A Picture Can Lead to 1,000 Words

 I often take pictures of scenery similar to that in my fiction. Grain elevators feature in Demise of a Devious Suspect, and I have dozens of single and multiple silos.

Because I could not travel to Garrett County, Maryland as I wrote the Family History Mystery Series, I'm especially thankful to have photos of that area. Even more so to have captured images from the trains, since they traverse areas I can't travel by car.

Some of these are in Maryland, others may be in West Virginia. There are no state line signposts among the trees.

Early spring in the Appalachian Mountains.

Note the Dogwood trees.

You can't jump out of a train for close-up photos of flowers. My guess would be this is a form of clover or perhaps sulfur cinquefoil, a perennial almost considered a weed.

This gives you a sense of how close the railroad tracks are to the rivers.

I'm still hopeful that 2022 will let me travel to Maryland as I write book four of the series.

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To learn more about Elaine, go to elaineorr.com or sign up for her newsletter. 

History and Mystery Intertwined

When I decided to merge my love of writing with  that of digging into family and local history, I wanted to be sure I didn't delve too deeply into the "how to" aspect of exploring family history. 

It didn't take long to figure out there is only so much license to take when exploring the history of a real place, in my case Garrett County, Maryland. I love riding through the Appalachian Mountains in a train. Or the Allegheny Mountains, if you prefer. While the town of Mountain Grove is fictional any references to the county's history has to be largely accurate. If not, why set it there?

With the Family History Mystery Series, I also faced the challenge of learning more during the COVID pandemic. A planned trip to tour some towns and conduct research fizzled, and I felt fortunate to find publications through the Garrett County Historical Society.

As always, the characters made their preferences known. I had planned for the protagonist, Digger -- you'll never guess how she got her name -- to spend more time plowing through old records and such, but she decided that would be boring. 

She also wanted more friends, so the Unscheduled Murder Trip gives them a bigger role. Book Three, tentatively titled Mountain Rails of Old, will feature the family of Digger's business partner, Holly. She's descended from one of the first free Black families in Garrett County, which will give me a chance to explore more aspects of the county's history.

In my wildest dreams, I never planned to insert a ghost, but one of the key characters was too good to let rest in peace. Writing does take authors down unexpected paths. 

Today marks the releas of the Unscheduled Murder Trip, which was fun to write and let me stretch my writing wings, probably an odd term, given that it relates to the ghost.

I do need that research trip, if only to take a walk around Deep Creek Lake.

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To learn more about Elaine, go to www.elaineorr.com or subscribe to her newsletter.