Lea Wait's Blog, page 124

Revenge of the trees

            Early last spring four men and a woman arrived at the house across the road from us in a beat-up pickup and a larger flatbed truck that had also seen better days.  Within minutes they fired up chainsaws and began felling large pine trees on the western edge of my neighbor’s property, 45 or 50 feet away from his house.  My wife and I watched (and listened; the sound of multiple chainsaws is terrifying) in horror as one after the other beautiful, healthy tree went down. 

[image error]Trees before the carnage

            I don’t have neighborly relations with this neighbor (I’ll call him J, though the chances he reads this blog are zero) on whose land the carnage was occurring.  Over the years J and his children appeared on winter weekends to ski at Sunday River, and we exchanged words and waves but rarely really spoke.  The sign of his presence was two bright outdoor spotlights that shone directly across the road into our bedroom window.  The lights went on at midnight Friday when J arrived and remained on until he left on Sunday afternoon.  When I once initiated a rare conversation to ask if the spotlights could be turned off overnight, J suggested I should get blinds for our bedroom windows.  What fear motivated this light display—a wandering bear or moose?  I never found out.  During those winter visitations, the house belonged to J’s father, a genial person who rarely used it.  When he died last winter, J inherited it.

            Although I had a phone number in Massachusetts for the father, I didn’t have any contact information for J, so when the tree cutting began I did a Bing search and found the number for his business.  I called to ask what was happening across the road.  He said that before his father died he made J promise to cut down several trees that the father feared might fall on the house.  And so J engaged these folks to carry out his father’s wishes.  “Several trees” were not what the loggers (a description they really didn’t warrant) had in mind.  Over three days they felled 17 trees, opening a wide vista that changed the character of our neighborhood.  I’m not an arborist, but one of the state’s most respected ones lives around the road, and he shook his head when he saw what had happened.  He attributed it to the high price of pulp wood and speculated that my neighbor was probably getting the work done for free in return for allowing the loggers to sell the wood—hence their hunger to take far more than a few. To the expert eyes of the arborist, the trees had seemed healthy and no threat to the house.

[image error]Post carnage

            Over the summer we tried to adapt to the new scene across the road, one consequence of which was that the shade the former woods offered our deck was lost and I had to buy and erect a large umbrella to make it possible for us to sit on the deck on sunny days. We mourned the loss of the trees and all they provided in shade and simple beauty.  Then two weeks ago the trees got their revenge.  Fifty-mile gusts that afternoon brought down a large limb from a tree near the neighbor’s house, on the other side from where the major damage had been done, but a tree that the loggers had trimmed—inadequately, as it turned out.  The branch crashed across the road, blocking it, and bringing down the electric line to the neighbor’s house. I phoned CMP to report the problem and then phoned J.  He seemed nonplussed. 

[image error]Revenge of the trees, with downed electric line in background

            That evening CMP arrived to saw and remove the branch, opening the road to local traffic.  The CMP man came to my house to report that he was unable to reconnect the electric line because the harness at the house was destroyed and would have to be repaired by an electrician before power could be restored.  He asked if I would pass that word to the owner.  I did so the next morning, and J was again nonplussed.  He said the electrician they had used in the past had retired, but he didn’t ask me to recommend anyone in the area.  I did tell him that I had myself tried for two weeks to locate an electrician to do a small job for me and that the busy construction scene in our area would make it hard to find someone.

            That was two weeks ago, and the electric line is still down.  I assume my neighbor has electric heat. The recent spell of warm weather came as a lucky break for him.  But normal November temperatures have returned.  I have no idea what my neighbor is going to do.  I know I should be sympathetic—and, after all, it could have happened to me if the branch had been four or five feet longer and thus taken down my power line.  But I have to confess that I’m experiencing some unattractive pleasure in seeing what happened.  And, at least for now, it’s nice not to have those glaring spotlights.  Am I wrong to feel this way?  Well, it wasn’t me but the trees that took their revenge.  I cheer them on. 

Book Research Challenges

Book research can mean travel or contacting primary sources or searching online or a combination. Whatever form it takes, I find research always interesting and often fascinating. I have to hold myself back from oversharing in my novels.

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For Primal Obsession the bulk of my research was hands on. As public-school teachers, my husband and I used to leave our coastal Maine home on the long Columbus Day weekend (yes, then it was Columbus Day). We rented a cabin somewhere new to us in northern or western Maine, a scenic area with hiking possibilities. But we never went into what folks call the “real Maine,” the wilderness.

When the opportunity arose for a six-day guided canoe expedition on the West Branch of the Penobscot River, we took it. The trip offered outdoor education credits for teacher recertification offering wilderness skills. It didn’t matter that we were classroom teachers, not even physical education teachers.

Once the trip was booked, I started pondering how to use it in a book. Here’s a short description of the romantic suspense novel’s plot. On a wilderness canoe expedition of six people, Annie, an investigative reporter, and Sam, the Maine Guide leading the outing, play cat and mouse with a serial killer. Like me, Annie is a novice in the woods, but she signs up for the trip partly to fulfill a promise to her murdered friend and partly to try to understand the killer. Little does she know… When the others on our expedition learned I was an author plotting that storyline, they were happy to make suggestions, some of which I used in the book.

[image error]We had a canoe, built by my husband, but my paddling skills were limited.                             I learned to paddle different strokes and to put my shoulders didn’t suffer. We paddled eleven to 13 miles a day, for a total of 44 miles. I learned how to watch for hidden rocks when paddling rapids. Twice, we traveled rapids, not major ones, but definitely challenging to this novice. I have no photos of that, for obvious reasons. But here we are at the start of the tip.

We paddled every day and camped overnight in small tents at sites designated by the state that had outhouses, which we called the lounge, close by in the woods. In Primal Obsession, the campers took turns digging their own lounges. But like in my book, we took turns gathering firewood and preparing the dinners brought in coolers, and of course with the clean-up afterward. Over our campfires,  we barbecued chicken and baked an apple pie in a Dutch oven.

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The group at our campsite

Other than paddling rapids, the biggest challenge for us all was “bushwhacking.” That’s our Maine Guide’s term for orienteering, which is using a compass to reach a particular spot on a map. On our first attempt at bushwhacking, I learned exactly why it’s called that.

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Susan keeping notes in a journal

The six of us were divided into two teams. One team, consisting of our guide, my husband, and me, had to use our compasses to traverse a small tree-covered island and come out at a specific location on the other side. The other team in one canoe had to paddle around the island and meet us there.

The wind came up, and the paddlers could not make it around. Blowdowns and boulders blocked us, so what was to be an hour’s trek took three hours, and we never made it to our designated spot. Finally, we were picked up by the park ranger’s boat. He’d already towed the others to our campsite. That rescue proved to me the saying, “Maine is a small town.” The ranger turned out to be a young man I’d taught in junior high. Yup. The experience of that trip was invaluable in making my story come alive. I also used our bushwhack and paddling rapids experiences.

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View downriver, W Branch of Penobscot River

Later, while writing Primal Obsession, I conducted other, less adventurous research. While Annie and Sam are deep in the wilderness of northern Maine, her brother Justin, a state police detective, is trying to solve the serial killer case. Questions about police procedure and jurisdiction meant a phone call. That was to the Maine State Police public information officer, Stephen McCausland. He was extremely helpful with lots of information and advice.

Two decades later I called again with questions related to the second book in the Obsession set, Hidden Obsession. To my amazement, he remembered me and that call, and we chatted amiably for a few minutes. Steve has since retired, and I will miss his voice announcing progress on cases in the media. It won’t be the same if I ever call again.

I never know all the research I might have to do when I begin a new book, whatever it is will fascinate me. And challenge me.

Why You’ve Hardly Aged at All

Kate Flora: I began writing seriously when my second son was born. That was when I[image error] quit my job to stay home with the boys and immediately panicked. I’d always worked. Now what was I going to do? I thought, optimistically, that this would be the perfect time to dive into my life-long dream of writing.

In anticipation of my new venture, I had bought a computer and typed “Chapter One,” thinking I would work while the boys slept. Naps, though, were unpredictable. The older one never slept. The younger one became an escape artist as soon as he could walk. I ended up following my mother’s example–getting up early to write while the rest of the family slumbered. Then I found a wonderful daycare situation. The baby turned one. At the end of that first year, I typed “The End” on my first attempt at a mystery, A Matter of the Will, a story that channeled some of my law school classes and adventures. I put it in a drawer.

I ended up spending ten years in the unpublished writers corner, with five books in the drawer, before getting an agent and finding a publisher who said “Yes” to my Thea Kozak series.

[image error]Many writers of series mysteries experience the same thing. Our books go on for decades while we age appropriately and our characters barely age at all. Along the way, the culture changes. Methods of communication change. Popular music changes. The challenges of private school education and the population schools deal with change. I began to rely on my nieces and daughters-in-law for insights into what Thea’s life would be. Sending out emails asking what music my characters would listen to. It was no longer close to the life I was living when Thea was “born.”

Coming into book ten in the series, Death Comes Knocking, I faced dealing with a situation I had created, and one which I’ve always advised writers contemplating a series to avoid: Thea and Andre are expecting a baby. Coming from a job in human services where I dealt with parental neglect, I used to joke that despite his brilliance, writer James Lee Burke would have had Robicheaux’s fictional child taken into state custody because of his child care practices.

In the new book, I deal with how Thea handles the challenges of a demanding job and a protective husband while she’s pregnant. She also has to learn to deal with the conflict between a self that has always been the protector of the weak and a self made newly cautious because of her need to protect her unborn baby. Thea is a woman used to tangling with bad guys, who describes herself as “Thea the Human Tow Truck,” someone who finds people broken down on the highway of life and has to stop and rescue them. Now that need to be a rescuer must be tempered by caution, by regular reminders to herself that she isn’t on her own anymore.

Along the way, I had to learn how expectant mothers dress these days. Definitely not in the smocks and tent dresses and ugly elastic waist pants I used to wear. I laughed aloud when I had to send a very pregnant Thea into an airplane rest room. I was reminded how odd it was to be unable to see my feet.

I am sure that over the years, I’ve many times told writers contemplating a series to avoid entangling their characters in marriage and children. They complicate the plot too much and hamper the character’s ability to respond to events and investigate no matter the day or the hour or how dangerous things seem.

Now, in the next book, Thea (and I) will face our own childcare challenges. Her life will be irrevocably changed and yet helping the vulnerable is who she is. Thea and I set out on her journey more than a quarter of a century ago. Now, we will embark on a new journey, she little aged and I, for better or worse, that much older. Now, as her creator, I will have to dive into baby gear and child rearing practices and determine what the balance between work and family will be.

Ever since Andre and Thea contemplated having children, they’ve had the baby’s names selected: Mason, Oliver or Claudine. Those names got abbreviated to MOC, or, as people hear it, Mock. In the next book, the baby will finally be born and my characters and I will learn whether is is a boy or a girl and what its name will be. But I expect, since they’ve called it MOC for so long, the baby, whatever its sex, will be Mock.

Rewriting My Family History

[image error]Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, again writing as Kathy. One of the most important people in my life when I was little was Grandma Coburg. She died when I was only ten, but even at that age I knew how important her home (affectionately called “the farm” by everyone in the family) was to her. We once took her and my grandfather house-hunting. I saw how traumatic that was for her, but I didn’t understand why until much later. Neither did I quite get why she was “Grandma” to me but my mother called her “Aunt Katie.”

[image error]In a nutshell, my mother’s father married two sisters. The first died giving birth to my mother in 1910. More than twenty years passed before the second marriage took place. It would have happened much sooner except for one thing—those two sisters had a formidable mother, and she blamed my grandfather for the death of her favorite daughter. It was only a couple of years ago, when I was looking at random documents on Ancestry.com, that I understood a bit more about why that was. It seems that first marriage didn’t take place until a few months before my mother’s birth. And, of course, Grampa Coburg was a trainman, gone a lot of the time working for the O& W Railroad.

[image error]Back when Mom was still alive and I was writing children’s books, I asked her a lot of questions about growing up on the farm and her . . . let’s say quirky . . . family. She was raised by her grandparents and Aunt Katie in a farm/boardinghouse in the days when the Sullivan County Catskill region of New York State was just beginning to be known as the Borscht Belt. During every summer Season, every room in the house, and in the “addition” built on for that purpose, was rented out to people from New York City. Mom, her cousins, grandmother, and aunts moved into the attic; the uncles and her father, when he was there, bunked in the barn, and her grandfather put a mattress on top of the piano in the big dining room and slept there at night.

[image error]I had lots of real family stories to go on when I set out to write what was originally called Boarding House Reach, but what I really wanted was to rewrite history and give the couple I knew as my grandparents a much easier time of it. The story went through lots of versions over the years. One critique thought its biggest flaw was having too many adult characters, but that was kind of the point. I wanted my young heroine, age twelve in 1922, to be both rebel and mediator when it came to the members of her family. And also, like my mother, and like me, for that matter, she had to be an only child used to getting her own way except when it mattered most.

[image error]I took me more than thirty years to get this story right. In any year but this one, I might not have done any more than that, but 2020 lent itself to making a bucket list, and getting this story out into the world was on it. I decided to self-publish and it is now available as both an e-book and a print-on-demand paperback. Along the way, my twelve-year-old protagonist’s name changed to Katie (her aunt became Mattie) and Katie’s Way was born.

Memory, family history, and imagination all played a part in creating Katie’s Way. You can read about some of the true stuff here but I hope that those of you who have children or grandchildren aged 8-12, or young friends in that age group, will also consider that my fictional version of events would make a great Christmas present. Links to buy this book and my other books for young readers can be found here

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Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-three books traditionally published and has self published several children’s books. 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. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Currently she writes the contemporary “Deadly Edits” series (A Fatal Fiction) as Kaitlyn. As Kathy, her most recent book is a standalone historical mystery, The Finder of Lost Things. She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com. A third, at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women, is the gateway to over 2300 mini-biographies of sixteenth-century Englishwomen.

 

Weekend Update: November 14-15, 2020

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Susan Vaughan (Thursday) and William Andrews (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. We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Who Knew? Of Salamanders and Their Service. Well. All Services.

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Sandra Neily here: this article was first published in my 2005 “Valuing Nature” column in the Moosehead Messenger. We’re all likely to have a hibernating winter ahead of us. Like salamanders.  Sometime in the spring we can crawl out to be social again. Like salamanders. Time now to think ahead when we can be outside with kids or grandkids, turning over logs to find and visit salamanders. (A guaranteed crowd pleaser!)[image error]

Under the soil a large army of wiggly, illusive engineers, soil scientists, and food service workers are helping to create billions of dollars of economic value. If we could count each of them working in a factory, we could value them as part of our economy. Just how are we to value these tiny, essential and moist forest workers who add so much value to our lives? Salamanders aerate the soil and support essential biological processes that enhance soil productivity and they are excellent “protein concentrators.” Without beaks, feathers, or scales, every bite of a salamander is an efficient nutritional delivery system for other animals.

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Spotted Salamander

Natural ecosystems (like forests) perform fundamental life-support services upon which we depend.  Just like the life support team in a trauma center, these services give us life itself and without them, we would most certainly perish. We value forests for timber and recreation but they provide a myriad of other services that clean our air, filter our water, provide over 50% of new medicine development, and regulate our climate. While many people “get” this concept they are unprepared for what comes next.  The economics of supporting a healthy ecosystem “service” or replacing a degraded one has now become an essential calculation and the question of how we develop without losses or who pays for a loss will become even more controversial.

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Red Spotted Newt

Salamanders are part of a vast and shadowy economy referred to as “ecosystem services.” Ecosystem services are the processes by which the environment produces resources that we often take for granted: clean water, habitat for fisheries, or pollination of native and agricultural plants.

(In Maine wild honey bees and their pollination services help support a $75 million blueberry industry, yet bee populations are threatened by pollution and pesticides.)

Sometimes it’s easier to understand an ecosystem service and its value if we have to think about paying to replace it once it is damaged and gone. When New York City’s water supply fell below accepted standards, the price tag for building an artificial filtration plant was $6-$8 billion dollars, a high price for what had been “free” before.  The city decided to spend $660 million to restore and protect the watershed (the water source.)  These funds purchased land, halted inappropriate development and compensated landowners who improved septic systems.

This “who pays” question does lead to other some possibly sticky issues in Maine.  If harvesting so affected deer wintering areas in Washington County that local income from deer hunting was seriously reduced, who should pay the correct price for restoring that particular ecosystem service?  If degraded air quality from ancient coal burning plants in the Midwest brings Maine significant costs from illness as well as lost productivity, who pays to replace the values of the service of clean air?   If extensive development on shorelines degrades water quality and affects the economic value of publicly owned resources valuable for tourism (rivers, lakes, wildlife), who compensates future generations for that loss?

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salamander eggs in a vernal pool

As New York’s challenge reminds us, a penny spent on prevention is our wisest course.  Preventing the loss or degradation of essential ecosystem services is just a smarter, cheaper route to travel.  For the salamanders that means encouraging landowners to know amphibian breeding routes, leave shade trees to cover roads on these routes, and buffer vernal pools necessary for creating the next generation of “soil scientists.”

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a Maine vernal pool

In return, for free, we all receive the ecosystem benefits of creatures who are an important part of forest health.

The journal “Nature” has this message of all of us: “The economies of the Earth would grind to a halt without the services of ecological life support systems, so in one sense their total value to the economy is infinite.”  A recent report attempting to calculate the global value of ecosystem services places their worth at somewhere between $16-$54 trillion dollars (or a mean of $33 trillion). The sum total of the world’s gross natural product from all countries is $18 trillion. [image error]That’s a lot of salamanders.

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Slow down in the spring. The amphibians are seeking romance in vernal pools, crossing from upland areas down to vernal pools.

Check out this great 202o NY Times article on a Maine couple saving salamanders.

And this one from my very good friend and salamander road warrior, Dr. Sally Stockwell.

 

Sandy’s novel “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” was a finalist in the Maine Literary Awards, a recipient of a Mystery Writers of America national award and a national finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest.. Her second Mystery in Maine novel, “Deadly Turn” is now in Sherman’s Books and on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. She lives in the Maine woods and says she’d rather be “fly fishing, skiing remote trails, paddling near loons, or just generally out there.” Find more info on her website .

The Arsenal

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A year ago last November I had cataract surgery for both eyes. I stopped driving a couple of months before that—I couldn’t read street signs. Really, I couldn’t read books and magazines even with my progressive lenses, and watching television was impossible no matter where I sat or angled my head. And all lights had a huge halo around them.

Cataract surgery is the one of the safest, most commonly performed procedures, but that didn’t make me want to go through it, LOL. I’ve been wearing glasses since the fourth grade, with a brief contact lens era in my thirties. I used to be known for my big brown eyes, and in my heyday I wore eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara to emphasize them. Even though I’ve abandoned such gilding of the aging lily, the thought of someone, even a qualified eye surgeon, messing with my eyes was scary.

I’m a very visual person, a lover of art museums and a dabbler in art myself, not to mention I spend all day in front of a computer screen trying to kill people. I don’t mind being a bit hard of hearing; a lot of life can be aurally ignored with no harmful effects, and in fact can be a blessing. But sight is my most precious sense.

I’m happy to report all went well. I can see things in the distance for the first time in decades, but I do have trouble with close vision, even with new progressives. (At the time of the surgery, I could have opted for additional artificial lenses to be inserted at additional expense, but I didn’t.) So I now have an arsenal for the fine print. Both my desktop and my Kindle’s fonts are magically enlarged by the press of a button. My lit magnifying glass makes me feel like a 21st century Lady Sherlock, and I own a necklace that’s as useful as it is pretty. Two mirrors are on call in case I ever want to swipe on some mascara again. As I have an aversion to resembling Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, that is unlikely.

However, magazines remain a problem. I’ve let a couple of subscriptions lapse, because I simply can’t read the articles comfortably. Country Life is still great for my research—I’ve gone full circle from childhood picture books to adult pictorial magazines.

And books? The old librarian in me is appalled, but I totally depend on my reading device since I can jack up the font. Heresy. A student once told me “Books are obsolete.” I wanted to jump over the circulation desk and strangle him, but now I almost see his point. See. Get it?

Don’t worry—I still own a zillion physical books, and even more are in my Kindle Library. What’s your preferred method of reading? Can you part with books once you’ve finished them, or are you a re-reader? Do you have a To-Be-Read pile that could topple over and crush you?

Veteran’s Day versus Memorial Day

Vaughn Hardacker here: There are two holidays that always seem to confuse a lot of people. One is Veterans Day (for many years known as Armistice Day) and Memorial Day while both honor our military veterans. They are not the same.

Veterans Day
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Vaughn Hardacker, a young 20 years old Marine in Vietnam 1968

We celebrate it every year, but how did Veterans Day come into existence? It dates back to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. While this day will always be known as the official end of World War I, also known as The Great War, it was at the eleventh hour of the eleventh hour of November 1918 (it is for this reason the holiday is always celebrated on the 11th regardless of which day of the week it falls on), that the war truly came to an end when the armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities between German and the Allied Nations, went into effect. The following November in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson became known as the president who celebrated the first commemoration of Armistice Day. The name later changed following the Second World War and Korean War in November 1938 when it became the legal Federal Holiday we know and honor today, Veterans Day, which is dedicated to American veterans of all the wars.

Memorial Day
People have honored the sacrifices of soldiers for as long as there have been wars, Memorial Day as we know it in the United States got its start during the American Civil War. As the conflict wound down, people across the North and South tried to honor fallen soldiers.

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Front of Vaughn L. Hardacker’s Purple Heart (Posthumous) awarded August 15, 1944

One such ceremony was held on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina. Local all-black churches led a gathering of roughly ten thousand people, many of whom were former slaves,  in properly reburying Union soldiers and holding a ceremony to honor their sacrifice and dedicate the new cemetery. The event included speeches, the laying of wreaths and crosses, drills performed by Union soldiers and even picnicking. However, it’s unclear if the event influenced any other such ceremonies in the country, so it remains ambiguous if it should actually be considered the first Memorial Day.The Birthplace(s) of Memorial Day. There are numerous places in the country that claim to have first celebrated Memorial Day a recurring holiday rather than a one-off event. Boalsburg, Pennsylvania claims that an 1864 gathering of women to mourn the deaths of soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg makes it the founder of the holiday, while Carbondale, Illinois claims two markers in its cemeteries as well as a parade led by Major General John A. Logan (more on him in a moment) as proof that it held the first annual celebration. There’s even a Columbus, Georgia and Columbus, Mississippi with competing claims. While Waterloo,

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Reverse side. Vaughn L. Hardacker. KIA France August 15, 1944

New York eventually won federal recognition because of evidence that its celebrations involved the full closure of the town, it has well over 20 rivals for the title, and all of them — even Waterloo — rely on evidence that is at least somewhat disputed. There’s only one event that unambiguously served as a forerunner to Memorial Day.

A few years back there was a popular C&W song entitled Some Gave All and it too has been cause for confusion. The widely used phrase “All gave some, Some gave all.” is mostly related to the members of the United States military who were wounded or killed in action. You will probably hear it more often around Memorial Day every year, and its not for the Veterans Day. A lot of Americans get this confused, and we’ll be honest — it can be a little annoying to all of the living veterans out there.

Memorial Day is a time to remember those who gave their lives for our country, particularly in battle or from wounds they suffered in battle. Veterans Day honors all of those who have served the country in war or peace — dead or alive — although it’s largely intended to thank living veterans for their sacrifices.

The above pictures are used to illustrate my point. In the top photo I was a twenty-year-old Marine Corporal serving in Vietnam. The lower photos are of the purple heart medal awarded to my uncle, Vaughn L. Hardacker, a nineteen-year-old sergeant in the U. S. Army who was killed in action on August 15, 1944 (days short of his 20th birthday). I as a veteran, was willing to give . . . my uncle (and namesake) gave all (I possess this medal and every time I look at it I wonder how much more he should have given so that they could spell his last name correctly).

I have finally gotten to the point where I can accept someone saying, “Thank you for your service.” without becoming upset (a subject I dealt with in a blog a few years ago) and I make sure that I always remember that my uncle would have liked to be told that very thing … after all, he gave all. So always remember, it isn’t the politician who has given us the right to either like, or dislike the direction we perceive our nation taking. It was those who gave all that paid for our freedom. I for one was willing to put my life on the line so that we all have the freedom to believe what we want without being belittled and viewed as being of less intellect and of less worth by those who don’t like our politics or our religious beliefs–especially from those who were unwilling to put their lives on the line for freedom. I am speaking to all those people who have made a living as career politicians making large salaries (which most of them–regardless of party–do absolutely nothing to earn) and granting themselves benefits for life, not to mention protection from prosecution for doing things you or I would go to prison for–case in point if we lie to Congress we can be sent to prison. However, a congressman or woman, cannot be prosecuted for blatantly lying to Congress to push their own agenda. Remember, unlike many of our elected officials, our founding fathers were true public servants. The business of government was done during the winter because the rest of the year they had to remain at home to raise their crops and support their families. So, the next time you see a veteran, either successful in life, or standing beside the road holding a sign asking for help, remember. He or she was willing to give all.

The purpose of this rant is not to belittle or attack anyone, but more to make us think about how our veterans, both alive and those have passed on leaving their families emotionally and financially devastated must feel when they see the so-called dead-locked congress and are supposed to be happy when a politician passes a two or three percent pay increase while giving themselves a thirty percent or higher raise.

 

 

Domestic Thrillers

The recent popularity of domestic thrillers in crime fiction begs the question: what exactly is a domestic thriller? More often than not it involves a crime that in some way touches upon a fragile relationship, usually a troubled marriage. The setting is typically the home or possibly the office, and the main character feels somehow trapped in a situation where there seems to be no escape. Oh yes, and a crime is always involved.

Once I discovered the joys of reading a good domestic thriller I was hooked on the genre. When reading one I feel like I’m a fly on the wall watching from behind the scenes, understanding the true dynamics of a couple’s relationship. In fact I liked reading domestic thrillers so much that I decided to write one. This after five horror novels, a book of short stories, a kidnapping mystery and a hardbitten crime novel set in Portland.

My first exposure to a real life domestic thriller happened almost twenty-eight years ago. On October 23rd, 1989, an unusual crime happened in Boston. Reports came in that a black man had forced his way into a couple’s car, robbed them, and then shot the two of them before fleeing on foot. This brutal, senseless crime caused racial tensions to escalate in the city, especially since Charles Stuart’s wife and unborn child ended up dying in the attack. As he lay in the hospital with a gunshot wound to his abdomen, Charles recounted to the police his version of events.

But as police began to dig deeper, Stuart’s lies began to unravel. His brother, Matthew, went to the police and admitted his role in helping Charles pull of this despicable crime. Matthew admitted that the two of them conspired to use the race card in order to hide the true motive for killing Carol Stuart: money!

I remember obsessively following the case in the news, each day learning new information about the murder. It was as if I was reading a riveting mystery or watching a great suspense movie. I wasn’t the only one mesmerized. The entire region seemed eager to find out who had attacked this seemingly happy couple as they returned home from child birthing classes. They made a handsome pair, too. Charles was tall and good looking, and a successful manager of a fur shop on Newbury Street. Carol was a tax attorney who had graduated from BC and was expecting her first child. This couple seemed to have everything going for them. I remember thinking: why do bad things happen to good people.

Back to Charles’ brother. After Matthews admitted his role in the commission of the crime, confirming the police’s suspicions, Charles’s story began to unravel. Of course, like in any good mystery, it was discovered that he had a whole other side to his personality. He’d tried to convince his wife to abort the child so she could keep earning her high salary. But she refused to give up the child. Because of her pregnancy, she’d gotten the upper hand in their marriage, which shifted the balance of power in her favor. Charles was planning to open his own restaurant after he killed her, using the life insurance money as a downpayment. Oh, and like most cases of domestic intrigue, he had a girlfriend on the side.

Unfortunately, Charles Stuart never got the justice he deserved. As soon as he found out his brother had confessed to the police, he drove to the Tobin Bridge, parked his car alongside the rail, and jumped to his death.

The Stuart case has always fascinated me as both a husband, father and a crime writer. I’d recently graduated from Northeastern when the crime happened, majoring in Criminology and Political Science. The idea that a successful husband would even think to kill his beautiful wife and unborn child seemed completely senseless to me. I wanted to understand the warped psychology of an individual who could commit such a heinous crime. I was intrigued by both the crime itself and the use of racial profiling to deceive the police. The crime itself was deeply flawed in execution, and far from complete, and yet it was brilliantly devious in the most psychopathic way. By playing on white Bostonians racial fears, Stuart sought to create the perfect murder.

The Stuart case was my first real introduction to marital bliss gone wrong, and I often still think about it. What is it about marriage that causes spouses to want to kill each, even in jest? Do you ever wonder how certain couples act in the privacy of their home, away from family and friends? Often, but not always, marital disagreements are about money. Or a secret affair. Almost everyone in a relationship experiences these problems at some time in their life. But only a few twisted individuals resort to criminal behavior to resolve the issue in their favor.

Charles Stuart happened to be one of them.

GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn was the first domestic thriller that truly captured my imagination. Flynn is a brilliant writer with amazing insights on marriage and the roles husbands and wives play in their relationships. Her character, Amy, is a wonderful literary creation and one of the most cunning and despicable villains in the genre. I couldn’t read the book fast enough. And I loved her alternating husband/wife first person POVs. GONE GIRL went on to reinvent the domestic thriller and bring it to the forefront as a new kind of mystery. The clever twists and turns astounded me, and made me realize how ripe this genre was to be explored. 

Since GONE GIRL, I’ve gone on to read dozens of books in the domestic thriller genre. Many of them good, others not so. None of them, in my opinion, matched Flynn’s cleverness, razor sharp insight and plot machinations. But they’ve all piqued my interest in one way or another, and got me thinking about the institution of marriage and the complex dynamics that define it.

So I sat down one day to write my own domestic thriller. Oh, I had wild ideas and intriguing plot points kicking around in my head. The words came our fast and furious. Many plot points changed in the editing process. The result? My agent loved it. He told me it was the kind of book he’d been looking for for quite some time. And the best part is that he sold it in a two book deal to an editor who was equally enthusiastic about the manuscript—and the genre.

Not only are domestic thrillers growing in popularity, but many agents on Twitter (#MSWL-more about this in another blog posts for those seeking agents) are actively seeking manuscripts in this genre. It seems that the reading public has an insatiable need for such fiction, and will for the foreseeable future. It’s why I took a career risk and wrote a domestic thriller, and in the process reinvented myself yet again as a writer.

I’ve been happily married for over twenty years and have two kids. The only domestic thrills I encounter these days are mundane at best, such as who will take out the trash, do the laundry or dishes. They say the best advice is write what you know, but I’ll leave that to my imagination.

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A Public Service From Your Friendly Local Mystery Writer

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I’m not a morning person, until recently tending to read well into the night, but COVID-19 has been altering that. Beth has difficulty sleeping, so she’s often up around 3 am. I don’t get up that early, but an aging body with low back pain and a temperamental bladder often has me up an hour or so later. What follows is interesting. I generally go back to bed where I enter a twilight zone. I’m not exactly asleep, nor awake, but somewhere in between. It’s there that my creativity has a cup of decaf with my memories and I remember things long forgotten. Some of them slide back into whatever brain cell they reside in, while others pace around the figurative campfire until they morph into a story idea.

 

Three days before the deadline for Unmasked: A collection of stories about masks and what lies behind them last Saturday, I was in that place and an idea popped forth. Hours before the deadline, it was written, revised, proofed and sent. It may not be selected, but I’m quite satisfied with it. Close behind it came a new look at what I thought would be a juvenile mystery novel. I started it three years ago, but set it aside as some of the plot elements weren’t playing nice. I started looking at it again in the twilight zone and realized it was the missing short story in an anthology I am calling Hardscrabble Kids. It was just about one story from being long enough to feel marketable. Now the fourteen year old whose OCD cost him a big toe will finally have a home.

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Scary things lurk in Maine cemeteries.

That brings me to today’s column. Beth and I have interesting and varied dinner conversations. She remains on Facebook, I left a couple months ago, so I get to listen to her mental squirming over what is posted there. Somehow we got on the subject of stuff that needed to be done. She’s a list maker and often has one that daunts her, me, not. I repeated something that is true, if a bit morbid; “You know, the day you die, all that stuff becomes someone else’s problem.” Surprisingly, she agreed. Anyhow, in the zone this morning, I remembered a song the Koster girls taught Kate, Sara and I to sing when we were kids, called the Worm Song. (https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=did+you+ever+think+when+the+hearse).

Since we writers do in plenty of souls, I guess in a bizarre way we’re performing a public service. That led me to start a list of the perks of being dead in no particular order.

1-No more bills.

2-No more bad hair days.

3-You’ll never have to make or change the bed.

4-Scam calls and crap mail are things of the past.

5-After the funeral (if you have one) no more visits from relatives you can’t stand.

6-Admonitions about clean underwear become meaningless.

7-Dreading the dentist is a thing of the past.

8-You’ll never have to cook or do housework again.

9-Who’s president will be immaterial.

10-No more tax returns.

11-You’ll never have to remember birthdays, what’s on the shopping list, or when the oil needs to be changed again.

12-whether the house is too hot or cold will be someone else’s problem, ditto whether the lawn needs mowing.

13-No more unexpected trips to the walk-in clinic because your cloth cutter ate part of your thumb. (Happened to Beth on Saturday)

This list could be endless, but you get the idea. What would you add to it?

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