I'm baaack!

And it's NaNoWriMo time ...

After a rash of technical difficulties, I've revived the blog. And it's also November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month. So I'm once again cranking out 50,000 words in 30 days. This year's installment in the Murder at the ... series is Murder at the Wedding. After a series of misfortunes, Hannah Montgomery's wedding is finally at hand. Of course, dead bodies have a habit of turning up wherever Hannah goes, so you can sort of guess the occasion is not going to go off without a hitch. Here's the first 474 words:

Murder at the Wedding

a novel

by Carol Anne Byrnes

1.                  Meet the Bride

“There,” said the petite Oriental woman, as she zipped the dress up Hannah Montgomery’s back. “I am so glad that I waited until yesterday to make the final alterations. It fits perfectly!”

Hannah looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall of the dressing room of the bridal shop. She had to agree that the dress indeed fit perfectly, its slender lines making her tall, willowy figure look even more graceful, and accenting the bulge in front, which seemed to have been simply stuck onto her abdomen as an afterthought, without making any other changes to her figure. That was going to be a surprise to most of the wedding guests, she reflected, since she hadn’t let many people know about the pregnancy, and so far, wearing loose clothing had camouflaged her expanding waistline.

“Oh, Keiko, it’s perfect,” Hannah said, sweeping her hand down her side, over the shiny satin, with just enough seed pearls to give the dress a bit of a glow without overwhelming its simple lines. “You’ve done a wonderful job!”

“It was my pleasure,” Keiko Miyamura, the owner of the boutique, said. “After all, you have had so much trouble. I want your wedding to be perfect.” She ducked her head, and Hannah could tell she was trying not to look too directly at the scorch marks along one wall, where a fire had damaged the shop and threatened to destroy not only Hannah’s dress but all of the bridesmaids’ dresses as well. Hannah had to admire Keiko’s composure, but then, in her life, she had seen worse than a fire in a bridal shop. Hannah had only recently found out that Keiko had spent part of her childhood in a relocation camp, where Japanese-Americans had been sent during World War II for fear that they were enemy spies.

“I’m really thankful you decided to keep working with me,” Hannah said. “I wouldn’t blame you for backing out after what happened here. I really feel it was my fault.”

“Oh, you do not need to apologize,” Keiko said. “It is my pleasure. Now let’s try on the veil.” She went over to a counter at the side of the room, where a long, lace veil lay spread out, picked it up, and returned to Hannah, sweeping the light, sheer fabric through the air as she came. She brought over a small stepstool to stand on so she could reach the top of Hannah’s head and pin the veil’s tiara to Hannah’s soft, golden-blonde hair. “Minnie says she’s doing an up-do for you tomorrow,” Keiko said. “You will look like Princess Grace.”

Hannah smiled. “I don’t know that anyone could ever look that classy,” she said. “Just don’t put me in any Alfred Hitchcock movies.”