Left Isis
Right Isis
             

March 2nd, 2024

Happy St. David’s Day (March 1) to all you Welsh persons, and a jolly St. Patrick’s day (March 17) to the Irish among you. I’ve titled this entry “Spring is On Its Way”, a nice reminder for those of you who are now buried in snow. But I live in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, which means that spring is well underway. Average daytime temperatures are in the high 70s, and the nights are nice and cool in the low 50s. Late fall, winter, and spring are the best times of the year here. Summer is another story. Not too bad if you have good air conditioning at home and in your car. Truthfully I prefer the weather here to that of my home state of Oklahoma, which is constant wind (and the occasional tornado) in the spring, steam heat (and the occasional tornado) in the summer, a pleasant fall (except for the occasional tornado), and ice in the winter. Yes, winter also offers the occasional tornado.

One of the Alafair Tucker Mysteries, Hell With the Lid Blown Off, is set around a tornado that rips through the little town of Boynton, in eastern Oklahoma. The storm kills several people, and when bodies are gathered in the armory hall, it’s discovered that one of the dead was killed before the tornado came through. I grew up in Oklahoma and all my life heard innumerable stories from people who had survived tornadoes, so I had plenty of reference material. I used it all – every weird thing my fictional tornado did in the book is based on some friend or relatives real experience.

When I moved to Arizona, one of the first things I noticed was that my shoulders had relaxed – The sun shines over 300 days a year, we’re never iced in, it seldom rains for more than a couple of hours – and even though the weather was hot and we sometimes had rolling thunderstorms in July, the likelihood of our house blowing away was minimal.

In other news, my Tell Me Your Story guest is one of my favorite authors and favorite people, Jeffrey Siger. His Andreas Kaldis novels are aimed at exploring serious societal issues confronting modern day Greece in a tell-it-like-it-is style while touching upon the country’s ancient roots. His novels are so spot on that he notes he receives no more than the customary number of death threats. His latest Kaldis mystery, At Any Cost, was just released in February. His tale of how he went from working as a partner in a New York law firm to living on the Greek Isle of Mykonos and writing novels will appear on this site on March 20 through the 31.

And quite a tale it is. Don’t miss it.