Lea Wait's Blog, page 136

Back to the Wild

It started with a book, as these things so often do. The Humane Gardener:Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife, in this case, by Nancy Lawson. I purchased the book back in the early spring of 2019, when I was just getting excited about gardens and harvests and canning anything and everything in the season to come.

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The Humane Gardener makes the case for taking others into consideration when planning gardens and home habitats, however, and – because this is me we’re talking about – I got a little carried away with that. Ultimately, what happened that summer was…not much. In order to create this backyard habitat I was dreaming about, I didn’t know what to pull up and what to keep in terms of beneficial plant life; I didn’t know where or how much I should plant if I wanted to have a garden of our own while also sustaining wild critters on our land. Basically, I knew exactly enough to stop me in my tracks for the 2019 growing season. We still managed to harvest some cukes and some tomatoes, it was a great year for berries, I think we managed to get some kale out of things by the time all was said and done. But, really, it wasn’t a stellar year for our food garden. The fox that called this place home seemed to be happy with the way things were going, but otherwise I have no real evidence that anything I did or didn’t do that summer made any impact on anyone, good or bad.

Once summer was done, I started reading a bit more on the concept of making your home a place more hospitable for wild things. Not a lot of reading, though, mostly just tidbits here and there.

And then came the foxes.

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In the Bath/Phippsburg/Brunswick area, a spate of attacks by rabid foxes over the past couple of years had fueled a frenzy among a few citizens who were determined to put an end to the problem. Ideally, by putting an end to the foxes. A contract was signed between the Bath City Council and the USDA in February 2020, to set out traps to capture “rabies-vector species” and test the unfortunates who ended up in those traps, for rabies. The USDA would be paid $21,000 for their services. If you’re not aware, you can only test an animal for rabies once it’s dead, which meant that any animals trapped would be killed, whether healthy or not. The contract was done without knowledge or input from the public; once the public found out, however, it turned out there were a few people who had a problem with it.

I was one of those people. For a month, I went to meetings, wrote emails, made phone calls, and generally made a nuisance of myself. While I was doing those things, I started reading again.

This time, I read a lot.

Doug Tallamy’s Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope; The Audubon Society Guide to Attracting Birds: Creating Natural Habitats for Properties Large and Small, by Stephen Kress; Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway. I learned that the primary reason we were having issues with rabid foxes in our picturesque Maine towns was because we’d shrunk their habitat to the point where (1) rabies-vector species were forced to live closer to humans, which meant if there was a rabies outbreak we were going to see it, and (2) that shrinking habitat meant it was more likely that rabies would spread among the animals now crowded into this ever-diminishing sphere of habitable land.

I also learned that foxes are an incredibly effective control on the rodent population, consuming up to two pounds of rodent and insect protein per day, which in turn means they keep tick populations down – which is kind of important in these parts, given the rate of tick-borne illness in Maine. I learned that places around the world – including large parts of the United States – have used the coordinated distribution of baited ORV (Oral Rabies Vaccine) pellets to all but eliminate wildlife rabies in their area. Maine is actually part of that coordinated effort, but at this point the program is only being done in the eastern part of the state.

I learned a bunch of other things, most of which was shared with the Bath City Council by Bath residents, scientists, and wildlife experts. The biggest thing I learned, however, was something stated well by the World Health Organization, and re-stated in multiple other studies trying to solve the same problem (rabies) with the same time-worn, ineffective solution (trap and kill). WHO’s findings?

Past strategies for elimination of wildlife rabies included reducing primary host density by culling, on the basis of the rationale that rabies transmission is density-dependent, disease incidence increasing proportionally with host density. Rabies transmission in wildlife may, however, be less dependent on density than was previously assumed; therefore, reducing host population density is unlikely to be effective in controlling or eliminating the disease (36). This conclusion is borne out by observations that widescale culling campaigns to reduce wild carnivore populations have failed to eliminate the disease (37). Reducing the primary host density is therefore not recommended as a means of controlling rabies in wildlife for humane, economic and ecological reasons.

Trap-and-kill may lower the population of rabies-vector species (specifically, foxes, raccoons, and skunks) in a region for a short time, but others ultimately move in to fill the gap and you’re back to square one. The only proven effective way to combat rabies when you’re dealing with wildlife in an urban setting is by instituting some type of baited vaccine program. In the meantime, rabies outbreaks tend to run in cycles that ultimately burn themselves out; the animals who remain have a natural immunity to the virus, while those who had it typically die within ten days of exhibiting symptoms. In the meantime, educating the public about how to interact with wildlife in their midst is a far more effective solution than simply ejecting that wildlife.

Baited vaccine programs take planning and work and coordination (and, let’s be honest, money), however. Why bother with all of that when you can throw $21K at another government agency and they’ll saddle up with their traps – during breeding season, no less – in order to trap and kill any foxes, raccoons, or skunks who happen to fall into their hands?

Because of the degree of public scrutiny and protest the City of Bath was getting thanks to their decision on the trap-and-kill, they chose to take a second vote after arguments were heard. The plan was approved, again.

In March of 2020, just as a global pandemic was shutting down the world as we know it, the USDA set their plan in motion, and began setting traps in the South End of Bath to trap and kill rabies-vector species. The city has been highly circumspect about that process, refusing to release any information on exactly how many traps were set or where. A report is supposed to come out by the end of June detailing how many animals that were ultimately caught tested positive for rabies. It’s worth noting, however, that for all the fuss from us about not killing foxes, not a single fox was actually trapped in this process. Instead, twenty-eight raccoons and skunks were trapped, killed, and tested; three cats were trapped and released.

While I’ve been waiting for follow-up information on this whole beastly process, I’ve continued to educate myself on the importance of re-building habitat for wildlife – not just the songbirds, bees, and butterflies that get all the press, but the so-called “nuisance” wildlife that now share our cities and towns. Raccoons, skunks, possums, coyotes, foxes, deer… As we continue to voraciously consume the places where they can live and thrive, it’s inevitable that they must find some way to sneak into the corners and edges of our ever-expanding society if they are to survive.

So, I’m working on “re-wilding” our property, a term I learned from artist and landscape designer Kdb Dominguez during the Save the Fox campaign. I’ve started a website devoted to the process, and have designed my own kind of two-year Master’s program, integrating homesteading and wildlife conservation through permaculture. Ben and I are letting a good portion of our lawn grow out into meadow, and I recently met with Deb Perkins of FirstLight Habitats to identify all invasive, non-native plants on our land and begin phasing those out in favor of more beneficial native plants, while simultaneously building a wildlife pond and restoring a vernal pool adjacent to the property. I’m taking a three-week permaculture intensive through the Resilience Hub in order to better understand how to apply permaculture principles to my mission, and I’m working on doing a much better job this year on our own food garden.

So… That’s what I’ve been up to. In this age of coronavirus, climate change, and an increasing understanding of the depth of racism and racial injustice in this country, it feels good to be proactive about something. Apart from a raging infection from poison ivy and brown-tail moth caterpillars, it feels good to be outside in the fresh air, making something happen. And it feels great to connect with others who share a passion for wildlife in this state and beyond.

I’ll have more information about my website and progress in next month’s post. In the meantime, if you have any interest in learning more about the plight of wildlife, the importance of habitat, and what you can do to help, I highly recommend Doug Tallamy’s books. There’s a lot to be hopeless about right now, but there are also things you can do to make a difference – many of them right in your own backyard.

Jen Blood is the USA Today-bestselling author of the Erin Solomon Mysteries and the Flint K-9 Search and Rescue Mysteries. Learn more about her work at http://www.jenblood.com. 

Tornados—Nature’s Beautiful Revenge

One of the things on my bucket list is to go on a tornado chase with a team of professional storm chasers. Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve been fascinated with tornados. I think my interest started when I first watched The Wizard Of Oz. The sight of that twister behind Dorothy both horrified and fascinated me. In fact, I’m so intrigued by these wind storms that years ago I wrote a satirical novella called FUJITA’S ITCH. I vividly remember driving through Washington state one day and seeing hundreds of huge dust devils swirling over the plains on either side of me.

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The majority of tornados occur in an amorphous region called Tornado Alley. Tornado Alley cuts through parts of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, but these storm can happen outside that area, too. In 2011 a terrible twister struck Springfield, Massachusetts and killed three people and injured over three hundred. In 1953 an F4 hit Worcester, MA.

Did you know that tornados can come in all shapes and sizes. Here is a chart below showing the different variety of twisters.[image error]

The peak of tornado season is May to early June and most tornadoes occur between 4 and 9pm. The strongest tornado is designated as an F5 and can have winds up to three hundred mph. There’s so much new information about tornado development that if you’re interested, I suggest you do some research on these fascinating storms and how they form.

The most powerful tornado on record is the El Reno tornado. It happened on May 31st, 2013 and at one point had a width of 2.6 miles on the ground. Wrote Climate Central’s Andrew Freedman: “The width of the tornado was equivalent to the entire north-south length of New York City’s Central Park.” Wind speeds topped out at 296 mph and it traveled over 16 miles on the ground. A picture of that tornado is below.

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Tornados have been frequently portrayed in books and films. The movie, Twister, was a prime example of a popular movie. I feel terrible for all the lives and damages these storms create, but at the same time I can’t help but be awed by these magnificent beasts formed by nature. Someday, when I finally do go on my tornado chase, I’ll get back to you with my thoughts of seeing a twister up close and personal. Until then, I’ll continue to study and watch clips of them on You Tube.

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Sam’s Ghost

I’ve had plenty of ‘by myself’ time in the past several months. With Beth going to Belgrade 5 days a week to take care of our grandson, that leaves me, Bernie (our dog) and my thoughts. I’ve noticed I’m spending considerable time thinking about people I’ve known in my life, most of whom have slid into anonymity as time has gone on. The following essay appeared in Wolf Moon Journal about fifteen years ago. With Memorial day  and D-Day just past, I felt it was time to share it again. I hope each of you reading this have been fortunate enough to have had someone like Sam in your life.

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I was under Beth’s VW, changing the oil, when I heard the slow crunch of gravel at the end of the driveway. A moment I had been dreading had come—the stranger from across the street had finally crossed the road.

It was the fall of 1977, and as naive first-time homebuyers in a market of rapidly rising mortgage rates, we had bought the second house we had seen. The sellers briefly mentioned the people living across the road, describing them as being a grumpy old couple with whom they had a sparse and strained relationship.

Their comments, coupled with our harried attempt to get the house into livable condition before winter, had left little incentive to make the first move. Now, that option was being taken from me.

I finished the oil change before sliding out to look at the person who had been standing patiently beside the car. I had to admit what I saw didn’t appear terribly menacing. The man looking down had an overly large nose, thinning white hair, glasses and hands that had seen their share of hard work.

I stammered, filling the growing silence with bits and pieces of personal history: who we were, where we worked, etc. All I got in return was “I’m Sam Morrison.” I managed to continue the one-sided conversation for about fifteen minutes before Sam nodded and walked back across the road to the neat two story house that sat between the road and a massive power line stretching toward Windsor.

As Sam had uttered less than ten words during the entire conversation, there was no way for me to tell whether or not he truly was the grumpy soul the previous owners had described. I went back to worrying about lack of insulation and drafty windows but developed the habit of nodding or waving whenever I saw Sam across the road, and he usually raised his chin or hand in acknowledgment.

One day in November, Sam introduced me to his son Maynard. In the course of talking to his son, I learned that Sam had retired the year before from the V.A. hospital and that his supposed grumpiness was, instead, a natural taciturnity—the kind people from away believe lurks in the heart of every true Mainer. I also realized that Sam was at loose ends, and retirement was weighing on him.

Sam’s wife, Edna, had a delightful pessimism about nearly everything and a tendency to talk about her husband as though he were among the recently departed. It took a while to adjust to this. Watching Sam’s grin as Edna discussed him in the third person, past tense, made it easy for me to be in league with him, egging her on about nearly everything in town from corrupt selectmen to the awful condition of the road that separated our houses.

When winter arrived, I turned to one of my favorite pursuits, ice fishing. On a whim, I invited Sam to join me. Within a month, Sam’s family had outfitted him with new traps, a sled, and a pack basket, and we were out on the ice every weekend. During the remainder of the winter, I learned a valuable skill, that of being comfortable around someone who seldom spoke, and I gained a friendship that grew until Sam became the father-figure that had been missing from my life for a long time.

When spring came and brooks began running normally, Sam and I would hop into my truck after supper and head off to see how many trout we could fool. He never had to tell me how he felt about these trips, the grin on his face as he dropped several fat fish in his kitchen sink when we returned was all I needed to know.

The backyard of our new home was a disaster. It began about three feet from the kitchen window and consisted of a decaying pigsty, large rocks, and a bumper crop of burdock. I was determined to tame this mess and spent endless hours digging and sifting to remove broken glass and rusty nails from the slowly shrinking wilderness.

Sam, an inveterate gardener himself, developed the habit of walking slowly across the road after supper each evening and sitting on a convenient rock. He watched and listened, lending a hand as needed as I chatted about everything that came to mind. We made a good team—Sam, the willing listener and I, the endless talker.

Like most Maine gardeners, Sam raised a set group of vegetables each year. I, on the other hand, was wont to try at least one new one each year. As the harvest progressed each summer, homegrown treats passed from one side of Route 226 to the other, enhanced by strawberries, both wild and cultivated as well as raspberries and blueberries from our family farm in Union.

My mother, a garden writer for the Camden Herald, met Sam on several occasions and did a feature story on Sam and his fifty years of garden experience. Despite being a man of few words, there was little doubt regarding the pleasure Sam got from the experience of seeing his picture in the newspaper.

Sam Morrison really didn’t need words to define his life. His deeds told a far better story. Whenever I found I didn’t have the necessary tool to fix something, I trudged across the road and borrowed Sam’s. For almost fifteen years, we shared his carefully maintained rototiller, and whenever I was too harried to get the driveway cleared before we had to leave for work, Sam found time to get the plow created snowbanks out of the way so we could get our cars safely off the street when we returned after work.

Beth will never forget the day I was at work and one of the hoses on the washer let go. Since the washing machine was in the kitchen, the potential for disaster was immense. Sam was on the scene immediately, turning off the valve and returning momentarily with a replacement hose that he just happened to have hanging in his storage shed.

When Sam began to succumb to the infirmities that come with being eighty-something, I was able to return some of the endless favors he had bestowed upon us over the years. With each mailbox cleared or roof I shoveled off during the winter came a small spark of satisfaction that comes with paying back spontaneous generosity.

When Sam began begging off going fishing, I knew something was wrong. Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with cancer. That summer, the tilled plot behind his house was a sorry collection of green. His family tried to have the kind of garden that Sam tended each year, but none of them had inherited the knack, and Sam was too tired to remedy it.

The nightly walk across the road became much harder. There is a terrible sadness that accompanies watching someone you care deeply about fade away. When his cancer became too much for the family to manage, Sam went to the Maine Veteran’s home. The last time I went to see him, he waved me off, almost as if he didn’t want me to see what he had become. Sam died on Sept. 18, 1994. I was humbled and grateful to be one of his pallbearers.

Ice fishing lost its allure the following winter. It wasn’t the same without Sam sitting on a sunny spot on the shore of one of our favorite spots, sharing a sandwich and a thermos of coffee. He had taught me the meaning of companionable silence, but it takes two for the experience, and I was now a solo act.

The following spring, I wondered if gardening would have lost the same appeal. Once my garden was tilled and the seeds were in, I discovered something both wonderful and unsettling. Late in the evening, when the sky had faded to dusky purple and the still air was broken with the soft, but sharp twee of bats, I began to catch an image out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I turned to look at it, it would be gone, but the sense that Sam had returned to sit on the stone wall and visit while I weeded or cultivated persisted. It was strangely comforting. After a while, I began talking like Sam had never left. After all, he had always been such a great listener. Why would his ghost be any different?

Over the next nine years, our daughters grew, I changed jobs, we survived the great ice storm, and Sam’s wife Edna died. My trips across the road happened only when Maynard stopped to mow the lawn or work on the house he was trying to sell. Sam continued to appear just beyond my direct line of sight while I was gardening.

We sold our house in June of 2003 and moved to Hartland. I made arrangements with the seller to plant a garden before we closed so I wouldn’t lose an entire growing season. We made an immediate connection, and she told me that the back yard was full of spirits and that they enhanced the success of anything planted there.

Our first harvest led me to believe she was right. We had the best squash crop in ten years and ate strawberries until the first week of November. I saw no ghosts, but had an almost spiritual sense several times while working in the gardens near dusk.

When spring arrived the following year, I looked forward to another successful gardening season. Cold damp weather quashed those dreams early on, leaving only a bumper crop of damp, heavy grass that sometimes took a full week before it was completely tamed by the mower.

One evening, as I was trying to finish the last bit of lawn and found myself mowing around fireflies, I looked up and froze. There in the shadows was a familiar shape—Sam’s ghost. It took him a year to find our new home.

I’ve seen or sensed his presence several times since that evening. Somehow, it makes this place a bit more like home.

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Weekend Update: June 6-7, 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:

Vaughn Hardacker‘s new web site has gone live. Check it out at: www.vaughnhardacker.net.

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In the drawing for advance reading copies of Kaitlyn Dunnett’s A Fatal Fiction, the winners are Carol, Monica, and Autumn. Congrats to all three of you. Hardcover and e-book editions of this third book in the “Deadly Edits” series will be in stores on June 30.

 

 

 

 

 

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

When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Go Virtual

Maine’s crime writers are blessed to be part of a resilient, resourceful community. The particular obstacle doesn’t matter – a sluggish economy, an endless winter, upheaval in the publishing industry – we find a way to survive, buoyed by readers whose support sustains us.

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Dick Cass reading to a rapt crowd

When the going gets tough the tough get creative, and creative is exactly what our community has been since the middle of March, spinning out imaginative ways to maintain the bond among and between writers and readers despite the challenges presented by the Covid-19 health crisis.

Maine crime writers who have released new books recently and those who will be soon  – including MCWers Kate Flora (Wedding Bell Ruse), Charlene D’Avanzo (Glass Eeels, Shattered Sea), Joseph Souza (The Perfect Daughter) and Kathy Lynn Emerson (A Fatal Fiction) as well as former blogmate Julia Spencer-Fleming (Hid From Our Eyes) – have found innovative ways to engage readers despite the suspension of in-person bookstore signings and library readings. They’ve done Zoom chats and group readings, online Q & As and FaceTime book clubs. Local independent bookstores can hook you up with their books, as well as those by other Maine crime writers.

That prompts a well-deserved shout out to our ingenious, hardworking Southern Maine bookselling friends: Barbara at https://kellysbookstogo.com/, Josh and Emily at https://www.printbookstore.com/, Paula and Ann at https://mainelymurders.com/, Ari, Meg, Matt, Sarah and Lucinda at https://www.longfellowbooks.com/, and Katherine, John and Karen at https://www.letterpress-books.com/ and so many others who run wonderful bookstores across the state. Somehow they have found ways to feed our reading habits throughout the pandemic and are now figuring out how to safely welcome in-store customers back to their shops.  Many thanks to all of them.

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[image error]Many of us at MCW are members of Sisters in Crime New England, which is doing its annual Member Reads via Zoom on Thursday, June 18 from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.  This means you can participate or watch from the comfort of your own couch (or deck, if it’s a nice night).

I’ll be reading, as will Gayle Lynds, Kirsten Reed, Dick Cass, Bruce Coffin, Charlene D’Avanzo, Barbara Ross and perhaps a few others. (If you’re an SinCNE member—published or unpublished—and you haven’t signed up yet, email me!) Each of us will read a brief selection from our work and then we’ll chat with each other and the audience. Pre-registration is required for this event – for the audience as well as the readers. If you’re keen to tune in, drop me a note at brenda@brendabuchananwrites.com and I’ll put your name on the list.

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Maine Crime Wave 2020, originally teed up for June 19-20, had to be cancelled as a live event. But there will be a virtual gathering called Maine Crime Online from ­7:00 p.m. to 8:30 on Thursday, June 25.   Maine crime writers reading from their work include recent Maine Literary Award winners and finalists Gerry Boyle, Richard Cass, Kate Flora, Vaughn Hardacker, Bruce Coffin and Joseph Souza as well as flash fiction judge and NYT bestseller Julia Spencer-Fleming.

My favorite Crime Wave tradition, Two Minutes in the Slammer, has been re-named this year Two Minutes in Quarantine. It involves a bunch of terrific writers you may not have heard of yet doing dynamic two minute readings.  There also will be online book selling by Barbara Kelly of the aforesaid Kelly’s Books to Go.  For more info about Maine Crime Online and a link to the Zoom registration: https://www.mainewriters.org/calendar/maine-crime-online

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The first Noir @ the Bar took place about a dozen years ago in Philadelphia, and is now a worldwide (really!) phenomenon. It is what is sounds like: a group of crime writers meet at a bar and entertain the crowd with brief readings of their darkest prose. A pub atmosphere + lovers of crime fiction = lots of fun for writers and readers.

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The readers at a Portland Noir at the Bar, in the pre-Covid-19 days. Left to right, Maureen Milliken, Bruce Coffin, Barbara Ross, Jessie Crockett, Dick Cass, Brenda Buchanan, Julia Spencer-Fleming, E.J. Fechenda, Gayle Lynds, Jen Blood, John Sheldon and Brendan Rielly.

We missed the chance to hold our usual We weren’t able to hold our traditional early spring Noir in Southern Maine, but the Covid-19 crisis has given rise to virtual Noirs @ The Bar. During the past few months, online Noirs have been hosted by writers based in Boston, New York, Washington DC and Edinburgh, Scotland, among other places. Most are recorded, so you can watch them at your leisure. If you google “Virtual Noir at the Bar,” you’ll easily find a good sample.  These are benefit events for a variety of worthy causes, so if you can afford to pitch in a little bit, all the better.

If you’d like to “attend” such an event live, on Friday, June 26 at 8 p.m. I’ll be reading at a Noir at the Bar celebrating Pride Month. Ten LGBTQ+ crime writers will be reading from our work via Crowdcast.

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There also will be music and a special Pride-themed cocktail (a professional bartender will instruct on how to put it together.) The event will raise money for Lambda Literary, which works to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender literature through programs that encourage development of emerging writers. Because of the COVID19 crisis, Lambda had to cancel all programs and events for 2020 on which it relies for funding, so join us to show your support. The link to register for this event is here: https://bit.ly/2XyyNtd

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Bottom line: writers love to connect with their readers, probably even more than readers enjoy meeting writers. We’re all grateful there’s so much interest in keeping the writer-reader bond alive when in-person gatherings cannot occur at our local libraries, bookstores and pubs.

No one will argue Zoom and Crowdcast events are as intimate as live readings. But they’ll do for now.

Trust me, when it is safe, writers will be eager to resume in-person events where we don’t have to worry about the dreaded screen freeze and can hug each other and our readers, without whom none of this would be possible.

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.

 

 

 

 

Be Careful What You Wish For

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Vaughn

Vaughn C. Hardacker here: As most of this blog’s readers know, I live about as far north as one can go in our state as one can go and still expect to encounter civilization. The winters here start in mid-October and we usually don’t recognize the arrival of spring until the passage of our mid-May snow storm. As a result we spend a lot of time wishing for the months of June through September. Well, almost. June is usually a chilly, damp month so our summer truly starts in July and ends sometime in . . . July. (However, this year it may have come and gone already. Last week, May 26 – 28 we had temperatures in the high 80s–hitting 90 on one . . . the night of May 29, as well as June 2, we had record lows and frost. For the first time in the 80 years they have been keeping records at the Caribou National Weather Service we had two June nights with frost.)

You might ask, what  does all this have to do with the title of this blog? Here are some possible answers.

First, I live in a 120 years-old house which is another way of saying I have a lot of maintenance work. Since mid-May I have spent five days rebuilding the west end of the porch that surrounds half of the house. The west side faces the weather and takes a beating. After who knows how long, the entire side of the porch was–all I can say is that I tore it apart by hand, using no hand-tools. In winter, I ignore outside projects.

Skipper & Gin early June is a time when grass up here makes up for lost time. It has been dormant for almost seven months and so far I’ve cut the grass two times a week (I live on a .85 acre lot) and with the obstacle course Jane, like most women, creates on our lawn causing me to have to move and then replace all of the lawn furniture, it takes three hours to cut it. This year my tractor rolled over and died so I had to buy a new one. I purchased a tractor for $2400 at Lowes and was told they could deliver in three weeks. That I said was unacceptable. Solution: I bought a $1,200 trailer so I could take it home. In winter I can’t even see grass let alone worry about cutting it.

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Skipper & Ginger (Winter)

In non-winter, I walk our two Yorkies twice a day. In winter, due to the cold maybe twice a week if they’re lucky. In non-winter we have fenced in a 26′ by 40′ area in which they get to run and play. In winter, they lay on the back of the couch and stare out the window. In non-winter I can’t even dress my feet without them sitting in front of me expecting to go for a walk. Talk about the ultimate guilt trip!

In winter I have a single chore. To keep the front walk clear using my snow-blower. The drive is plowed by Jane’s son-in-law. We get on average one storm every two weeks. In non-winter . . . Have I mentioned cutting the lawn?

All winter long we sit in the cold darkness (up here in December we are in the dark by 3:00 pm–if not all the time) and think about the warmth of spring. Did I say warmth? Maybe absence of snow is a better choice of words. Then the snow goes and the season of yard work (I have never been able to figure out where all the

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Coming September 4, 2020

stuff that magically appears with the passing of snow coverage comes from), planting flowers, and repairing those areas of the house that have born the brunt of winter is upon us. It never fails that, after a couple of weeks of frenetic springtime activity, I look back on the winter months and can’t help but wish for the laid back time of the year when I have nothing to do but sit, write, and wish for the disappearance of the snow.

I don’t want to leave everyone in a state of depression so I will say that on a personal level I’ve had a good run of late. Last week, May 29, I received the ARCs of my novel, THE EXCHANGE. The publisher also ensured that Bill Bushnell (book reviewer for Bushnell On Books, Kennebec Journal and Publisher Weekly) got a review copy and Lisa Gardner is reading it for the purpose of giving us a cover blurb. The county has thus far dealt with a grand total of ten Covid-19 cases, eight of which have recovered, one is still receiving medical care, and (unfortunately) one died. This past Monday, June 1, local restaurants reopened and the furthest north bookstore in the continental United States (Bogan Books in Fort Kent) is also open for customers to actually enter and browse the books!

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Bogan Books
Fort Kent, ME
boganbooks.com

Now the disclaimer: Regardless of how I sound in this blog entry; I’ll take non-winter with all of the chores and projects over winter any day!

Oh, yes. Some of you may recall my blog about Ronnie Jay. Ron and I have been in touch. He is in Tennessee, where his life has taken some major turns . . . that’s a subject for a future blog.

 

The Brown Thumb Struggles On

Kate Flora: Confessing that today, with so much chaos in the country, I am finding it hard to write. Hard to think because I have no focus. I have nothing to say about writing, wouldn’t touch politics with a barge pole, and yet the calendar says it is my turn to blog here at MCW.

What do you do when things are so overwhelming that they disable your focus? I tend to do one of three things. I cook, I visit my favorite second-hand shop and scout out bargains, or I go out to the garden. My favorite shop is still shuttered due to the virus. If I cook it, I am going to have to eat it, and I’m already working on my Covid-19 pounds, so it is off to the garden I trot.

I should stop and say here that I am the brown thumb (the gardening equivalent of black [image error]sheep) in my family. My mother was a garden writer who in her 80’s wrote about mysteries where her protagonist was woman with large Maine gardens. My father had a degree from the Stockbridge School of Agriculture. My brother John gardens like a fiend, and my late sister Sara, like my father, could hold out her hand and plants would jump to meet her like an eager pet. I, on the other hand, am the queen of invasives. I can grow the things other people eagerly give away. My ineptitude doesn’t stop me from trying, though. I just joke that I don’t have a green thumb, I have a green credit card.

First, because I thought it would be cool, as I step out into the garden, I try out a new app called Plant Snap to see if it can identify a plant I love but have forgotten the name of. Alas, Plant Snap strikes out three times. Ah well. There are plenty of other garden-related things to do. Before I dig in, I usually walk the yard, making mental notes of what most needs to be done.

Then I dig into weeding–an endless battle with Gout Weed or Bishop’s Weed, which is everywhere or I embark on a game I call “musical plants” because it involves moving things around because I, or they, have put them in the wrong places.

This is part of what I saw on my walk around:

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I actually have two sets of gardens, and so I get to play even more musical plants. At the oceanside cottage, I planted Ladybells because I loved them in my mother’s and grandmother’s gardens. Alas, because of my talent for raising invasive plants, I now have Ladybells (Adenophora) choking out everything else, so I will transplant some of them to my other garden, and dig up some of the hardy ageratum–lovely periwinkle blue and blooms in September, to take to my cottage garden.

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Centranthus on a wall in France

Gardening, it seems to me, is an endless set of decisions. There’s a tiny purple weigela that is being dwarfed by Centranthus Ruber, newly introduced because I saw the centranthus blooming on a tall rock wall during a barge cruise in France last year. Now it has grown tall and the little wiegelia is very unhappy, pressed on the other side by Russian sage. Keeping plants happy is a perpetual challenge. What will grow tall and overwhelm a smaller plant? What is supposed to be in that bare spot where something was eaten over the winter? Why on earth did I decide to plant huge grasses that would need the strength of ten to dig out? What will bloom in September and October when most things are done? (My answer is chrysanthemums, ageratum, and a frothy planting of anemones.)

My spring garden is subtle–after the daffodils, I get delicate purple stalks of my favorite cranesbill geranium, Mourning Widow, and then pink cranesbills. Later, the trailing blue of cranesbill Roxanne (or Jolly Bee) will wind itself through the garden, a lovely contrast to the bright yellow (and very aggressive) evening primrose and anything that’s pink or yellow.

Despite the brown thumb, scratched arms, and occasional tick, I seem to be unsatisfied with too many beds to care for, and always have to have colorful planters as well And then there is my daylily addiction. As I’ve written here before, gardening is very valuable for a writer. The meditative quality of garden lets me plot, just as the challenges of the garden plot teach me to slow down, calm down, and be present. And when I’m present, despite the chaos of the world, I can see my story more clearly and figure out what happens next.

 

The Cozy Timeline vs. Real World Events (and a giveaway)

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today pondering, not for the first time, the difference between book time and real time. Cozy mysteries and contemporary romances, two of my favorite types of reading, have this is common: they are set in the present in the “real” world, but with a caveat or two.

Both genres generally avoid making references to current events, especially politics. Pandemics haven’t come into consideration before, but ongoing wars are usually ignored. In part this is to avoid “dating” the story. It’s also because a book is written long before its publication date and even longer before most people will read it. Writers can’t predict the future any better than anyone else.

Clive Cussler tried to find a way around this by putting a dateline in his novels that was a few years ahead of their publication date. That was fine when they were new, but I recently reread Flood Tide, published in 1997 and set in 2000. In 2020, the ability to suspend disbelief was much more difficult—I knew for a fact that the apocalyptic events the author described didn’t really happen.

I’ve never done a survey, but I suspect that many novels, unless they are historical or futuristic, go out of their way to avoid telling the reader what year it is. That said, writers generally need to have a calendar of some sort in mind when they map out their plots. What month the story is set in makes a difference. So does the choice of a day of the week when it comes to creating certain scenes. I was very aware of this in writing A Fatal Fiction, if only because I happened to be writing a story set at exactly the time of year I was experiencing in reality.

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I have a timeline for the series. I know in what year Mikki Lincoln was born, when she married, and when her nephew, who has a role in this story, was born. In fact, all the continuing characters in the series have somewhat detailed life stories in my notebooks, not only to flesh them out, but also so that I have a quick reference guide to how old they are and when the major events in their lives occurred. That still gives me some choice when it comes to the date of each novel. In my Liss MacCrimmon series I once let five years pass between books, mostly to let fictional time a chance to catch up with real time.

A Fatal Fiction was (mostly) written in the spring of 2019 for release on June 30, 2020. While I was in the early plotting stages, I realized that using 2019 as the year of the story would put Easter and Passover and Maine’s Patriots’ Day in the same week, a coincidence I could utilize in the story. Then serendipity came into play. In addition to weather forecasts and reports, I had access, by way of a Facebook group, to daily posts that include the weather in the town that is the model for my fictional Lenape Hollow, New York. As much to amuse myself as for any practical purpose, I decided to make the weather in my novel match reality. Since I was already doing this with things like phases of the moon, it didn’t strike me as too weird.

Okay, it was a little weird. But it was kind of fun to start a new scene, taking place on a new day, and discover that Mikki was going to have to do her sleuthing while ducking rain showers. I took a few liberties when the story demanded it, but overall I let reality have its way.

Now here we are in 2020 and I’ve just finished writing next year’s Deadly Edits mystery, Murder, She Edited.  Once again, I never say what year the story takes place in, but the clever reader in July of 2021 and later will find it easy enough to figure out that it is set in the summer of 2020. That brings me to a dilemma many writers are facing right now—how much reality should we include in what is supposed to be escapist literature?

The book was due on my editor’s desk today, well before anyone can say with any certainty what the summer of 2020 will bring. At the moment, my text makes no mention of the world-shaking events that have taken place during the first half of 2020, but it can still be revised before publication. The real question is, should it be?

Leave your answer to that question, or any other comment you’d care to make, in the comments section below or at my Kaitlyn Dunnett Facebook page and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win one of three Advance Reading Copies of A Fatal Fiction. Shadow will pick the winners at noon on Friday, June 5. Unfortunately, I can’t ship books outside the US right now, but I’d still love to hear from international readers.

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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.

 

Weekend Update: May 30-31,2020

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

 

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

[image error]From Kathy Lynn Emerson (writing as Kathy Lynn Gorton Emerson): You’re hearing it here first. I’ve just launched my first attempt at a self-published e-book with The Life of a Plodder: Fred Gorton’s 95 Years, the biography I wrote of my grandfather way back in 1980. It’s gone through several revisions since and was online at my website for ages, and now it’s available for the bargain price of $3.99 at numerous e-booksellers. Here’s the link to assorted buy links https://books2read.com/u/mlwvAP. It’s already up at B&N and iBooks and in the publishing pipeline for a Kindle edition. I’m hoping to be able to bring out a POD version later this year. If you’re interested in local (rural New York) history or just want to know what life was like from the 1870s to the 1960s, you might enjoy reading what Grampa Fred recorded about his family, friends, and neighbors. Hint: he was a terrible old gossip and wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions. Most of what is in the book comes directly from his diaries and the memoir he wrote when he was in his 80s.

 

 

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

The New Normal is an Oxymoron

John Clark will not bombard you with another barrage of Covid gloom. Yeah, it’s here, it’s real, and I’m slowly wrapping my head around the probability that it’s gonna be with us forever (or some crazy number like that). Screw it. I’m taking all the suggested precautions, but at age 72, I don’t have time to rent much space in my head to pandemics. I’ve got too many odd, bizarre and creative thoughts running through it to be sad or bored. If you look carefully, there ARE some silver linings. Take projects we needed done to whip this place into shape. We were bedeviled with water problems. The back yard was a mudhole and the sump pump was billing us for overtime. The first two companies I contacted never responded, But Carrier Landscaping in Lewiston did, Dustin drove up on a Thursday, did an assessment and on Monday, we had an estimate. Andy who did the work, came up last Thursday and by Friday afternoon, we had two new French Drains in place. The sump pump is resting and the mud is gone. Over the weekend, Beth and I created a small garden space, agreed on what will go where and burned the remainder of the junk wood so things look even nicer. A pear tree, a flowering plum, six raspberries, and a grape vine have been planted. As I write this Caleb and his assistant are installing our new back deck and just discovered they have to remove the sliding door to address hidden rot under it in order to attach the new deck, but the bottom line is that another project is on its way to resolution.

My writing has already taken advantage of some of the possibilities inherent in the Pandemic. One of my Level Best entries takes place after the economic effect of the pandemic alters rural Maine. Another short story with a horror flavor taking place in rural Maine has been accepted for a Pandemic themed anthology. I tend to imagine along a line dividing horror and dark humor, a very fertile environment right now. In the pipeline are stories of varying lengths about a bored teen who falls asleep during a performance at Lakewood, only to wake up in the same seat after a performance in the 1930s, a teen with moderate OCD who discovers a skeleton while bush hogging an overgrown field, and another teen running from an abusive home, only to get hit by a car in a blinding snowstorm, ending up stuck between two dimensions.

Below are a few photos taken over the years. Each of them has the potential to spark a story idea. Which one does it for you and what is about to happen?

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