Lea Wait's Blog, page 133
July 23, 2020
Hey writers, there’s no excuse for boredom
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Crossing a bridge in Dover-Foxcroft loosened up a plot conundrum. And it was pretty too!
You may have seen the clickbait “news” last year that Dover-Foxcroft is supposedly the “most boring” town or city in Maine. It was apparently based on the fact that it has the oldest median population, combined with lack of population blah blah blah.
So, in other words, few people and old people make for boring. Do with that information what you will.
As far as I’m concerned boredom can be directly related to the person feeling it, no matter what their surroundings. As my mom used to say, “If you’re bored, I can find something for you to do.”
The reason Dover-Foxcroft is in my thoughts is because I’m there. I’m taking a writing vacation in the heart of my book-in-progress’s setting. (And thanks, too, to a discount for Mainers designed to make up some of the lost income from COVID-19 restrictions).
I’m not bored at all. Not one bit. First of all, because it’s a beautiful spot in a beautiful part of the state and there’s nothing boring about it.
More importantly, I’m never really bored when I’m allowed to be alone with myself and my thoughts and doing what I want. Boredom comes from having to deal with other people’s stuff that doesn’t interest me. And, most importantly, I’m immersed in the area where my book takes place. Everything I see and do is fodder for my writing.
I went on a walk yesterday to a local cemetery to get ideas for character names. Any writer out there knows how hard it is to come up with names, and I find that getting names from local cemeteries not only lends authenticity to a book, but keeps me from having to think too hard when I can be using my brain for other things.
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Boom! Plot issue solved!
On the way, I walked over a bridge over the Piscataquis River that overlooked an old dam and its works. I’d been struggling with a specific plot point, and seeing that dam, its locks, fish ladder and more, gave me a plot epiphany. You’ll have to read the book to find out what it is. 
July 21, 2020
What the Writers are Reading
Today we’re sharing some of the books we are reading this summer–for fun, for research, for cooking, for keeping up with fellow/sister authors. Here are the books we are reading and we would love it if you would chime in with the books you are reading as well.
Kate Flora: I just finished Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road, a thought-[image error]provoking little bonbon about relationships and self-awareness. Because I haven’t read my fellow contributors stories in The Faking of the President and Heartbreaks and Half-truths, the two anthologies I have stories in, those will be next. My kindle is full and my TBR pile is huge, and I am looking forward to lolling around on the porch of the cottage, devouring more fiction. I’ve heard that I have a new cookbook coming for my birthday, so as soon as it arrives, I’ll share that with you. I visited a friend recently and she was making amazing food from it. Then, strange as it may seem to reread one’s own books, I plan to review the first nine Thea Kozak mysteries before digging in to writing number eleven.
[image error]Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett: I’m on a real escapist kick right now, almost exclusively reading in the paranormal genre. This is John Clark’s fault. One of his recent posts reminded me of Kim Harrison’s “The Hollows” series, in which witches, vampires, weres, pixies, elves, and all the other supernatural species have come out of the closet after “the Turn”—a global disaster caused by eating genetically engineered tomatoes. This gives a whole new meaning to “killer tomatoes” but it happened 40 years before the first book in the series, so the plague has passed and humans are more or less peacefully coexisting with other species. Anyway, there are more than a dozen books in the series and I already owned them all. I thought, I’ll just reread the first one, for a change of pace. Hah! Now I’m hooked, and well into [image error]#7. There are some mysteries coming out next week that I’ve been waiting for (by Sherry Harris, Lindsey Davis, Dianne Freeman) but they may have to wait till I get to the end of Harrison’s series. Then, too, I just downloaded the first new Harry Dresden novel in years (a wizard operating as a private detective in Chicago), so that might just have to be read first. Mysteries are wonderful, but they’re set in the “real” world. Fantasy/paranormal/SF novels have the advantage of whisking me completely away from less-than pleasant everyday realities.
John Clark: Two authors that have helped me stay sane this summer are Diane Burton and Jennifer Alsever. I just bought the three of Diane’s books I haven’t read, so next week is looking good. She writes science fiction with humor and a dash of sexy sizzle, as well as a series of equally funny detective stories. I have yet to find a book of hers that wasn’t extremely satisfying.
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Jennifer has four books out. Extraordinary Lies is a YA thriller about two girls with scary psychic powers that is set in 1971. I liked it so much, I bought her earlier trilogy, Ember Burning, Oshun Rising and Venus Shining. They remind me of Jen Blood’s Erin Solomon series. They’re the type of series you want to have all three on hand because as soon as you finish one, you MUST read the next one. They’re set il Colorado and are a blend of dystopia and romance. While written three years ago, the plot is scarily relevant to what we’re dealing with right now.
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Dick Cass: I blew through a long ton of crime fiction this month: here’s just a sampling (ignore the Bill Buford, though it was an excellent tale):[image error]
Lately, I’ve found enough attention span to start reading nonfiction again. I’m rereading Robert Grudin’s Time and the Art of Living. Grudin is a professor at the University of Oregon and an interesting thinker. The book feels very apt at the moment, since time had become such a strange accompaniment to everything else going on.
[image error]Also reading Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, the much-touted story of the author’s “obsessive search for the Golden State Killer, a predator who wreaked scores of sexual assaults and sadistic murders in California. McNamara was a journalist who became consumed with discovering the perpetrator. Ultimately, her work resulted in his arrest.
How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia is keeping me in touch with the jazz world in a thoughtful and jargon-free way, and my midsummer garden doldrums are being propped up by Spirit of Place–the making of a new England Garden, by Bill Noble. [image error]In his own way, Noble is another obsessive, chronicling a two-decades evolution of the gardens on the property of his farmhouse in Vermont. Much beautiful, uh, garden-porn and interesting insights into his decisions around form, structure, native plants, and so on. I’m already looking at my own back yard with a jaundiced eye . . .
Charlene D’Avanzo: I’m working my way through Tony Hillerman’s eighteen (!!) Leaphorn and Chee books. A gifted writer, Hillerman won an Edgar in 1974 and a half dozen more awards. He also headed up Mystery Writers of America for a few years.
Hillerman’s books are a stunning lesson in “sense of place”. His stories brilliantly immerse readers in the smell, colors, dust, heat, and landscape of the southwest. That, and his terrific characters – Leaphorn, Chee, and the rest – are why I can’t put his books down.
Susan Vaughan: I’m currently reading Tightrope by Amanda Quick (aka Jayne Ann Krentz), a romantic suspense bound up in an intricate mystery. The series is set in the mid 1930’s at a California resort town where murder and intrigue are just below the Hollywood glamour. I do love an historical mystery, and if there’s a romance, even better. In this one, [image error]Amalie, a former circus performer who barely escaped being murdered on her trapeze, has opened a bed and breakfast in the mansion where the “psychic to the stars” had either committed suicide or was murdered. When her first guest, an inventor and showman, is murdered onstage by his robot, Amalie Vaughn connects with Matthias Jones, who is searching for a groundbreaking cipher device (an Enigma machine) and who may or may not have links to “the mob.” If that doesn’t sound intricate enough, there’s more.
Quick is famous for her quirky characters, snappy dialogue, and carefully crafted plots. Tightrope is the third book in the Burning Cove series, and I’ve enjoyed the first two as much as I’m hooked on this one. Not deep, but fun and fast-paced summer reads. Each book stands alone, but you might want to start with The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and move on next to The Other Lady Vanishes. Book 4, Close Up, is next on my list.
P.S. My romantic suspense, Dark Vengeance, is free on Amazon until Friday.
Sandra Neily: I decided to dip into Kate Atkinson with Big Sky as so many of our bloggers here were anticipating it a while back. I find that if I read too much at once, my entire world started to feel jaded, and [image error]my own life started to sound that way, too! But Atkinson is clearly brilliant at forging a few lines about character that just get richer and richer each time we are fed a piece of them. And there’s stunning originality about a subject we might think we already know about: white slavers preying on young girls who are no match for their intent and organization. I will be seeking out her other works!
My husband says he wants to read again, but somehow … has not. For a recent camping trip, I downloaded the audio version of Land of Wolves by Craig Johnson and we both enjoyed that coming and going to Cobscook Bay State Park (also when we got stuck in the screen tent avoiding bugs when the wind died). Longmire is always Longmire even when he evolves. Quite a feat with so many books in the series. [image error]
I am dipping into authors who create mysteries set in powerful physical worlds (as I have been working on those worlds in my novels). Listening to Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was hypnotic. I am so glad I listened rather than read. The narrator savored each spoken word about the marsh. Next up on Kindle will be Shattered Justice by Susan Furlong. Newly reviewed, the NYTimes calls her forest “gorgeous” if we can get beyond the “armed militia camps,” and says the the heroine is “gritty.” Anyone who lives with a retired human remains detection dog has to be interesting. I will report.
ps: Speaking of audio that is riveting, Hearing Michelle Obama read Becoming, means we are more deeply inside her journey. And she’s an amazing reader. In her voice we can clearly hear trouble, disappointment, joy, exhilaration, fear, triumph, and pain. Not in obvious ways. Just real ways.
July 20, 2020
COVID READS
During this stressful, bizarre time we all need to escape and immerse ourselves in something engrossing. As I’ve said before, what better way to do that than with books?
For ideas, I’ve assembled a short list of “covid reads” in several categories:
• Comfort Books:
– Jane Austen: the English novelist penned romantic stories with biting social commentary praised by scholars of historical fiction. Begin with Sense and Sensibility and work your way through the rest. Your intimate experience with a pandemic will help you appreciate why Austen’s original readers swooned when Mr Darcy said, “I trust your family is in good health.”
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– Harry Potter: J.K. Rolling’s fantasy books have been labeled thrillers, mysteries, adventures, romances, and British school stories. Our Stephen King called the series “a feat of which only a superior imagination is capable.” Escapes to be sure.
• Little Books With Big Messages:
– The Little Prince is tiny, but it offers vital messages for its readers. Published posthumously in France after that country’s liberation, Antoine de Saint-Exupery novella became one of the best selling, most translated books ever published. The story follows a young prince who visits various planets in space, including Earth, and addresses themes of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss.
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– Another children’s book, EB White’s charming Charlotte’s Web, is loved by all ages. White so skillfully handled its themes – innocence, change, and inevitable death – that he put Maine on the literary map. It has been said that we are all Wilbur, needing a Charlotte to save our lives at one point or another.
• Adult Books With Big Messages
– To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee’s famous novel was published in 1960 and sold over 40 million copies worldwide. A civil rights story, the book is about right and wrong, meanness, and kindness and couldn’t be more relevant right now. Consider this quote: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
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• Stories about plague. Escape into pestilence tales. Why not?
The Stand – In Stephen King’s novel a computer error at a biological warfare research lab results in escape of an influenza strain that kills over 99 percent of the global population. With government and all institutions gone, battles of good and evil begin.
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Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel’s tale focuses on survival of our culture as opposed to humanity. Survivors mourn loss of so many and little things – or memories of them – matter the most.
So, happy Covid reading. Be well and however you manage to do it take some time now to escape from a truly terrible moment.
July 17, 2020
Weekend Update: July 18-19, 2020
Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be a posts by Charlene D’Avanzo (Monday), group post (Tuesday) Maureen Milliken (Thursday), and Darcy Scott (Friday).
In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:
from Kaitlyn Dunnett: The audiobook of A Fatal Fiction is out! Yay!
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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
July 16, 2020
Location, Location, Location
No, I’m not writing about real estate, or maybe I am, but I’m not trying to sell you any property, I promise. This is about fiction settings—region, country, state, city, bodies of water, even food and drink. Realistic or real details of a setting help make a story come alive and give it atmosphere. The coastal Maine setting plays a big role in Barbara Ross’s Maine Clambake Mystery series, in Kate Flora’s Joe Burgess mysteries, and in Bruce Robert Coffin’s Detective Byron mysteries. Think the lap of water at a dock where a body is found floating, the isolation of an icy Maine winter aggravating old grudges. As for a non-Maine author, what would Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch mysteries be without Los Angeles’s glitter and mean streets?
If an author sets her story in an area where she lives or has lived, weaving in the setting [image error]details is easier than setting the story in a far-off land or even in another state. When I began writing fiction, my location research was in the library or by telephone, a big reason my first books were set in Maine. Always a Suspect (originally Dangerous Attraction) takes place around Christmastime. My plot required the climax scene to be at a ski resort. I don’t ski, but friends invited us to their condo in northern Maine for the weekend. The stay gave me an opportunity to experience the mountains in the snow and to take photos.
I’ve set four more books in Maine partly because the plots came to me that way. For example, Primal Obsession takes place in the northern wilderness because the story involves a killer tracking a canoe expedition. I’ve utilized travel experiences for book settings, but inevitably I need to do other research. Today, the internet makes that much easier.
Some of Dark Rules (originally Breaking All the Rules) takes place in New York City and some on a fictional Caribbean island. I’ve visited the Big Apple a few times, but not the Eastern European section of the East Village, where my characters go to find particular shady characters who might have information. In one scene, they come across a street [image error]vendor selling designer knockoff handbags. The vendor says, “Ve haf de labels. Stick on bag,” showing them brass logo tags for major designers. Janna is incensed, and Simon hustles her away before she can call the police. I based the vendor on my actual experience and created that scene to show Janna as strictly by-the-book, and Simon as more the rule breaker.
Later they go to the Caribbean undercover to meet with the big smuggler. Although I’ve been to the Virgin Islands, that location didn’t work for my story. The internet came to the rescue. I plopped my island in an area where there had once been pirate activity and added the vegetation, fish, and birds found on an online guide. Readers have said they feel the heat of the Caribbean, not just the heat between my hero and heroine. It’s romantic suspense, after all.
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Sometimes story ideas have come to me that couldn’t be set anywhere I’ve been. In On Deadly Ground, a museum director hires a bodyguard/guide for her trip to Central [image error]America to return a Maya artifact (with a curse!) to its temple being restored by a team of archeologists and local Maya people. The story is a race through the jungle against kidnappers, thieves, and an earthquake. I used my trip to Mexico to inform my story. Tours of Maya ruins, one including a cenoté, a water-filled cavern connected to an underground river, and a visit to a village where Maya people live the old way came to life on my pages. And eureka, my online search found the entire diary of an archeological expedition.
I’ve run into trouble researching my new book. Even Google Street View hasn’t been adequate. For various reasons, the setting is Virginia, just south of the Washington, D.C. area, near the Potomac River. This time it was readers and other authors who’ve come to my rescue. I now have a better picture and sense of the rolling hills and of the wildlife and scenery. I still need some local color, maybe a craft beer or food dish.
Background details can’t take the place of good story and characters, but they provide reality and richness to any story. Sometimes setting is almost a character in the story. If anyone can mention a particular novel in which the setting seems a character, please comment.
The Intriguing Prospect of Leisure
Kate Flora: Apologies for getting to this post so late in the day. For the past week, I’ve[image error] been contemplating the possibility of a sabbatical from writing and it seems even contemplating stepping back from the keyboard, and creation, is making me lazy.
A sabbatical, you say? Why would you do that? What about us? It is a fair question. After the lonely years in the unpublished writer’s corner, when the books start being published, the relationship between author and work becomes a triangle, where readers are also a big part of the mix. Readers develop relationships with the author, but more than that, and very surprising to me when it happened, is that readers develop relationships with the characters and the stories. Years ago, when a number of popular authors of mystery series dropped or killed off their female protagonist’s significant others, I was surprised t receive messages from my readers telling me that if I killed off Andre they would never read my books again.
Another surprise? A man once told me at a reading that his wife had given him permission to date Thea. And many readers have told me how much they love Joe Burgess. I know he’s the guy I’d like to have watching my back or showing up at my accident or crime scene and some very admirable real cops have helped me shape and understand him.
Thirty-five years in the writer’s chair and characters do become important companions. I used to say that beyond the tip of the iceberg of character that’s on the page, I know more about their childhoods and what shaped them, as well as an understanding of how they see the world. I wrote my first Joe Burgess in response to my beloved sister Sara’s death. Also as an edgy response to people saying “I’ve always wanted to write a book and sometime when I have a free weekend, I’m going to write one.” I was curious about how long it would take me to write a book. Four and a half months after I typed: Chapter One I had finished a 485 page book. A brilliant agent and ruthless editing eventually produced a considerably shorter Playing God.
Lest you think that I am abandoning you, be assured that Thea ten, Death Comes [image error]Knocking, and Burgess seven, The Deceits of the World, are written and in the editing process, so this will not be a year when you will go without new chapters in their stories. There are stories in several anthologies and an essay in the pandemic book, Stop the World, along with fellow MCWers John Clark and Dick Cass.Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/STOP-WORLD-Snapshots-Pandemic-profits-ebook/dp/B08BCS7RGR/
I had hopes that there would be a new character, Rick O’Leary, and a new dark series heading toward your hands and your eyes. But this turns out to be a very bad time to try and sell and dark police procedural with a while male cop as a protagonist.
Several years ago, when I thought I’d settled into a rhythm with my Thea Kozak series: write for nine months, promote for three, the publisher abruptly dropped the series. Back then, I didn’t know how common this was and was devastated. I debated dropping writing and going back to practicing law. Then opportunities came along that widened my horizons. I was invited to become an editor at Level Best Books, and spent some years publishing short stories. I decided to take a chance on writing male cop protagonists, and Joe Burgess was born. Those adventures have carried me through many years. Until now, when I’m feeling weary and uncreative again.
Will I turn to baking? Gardening? Walks by the sea? Reading the books waiting in my vast TBR pile?
Who knows how long I will stay away from my desk? But we are told, and right now I believe, that sometimes it is necessary to step away to refill the well of creativity. Have any of you, out there in readerland, tried it? Was it helpful? What worked for you? Do you think I’ll quickly become restless and sit down to write again?
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July 13, 2020
Reality Will Always Trip You Up
Kaitlyn Dunnett here. Relax, I’m not going to talk about the pandemic or protests. No, my subject today is one of those normal but inescapable facts of a writer’s life—no matter how carefully you research a book, no matter how many times you proofread it, someone will always be able to find something you (probably) got wrong.
[image error]Sometimes readers find “errors” simply because writers are trying very hard not to bore their readers. in the last Liss MacCrimmon title, A View to a Kilt, Liss and her mother travel to Florida to settle the estate left to Liss’s father by his brother. In the scene in the uncle’s lawyer’s office, I didn’t bother to show the lawyer asking for proof of identity or a power of attorney, both of which, naturally, Liss’s mother would have brought with her. And I didn’t go into a lot of detail on inheritance law. I drew on my own experience in Florida when my mother died back in 1993. Since her estate was under a certain dollar amount in value, there was no need for probate and the transfer of everything to me was a fairly straightforward process. I didn’t see any point in burdening the reader with extraneous legal details.
[image error]According to one of the reviews of the book posted on Amazon.com, this oversight was a serious error on my part and proof I didn’t do my research. Any real Florida lawyer would be disbarred if he was as negligent as the one I portrayed. Um. Okay. I still think most readers would assume there was more to the meeting than I showed, but I guess I should have checked current probate law to make sure nothing had changed. For what it’s worth, I did thoroughly research the subject of private investigator’s licenses in Florida , since Liss’s late uncle had one. That issue is much more crucial to the plot.
[image error]In March, when A Fatal Fiction was in press and advance reading copies had already been sent out to reviewers—much too late to make any changes—a notice popped up on the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department Facebook page to announce they were moving from one location to another in Monticello, New York, the county seat. This prompted instant panic on my part. Although a reader who really wanted to could work out that the story takes place in the spring of 2019, well before the change, I never say that in the text. The book’s release date, June 30, 2020, meant that anyone who read it and was curious enough about the jail to look it up online, would find it in its new location, not the one it had when one of my characters was taken there for questioning. Did I specify the old location? Did I imply it? Was I going to get letters and snarky comments in reviews? As it turns out, I think I was vague enough to avoid that, but you never know.
[image error]I have been fortunate when it comes to dodging bullets in the past. One of my Liss MacCrimmon mysteries included a comment about the Curse of the Bambino. That, of course, was the year the Red Sox broke the curse by winning the World Series. Luckily, I was able to change a few lines of dialogue before the book was published.
The lesson here is that there will be some nit-picking detail the author overlooked in just about any novel. Inevitably, a reader is going to find it, probably within days of publication. Nine times out of then, that reader is going to tell the author, and possibly the world, that she made a mistake. Will something I haven’t yet thought of surface to embarrass me in A Fatal Fiction? It’s a good bet that something will. It’s been out a couple of weeks now, but only time will tell if I’ve dodged a bullet.
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With the June 30, 2020 publication of A Fatal Fiction, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett will have 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.
July 12, 2020
Flower Riot and Paying Deep, Deep Attention
[image error]Sandra Neily here: It was a wonderful day except for the tick. Grateful for Maine’s Tick Lab.)
This week my second novel, Deadly Turn, was finally published. It’s taken years, with a long break for cancer treatment and then more time to revisit and recraft what I wrote years ago. (Leave a comment on this post. I’ll scramble your names on pieces of paper, close my eyes, and send 2 of you a free copy. Leave emails, please.)
The novel and its drama take place deep in the Maine woods where wild flowers are often shy (Lady Slippers, Purple Trillium). This week, however, I was seeking sun and the riot of flowers that cover ski slopes near my home. Early July is best, just when Lupine is fading and right before Goldenrod (which I’ve never liked … go figure). [image error]
I wanted to see how many flowers I could visit on one hike up the grassy slopes. Their names are below so you can test yourself. To identify some I didn’t know, I used this amazing plant ID ap on my phone when I got home with pictures.[image error]
[image error]I spent a lot of the ‘hike’ sitting in flowers or on my knees, watching flowers. Maybe after creating characters who pay deep attention to the natural world, I needed a field trip away from the keyboard so I could practice deep attention. It was a wonderful day. [image error](Except for the dog tick. Very grateful for Maine’s Tick Lab.)[image error][image error][image error][image error][image error]
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More Deep Attention: In this excerpt from Deadly Turn, teenager Chan shows us how it’s done.
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As we worked our way downhill, climbing over downed trees and skirting raspberry thickets, I could see Chan’s generosity everywhere. Piles of cedar brush were mounded next to tall balsam firs where sheltering deer could nibble cedar until the spring thaw eased their hunger.[image error]
In a marsh, old tree snags sticking out of a small pond supported square boxes with large round holes: wood duck nests built and nailed up by the boy. Wood ducks usually nest in trees, but these birds had luxury condos high above predators hungry for spring eggs.
Chan sat on a log, pulled off his rubber boots, and waded toward a tiny island, bending to pick handfuls of grass as he sloshed ashore. Birds flapped around his head as he shook the stems and they rained down white kernels. He turned and pointed. “No dog,” he said.
I pulled Pock into a sit. Two ducks swam so close that we could see each feather as if we had a magnifying glass. Pock shivered slightly but sat still. Long ago my dog had learned that his lips would never touch a fast duck. Their webbed feet treading water, the birds swayed back and forth, staring at us. The male wood duck looked like an extravagant art installation staged far from a museum.[image error]
He had bright red irises that matched the red of his bill. His wing feathers were iridescent blue slashes, and his vivid green head sported white racing stripes that folded into feathers pointed backwards like an aerodynamic bike helmet. Someone with minimalist tendencies had finished him off. His body was geometric blocks of brown shades, some with a copper sheen, other hues compressed between tiny white lines that looked like contour lines on a map. The basically brown female blended into her surroundings, but blue wing feathers marked her as a wood duck.
“Oh, Pock. Have you ever?” I asked. He was still trembling, oblivious to ducks as living, breathing art.
Scattering the birds and wading back to us, Chan grinned. “Wild rice. If I was hunting them, it might be illegal—feeding them during hunting season. ‘Specially since I planted it. But I’m not hunting ducks, and I make sure no one else is either.”
By a massive beaver dam, Chan had chain-sawed a pile of birch for the beavers. Beavers don’t usually need help from anyone, but drag marks under the water showed the residents were storing up the limbs they’d eat after ice closed the pond. “Wait, here,” Chan said as he carefully shouldered his shotgun and navigated logs mudded into the top of the dam. Pock didn’t even look back as he raced after him.
I didn’t see the deer carcass on the far side of the dam until a bald eagle landed on it. Each jab of his curved beak brought up something red and stringy. He may have been eating, but his intense yellow eyes tracked every move I made.[image error]
He wasn’t bald. White feathers overlapped his head and cascaded around his shoulders in a fashionable shag haircut. His feet looked like bright yellow rain boots with knives at each toe. I had a flash of a James Bond movie where lethal objects snap out of everyday items and kill people. A bit of white brow sagged over each eagle eye, gathering darkness into his stare.
So many flowers on one hike! From top to bottom: Meadow Hawkweed and Orange Hawkweed, Bird Vetch, Hedge Bedstraw (Also called False Baby’s Breath), Milkweed, Common St. Johns Wort, Bladder Campion (Maiden’s Tears), White Meadowsweet (butterflies love it), Daisy, Buttercup, Purple Meadow Rue, Yarrow, Lupine, Wild Strawberry
Sandy’s 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.
Baby’s Breath), Milkweed, Common St. Johns Wort, Bladder Campion (Maiden’s Tears), White Meadowsweet (butterflies love it), Daisy, Buttercup, Purple Meadow Rue, Yarrow, Lupine, Wild Strawberry
Sandy’s 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.
July 10, 2020
Weekend Update: July 11-12, 2020
[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be a posts by Sandra Neily (Monday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday) Kate Flora (Thursday), and Susan Vaughan (Friday).
In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:
from Kaitlyn Dunnett: a new Q&A from me about A Fatal Fiction is up at the Sisters in Crime New England blog: https://sincne.clubexpress.com/content.aspx?page_id=2507&club_id=338034&item_id=2026&pst=11429&actr=3&fbclid=IwAR2DaHZTTXW3F7IxlWhqF7ZSp4wdy9fkObB5l1-FeQNs8VXRGaBesZ5nuiU
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and the winner of the July 7 drawing for a hardcover copy of A Fatal Fiction is Lori B. Thanks to all who entered by leaving comments on my June 30 post.
Kate Flora has a “Day in the Life of . . .” at Dru’s Book Musings, featuring the protagonist from my romantic suspense novel, Wedding Bell Ruse. You can read it here:
Also, Kate’s publisher for The Faking of the President says the book is a NYT reading pick. Very exciting!
[image error]Sandra Neily’s second Mystery in Maine novel, Deadly Turn, was published this week. Patton, Game Warden Moz, and the ever wayward Lab, Pock, return. Read the first three chapters here. See her blog post to win a free copy.
If you comment on MCW posts this week, one lucky commenter will receive a copy of The Faking of the President.
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
July 9, 2020
Is A Writing Group For You?
People ask me all the time about what it takes to publish a novel. What’s the best steps to take? How do I go about it? One of the first things I tell them is to join a writing group.
I’ve been in many writing groups throughout my career. Some were good and some not so much. I’d been in one called The Pine Nuts that met monthly in Cape Elizabeth for seven years and that group was amazing. It helped me become a better writer in ways I’d not anticipated. Unfortunately, I had to quit the group for personal reasons. So when I began looking for a new group to join last year, I knew the kind of people I wanted to surround myself with. My current group, while small, has been invaluable to me.
Do you need a writing group? In my opinion, every writer would benefit being in one. Not just any group though. It’s important that you find one that is a good fit for you and where the members are thoughtful and respectful of each other’s work. A good writing group nurtures the individual rather than criticizes and puts the writer down. They find the good in a manuscript while gently coaxing the writer to make important changes where needed.
What to look for in a good writing group.
1. Experience. You want to join a group with some experienced writers who have also been in a group setting before. People who have been in a group understand how to criticize without being too judgmental, as well as praise the writer where praise is needed. Experienced members can also put you at ease and give you vital feedback in a supportive and positive environment
2. Diversity. By this I mean you want a group with different types of writers. Diversity in this regards allows you to see different styles of writing and incorporate that in your manuscript. Good writing is still good writing, but if someone who writes romance really enjoys a chapter of your crime novel, then you know you’ve done a good job holding their attention.
3. Dedication: There’s nothing more frustrating than showing up to group only to realize that half the members have not showed up. Or have not read your submission, even though you spent hours reading and critiquing their submission. A group is only as good as its members and so a policy of some sort attendance policy makes sense. Ask the group leader about the dedication of its group members. If the attendance policy is not enforced, I would think twice about joining.
4. Rules: There should be some rules if a group is to be successful. They don’t need to be hard and fast, but you don’t want to join a group where chaos and disorder are routine, otherwise you’ll be wasting your time. For example, each person should be allowed a limited amount of time to speak without interruption. There should be a limit as to how many pages a person can submit to the members each meeting or else members will submit hundreds of pages. And each person should be allotted the same amount of time to critique a submission or else meetings can quickly get off topic. It always helps to have one person be the moderator, Keeping time and gently coaxing members to follow the rules. More importantly, all criticism should be based solely on the work and not be personal attacks.
These are the some of the checklist items to look for when thinking about joining a group. If you’re living in Maine, the MWPA has a comprehensive list of writing groups throughout the state. I would highly recommend joining a writing group if you want to kick your prose into higher gear. Feedback is extremely important to writers, especially new writers still looking to establish their voice. Be prepared to develop a thick skin, and try and view criticism not as a personal attack but as a tool to help you get better. Without criticism, you’ll never know what you’re doing wrong or what in your work needs to be fixed. Different sets of eyes will point to weaknesses in your writing. Good feedback will help you straighten out bad habits, realize the holes in your plot and heLp you improve your character development.
So go out and find your people. It will not only help you improve your skill set, but you mind make some new friends for life.
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