I steal a lot. Most writers do. Nothing beats research for a book’s setting. Real places ground me. The things is, you may have visited a place many times, but when you write about it, that’s different. Specific details you never considered become important. What do the university students wear? Where do they drink? Where do they live? The Shadow Warriors pulled me back to Göttingten, Germany. World of Mirrors demanded a trip back to the Island of Rügen, in the Baltic. Festival Madness recreated my Burning Man experiences. In Chased By Death I explored Key West and Miami.

My latest mystery novel, Murder in the North Woods was easier. The setting was inspired by my youngest son who attended camp in the area, became a counsellor, head of the food service, and then traveled back to the area for worker weekends with the Wilderness Engineers. I heard zany stories about the North Woods and his friendships with the locals. It had been years since we trundled two little boys off to summer camp. What was the North Woods like now?

The research trip to the area was one of the best vacations my husband and I ever enjoyed, with scenery, casinos, intriguing discoveries, and tasty North Woods food. I never make up anything that I can “borrow” from real life like Laura’s garage apartment. Heather’s cottage really belongs on Sylvan Lake in Indiana. We found Darrell’s occupation in the Boston Globe. I moved the geography of Newton, Kansas to the fictional town of DuBois. My troubled sleuth, Laura lives in Houston, where I went to university. Some of the characters are from Chicago, where we lived for many years. Steal, swipe. Repeat.

What else did we find on our trip to the North Woods? The grubby casino. The elegant Lake Club on Green Heron Lake. The boathouse. The wide-mouthed bass mailbox. Darrell’s trailer. The King’s Victorian House. The signs with arrows telling the visitor where people lived. We found Nub’s pub. We even found a river with rapids. I made up the shoe company, having worked in that industry for years. I did not make up the Y2K project, very like a project I worked on. The class V rapids and the naked tug of war came out of my head. Everywhere we looked, I envisioned settings for my novel.

One thing that bothers me is that the folks in the North Woods are simpatico, and I had to make some of them bad. An author cannot have an entire novel full of nice people. It doesn’t work. A few of the not-so-nice ones are redeemed. Even, the main character, Laura, is not traditionally “nice.”

Once I had my setting, characters appeared and took action and started the plot rumbling. Often, the characters have their own agenda, and the author must write fast to stay abreast of them. That is a terrific moment in any writer’s life.

Here’s a brief rundown of the plot that emerged with and from the research. A savvy cyber-sleuth teams up with a hunky homicide cop to route corporate miscreants and to solve a murder. Murder in the North Woods is an amateur sleuth mystery with both cozy and noir elements. When she arrives in the town of DuBois, Wisconsin, to determine who is sabotaging an unpopular business project, Laura Goode discovers her only contact is now a corpse. Gar Morris, information officer at Great Northern Shoe Company, was a local lothario whose killer could be anyone from an enraged husband to a bitter factory worker whose job is heading overseas. Along with murder, office politics thwart Laura’s mission to find out who is sabotaging the project. Adding more complications to her life, boyfriend Jack, a cop, and husband Taylor, with more money than sensitivity, appear unannounced. Who needs these distractions when you’re swanning from boardroom to bar room, trolling for bass, hunting hackers, and rescuing your kidnapped cat? A nude biker’s club and the whitewater raft trip from hell provide a thrilling climax. You’ll have to read the novel to discover how everything works out.

Murder in the North Woods is a traditional mystery, released December 1, 2020.

She’s into high tech. He’s into homicide. The Northwoods rock and roll when a savvy cyber-sleuth teams up with a hunky homicide cop to route corporate miscreants and to solve a murder.

When she arrives in Wisconsin’s North Woods to determine who is sabotaging an unpopular business project, Laura Goode discovers her only contact is now a corpse. Gar Morris, information officer at Great Northern Shoe Company, was a local lothario whose killer could be anyone from an enraged husband to a bitter factory worker whose job is heading overseas.

Along with murder, office politics thwart Laura’s mission to find out who is sabotaging the project. Adding more complications to her life, boyfriend Jack, a cop, and husband Taylor, with more money than sensitivity, appear unannounced on alternate weekends. Who needs these distractions when you’re swanning from boardroom to bar room, trolling for bass, hunting hackers, and rescuing your kidnapped cat? A nude biker’s club and the whitewater raft trip from hell provide a bizarre but thrilling climax.

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Meet the author
I was born in Montana, raised in Colorado, educated in Texas, and lived in suburban Chicago for years and now even more years in suburban Boston where I became a Red Sox fan, a Patriots fan, and a writer.

An information systems nerd for twenty-plus years, I’m a survivor of Dilbert-like re-engineering projects and other high-tech horrors. In my writing, I like to show technology’s humor and quirkiness along with its scary aspects.

Murder in the North Woods is my fifth published novel. The research trip to the area was one of the best vacations ever, with scenery, casinos, intriguing discoveries, and tasty North Woods food. I never make up anything that I can borrow from real life like the garage apartment, the character of Reverend Josie, and the cottage by the lake. I moved the geography of Newton, Kansas to the fictional town of DuBois. Writers do strange things to create believable fiction. Y2K (remember the Millennium Bug?) pulls many of the story elements together, as I had worked on a project like the one on the book. My project, of course, had no murders and much less sex. Well, none. Characters misbehaving are fun to write and fun to read.

All comments are welcomed.