. The truth is, I had no clue who it was! I thought I could let it slide. Reporters always have confidential informants, right?

Right?

My editor wasn’t buying it. She insisted I—I mean my character—had to reveal the name.

The annoying part is two of my beta readers had said the same thing. I’d ignored them. But I pay this editor good money to keep me honest. Which means, I had to put the screws to my reporter character and get her to tell me her secrets.

She stubbornly refused. For days. I tried all my usual tricks. Nothing worked.

Until one night I decided enough was enough. Waiting for a secretive character to cough up information was akin to waiting for the Muse to inspire me to write.

I can’t wait that long!

I sat down and thought it out. Who would know this information that the reporter’s privy to?

And it came to me. Like the proverbial bolt of lightning. I slapped my head. Of course! It made perfect sense. So perfect, in fact, I’m ashamed Zoe didn’t figure it out already!

The best parts? It will require two sentences to fix #9. Even better, I can continue the thread in #10, where it fits perfectly!

Serendipity.

So, readers, care to share any moments of serendipity in your own lives?

Spider-Lilies and Serendipity by Nancy L. Eady

Spider-lilies: 

Lycoris radiata. Other common names include “British Soldiers,” “Equinox Flower,” “Guernsey Lilies” and “Surprise Lilies.”  A member of the amaryllis family that blooms in early fall in the southern United States.

Serendipity:        

n. 1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident; 2. good fortune; luck.

Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Random House (2001).

In Alabama, most of our flowers bloom in the springtime. Nothing can beat the spring explosion of color in our area of the country, especially in those rare years when the weather and climate coincide to allow everything to burst into bloom at once. After spring, the splashes of color become rare enough that the few flowers making them stand out. The most striking of these outliers is the spider-lily, which technically is neither a spider nor a lily, but a member of the amaryllis family. 

As a writer, I like words, including multi-syllabic words I can play with. “Serendipity” is one of those words. It has a happy ring to it, fitting since the ideas of good fortune and pleasant surprises are intricately intertwined with its meaning. 

You wouldn’t think that serendipity and spider-lilies have much to do with other, but they do. Spider-lilies distill the essence of serendipity. Spider-lilies pop up unexpectedly during the months of September and October wherever one of their bulbs happens to have migrated, and always in groups. Unlike most flowers, spider-lilies tend not to be planted deliberately by gardeners seeking fall color, at least not in Alabama. They just happen. 

A day or two after a good rain in early fall, the flowers spring up from nowhere at odd spots to grace a road side, the edge of a forest, an abandoned yard, a derelict building. Even the spider-lilies that have the temerity to pop up on lawns mowed regularly on Saturdays manage a few days of glory mid-week and still show up year after year after year, never quite when you expect them and never quite where you remember them being the year before.

Whether I’m driving to work or headed out on an errand, I experience a rush of joy when I pass a formerly unadorned strip of road side that has, overnight, sprouted rows or clumps of these gorgeous red flowers. I can’t predict where they’ll be or when I’ll see them, but I’m always happy when I do. 

And that’s why spider-lilies look like serendipity.