Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: The Missing Place by Sophie Littlefield

Welcome to our stop on The Missing Place tour for Sophie Littlefield. This tour is hosted by Me, My Shelf and I.

The Missing Place
Author: Sophie Littlefield
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Released: October 14th 2014
Review Source: Gallery Books

Twenty-year-old Taylor Jarvis and Paul Carroll go missing in Weir, North Dakota, where they have been working on rigs owned by Oasis Energy. The boys stayed in Black Creek Lodge, a ?man camp? providing room and board. The mothers of the two boys come to Weir to find out what happened to their sons and form an uneasy alliance. Shay Jarvis, a 41-year-old single grandmother, has more grit than resources; for wealthy suburban housewife Colleen Carroll, the opposite is true. Overtaxed by worry, exhaustion, and fear, they question each other's methods and motivations - but there is no one else to help, and they must learn to work together if they are to have any chance of breaking through the barriers put up by their sons? employer, the indifference of an overtaxed police department, and a town of strangers with their own secrets against a backdrop of a modern day gold rush.

Playlist for The Missing Place

Thank you for inviting me here today! I often listen to music while I’m writing the first draft of a novel, and I try to choose artists who my main characters might listen to, or are in some way connected to the setting or theme.

It was easy for me to choose the song I would play the most as MISSING PLACE came to life: “North Dakota” by country singer Chris Knight. It has the perfect tone—somber, worn, exhausted, plaintive, but also beautiful. Chris Knight is one of my favorite artists and I never tire of listening to him.

My main characters, Shay and Colleen, are middle-aged women from very different worlds. Gritty, tough, small-town mom Shay has already endured a lot when the book opens. She really came to life for me when I was listening to "One of Us" by Joan Osborne.

It was harder for me to get a fix on what Colleen would like: she’s traditional in her values and style, and I imagine her listening to contemporary “easy listening.” Something like “Free Fallin’” by John Mayer, maybe.

There are two young men at the heart of THE MISSING PLACE. They almost never appear in the book, but their absence drives their mothers’ search.

The first is Paul, a moody, uncertain boy who was bullied when he was younger and still carries the scars. I think he might be drawn to music like Rise Against “Make It Stop.”

His best friend Taylor, an easy-going and well-liked athlete, would enjoy upbeat, energetic music, the sort of thing you’d play at the beginning of a party when everyone’s in a great mood. Something like The Offspring “You’re Gonna Go Far Kid.”

Sophie's first novel, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Minotaur, 2009) has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Barry, and Crimespree awards, and won the Anthony Award and the RTBookReviews Reviewers Choice Award for Best First Mystery. Her novel AFTERTIME was a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Horror award.