Decisions, Decisions

When I write a mystery, my protagonists are faced with  making choices. Of course, in real life we have to make decisions too. Sometimes, however, I procrastinate, hoping that everything will work out all right and I won’t really have to decide because, good heavens! what if I should be wrong? Do you ever do that–put off making a decision because maybe you will make the wrong one?  So, Darcy and Flora barrel through my books making decisions and sometimes they are the wrong ones. Sometimes these gals get into a lot of trouble because of deciding one way when another would have been a lot safer and, perhaps, wiser.

In The Cemetery Club, Darcy and Flora get hold of an old map. Should they try to find someone to decipher that strange word in its margin or should they just forget it, hoping that it doesn’t hold any clues to the past? Darcy, being Darcy, can’t let well enough alone. Her curiosity causes her to decide to find someone to explain the word but that decision leads them  deeper into danger. In Grave Shift, these daring mother/daughter sleuths get a letter asking them for help in finding a missing woman. They are tempted to disregard it but who could ignore this plea for help? Their decision to get involved in a mystery that not even the police could solve, leads them to Amarillo, Texas, then back to Ventris County. Darcy has a close encounter with a mountain lion and at last comes  face to face with a killer. Poor decisions? Maybe. But in the end, everything turns out all right. Of course.

Now in their third book, Best Left Buried, the mysteries which seem to plague them take on a personal twist. Darcy’s grandmother’s journal, written in 1918 opens her eyes to a turbulent part of their past and maybe, just maybe  it would have been best to leave that book and its secrets in the ground. But could they do that? Oh, my no! And because of that decision, Darcy and Flora are plunged into facing new threats which come at them from several different directions.

So, even fictional characters whose lives writers pretty much direct, have to make choices and,  like their creators, sometimes those choices are not all that wise but they make them anyway and off we go, into yet another mystery that becomes more of a coil the farther we venture into the book. My goodness! Did I say that I direct Darcy and Flora’s lives? Poor choice of words! They pretty much direct me and all I do is write about their escapades and decisions. In the end, their choices are vindicated and I am glad that I chose to put them on paper. And, I hope the reader is happy with the outcome. Writing and reading–good choices, every time.