Lea Wait's Blog, page 12

Weekend Update: March 29-30, 2025

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be a group post (Monday) and posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday), Kate Flora (Thursday), and Brenda Buchanan (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Gratitude

We creative types like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, wresting our work and what success we can find out of an unforgiving world by the strength of our sinews and the pureness of our hearts, when the truth is, as Isaac Newton said it, we are ‘standing on the shoulders of giants.’ That is, with the help of people who have done what we’ve done and provided help and examples for us to further ourselves. Nearly everyone I know who’s accomplished anything has done it with the help of mentors.

For writers especially, I would say that many of our mentors might not be people we’ve known or worked with directly. Often we are moved to writing by trying to emulate something we read that spoke to us in a deeper way than if we were only a reader. In that case, the mentor becomes partly the person who wrote the work and partly the work itself.

My first mentor of that kind is John D. MacDonald, about whom I’ve written before. I remember walking into a panel at Bouchercon in New Orleans and seeing two of the presenters wearing T-shirts that read Bastard Sons of Travis McGee. I knew I was in good company. I never met the man, though the fact that I write about amateur sleuth types in political situations owes a great deal to him, that and the knowledge that popular fiction can treat serious issues.

In graduate school, I met Thomas Williams, Jr., a National Book Award-winning novelist who taught at the University of New Hampshire.

Tom was in no way a writer of crime fiction—the UNH program was widely considered to have too many people writing literary fiction about trees. What I learned from him had to do with working more deeply into a piece after you were sure it was done, the self-discipline of not settling for good enough. And he wrote what I think is one of the finest short stories written by an American, Goose Pond.

A mentor doesn’t always present as such. In the year Williams was sick with the cancer that killed him, Joe Monninger stepped in to teach the various workshops and courses Tom would have been responsible for. He and I were about the same age, though he’d had much more success. I had gone to graduate school not for the degree but to see how I measured up against other writers and he might have been the first writer to treat me as a professional peer. He died recently and wrote a lovely tribute to his place in Maine and dying there.

What I mean to say here is that we need to appreciate our teachers and mentors while we can. There are things I said to both Tom and Joe in appreciation, but there is always more to be grateful for. We worry about talking to readers to sell our books, asking for reviews, increasing our reach and our community. What we sometimes forget is that our community began with those mentors. Don’t wait to appreciate them.

Deception—Or how I figure out who done it

Writers specialize in sleight of hand. Mystery writers in particular. Playing fair is part of the canon of mystery writing. We plant clues in plain sight and give the reader all the tools necessary to solve the mystery, but we don’t paint the clues international orange or even fire engine red.

How do we do it? Sometimes very well, others, not so much. Sometimes we fool ourselves.

In a perfect book, all the clues are laid out for the reader to discover. Pro tip: clues are disguised in ordinary dialogue, mixed into a list of items, omissions, or objects too commonplace to stand out on their own. Once the clue has dropped, a red herring often follows as a form of writerly deception. Gotta watch those writers, they’re a tricky bunch.

Red herrings are clues that take the protagonist, and the reader, on a chase to a dead end. So, if the complainant tells you it was a silent night on the moors (red herring), and you are Sherlock Holmes (if only), that’s a huge clue, eventually. In the meantime, the reader, Holmes, and Watson are led on a merry chase considering and discarding suspects until the red herring is shown to be an enigma and unwrapped to reveal its clue.

I have no idea how Conon Doyle did it so effectively, but I’d love to ask. If you look at his picture, you’ll note he has an amused glint in his eye. I’m betting he’s not talking.

How do I do it? Well, let me warn you. I have never successfully unwrapped my villain in the first draft. My first draft endings never satisfy. They always leave me with the unsettled feeling that I missed something. It’s during the second draft editing that my epiphany occurs and I discover my clues lead not to x but to y.

Yes, much to my chagrin, red herrings fool both authors and readers. Even when I’m the one who wrote them. In a strange way fooling myself assures me the real clues are well planted and ably disguised by red herrings. How do I figure it out? It’s all in the process.

I begin each book with the victim. In the process of dissecting a life cut short too soon, I uncover and make a list of likely clues. What about his life made him a victim? Why did the villain think he needed killing? Then I decide where in the book those clues will have the most impact, and how to hide them. At the same time, I work up a minimum of three alternate scenarios. Who else has motive, means, opportunity? Then I bullet point outline three different stories, each with a different ending. At this point, I have a dead person and no idea where to point the finger.

Once all the background work is done, I write the book. Because I’m a pantser, I write from chapter to chapter. The characters tell me their story, and I get so lost in the weeds of clues, red herrings, and justifications that they usually direct me to the wrong villain. In the second draft editing, I read the book as if I have no idea of the story because, well; I don’t. I force myself to follow the clues with a fresh eye and uncover the true culprit.

It’s all about the deception. The characters always control the story, and they do not play fair. At least not with this writer.

Risk Placing Real Emotion at the Center of Your Work

Yes, it’s all melting, but if we close our eyes we might remember, standing in the same spot …  what we loved.

Onward into my post!

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work.”  Author Anne Lamott

Sandy Neily here: I am, lately, needing inspiration so I’m rereading “Bird by Bird” and now, sharing some with you!         “Anne Lamott understands better than anyone that writers need help. . . She writes so well, in fact, that it’s hard to believe that she, too, has trouble with writing. That’s what’s so deeply comforting about this book.” The Wall Street Journal   

“Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”   

Listen to her, here.  And if you haven’t found this amazing interview series with “old ladies” interviewed by Julia Lewis-Dreyfus, here she interviews Anne Lamott. (Wow. Well, don’t miss the Jane Fonda one either.)

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that ‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’ You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”

“I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

“Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?”

“Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.”

“But how?” my students ask. “How do you actually do it?”
You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind — a scene, a locale, a character, whatever — and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.”

“The problem is acceptance, which is something we’re taught not to do. We’re taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again.”

“I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good at it.”

“If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days–listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you’ve taken in, all that you’ve overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)”

Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; Bird by Bird; Operating Instructions, and the forthcoming Hallelujah Anyway. She is also the author of several novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California.

  Sandy’s debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” was published in 2021. Her third “Deadly” is due out in 2025. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

 

Why use a fictional town instead of real town in a mystery?

One question I get asked with surprisingly frequency is why I use a fictional town in my books instead of a real one. Many readers who ask are also under the impression even though my town, Redimere, Maine, doesn’t exist, it’s still “based” on a town in Franklin County, and they want to know which one.

This question is often from people who live in Maine, particularly those familiar with Franklin County, which is in the northwest corner of the state. But, surprisingly, it also comes from people who don’t live there, or aren’t even familiar with it.

First, it’s important to know that — like characters — my town isn’t “based” on any town. Instead, it’s inspired by many towns, some not even in Franklin County. It may be hard people who don’t write or create other art to fully grasp the concept of inspiration vs. direct depiction of reality. It’s also a hard concept to explain to people’s satisfaction, I’ve discovered. The way it works is that different elements, big and small, interest me or seem to work. They spark something in my imagination. They come together in my mind to form an entity that’s very real in my head and unlike any of them, but inspired by all of them. That goes for characters, and it goes for Redimere.

When I first started writing Cold Hard News, the first in my Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series, it was set in Waldo County. The town of Brooks inspired some elements. I moved Redimere to Franklin County sometime during the revision process (a story for another day). Franklin County towns like Kingfield, Phillips, Strong and Stratton also came into the mix. On top of it, one day back in the 1990s, a decade before I actually began writing, I was thinking about my future book as I drove through Cherryfield, way Down East, in Washington County. I took some photos (with a film camera!) because I thought its downtown was evocative of the one in the mystery novel I planned to write. In particular, a large clapboard yellow building seemed to be similar to the newspaper building in my imagination. That building, with some small tweaks to the front windows and door, is very like the one that the Weekly Watcher newspaper in my books operates out of (Bernie O’Dea is the editor and owner).

Kingfield is a real town in Franklin County. Redimere, my fictional town, is not based on it, but just like it in the way that towns in that area are.

Redimere is not Brooks or Cherryfield. It’s not Kingfield or Phillips or Stratton. It’s not the town I live in. It’s a town in my imagination that is inspired by things that were ticked by these towns. The things that happen in Redimere aren’t “based on” things that happen in those towns (I barely know what happens in those towns!). They’re also not based in any way, shape or form on anything that happens in the town I live in. I learned at

Brooks, a town in Waldo County, provided some inspiration, particularly this store, which is a lot like The Country Grocer in my books. (It’s no longer a store, I know, so don’t email me).

a young age that you don’t [poop] where you eat. I take that to heart.

Now, with that background, the actual answer to the question is that it’s virtually impossible to use a real town as the center of action in fiction without also stifling imagination. At least it is for me. I’m not talking about setting a book in city, like New York or Los Angeles or Boston, or even Portland. Maybe even Augusta (my

I took photos of Cherryfield, in Washington County, back in the 1990s, thinking it had some similarities to the downtown of my future mystery novels. The yellow building is an inspiration for the Weekly Watcher newspaper building in my books.

hometown, population 18,000). I’m talking about an existing smaller town or small city.

While most of my readers don’t live in, or are not familiar with, Franklin County, those who do, or are, would assume even more than they already do that the characters are based on real people and situations. That the stories are thinly veiled commentary on town happenings. This doesn’t just go for Franklin County, it’s also true of the Kennebec County town I live in. While I know this doesn’t apply to the vast majority of those who read my books, I still have a fact-obsessed enough brain to not want it to happen.

Bigger-picture, if I stuck my plots and characters in a real, but small, geography, it would push the writing into a framework that would be stifling. I can bend a fictional town to my will. It makes for a much more creative and expansive writing process. I’d stumble and stall a lot if I had to exist in a real framework. I could add fictional elements to the real town, but I have trouble doing that. Maybe it’s a lifetime as a journalist, that I just can’t put fake things into reality. Some of it, too, is that I know it would lead to more consternation on the part of people familiar with the town. That road doesn’t exist! There was never a store like that in that town! Etc. The situation would be even worse when writing about actions of the town government, the post mistress, the businesses in town.

Beyond all that, why limit myself to a framework, even if I’m going to make it flexible, when I can create my own and make it do what I want? Imagination is gonna imagine. Trying to tame it so that it fit into a box that I didn’t create would not be fun, or conducive to good writing.

My town of 2,000 is bigger than any of those, more than double, that exist in that part of Franklin County. It has a small college. Readers have pointed out to me that, aside from the University of Maine-Farmington, there is no college like that in Franklin County. No, there’s not. But there is in my books, because fiction is fiction. I needed a town big enough that it would have, besides the college, some commerce and other elements that would support the books’ plots as well as a police department and a newspaper.

As a reader, I used to try to figure out where fictional towns set in real places were. It was a frustrating exercise. As a writer, I now know why that’s the case. My town’s location is in the general area of central-north Franklin County, but it’s hard to pin it down to a specific spot. I’ve made up a river, and a state route, in order to make the vague location less pinned to reality. That’s not because I want to screw around with readers, but more so that I can free myself from the constraints of reality when I form my plots or scenes in which geography has an impact.

Why have a map of a fictional town? Why not? From The Bernie O’Dea Reader’s Companion.

In my recently published The Bernie O’Dea Reader’s Companion, there’s a map I’ve created of Redimere, as well as one of the area around the town. It may seem counter-intuitive to have a map of a fake place in a real area, but I’ve used two similar, but much cruder, ones to help me keep things straight when I write. Still, I tell readers of that book, this may not match reality as you know it, or even imagine it.

All that said, I do use real towns and cities in the books. Farmington, the county seat and, at 8,000, Franklin County’s most populous, is where real people and those in Redimere go for services. I also refer to Kingfield, Stratton, Carrabassett Valley, and other towns to make Redimere seem more real and give an idea for those who are familiar of its general location. I make up surrounding towns, too, like West Vineyard, as part of the fiction and plot process. In real life, there’s a New Vineyard, which I also refer to briefly, but no West Vineyard. Again, I’m not trying to play head games with people who live there or are familiar with the area, just creating my fictional world.

I know, as a reader, it can be hard to let fiction be fiction sometimes. On the other hand, I know readers have great imaginations, and as long as the tell themselves that fiction IS fiction, then Redimere, Maine, can exist right along with the real Franklin County.

Weekend Update: March 22-23, 2025

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Maureen Milliken (Monday), Sandra Neily (Tuesday), Kait Carson (Thursday) and Dick Cass (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Matt Cost: It is cover reveal time! A new book with a new publisher. Verging into the thriller genre. A lot of new. But, the question is–Who is Max Creed?

Max Creed is a fictional person created to bring justice to those wronged by the ultra-wealthy in a world where the law overwhelmingly favors those with money and power. He is bound only by the laws of humanity and not those of the legal system.

When Sevyn Knight hires Max Creed and his disciples to right the wrongs done to her father at the hands of billionaire playboy, Rupert Hastings, the game is afoot. Creed must enmesh himself into the world of the immoral tycoon in order to destroy him, but the temptations of sin and the allure of the pleasures of the rich and famous tease the very fabric of his being.

Aided by his business manager, John Little, the former assassin, Scarlett, the tech wizard Scads, the attorney, Marian, and the financial guru, Tucker, Creed races against time to stop Hastings from becoming all powerful as murky figures appear on the darkest edges of his fiefdom.

A breathless thrill ride that will keep your heart pounding long after the last page is turned.

MAUREEN MILLIKEN: I have two exciting announcements.

First, The Bernie O’Dea Reader’s Companion is now available. This includes 60-plus pages of previously unpublished content — basically a novella — as well as character bios, a timeline of events through the four books, artist depictions of Bernie and Pete’s houses, maps, and more.

It’s available, paperback only, through maureenmilliken.com or on Amazon.

Dying For News is now available as an audiobook, on Audible, iTunes and Amazon. the fourth book in the Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series, it’s narrated by the awesome Trudi Knoedler, who also narrated the first three books in the series.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

That writing advice you’ve read? Take it with a grain of salt.

Kate Flora: March is the month when I usually write one or two short stories along with whatever else I’m writing. The process of writing short stories is different from the way I write novels, and it reminds me of things I’ve learned about writing over the past four decades.

When I write a novel, I usually know a lot about the story before I begin. Since they’re usually crime novels, I know who my protagonist will be, who the victim is, how they were killed, some details about the crime scene that will be relevant to the story, who killed them them, why they were killed, and who else might have wanted them dead. That’s a lot, right? And it’s arrived at by some months before I start the actual writing that I call “cooking the book.” During those months I’m asking a lot of those essential questions about who my characters are and why they’re in the book. The ‘what’s this about?’ questions. The ‘why were they killed?’ questions. Much of that is done before I start to type Chapter 1.

What does that have to do with writing advice? Well, most of us read books about how to

The girl who dreamed of being a writer

write, don’t we? I have shelves of them. Some I’ve started and never read, especially those that promise to tell me how to write a best seller. Some I return to time after time, and often when I return, the books are different because I’m a different writer than I was five, ten, or thirty years ago. What they have to with my writing process, and perhaps yours, is that whatever the experts have to say about writing, you have to take that advice with an eye to your own work and your own intentions for the story. Some advice will work for you; some will not.

Sometimes, over the years, when I’m teaching writing or doing a manuscript critique, I’ll give some advice on a piece and be met with some version of ‘my last writing teacher said x, or y’ and my advice is wrong. These are often students who are looking for the answer or answers that will let them do their writing. The magic. The secret. The truth, as Sue Grafton told me years ago, is this: there is no magic and there are no shortcuts.

The champagne my husband bought when I sold my first book

I’m not sure I agree with Sue about the magic. Sometimes, when you get into the flow and the words are coming at you with lightning speed, when your characters take over the narrative and story is happening, there is magic. But to be available for that magic, you have to do the work and be in the chair. You have to be there when the magic arrives. So to my disagreeing students, and to all the students I’ve taught, I say that every writer is different and every writer’s process is different. But you will not discover your own process unless you’re actually writing.

Not writing for class. Not doing an assignment. Not following a prompt you’ve been given. But carving out the time in your life to write on a regular basis. To write long enough to learn what you care about and works for you. Are you a morning writer? Do you like to write late at night? Are you a cooker who carries the plot around with you while you do errands or someone who loves to work and rework the writing until it feels just right?

Something else I’ve learned over the years that surprises me: even when I’ve written many books, the process of writing each book can be individual. Sometimes the story will come easily and other times I describe it as writing the words on my skin, then carving off that skin and pasting it to the page. Sometimes the story will flow until the middle and suddenly become impossible to move forward. Sometimes I rush my endings. Sometimes when I’m rewriting I’ll realize that I need to muscle my chapters apart and insert another one to make the story work.

Kate shares a moment with Harlan Coben

Short stories are different still. Usually when I write a short story, I just sit down and write the first draft in one or two sittings. Then, as though I am making bread, I let it rise, and punch it down, and knead it, and let it rise and knead it again. I will lie awake at night thinking about how I’ve failed to adequately develop the character and so the story can’t flow. Sometimes I can’t find the character’s voice and world view and understand why the story is about them until the second or third try. Sometimes, as these are crime stories, I’ve failed to leave the precursor clues early in the story that will make the ending both plausible and a surprise.

So, dear readers, what is your process? Do you have favorite writing books?

How It All Began, Part One

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today taking a long leap back into my past. Some of my bios have included the information that my earliest writing was in the form of a newspaper, The Dolland Times. Yes, I wrote it for the many dolls I owned as a result of being a spoiled only child and only/youngest grandchild. But to be honest, I was creating fictional stories in my head long before I ever set words down on paper.

I don’t know exactly how old I was when I started the long-running saga I’m about to share, but well before I passed my eleventh birthday, I had developed the habit of continuing the story every night after I was tucked into bed. At that point, I did write some of it down, and being something of a hoarder, I still have those few pages.

I’m putting up the scans of the first few. If you’re my age, some of the names will sound vaguely familiar. That’s because I modeled most of my characters on those in TV shows I watched with my parents in the 1950s. Rocky and Vena come from Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Penny and Clipper from Sky King, Perry and Della from Perry Mason, and so on. And, believe it or not, “King Mel” was based on Mel Tormé, who hosted a variety show back then. Kay, possibly Kay Ballard, Tony (no idea who she might have been), and her three brothers (ditto) were based on real people who appeared on his show. I was an equal opportunity borrower. Can you identify the origins of some of the other characters I borrowed? If so, feel free to share in the comments. I remember most of them, but the identities of other inspirations have vanished into the mists of time.

 

The two characters named Kathy, obviously, were based on myself. Since eleven-year-olds have no modesty, I described the adult version, Queen Kathy, this way: “Queen Kathy was kind and generous, but most certainly, she was also the most beautiful damsel that ever lived. She had brown hair, blue eyes, light skin and ruby lips. She was always dressed in beautiful clothes and always wore her hair in a neat bun.”

The primary settings, castles, towers, and magic aside, were the homes of my two sets of grandparents. Funny thing about that. I’ve used both places, more than once, in my novels. And I still have the ceramic “skull” that featured in a number of the nightly adventures.

New episodes of The Secret Dream continued for some years after I wrote those few pages in 1958. I’m not sure when it came to an end, although I suspect my dreams switched to a different genre around about the time I hit puberty, but I’ve never stopped spinning stories, and my dreams still tend to be of the vivid (and convoluted) variety. What can I say? A writer takes inspiration anywhere she can find it.

Next month, in Part Two, I’ll tell you about my earliest attempt at writing biography. Meanwhile, I’d love it if readers would share stories of their early writing efforts in the comments section.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

 

The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed by Matt Cost

They tell us, sir, to not chase trends in the writing business. But often something pops my writing impulses from the headlines, and I engage. I dig in. I explore and research and learn. And then the words appear on the screen, the printer spits them out, and we have the makings of a book.

Two years ago, I wrote The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed about a billionaire playboy who has political aspirations, perhaps inclined in that direction from powerful forces beyond his knowledge. It publishes in April and is the beginning of a new series with a new publisher.

  Max Creed is a fictional person created to bring justice to those wronged by the ultra-wealthy in a world where the law overwhelmingly favors those with money and power. He is bound only by the laws of humanity and not those of the legal system.

When Sevyn Knight hires Max Creed and his disciples to right the wrongs done to her father at the hands of billionaire playboy, Rupert Hastings, the game is afoot. Creed must enmesh himself into the world of the immoral tycoon in order to destroy him, but the temptations of sin and the allure of the pleasures of the rich and famous tease the very fabric of his being.

Aided by his business manager, John Little, the former assassin, Scarlett, the tech wizard Scads, the attorney, Marian, and the financial guru, Tucker, Creed races against time to stop Hastings from becoming all powerful as murky figures appear on the darkest edges of his fiefdom.

The original Merry Men

A breathless thrill ride that will keep your heart pounding long after the last page is turned.

The brilliant and talented Jule Selbo on The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed:

“The author weaves a slippery spiderweb of clues and connections for Creed as he plays an assumed role within a vast and dangerous criminal empire. Readers will root for Creed, for he refuses to accept that there is one set of laws for the ordinary people and another set for the ultra-rich scions of industry. The battle is on and it’s good one – the pace and action in this book is intense. By the final pages, readers will be eagerly awaiting the next in the series.”

The fact of the matter is that it takes time from typing the first sentence of a new book to publication date. I write diligently and will finish the first draft of a book in four months, but then take a couple of months to edit. I recently submitted a new book, 1955, the start of another series, to Level Best Books. It took five months to get accepted, even though I am an established author with them now. I have been told it might sneak into publication at the end of 2026, or maybe 2027.

The timeline on this is four months to write, two months to edit, five months to get accepted, and twenty-four months to publication. All in all, from the beginning of the book to its publication date is three years (give or take a month). This series has less complications due to the length of time because it is a historical fiction PI mystery set in 1955. There are not many changes to the events of seventy years ago, unlike writing contemporary thrillers.

In The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed, Max Creed and his band of not so merry people will fight a crusade to fight evil and worse from seizing power in a world determined by the super wealthy. The beauty of Max is that he is not forced to play by any set of rules. He will give the justice system their chance to set things right, but if they prove incapable, he will take matters into his own hands.

Sometimes, breaking the law is the only way to achieve justice. Do you agree?

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published six books in the Mainely Mystery series, starting with Mainely Power. He has also published five books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, starting with Wolfe Trap. And finally, there are two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, starting with Velma Gone Awry. For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed is his 17th published book.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. They have been replaced in the home with four dogs. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.

Who Doesn’t Love a Good Con?

Rob Kelley here, thinking about scams and cons in fiction and real life. So I’ll start by saying a nonprofit I volunteer for was the target of a scam this last week. I’ll come back to that in a sec.

Con artists and cheaters, flim flammers and fakers, scammers and swindlers. No clearer sign of the popularity of trickery in our lives than the huge number of words to describe shams and skullduggery (OK, I’ll stop!). Our earliest stories include trickery: Odysseus, Loki, Raven, and, of course, the serpent in the garden. Something about lying is at the core of our relationships with language and with each other. And, also true, many of us lie for fun and profit–it is, after all, an alternate definition for fiction.

Maybe that’s why we love a good con. Who doesn’t come to admire Thomas Ripley even though he’s a pathological liar? We find ourselves actually rooting for him as the protagonist, worried he’ll get caught, relieved each time he gets to continue his murderous, stolen life as Dickie Greenleaf.

And we root for poor, sad sack Nick Dunne, with his disappointing life and inexplicably missing wife. But after we meet Amy halfway through the book, we are surprised and disrupted, unhappy with her deception, then a little more forgiving when we understand Nick’s casual betrayal, then supportive in her desire for revenge, then maybe somewhere in the middle in her final power play.

But the point is, we love cons because we love the ride.

Two weeks ago a small nonprofit I work with was contacted by a potential donor getting our mailing address details for a substantial donation. We provided that and asked where they had heard about our work, which they never answered. Instead, when the check was mailed–USPS with tracking–the donor asked for a deposit receipt. That was a new one for us, since most donors only ask for an acknowledgement. But it was a decent sized check, so we figured whatever made the donor comfortable.

Unfortunately our administrator was out on vacation that week, so it took a few days to get a staff member to the mail to pick up the check. The donor was very anxious, frustrated that we hadn’t deposited it.

My Spidey sense was tingling by this point. The organization the check was from had an unusual name, but we figured it might be a family business. The bank it was drawn on was real, an internet bank in the South. The check was for just shy of double the originally committed donation figure, but we figured they just committed more funds, so our bookkeeper deposited the check, and we sent along the deposit receipt and acknowledgement.

I joked with our bookkeeper that this felt like some kind of Nigerian Prince Scam. She wasn’t sure, and, frankly neither was I. Until, that is, the next email arrived.

Oh, goodness, our donor said, our secretary wrote the check for too much and we are traveling and need that money to pay a vendor. Can you please wire the excess funds back to us, or transfer it via PayPal?

Two seconds of searching revealed the con: The Overpayment Scam. (I confess I was disappointed this scam didn’t have a cool name like Spanish Prisoner, Pig in a Poke, Melon Drop, Badger Game, Pigeon Drop, Spear phishing, or my favorite: Pig Butchering. Again, so much language play!)

According to the Federal Trade Commission, a scammer will “‘accidentally’ send a check for too much, and ask you to refund the balance. But that’s a scam . . . These scams work because fake checks generally look just like real checks, even to bank employees. They are often printed with the names and addresses of legitimate financial institutions.” And “it can take weeks for a bank to figure out that the check is a fake.” In the meantime you’ve refunded the overpayment and you’re out that money when the scammer has moved on.

I made myself a pledge. I would not lie to this scammer, just keep them engaged as long as I could. I took such glee from this whole game that at one point I was actually rubbing my hands together like a bad Bond villain or Mr. Burns from the Simpsons.

We’d sent the deposit slip to the scammer last Wednesday, and by Friday the scammer was beside himself. He asked me to send it via Zelle or Venmo (we said we didn’t have that set up on our business account) and that our administrator was out through the end of the week (also true). By Friday we finally got the scammer to give wiring instructions, and by that point we had notified our nonprofit’s bank that the check was probably bogus, and the bank the check was fraudulently drawn on, and the bank the wire was supposed to go to, that they were part of a scam.

The scammer kept emailing asking if the wire was going out, and I said I was talking to the bank (I was, indeed, talking to the bank against which the fake check was written at that very moment). On Monday when no wire had shown up the scammer frantically begged us to wire the money immediately for same day execution, and I had to tell them that the check had not been accepted.

It was probably going a little too far to ask him for a replacement check for the original donation account, but I did it anyway.

I’m hardly the first person who has taken glee from messing with scammers, with Exhibit A being the scam revenge granny from the UK company Virgin Media/O2. This particular AI chatbot is targeted at computer support scams and is programmed to waste as much scammer time as possible.

Click on the image to watch a short video demo, dear.

No surprise, the revelation to our scammer that we were on to the fake check ended our correspondence. And while I had some fun, I am aware that this scammer, like thousands worldwide might, have very well have been part of a “scam farm,” the scope and scale of which have multiplied all over the globe, with trafficked people forced to run online and telephone scams in horrific conditions and against their will.

I guess for me it just brought home the truisms that underlie fiction, and especially crime fiction. We make up stories with violence and mayhem to show our characters, our people, righting wrongs, or at least exposing them. We don’t seek to cheat our readers, but we’re not unhappy to string them along, distract them with a red herring, then surprise them with a quick turn or a surprise reveal that brings justice, or knowledge, or closure.

I mean, who doesn’t love a good con?