Simple Twists of Fate; a guest blog by Wendall Thomas

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Authors, unsurprisingly, tend to be a somewhat superstitious lot. Not, say, to the extent of the 2004 Red Sox players who refused to shave their increasingly shaggy beards in case it might bust the streak, but still... we have our rituals. We respect (and worry and fear) the mystery of being able to pull a whole novel out of thin air. And we're all very aware that at more than one time, we've been the recipients of luck. That weird idea you have about a Southern vampire mystery romantic comedy turns out to be a massive hit for HBO. Or, more commonly, you meet an agent at a cocktail party you almost didn't attend because you were tired, and she's the one who sells your new series for more money. 

Wendall Thomas is a big believer in luck. Or karma, or doom, to use the old Norse term. Why? Well, let's just say, "Luck plus preparation equals opportunity."

 

 

I believe in fate. 

 

There are so many times a chance meeting or a lucky accident has changed the course of my life or paid off, years later, in unexpected ways. Planning has never worked for me. I’m not just a “pantser” in writing, I’m a pantser in life. 

 

The spring I was due to graduate from The University of North Carolina, I’d managed to accumulate 2500 albums and planned on being a sound engineer. But when an all-male New England prep school called and offered to fly me up for an interview, I went. And got the job. I’ve been teaching, one way or another, ever since.  

 

 

I never planned on getting married. I just wanted to travel. So when I got a last minute job offer to lecture at a writing workshop in Ballygally, Northern Ireland, I took it. When one of the writers dropped out, an Englishman named James Bartlett took his place. At the final night party, James was too late to sit at his friends’ table and wound up next to me. Even though he was fourteen years younger and lived in Belfast, I took a chance and danced with him. That was twenty years ago. Not surprisingly, we got married in Vegas, no wedding planner required.

Wendall and James at the scene of the crime

In 1995, I wanted to go on a walking tour of the East End of London, but only had time to make it to the one in South Kensington. I couldn’t know that the inspiration for my third Cyd Redondo mystery, Fogged Off,  would come from that walk and my subsequent friendship with the wonderful guide, actress Emily Richard, and her husband, Edward Petherbridge—some of you might remember him as Lord Peter Wimsey in the 1987 BBC adaptation of the Dorothy L. Sayers’s novels.

They had met on the epic eight hour production of Nicholas Nickleby and were both trained in classical theatre. They not only gave me their guest room and endless cups of tea, they gave me an entrée into the dressing rooms, cast parties, disappointments, and gossip of the West End. From them, I also learned about the down and dirty “backstage” of the walking tour world, filled largely with out-of-work actors, and retired academics. I was fascinated by the drama behind the guides seen leading groups on every corner in the city. 

Walking (and being inspired) with Emily Richard

And I knew I’d never seen that world in a novel. So, when the pandemic demanded I write about  a place and a world I already knew well and which Cyd might find tough to navigate, I chose London and the “cutthroat” world of Jack the Ripper walking tours—highly fictionalized, of course. It was fate.

One of the last conversations I ever had with my Dad was about fate and opportunity. He’d grown up the youngest of six on a farm outside Charlotte, N.C., complete with outhouse (as a child, he was famous for locking neighbors in and making him sing to get out...). He told me that the whole trajectory of his life, which he thought he would spend as a minor league baseball player or a mechanic, came down to his willingness to veer off course and say yes to random opportunities. This “pantsing” resulted in achievements—a PhD, heading the Speech and Hearing Department at UNC, consulting for NASA—that a farm boy couldn’t have dreamed of. It was only in his later years that he saw the plan that had always been bigger than he was.

Fogged Off is dedicated to him—my role model and cheerleader for flying blind.

Are you a planner or a pantser in life? Do you believe in fate? Have you ever had a chance meeting that changed your life? Let me know, because I'm giving away a copy of Fogged Off to one lucky commenter!

 

FOGGED OFF: When travel agent Cyd Redondo’s client and Jack the Ripper expert Shep Helnikov is found dead in London, she navigates the cutthroat worlds of research librarians, unemployed actors, embassy underlings, rodent smugglers, and more to find his killer and bring his body back home.

 

Wendall Thomas teaches in the Graduate Film School at UCLA, lectures internationally on screenwriting, and has worked as an entertainment reporter, development executive, script consultant, and film and television writer. Her first Cyd Redondo novel, Lost Luggage, was nominated for the Lefty and Macavity Awards for Best Debut Mystery of 2017. Her second, Drowned Under, was nominated for a Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery of 2019 and an Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original. Her short fiction appears in the crime anthologies Ladies Night, Last Resort, and the Anthony-nominated Murder-A-Go-Go’s. You can find more at her website, like her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter as @EWendallThomas

“Laugh-out-loud, coffee-down-your-shirt, don’t-read-it-on-the-bus hilarious. . . Fogged Off is what the world needs right now.” Catriona McPherson, multi-award-winning author of the Last Ditch Motel series

“A screwball delight. . . If Preston Sturges and Janet Evanovich had a baby, she would be Cyd Redondo.” Haris Orkin, award-winning author of You Only Live Once