Lea Wait's Blog, page 131
August 19, 2020
Adventure or Misadventure?
Susan Vaughan here. I’ve written about this misadventure before, but readers and other writers have encouraged me to share it again. I think they need a chuckle or two.
[image error]Several years ago when the Romance Writers of America conference was in Washington, D.C., I arranged to do a little book research while there. In the now published Ring of Truth, the story involves trying to find the crown jewels stolen years before by the hero’s father. But the backstory is about that theft, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. No, not the one in the film Night at the Museum; that museum’s in New York City. I needed to see the layout of the area where the theft would take place and to decide if my fictional burglary was realistic given the security at the museum.
A couple of weeks before, I phoned the museum and reached the Museum of Natural History’s manager of security. I’ll call him Smith here. You’ll see why. I explained about being a novelist doing book research and asked for an appointment to discuss security background for my novel. I stressed I didn’t expect him to reveal security measures. He said that it was no problem and I needed no appointment but to come to the security office and they’d find him. Very casual and welcoming. Hah!
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On my free afternoon, I took the Metro to the Smithsonian stop and walked to the museum. A guard directed me to the security office, deep in the bowels of the building, where a helpful uniformed guard phoned Smith, but he couldn’t meet with me for an hour.
I used the time to scout the locations I needed for my book. Various gems and crown jewels are exhibited in the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals on the second floor. Security was visible all around—guards standing at alert, cameras on the ceiling—and invisible sensors as well, I assumed. No one seemed to care that I took loads of pictures, even one in the ceiling of where I thought my burglars could have access.
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In fact, I had to elbow tourists with bigger cameras out of the way to get a good shot of the Hope Diamond, which had just been reset and only recently returned to the exhibit.
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Finally, Smith met with me in an outer office, me beside the secretary’s desk, him leaning against a table. The big man was an imposing figure, even more so because of his stance and suspicious stare. A burly guard stood by. I thought at the time he’d been flirting with the pretty secretary. I again explained to Smith my purpose, first asking about how Smithsonian Special Police were hired and trained. He gladly discussed that, stating proudly that many were veterans, like himself. Which explained the military, intimidation stance.
Then I launched into the meat of my questions, saying the burglary in my story took place years previously and stressing I didn’t need to know the exact security measures, only if my burglary was at all possible. As I ran through my scenario, his blank expression got less blank and more hostile. He insisted no burglary could happen under his watch. As soon as I said in my story two guards were involved, he demanded—yes, demanded—I not write the story as an inside job. All the guards are honorable and honest. It couldn’t happen, he said.
All this time the burly guard and the secretary seemed to barely breathe, riveted on our [image error]conversation. Smith leaned back, arms folded, and speculated I might not be who I claimed to be. Perhaps I was using this meeting as a ruse to set up my own crime. I wanted to shout at him, “I called you two weeks ago. Why didn’t you check on my identity in the meantime?” Some security expert. But I held my tongue. I quickly dug out my proof, such as it was. When I handed Smith my bookmarks and driver’s license, the guard and the secretary immediately asked for bookmarks. “For my wife,” said the guard. The boss ignored them—and my bookmarks. He was done.
He directed the guard to escort me out of the museum. With adrenaline roaring in my ears, I stood and thanked him, then followed the guard down the hall, up the stairs, and all the way to the door leading to Constitution Avenue.
I wrote Ring of Truth as planned, with a guard on the take—yes, an inside job—but not worrying about accuracy, I made up the details of how the jewel thieves managed the robbery. The story of this research outing has provided entertainment at many book events since that misadventure of mine.
I take pride now in the fact that I am the only author to be kicked out of the Museum of Natural History.
NOTE: This book and the others in the Devlin Security series are on sale starting tomorrow, August 21, for 5 days. The first book, On Deadly Ground, is free, Ring of Truth is 99c, and the other two are also sale priced. Here’s a link to the series sale: http://getBook.at/DevlinSeries .
August 18, 2020
Of Course I Should Have Done It … Sooner
Sandra Neily here:
I should have done it sooner.
Well, that’s perhaps an endless list for most of us. (Including my missed Crime Writers posting date last week. Apologies to the team.)
[image error]But I should have done this sooner. My second novel, Deadly Turn, was published (by Piscataqua Press) in early July. When we ran a free Kindle offer for my first novel (to spark excitement about buying the second one) almost 6,000 people applied for the free offer and it was past time to update my web site.
I’d read up on suggestions about how to craft the About section. The current thinking is that personal information should be offered up in the first-person speaking voice of the author. And we really should have a mission statement that’s short and cuts right to why we write.
Here’s how I revised the “About” info on my site:
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“I am creating a series of murder mysteries about the murder of the natural world … stories that are compelling, intimate field trips into a world at risk of disappearing.”
Growing up in East Boothbay, Maine, I learned that the natural world is a disappearing world. Over the years, the woods and waters around me disappeared under bulldozers or behind gated driveways. These losses are the core experiences of my childhood and my conservation career, and they are the marrow of my fiction.
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When moose are angry, the ears go back. The hump on the back swells. You should already be gone or behind a huge tree. I know this…
My resume includes being chased by moose, river otters, and mad mother partridges. I forgive them all, as I am often out there hiking, paddling, or skiing where they live. [image error]My seriously unsupervised childhood exploring clam flats, deep forests, and secret streams grew into my Mystery In Maine series with my first award-winning novel, Deadly Trespass and most recently, Deadly Turn.
Deadly Trespass has received the national Mystery Writers of America McCloy award and was named a national finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, a fiction finalist In Maine’s Literary Awards competition, and a finalist in the international Mslexia novel competition.
Deadly Turn (published in July, 2020) is already receiving praise as a page-turning adventure from some of Maine’s most accomplished outdoor professionals and advocates.
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Guiding a Class V rapid (real consequences and boulders) is so much easier if one’s crew really does know the terms “left” and “right.” Always was an adventure.
My novels are infused with the drama and laughter of various outdoor careers, the sadness of loss, and close encounters with dogs and wildlife. I’ve been a whitewater river outfitter, licensed Maine Guide, and co-founder of a coalition to protect the Penobscot River from a dam. I am the author/editor of “Valuing the Nature of Maine,” and ‘Watching Out for Maine’s Wildlife” (reports that document nature’s economic value).
My love of and concern for Maine’s woods and waters has led to various appointments including the Maine Economic Growth Council, the Northern Forest Sustainability Initiative Steering Committee, the Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the Northern Forest Lands Council, and the Maine Department of Conservation Public Advisory Committee. These efforts however, often shared in the company of people who care deeply, have not [image error]eliminated threats to the largest intact, temperate forest in North America.
I’ve spent most of my adult life working in the conservation field, sometimes in paid communications positions, sometimes as a citizen activist. I’ve been recognized for my work to illuminate the economic value of our resources. I’ve authored reams of op-eds, legislative testimony, articles, and newsletters that usually find audiences predisposed to care.
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Ripogenus Gorge, Penobscot River. Would have been a lake with the 19th dam.
I’ve been recognized for my work to save the Penobscot River from its nineteenth dam—a dam that would have drowned the river’s last remaining gorge and its rapids, wild salmon, and mist covered rare plants.
But times have changed. Many of us are trapped in information silos that shelter us from the knowledge and compassion we need to secure a future for our world.
My goal is to create stories that are compelling, intimate field trips into a world at risk, using the magic of mystery and Maine’s north woods to engage readers into knowing and caring. Fiction can reveal truths which are otherwise obscured. I take Edward Abby seriously: “. . . since we cannot expect truth from our institutions, we must expect it from our writers . . .”
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Disappearing forest. Clearcuts outside of Greenville. Less than 2% of Maine’s commercial forest lands (about 9 million acres) have any old or older trees on them.
I live on Moosehead Lake with my husband and rescued Lab, and would rather be fly fishing, skiing, paddling, looking for salamanders with my granddaughters, or just generally “out there”-—unless I’m writing stories that draw readers into disappearing worlds.
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It really matters that when fall fishing, one wears every scrap of clothing one has, no matter how GEEKY.
Even if you aren’t creating copy for a website, I suggest your write up an “About” for yourself. Who knows when you’ll need to share yourself beyond the cold form of a resume. And the process (plus editing it down) helps us focus on what might really matter About our lives.
The second Mystery in Maine, Deadly Turn, was published in early July. Her debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novels at all Shermans Books and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.
Painting the Story with Words
Such is the strength of art, rough things to shape.
Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.
Kate Flora: If going on sabbatical was a rehearsal for retirement, I am not meant to[image error]
retire. I lasted less than a month before the call of story lured me back to my keyboard. A new character arrived on the page, presenting herself as my protagonist for the story, and it has become my almost obsessive challenge to find out who she is.
I have always found this the most fascinating part of writing—the way a character presents him or her self and then, as I being to shape the story, the character’s story and voice begin to emerge. In the beginning, it is very much a process of two steps forward and one step back, sometimes even two steps back. I set my character in motion, she begins to interact with other characters and her environment, and I have to step away from the work and ponder.
Along with her appearance, questions about her childhood, her world view, and what is going to make her different from all the other female detectives out there arise. Why is the mystery going to open with this particular crime scene, and how do the elements of that scene—who the victim is, how that victim was killed, etc.—affect my new character? I need to learn how she sees the world and how her background shaped that. Much as Joe Burgess’s mother taught him to be patient and observe, and Thea Kozak’s family made her the peacemaker and rescuer, I am now in the process of discovering what, in my character’s family, education, challenges and traumas, shapes what kind of detective she is when we first meet her on the page.
At least in the beginning, getting to know a character, even though I am creating her, is fascinating. I will spend a few hours writing my thousand words, and for the rest of the day, I’ll be rehashing what I’ve written, rewriting it in my mind, asking myself a lot of questions about who she is, whether that’s genuinely how she’d react in that moment, and how the answers will shape tomorrow’s revisions. Sometimes a character will simply begin doing or saying things I didn’t consciously know about, showing me who she is.
Whenever a new character she will be interacting with appears, more questions will arise. Is this someone she trusts? If she is distrustful, where is that coming from? If the person is a friend, how did that friendship form, and if that person is suspicious, is the suspicion coming from another character’s behavior or my protagonist’s background, experience, issues, or flaws?
Discovering Samantha Warren is like getting to know someone new, someone I’m going to be spending a lot of time with over the next six months, but also different, in that new beginnings in books tend to occupy more of my mind than friendships in the real world. When I’m cooking, Sam is there. When I’m trying to read that immense biography of Grant, she keeps poking herself into my thoughts. When I lie down to sleep, I will spend half an hour or more rehashing what I’ve written and considering what it reveals about her and whether I’ve got that right or it will need to be rewritten tomorrow.
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August 16, 2020
Shadow, One Year Later
[image error]Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, writing about an anniversary that will always be tinged with sadness. As regular readers of Maine Crime Writers know, my husband and I offered to adopt Shadow when our good friend Lea Wait was first diagnosed with terminal cancer. She died on August 9, 2019. The following day, we brought Shadow home. Less that a week earlier, the last of our elderly cats had passed away. It was probably just as well that we didn’t have to introduce a much younger, rather hyper cat into a house already occupied by an ailing feline, but it was still a a traumatic time for everyone involved.
[image error]A year later, I’m happy to report that Shadow has settled in fairly well. She may never be the kind of cat who will cuddle, and she goes ballistic if we try to clip her claws, but we no longer risk being scratched or bitten every time we pick her up. Little by little, she’s grown accustomed to the traffic just outside our windows on busy U.S. Rt. 2. Instead of having a panic attack and hiding under the bed every time a pulp truck goes by, she calmly goes about her business. These days, only thunderstorms seem to rattle her.
Twice in the last year, she’s voluntarily hopped up on a lap (once mine and once my husband’s) and stayed to be stroked and praised. She even purred. Although she got onto our bed at night a few times when she was first here, she didn’t fall into that habit. We’ll see what colder weather brings. What she will occasionally do is perch on the arm of the sofa and stare at me . . . especially when I have a bowl of ice cream in my hands.
[image error]She’s caught two mice and indulges in almost daily staring matches with the chipmunk who lives in the woodpile on our back deck. She has yet to meet a dog, but birds, butterflies, and bugs fascinate her. Her favorite perches are the corner of the screen porch and on top of the loveseat in my office, which has a view of the yard through a window, but for sleeping she prefers the back room, aka junk room/laundry room/auxiliary library, she hid in when she first arrived.
[image error]We’ve discovered that she has a few strange quirks. She rarely drinks water, although she must get enough liquid from her canned food because she’s not dehydrated. She does odd things with one back foot, including using it to attack toys before she goes at them with all four paws and her teeth. And she still hasn’t figured out what the refrigerator and stove are for. At Lea’s house she lived upstairs, so she gets office chairs and loves to watch the printer in action, but before she came here, she had no experience with cooking or even much with people food (see exception for ice cream above). Since all our previous cats were expert moochers, this has made quite a change for us.
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All in all, she’s come a long way in a year. One or two more, and she may even consent to cuddle on a regular basis.
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With the publication of A Fatal Fiction, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-two 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 Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries and the “Deadly Edits” series as Kaitlyn. As Kathy, her most recent book is a collection of short stories, Different Times, Different Crimes, but there is a new, standalone historical mystery, The Finder of Lost Things, in the pipeline for October. She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com. A third, at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women, contains over 2000 mini-biographies of sixteenth-century Englishwomen.
August 14, 2020
Weekend Update: August 15-16, 2020
[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be a posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Susan Vaughan (Thursday), and Charlene D’Avanzo (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. Contact Kate Flora
August 13, 2020
Flowering Natives on the Homestead
Hello all! Jen Blood here, on what will actually be my last post for a while. I haven’t been doing much in the way of writing this summer, between gardening and homesteading and a couple of health issues (poison ivy, brown-tail moth rash, sciatica… all the good ones) that have kept me from the computer. The writing that I have been doing seems to be leaning farther and farther from the land of crime and mystery, and more in the direction of romance. I have a paranormal/Gothic novel in the works now called The Haunting, which I’m hoping to complete in the next month or so.
Because I do feel so far from the writing world (and, particularly, the world of mystery) and have been so distracted lately, I’ve decided after much contemplation that it’s time for a break from the blogging world for a while. I’ve had such a wonderful time writing for Maine Crime Writers, and so treasure the friendships I’ve made here and the amazing people I’ve come to know.
As a farewell, it seemed only fitting to leave you with images of some of the blooms out here on the homestead, along with a little information about what they are and what they do for the landscape. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m working on creating more habitat for wildlife on our single-acre lot. This endeavor has become more and more important to me of late, particularly after spending the spring fighting for the foxes and watching (and listening to) the lot next to ours be completely stripped of trees by new neighbors.
I’ve learned a lot about the importance of native plants in my reading, most notably the work of Dr. Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope. In Nature’s Best Hope, Tallamy talks about the dangerous decline scientists are seeing in the number of songbirds and insects, and cites loss of habitat as a key reason for their demise. In that book, he proposes something he’s called Homegrown National Park – essentially, uniting all of us to re-wild our own back yards in an effort to recreate some of those lost spaces. This is an idea I love, and one I’ve become passionate about being a part of.
Native plants are key, because they have evolved in tandem with specific types of insects to provide key sustenance for those insects. For example, goldenrod supports one hundred and twenty-four species of lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) who use this as a caterpillar host plant… Meaning, butterflies and moths lay their eggs on the goldenrod plant, and those eggs then hatch into larvae known as caterpillars. The caterpillars munch on the plant, unless of course they are eaten by birds or other wildlife… Which is key. Did you know that caterpillars are an essential food source for breeding birds? You may put out bird seed, and that’s great, but ultimately what nestlings need to survive is protein. According to Tallamy, chickadees must find between 6,000 – 9,000 caterpillars to raise a single clutch of young.
Non-native plants don’t have the same evolutionary history, which means insects are unable to feast on them. Historically, we’ve viewed this as a good thing – no insects munching on our plants means we get to enjoy them longer, right? Sure, but this explosion of what are known as “non-native ornamental” plants – Japanese honeysuckle, barberry, and Norway maple, for example – are a primary reason for the alarming decline in numbers of insects and, consequently, songbirds.
Soooo…. I’m encouraging the growth of native plants here on our little acre. I’ve also stopped weeding the flower garden to a large extent, since denser ground cover provides a more hospitable space for those aforementioned caterpillars to grow and, ultimately, play their role in the circle of life.
If you want to learn more about the plants in your yard and which are natives (and which natives are most beneficial), I highly recommend the National Wildlife Federation’s Native Plant Finder. It’s a free tool you can use online, and it helps you log which native plants are on your property, and tells you how many (and which) types of insects it supports. I like it because it identifies the most beneficial plants, but be warned that there are many, many helpful natives that it doesn’t list on there. I also recommend PictureThis and PictureInsect, two incredible plant and insect identification apps you can download to your smartphone. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned from these two apps over the past few months, and can’t say enough good things about them.
ANYWAY… Onto the flowers here on the homestead.
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Bee balm
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Butterfly milkweed
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Tiger lilies
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Phlox
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Marji, among the bugleweed in our overgrown yard. Our bumblebees have been very, very happy this year!
Okay, friends… That’s it for me for now. Thank you to all of you who have read, commented, and enjoyed my posts. I’m certain that I’ll be back here and there, and will definitely let folks know when the next publishing project has been completed. In the meantime, you can find me at http://www.jenblood.com for updates on the world of Jen. Be well!!
August 11, 2020
Back To School—Covid Style
In a few days, my son returns to the University of Miami. It’s a perilous time for all students, but especially for college kids. Especially college kids in Miami, Florida, where COVID rates are high, Everything has changed on college campuses these days and a lot of kids feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick. They have to test negative before they return to school. They need to wear masks everywhere and continually get their temperatures checked. Huge frat parties will be a thing of the past, and the college football season looks like it might be canceled. For a school that cost big bucks to attend, these are some tough apples to swallow.
As a former teacher, I feel for all the students and teachers that have to navigate this new educational world. I especially feel for college students. College is a time for self-exploration and freedom. For many, it is some of the best times in their lives. It’s a time for intellectual growth, parties, playing or attending sports and so much more. Many students meet their future husbands and wives at college. And you only get one shot at it, because once you graduate you can never return to that amazing time in your life. Ask Will Ferrell’s character in the movie, OLD SCHOOL.
Some may disagree with me, but it’s not natural for young people to be taught in front of a computer. Yes, University of Phoenix and others schools have made this learning style their model, but I feel that’s not the norm. Learning needs to be integrative and in-person, with a skilled instructor leading the intellectual process and encouraging input and open discussion. This is especially true in college, where students pay big money to be there and learn from experienced minds, often the best minds in their respective fields. As well, college is often the last step in the educational process that leads to employment.
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So it begs the question of whether students should attend classes while the COVID still rages. It’s a question I can’t really answer. Harvard and Bowdoin obviously thought not, while my son’s college believed it was safe enough to hold classes, with restrictions. But even these decisions make one scratch their head. Miami now has some of the highest rates of COVID in the country. Brunswick, where Bowdoin College is located, has some of the lowest rates and yet the college is closing its doors to all but the freshman class. Not sure I get it, but that’s the reality.
As for my son, having been home since March, he is beyond ecstatic to return to school and see all his friends. He has two more years left and he’s done, graduated, and he wants to make the most of his college years. The campus is located in stunning Coral Gables and is an absolutely gorgeous setting for a young person. There are palm trees among the academic buildings, constant sunshine and a scenic lake that sits in the middle of it all. I think the Bubonic plague could be raging and he would still be prepared to return there.
I wish all you students and teachers a safe return to school. And let’s hope this crisis passes very soon and we can all get back to normal.
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August 10, 2020
Reading Through the Dog Days Of August
John Clark having read 233 books thus far with some recent YA favorites to help you escape heat, COVID and mosquitoes. No matter how much I read, the TBR pile never shrinks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
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Last Chance Summer by Shannon Klare: Alex was already on a short leash when her best friend twisted her arm to sneak out and go to a party in the woods. Instead of a fun time, things went terribly wrong and after failing her year at school, her desperate parents gave her a choice: Go to rural Texas to her aunt’s camp, go to boarding school, or lose her college funds. Kicking and screaming, she ends up with her aunt, only to discover she’ll be a counselor for troubled younger teens. The first person she meets is Grant who’s there as a counselor as well, but has a history with the camp. While they start off like a cat and a dog, hackles raised, the longer they know each other, the more each gets under the other’s skin. The worst fear Alex has keeps her from believing anyone who learns what happened that sent her into her tailspin won’t reject her. Fortunately, the demons in her mind and the overwhelming sense of guilt she struggles with aren’t as unique as she might believe. Read the book and discover how she comes to a new realization. It’s a very satisfying story.
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He Must Like You by Danielle Younge-Ullman: Few have more on their plate than Libby. Her college fund has been hijacked by her father, her brother quit college and ran off to Greece, her home life resembles living in a war zone, she has suspicions her experiences with two guys might have crossed the consent line, and she’s frequently harassed while serving an older and extremely self-important patron at the restaurant.
When everything comes to a head and she loses it when said patron grabs her rear end, it’s the messy and painful beginning of sorting out her confusing life. Following her as she does, is not only fascinating, but develops into a tribute to girls finding their strength, opens the reader to how much waitstaff have to endure to earn a living, what’s out there in terms of help and healing for sex abuse survivors, and how the messy chaos of a family can result in healing. It takes a masterful author to tackle so many issues in one book, but it’s done extremely well in this one.
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More Than Maybe by Erin Hahn: A mix of love story, ‘families are messy,’ and coming of age that works very well. Take a girl whose dream is to be a music reporter, but has a deadbeat father who denigrates her after getting drunk in the bar where she works. Give her the ultimate secret crush on one of two brothers who do a music themed podcast from the bar every weekend. Note that the straight brother has an equally strong secret crush on her. Mix in that his dad is a former rock star and dad’s pushing over the years has soured performing the music he loves to write. Sprinkle with drama, great chemistry and neat supporting characters and savor. It’s a dandy read, satisfying and ending nicely.
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Splinters of Scarlet by Emily Bain Murphy: A dandy fantasy set in 1800’s Denmark. Marit lost her mother, then her father and finally her sister, leaving her an orphan. Dad was killed in a mining accident, her sister succumbed to Firn, a residue that crystallizes the blood, then the entire body when a person uses too much magic.
After she ages out of the orphanage, her focus is on doing whatever she can to protect Eve, a girl she befriended and loves like a sister. On the night Eve is adopted by a wealthy former orphan and ballerina, Marit manipulates a tear, then uses her seamstress magic to fix the woman’s torn coat and asks for a job as her seamstress in return. That leads to her joining a large staff of servants in the Copenhagen manor owned by the woman. At first, there’s resentment, even hostility from the other servants, but as she begins to fit in and start probing in an effort to discover whether her father’s death was really an accident, bonding happens and the more she learns, the more dangerous things become for all who live there. It’s a great plot with intriguing magic, plot twists and plenty of action, particularly toward the end. That conclusion is particularly masterful and makes this a perfect story for YA fantasy lovers.
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The Stepping Off Place by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum: There are several powerful aspects to this story. Reid and Hattie’s friendship, for one and how Reid comes to understand it and their respective roles, for another. Then there’s the relationship dynamics, some between the teen players, others between them and their parents. Reid, for example doesn’t, at first, realize how her role in the family has been largely scripted by her younger brothers autism. That’s just one of several realizations, most of them very painful, that she has to process in conjunction with her coming to grips with Hattie’s death. First she’s in serious denial, then angry and tempted to retreat from the world, and then she teeters on an emotional razor blade as she wrestles with three possibilities regarding her best friend’s death. There’s plenty of emotional messiness here, but I was really floored by the way Reid, Hammie and the others decided to honor Hattie’s death. It’s powerful and freeing. This is a terrific first book and a great one for libraries of any type to add not only as a great story, but one that can be a resource for those teens dealing with loss or depression.
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My Eyes Are Up Here by Laura Zimmerman: Imagine having almost every moment of your life ruled by a body part. Meet Greer Walsh. For maybe a day she was comfortable in her skin when puberty hit. After that, she was ultra self-conscious, let her insecurities run rampant and endured endless dialogues with Maude and Mavis as she calls her oversized breasts. Comfort is an elusive experience for her as is finding bras and tops that fit. She slouches and hides in oversized sweatshirts. She’s very smart, particularly in math, but when it comes to thinking about a social life, she’s a babe in the woods. Having a mother who is ultra confident and believes she has all the answers makes confiding a wishful, but impossible thing. Add in a younger brother who’s a cross between Attilla The Hun and a barnyard animal and you start to understand why she endures with little hope of living.
All this begins to change when her mother drags her along to meet Jackson, son in a family Mom’s working with in her capacity as a relocation specialist. There’s an immediate connection between them. It grows as the story progresses, even though Greer’s continual dialogue in her head with Maude, Mavis and how she things the rest of the world looks at her gets in the way. Add in a chance to try out for volleyball and a website the coach gives her that starts changing her life, great friends and situations that force her out of her head in time to start living, and you have one heck of a book. Quinlan, Jackson’s little sister, may be a minor character, but she almost steals the show. Read the book to find out why. This deserves to be in lots of libraries. It’s funny, painful, honest and will strike a chord with any teen with image of self consciousness issues.
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There are aspects of this story that will remind readers of the Harry Potter Series and I say that in a very favorable way. This, however, stands on its own merits in multiple ways. Manuela has been isolated most of her life because her eyes are different. They have gold star shaped pupils, necessitating her wearing sunglasses at all times outside the cramped apartment she shares with her mom and an elderly lady they befriended while living on the streets of Miami. Her father is a mystery, supposedly the scion of an Argentine crime family, possibly dead, maybe hiding out somewhere. Whenever Manuela asks Mom, the responses are vague and guarded. Every month, when the moon is full, her period starts and the cramps and discomfort are so severe that her mother gives her three mysterious blue pills that knock her out for several days.
When she notices suspicious people watching the apartment house, followed by a near fatal attack on the elderly woman they live with, Manuela panics and rushes off to find Mom at the home where she works as a maid, but what she finds is a completely different workplace and no sooner does she enter, than ICE agents raid it, carting off everyone save her when one of her mother’s co-workers creates a distraction, allowing her to escape.
She ends up hiding in the back of a pickup driven by one of the suspicious watchers, ending up deep in the Everglades at a secret compound where other teens with similar eyes are attending school. What follows this discovery is not only intriguing as all get out, it reveals a hidden society, another dimension which is accessible only during a full moon and the revelation of several aspects of her life that make the story impossible to put down. The book ends with that perfect blend of partial resolution and cliffhanging that sets up the sequel.
August 7, 2020
Weekend Update: August 8-9, 2020
[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be a posts by John Clark (Monday), Joe Souza (Tuesday), Jen Blood (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:
You can sign up to join the conversation about the voices from the pandemic, an anthology including Kate Flora, John Clark, and Dick Cass here:
https://creatingconversations.indielite.org/event/stop-world-snapshots-pandemic
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Here’s a blast from the past, Maine’s own Rudy Vallee singing The Stein Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-sfdtRBIfI&list=PLsndT1ixi6MBqy4kwhpUAFyWOyIg64ika
In case you want to celebrate Maine’s bicentennial in your own kitchen, you want a copy of the Maine Bicentennial Cookbook. You can order it here: maine200cookbook.com
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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. Contact Kate Flora
August 6, 2020
A Trove of Garden Insight from Katharine White
We’re spending some time in Brooklin this month, where I lived for a while in the early 90s and to which I have returned most every summer since, at least for a few days.
Regular readers of this blog likely are aware of my deep appreciation for the work of E.B. White, who lived around the cove from the cottage where we often stay. But today I’m thinking about his spouse, Katharine S. White (1892-1977), who joined Harold Ross at The New Yorker six months after its founding and was enormously influential in many roles, primarily as its first fiction editor. In that position, she edited the short fiction and poetry of Vladimir Nabokov, Nadine Gordimer, Mary McCarthy, John Cheever, Marianne Moore, John Updike and Ogden Nash, among others.
Katharine White also was passionate about gardening.
In 1958, in addition to her editorial duties at the New Yorker, she took up the pen herself and wrote a column called Onward and Upward in the Garden, examining the content and style of garden, seed and nursery catalogues in the same manner as a reviewer of literature examines the plot and structure of a novel. No one had taken critical notice of catalogues before, and her first column—called A Romp in the Catalogues—won deserved attention. In the next dozen years, she wrote thirteen more Onward and Upward columns, all of which are collected in a book published in 1979, with a lovely introduction by her husband.
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Here are a couple of passages that give the flavor of Katharine White’s strongly-held views about all things garden-related.
From the first Onward and Upward in the Garden column, published in March, 1958:
The Burpee people go for ruffles in anything. To me a ruffled petunia is occasionally a delight but a ruffled snapdragon is an abomination. The snapdragon is a very complicated flower form to start with, and it has style. Fuss it up and it becomes overdressed.
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Snapdragons, complex enough without hybridizing them to add frills, Katharine White said. I must agree.
In a column dated June 6, 1962, she ruminated on wild blueberries, Maine’s favored fruit, and the degradation that is wrought by chemical spraying of the crop:
Blueberries . . . can be grown from Maine to North Carolina, from Michigan to Missouri, but if you live in Maine, where the wild blueberry is one of the main crops, it just doesn’t occur to you to plant the large cultivated blueberry, which has less flavor . . . Every market in our region sells wild berries in season, and the stores conscientiously try to have them picked by hand from unsprayed bushes. But in the cities one can’t be sure. Some berries may have been raked in commercial blueberry barrens where the bushes are heavily dusted or sprayed with chemicals to keep down the blueberry maggot and other pests. . . I’d rather eat a maggoty blueberry any day than a sprayed blueberry. Rayner [a Maryland nursery] lists one variety that is “from a wild type,” the Rubel. It won’t be the same, though, for it is a huckleberry, and every resident of Maine knows that the huckleberry can’t compare with the wild low-bush blueberry.
Full of helpful information, decided opinion and wit, Onward and Upward in the Garden is a pleasure from start to finish, because it was written by a woman who not only loved gardening, but revered clear, lucid writing. In the introduction by E.B. White, another reason to treasure this book, he reveals her writing process was actually intense and laborious. In her heart, Katharine White was an editor, and he says she found it difficult to don the hat of a writer:
The editor in her fought the writer every inch of the way; the struggle was felt all through the house. She would write eight or ten words, then draw her gun and shoot them down. This made for slow and torturous going. It was simple warfare—the editor ready to nip the writer before she committed all the sins and errors the editor clearly foresaw.
We’re fortunate that she stuck with it, because Onward and Upward in the Garden is a treasure that stands the test of time. When the world feels upside down, as it certainly does this summer, it’s a pleasure to dip into Katharine White’s vibrant, uncluttered prose about flower arranging, rose cultivation and right-thinking (as well as wrong-headed) seed merchants who preserve (or threaten in the name of innovation) our horticultural history.
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Speaking of libraries, Katharine White’s son from her first marriage, the author, editor and baseball writer par excellence Roger Angell, is being celebrated by the Friend Memorial Library in Brooklin tomorrow morning on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
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It’s appropriate that his birthday bash—which will include balloons, brief remarks, music by a band called the Treble Makers and a mini-parade featuring vintage cars and fire trucks—is being organized by the library, because Katharine White was a longtime trustee of Friend Memorial and one of its fiercest champions.
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It is also appropriate that outside the library’s side door is the E.B. and Katharine White Memorial Garden, a wonderful place of respite for not only bookish sorts but the entire community, in celebratory times and worrisome ones, too.
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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 on new projects. FMI: http://brendabuchananwrites.com
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