Writing & Gardening Go Hand in Vine for Nancy Hughes

HALLIE EPHRON: There are so many apt analogies to what it's like to write a novel. Banging your head against a wall. Opening a vein. My favorite, from John Banville: "The novelist daily at his desk eats ashes, and if occasionally he encounters a diamond he is likely to break a tooth on it. Money is necessary to pay the dentist's bills."

Nancy Hughes, whose new mystery novel Vanished (the final book in her Trust trilogy) is just out, hits her stride and finds inspiration in her garden. 

NANCY HUGHES: Good morning, Jungle Reds! And thank you for inviting me to write a guest post. My delight is three-fold—To start many days with your delightful imagery. To reconnect with Hallie via Penn Writers, and to follow Hank, who was inordinately kind to me, a stranger, at my first Edgar Symposium ten years ago. I only share spare copies of your books, not those you signed with personal notes.

With the publication of my fourth novel, Vanished—the third in my Trust trilogy—I’m often asked questions about inspiration, which beg a truly original answers. Huh! Where indeed? Mine comes from snippets of people and places rolled into one single thought. I ask myself, what if? Suppose? And a single sentence emerges to drive a new story. 

From that summary sentence, the plot takes shape as a list. I woke one Saturday morning with the entire story for Vanished revealed to me in ten points. Ever the outliner, I went straight to my Mac. The book itself had to get in line and wait its turn behind three other novels, until I couldn’t leave it alone. Ultimately, the characters arrived, screaming to drive it, some by design and some uninvited.

I’m grateful for feedback. How else could I gauge my own work? Half my readers say I’m all about the plot; the others say it’s the characters. I believe that’s true of The Dying Hour.

The seeds for my mysteries germinate and grow as I garden. Literally! While I dig, mulch, plant and weed, my mind will not shut up, and the stories takes shape. Scenes as crisp as new dogwood blooms take over my imagination, as if the characters’ stage is my lawn and I’m hovering nearby. The task at hand fades as my mind watches.

Writing in rural Pennsylvania, beneath a canopy of hundred-foot trees that backdrop my shade gardens, sounds ideal for inspired writing. But it’s just as distracting to see deer munch my azaleas as hearing sirens and honking. And nature is itching to reclaim the land with poisonous tentacles, brambles, and hungry beasties.  

From April until October, I escape to my summer office, built from hundred-year-old barn boards by my husband who, silly man, thought potting shed. I wish you could see the view from my chair and footstool, Mac on my lap, gazing across an emerald expanse to a swath of azaleas fronted with impatience. Oh, the aaah power of flowers! The tranquility stills my overactive mind, inspiring quiet scenes and introspective characters.        

Fleshing out villains and their nefarious deeds fits perfectly with yanking entrenched poison ivy, trumpet vine and their ilk. And fixing problems of my own creation. “Here,” a successful shade gardener said as I ranted about my failure with roses. “This will grow anywhere.”  And it did—everywhere—taking three years to eradicate. I attacked with sharp weapons while plotting murder and mayhem. Perhaps its flowers are poisonous?

In my garden, I can expunge negativity, be it what’s in the news or thoughts of bad people doing bad things to the innocent. It’s also where my left brain kicks in. While planting a tidy row of annuals, my peripheral mind nudges me about scheduling conflicts, too many characters whose names start with B, and did her eye color change between chapters ten and twenty?

Better ask my pathologist friend to skim the morgue scene for accuracy. Yes, I will fight for my beloved adverbs! And my dear editors—have I thanked them lately for tolerating my idiosyncrasies?

Ultimately, like typing ### on page 300, the killing frost comes, enabling me to put books and gardens to bed for the winter. In February the snowdrops will peek through the snow, and creativity will emerge, refreshed, in the garden.

HALLIE: I use my garden, too, but to get AWAY from writing. (Like laundry...) And while the same problem bangs around in my head unsolved in the office, miraculously as I'm outside sweating and pulling weeds, solutions emerge.

(Nancy, I hope in comments you'll tell me how to vanquish trumpet vine. Please.)

Writing is like... how would you complete the analogy.

ABOUT VANISHED

It was supposed to be the kidnappers’ last job, snatching the infant of a poor single mother for an unsuspecting wealthy client. But the kidnappers grab the wrong baby—Billy, the son of high-profile bankers, Kingsley and Todd Henning—from their employer’s secure daycare. Realizing their mistake, the kidnappers plant evidence to implicate the parents and dismantle their operation. No ransom call comes. Detectives, convinced the parents are guilty, interrogate relentlessly as they uncover planted evidence.

The parents can’t face the mosaic of guilt, blame, and despair or help each other. On day ten, they are called to the morgue. The deceased is not Billy—this time. Shaken, they recommit to each other and vow to find him themselves. They scrutinize the bank’s security footage for incongruities only insiders might spot and follow the flimsiest clues into the murderous underworld of illegal adoptions. As novice detectives, they are exposed to extreme danger, skirting the law while keeping one step ahead of the villains and the police.

But is it too late? Will the kidnappers eliminate all trace of the baby? Or are they no match for two angry, determined parents?

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