Truth From Fiction?
Nancy Lynn Jarvis has been a Santa Cruz, California, Realtor® for more than twenty years. She owns a real estate company with her husband, Craig.
After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, she worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News. A move to Santa Cruz meant a new job as a librarian and later a stint as the business manager of Shakespeare/Santa Cruz.
Nancy’s work history reflects her philosophy: people should try something radically different every few years. Writing is her newest adventure.
She invites you to take a peek into the real estate world through the stories that form the backdrop of her Regan McHenry mysteries. Details and ideas come from Nancy’s own experiences.
The Widow’s Walk League, the fourth book in the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series I write has just been released and I’m getting a little nervous. I have all the usual, “will people like it, more importantly, will they buy it,” jitters writers have with each of their books, but this is something else.
The book blurb reads: “Santa Cruz husbands are being murdered. The local news media is buzzing because a dark-clad figure witnesses describe as Death had been seen lurking nearby each time a murder is committed. Regan McHenry discovers all the murdered men have something in common: their wives belong to a walking group called The Widow’s Walk League…”
My protagonist is a real estate agent like I was. What happens to her at work is based on things that happened to me or to other Realtors I know. The real estate stories, strange as they may be, are true; the murders are not. At least they’re not supposed to be. And that’s what’s worrying me.
The first series book, The Death Contingency, began with a young surfer partying too much, getting swept out to sea, and dying of hypothermia. I got a couple of outraged emails telling me that would never happen to a fit, experienced young man…until local headlines proclaimed a young surfer died just as I described his death in my book. The real death occurred about a year after my book was released.
Buying Murder, book three in the series, opens with the discovery of a partially mummified body hidden in a wall anomaly. It only took three weeks after my book’s release for a headline like that to hit the local news.
In a double yikes, four months after the book came out, one of the members of the real family who inspired the villainous family in the book was arrested for being exceedingly bad.
I’m not a psychic —it’s not like I can really foretell community deaths and murders. I don’t believe in psychics or mediums who say they can communicate with the dead, and as Regan demonstrates during a séance in The Widow’s Walk League, neither does she. Still, Regan finds that what she believes and doesn’t believe gets a little confusing when another murder takes place.
I hope I’m not psychic.
Some of the murders in the new book take place at my favorite Santa Cruz events. I set one murder on Pacific Avenue on Halloween night and another at Woodies on the Wharf. (Yes, I know, I’m the one who wrote about murders happening where they did, but I was having too much fun writing the scenes to stop and think about what I might be unleashing.) Do you see why I’m worried? Should I warn anyone that the new book is being released?
As a final note, when Lelia last had me on her blog, I wrote about my garden being sabotaged by an unknown person who opened a gate letting deer in to graze on plants that had special meaning to me. At the time, I was writing the end of The Widow’s Walk League and had a tough decision for Regan to make regarding the killer’s fate. Regan isn’t me, but my life experiences do impact her. Let’s just say, after the garden, I was in the mood for justice, and so was Regan.
Now the garden is recovering, not as quickly as I hoped and some plants didn’t make it, but the devastation brought new opportunities with it, so the garden is good.
June 24, 2011
Posted in: Guest Blogs
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9 Responses
Lelia,
It’s nice to be back and under more settled circumstances with a recovering garden and a new book. Thank you and thanks for your interest in all things growing.
Nancy Lynn Jarvis
What a great blog post, Nancy! I can see why you’re worried, but truly, I expect these circumstances are simply a matter of “nothing new under the sun.” When thinking of real estate mysteries, someone I know went to jail for three years for attacking a female real estate agent. He was under the mistaken idea she had the hots for him. Just saying.
Carol
Perhaps your next novel should be about an author…whose books keep coming true…Seriously, I’ve thought about this myself. We crime writers wade around in much all day. What can we do to make sure we also add some goodness and light to the Real World?
Oops, that was supposed to be mucK not much
Jenny, what a great idea for a book. Please write it. I’m toying with the idea of taking a vacation from mystery and writing a standalone about a group of seniors who get together to rob a bank in response to proposed Social Security and Medicare cuts.
Oh, Jenny, I did have fun with a character saying he thought he might give up his art career and write a book “Because everyone knows it’s easy and writers make lots of money.”
Nancy
Taking a hint from Jenny’s comment–why not make your next one about a realtor who writes a mystery that immediately climbs to the top of the best seller lists?
These ‘coincidences’ may be nothing more than that, but you never know.
Why didn’t I think of that, J.R.? I better sign off now and start writing.
Nancy
Nancy, thank you so much for such a fun topic and for visiting here again
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