What I'm Writing @LucyBurdette

Lorenzo's cards say a book is coming!

 LUCY BURDETTE: 
Before I talk about writing, I wanted to acknowledge what a difficult week it's been for those in the path of Hurricane Irma. This included my beloved Florida Keys, though we hear that Key West itself sustained less damage than the islands further north. (And also in the Caribbean islands further south, which were devastated.) Honestly, I wondered if I'd ever feel like writing again if the storm had wiped out the island and the community of people I've grown to know and love. I'm hoping and praying that life can return to something like normal soon on that magical spray of islands...

Now back to writing...

It's been a while since I've written about what I'm writing, and that probably reflects how difficult the process is. But by the time this post goes live, I will be getting ready to dive into the full manuscript for Key West food critic mystery #8 (still unnamed). This should be fun (compared to the muddy middle in which I had to keep slogging forward whether I knew what was happening or not.) The whole book will be laid out on the pages, but I will be looking for important plot points that I let drop or failed to mention entirely, errors in timeline, characters who don't sound like themselves, clunky language, and so on.

I really enjoyed getting back to the lives of Hayley Snow and her entourage, including Miss Gloria, Lorenzo, Lieutenant Torrence, Detective Bransford, and on and on. It turns out I've woven a lot of people into this series! 

Key West is famous for being the home of the Harry S. Truman Little White House. The president spent a lot of working vacations on our island, and this modest place where he worked and relaxed (playing poker with members of his cabinet and members of the press) couldn't be more appealing. I have a good friend who is one of the tour guides at the Little White House and he was immensely helpful. Not only did he give me extra private tours of the backstage areas of the building, he was loaded with plot ideas. Now that's a great friend. I also had the pleasure of meeting the director, Bob Wolz, who has been instrumental in protecting and refurbishing the building, restoring it to the condition that it was in when Mr. Truman was in residence.

I invented a Havana/Key West conference as the backdrop for this book. In addition to writing about the fascinating country of Cuba, I was forced to eat and prepare lots of Cuban food. So you'll be seeing that too!

Here's a tiny sneak peek...the book will be out next summer from Crooked Lane Books:

Chapter One

Some days you can take the temperature of our island’s anxiety by reading the column in the Key West Citizen called "Citizens Voice." Those phoned-in snippets of opinion can veer into the red zone on any number of topics—leaf blowers, the homeless, traffic, a new amphitheater at the waterfront.

But the comments and rants and worries about this weekend’s Havana/Key West conference sounded even more hysterical than usual. Rumors circulated that Raul Castro and Jimmy Buffett were both scheduled for brief appearances at the Harry S. Truman Little White House, where the conference would be headquartered. This would gum up traffic on the island and leave us open to all manner of visiting nut jobs.

I believed the Jimmy Buffett scuttlebutt because Parrot Heads, Buffet’s super-fans, had been pouring into town over the past few days dressed in Hawaiian shirts and parrot hats. Since it wasn’t the season for their annual convention, I suspected they’d gotten some insider information about Jimmy’s schedule. 

But Castro in Key West? That seemed downright preposterous. On the other hand, it would definitely up the ante for the weekend, as protestors who felt the US should have no contacts with a repressive Communist country clashed with people who believed this kind of event would help the Cuban people find a voice in the free world. The comments in the paper had been coming fast and furious and ugly, reminding me of a full pot of potatoes boiling too hard. If someone didn’t turn down the heat, there’d be a huge mess on the stove.

If you've fallen behind in reading the Key West series, now's a good time to catch up! Available wherever books are sold...