At the beginning of my work in progress, The Girl from Devil’s Creek, some policemen are eating blackberry pie. Blackberry pie is an Appalachian recipe and tradition, and everyone seems to have their own recipe for this one. Here is mine, which is what I would envision them eating at the Jay’s Nest.

Image by 俊哉 佐伯 from Pixabay

Thanks for stopping by! I am in the process of writing a new novel and here’s a quick excerpt from the book:

The image above was taken by my friend Rachel Springstead. This is Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

The ghosts will be out tonight. Annie thought, taking a drag of her cigarette. The breeze from the open windows blew her hair back, and a few tiny drops of rain made prisms on her sunglasses. She shivered for the tenth time in five minutes, but she left the windows down. She breathed in giant lungfuls of the thick, damp, soupy air. It hurt, but at least the pain was something. She sighed as she clutched the wheel; fourteen years gone, just like that.  She took  another drag of the cigarette and coughed. Anna Renoir, she thought, didn’t smoke. It was a completely unacceptable habit for a surgeon's wife.  

Anna Renoir had been fabulous: a social butterfly, a semi-professional philanthropist, a world traveler. She’d sat on a dozen of the best boards in the city; the local charities, hospitals, and galleries didn’t decide anything without her input. To top it off, she was thin, blonde, and chiseled in ways that the best surgeons in the country couldn’t replicate. She was the kind of woman that made most other women squirm in their seats with insecurity. Too bad it was all a lie.

 Before she even knew what happened, the clock had struck midnight, and the glamorous Anna Renoir had floated out the window like a tendril of smoke and dissipated in the foggy sky. All that was left was plain old Annie Skaggs: trashy, witchy, and if you asked the people around here, guilty of murder.