Guest Post From Author Mel Taylor

The view from my car was both eerie and spectacular.  When the conditions are just right, misty fingers of ground fog will seep over land in areas west of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In the pre-dawn darkness, the ground fog can hinder drivers, however for a writer, it is perfect. How did I use this scene? In one of my books, I placed a victim right in the middle of the fog with only a visible hand and arm sticking upward in full rigor. Once the paramedics pronounced him, my main character, detectives, and crime techs all had to wait until the sun burned off the fog before they could process the crime scene. This gave me a chance to describe the location and let the characters dialogue.

As writers, we are collectors. We collect tidbits of the best dialogue we hear and use them later. And we collect locations for our chapters. Along with that, I use streets and landmarks the reader will recognize. I can’t tell you how many times a reader told me about a certain street I mentioned in my book or an old building, a certain way the sun sets on a piece of land. As a reader, it brings them closer and puts them into the story. It puts the reader right there, front seat. I had lunch one time in one Florida city, and the place was so unique, I had to use it. There were no menus and the meals were written in chalk on a board. Christmas tree lights were up all year, stuck into the layers of a chickee-hut. The floor never looked swept and there was no sign out front. Yet everyone in town knew where to go. This time, I used the surroundings for a conversation between two characters, discussing details of my latest murder mystery.

I have friends, authors, who fly to exotic places around the world, taking in every morsal of place and setting, absorbing all details for the readers delight later in a book. In one area I have been lucky. South Florida is perfect for setting. For the fast-paced, there is the late night glitz of South Beach. From Miami Beach, you have the sand and palm trees going northward into Fort Lauderdale and beyond. Then, if you head straight west about fifteen miles, there is the stark and wild environs of the Florida Everglades, replete with three hundred pound alligators, poisonous cottonmouths, and pythons the length of an SUV.

There is a lot to use. This is a beautiful country and there are many places of interest. Just take your well-developed characters and stick them in places so the reader will have to keep turning pages.



Mel Taylor is the author of the Deadline books. The books are a series featuring TV reporter Matt Bowens. The first and second books were released by Avalon Books, with Murder by Deadline, followed by Encounter by Deadline.
Mel released his third book, Death by Deadline last August. Mel uses his experience in television news as the basis for books and pulls on the exotic beauty of south Florida as a locale.