Lea Wait's Blog, page 137

Raw as an Oyster

I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve been feeling raw as an oyster [image error]these past few months, enough so that I’m listening to podcasts by the TED Talk-famous Brené Brown and trying to parse out feelings about what we’ve lost and what we’re grieving. In effect, we’re grieving the world as we knew it, and with nothing yet to replace it.

Said feelings of vulnerability are not really being helped   by an underlying sense in some of the discourse around the Dreaded Covefe of 2020 that’s focused on how it’s OK for the old folks to die, as long as we get the economy going.

Not that I’m considering myself an old folk just yet, though there are mornings (and doctors’ appointments) that remind me it might be right around the corner, but it does remind me how little we actually do respect our elders. Native Americans/First Nation People place their elders in positions of respect, listen for their wisdom. In America, we push them out in wheelchairs and leave them at the bus station if they can’t afford to pay the freight of the nursing home.

What raises my spirit back up, thinking about this, is the knowledge that many of our elders swing into the seventh, eighth, even ninth decades of their time on this blue ball with knowledge, skill, and wisdom that allows them to create at a level most of us could only hope to match.

I think of John Huston, the director of that great gangster film Prizzi’s Honor, which he made at age 79. Pablo Casals, the great cellist, played and gave master classes into his eighties, played at the White House at eighty-five. [image error]

Harriet Doerr published her first novel, Stones for Ibarra, at the age of 74. Lawrence Block, the prolific crime writer, published his (approximately) hundredth book recently at the age of 89. I give you also Maine’s own Ashley Bryan (96), Willie Nelson (87),[image error] Betty White (98), and Stirling Lord, who recently started a new literary agency at the tender age of 99.

I’ve been as guilty of youth bias as anyone, especially when I was a youth myself. And there is a great deal to be said for energy, freshness, even naivete. But when we discard out of hand the contributions someone has made, or could make, because of their age . . . we’re sliding down a slippery slope. That kind of argument begs the question of at what age one becomes irrelevant to any conversation about art, creativity, music, entertainment, or any of our pursuits.

As an eldering person, I plan to keep pushing as best I can, stretching what I know and what I don’t know, keeping on with whatever it is my lizard brain is trying to get me to do. What I will not do is give up because I’m being ignored or diminished because of age. I hold fast to a quote I’ve heard attributed to Pablo Casals. [image error]When someone asked him why he practiced the cello sixteen hours a day at age 95, he said: “Because I think I’m making progress.” This is the man who rehearsed a set of Bach cello suites for twelve years before he thought himself worthy of playing them in public.

So excuse me if I don’t buy anyone’s desire for me to step off the planet in favor of a younger demographic. Or to get the economy back on track, for cry-eye. I do plan to die at my desk, like Robert Parker, and I don’t intend to give up on the work. Because I think, maybe, I hope, I might eventually make some progress.

Narrowboating in the UK: A Different Kind of Cruise

I feel a bit guilty for not dedicating my Memorial Day post to the many brave souls past and present, military and medical, who’ve done and continue to do so much for us all, but I’ve become so worn down by the current situation I’ve decided to focus instead on the nostalgia of the not so distant past, when traveling and vacationing safely were still possible. If you’ve been following my MCW posts, you’re already aware that my husband and I spend summers living aboard our sailboat as we travel the coast of Maine, but some years back my in-laws (good, old fashioned Anglophiles) introduced us to their own favorite cruising style: narrowboating in Wales.  

[image error]Leaving Chirk Marina via the Llangollen Canal

The rich and complex history of the British Inland Waterways—with their accompanying flights of locks, swing and lift bridges, tunnels, and canal-side pubs (ah, those pubs!)—would require a separate post or three to adequately explain the whole thing, so should the concept interest you I suggest you check it all out on Wikipedia. For now, a bit of history to whet the appetite. 

[image error]Typical Lift Bridge

Designed and built before the advent of railways, and as a network for ferrying goods and services throughout the land, these shallow, narrow canals are today home to a unique kind of tiller-steered watercraft sporting a nominal beam (about six and a half feet) and length of up to seventy-two feet that now crisscross the region in a strictly recreational role. 

Originally pulled by horses along the towpaths paralleling the canals—paths used these days for walking and cycling—today’s “narrowboats” are mostly diesel-powered, with interiors as comfortably fitted-out as many summer cottages. And while the kitchens (galleys in boat-speak), are more than adequate for pretty much anything you’d care to whip up, we choose to pub it whenever possible. 

[image error]One of the Many Roman-Era Canal Bridges Still in Use

Our preference is to arrive in country mid to late May, before the start of British tourism’s “high season” and just as the year’s crop of lambs and goslings are first making their appearance along the more pastoral routes (our favorites). In spring, the rural towpaths are bordered by a mix of rustic fencing and rambling stone walls wildly ablaze with the gold of Scotch Broom, riots of wild lilac and clematis blooms the size of dinner plates. In many places, these towpaths are just a few miles’ walk from publicly accessible castles, ancient bridgeworks, aqueducts, and the cobbled streets of centuries old villages such as Ellesmere, where kerchiefed grannies still wander with basketed arm to do their marketing. 

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UK canal routes range in flavor from the urban to the rural, as well as in length and difficulty of terrain—utilizing a system of locks that enable the boats to change elevation along the way. This can be a slow and arduous process during the busier months, resulting in impromptu cocktail parties and barbecues breaking out along the towpath as travelers meet and commiserate with others in the queue for the flights (series) of locks. Rather conveniently, locks are often found cheek by jowl with canal-side pubs serving much needed sustenance. 

[image error]Our Vessel, The Mayfly



[image error]The Top of the Grindley Brook Locks (Note the pub on the left)

The best boat hire company in the UK, in our view, is Black Prince Narrowboats (https://www.black-prince.com), with bases in England, Scotland and Wales. We like to rent from their Chirk base in the Ceiriog Valley of North Wales, a few hours’ train ride from Manchester airport, which provides easy access to our favorite canal route: the peaceful and bucolic Llangollen Canal (or The Welsh as it’s known to locals)—arguably the most beautiful in Britain. Pronouncing this properly is tricky, and when done correctly sounds as if you’re hocking up a fly from the nether reaches of your throat.  

Forty-one miles in length, the Llangollen dips through hillsides thick with sheep, cows, and wildflowers. A real highlight is traversing the navigable Pontcysyllte Aquaduct over the River Dee. This 18-arched stone and cast iron structure (completed in 1805) is the longest aqueduct in Great Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world. Check out this video for a taste of the experience: https://binged.it/3fYbwbq

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From here, it’s maybe an hour farther on to the where the canal dead ends in the town of Llangollen itself with its many shops, quaint tea rooms (a full English Cream Tea can be had here for a song), and, yes, more pubs. The Robin’s Nest is a particularly good one in town, its claim to fame being the coronary-clogging “Cumberland sausage and egg stottie”—a kind of savory pastry that’s the hands-down favorite of the men in our party. Others worthy of a stop at various points along our route include The Romping Pig, Dusty Miller, Cotton Arms, the Royal Shepherd, The Brown Cow, The Black Lion, and my personal favorite, Darcy’s Pub (yes, it’s a real place). The drinks are large and the food generally excellent. Be sure to try the Spotted Dick somewhere along the way (no worries…it’s a dessert pudding).  The entertainment is, well, eclectic.

[image error]The Men Check Out the Bar…



[image error]…While the Women Check Out the Entertainment

Llangollen “attractions” include Chirk Castle—a magnigicent, 700-year-old marcher fortress built by King Edward I—and the remains of Castell Dinas Bran situated some 4000 feet above the verdant Vale of Llangollen and 800 feet above the town itself. Built in the 1230s by Madog ap Gruffyd Maelor, a nemesis of LLewelyn the Great (who was, interestingly enough, an ancestor of mine), the ruins are a good 45 minute uphill climb. Trust me; the view is worth it. 

[image error]Looking Toward the Vale of Llangollen from the Ruins of Castell Dinas Bran

After all this hiking and pubbing, you’ll no doubt be ready for a rest. Simply pull your boat to the side of the canal anywhere you fancy, drive a stake into the towpath, and tie off for the night. Drinkies are at six.  Okay, five-thirty.

[image error]The Author at the Tiller





Darcy Scott (Winner, 2019 National Indie Excellence Award; Best Mystery, 2013 Indie Book Awards; Silver Award, 2013 Readers Favorite Book Awards; Bronze Prize, 2013 IPPY Awards) is a live-aboard sailor and experienced ocean cruiser with more than 20,000 blue water miles under her belt. For all her wandering, her summer home and favorite cruising grounds remain along the coast of Maine—the history and rugged beauty of its sparsely populated out-islands serving as inspiration for much of her fiction, including her popular Maine-based Island Mystery Series. Her debut novel, Hunter Huntress, was published in Britain in 2010.

Weekend Update: May 23-24, 2020

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be a posts by Darcy Scott (Monday), Dick Cass (Tuesday), and John Clark (Thursday).

 

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

Where do writers get their ideas? Try right outside your door

As anyone who reads this blog, or anything written by any writers anywhere, knows, one of the top questions for fiction writers is… wait for it…

“Where do you get your ideas?”

We’ve discussed this before. You know we have. The answers are many and varied. But it starts with imagination. Honest to god, I can’t tell you where to get that. I’m lucky, I guess, that I’ve got plenty of imagination. Imagination to spare. I’m never bored, at least when I’m in control of where I am and what I’m doing (as opposed to, say, a work meeting). Sometimes it’s a curse — for instance right now every time I see one of the MANY out-of- state cars driving through my town, all I can see is bright neon COVID-19 dripping from the bumpers and blowing out the windows.

Sorry folks. Not judging. Just saying. But I digress.

Almost anything can spark imagination. Once, when I lived in New Hampshire, I was driving to work through the heart of Manchester and saw a little boy standing on a corner holding what looked like a box of cupcakes and crying. By the time I got to work I had a whole story about that kid in my head. I mean, how could I not?

Anyone who’s read my book NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS knows what I did with the horrific scene I witnessed of a family of ducks that had the misfortune to try to cross Route 27 north of Augusta one day on the way to work. Sorry folks. But not sorry. Because book. Writing.

I had to skip over to the south east end of Augusta yesterday to shoot some snaps for work (work again!) and it was close to a spot that has sparked my imagination from the time my family moved to Augusta when I was 12.

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The old Augusta Mental Health Institute campus, which is now state offices, still is an eerie place. Even on a warm sun-splashed May afternoon, the Stone Building evokes so much … imagination.

Many of the buildings on the sprawling campus have been refitted for state offices, but I believe the Stone Building, its main portion nearly 200 years old, is empty. Really, how could anyone work in there?

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Pro tip: It’s easy to socially distance once you’re down by the Stone Building (named for a person, though the building lives it out), even when the state workers are there in full force. And it’s a beautiful spot.

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[image error]The vestiges of the attempts to make it seem like something it wasn’t are still there. A gazebo in good need of a paint job. A large octagonal base, probably 15 feet across, that, looking at old photos, was part of an elaborate flower garden.

But come on, who were they kidding?

[image error]AMHI is directly across the river from the Maine State House. [In the photo above, the smokestack in the distance marks AMHI, with the Stone Building to the right.] The story is that the porch on the second floor of the State House was deliberately put directly facing AMHI so the legislators would remember who they were there for — the most vulnerable and needy, because if you can take care of them, then you are taking care of everyone else.

I wonder how many of Maine’s elected officials think about that when they stand out on that beautiful porch?

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Rhetorical question. Everybody loves a good story.

I more think of it from the point of view of those sad inmates of the Stone Building. How it must’ve been to be in there, basically a prison back in the day. Despite the beauty of the spot, I can see the despair billowing from the Stone Building as clearly as I can see the COVID-19 coming out of those cars from Massachusetts and New York and Connecticut…

They could look out on the lush beautiful river valley, across the Kennebec to the State House. Think about what lay beyond the lawn and trees.

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It all probably felt just as far away as the mental hospital felt to the legislators.

BOOK LAUNCH IN COVID TIMES

What’s like opening day that doesn’t, a curtain rise that won’t, the new moon that refuses to appear?

For an author it is, of course, the book launch that never really happens.

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Yup, Book Four in my Oceanographer Mara Tusconi Mystery Series – “Glass Eels, Shattered Sea” – was scheduled to come out two weeks ago. It did, kind of. I mean you can buy it on Amazon, from Maine Authors Publishing, in the bookstores, etc. But all my launch events plus my favorite local shindigs – like Books in Boothbay and the Maine Lobster Festival – are kaput.

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Yes, here I am whining about selling books when absolutely horrible things are happening out there.

Here’s the deal, though. Every darn thing about crafting books is really hard—from coming up with a good idea you can actually use to the discipline of brainstorming, writing, editing, rewriting, editing again. It goes on and on.

At the end, there’s lots of joy—like seeing the actual book for the very first time. When the proof comes in the mail, you unwrap it and hold your creation in hand for the first time.  You run your hand across the cover, flip through the pages, scan the back cover, reread the blurbs.

Since, dear reader, I can’t tell you in person about “Glass Eels, Shattered Sea”, I’ll describe it here and add that it’s a great escape for your shelter-in-place days!

The story begins on a star-studded spring night when Mara finds an old Maine eel fisherman lying alongside a rushing river with a bleeding bullet hole in his chest. Mara has stumbled upon the deadly world of international elver (baby eel) trafficking.

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Along with fellow oceanographers Harvey (female best friend) and Ted (lover), Mara next travels to the Sargasso Sea aboard Research Vessel Intrepid. Bordered only by circling currents, the Sargasso is home to Sargassum seaweed which floats in large mats on the surface. American and European eels travel thousands of miles to spawn there, although nobody has seen the event.

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The story is rich with vivid scenes. One night when the ship’s wake sparkles with bioluminescence, Mara shimmies into the ship’s bow chamber to watch glowing, barrel-shaped salps drift by. By day, Mara and Ted snorkel in tropical waters to collect Sargassum samples. Vivid memories of my own trip to the Sargasso as a grad student on a research vessel informed the narrative.

Back home, an eel trafficker pushes Mara into Maine’s icy water and … well, you need to read the story for yourself!

For more details plus purchase info go to charlenedavanzo.com.

HOOKED ON READING DURING THE PANDEMIC

Like everyone, I’ve been practicing social distancing and mostly staying home, but that’s par for an introvert and a writer, both of which I am. I’m a voracious reader normally, and [image error]now is no different. I wish I could say I’ve been reading deep literary fiction or serious nonfiction, but that would be a rarity. No, my go-to reading is mostly popular, genre fiction—mystery, thriller, or the genre I write, romantic suspense. Recently, I’ve read all three, but here are two mysteries I can recommend to those of you looking for something new to read. It’s said that plot is the events in a novel, while story is about how the plot events affect the protagonist, and how he or she changes or grows as a result. Both of these novels are prime examples of that.

The first of my recommendations is a mystery, but Maine’s Paul Doiron’s STAY HIDDEN  is also a page-turning thriller. Doiron is the award-winning author of eleven mysteries. He’s Editor Emeritus of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, having served as editor in chief from 2005 to 2013, before stepping down to write full time. This is book nine in his series featuring Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch.

In STAY HIDDEN, Mike is on his first assignment as a warden investigator. He’s been sent [image error]to investigate the death of a woman visiting an isolated island off the Maine coast. Whether the death was an accidental shooting by a deer hunter or murder is the initial question, and the fog that traps Mike on the island only increases the mysteries piled on mysteries. Employing his knowledge of small-town and coastal Maine life, Doiron has created an island that is cold and wet, impoverished, overrun by starving deer, ticks (eeuw), and Lyme disease—and populated by warring factions and a fascinating cast of believable characters. It seemed to me that Mike is always wet and cold and in danger of drowning or being attacked. I held my breath several times. Unpredictable twists both make him a target of the elusive killer and lead him to the answer. Remember plot vs story? The story events and challenges to Mike Bowditch motivate him to prove himself as a warden investigator and to change in other ways he hadn’t considered before. I couldn’t put this book down.

Another book I read late into the night is next. Barbara Neely’s first book in her ground-breaking Blanche White series, BLANCHE ON THE LAM, won the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. Neely, who passed away this March at age 78 after a long illness, grew up in Pennsylvania and lived in several other states, among them North Carolina, the setting for the Blanche White novels. She was a social activist by the time she was nineteen, when she helped organize a tutorial program in Philadelphia. Later in North Carolina, she wrote for Southern Exposure magazine.

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I am in the middle of BLANCHE ON THE LAM, but I’m already hooked on Blanche, the writing, and Blanche’s story. When this book was first published in 1992, few mysteries featured African-American sleuths (Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins comes to mind), and none featured a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper.

Blanche White (get it?) is a smart black woman in North Carolina who works as a housekeeper/cook in rich white people’s homes. An unlikely sleuth, indeed. When an employer doesn’t pay her, a judge sentences her to 30 days in jail for writing bad checks. She manages to slip away from the courthouse and hides out as housekeeper/cook in a wealthy family’s summer home in the country. When there’s a murder, Blanche must solve it to save her own skin. Blanche has savvy, a sharp wit, and a biting sense of humor about the southern white gentry. The ever-present issues of race give this book an edge, subtly and with humor, about the connections between white employers and employees of color. I can’t say yet how the plot will affect the story of changes in Blanche until I finish the book. But I’m betting I’ll purchase the next in the series asap.

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And just FYI, the e-book of Never Surrender, in my Task Force Eagle romantic suspense series, is free on Amazon starting Friday, May 22, and ending May 26. Here’s a brief description. When a charming DEA agent has a lead in Maine to the cartel that killed his brother, his vanished suspect’s loyal sister refuses to cooperate. Threats force her to accept the agent’s protection, and their search leads them into deadly danger and each other’s arms.

 

Romantic Suspense, Kate? Really?

Kate Flora:  When I announced to people who know me that my new book, Wedding[image error] Bell Ruse, (ebook ISBN 9781647160876) published tomorrow, is romantic suspense, people asked me why the switch? Am I going in a new direction? It is quite a switch to go from writing dark, gritty police procedurals and true crime to romantic suspense. Even I was surprised. Here is how it happened.

 

A question writers are frequently asked at book events is where we get our ideas. For most of my books, I may have a character or an event or a situation that I begin wondering about. It’s a process of slowly developing a plot, asking questions like “Why was this person a victim?” or “Who would want to kill that person?” or “Why was the person in this situation?” That asking usually leads to a series of answers to those questions that let me develop the plot of the novel.

Much of the time, I am writing a series book, and some of the questions, and much of the plot, will arise out of my series characters–who they are, what they do, how they see the world. If it is a Thea Kozak mystery, the situations she’s involved in usually arise either out of her work as a consultant to private schools or through some family or friend connection, often involving a vulnerable person who needs rescuing or justice. For Joe Burgess, because he’s a personal crime detectives, the stories usually begin with a call from dispatch to a crime scene and a victim and his investigation begins.

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Photo by Jennifer Baumstein on Pexels.com

Sometimes, though, the opening just comes to me, a situation that just sparks my curiosity and impels me forward, as was the case with the central character in Wedding Bell Ruse, Callista “Callie” McKenzie.  When she came into my head, she was driving down an unfamiliar road in Vermont. It was night and she was far from home, running away from a life that had imploded after a terrible betrayal by her fiancé. She was broke. Exhausted. A meticulous and cautious accountant with no plans for her future. Finally, needing a break, she pulled to the side of the road to rest and was awakened by a police officer checking to see if she was okay. Sent on to the village coffee shop, she orders coffee, then goes to the restroom to try and look less disheveled. When she comes out, a strange man is sitting at her table. He has the saddest eyes she’s ever seen. As she sits down, he says, “Smile and pretend you’re glad to see me.”

Openings that arrive in a rush, where I can see the characters and scenes so vividly, are very rare. As a writer, I just had to know more. As I followed Callie and her story and learned the story of the man who sat at her table, I wasn’t thinking about what I was writing. If asked, I probably would have said I was writing a fairytale. I just needed to know what was happening. I’ve always believed that while writers go to work every day and write whether the words flow or not, when something arrives like it was “sent,” I should follow it to see where it takes me. This time, it took me on a romantic and suspenseful journey with two people, one who needs to hide out and get herself together, the other who needs to marry soon or lose a precious piece of land, and some people who don’t want the marriage to take place.

It was different. It was fun. I doubt that I’ll do it again, but I’ve always been a writer who answers the call when stories–fiction for nonfiction–come to me.

A kind writer named Mary Harris helped me find my publisher and my kind friends on Facebook helped me find the title. The winning title was on the Maine Crime Writer’s page, suggested by George E. Clark.

I’m not much of a reader of romantic suspense, but when I was the librarian’s assistant at the Vose Library in Union, Maine, (at age 11 1/2) one of the perks of the job was that I was second in line for the newest Phyllis Whitney, Victoria Holt, and Mary Stewart novels. I cut my adult reading teeth on romantic suspense. This book is, of course, dedicated to them.

 

Weekend Update: May 16-17, 2020

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be a posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Susan Vaughan (Tuesday), Charlene D’Avanzo (Thursday) and Maureen Milliken (Friday).

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

Kate Flora:  Is taking part in a virtual book event tonight (Saturday) for The Faking of the President. Details here:

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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

The Search for Leigh Abbey

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One of the Devil’s Arrows, Yorkshire

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, with a post that could be subtitled “Finding Pretty Scenery to Post.” One of the things I’ve been trying to do lately on Facebook is intersperse the shared posts on Covid-19 news and those that are shameless self-promotion with photos that show pretty scenes in happier, less stressful times. A great many of those have come from the pictures I took during the fifteen-day visit my husband and I made to England and Scotland back in the summer of 2001. We took even better pictures with our video camera, but someone would have to be way more tech savvy than I am to reproduce anything from those nearly twenty-year-old VHS tapes here. Fortunately, my snapshots still contain some pretty nice scenery.

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garden at Cothele, Cornwall

I should pause here and explain the title of this post. Back in 2001, I was still writing my Face Down Mysteries for St. Martin’s Minotaur line. If memory serves, Face Down Before Rebel Hooves was about to come out, Face Down Across the Western Sea was written but not yet turned in, and I was actively planning what would become Face Down Below the Banqueting House. Research relating to all three was the official, tax-deductible reason for traveling to England.

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Rufford Old Hall, Ormskirk

We visited the north of England to follow the route of the Rebellion of the Northern Earls of 1569, the central story of Rebel Hooves. We visited Cornwall and Bristol, where Western Sea is set. But mostly,

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Speke Hall, Lancashire

we toured houses. You see, although Susanna, Lady Appleton, my series sleuth, had already appeared in five published Face Down novels, as well as Rebel Hooves and Western Sea, I had never had her spend much time at her home, Leigh Abbey in Kent. I didn’t have a clear concept of what the place looked like. The remedy? Plan a trip around visits to sixteenth-century English country houses that still look something like they did in the Elizabethan era.

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Penshurst, Kent

So off we went, looking for inspiration, and back we came with wonderful memories and lots of visual aids. Little did I know that two decades later I’d be looking to these photos for their sense of peace and tranquility as well as their beautiful scenery.

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Athelhampton, Dorset

Enjoy!

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upper garden at Cothele

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Haddon Hall, Derbyshire

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Haddon Hall, Derbyshire

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church in Barfreystone, Kent, geographical location of the fictional Leigh Abbey

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 three websites, at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com and another, comprised of over 2000 mini-biographies of sixteenth-century English women, at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women.

Forks in the Road: Chosen and Not Chosen

Sandra Neily here.

It’s been a month of choices and transitions, of learning, loss, and loving what might be small and also so very huge.

I will start with the smaller ones. And then get to Rupert.

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Yes. close up of coleslaw.

I’ve made progress learning how to avoid the store by buying 3 weeks of food at once, letting dry goods “rest” to decontaminate, and (wearing gloves) “processing” the rest at the sink. My plan to have salads no matter what, works well with coleslaw to finish out the last week. (Red and green cabbage, shredded carrots, raisins, any dead veggies that need to disappear.)

Raven, our Labrahound (Lab and Blue Tick hound: lab indoors; hunting dog outside where furry things run from her), has taken to leaning against walls in what I can only think is regression from the two years she lived in a crate before she was rescued.[image error]

The used, small camper trailer we bought (before the stock market ate much of our retirement funds), arrived on a truck because by the end of February we’d read up on what was happening in China and Europe. Read up enough to know the virus was already a silent spreader everywhere we’d planned to go. Knew that people who did not have symptoms were spreaders. Knew that it could float in the air.[image error]

We were so right.

Much of the fun I used to have with my granddaughter, is now limited to various kinds of outdoor tag where I run fast enough so she really can’t catch me. Unless she’s on her bike. I miss our dress-up sessions and reading cuddles. (Yes, I am very lucky to live near enough to have outdoor playtimes, but she does not understand why her “Moomoo” can’t “come in and play.”)[image error]

In early May, it snowed on 3 cords of wood we thought we were so smart to get in before an early fall snow might catch us lazy and unprepared.[image error]

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Rupert Neily III

All that pales to losing my brother a few weeks ago. We knew it was coming. It was a long, cruel illness. Three of us have led exceptionally clean, careful lives in order to be with him as we knew we could not have hospice caregivers coming and going, and we were not going to send him to a hospital where he would be alone without loved ones to surround him.

My last real chat with him was over literature. “Are you still able to read a bit?” I asked.

He pointed to a book and said it was “mush.”

“Why mush?” I asked.

He could only do a few words at a time. He frowned.  “Too general.”

[image error]I picked up When We Were the Kennedys by Monica Wood. “I think you’ll like this one,” I said.  “It’s an unusual Maine memoir. Alive and real every time I return to it. Nothing mush-y about it. Everyone just leaps off the page. I’ll read it to you and see what you think.”

He loved it. We didn’t finish it, but he loved it the way I loved it: for its depiction of working-class Maine life in a mill town in the 1960’s. He loved it for how Wood essentially recreated all our own childhoods of that era, even as she gave us hers, unvarnished and full of life, confusion, and loss.

I read to him for hours that first day. And the next week, only a few days before he went on his final ramble (Rupert was a great rambler), I sat next to him and said, “I could read some more if you want.” He wasn’t talking by then.

“Or I could just read it and annoy you as I have for decades,” I said with a smile.

He heard the smile, raised both hands and gave me two thumbs up. I thought about skipping the parts where Wood’s father’s death exploded her family, but realized that was probably why he was also drawn to her story. It is very much a book about life and death.  And by the time I read it to him, his life and death were also delicately balanced.

[image error]That we could come together over the Maine we love and know … the Maine of small towns and big woods where much is lost, even as much remains that we must work hard to conserve … was very, very special. As people everywhere learned of his passing, they wrote to say how grateful they were for all his big-hearted efforts to conserve the best of Maine.

I will close with a few passages from what we put in the paper.

[image error]“Rupert’s first and enduring love was the Maine woods, lakes, streams, hills and coast. They were his botanical garden. He avidly explored them on foot, bike and rowing and sailing his beloved Whitehall, his eye ever roaming to an alluring ridgeline. He learned how to find his way in the woods as a boy hunting with his father. He learned how to find spiritual nourishment from the mystery of nature all on his own, most especially during his recovery from a bone marrow transplant from his sister Sandy for leukemia in 1998. …

Rupert was mischievous, loved to trespass, was perplexed by rules and so generally avoided them. He found signs everywhere, layers of meaning unseen by the rest of us. He collected “icons,” things he found in his path, put there for some reason that was his work to figure out. A favorite was a fork flattened by a car tire, which became ‘he fork in the road.’

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Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, Are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, The world offers itself to your imagination, Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – Over and over announcing your place in the family of things. (excerpt from “Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver: one of his favorites)

Contributions in Rupert’s memory may be made to the Kennebec Land Trust (www.tklt.org) or the Boothbay Region Land Trust (www.bbrlt.org). A time for remembrance will be found in the future.”

Sandy’s 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 she’s been a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novel at all Shermans Books and on Amazon . Find more info on the video trailer and Sandy’s website.   The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” is available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle and the paperback will be ready for purchase July 1st!