Sarah Gibbard Cook
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A New Year’s Mystery

1/1/2018

4 Comments

 
From the window, the lump under the tree out back looked like a large rock. A closer view transformed the rock into a sleeping body. My intrepid granddaughter, bundled against the cold, ventured close enough to touch. The body was quite dead.

I phoned the authorities for instructions. They said the next step depends whether death resulted from a road accident or natural causes. And if the hole in the body’s side suggested neither? Unlike a bullet, I was told, the bolt from a crossbow leaves a clean exit wound. I chose not to turn over the frozen carcass to investigate.

This may not have much to do with history or writing, or maybe it does. Details from the mystery—the lump, the unexplained body, the evidence of shooting, the uncertainty what to do—may resurface in some future tale set in medieval Europe, the deer transmuted to human form. The hole in the crossbow victim's corpse may match the one out back. As I blogged last May, it’s all autobiographical.
4 Comments
Lisa Imhoff
1/1/2018 09:37:30 am

As Ben Logan once said (or probably OFTEN said), A writer is someone upon whom nothing is wasted.

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Sarah link
1/1/2018 05:27:42 pm

Indeed, it's all grist for the mill. Probably applies to many other creative practices, too.

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Anne Liesendahl
1/6/2018 03:09:37 pm

I want to read the book already.

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Sarah link
1/6/2018 05:10:31 pm

Thanks, Anne! Don't know if the crossbow scene will ever happen. But it would fit in well to my projected series in Rhodes (Dec. 18 post), of which the first volume is under revision to get ready to send to agents. Happy new year of writing!

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    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

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