Julia Buckley | Why I Like to Set Books in the Fall

I have a new Berkley series coming out in October. This is a perfect debut time, since the book, too, begins in October. While I’ve written books set in every season, I usually like to start a series in the fall, because that season, for me, is the most vibrant and full of possibility.

We are now experiencing cooler days and nights; we’re putting warmer covers on the beds and digging out our fall and winter clothes. We’re drinking warmer beverages and taking invigorating walks. Something about this weather fills me with ideas and a sense of mystery. Perhaps the gray days make me think of Conan-Doyle’s gloomy moors or Shakespeare’s moody heath, or of Christie’s St. Mary Mead in the rain.

Whatever the reason, my mind always goes to a story set in the fall. So in my new book, THE BIG CHILI, Lilah Drake is driving through Pine Haven, Illinois, delivering a big pot of chili to a woman at a local church, who pays Lilah for the food and for the right to claim it was her own creation. Pine Haven is bright with autumn leaves and chilly air, and Lilah too feels invigorated by the season change, as does her faithful companion Mick, a chocolate Labrador who happens to be Lilah’s best friend.

Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway famously said, in THE GREAT GATSBY, that the warm months were invigorating to him because “I had the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” For Lilah, it is just the opposite, and she truly comes alive when the weather grows cool and stimulates her sleuthing mind.

Another advantage of cool weather is that we are more likely to want to find someone to help keep us warm. Lilah has been unlucky in love, but there is someone in Pine Haven that she finds very attractive, although she’s relatively certain her feelings are unrequited. Still, the cool, romantic, Halloween-lit streets of Pine Haven encourage her to hope that things might change, and that something surprising might wait just around a shadowy corner.

About Julia Buckley

Julia Buckley is a Chicago mystery author whose career started in 2006 with the publication of THE DARK BACKWARD. Since then her work has appeared on Kindle in the Madeline Mann series and the novel THE GHOSTS OF LOVELY WOMEN. Her new series from Berkley Prime Crime will begin with THE BIG CHILI, to be released in October of 2015.

She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Romance Writers of America, along with the Chicago Writer's Association. In addition, she has worked with the same writer's group since 2000.

Julia has taught high school English for twenty-seven years; she lives near Chicago with her husband, two sons, and three cats.

Contact Julia's Agent, Kim Lionetti, at Bookends Literary, or e-mail Julia directly at [email protected].

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About THE BIG CHILI

First in a delicious new mystery series filled with casseroles, confidences, and killers...

Lilah Drake’s Covered Dish business discreetly provides the residents of Pine Haven, Illinois, with delicious, fresh-cooked meals they can claim they cooked themselves. But when one of her clandestine concoctions is used to poison a local woman, Lilah finds herself in a pot-load of trouble…

After dreaming for years of owning her own catering company, Lilah has made a start into the food world through her Covered Dish business, covertly cooking for her neighbors who don’t have the time or skill to do so themselves, and allowing them to claim her culinary creations as their own. While her clientele is strong, their continued happiness depends on no one finding out who’s really behind the apron.

So when someone drops dead at a church Bingo night moments after eating chili that Lilah made for a client, the anonymous chef finds herself getting stirred into a cauldron of secrets, lies, and murder—and going toe to toe with a very determined and very attractive detective. To keep her clients coming back and her business under wraps, Lilah will have to chop down the list of suspects fast, because this spicy killer has acquired a taste for homicide…