Real Place Reality: article by Radine Trees Nehring in Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

Real Place Reality

Ahhh ... the driveway is shoveled, my frigid toes are thawing in fuzzy slippers, and I have thirty minutes all to myself. Think I’ll begin one of my new library books. Um, which one...? Oh yes, that one!

Page 1: “Summer in Benteen County, Kansas, is a season possessed of all the gentle subtlety of an act of war. ... A week ago, the thermometer had risen past the unbearable mark ... and, in automatic response, the humidity rushed after it – to a level technically described as obscene.”

How about it? Would you rather read this description from the opening page of J. M. Hayes’ mystery novel, Mad Dog & Englishman in summer – or winter?

Winter, you say? Me, too, because from the very beginning of that novel, I feel heat.

(When it’s hot outside, I suggest enjoying something like Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger, where you can experience a white-out blizzard – and frozen body – in northern Minnesota.)

Good mystery writers are master manipulators, creating atmosphere and location inside minds. They take us to places dark and stormy or glaring and sharp, thrill us with spooky ice caves, steaming jungles and worlds far away from the familiar. The more skillful the writer, the more willing we are to believe, share, travel, and enjoy – riding along eagerly with characters and events that become real for at least the space of a novel.

But there is also a real place reality in fiction that goes beyond hot Kansas or cold Minnesota, ice caves or steaming jungles. Novels using real place reality enable us to experience actual locations while we enjoy the entertainment of a mystery being solved there. This type of novel offers a mini-vacation without the expense of travel (though quite often readers end up wanting to see the described location for themselves).

In fact, Joe David Rice, Director of Tourism for the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, says this: “I suspect a ... mystery set in a real location can be a big boost for the local travel industry.”

One of the authors who gives readers a vivid location experience is Ellen Elizabeth Hunter, a real place writer helping hundreds of readers enjoy Wilmington, North Carolina and nearby Wrightsville Beach. I learned about Ms. Hunter’s novels while planning a trip to the Cape Fear Crime Festival, a mystery fan convention held in Wilmington on the North Carolina Coast every Halloween weekend. Someone recommended Ms. Hunter’s novel, Murder on the Candlelight Tour, as an introduction to the area, but the book ended up being much more than that. While my husband and I were at the convention we saw Wilmington by using Murder on the Candlelight Tour as our tour guide. We visited historic buildings and restaurants portrayed in the story. We even ordered the same dishes Ms. Hunter describes so deliciously. Now that’s real place reality. (And yes, it’s a cracking good mystery story too.)

Ellen Elizabeth Hunter is not a Carolina native, perhaps one reason she notices Wilmington details with a newcomer’s freshness and a tourist’s excitement. She grew up in Connecticut, spending much of her time in an old farm house that had many historic features, including a tin firewood box. (That real firewood box ended up playing a critical fiction role in one of her novels many years later.)

Ms. Hunter has also lived in New York City, where she worked in an 1899 Beaux Arts townhouse while her home was a brownstone on Beekman Place. She’s a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and once lived in and restored an historic home in New Jersey. She repeated the restoration process in a North Carolina home after moving south twenty-five years ago.

She says, “I fell in love with Wilmington, North Carolina, and wanted to live there, but couldn’t because of my husband’s work in Greensboro.” (About two hundred miles away.) “I decided the next best thing to living in Wilmington myself would be creating a character who did.” Not surprisingly, given Ms. Hunter’s background, that character turned out to be Ashley Wilkes, an historic preservationist and old house restorer who works on homes in the Wilmington area. Therefore, thanks to Ms. Hunter, I was not only able to see the real Wilmington, I learned about an interesting profession I’d not been familiar with.

Though she still lives in Greensboro, Ellen Elizabeth Hunter spends a lot of time in Wilmington and the surrounding area, not only doing research for her novels, but giving talks and attending book events honoring her. She’s also been honored by the state with an article in Our State magazine, and reviewed positively in many other area and state-wide publications. By being so location-conscious, Ms. Hunter has proven to be the high-sales, high-value writer Chambers of Commerce as well as eager readers love. “I just write about a wonderful place as it really is,” she says.

Not only that, she writes about interesting events. Murder on the Candlelight Tour and two more of her novels, Murder at the Azalea Festival and Murder on the Ghost Walk, take place during actual Wilmington celebrations that are very popular with area residents, as well as tourists. Her newest novel, Murder at Wrightsville Beach, gives us the real ocean, a beach house, and the murder of a local art gallery owner.

(If you’d like to explore the Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach area, learn more about Ellen Elizabeth Hunter, or order one of her novels, go to http://www.ellenhunter.com.)

Meanwhile, back in the Ozarks, my own fiction writing career was getting under way in the same time period as Ellen Hunter’s. She and I are both relative newcomers in our areas. My husband and I chose Arkansas for our home after spending time thinking about going “back to the land” in several parts of the United States. My love for Arkansas led to an interest in writing about it, and, in a burst of energy, I spent ten years selling articles, essays, and poetry about the Ozarks to publications in the United States as well as other countries. After publishing one non-fiction book set here, (Dear Earth, A Love Letter from Spring Hollow) I decided to try my hand at writing the type of book I enjoy reading most – the traditional mystery.

My first effort, A Valley to Die For (St Kitts Press, 2002), was set in the same country Ozarks area as Dear Earth, an easy location to describe, since I live here. Then, in Music to Die For, I decided to send my protagonist, Carrie McCrite, an employee of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, to another Ozarks spot I love, Ozark Folk Center State Park in Stone County. (Picture Sturbridge Village with an Ozarks setting and Ozarks history, plus a music theater where old-time music can be enjoyed every day the park is open.)

It wasn’t long before I discovered it was not only fun to site books at Arkansas tourist destinations, it was good business. When people ask “Do you have to get permission to use a real place as a book setting?” I report that I do, indeed, get written permission as a courtesy. However, that’s never difficult because the people in charge of such places are smart enough to realize – as I now have – that an adventure story set in their location is excellent advertising, bringing tourists to see the place where it all happened. Settings in my novels are real enough that, at signings, I give actual tourist brochures and location maps to everyone buying one of my To Die For novels.

Do I really need to tell you I enjoy research? And, not only are people at my various book settings eager to be research assistants, they’re often caught up in the magic of the forming story. They leap into the idea with me, acting out possible plot twists and saying something like: “she could ...” or, “what if ....” We have a very good time.

As a mystery reader, I’m excited when I find a new author who takes me into a real place, tells me about a real career I’m not familiar with, and joins these with an adventure puzzle capable of holding my attention. As a writer, I love telling stories set in real places I have chosen to visit, absorb, and share with readers. As a publicist, I now realize this decision was good business, since possible tourist destinations love being starred in novels. Not only that, magazine and newspaper articles locally and in other states write about my work as an ambassador for tourist destinations in Arkansas.

My latest novel, A Treasure to Die For, is set in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. The summer issue of the Eastern National Park magazine, Horizons, featured an article about the two-day celebration for my book that was hosted by the National Park staff in Hot Springs. We had a terrific party and book signing in the historic Fordyce Bath House, where much of the adventure and menace in my novel takes place. Not only that, sometimes visitors to the Fordyce who have purchased my book in the gift shop there take time to write and tell me (as one said) “what fun it was to ‘see’ all the places described.”

Fiction may be mostly imagination, but, as a reader, I’m always glad when an author uses her or his mind and powers of observation to describe a place so realistically that I’m there.

It’s even better when I can travel to see and touch the chosen places myself. Then of course, (think of Wilmington on the sea coast), there’s always the added pleasure of being able to taste the local cuisine....

If you’d like more information about me or my books, or would enjoy talking about Real Place Reality, meet me at http://www.RadinesBooks.com

My books are available through all bookstores, from my publisher at St Kitts Press, at Internet booksellers such as Amazon .

Radine at Big Sleep Books in St. Louis.		Award-winning Arkansas writer and journalist Radine Trees Nehring and her husband, photographer John Nehring, live in the rural Arkansas Ozarks near Gravette. Nehring's writing awards include the Governor's Award for Best Writing about the State of Arkansas, Tulsa Nightwriter of the Year Award, and the Dan Saults Award, given by the Ozarks Writers League for nature-or Ozarks-value writing. Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc., named her book, Dear Earth, Best Non-Fiction Book and her novel, A Valley to Die For, Best Mystery Novel. A Valley to Die For was nominated for a Macavity Award –"Best First Mystery Novel." Research for her many magazine and newspaper features and a weekly radio program, "Arkansas Corner Community News," has taken the Nehrings throughout the state. For years Nehring has written non-fiction about unique people, places, and events in Arkansas. Now, in her mystery novels, A Valley to Die For, Music to Die For, and A Treasure to Die For, she adds appealing characters fighting for something they believe in and, it turns out, for their very lives. Visit the author's website. Direct correspondence to Radine Trees Nehring or Editor.