AUTUMN EMBERS - A guest post by Tina deBellegarde
October 14 - November 8, 2024 Virtual Book Tour
My Characters’ Search for Identity
Autumn Embers, the third book in my Batavia-on-Hudson mystery series, is a story about family, friendship and identity. When I stopped to write this essay, I realized that identity is a theme I return to over and over.
So much of my writing has to do with characters attempting to fit in, trying to feel comfortable, getting to know themselves. Be it in a new community, in a profession, in a relationship, or even in their own skin. They are testing their potential, overcoming their personal blocks.
The Batavia-on-Hudson series started with Winter Witness where Bianca St. Denis is working to be accepted as a member of her new community, a small village in the Catskill Mountains, and learning how to live as a new young(ish) widow. It’s a new identity for her and she’s not sure she is ready to embrace it. Many of the other characters are also flailing: the local troublemaker teenager who can’t seem to shed the bad boy image no matter how hard he tries, the new young doctor in town who doesn’t measure up to Old Doc, the quiet Japanese man who lives alone in the hills above the village. They are all searching to know themselves and where they fit.
Dead Man’s Leap, Book 2, is where Bianca comes to grips with her grief and learns what’s important to her. In fact, the entire community deals with a storm that causes enough damage that they all have to reassess what is important to them and their identity. They learn to cut their losses (material and emotional) and move forward with their lives.
It’s no surprise to me that I write on this subject. As a child, I was painfully shy and my affliction was complicated by a lifestyle of frequent house moves, including a major one out of the country. I needed to fit in again and again. And just as I thought I had it under control, we’d relocate one more time. Needless to say, these moves were very difficult for someone like me, but in the long run, I learned a great deal from these disruptions. Each time I settled in my new community, I was able to peel off a layer of my shyness—of my identity—until one day it no longer debilitated me. I had shed one version of me and replaced it with another version I preferred: someone more adventurous and more comfortable in my own skin. Each new location taught me that I could remake myself over and over.
I started investigating these ideas in my writing years ago. Some of my first pieces of short fiction were on the subject of my childhood as a daughter of immigrants. How I never really understood my friends. How I had to mold myself to be like them, dress like them, eat the foods they ate, and listen to the music they liked. In fact, one Friday in grammar school, after being embarrassed during recess for not knowing a pop song, I spent the entire weekend with my transistor tuned into WABC to introduce myself to all the hottest songs. By the time I returned to school on Monday morning, I knew them all, along with every word of their lyrics. This incident was the basis of my flash fiction piece entitled “Lost in America.” So, no, it’s no surprise to me that I write about identity.
As I said above, Book 3, Autumn Embers is a story about family, friendship and identity. Ian, Bianca’s son, has made a new life for himself in Japan. There, he has embraced the expatriate community and as a result, they have become like family—his chosen family. Bianca must come to terms with this painful realization, but she also learns that she has done the same thing in Batavia. She too has chosen her new family in the villagers of Batavia. Many of the expat characters in Autumn Embers are grappling with these same notions. They learn just how malleable their identities can be. In the meantime, at home in Batavia, Mike Riley, the sheriff and Bianca’s love interest, is grappling with his own issues. It looks like he may not be re-elected as sheriff and he has no idea how to not be a law enforcement officer. As if that weren’t enough, he has learned news about his partners death from years ago that calls into question who Sal really was. And Mike does this all while learning how to live his new life as a separated bachelor. He is in flux and learning the depth and complexity of his own identity.
My experience has shown me that my identity has many layers and many iterations. I have taken these lessons, shared them with Bianca and the others, and enjoyed watching each character evolve on the page.
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A Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery
Bianca St. Denis travels to Kyoto to return a priceless artifact recovered in Batavia-on-Hudson during last summer’s flood. It’s late October and the city of 2,000 shrines is in full autumn splendor. While she’s in Japan’s ancient capital, Bianca visits with her son, a student at Kyoto University. Ian shows her the sights and introduces her to his circle of friends—his chosen family.
On the night of her welcome party, Bianca thinks she witnesses a struggle in the garden, perhaps even a murder. When the police investigate and find no body, she is stumped yet alarm bells won’t stop ringing. She knows she’s witnessed something.
When a dead body surfaces and suspicion falls on her son, Bianca’s maternal instincts spring to action to protect Ian and clear his name. Meanwhile, things in Batavia-on-Hudson are tense. Sheriff Mike Riley is losing his re-election while tackling devastating news about his dead partner, and wavering about his troubled marriage.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Tina deBellegarde’s debut novel, Winter Witness, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Dead Man’s Leap, her second book in the Batavia-on-Hudson Mystery series, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. Reviewers have called Tina “the Louise Penny of the Catskills.” Tina also writes short stories and flash fiction. Her story “Tokyo Stranger,” nominated for a Derringer Award, appears in the Mystery Writers of America anthology When a Stranger Comes to Town edited by Michael Koryta. Tina co-chairs the Murderous March Conference and is a founding member of Sleuths and Sidekicks, where she blogs, tours virtually, and teaches writing workshops. She is a member of Writers in Kyoto and reviews books for BooksOnAsia.net. She lives in Catskill, New York with her husband Denis and their cat Shelby. She travels frequently to Japan to visit her son and daughter-in-law and to do research. Tina is currently working on a collection of interconnected short stories based in Japan.
Catch Up With Tina deBellegarde:
www.TinadeBellegarde.com
www.SleuthsAndSidekicks.com
Goodreads
BookBub - @tinadebellegarde
Instagram - @tdb_writes
Threads - @tdb_writes
Twitter/X - @tdbwrites
Facebook - @tinadebellegardeauthor
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Thank you for sharing this essay on your site and for showcasing Autumn Embers. I hope you enjoy the series!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this essay on your site and for showcasing Autumn Embers. I hope you enjoy the series! (I just realized that the comment above was posted as Anonymous - I have been having internet issues lately - sorry about that! Traveling can be challenging that way)
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