by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1
When I pitched my Natchez Trace Park Rangers series to my publisher, I envisioned stories set on the Natchez Trace up around my area near the Tennessee River. I live thirty miles from the Trace and have traveled it many times south to Jackson, Mississippi as well as north to Nashville. From the perspective of setting, writing the story would be easy.
However, that wasn’t what my editor envisioned. She fell in love with the idea of books set in the southern terminus—Natchez, Mississippi.(Photo 1) Sounded good to me…except I’d never been to Natchez.
Internet
It’s really important for me to get the details right for my stories so the first thing I did was to hit the Internet, googling the history of Natchez. Even though I don’t write historical fiction, I had to know the city’s back story as much as I had to know my characters’ back stories. What made the city what it was when the story opened. I discovered really neat places like Fort Rosalie, Melrose, the William Johnson House and places like Windsor Ruins and Emerald Mound, both just outside of Natchez.
Then I googled the Natchez Trace and focused on the southern end. I soon learned that the rangers on the Natchez Trace fell under a different umbrella of the National Park Service than I originally envisioned. That meant for a ranger to investigate a crime, the crime had to occur on the Trace or property the Natchez Trace Park Rangers owned. The more I researched, the more I realized I needed to take a…
Road Trip.
The Internet research had helped me formulate a plan for my road trip: where to go, the people I needed to interview, the locations I needed to see. All total, I made four trips and would have made more except for Covid.
On my first trip, I stayed at a hotel downtown and right across the street was a real estate office. One thing I’ve learned is people love helping authors, and the women I met at this office were no different.
From my Internet research, I knew the kind of house I was looking for, and when I described it to Elizabeth, she gave me a list of houses to look at. I spent a day and half putting the addresses in my GPS and driving around Natchez, looking for the perfect house for my heroine to live in. I found it in this craftsman.
My next trip was longer, three days, and I drove the Trace almost the whole way. It’s a beautiful two-lane road, passing through farmland, timber, and bayous.
I learned there are many bayous around Natchez and even managed to get lost on a one-lane road looking for a place to bury a body…
Two more trips provided me with more of the flavor of Natchez. I ate at some of the popular restaurants like King’s Tavern, Fat Mama’s Tamales, The Guest House, and Jughead’s Fish Fry. Each of these show up in the books.
Find an Expert
The last thing I’d like to talk about is interviewing experts in the field you’re writing in. Earlier I told you I’d discovered the Natchez Trace Park Rangers were different from National Park Service Rangers. I knew I had to find an expert, so I contacted the District Supervisor on the Trace and made an appointment to meet with her. She was fantastic. I asked questions, took notes, and got her email address so I could touch base later if I needed to (which I did).
I realize most writers are introverts, but knowing that people like helping authors makes it easier to call and get those appointments and then show up, ready to ask questions. I often ask if I can add them to my acknowledgement page, and most are excited about that. And I always send a person who is kind enough to give me an interview a copy of the book once it’s published.
I think research makes a book more authentic, and I realize right now, the Internet is about the only way we can travel and you can learn a lot there. However, if you have the opportunity once this pandemic is over, visit your setting. I’ve had readers who live or have lived in Natchez ask how long I lived there, which I took as a compliment.
Natchez Trace Ranger and historian Emma Winters hoped never to see Sam Ryker again after she broke off her engagement to him. But when shots are fired at her at a historical landmark just off the Natchez Trace, she’s forced to work alongside Sam as the Natchez Trace law enforcement district ranger in the ensuing investigation. To complicate matters, Emma has acquired a delusional secret admirer who is determined to have her as his own. Sam is merely an obstruction, one which must be removed.
Sam knows that he has failed Emma in the past and he doesn’t intend to let her down again. Especially since her life is on the line. As the threads of the investigation cross and tangle with their own personal history, Sam and Emma have a chance to discover the truth, not only about the victim but about what went wrong in their relationship.
Award-winning author Patricia Bradley will have the hairs standing up on the back of your neck with this nail-biting tale of obsession, misunderstanding, and forgiveness.
Patricia Bradley is a Carol finalist and winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense, and three anthologies that included her stories debuted on the USA Today Best Seller List. She and her two cats call Northeast Mississippi home–the South is also where she sets most of her books. Her romantic suspense novels include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. Obsession, the second book in the Natchez Trace Park Rangers series, released Februrary 2, 2021. She is now hard at work on the third book, Crosshairs.
Writing workshops include American Christian Fiction Writers online courses, workshops at the Mid-South Christian Writer’s Conference, the KenTen Retreat where she was also the keynote, Memphis American Christian Fiction Writer group, and the Bartlett Christian Writers group. When she has time, she likes to throw mud on a wheel and see what happens.