Today I have the pleasure of hosting a new to me author, Morgan C. Talbot. Morgan is the author of First to Find. The first in the Caching Out series.
First to Find by Morgan C Talbot
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing (October 2012)
Formats Available: Paperback, ebook
Synopsis from publicist:
Death is the hardest puzzle to solve.
Margarita Williams escaped death at a young age, but its shadow has followed her all her life.
Now, amidst the chaos of a new Australian roommate and mysterious, menacing neighbors,
Death has set the puzzlemaker a puzzle of her own: someone is killing her fellow geocachers,
one by one.
And if she doesn’t stop the murderer before he strikes again, Death will finally collect the soul
that got away.
Since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, I invited Morgan to write about some of her Holiday Traditions.
Holiday Traditions
End-of-year holidays are all about traditions. Whether it’s Uncle Bernie’s insistence on the entire family heading outside and playing a few rounds of horseshoes no matter the weather or Grandma’s famous rum pumpkin pie, or how that one brother always manages to bring a new “girlfriend” to every Thanksgiving dinner, we all have something, or someone, we can count on year after year. Even if that something or someone drives us completely bonkers.
That’s the beauty of a tradition, though. We can count on it. We can rely on it. And in the case of Dad’s first snores in the easy chair in front of the football game from too much good food, we can set our watches by it. Traditions hold us together. They give us a few moments in our busy, chaotic lives in which we don’t have to worry about what to expect. And in that regard, with our oh-so-human tendency to worry over the future, traditions are a comfort, no matter what sort of wacky story is told regarding their origins.
I recently went on a hayride at a fall party with my children. Everyone loves a hayride, right? Ha, ha. No. The ever-slumping, overhanging hay bale onto which I crammed myself constantly threatened to bend further earthward, and I nearly slid right off its slippery stalks several times; Sprained Ankle City was just one surrender to gravity away. The kids sitting on the bales above me (I now have a hierarchy of the most- to the least-appropriate hay-stacking patterns for hay rides—guess which one I was on?) entertained themselves during the nowhere-near-Mario-Kart pace by tossing handfuls of hay that constantly fluttered down the backs of our shirts. The sing-along guitar man was on the other side of the hay pyramid, and we couldn’t hear a single song over the shouting and whooping. After the ride was over, I spent ten minutes pulling sharp fragments of wheat hay stalks out of my socks.
Am I going to go again when my children beg me next year? You bet, though I’ll be angling for the top of that pyramid next time. I’ll go because such wacky adventures build memories. For the rest of my children’s lives, they’ll get to preface a fall story with, “Remember that time Mom almost fell off the hayride?” And maybe they, too, will learn to angle for the top of the hay pyramid. Traditions are not just for remembering. They’re for learning, for teaching the next generation, and for giving them stories to tell to their own children.
My mystery series, Caching Out, tells its stories during moments of tradition in my characters’ lives. My first four books are/will be set during the holiday seasons surrounding Halloween, Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. The Halloween story is already written, involving a scary monster in the night and the sleuths that try to catch him. Next year, in the book Grandfathered Out, I can only wonder what sorts of family traditions my characters will cram in between their sleuthing and their geocaching. Maybe I’ll throw in a hayride
Thank you so much Morgan. I’m really looking forward to reading First to Find!
© 2012, Teresa. All rights reserved.
I love the piece on traditions. We try to take my son on things all the time, I know he won’t remember them but they are all a learning and building experience. I’ll have to be careful on hayrides too! Looking forward to the book.
Thanks so much for hosting me, Teresa. I appreciate your time and attention during my book’s blog tour. Have a happy Thanksgiving!