What We're Writing Week - Julia Goes Hunting

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I wish I could come up with a theme for what I'm sharing with you today, like Lucy talking about distinguishing characters and Debs on revealing character with interior design. No, this excerpt from AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY is here because, as we can all testify, it gets hard to share pieces of the work-in-progress without giving something away!

This is a piece that comes at the end of the first act, when I've set up the protagonists, and the problem, and sent them on their journey. This is the point in the manuscript where I like to jump out and yell BOO! to my readers. I confess, the desire to have a shocker after several chapters of sedate sleuthing is what leads to my well-known habit of not having any bodies until a hundred pages into the book. 

 

When he saw the two men near a makeshift blind, his first reaction was annoyance. A birder had reported hearing firearms discharge in this area, so he had taken the day to check it out, but honestly, any birder who had trekked this far into the Adirondack Park at the beginning of December to knock a few nuthatches off their list couldn't be all that reliable. Although he had spotted a Golden-crowned kinglet when he disturbed a spruce thicket. That was cool.

No, he was annoyed because he'd been enjoying his so-far perfect day in the woods, and now these two were going to get up his nose when he ticketed them. It was one day past deer season, and there were always sports who couldn't get away from the office on Friday and figured it was no big deal to show up on Saturday afternoon instead. These yahoos didn't even have blaze orange on, and he'd have to write them up for that as well. He liked hunting as much as anyone, but rules were rules for a reason, and letting one day slide became one week, and then you had fools trying to harvest deer in January, and likely getting lost and frostbit to boot.

“Hey, there, fellas.” He emerged from the brush he'd been using to get the lay of the land and waved. He wasn't worried about them bolting – there was no sign of an ATV anywhere, and neither of the pair looked fit enough to make it more'n a few dozen yards at top speed. Even dirt roads were scarce in this part of the High Peaks - he had left his four-wheel drive over a mile away. “Season ended yesterday, and you're not properly dressed. I'm going to have to see your IDs and hunting licenses.”

They turned, and their rifles came up, and he heard a BOOM-crack and a blow like an oak tree splitting and he tilted over and fell into the leaf mold and the long pine needles and saw the birds, more birds than he would have imagined, fleeing and shrieking into the dimming sky.

 

Dear readers, I have two questions: do I need to identify this viewpoint character as a NYS Forest Ranger? And should I give him a name? (He is named later on, when the question of what happened to him becomes relevant.)