Today please welcome mystery writer Delia Pitts to What Scares You! You can grab yourself a copy of Delia’s newest book, a contemporary noir mystery, Trouble in Queenstown. She is also the author of the Ross Agency Mysteries, a series set in Harlem. She has published several acclaimed short stories, including, “The Killer,” which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Delia is an active member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Crime Writers of Color.
Delia and her husband live in central New Jersey and have twin sons living in Texas.
But what scares her? Read on to find out…
What is your greatest fear?
Like most parents, my greatest fear is suffering the death of my children. I have twin boys, now in their thirties, and this dread courses through me like a railroad train every time I get a phone call from one of them. Texts from them are a different matter, somehow less urgent and friendlier. I made the reality of this devastating loss the underlying disaster that drives all the central characters of my new book. Each asks and answers the question: Am I still a parent after I lose my child?
What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
Fleeing the movie theatre because I couldn’t bear another minute with the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. This was at about five years old. But those scenes with the Wicked Witch of the West still can make me turn off the TV even now.
I also remember waking in the middle of a summer night and standing on my bed looking out the window at the black sky over the bungalows in our neighborhood. I was ten years old. To this day, I’m certain I saw the bright light of an airplane plummet straight down to the ground. No explosion, no reports the next day of a crash. But I swear even now this disaster happened: The fierce streak of light perpendicular to the ground is etched on my memory. Having no one else confirm what I saw with my own waking eyes didn’t undermine my experience. In fact, my isolation made this event even more terrifying.
But the scariest thing I ever saw as a child was when both my parents wept at the assassination of President Kennedy. I had never seen them (or any grown-ups) cry. About anything. So, witnessing their trauma at the devastation of unpredictable loss was terrifying to my sixth-grade self.
How do you deal with fear?
My tendency is to analyze it into submission. The more I pick apart a fear, the smaller it becomes. I am the nerdy one who broods, noodles, and dissects until the fear withers to dust. This is why those flying monkeys still haunt me: To this day, I can’t figure out if they are little people made up to look like monkeys. Or real monkeys trained to wear flying gear. Which is it?
“Those flying monkeys still haunt me: I can’t figure out if they are little people made up to look like monkeys. Or real monkeys trained to wear flying gear. Which is it?”
What’s something that most people are afraid of that you are not?
Visiting new places seems to spook lots of people. Understandable, as the unknown could contain dangers. But I’ve always enjoyed exploring new places, people, food. A few months after college graduation, I headed by myself for a year-long stay in Dakar, Senegal. I knew no one there and no one who’d ever visited there. I had a grant that gave me the confidence of money. That plus extreme youth carried me forward. I can’t imagine doing that same land-on-the-moon sort of adventure now. My imagination is pickled with too much knowledge, I suppose. But I am forever grateful that I had that stupid bravery when I was twenty-one.
Do you enjoy scaring other people?
No, I think scaring other people is the lowest form or sadism. Except in my fiction, then its fair. One of the loveliest reviews I ever received for one of my serialized short works of fan fiction was when a reader wailed that the ending of the chapter had her gnawing her arm off to the elbow. She couldn’t bear the four-day wait for the next installment of my story. Sweet triumph!
What scares you most about the writing process?
That I won’t be able to finish the story I’ve started. All those voices yammering in my head, demanding to be heard, propel me to write. I keep at it until I satisfy the characters that I’ve done my best to share their story as they want it to be told.
What is your greatest fear as a writer?
Losing my draft, of course. I’m haunted by the story of Hemingway’s wife Hadley who brought his first draft of The Sun Also Rises in a suitcase for a train ride to Switzerland, only to leave the suitcase on the station platform. Horrifying. When I was in Gambia doing my doctoral research, I spent hours each evening typing the day’s interviews on a portable Remington typewriter. I made carbon copies (yes, I am that old) and mailed the copies each week to my parents in Chicago. My fear was that a fire would devastate my room, and I’d lose the originals of those precious interviews with Gambian weavers. I never feared the fire, only the gut-wrenching fate of having nothing to show for my year of research.