Southern Voices

I've got the South on my mind . . . the southern states of the USA, that is . . . and I wonder . . .

What do you think of when you think about the South? . . .

A shy pink camellia?

Sweet iced tea with lemon and mint?

Good old boys enjoying the evening on the front porch?

The seductive scent of a creamy magnolia?

A great Live Oak, hung with Spanish moss and spreading its leafy arms across a small town square?


Or maybe tractor caps, proclaiming long-held loyalties?

All this is on my mind because I've just received my panel assignment for Bouchercon - "SOUTHERN VOICES: What's special about Southern mysteries?"

The panel is composed of Cathy Pickens, (who writes a down home series about upstate South Carolina,) Deborah Sharp (setting: the part of Florida natives call the real Florida,) T. Lynn Ocean (coastal Carolina, Wilmington,) A. Scott Pearson (Memphis, TN,) and me.

That's a lot of different Souths. I'm trying to figure out what the commonalities are -- not gators, nor old plantations, nor log cabins, nor Elvis. Well, maybe Elvis. Maybe biscuits and gravy.

But special? What's a key element in Southern fiction -- in Southern mysteries? I have some vague, half-formulated ideas having to do with the Scots-Irish and story-telling and maybe even a tad of alienation resulting from the Late Unpleasantness, as John's Aunt Barbara called the Civil War.

So I'm asking, do you think there's anything special about Southern mysteries or Southern fiction in general?

(Let's hope so -- it'll be a long, awkward fifty-five minute panel otherwise.)

Help me out here, folks! And for those of you blog readers in other countries, I'd be really interested to know if you have any notion of the American South as being any different from the rest of the US -- any stereotypes, etc.