Travel + Writing = Travel Writing
Writing Life - Alexandra Sokoloff
Two of the things that most define me as a person are writing and travel. (Others are politics, dance, and history). I’ve deliberately set my life up so that those are my primary activities. I can write when I’m traveling, and I use the experiences of my travel in my crime novels and screenplays.
But I’ve never considered myself a travel writer. Until recently.
Travel is a big part of a novelist’s life, in general. There’s travel to writing conferences, to book festivals, to bookstores, hopefully book tours — and of course, location research. YouTube videos are great, but no substitute for actually being in a place. But travel is a much bigger component of my writing than I ever expected it to be.
Now that Craig and I have sold our Lost Highway series and are committed to three books in this on-the-road thriller odyssey, I have to admit - and embrace - that road trip thrillers are what I do, now. The Huntress Moon series is six books of on-the road suspense thrillers. If nine novels with a focus on travel don’t make me a travel writer, I’m not sure what would.
In my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops I encourage writers to focus on the experience of the story in their books and scripts. Part of the experience of a story is the promise of the genre: what does the reader expect and crave to immerse themselves in when they pick up this book?
I write thrillers, so delivering on suspense, mystery, and thrills; jeopardy and adrenaline rushes, are a vital part of my job - my contract with my readers and audiences. But my books also specifically promise the adventure and exhilaration of the road: the mysticism of it, the synchronicities, the freedom. The killer heroine of the Huntress Moon books finds some balance to the ugliness of her bloody mission by seeking the beauty of wide-open and uninhabited places.
I also hope by bringing my readers into these breathtaking natural spaces, I’m providing some balance to the darkness of the crimes that the books are exploring.
Substacker Nico Ranng is inviting travel writers to post their work on Travel Writing Thursdays and I’ve decided to take up that challenge (although maybe not every Thursday!)
So today, here’s an excerpt from Hunger Moon – Book 5 in the Huntress series. To research one of the plots of this book I spent a fantastic week in the Canyon de Chelly area – staying in the Diné-owned Thunderbird Lodge in Chinle, exploring the canyon with a Diné guide, walking the rim paths to get the experience of the upper levels as well as the lower. The Southwest has some of the most stunning natural land in the world – always worth a trip in person. Highly recommended!
Trigger warning: The Huntress series explores issues of violence against women and children and the systemic inadequacy of laws and lack of societal commitment to ending these atrocities. The crimes and laws portrayed are based on real-life crimes, criminals and laws. While readers find the books cathartic, they can also be difficult.
HUNGER MOON
Chapter 1
The sandstone spires reach like alien fingers from the depths of the canyon.
The gorge cuts through the Arizona tablelands, a vast, prehistoric gash. Inside lies a 230-million-year-old natural wonder: a cathedral of wind-carved sandstone walls in every possible hue of red, gold, and white, adorned with the gleaming black curtain-like sweeps known as canyon varnish. Ancient ruins of cliff villages nestle in natural caves at impossible heights. Sedimentary deposits lie in distinctive round piles, like stacked pancakes.
And the famous double sandstone spires rise 750 feet from the canyon floor, at the exact junction of de Chelly and Monument Canyons.
Navajo legend says the taller spire is the home of Spider Grandmother, the goddess who created the world. She stole the sun and brought fire to the Anasazi. At the beginning of time, monsters roamed the land, and she gave her children, Monster Slayer and Child-Born-of-Water, power to kill the monsters and protect the First People.
Her stories are only told in the winter months.
And only to those who will listen.
A bleak sky, streaked with white, stretches over the desolate South Rim of the canyon. There will be snow tonight.
The grinding of a pickup truck grates through the silence.
A four-door Tundra. Tonneau cover over the bed. Two men dressed in camouflage inside. Fast-food and jerky wrappers litter the wells at their feet. In the back seat, a cooler packed full of beer.
And three rifles, three-inch twelve-gauge magnums, strapped to the padded back-seat gun rest.
Hunters, driving the rim.
The front-seat passenger sets his sights on something moving ahead of them, leans forward greedily. “There we go, there we go.”
The driver follows his gaze, fixes on what he is tracking. Not a deer, but a young girl, shining black hair underneath the hood of her parka. Schoolgirl’s backpack on her shoulder.
On the men’s faces, something crude and capering.
“That’s some tasty-looking pussy.”
“Oh, yeah, that’ll do.”
“Let’s go.”
“Get her.”
The driver swerves the truck over to the side of the road, squealing brakes.
The girl hears the sound, stiffens, is starting to run before she even completes the glance back.
The truck skids to a stop in the snow. The doors fly open; the men are out of the car, grabbing for their rifles.
The girl runs for the rocks, but her pursuers are bigger, faster. Two of them, grown men, against a teenage girl.
They move forward into the strong wind, a military-style formation, heavy boots crunching in the sandy snow.
They pause at the rock outcropping, looking out over the boulders. The girl seems to have disappeared. Then a scrabble on the rocks betrays her. Hearing it, the men grin at each other.
The driver rounds the rock first, his mouth watering. He is already hard in anticipation . . .
The tire iron bashes him across the face, breaking his jaw. He staggers back, howling inarticulate pain.
The girl kicks him viciously in the knee, crumpling him, then swivels as the second hunter rounds the edge of the rock. She slams the tire iron against the side of his head.
Now both men are collapsed on the ground, moaning and cursing.
She steps forward, no longer feigning that youthful, hesitant gait.
She lifts her arm and uses the tire iron on their skulls. Two, three, four blows, and there is no more moaning. Thick crimson drops spatter the snow. Her breath is harsh. Her face is ice.
There is only the wind, swallowing the sound of her breathing.
Cara stands at the edge of the canyon, looking out at the spires of Spider Rock, the vast open gorge.
Below her is an icy crevasse. The canyon has any number of them, deep splits in the rock wall where whole sheets of the cliff have broken away. Behind her is the hunters’ pickup truck.
Their bodies lie at her feet.
She drags one, then the other, to shove them over the cliff’s edge, stepping back to watch each body hurtle down into the crevasse, tumbling into oblivion.
The snowfall tonight will cover all trace of them. Later, birds and animals will pick the bones clean.
Another offering to the canyon, and the gods and ghosts that haunt it.
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