Did you see it? Did you see it??

 HALLIE EPHRON: There's not a lot on my bucket list, but the one thing I'd still love to see is the Aurora Borealis. When I was in Alaska (the Inside Passage) I saw a teeny tiny streak of luminescent green from a boat's roof deck at two in the morning. Coulda been my dinner disagreeing with me.

Then, last week the Aurora came to town (we're just south of Boston)! Here's a picture that my daughter took using the NIGHT MODE setting on her iPhone camera. (She said just looking up at the sky with the naked eye, there were NO COLORS. None at all.)

She walked over to our local park after dark and there it was. It's the same field where my daughter played baseball and fortunately there are no lights in it at all.

I, of course, slept through it.

We went over again the following night (hope springs) and, of course, it was just us and the crickets.

Also, it turns out my phone is so old that it doesn't have night vision. Hopefully I'll have it by the time there's another solar storm.

For anyone who's interested, here's a link to information from my local paper about using your cell phone to capture pictures of the Northern Lights.

Did the Aurora come to your town and were you among the lucky ones to see it??

C'mon Down! The New England Crime Bake

HALLIE EPHRON: November means we're coming up on the annual conference for crime fiction, The New England Crime Bake. And YES you can still register!

It's the coziest (not as in cozy vs hardboiled; cozy as in welcoming to all) of conferences. It's sponsored by the New England Chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

I still have the program from the first conference, November 9, 2002.

The Crime Bake started out as a one-day affair and featured an amazing roster of New England crime fiction authors. Jeremiah Healy gave the Keynote. Among the panelists were some of the greats who have since left us, including Barbara Neely, Phil Craig, Bill Tapply, Al Blanchard, and Jane Langton.

Even more amazingly, there are many writers who were there and, like me, will back in November, 22 years later (including Paula Munier, Kate Flora, Toni Kelner, Leslie Wheeler, Sarah Smith, and Gary Goshgarian)! Yes, there will be newbies, too.

The Crime Bake started as a glimmer in Kate Flora's eye and has been going strong ever since, now encompassing three days and including pitch sessions with agents and editors, manuscript critiques, and forensics experts.

This year the guest of honor will be Gabino Iglesias.

His novels include Zero Saints, Coyote Songs, The Devil Takes You Home, and his recent release, House of Bone and Rain. An Edgar Award finalist and winner of the Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, and numerous Book of the Year Awards. He also teaches writing. I can't wait to meet him.

Here's what The New York Times says about him:

Iglesias, a Puerto Rican novelist, found himself without a salary or health insurance. Unable to find other work in the bleak 2020 job market, he gambled on finishing the book he had started writing on his lunch breaks.

As Covid-19 raged outside, he wrote at a feverish pace for months on “The Devil Takes You Home,” his haunting noir thriller, which Mulholland Books will publish on Tuesday. Echoing the Book of Job, it follows a father in Austin who loses his job and health insurance, his young daughter to terrible disease and, finally, his marriage.

I'll be at the Crime Bake this year, too, on a panel and doing something that I'm not supposed to tell you about but TRUTH BE TOLD it will be exciting for any and all who follow Jungle Red.

So hope to see many of you at the Dedham Hilton (a 60-second cab ride from Amtrak's RTE 128 station.) I'll be in the bar sipping my Virgin Martini, looking to put names to faces.

So here's that link to register.

DARING TO DREAM…THEN LIVING THE DREAM with CATHY ACE

 HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm thrilled to welcome back a longtime friend of Jungle Red, Cathy Ace. We first hosted her back in (gulp) 2014 with her (was it her first??) Cait Morgan mystery set in **Vegas** -- a gutsy move for a Welsh(!) writer who was living in Canada. She's been on a roll ever since.

Today Cathy is back with fabulous news. The kind of news we mystery writers would kill for.

I'll let her tell you...

CATHY ACE: I wonder if you recall that song in the musical South Pacific which includes the lines: “...you gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?”

It’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot recently, because the 14th Cait Morgan Mystery is set in Tahiti, in the south Pacific, where Cait can’t help but hum another song from the same musical while she’s in the shower washing her hair (I bet you know that song, right!?).

However, I think we have to admit that the extent to which our dreams become reality is often not something over which we have complete control. We can plan, we can do our best to make, and take, opportunities, we can act…but – sometimes – it seems as though Chance plays a part in our being able to take that final step and actually experience what was once no more than wishful thinking.

For example, as a bookish child growing up in a somewhat deprived area of a once-great Welsh port, I never thought I’d ever get to feel the sands of exotic Tahiti between my fingers, however much I dreamed and hoped I would.

But a chance to visit came along, and I took it…so I actually dipped my toes into the crystal waters of the south Pacific, and saw the stars in the southern skies. It was so much more than I had dreamed it would be…and that visit, and my subsequent ones, inspired me to write The Corpse with the Pearly Smile.

And now there’s another dream that’s starting to come to life for me.

I suspect that every author is asked the question: “Who would you choose to bring your characters to life on the screen?” It’s a question I know I’ve been asked ever since my first book was published in 2012…and this year it was announced that the talented Eve Myles (Keeping Faith, Torchwood, We Hunt Together) will be portraying Cait Morgan when Free@LastTV (Agatha Raisin) produces the TV adaptation of that first Cait Morgan Mystery, The Corpse with the Silver Tongue.

So how does it feel to live this dream?

Well, it hasn’t been a straightforward journey by any means: the books were optioned back in February 2020, and I think we all recall only too keenly what happened in March of that year. There were so many productions that had to be completed once TV shooting began again post-pandemic that our project was pushed back…and then there were a couple of strikes to contend with, so it wasn’t until May of 2024 that the official announcement about casting was made. I know everyone says that TV takes time, and now I understand what they mean.

This dream? Well, I’ve learned that getting excited about the prospect of something being “about to happen” can be draining…so I’m doing my best to only get excited when something has actually happened.

From the time of the initial discussions with the production company, I chose to be involved with the adaptation. I didn’t want to write the screenplay – it’s not something that’s within my realm of expertise, and I truly believed there’d be a better person to do the job. There was, and his name is Matthew Thomas (Marcella, Queens of Mystery, New Tricks). 

Now, obviously, this Welshwoman was delighted that a person with such a lovely, Welsh-sounding name was up for writing the screenplay, and you might imagine how thrilled I was to discover that Matthew is the son of the renowned Welsh author Leslie Thomas (The Virgin Soldiers, The Last Detective/Dangerous Davies) so the Welsh blood and the writing blood course through his veins. And I ADORE his screenplay – which excised all the right parts of the novel to create an adaptation that will run for two hours.

So we were off to a wonderful start. WOOT!

Then came the question of Cait. It was agreed that she’d be Welsh, because Cait is Welsh, and I am Welsh, and the casting of a Welshwoman was a hill upon which I was prepared to die…though I didn’t have to, because the wonderful producers completely agreed that Cait’s nationality would be honoured (with the extra vowel).

And Eve Myles is P.E.R.F.E.C.T. Not only is she an incredibly talented performer, but she’s also enthusiastic about the project. YAY! I’m thrilled, because there are relatively few working-class Welsh women portrayed on the screen (to be honest, almost none) and I wanted that to be the Cait that people “meet”, and Eve will do her proud.

As for Bud Anderson, Cait’s partner in life and crime? Well, the character is Canadian, he’s in his fifties, and he’s the person who keeps Cait tethered when she gets dangerously wrapped up in her own head, trying to work everything out. So…solid, dependable, and procedural (he’s a cop who’s recently moved up from overseeing a large homicide squad to a command role within an international gang-busting task force when we meet him in the first book).

Do I know who’ll portray him? Yes. But I’m sworn to secrecy until the papers are signed and The Announcement is made by those who are allowed to make it (the humble novel writer is not that person).

Then there are the locations: the book is set mainly in Nice, in the south of France, with a critical sub-plot running in British Columbia, Canada, and some Welsh asides. All three areas will be used for shooting the production, which is wonderful – the authenticity of the locations is critical in the books, and it will be in the TV adaptation – and I’m hoping I can snag a Hitchcockian appearance in at least one of the Canadian bits (I fear it’s unlikely I’ll be wafted away in a private jet to sip a glass of rosé in the background of a scene on the Cours Saleya in Nice…boo-hoo).

So living the dreams is…well, it’s wonderful, and I’m excited, and it all seems to be coming together (at last). I am determined to hang on for the entire ride…and I shall continue to dream, and take whatever opportunities arise. Because that sand in Tahiti feels wonderful, and the idea that my ninety-year-old mother might, after all, see her daughter’s characters on the screen is still there…still a hope, a dream, but now – more than ever – within grasp.

HALLIE: So Cathy leaves us with this question: What dreams have you seen come to fruition…and did they live up to your hopes?

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Cathy Ace FB: https://www.facebook.com/Cathy-Ace-Author-318388861616661 Cathy Ace website: http://www.cathyace.com/ Cathy Ace Twitter: https://twitter.com/AceCathy Cathy Ace Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathyace1/