Lea Wait's Blog, page 125

Weekend Update: November 7-8, 2020

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by John Clark (Monday), Joe Souza (Tuesday), Maggie Robinson (Thursday) and Sandra Neily (Friday).

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

On Wednesday, November 11th:

Nov11





Zoom With Vose Wednesdays @ 6pm: AUTHOR KATE FLORA AND HER MOTHER’S BOOK: The Corpse in the Compost by A. Carmen Clark

6:00pm – 7:00pm

Join Maine author Kate Flora as she shares her journey of editing and publishing her late mother’s novel “The Corpse in the Compost” by A. Carmen Clark through a draft manuscript that had been started before her death in 2005 as a follow up to her first novel, The Maine Mulch Murder, An Amy Creighton Mystery. Kate’s challenge to find her mother’s “voice” led her to make the changes she felt were necessary to finish this sequel. Flora’s mother, A. Carmen Clark is best known in the midcoast as the Home & Garden editor for The Camden Herald in the 1980s where she held that position for over twenty years. Her column, “From the Orange Mailbox” received national praise, and selections from the column were later compiled into a published book of the same name. The book received several awards and an article she wrote for Self magazine in January 1998 won an award for the best magazine article in the nation. Kate Flora is well known as a Maine Crime and Mystery writer and has published nine books. Please Click on Title of Program for Zoom Link.

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

How I Beat Writer’s Block

[image error]

Vaughn

If there is such a thing as a lazy writer, I guess it may be me. When I finally come up with a plot idea, I crank out more than 1000 words a day. However, once I finish a manuscript I usually go through a period of procrastination which sometimes goes on for months. In his book, Writer’s Block: The Cognitive Dimension (1984), Mike Rose defined it as: “a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown. This loss of ability to write and produce new work is not a result of commitment problems or the lack of writing skills.[1] The condition ranges from difficulty in coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Writer’s block is not solely measured by time passing without writing. It is measured by time passing without productivity in the task at hand.”

[image error]

Skipper & Ginger

I find that the condition is strengthened by life. I’ve always said: “Life gets in the way of living.” There is always something to take my attention away from dealing with the condition. I take the path of least resistance, the internet. I often spend hours perusing the net seeking topics that interest me, but have little if anything to do with writing. I have found something that takes me out of my self-induced funk–Skipper and Ginger. Who are these people? My Yorkies. When I want to think and get away from distractions I walk them. In Stockholm, the town has created a walking path that meanders through the woods along the Madawaska River. In this environment I find that I do some serious thinking. On several occasions I’ve had an epiphany–an idea for a plot.

I’ve always had a soft place in my heart for dogs (In fact I prefer them to kids–eventually

[image error]

Maggie

kids become teenagers and turn on you.) A dog gives you unconditional love and all they ask in return is food, water, and possibly a daily walk. There is however a down side . . . Before Skipper & Ginger, there was a five pound Maltese named Maggie. In January of 2018, Maggie was 17 years old. She had become deaf, blind, and spent all of her time lying in her bed. Jane and I made the tough decision of having her put down. Jane had gotten her as an eight-week-old puppy and for many years it was the two of them against the world. They went everywhere together–everywhere, including the bathtub, kayaking on the Androscoggin River, and riding Harley motorcycles. After Jane and I started our relationship, Jane spent two weeks in

[image error]

Maggie’s Flight to Florida

Florida. Maggie flew with her (she whined being cooped up in the carrier and Jane got permission to let her sit in the empty seat next to her. Making the decision to put her down was possibly  the hardest decision Jane ever made. (It wasn’t easy on me either . . . When I lived in Chicago my wife had our dog put down and I was in my office crying like a baby. My wife said to my daughter, “I don’t understand this, he didn’t cry when his mother died. My daughter answered: “Mom, he liked the dog.”) On January 30, 2018 Maggie left us. On January 31, 2018 Skipper joined us and in August along came Ginger.

Getting back to the topic of this blog . . . what does all this dog stuff have to do with writer’s block? When I walk the dogs I become mentally isolated from all the extraneous B. S. that we all deal with on a daily basis. As we are walking, there isn’t a time that I don’t

[image error]

Plotting the next scene in my book.

think about my late mother-in-law. When she wanted to describe someone who was being treated badly she’d say they were treated like a dog–not mine. I’d love to have their life. As we walk I find my mind roaming from subject to subject and voila my muse kicks in. To show you how this works, I’m writing this on Tuesday, November 3 and it will publish on November 6. For several weeks I’ve been wracking my brain for a topic to write about. This morning as I walked the dogs I got the inspiration to write this.

I have recently started a new novel, a follow up to my novel, Wendigo, and have hit that saggy middle. Where do I go from here? I’ll figure that out on our afternoon walk through the woods.

I’m Talking Cars Again

It has been a week, hasn’t it?  On Monday, focus was a struggle.  By Tuesday it was close to impossible. Now it’s Wednesday, and I think the wisest course is for me to revive a favorite post from the past.

Why did I choose this particular re-run?  We recently bought a Subaru, the make favored by my imaginary pal Joe Gale and many actual Mainers. So wheels have been on my mind, as has this January, 2017 post about the cars that our characters drive.

Next month I promise to come up with a fresh post. In the meantime, please make sure to tune into Crime Bake at 7 p.m. on this coming Saturday night, November 7. Here’s the registration link: https://crimebake.org/

From the MCW archives, January 4, 2017:

One of my beta readers jotted an interesting question in the margin of an early draft of my first Joe Gale book.

Does the reader really need to know what kind of car Joe drives? 

I didn’t even have to think about it. Wheels always matter, at least to me.

 

[image error]

Joe drives an aging Subaru station wagon, which says so much about him. (By the third book in the series he’s actually on his second Subbie, having totaled his first one during Cover Story.)

 

[image error]

If you’ve never owned one, you have no idea how much stuff these babies can hold.

Joe’s a loyal Subaru guy because his job as a newspaper reporter requires him to drive all over the state in good weather and bad. He carries a lot of gear, and with the back seat down, a Subaru wagon is almost as versatile as a truck. And every Subaru model is equipped with all-wheel drive, making it the all-but-official car of Maine. If Joe drove a VW, he’d be a completely different guy.

To my mind, choosing the right car is as critical as getting a character’s name right. Take Paulie Finnegan, who appears in the parts of Quick Pivot that take place in 1968.

[image error]

Paulie was not a stylish fellow. He wore lace-up brogans, wash-and-wear shirts and heavy-framed glasses when they were decidedly un-hip.  In the summer of ’68 he drove a 1963 Chevrolet Bel Air. Solid car, but hardly flashy.

By contrast, as a young banker Jay Preble drove a 1968 MGB Roadster.

[image error]

Jay Preble tooled around Riverside in one of these.

Forty some years later he tooled around in a vintage Jaguar and his golf cart was tricked out to look like a miniature Mercedes-Benz.

Was Jay a foreign car nut, or was he hiding his insecurities behind such high-tone wheels? You’ll have to read Quick Pivot to find out. 

[image error]

A related technique is to use a car to convey something about setting. Several key scenes in Quick Pivot take place on Peaks Island, where vehicular longevity matters more than style. Jimmy B. Jones—a minor character in the book—drives a rusty pickup truck with spring-sprung seats and a passenger door that can only be opened from the inside. Jimmy’s durable wheels speak volumes about the quirky folks who live on a rock in the middle of Casco Bay, including Helena Desmond, who plays a central role in the book’s plot but, alas, does not drive.

A lot of the writers I read seem to put careful thought into fictional vehicle choice.

[image error]

Can’t you picture Elder driving this Cougar?

MCW blog-mate Dick Cass uses his protagonist’s wheels to tell us about Elder Darrow’s world view. In his fine first novel Solo Act, Dick describes Elder’s car:  The Cougar’s black vinyl top was shredded, the yellow paint tinged faintly green as if it were molding.  The rocker panels were perforated with rust holes, but it ran and it was paid for.

This passage tells readers something about Boston, the city where Elder operates his jazz bar, The Esposito. Anyone who has lived in that city understands the benefit of driving a car with a few dings and dents. Hub rotaries can be a dangerous place indeed for those in shiny new cars.

[image error]

A classic Crown Vic, gone, only used models still available.

 

 

Cops like Bruce Coffin’s John Byron and Kate Flora’s Joe Burgess don’t drive Crown Vics anymore because Ford no longer makes the longtime police favorite. So Byron drives a Taurus with balky air conditioning and Burgess patrols Portland in an Explorer.

New England colleague Steve Ulfelder is a race car driver in real life, and his wonderful character Conway Sax knows how to use his big Ford Trucks (an F-150 in Purgatory Chasm, an F-250 in Wolverine Bros. Freight & Storage) to chase down bad guys in a way that is as entertaining as it is intimidating.

But no post about cars in fiction would be complete without mention of the most complete and terrifying car of all, Stephen King’s Christine, a 1958 Plymouth Fury that still haunts my dreams more than three decades after I read it.   

Dear readers, do you notice what kind of car a character drives? What do you drive, and what does it say about you?

The protagonist in my new series-in-progress, lawyer Neva Pierce, drives a 2002 Range Rover, a gas guzzling monster that was the only useful thing her father left to her when he died. But it’s paid off, so for the time being it’s the perfect ride. It looks like this:

[image error]

Neva’s inherited wheels. A behemoth that’s hard to park and gets about 15 mpg, she vows that her next car will be a hybrid.

Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a diehard Maine newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. Three books—QUICK PIVOT, COVER STORY and TRUTH BEAT—are available everywhere e-books are sold.  These days she’s hard at work a new series featuring Portland criminal defense lawyer Neva Pierce, who represents people in all kinds of trouble.

 

 

 

 

Casting Call: Finding Characters for the Book

 Kate Flora: I had the privilege, earlier this week, of doing a zoom panel for the Concord Festival of Authors on the topic of how we choose and develop characters for our books. The discussion included two Maine Crime Writer bloggers, Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson and Charlene D’Avanzo, along with another writer, Edwin Hill.

It’s always fascinating to take part in a discussion where the involved authors write different sorts of mysteries and so have different challenges in creating the protagonists for their books. Things may be far different for a cozy than for a gritty police procedural. To staff the books, authors must ask themselves what are the attributes which my character will need in order to be a credible performer of the job they’ve been assigned—whether it’s a burned out detective or a baker of gourmet dog biscuits—and to solve the mysteries that come their way.

Sometimes, as in the case of Kaitlyn’s protagonist, Mikki Lincoln, for her Deadly Edits series, the character is an older woman emerging from retirement to supplement her income. Mikki is given Kaitlyn’s childhood home to renovate, but the rest of her character, and the editing challenges she faces, are things that her author must learn.

[image error]In the case of Charlene’s Mara Tusconi, a marine biologist, she draws on her own experiences as a marine ecologist, but must also give her much younger character the skills and strengths to cope with a job that throws her up against the many challenges working as a woman scientist in a man’s field presents.

I began my writing career with what I often call a “Help Wanted” ad. My character had to be brave and strong enough to handle entanglements with bad guys. Smart enough to solve mysteries. She had to have a profession that would allow her to avoid “Cabot Cove Syndrome,” where everyone in the character’s orbit eventually gets killed. Thea answered the ad. I had to learn my tall consultant’s challenges both in finding clothes that fit, and what her world as a consultant to private schools was like. When Andre entered her life, I had to imagine what he’d be like, both personally and professionally, and send the two of them off on a journey where he was sometimes lover, sometimes sidekick, and sometimes antagonist when his protective nature clashed with Thea’s independence.

A bigger challenge presented itself when I decided to develop my interest in the police[image error] and the work they do into my Joe Burgess series with three male protagonists. I often tell my writing students that part of the challenge of imagining characters is to understand how they are like you and how they are not. Burgess, Kyle, and Perry were far different from me and it took a lot of interviewing, and time spent around police officers, to bring them to life.

I’ve written enough books now that when I embark on a new character, as I did in the book I wrote last year, The Darker the Night, a large part of the pleasure and challenge is to get to know the new characters. What will their attributes be? What are their secrets? Where are their strengths and weaknesses. What are the narratives in their heads as they learn about the crime and try to solve it. What drew them to their field? What’s their history? Where are their blind spots?

Of course, it is not only protagonists who need our attention. There are also antagonists, a part of our cast that includes not only the bad guy, but other characters who play a role in thwarting our protagonists as they try to solve the crime. It is very important to make bad guys as dimensioned as our protagonists. Bad guys usually believe that they were driven to commit their bad acts. That they were justified. They had to do it. As we like to say in the crime writing biz, the bad guy or gal doesn’t look in the mirror while brushing their teeth and think, “Oh, I am so bad.”

[image error]Those other antagonists? The boss. Jealous colleague. Someone  higher up the food chain. A spouse. A parent. Anyone whose actions thwart the investigation? They all have to be developed in a way that makes their behavior credible.

Then there are the peripheral characters—friends, family, lovers, witnesses, etc. Our challenge is often how to use them without spending too much time on them or creating reader’s expectations or getting readers too attached to them. 

I learned this the hard way. When I wrote the initial draft of my first Joe Burgess mystery, Playing God, I opened the story with a rookie cop, Remy Aucoin, finding a body in a car on a wintery Portland street. Remy was nervous and didn’t quite know what to do, drawing the wrath of my protagonist. Beta readers, though, immediately bonded with Remy, assumed the book was about him, and were disappointed when he disappeared from the story. I had to rewrite the opening to give the scene to Burgess.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, they worm their way into our hearts and become regulars. That’s what Remy did even though I wouldn’t let him steal that scene.

A few things I’ve learned along the way? Don’t give your series character a spouse who will say, “Where are you going? It’s three a.m.” when your character needs to go investigate. And if you’re going to let your character have kids? Be sure you have good childcare lined up. This last is something Thea and Andre will have to deal with soon.

[image error]

Blocked!

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, writing again as Kathy. I thought you might like to know how my experiment in republishing  the children’s books written back at the start of my writing career is going. It progresses, quickly in some areas and with excruciatingly slowness in others.

[image error]

Only one book hit a roadblock, and I do mean a roadblock. I went in to check on the progress of my historical novel for ages 8-12, Julia’s Mending, originally published in 1987, and discovered that Amazon had “blocked” publication as an e-book.

[image error]

Why? Because it is already available online for free, and that’s a big no-no on Kindle. The thing is, it was never made available as an e-book by the original publisher. They’d barely imagined the concept of e-books that long ago. A little hunting around online gave me the answer: the book is being offered at a pirate site. In other words, some nefarious person made a bootleg copy of my book, probably by scanning it, and tossed it out into cyberspace without a by-your-leave. Lucky me. I get to track down a way to contact the pirate site (NOT an easy task, from what I’ve heard), convince them to take down my book, since they’re in violation of copyright, and then convince Amazon that it’s no longer out there for free. Aaargh! I will do all that, but not just yet. It will require more calmness and patience than I’m capable of right now, even a couple of weeks after discovering the problem.

[image error]

The good news is that this doesn’t affect Amazon carrying the print-on-demand edition of the book. In fact, Julia’s Mending is already available there, along with The Mystery of Hilliard’s Castle and The Mystery of the Missing Bagpipes. For those wondering, it takes Amazon about ten days to get a copy to a customer when it says “ships in 1-2 days.”

With the other books, the process has gone smoothly. I have now reissued three titles and made two previously unpublished children’s books available as e-books and paperbacks at the major e-book outlets. Well . . . mostly. The computer problems at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago seem to have slowed things down at that site. The two new ones, Shalla and Katie’s Way, aren’t available yet for Nook users, but they are for Kindle and iBooks and Kobo and are listed at Baker & Taylor and a bunch of other places I’ve never heard of.

[image error]

I worked with the talented Dave Fymbo at LimelightBookCovers.com to find just the right look for each book while at the same time “branding” them all as books for young readers written by me. Those are the covers scattered throughout this blog. An outfit called Draft2Digital has done all the heavy lifting in the tech department to format the books and distribute them to booksellers. To read more about the middle-grades novels now available and to find buy links, click here

[image error]

And now, a couple of questions for readers of this blog, especially those of you who are parents or grandparents of 8-12 year-olds. Are kids in that age range reading books online? Or do they still prefer the feel of holding a printed book in their hands? And whichever way they’re reading, are they at all into traditional mysteries or historical fiction?

[image error]

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson has had sixty-three books traditionally published. 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: October 31-November 1, 2020

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday) and Vaughn Hardacker (Friday).

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

from Kathy Lynn Emerson: I’m continuing my efforts to make my books for young readers (ages 8-12) available, even the ones I wasn’t able to sell to a traditional publisher back in the day. Here are the covers for two brand new titles, currently available as e-books but soon to be out in paperback as well. Both are historical fiction. If you follow the link below, it will take you to a page at my website with more details.

[image error][image error] http://www.kathylynnemerson.com/Children’s%20books%20and%20YA%20novels%20by%20Kathy%20Lynn%20Emerson.htm

Meanwhile, both The Mystery of Hilliard’s Castle and The Mystery of the Missing Bagpipes are now available from Amazon in paperback editions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Scaring Us. Scaring You.

 

It’s Halloween, and this year, Maine Crime Writers are sharing some scary moments from our own books:

John Clark from the first story I had published in a Level Best Anthology:

We set a 6 p.m. date and I went back to the business of sorting invoices.

“Thank you, dear, I’m so tired of my own cooking.” Martha cleared away the leftovers and wiped off my kitchen table. I retrieved a flashlight from the utility drawer and we went down the cellar stairs, taking turns brushing aside the musty cobwebs.

A long time ago, my mother had asked dad to build her a small wooden pantry in the back cellar. I had no idea if anything was still stored there, but if I could save Martha a few bucks, I was more than happy to do so.

I pulled the dusty plastic curtain to one side.

“Oh shit! Her eyes, they…” Martha turned and retched

I stared at the gallon jar on the shelf behind the rusty bike and realized I’d never wonder again whether the Dark Lady was real.

Kaitlyn Dunnett from my Liss MacCrimmon Mystery, Vampires, Bones, and Treacle Scones:

            Without waiting for Dan to join her, Liss headed for the parlor, which was designated as the first stop on the tour. The skeleton had worked perfectly the previous day, but the key to a successful performance was attention to detail. Check and double check—that had been the rule the stage manager of her former dance company had lived by. That simple philosophy had prevented theatrical disaster on more than one occasion.
            “Showtime,” she whispered as she opened the door from the hall.
            The eerie greenish illumination she’d installed came on, as it was designed to, but the skeleton failed to sit up. Napoleon Bony-Parts remained in an immobile heap.
            Liss squinted in the murky glow, unable to make out much more than a vague shape lying on the sofa. She wondered why the plaster bones weren’t reflecting the green light. They weren’t florescent, but they ought to show up better than they were.
            Glad she’d brought at flashlight with her, she switched it on and at once swung the beam upward to check on the pulley. One end of the wire hung down, unattached and useless. Liss swore under her breath. “Damn mice.”
            She redirected the beam, aiming it at the sofa and gasped.
            The skeleton was gone. In its place was one of the manikins. It lay sprawled in an ungainly pose on the sofa and someone had painted two bloody puncture marks on its neck, turning it into a “vampire victim.” Fake blood had even been dribbled down the side of the brocade cushions to puddle on the floor.
            Annoyed that someone had messed with her set piece, Liss’s first thought was that she needed to search the room for the skeleton. The eerie, pulsing green lighting effect made it difficult for her to identify even the most common objects. The parlor organ looked positively sinister.
            “Dan!” she shouted as she played her flashlight beam in a haphazard fashion over walls and furniture. Was that more fake blood? “The prankster got inside again!”
            She had to find Bony-Parts. She had enough time to reset this scene and return the manikin to the dining room, but only just, and only if she could locate the skeleton quickly. There! Behind the sofa. She hurried toward the spot, irritated by the way the bones had been so carelessly dumped.
            It was only when Liss bent down to examine the skeleton for damage that she realized she’d got it all wrong. She caught a sickening whiff of an odor she’d hoped she’d never have to smell again. The reek of death was both unmistakable and terrifying.
            She jerked upright and, for the first time, her flashlight beam shone directly on the face of the manikin.
            Bile rose in Liss’s throat. Her knees went weak, forcing her to grip the back of the sofa to keep from falling. What lay there was not a manikin. It was a man. A very dead man. The red marks on his neck weren’t fake blood. The gore was all too real.
            But that wasn’t the worst of it.
            The worst of it was that she knew him.

[image error]

Kate Flora, from my Thea Kozak mystery, Death Warmed Over:

The building stayed silent. No one appeared in the doorway and said, “Police! Drop your weapon.”

The cavalry wasn’t coming and we were running out of time. I swung up my briefcase, stepped forward, and slammed it into the side of Harriman’s head. As he staggered sideway, I dove past him and went right over the desk, grabbing Trish and pulling her onto the floor as an explosion of bullets slammed into the desk, the chair, and the wall above us. I heard glass on a painting shatter, the antique porcelain lamp on the desk explode.

In the silence after the first barrage, Trish’s breathing was so loud in my ear I couldn’t hear much else. Her breath and a low keening nose. Then I heard a man’s voice. Strained and full of deadly menace. “Dr. Gorham. You have ruined my life. Now I’m going to ruin yours. And I want to see your face when I do it. I want to put a bullet right between your fucking eyes.”

His heavy footsteps lumbered toward the desk. Just like I’d counted bullets, I counted steps. I figured it was about twelve or thirteen steps from where he’d been standing to where we were huddled.

His threat had been to her, but I doubted that he’d spare me.

I didn’t want to go without a fight.

I had no weapons. There was nothing to grab or throw or swing.

[image error]

Susan Vaughan, from Hidden Obsession, the second book in my Obsession series.

As Sheri approached the door, the dog whined and hung back.

“What is it, Com—”

The outside light shattered. Darkness crashed down with the broken glass.

A heavy weight rammed into her, nearly knocking her over. Her purse fell away. A hand clamped over her mouth. It pulled her back against a hard body. The heavy stench of sweat assaulted her nostrils.

Her heart pounded with painful thumps, and she dragged in air. Why? Who?

Comet launched into fierce barking. It was too dark to see her, but the dog was close. Would he hurt her too?

Adrenaline jolted her into action. She flailed her arms, reached behind, but could get no purchase. She twisted and kicked backward. Her boot heel connected with bone, a shin or a knee.

The attacker uttered only a muffled grunt. The grip tightened on her mouth. Her lips stung, and she tasted blood.

His free arm wrestled with something. He draped the thing over her shoulder. Looped it around her neck. Its movement scratched her throat. A rope.

White noise roared in her ears. No! She wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the rough weave, kept it from tightening around her neck. With her right, she maneuvered the house keys between her knuckles.

As he fought one-handed with the rope, the grip on her loosened a fraction.

Sheri wrenched around and jabbed the keys toward where his head must be.

She hit only air.

But his hand pulled free from her mouth.

“Help! Help me!” Was there anyone nearby? A car passing? Someone. Please, someone be there… She dug in her jacket pocket.

He grabbed at her arm. Caught hold of her sleeve and reeled her in. Comet growled. She set up a fierce snarling near Sheri’s feet. The attacker wrestled the rope around her neck and yanked her against him.

He leaned, off balance. More growls. The sound of cloth ripping. He leaned again, maybe standing on one foot. A big jerking move as he seemed to kick out. Comet, run!

A thump and a yelp. Silence. No!

“Help! Help me! He’s trying to kill me. Hel—”

His free hand clamped down on her mouth. He yanked the rope tighter.

[image error]
http://getbook.at/Hidden-Obsession

Maggie Robinson, from the first Lady Adelaide Mystery, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now. This is not precisely terrifying, but how would you feel if your late and unlamented husband turned up as a ghost six months after you buried him?

“That dress is ridiculous, Addie,” Rupert intoned from a dim corner. He was wearing the dark suit with the maroon foulard tie she’d had him laid out in, and apart from being rather pale, was still a handsome devil, emphasis on the devil. If he’d been in his uniform, she might even contemplate marrying him again.

She shut her eyes.

“I’ll be here when you open them. And believe me, it’s no picnic for me either.”

Addie opened them, and her mouth, but found herself incapable of uttering anything sensible.

“Yes, I’m back. But hopefully not to stay. Apparently I have to perform a few good deeds before the Fellow Upstairs will let me into heaven. It will be a frightful bore for you, I’m sure.”

She told the truth as she knew it, feeling absurd to even speak to someone who couldn’t possibly be there. “You’re dead.”

“As a doornail. What does that mean, anyway? The expression dates from the fourteenth century. Langland, Shakespeare and Dickens all used it. Dickens was of the opinion that a coffin nail is deader, but there you are.”

Addie reached for her cup of cold tea and downed it in one gulp, wishing it was gin, brandy, anything to make Rupert go away. But if she were drunk, more Ruperts, like those fabled pink elephants, might actually appear. It was a conundrum.

“I’ll try to stay out of your hair as much as possible. Speaking of which, thank God you haven’t cut it into one of those awful shingles. I always did like your hair.”

“What’s wrong with my dress?” Addie asked, peeved. Even though she knew he wasn’t truly there—that he was dead—he still had the ability to irritate her even in her imagination.

“It’s far too flimsy and sheer and short. I can practically see your nipples if I squint hard enough. I admit you do have lovely legs, but everyone and his brother don’t have to see them. Your father would not be pleased.”

“My father is dead.” Panicked, she looked around her bedroom. “My God, he’s not going to turn up too, is he?”

[image error]https://maggierobinson.net/books/nobodys-sweetheart-now/ 1st chapter & links!

Charlene D’Avanzo, from Cold Blood, Hot Sea, first in my Maine Oceanographer Mara Tusconi mystery series. Snooping around in her sea kayak where she shouldn’t, Mara is chased at night by a madman in a motorboat:

I kept paddling and changed direction, praying he couldn’t find me in the fog. His motor droned on, closer and closer. And like the intense beam of a lighthouse, his flashlight’s beam swept back and forth, back and forth, cutting through the murky darkness. It probed in every direction—toward shore, out to sea, back to the pier.

Suddenly the shaft stopped death and I was bathed in light. The beam had found me.

The whine of the motor grew louder, He’d turned his boat.

And now he sped right toward me.

My mouth went dry. The reflective tape strips on my life jacket, insurance so other paddlers could see me in fog, had turned into a hazard.

He quickly gained on me like a hungry shark. Given his speed, I was certain he was going to ram my boat.

My little kayak would be nothing to a powerful motorboat. He’d run right over me. The grinding blades of his motor would shred the kayak and rip into my body. As if in a movie, I saw it in slow motion. The terrible force of the collision, my boat shattering around me, my screams, the hot pain, the ultimate blackness.

He was very close now—less than a hundred feet. There was no way out.

Then through the murk appeared a row of weird white oblong tubes in a row, bobbing in the water. No matter what the heck they were, upside down the kayak bottom would perfectly mimic one of then.

 I maneuvered my boat next to the end tube. The roar of the motor filled the dense air, and the flashlight probed the gloom.

 I sucked in a deep breath and rolled the kayak.

[image error]

Sandra Neily : excerpt from Deadly Turn.

“Yip, Yip! Zip, Zip.” I called and waited. Waited and called. If I hadn’t been facing uphill I might have missed his blurred shape speeding across the road above me. Of course my dog was up to no good up on Eagle Ridge. “Texas,” I panted. “Could use Texas right about now. Or Oklahoma.” On a flat plain, I could have dashed from tower to tower, maybe dodging cows, but in Maine’s north woods we all have to go up, up, up.

 I dropped my pack and hard hat, tightened the band holding my pony tail, and tried to jog up the road. Nothing had changed since the last time I’d asked my knees to challenge elevations. Since I’d turned fifty, they just complained.

Stopping where Pock’s dusty prints left the road for the trees, I held my breath and strained to hear real world sounds. Up over the last rise of ridge, machine noise grew loud and ugly. I didn’t hear the familiar whomp, whomp swishing noise. What I heard sounded like a car commercial where inferior models get crushed into walls, and metal pieces fly off to clang away on concrete floors.

Hands on knees, bending almost double to breathe, I hoped for some dog information. A bark. A howl. Partridges flushed from cover. Deer bounding away. Hopefully not a repeat of last spring’s cowardly move when he’d brought me an angry mother moose, her nose inches from his fleeing butt. I’d climbed a tree. Pock had to run for it.

I heard only my hoarse rasp and the calls of chickadees hopping into the nearest tree. They were the forest’s perky bird investigation squad, a winged gang that didn’t feel threatened as they clustered toward activity that promised cheap entertainment. Even when the occasion was a remote dirt road, they always looked dressed up with black hats, throats like black bow ties, and tuxedo-grey coloring over their shoulders.

I heard Pock’s muzzle scrape on gravel before I saw him. Wagging, he nudged a brown tree limb out onto the road. It flopped awkwardly from side to side, one narrow part attached to something that looked like a lump of trunk.

“Quit clowning around,” I said standing up. “We’re working here.”

Yipping with delight, he shoved his find toward me. Too late I realized it was a limb, but not from a tree. It was an arm attached to a shoulder—a chunk of shoulder wearing a tattered, bloody sweatshirt that did nothing to hide stringy tendons wound around splintered bone.

I fainted.

[image error]

Geezerflash

[image error]

Fern Gagne was under the weather. It was an expression he’d used and heard others use many times in his 53 years, but it was never like this. This was hellaciously serious and he doubted any physician, especially in rural Franklin County, could treat him with any degree of success.

There were some in Sclearville who might take great satisfaction in claiming it was his own fault, while others would certainly sympathize with how he was feeling. Nevertheless, he doubted anyone in his hardscrabble village could, or would come to his aid any time soon. Morena Hilton certainly wouldn’t, nor would her shit-for-brains husband and the others in her clan of outlaws who’d made a career of terrorizing anyone in town daring to disagree with them.

Fern’s friction with the Hilton clan had begun shortly after his return home town following twenty five years in service to his country. He’d come back, tired of looking over his shoulder every time he heard a noise. Three tours in undeclared war zones would do that to almost anyone. His needs were simple and covered adequately by his military pension, coupled with income from the small farm inherited from his widowed father who’d died shortly before Fern was discharged. Unfortunately, his dream of solitude with abundant peace and quiet, had lasted less than a year thanks to the Hilton clan’s greed and penchant for engaging in illegal activities.

He twitched his shoulder, trying to quell an itch his situation prevented him from reaching, diminishing it enough to refocus on where his thoughts had been headed. The initial encounter with Morena and her crew happened during deer season his first year back. Fern knew hard times and lack of jobs led folks in Sclearville to jack deer in order to feed their families. He was okay with that, but when he caught the Hiltons coming out of his woodlot with four does in the back of an unregistered pickup, that had set him off. In hindsight he should have called the game warden, but rage, probably left over from his warzone twitchiness, had consumed him. By the time it had lifted, Fern’s rifle was empty and the Hilton’s truck in no shape to let them escape.

There was no way to apologize his way out of a situation like that, nor did he feel it necessary. Sure, he didn’t own the wildlife on his 45 acres, but that didn’t give others the right to kill off that many critters. He spent the next week holed up in the upstairs of his farmhouse, going from window to window, carrying his most powerful weapon. When no retaliation was forthcoming, Fern relaxed his guard. That turned out to be a mistake. While he couldn’t prove anything, there was no doubt in his mind that the Hiltons were behind the extremely loud explosion late one Sunday night that completely collapsed the dug well his livestock depended on. The county sheriff was sympathetic, but didn’t sound optimistic about charges sticking.

Fern let his anger simmer, then cool, concentrating on hiring someone trustworthy to dig out and reinforce the well. The cost irked him, but his critters depended on a safe water supply, so he sucked it up and waited until he came up with viable plans for revenge.

He coughed and didn’t like the woody sound. When the rasp subsided, his thoughts drifted back to his revenge as staying in the moment wasn’t at all pleasant. After all, who wanted to feel weak and helpless? Coming up with something that would be scary and intimidating without getting him arrested wasn’t as easy as he’d expected. It took imagining and discarding half a dozen schemes, letting each one rest in his mind for at least three days before he was satisfied number seven would work.

And it did, but not like Fern expected. Three creepy weeks of dragging sheets and towels through the woods to collect deer ticks wasn’t the least bit fun, but by the time he was ready to exact revenge, he had a pint jar ¾ full of very hungry predators. Finding an unscreened and unlocked window at the Hilton’s trashy compound was the easy part. It took him less than a minute to lean over the rotting sill and shake all the creatures loose.

Fern laid low for the next week, going out of his way to avoid anyone in town, even going as far as to buy what he needed at the big box store in Farmington. A month went by, then two, and every day Fern hoped for news that his revenge had been successful. Just before Halloween he learned that four members of the clan had been diagnosed and treated for Lyme Disease. His satisfaction was short lived. First, Athlena Hilton used her feminine wiles to convince a less than ethical physician to certify that her disease had rendered her disabled, resulting in a hefty monthly social security disability check. She celebrated by doing a half hour table dance at Quillies Tavern. Then Fern learned that townspeople were having a benefit supper and auction for the poor Hilton family. He had to exercise severe restraint not to sneak into the event and poison the coffee urn.

[image error]

This photo has nothing to do with the story.

After an uneasy period with no further incidents, Fern spent the winter cutting wood, tending to his critters and debating his next move. When he saw the announcement that the town’s first selectman was not going to run again, he decided to act. Getting the required number of signatures was easy thanks to his family’s history with the town. When asked what he wanted to accomplish, Fern told prospective voters that he wanted to make the town safer for families and attract new people. When pressed as to what he meant, he would wink and whisper “Hiltons”.

Once elected, Fern set out to convince the other selectmen to support several ordinances he believed would accomplish his goals. Foremost was a junkyard/nuisance one that would hit the Hiltons where they lived. It would prohibit junk cars, unused farming equipment and non-working appliances from residents’ properties. Since the Hiltons had an abundance of all three littering their twenty acres, Fern figured compliance would cost them big time.

[image error]

He hadn’t counted on their reaction, one that landed him under the weather. The temperature was still dropping below freezing most nights, making his current situation, naked and chained to a tree miles from any road, miserable. He might as well admit the Hiltons had won the war. Yelling only made his throat hurt and he’d started to lose the battle with the ants who had discovered the molasses covering him from head to toe. All he could hope for was that death would come before the local bears woke up and found him. Being under the weather really sucked.

Knowing What We Don’t Know, and Liking It

Dick Cass: As some of you may know, I had a little medical extravaganza perpetrated on my corpus earlier in the month (gory details definitely NOT on offer) and beyond the sudden deceleration of the fast-paced life here on Trout Brook to a pace Dennis Eckersley might call “the speed of stink,” I was moved to meditate a little on the idea of uncertainty.

[image error]Humans hate uncertainty. Uncertainty makes us nervous and queasy and we spend much more of our time than we need to trying to convince ourselves of verities, things we can be sure of. We want things resolved, our answers straight, our states unambiguous, our diagnoses clear. Which, is, as they say, a mug’s game. We pursue the idea of certainty far more than is healthy, anxiously searching for what isn’t there.

Which, I think, is part of the popularity of crime fiction. There is a very tight connection between uncertainty and a good crime yarn. Uncertainty drives the story forward. Something terrible happens, the universe is rent, and through the actions of the characters and their psychologies, eventually, the causes and actors of the terrible thing are revealed and the world is made whole. The outcome is made certain.

But keeping the energy of the trek through such a story high requires that the writer maintain an air of uncertainty for the reader the whole time, via subtle clues, false information, diversions, red herrings, and so forth. If you are certain what’s going to happen, why on earth would you want to read on?

[image error]Another lovely thing about uncertainty is that accompanying the pain of not knowing what’s happening can come hope. In the uncertainty of a novel, the reader can look at a clue and, without knowing, hope that it is relevant, that it marks a step toward the solution of the crime, the certainty here or she is after. As we can, if we choose, look at uncertainties in our lives and instead of assuming poor outcomes, hope for the best. Or at least something better.

In fact, keeping the various balls of uncertain information in the air and only slowly resolving them is one of the great acrobatic performances available to a writer and, not incidentally, hella lot of fun. In a good book, the writer drags the reader deeper and [image error]deeper into uncertainty, farther into the unknown, with the promise that, at the end, there will be certainty. Unlike, much as we try to convince ourselves, our own lives.

Quick note: Thanks to all who attended the launch of Sweetie Bogan’s Sorrow on October 2. Lovely to see you, even in upper-body Zoom costume. And many thanks to the Rogue Women Writers blog for hosting four Maine crime writers a couple weeks ago. Here’s the link, if you’re interested. These ladies know how to get books sold. Believe me.

 

I’ve got New England Crime Bake fever, and I don’t want a vaccine

[image error]

Last year’s Crime Bake special guest Ann Cleeves gets some tips from a panel of all-starts, from left Hallie Ephron, Hank Philippi-Ryan and Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Early fall 2008 I was trying to get some traction on writing my first mystery novel. It was something I’d intended to do since I was 9. As I tried to figure out how to go about things, it occurred to me that maybe the reason it had taken until then to do anything about it was I had no clue. Working in newsrooms for nearly three decades didn’t help. Woe to she who mentions she’s writing a book.

I could expect one of two reactions. Or maybe both:

“Every journalist has an unpublished book in their bottom desk drawer.” Always the BOTTOM desk drawer.

“It’s impossible to get a book published.”

Yes, these are the words of encouragement a budding novelist can expect to hear in a newsroom. I needed a new crowd. One who got me.

I’m not sure how I stumbled onto New England Crime Bake, but stumble I did. I was so out of it, that until a week before it started, I still thought it was in Lowell, Mass. I was living in Manchester, N.H., at the time, so Lowell was a quick 45 minutes away. Then I found out it was in Dedham, Mass. I couldn’t get Friday night off from work, but I managed to get a hotel room at the site for Saturday and drove down, if memory serves me right, it snowed that morning.

Breakfast was finished when I got there, but the coffee was still out. The only seat I could find in the packed ballroom was way back in the farthest corner. One vivid memory is that Raffi Yessayan, was at the table, too. Later, when I realized he was an author and presenter I was thrilled. I was sitting next to an author and presenter!

It didn’t matter that I was so far from the action, I was hooked. A group of 250 people all doing what I was doing. A weekend talking about mysteries and mystery writing. It was about as far from the newsroom and those ink-stained wretches as Mars (except, of course, the popularity of the bar, that was pretty familiar).

I went home Sunday afternoon fired up and ready to write. And yes, authors new and old can learn a lot at Crime Bake, but the biggest benefit for me was and is how inspiring and motivating it is. People DO write books. The DO get them published. And we can have fun talking about it all weekend long.

[image error]

Lunch with Elizabeth George, 2015

Nowadays, with three books under my belt and another one slowly working its way to the surface, when an aspiring author asks me for advice, the absolute number one thing I say is, “Get to Crime Bake.”

As with so many other things, Crime Bake “is going to look different this year.” Sorry to put it in quotes, but the phrase almost types itself nine months into the pandemic. I’m excited that there’s going to be a virtual event on Saturday Nov. 7. It really does sound like a lot of fun and I’m looking forwars to it. I’m glad the committee made sure it happened and worked to make it enticing. It would’ve been easy to just say, “See you in 2021.”

But, man, I want the real thing. Because, like so many other things we’ve realized this year, but even more so, there’s nothing like being there.

Don’t just take my word for it. My sister Becky came with me in 2015 because Elizabeth George was the special guest, and she’s come back every year since because she enjoyed it so much. And she’s not even a writer!

[image error]

My sister Becky came along in 2015 because she’s an Elizabeth George fan, but now she comes every year because she’s got Cirme Bake fever, too.

Here are some of the top best things about Crime Bake, in no particular order, and leaving a lot of stuff out because it’s just too much to get my head around all the great things:

[image error]

It doesn’t matter what the panel is, everyone always has a good time.

No matter how much you know about writing, publishing — or don’t — the panels are fun and informative and like nothing you’re going to hear in a newsroom.
Hanging out with mystery writers, fans and industry folks for a weekend is a friggin’ blast.

[image error]

Pal John Radosta, who I’ve hung out with at every Crime Bake since my first one, was almost as excited about my second book as I was. I believe this was in 2016.

I’ve made friends I only see once a year, but it’s like I just saw them yesterday. And I’ve also made friends who’ve become valuable go-to people in both my writing and non-writing life.

[image error]

Gotta love the book table! 2014 I believe.

There’s a wicked long table piled with books to buy.[image error]
If you’re a panelist, they sell your books, and it’s alphabetical, so my books can be right next to Walter Mosley’s (2018), and some of the magic must’ve seeped on over, because people actually bought a few!

[image error]

My sister Becky won a basket of books one year!

You can also win a big basket o’ books in the raffle!

[image error]

My sister Becky hangs out with her new BFF Elizabeth George in 2015.

You get to hang out with really really cool famous authors. And really cool not as famous ones.

[image error]

Former Mystery Writers of America President Donna Andrews introduces me as one of the debut writers in 2015. I wouldn’t have gotten that far if I hadn’t gone to my first Crime Bake in 2008, then my second one in 2009, then my third one…

No matter what stage of the writing game people are in, everyone is welcome, celebrated and treated like they belong. Because they do![image error]
I find myself, often during the other 362 days of the year suddenly just thinking about Crime Bake.

I could probably put together a more coherent pitch for those who have never been there, but it’s too much for me to fully describe. I just want it to come back.