Yesterday I wrote about being romantic. This morning as I look out at a dark summer pre-dawn, I think of how life is a many-faceted adventure, not just one thing straight through, but a blending of many feelings and experiences. To me, romance can be a bit mysterious and a mystery can be a bit romantic. Romance spurs the imagination. Take, for example, one investigative reporter on leave from a newspaper in Dallas who has returned to her hometown of Levi, Oklahoma. Darcy is a dreamer but she’s also a doer. She is romantic but she has a healthy share of curiosity which lands her smack in the middle of a mystery. So there you have it: romance, mystery, curiosity, three strands of a tightly woven cord which is life for one Darcy Campbell.
Romance, for Darcy, comes in the form of tall, slim, red-haired Grant Hendley, sheriff of Ventris County. He was Darcy’s teenage sweetheart but that was before another man, Jake Campbell, came into her life. Now that she’s back in Levi, that old flame is rekindling.
Romance is all around Darcy in the beauty of the countryside. Spirit Leap is a lovely area, dangerous and fanciful. The tranquility of the night with its elusive scent of water, earth, and small autumn wildflowers began to calm my scattered thoughts. The murmur of the creek, the sleepy sound of insects enjoying a respite before winter, moonlight silvering dark woods, were a balm to the craziness of human tragedies. Spirit Leap is what the Cherokee people called the sheer granite cliff upon which I sat. A geology professor from the University of Oklahoma once told me that the jumble of jagged rocks along the creek had been spewed from far beneath the earth’s surface at some dim time in the past. Much more romantic was the old legend that a spurned lover leaped to his death from here many years ago and the earth had erupted in protest. (Excerpt from Grave Shift)
And there’s the curiosity: Andrea Worth disappeared from her home in Levi two years ago. What happened to her? Why hadn’t law enforcement found any clues? When Andrea’s mother asks for help in finding her daughter, Darcy’s curiosity and compassion are engaged and there she is, in a full-fledged mystery.
Darcy and her mother Flora Tucker can often be found doing what I’m doing now: drinking coffee, looking out at a morning waiting for the sunrise, and considering how they will deal with the mysteries of life. I write about their adventures in The Cemetery Club, Grave Shift, and the third cozy which will soon see the light of day. Oh, one other thing–to me, writing is romantic too. It spurs my imagination and sense of adventure, resulting in cozy mysteries which, hopefully, will appeal to the curiosity of the readers.
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