A Duck is a Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickenson wrote the famous poem, Hope is a thing with feathers. As soon as the first book in the Simpato Mystery Series came out, I was asked, “When did you start writing humor?” My answer was, “I always did. But it wore a heavy overcoat.” Now it was time to take the coat off, put some feathers on it, let the humor fly a bit. Hope is a funny feathered thing.
The world can be a grim place, and humor has a way of lightening the load. It can also tell “truth to power” as the saying goes, as long as that truth is coated with Silly Putty and wrapped in Silly String. When I sat down to my computer for my annual November draft (alas, poor NaNoWriMo, we knew you…well…) I’d been to the high mountain of joy—my son’s wedding—to the low of October 7. What on earth could I write about?
During the pandemic my husband and I sold our suburban house and moved to a tiny town (5000 souls) in northern Napa county. Legend had it that the founder of the town had been too drunk to write out the intended name, Saratoga, California, and had misspelled it to Calistoga, Sarafornia. The Calistoga part stuck, held in place by sulfur mud baths, boiling hot geysers, and much, much later, by the Judgment of Paris in which a Calistoga winery, Chateau Montelena, beat out venerable French wines to win first place, and catapult Napa wines into the spotlight.
To my chagrin, after the escrow closed, I learned that the nearest Starbucks was 26 miles away. As was the closest Target, CVS, Trader Joes, and Chico’s outlet. While my fingers started to do heavy walking to the online orders, my feet started daily walks around my new town.
There was so much to see! Nuns in full habit, such as I’d not seen since the sixties. A river that nearly ran dry in the summer and raged in wintertime, and kids, loose and unaccompanied, mucking around in the, well, muck, looking for tadpoles and quarters. One, single bar that stayed open after 9 pm. A police station that decorated, heavily, for Halloween, and sponsored “cocoa with the po-po” on back-to-school night.
Back to November, and writing-time. Normally, I’m an outliner. My outlines have outlines, and my sub-outlines have index cards. My index cards are numbered, lettered and sorted. I’m an organized thinker, a plotter par excellance, and when my characters go off script, as they inevitably do (they’re pantsers, heaven help them) I revise my outline to fit the new facts.
But that first day of November I had nothing outlined, the index cards were virginal, and if it hadn’t been electronic, I would have been staring at the blank page. As it was, the empty screen did the job of sending despairing chills into my writing soul.
And it was pouring-down raining.
I looked out the window at the wet, shiny street, and thought, This weather is only good for ducks. As I watched pick-up trucks leave plumes of water in their wake, I realized that here was a new story for me to tell.
Ducks, I thought. In Spanish (my childhood language, and the native language of 50% of Calistoga’s residents) duck is pato. What if the town founder, too drunk to write out Simpatico, wrote Simpato instead. Great name for a town! I’d put my story in a town called Simpato! And what would the locals call the town? Sin-Pato, of course! Without A Duck!
I typed out the name, Simpato. I typed out Sin-Pato. I typed out Without a Duck. And then I thought, the grocery store would have to be the Duck Shop, right? And the newspaper? The Quack, of course! And in a murder mystery we need a body. What is the most prized commodity in a small town? Gossip! Murder the gossip columnist!
With no outline, I started Murder without a Duck.
Needless to say, about half way through, as with every first draft, I screeched to a halt. Where was this going? Who was the real bad guy? There was only one thing to do: outline. And so I did.
Calistoga welcomed Murder without a Duck, and the local bookstore gave me a grand book launch. My publisher, Sibylline Press, signed me for two more books, and maybe more. I bought ducky earrings at the local gift store, and my book cards are on the tables of many of the farmer’s market vendors. From stranger in town I’ve become the lady who writes the duck books.
When it came time to write the second Simpato Mystery, I knew my town quite well. I had imagined into life an entire city government, shopkeepers, a chief of police, and had given the local nuns a way to support themselves in these troubled times: cannabis cookies, anyone? And when the real-life City Council voted on where to allow food trucks to park, my imaginary Simpato burst into taco-truck wars. Truck a Duck, outlined and plotted, sprung fully formed from my fevered brain!
Hope and humor are woven into my books, and even the serious subplots are gently placed before the townspeople to resolve. And the duck puns? They just keep quacking!
I feel welcomed now, and I hope that Simpato will become a place where readers can’t wait to return. Bienvenidos!
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TRUCK A DUCK
A food-truck storm is brewing in the wine-soaked tourist heaven of Simpato.
Sal DeVine, temporarily suspended lawyer and town Keeper of Secrets, takes on a new challenge, covering a City Council meeting for the local paper, the Simpato Quack. Known to the locals as Sin-Pato, or Without a Duck, Simpato is famous for its wine, gourmet food, cannabis-cookie-selling nuns, and awful duck puns.
Is there room for food-trucks downtown? The locals working in the tourist hotels and vineyards want places they can afford to eat at amidst the high-end restaurants and boutiques. The shop owners and winemakers don’t agree. The City Council compromises with a two month trial for three of the five local trucks—a fair solution until one food truck owner turns up dead.
Are the spots worth dying for? Is the chic atmosphere worth killing for? Sal DeVine needs to know.
BUY HERE
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Claudia Hagadus Long is the author of 8 novels, including the Simpato Mystery Series and the Zara and Lilly series, one of which has been optioned for a major feature film. When she’s not writing stories, she’s a lawyer in Northern California, where she lives amid wineries and geysers, with her husband and too many animals. She’s a passionate weaver and spinner, a dedicated cook, and the doting grandmother of three perfect grandsons. She relies heavily on coffee.
Truck a Duck
Murder without a Duck
Facebook.com/ClaudiaHLong
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