Dear Reader,
Renee Patrick is the pen name of married authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan. Their mystery novels featuring Lillian Frost and real-life costume designer Edith Head have been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. The fourth book in the series, The Sharpest Needle, is available now.
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WRITING THE RAILS
We enjoy the research required to write our books. It helps that for our series, set during the golden age of Hollywood, research includes watching lots of old movies. The process is fairly routine. Hunting down out-of-print books. Peering at vintage newspapers and magazines on a computer screen. Traipsing through dusty libraries. About as glamorous as it gets is when we visit libraries in Los Angeles, where the dust has a youthful sheen and a healthier diet.
For our latest book, a field trip was in order. We wanted to see one of our major locations, Hearst Castle in San Simeon, firsthand. For a dash of verisimilitude, we opted to travel the way our characters would: by rail from Los Angeles.
The fun started as soon as we reached Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. It's been renovated and modernized, but you can't fool old movie fans: we recognized the bones of the building from countless films like, well, Union Station (1950). We found the platform featured in the classic noir The Narrow Margin (1952) and reenacted the final scene ourselves.
Rail travel instantly transforms the familiar. As our train wended its way out of Los Angeles, we passed the backs of businesses festooned with vivid graffiti no one would ever bother to remove. After all, no one saw it save for train passengers.
Outside the city, the trip became even more remarkable. Long stretches of the track hug the Pacific. We rolled past isolated coves accessible only by water; surfers stopped their paddling to wave at us, the only other people they'd see all day. Soon, WiFi and cell phone service was only a wish. Your only company aside from your thoughts were the old-fashioned utility poles standing sleepy sentry alongside the tracks. Occasionally a huge building would loom in the distance, the forbidding placement and fencing indicating it was a prison, with a name heard in one of those old movies. Not so far away, other travelers were rumbling up Interstate 5. But we were also moving backward through time as we ambled north through California, pressed temporarily into an era without distraction.
San Simeon, the breathtaking setting in particular, impressed. But the journey there made a more lasting impact. We've thought of that ride often during these long months when we'd welcome a trip anywhere. Once the world opens up again, we intend to return to the deliberate pace of train travel, which mercifully forces you to slow down, breathe easy, and appreciate whatever happens to be rolling past your window.
-- Renee Patrick
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Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
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SHINE WITH ME (Fiction) by Kristen Proby
I'm thrilled to tell you about my newest release with 1001 Dark Nights, Shine With Me. This novella is a part of my With Me In Seattle series. You'll get to see some of your favorite couples from this world, and meet some all new characters that I know you're going to fall in love with! Two of those are Sabrina and Ben. Sabrina is getting ready for a new movie role--the role of a LIFETIME!-and only Ben can help her do it. There is so much swoon and sighing included in this story, I don't even know what to do with myself.
Enter to win one of five copies! Click on the link to Authorbuzz and the book jacket for details.
Go to: AUTHORBUZZ click on SHINE WITH ME to read more and to email author Kristen Proby, you'll get a reply.
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