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Trish and I write a lot about synchronicity, both here on the blog and in our non-fiction books. But what about our novels? Do we ever use synchronicities in our stories?

Actually, not so much.

It’s tricky for writers. You have to be very careful, because readers usually don’t like it when a mystery is solved by a chance encounter, an overheard conversation, or a mistaken turn on a road that leads to a neat resolution. Readers consider such methods of resolving a mystery as a shortcut, and they feels cheated. They want mysteries solved through cause and effect, not through mysterious, unexplainable circumstances. Right?

But wait. There’s something else here.

The fact is, real life investigators often make use of coincidence in their detective work.  An investigator just happens to get assigned to a case that is suspiciously similar to a case he looked into last year. He takes what learned in that case and is able to solve the new one. If the case had gone to another investigator, it wouldn’t have been solved. Or at least not in such a neat and timely manner.

How many crimes have been solved in this manner outside of cause and effect? Former private investigator Steve Gore notes that if it were not for these kinds of coincidences, many suspects, witnesses, and pieces of evidence wouldn’t be found and crimes would remain unsolved, perhaps even be unsolvable. Except investigators typically call it experience or street knowledge, not chance and coincidence or synchronicity. Yet, another experienced investigator might not have the same sources and experiences.

Here’s a story from Gore’s own experiences:

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“Shortly after I opened my private practice, I was contacted by a criminal defense attorney whose client had been arrested for aggravated mayhem. The victim had been badly beaten and lost part of his ear and underwent hundreds of stitches to repair his torn and slashed skin. The client, like the other three men arrested, denied that he was involved or even present. If convicted, under California law the client faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

“The police report said the victim and two women had walked out of a bar and gotten into an argument with four men. The men then assaulted the victim and fled. Police located four men in a parking lot a mile away and detained them. The women were brought to the scene and identified all of them.

“The client, held in the county jail without bail, told me he happened to be in the parking lot when four men drove up. He knew two of them and they began talking. One of the four walked off the lot and into the neighborhood. The police drove up, detained the four remaining men and brought the women to the scene. The client assumed he’d be released right then. He wasn’t.

“Since the three others were claiming innocence, they refused to tell the client who the fourth man was, both because they were afraid he might cut a deal and inform on them and because they were afraid he might take revenge on them for informing on him. However, one afternoon in the jail exercise yard the client overheard the three talking and learned that the fourth man was nicknamed Boo, that he was a drug dealer, that he was about five years out of high school, and that his mother, name unknown, used to live in a pink apartment building on a wide street in Richmond, California.

“I was faced with a number of problems: I didn’t know whether the client was telling me the truth about the event. I didn’t know whether he was telling me the truth about what he claimed to have overheard. I didn’t know whether Boo actually existed and, if so, had really been involved in the crime. And assuming everything the client told me was true, not only were there Boos by the dozen in Richmond, there were dozens of pinkish apartment buildings on the many wide streets in the city’s fifty-two square miles–larger than San Francisco.

“Moreover, there are many of shades of pink and too often what is described as pink turns out to be a shade of red or brown. Beyond that, even if I found the right building, I needed to find someone who knew Boo’s mother, which meant they’d also have to know her son’s nickname was Boo.

“What were the chances of that?

“Even as I sat in the interviewing room at the jail with the client I recalled that two months earlier, when I was still working for the county, I had been to a pink apartment building on a wide street in Richmond looking for a witness. I drove straight out there and spotted a woman sitting on the steps and drinking a beer. I walked up to her, identified myself, and said, “I’m trying to get ahold of Boo’s mother.”

“And she said: ‘Mary moved away about two weeks ago.’

“No reader of fiction is going to believe it.

“And something almost as coincidental: I later found Mary had gotten a traffic ticket in Oakland a few days earlier and the citation showed her new address.

“Over the next few days I drove by that address until I spotted someone out front who matched Boo’s description. He was standing with some men about his own age and selling drugs over the low front fence.

“I showed up the next morning, hoping to catch him still a little groggy and before his crime partners showed up. A woman who identified herself as his mother opened the door. The fear in her eyes suggested that Boo might be the one. I say ‘might’  because it was likely she knew that Boo had been involved in other crimes and that someone, sometime would be coming for Boo. She stepped back and let me in and said, “I’ll go wake him up.”

“I sat him down at the dining-room table, set out my recorder, and the story came out. (The various and contradictory reasons people talk to investigators and confess to crimes is a topic for another time.) He not only admitted to his part and cleared the client, but implicated the other three in a hit by hit, punch by punch, slash by slash account of who did what.

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Good story, right? I’m going to mention it in a talk at the Tallahassee Writers Conference later this month, a talk about synchronicity and writing. How did I get it? Did I have to go interviewing detectives, did I search the Internet with crime and coincidence keywords or detectives and coincidence? No.

Someone sent it to me just as I was starting to put together the talk. It came from a mystery writer actually, Nancy Pickard. She knows Trish and I write about synchronicity, but she had no idea either of us would be talking about it at a writer’s conference in a few weeks. So that’s another example of how things fall together.

Conference speakers…..T&R

Adam Walsh

This post originally appeared on our blog during the first month of its existence. The psychic mentioned in the post, Renie Wiley, died in 2002. She was a wonderful friend and an amazing empath.

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Synchronicities often occur during highly charged emotional periods, when we’re experiencing major transitions in our lives. For a psychic, this kind of emotion is like skimming cream off the surface of milk.

This story is from Renie Wiley, a friend who lived in Cooper City, Florida. She was an empath, a psychic who tuned in to the emotions and physical body of whoever she was reading. Renie sometimes worked with cops on difficult cases. We observed her on several occasions and wrote an article on her psychic detective work for Fate Magazine. She died in 2002.

The following story illustrates an aspect of synchronicity – precognition. (Note: I think precognition was the wrong term for this. Clairvoyance fits better; she was tuning in on an event that already had happened).

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In early 1982, Renie and a cop from the Cooper City police department were driving near a mall in Hollywood, Florida, where Adam Walsh had last been seen on July 27, 1981, while shopping with his mother. The cop hoped Renie might be able to pick up something psychically about Adam – where he was, what had happened to him, who had abducted him. At this point, the police suspected he had been kidnapped, but didn’t have any leads. Renie often had an object that belonged to the victim she hoped to tune in on, but she didn’t have anything of Adam’s. Yet, posters of the boy had been plastered across South Florida, his huge, innocent eyes supplicating, begging for help. His face had been burned into the collective consciousness and that seemed to be all that Renie needed.

Within a few miles of the mall, Renie’s hands suddenly flew to her throat. She started choking, gasping for air. The cop had worked with her often enough to understand she was picking up something related to Adam and quickly sped away from the area. Several miles later, he swerved to the side of the road. By then, Renie was sobbing.

“Adam,” she whispered, “was decapitated.”

Not long afterward, the head of the six-year-old boy was found in a field in Vero Beach, more than a hundred miles north of the Hollywood mall.

Ther are some musicians, artists, writers, who typify an era. Joni Mitchell is such a musician. I read tonight that she’s 71  and is in the hospital.

Here she is, singing one of the great folk tunes of the late 60s and early 70s.

Here’s an update on her condition.

Could watching a television show about spirit contact enhance one’s chance to make contact with a deceased loved one? That’s what Mandy Moo of the UK wondered, and then decided to see for herself. Here’s her story, which first appeared on the Unexplained-Mysteries.com web site.

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“Three years ago, my dad passed away suddenly from a heart attack in his sleep. I was devastated and still miss him terribly. Last week, I had been watching Ghost Adventures, and feeling a little inspired, I thought I’d have a go at taking some camera shots using my iphone. I turned off all the lights in the lounge and talked to my dad as if he were still here, telling him that I was attempting to capture a photo of him.

“I pointed the phone at the spot on the sofa where he used to sit when he came to my house and started clicking away. The room was in complete darkness apart from when the flash would go off on the camera. After about 5-6 shots I switched on the lights to review the pictures, and there was an orb above the sofa on one of the shots.

“I still thought it might have been questionable so I turned off the lights and began clicking away again. After repeatedly clicking for about another 15-20 shots, I saw a figure of a man sitting on my sofa. It happened so fast on the pre-flash light, I was so shocked that I gasped out loud. A split second after I saw him what felt like a massive ball of heat hit me in the chest and radiated from my toes and out of my head. I immediately switched on the lights and sat there a bit dumb-struck and tried to process what had just happened. The image had not been caught on camera, but I know what I felt and saw was real.

“I would like to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this. I don’t know if the figure I saw was my dad, I really hope it was. I don’t know whether to feel scared or relieved. The next morning whilst I was vacuuming my hallway, I heard a voice call out ‘MUMMA!’ for a split second. I thought it was one of my children but I was alone in the house. Then about an hour after that I was coming into the hallway again when I saw out of the corner of my eye a black shadow that moved exactly like a cat coming down the last 3 steps of the stairs and into the kitchen. It moved really quickly and even though I tried to follow it, I knew it wasn’t a real cat.

“To say I’m a bit scared now is an understatement, can’t tell anyone about this because I know how crazy it sounds. I don’t want anyone to tell me things that are going to frighten me more….I just miss my dad and wanted to know if he was watching over us. I would be grateful for any info, thanks.”

For the last 15 years, we have lived next to a Haitian family on our right and, for the last decade, next door to Annette and her family on our left. For awhile, Annette’s twin sister and her husband and son also lived next door.

The Haitian family has five daughters. The dad speaks good English, but the mother’s English remains broken and since none of us speak French or Creole, our communication with the mother has been somewhat limited. Whenever Annette and I see her, though, we call her Mommy, and that’s what she calls Annette and me.

“Hi, Mommy,” she says, waving enthusiastically at one of us.

“Hi, Mommy,” we call back.

Occasionally, the three of us congregate on the sidewalk in front of our homes and try to carry on a conversation about our kids or our cats. But because of the language barrier, the conversation never gets very far.

Oddly, none of us ever asked what Mommy’s first name is nor has she ever asked us our first names. Until today.

Mommy stopped by Annette’s for something and while she was there, asked what her name was.

“I’m Annette,” she replied.

Mommy drew back in surprise, her eyes wide and startled. “I am Annette.”

“What? No way.”

They both got a big laugh about that, but with the next piece of the conversation, things veered into the very weird. Mommy touched her daughter’s head. “Jannette.”

At this point, Annette was probably hearing chords from The Twilight Zone. Her twin sister’s name is Jannette.

So, what’s with this weird synchronicity with names?

But even more to the point, I think the three of us – both Annettes and I – got lazy because of the language barrier and it was just easier to refer to each other as Mommy. Tomorrow when I see Annette who lives on the right, I’m going to make a point of calling her by her name and introducing myself as Trish.

Whitley Streiber recently asked us to write something for his website, Unknowncountry.com. It’s a big site with lots of departments and we thought we were writing a column for Insight. But, to our surprise, the article showed up in headline news, the top story for the weekend.

Essentially, it’s a summary of our thoughts on synchronicity, and it leads off with a story about how we met Charles Fontaine, the Quebec man whose UFO encounter inspired our book, Aliens in the Backyard. What we didn’t realize was that Saturday, the first full day that the article appeared, was the fourth anniversary of Charles Fontaine’s early morning encounter. So an article about synchronicity leads to another synchronicity.

You can read the story here.

We’re working on a book about creativity and synchronicity and one of the  chapters is called Into the Zone. Here’s what we’d written (in part)  in the proposal about this chapter.

Stephen King calls it “dreaming awake.” We call it being “plugged in.” Whatever you call it, you know when you’re there. You’re in the flow, the groove, and the rest of the world disappears. The zone is where you go when life is your canvas.

So Rob was about to begin work on this chapter, but before he started to went to one of the Facebook synchronicity group pages he occasionally visits and what popped up but a picture-quote featuring a blooming flower and the following quote.

SYNCHRONICITY happens when you align with the flow of the universe rather than insisting the universe flow your way.– Akemi G

It was a perfect nudge for him to get to work on it. It was also a synchronicity about synchronicity – we have those occasionally – and getting into the flow, the zone.

You’ll notice that the picture-quote at the top, the one I came upon, lacks attribution. But a quick Google search of the quote found that it was from a book called, Why We are Born: Remembering Our Purpose through the Akashic Records, by Akemi G.

My storyboard.

A storyboard is supposed to be a visual representation of a script, play, novel, comic book…Whatever the venue, the storyboard is the writer’s visual guide to plot, characters, scenes, the entire banquet.

Some years ago, I remember Rob telling me about the storyboard at LucasFilm that dealt with Indiana Jones. It was, he said, probably fifty feet long, with multiple paths jotting out from each entry. In comparison, my storyboard is kindergarten.

The yellow cutouts at the tops of the first, second, and fourth columns and midway down the fifth column are part headings.   I just added that fourth part last night because I realized that the event happening at the end of part three s actually plot point two in the story. If this were a movie, PP2 would be the event that pivots the story in a new direction – usually the last thirty minutes or so of a film.

The yellow index card on the far right is the pitch. It reads: A serial killer. An animal communicator. A homicide detective who talks to the dead. When the lives of these three individuals slam together, nothing is what it appears to be.

 U Я miNe started because of a conversation with my agent in August of 2014. I played around with the idea of a dog walker who is being stalked by a serial killer. Nothing too original there. But the dog walker is a young woman who communicates with animals- the dead and the living – and whose relationships have gone south because of it. The detective investigating this whole thing is the only son of famous mediums , who communicates with spirits to help him solve his cases. His personal relationships have suffered because of it.

I use a different colored Post-It for each viewpoint character. Green belongs to the dog walker, Laurie Brautigan, 27. Lavender is for the detective, Nick Finley, 33. Hot pink is for the killer, Gabe Angeles. In retrospect, I wonder if I should have written this novel from the points of view of the dogs involved in the story – Maia, a Border Collie mix who belongs to Laurie; Dusty, a Rhodesian Ridgeback who witnessed the murder of his human, Donna O’Connor; Randy, an aging Golden Retriever who belongs to Laurie’s closest friend, Colleen Larson; and Fiddler, the lab mix that belongs to the killer, a dog who is the love of his life. Now THAT would be original.

It might also be impossible to write.

That said, the dogs in the story are the ones who ultimately determine the ending. These dogs illustrate what animals can do when their instincts are harnessed, directed, and focused, and there are humans around them who can interpret their actions. There’s even a hamster in this story who witnessed the murder of his human and yielded his testimony to Laurie.

For me, the storyboard has become more essential over my thirty years as a novelist. I like that I can turn my head to the right and see the scenes laid out in order, all so tidy – and meanwhile, the kitchen in my actual home is falling apart, dishes piled in the sink, the fridge screaming for food. I like the fact that my storyboard is my anchor. It may not be a fifty-foot-long archetype like Indiana Jones, but it’s completely mine. My world, my good guys and bad guys, my love story, my psychic magic, my weirdness in hot pink, green, and lavender.

On these various squares of paper, I jot notes about the high points in each scene/chapter. It’s a great way to uncover your weaknesses as a writer. You look at those notes and think, Huh? Nothing happens. What am I doing? Way back when, someone at LucasFilm told Rob that a conflict must happen on every fifth page. In terms of a movie script, that’s every five minutes. When I discover I haven’t done that, I go back and rewrite.

The irony with this storyboard, though, is that I created it after the fact, during my rewrites instead of while I was writing the first draft. Back in October, about a month after I decided to go ahead with this idea, I decided to alter my structure. Instead of doing alternate point of view chapters, I did longer sections with a single viewpoint. I thought it worked.

But when my agent read my summary and the opening, he called and we talked about the story. He felt it lacked tension. “Trish, this is a stalker story, a kind of horror story. You need tension on every single page. Try it with alternate chapter viewpoints.” He made some more suggestions, I went back to the manuscript and realized he was right. I tore apart the manuscript and began rebuilding it, a step at a time, with the help of the storyboard.

This is my fortieth novel and doesn’t include novels I have ghostwritten or novels that have been sitting on my closet floor for twenty years. Isn’t the process supposed to get easier with practice? While some parts of the creative process of writing have gotten easier, other parts seem to have become more challenging. One thing I’m absolutely sure of now is that with my next novel, I’ll START with the storyboard; it won’t be a revision postscript. I will also do what I’ve done with most of my novels and DIDN’T do when I started this one: write the pitch for the story.

Big Sur

One of the first posts we did in February 2009 when we started our blog was called Big Sur- Cabin by the Sea. It happened to Dr. L. Daryll Amstrong and illustrates, I think, what can happen when we feel strongly connected to a particular place. It remains one of my favorite stories.

This synchronicity happened to Dr. L Darryl Armstrong. It beautifully illustrates what can happen when we feel strongly connected to a particular place.
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Several years ago during the first days of establishing our business, I had the occasion to work on the west coast and visit a friend in Carmel. Having always wanted to tour the area, especially Big Sur, and to get a massage at Esalen one day, I trucked off to just spend some time driving and exploring the coastal highway.

By chance I happened upon a real estate sign noting a house for sale or rent, I don’t recall which. The “house” was actually a large cabin – 2 stories that hung off the side of a cliff with the most remarkable view of the Pacific Ocean I have ever seen from a private residence. It was obvious someone had spent a great deal of their personal time and money carving out this homestead. I was mesmerized, and could imagine what life might be like in a “cabin by the sea”. Every time since then, when I have been out that way, I have driven by the cabin. These days it has a fence on the road and a gate but you can still get a glimpse.

A few years later, late one evening, I crawled on to a Southwestern flight headed home to “my own cabin in the woods” on Lake Barkley in Kentucky. I don’t recall where I was flying from, maybe Phoenix. Anyway, I got my always enjoyable exit row seat and stretched out because I was exhausted.

I normally “hibernate” on a plane and rarely strike up conversations as I prefer to read, work or sleep. The plane was not very full but sure enough this fellow chooses to sit in the exit row with me. For some reason I was drawn to his smile and immediately liked him. Eventually my southern hospitality overcame me, I guess, and I offered him a drink since I had plenty of coupons and he smiled and offered me one as well.

We chatted and I found out he was from California. We started talking about how we both liked certain areas (I mentioned Big Sur, Carmel, Monterrey) and when I got to the story about the cabin on the side of the road overlooking the ocean he got a strange expression on his face.

I thought nothing of it. I just continued describing the setting and how much I would love to live there with the view and the peace and quiet despite all the inconveniences. He finally said something to the effect, ‘You know, I understand how you feel. We obviously both work hard and have a lot of stress. It sounds like when we get home we are both ‘hermits’ in parts of our lives. I have always enjoyed my peace and solitude as well. Let me show you where I live.’

And this man, whom I had never met and yet instantly took a liking to, reaches into his briefcase and pulls out a photo wallet. And yes, you guessed it. This was the man who owned the cabin I have always cherished in my mind. We were both surprised yet it seemed as if a “loop” had been closed because I left the plane that night knowing that someone I could share mutual empathy with enjoyed the “cabin by the sea” as much as I did.

It’s not unusual for someone to report seeing a ghost in an old house or building or a graveyard. I’ve also heard of hitchhiking ghosts, the most famous are the stories of a young Elvis in his uniform hitchhiking to Graceland…and apparently getting rides. Elvis stories, though, are often fan-based, which no doubt raises red flags for many.

This story from the British Isles (Pembrokeshire, Wales)  is unusual for a couple of reasons. The ghost appears on the side of the road and darts in front cars. It happened at least three times in four days in February, all three incidents happening on the same stretch of road, and all apparently reported to the Paranormal Chronicles website. So if these stories are real, and not made up by the website for our entertainment, how many more incidents have occurred recentlly that weren’t reported?

The site says this about the reports: “The road has witnessed some terrible and tragic accidents over the years and one can speculate that if there is a paranormal world veiled over our own reality that local drivers are witnessing chilling and disturbing hauntings replayed in the darkness.”

It’s also interesting that at the top of the map, probably the north side of the haunted stretch of road, is Merlin’s Bridge. Nice.

For the full stories of the sightings, take a look here.

Thanks to Jane Clifford for alerting us to this story. Jane, who lives nearby the road in question, says this about it: “I didn’t know about these stories about that stretch of road that’s spooky locally, and yet have avoided using it for over 30 years…never liked it!”