Lea Wait's Blog, page 143

Life With Shadow

[image error]Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. It’s been about six months since my last update on Shadow (https://mainecrimewriters.com/2019/09/03/an-update-on-shadow-lea-waits-cat/),who came to live with us last August. It was an adjustment for me and for my husband. We were used to cats who loved to cuddle (Maine Coons, mostly). Shadow, apparently, was never fond of being held. It was also a big adjustment for her. She’d had a pretty rough couple of years. Not only did she lose first one and then the other of her humans, she also ended up being left alone for long stretches. Someone came in to check on her and make sure she had food and water and a clean litter box, but when your regular person is frequently in the hospital, and occasionally has to make writing-related business trips as well, it takes a toll. All in all, we knew it would take a while for her to settle in.

Slowly, she’s warming up to us. I can pick her up without sending her into a frenzy trying to bite and scratch, and even hug her (a little). She allows herself to be stroked, when she’s in the mood, and warns us when she’s had enough with a little yip before the claws come out. Twice now, she’s pushed her way under the covers on a cold night and curled up between us to sleep for a while.

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Shadow obeying the order to look over there.

She still fights any attempt to clip her claws, and does not know the meaning of “no, no, bad kitty!” when it comes to scratching anything other than her scratching post, but she’s better about using “velvet paws” when she just wants to play. She has several times raced after me as I was walking away from her, whacked me on the backs of my legs, and taken off again a warp speed. I assume this is a game, but I’m still not certain of the rules.

Shadow exhibits typical feline behavior in many ways. She’s determined to get out onto the screen porch until she realizes it’s freezing out there. She has a habit of getting locked in the clothes closet because she streaked in there without anyone noticing. And she immediately jumps into any box or bag she happens to find. She particularly likes the grocery bag that lines my paper recycling bin, especially when it has just been changed and has only a few post-its inside.

She also has some distinct quirks not found in any of the many other cats who have shared our home over the years. She doesn’t drink water. Not out of her bowl. Not out of the sink. She’s not dehydrated, but I’ve been making “gravy” by adding water to her food to make sure of that. The one time I thought she was trying to lick water off the side of the sink, it turned out she was eating a blob of toothpaste I’d missed wiping up. She seemed to like it.

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Shadow with her favorite toy

These last months have been a learning experience for Shadow. Because she lived upstairs with Lea and Bob (to separate her from his studio and paintings downstairs), the refrigerator, the stove, and the wood stove were entirely new to her. Because their house was on a quiet street, the constant traffic, including pulp trucks, passing by our place on U.S. Rt. 2, meant all kinds of noises spooked her. She wasn’t used to other animals, either. We don’t have any other cats at the moment, but when a neighborhood cat dared come up to the outside of the sliding glass door to our back deck and look in at her, the result was a solid fifteen minutes of hissing and howling. We didn’t know Shadow could make sounds like those.

All in all, I think we’re making good progress. Just this past week, she’s started curling up in my usual place on the loveseat in the living room (when I’m not there, of course) and one of those times she let me sit down next to her without immediately bolting. I was even allowed to pet her without damage to life or limb.

Definite progress.

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With the January 2020 publication of A View to a Kilt, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett will have had sixty-one 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. Next up is A Fatal Fiction, in stores at the end of June. 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.

Weekend Update: February 29-March 1, 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:

 

 

 

 

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

Outdoor Settings: Much More Than “Place”

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As an ecologist-turned-writer, I regard the outdoor settings of my books as much more than “place”. The Maine coast – its frigid waters, sudden storms, waving seaweeds, all of it – is a glorious and unpredictably dangerous entity that, for me, is very much alive.

My protagonist, oceanographer Mara Tusconi, who gets into all sorts of trouble in her sea kayak, helps readers know that danger. For instance, she was nearly swept into the cold Pacific Ocean when her rudder broke, fought fifteen-foot waves off Maine’s coast, and was plucked out of fifty-degree seawater by a lobsterman. Many of Mara’s adventures are based on my own experiences (except the last one).[image error]

We writers describe characters that people our stories with words like “moody”, “secretive”, “impulsive”, and so on. A crime novelist whose books I enormously admire – Anne Cleeves – applies a similar vocabulary to the wild, desolate, unforgiving British Isle landscapes of her stories.

Here’s an example: Cleeves describes England’s North Devon, the setting for her fist Detective Matthew Venn book, “The Long Call” as “a land of water and sky where the cry of the herring gull, the sound naturalists named the long call, the cry which always sounded to him like an inarticulate howl of pain, is woven through every inch of the story until it is a character in and of itself.”[image error]

At last year’s CrimeBake, Cleeves called the bleak and wild spaces of her Nordic fiction as very much more than a backdrop. That setting, she said, deeply affects the people who live there. It’s an open landscape where you can see as far as you can, but a place where secrets are very well hidden. People know secrets about each other they never speak about because they absolutely need to keep that distance. A professional naturalist, Cleeves has lived where her stories are set and it shows.

Here’s an interesting bit of trivia – most of Maine’s early settlers in the 1600s came from the West Country, a rugged maritime region of England. So “bleak and wild landscapes” are part of the state’s heritage.

Like Cleeves, Paul Doiron, a Maine crime writer I especially admire, has professional training that inspires his work. Doiron is an avid fly fisherman and Registered Maine guide whose passion for Maine’s interior shines through his Game Warden Mike Bowditch series. For example, in “The Precipice” Doiron portrays a lake in central Maine this way:

“The sun hadn’t yet cleared the hills in the east, but the sky above the lake was streaked with pink and gold, and there wasn’t a breath of wind to stir the leaves of the maples. The lake, visible between the sleeping houses, was as flat and blue as stained glass.”[image error]

If you are looking for a Maine writer who skillfully weaves the outdoors into a story without sounding sappy, Paul Doiron would be an excellent choice.

Next time you read a story with outdoor scenes, try thinking about that setting as a character on its own with moods, secrets, and surprises. Perhaps that will change your take on the whole thing.

Still, I Persist

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“You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem,” Eldridge Cleaver. This is one of the most memorable quotes from my time in college. When I went off to Arizona State from the town of Union, I not only swapped physical climates, but social and political ones as well. In addition to losing 17 pounds in a couple of weeks (dry heat), I was suddenly immersed in a completely new world. There were Mormons everywhere, the two freshmen a few doors down were Hopi and Navajo, and my first friend, aside from my roommate, was from Columbia in South America. I’d gone from a graduating class of 38 to a university with 29,000 students.

We hadn’t spent much time studying the Vietnam War in high school and I didn’t have strong feelings either way when I arrived in Tempe. That changed during my second semester. We were assigned an original research paper and for reasons that escape me today, I chose to research the economics of the air war over North Vietnam. The deeper I dug, the more troubled I became. We were not only pouring an enormous amount of money into bombing that country, we were also defoliating large areas of forest land, with little or no concern for the people living there. We now know just how nasty Agent Orange was, not only for the Vietnamese, but for untold numbers of our own troops.

When I handed in the paper, I also knew where I stood, firmly opposed to the war, not those who had been sent there, but opposed to elected officials and high brass who lied about what was happening and why we were there. I found others on campus, including faculty members who shared my opposition. That led to demonstrations, my running for the student senate, and guerrilla theater on campus. (I can still see the faces of some sorority girls when we did a fake ambush with simulated blood and Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag, blaring from a speaker hidden in a hedge.) It also resulted in the infamous hopping of freights to San Francisco for the Easter Sunday antiwar march.

There were aspects of the antiwar movement that affected other family members. Mom understood where I was coming from, but my father, mostly due to the fact that we seemed to address the war when both of us were intoxicated, was largely negative and abusive. Even so, a double sheet from the Socialist Worker newspaper hung in our family dining room for many years. It featured a photo of Richard Nixon with “Would You Buy A Used War From This Man?” under it.

Fast forward to 2016. I’d voted in every election since turning 21, but my involvement with social action and politics wasn’t what you would describe as active, aside from working with Beth to be good role models for our daughters. That often involved listening to them talk about issues while they sorted out how they felt. I’m glad to say it worked. Both Sara and Lisa are involved in social justice, aren’t afraid to speak out when they see or hear something counter to their values, and work in jobs that are involved in making life better for others.

Meanwhile, I was getting more and more uneasy with what was happening in Augusta and Washington. I was a Bernie delegate to the 2016 State Democratic Convention and, even though I felt the national DNC screwed Bernie, I voted for Hilary. Those who follow the blog know I ran for the Maine House of Representatives in 2018 a I had a real flashback moment during my door knocking when I pulled into a driveway and saw a man with two fingers missing, holding a rifle. We had a most interesting conversation. He was an Agent Orange survivor and had endured 106 operations, mostly for recurring tumors.

After losing the house race, I realized I wasn’t going to run again. Then we moved to a friendlier area politically. Here’s what I’m doing this time around. First, I’ve been contributing monthly to ActBlue and Emily’s List. I’m firmly convinced the more women we elect to political office AT ANY LEVEL, the better our future will be and Emily’s List does that better than any other organization. I’m also hoping to be a Bernie delegate to this year’s state convention. I have also volunteered (did my first shift yesterday morning) to work on the State Democratic hot line. This has been established to help voters in Maine get answers to questions, things like where do I vote, what time do the polls in my town open and close, etc. Here’s a link to the page so those who are interested in what’s there can see and bookmark as needed. https://www.voteinmaine.com/

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After the March 3rd primary, I will continue to be a hotline volunteer and will also offer my services as a driver for local candidates when they go out knocking on doors. Stay tuned for more about this years election adventures. What are you doing to make the world better for our children and grandchildren?

“Haunted by Waters . . .”

Maine, thank goodness, is a land of rivers, something people forget when they fall in love with the coast and the ocean. In Massachusetts, I was born next to the Neponset and baptized early in the Charles River, a long story involving a sixteen inch pickerel and a slippery mud bank. [image error]We didn’t eat fish out of most rivers in those days. Actually I was baptized twice in the Charles, learning to sail at Community Boating and riding home on the T in wet pants and shoes.

The Kennebec came next, above Solon, where I fished for rainbow trout with my uncle the dairyman, my father, and my brother, who stored earthworms in his pocket so he didn’t have to keep recrossing the bridge to bait his hook.

When I moved away to college, my river was the Kennebec again, the Two Penny Bridge between Waterville and Winslow, the sulfur smell of money sharp in my nostrils in the foggy mornings on my way to Calculus class.

Which is only to begin to explain that I’m drawn to moving water, where the view before you changes constantly. A lake can be still as a pewter plate, but rivers never stop moving.[image error]

I confess this is why I love them. They run top down, high country to lower by the grace of gravity, no matter if the source is a mountain tarn or a crack in the rock. They move, and if you’re careful and pay attention, you can move with them. Though pushing straight against the current is usually a mug’s game.

I think of myself as both washed and carried by the rivers I’ve known. After college, leaving Maine, my river was the Potomac, years spent rubbing against the dailiness of government. Back to New England, the Merrimack, Sugar River, the Contoocook in New Hampshire. To the West, in Oregon, the Willamette, the Trask, Nehalem, Deschutes, and Metolius. Crabbing on the Columbia on Thanksgiving morning with two hungover Finns. The Rogue. The Sacramento. In Connecticut, I barely remember them, subsumed by their cities: Farmington, Housatonic.

And then, finally, home again: the Kennebec once more, much cleaner now and full of fish and birds. The Spurwink, Presumpscot, Cat Mousam. The Androscoggin and the Penobscot. Both branches. And finally to this house on Trout Brook.

What the river taught me, sometimes the hard way?[image error]

Know where your feet are before you start moving.
Hidden rocks are more treacherous than the ones you see.
Bucking the current is a fool’s game, but you can always slide sideways.
The shore is no safer than the deepest pool.
Mud always sticks.

So, I believe in the words of Norman MacLean: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. . . I am haunted by waters.” And intend for that always to be so.

Winter Reading, or How I Got Through Knee Replacement Without Losing My Mind…

Darcy Scott again, here to report that in mid-December, after having put off the inevitable for a number of years, I had knee replacement surgery. Good timing, I figured, as it would get me out of all that last minute shopping and pre-holiday running around (no driving for six weeks), not to mention the long hours of cooking—my sister and husband being more than happy to pinch-hit. Besides, our kitchen, lovely as it is, hardly lends itself to hobbling about on a walker.

During my über-organized, pre-op planning phase, I recognized a window of opportunity for undertaking a number of projects that had long been on my list—including throwing myself into the research for my new novel and making a start on those piles of books gathering dust beneath my bedside table. 

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A truly sucky plan, as it turned out. The first few weeks post-surgery, I was so exhausted and loopy I was incapable of the focus necessary to read let alone write, and forget anything requiring organization. Hell, I barely made sense when I spoke—the whole thing weirdly reminiscent of my mother’s illness a number of years back. “Who let the frogmen in the living room?” I remember her asking our startled assemblage one night at dinner. “And why the yellow goggles?” 

Relax, my medical team suggested when I complained about the boredom and inactivity, the three-month injunction against virtually all physical exercise including my beloved yoga. Take advantage of the downtime to rest and convalesce, they advised—a quaint term bringing to mind languid afternoons spent lounging on the porch of some elegantly decaying plantation house, lavender-infused ‘kerchief draped over the eyes. Not easy for a woman used to being constantly on the move. Eventually though, as I weaned myself off the drugs and slowly got to know my new cobalt and chromium body parts, I found a few trickles of interest beginning to sneak in along with just enough focus to allow a start on those stacks of books I mentioned. Something—anything, I figured—to keep me from losing my ever lovin’ mind. 

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I started light. Long a fan of Carol O’Connell’s quirky Kathleen Mallory mysteries, I pulled out It Happens in the Dark (the 11th book in that series). This proved just the ticket. A bit of backstory for those otherwise unaware. At the start of book one, Mallory, an 11-year-old wild-child, petty thief, and budding sociopath living on the streets of New York City, is rescued by police detective Louis Markowitz who ends up raising her as his own. After his murder a number of years later, Mallory—by this time a ferociously intelligent detective with the NYPD Special Crimes Unit, whose own criminal tendencies are only minimally kept at bay by the combined efforts of her long-suffering police partner and a brilliant criminal psychologist unlucky enough to have fallen for her—continues her adopted father’s fight for right, with a decidedly dark twist. Excellent stuff, this.

Next up were two terrific mysteries by Texas writer Rachel Caine: Wolfhunter River and Bitter Falls (books three and four in her Stillhouse Lake series). More riveting narrative and dialogue here, the edge-of-your-seat tension almost too much at times. In this series, a shy Midwestern housewife’s happy (read “clueless”) existence is shattered when her husband’s secret life as a serial killer is revealed and the families of his victims turn on her. A word, gentle reader: to set yourself up for these later books, be sure to start with books one and two (Stillhouse Lake and Killman Creek).

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Wouldn’t you know, all this murder and mayhem suddenly had me feeling better, so I picked up Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep—one of the best reviewed nonfiction books of 2019. This story recounts the life of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime tell-all that Harper Lee worked on obsessively (and ultimately unsuccessfully) in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird was published—this in hopes of creating a non-fiction saga along the lines of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (for which Lee did much of the research). Furious Hours has it all: multiple murders, high courtroom drama and the racial politics of the Deep South, as well as a moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved author’s struggles with her fame.

In his NY Times book review, Michael Lewis describes what makes Furious Hours so good. “It’s in her descriptions of another writer’s failure to write, that [Cep’s] book makes a magical little leap, and it goes from being a superbly written true-crime story to the sort of story that even Lee would have been proud to write.”

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Now that I’d sunk my teeth into some serious crime writing, I was ready for The Border, the 700-plus page finale of Don Winslow’s sprawling, intense, and thoroughly excellent Cartel trilogy (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel). This was a deliciously complex, unabashedly violent read, breathtaking in its scope. Crime Reads called it “One of the most ambitious works in modern crime fiction, an epic narrative of the ill-fated War on Drugs.”

By this time, I was making my way through all the grueling, post-op physical therapy that knee replacements require, and feeling massively sorry for myself in the bargain, so I opted for a little mind candy in the form of Blue Moon—the 24th installment in Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 25 years or are otherwise unaware of this prolific writer, his mystery/thriller series follows the adventures of a retired (except when he’s not) Army MP who wanders the country righting wrongs and falling for all the wrong women. I’ve read every one of these books—a guilty pleasure that’s about to come to a screeching halt, it appears, as Child recently announced his intention to hang up his authorial pen. Bummer. It seems even authors who sell zillions of books eventually grow tired of the characters they create. Then again, could be that a knee replacement did him in. I’ve asked Siri, but so far she’s refused to comment.

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: February 22-23, 2020

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

 

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

The Line UP online magazine has listed Vaughn C. Hardacker’s novel Wendigo as one of 11 Chilling Horror and Thriller Books to Read This Winter. These terrifying reads will make your blood run cold. https://the-line-up.com/winter-horror-books

 Vaughn C. Hardacker’s sixth thriller, The Exchange, is under contract with Encircle Publications for a September 2020 release. Lisa Gardner, NYT Best-selling author has agreed to read the ARC and possibly do a cover blurb.

Kate Flora has just learned that her story, “Afterlife” has been accepted for publication by Superior Shores Press in the anthology, Heartbreaks & Half-Truths: 22 Stories of Mystery and Suspense, to be published in June.

Mark your calendars, mystery lovers, registration for the Maine Crime Wave opens in March.

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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

Dreaming Up An Answer

Kate Flora: Often, at bookstore and library events, I, and other writers are asked where we get out ideas. There are many answers–overheard conversations. Stories in the newspaper. Things that happened to us or people we know. Something we read or saw. A strange incident we passed on the street or observed happening in another car. Something we read in a book that made us wonder how it we be if we flipped that. I’ve never heard anyone say: It came from a dream. But that’s sometimes where story ideas, or characters, or plot twists come from.

I used to wonder if this happened with other writers. I’ll have hit a snag in my plot and after several hours of struggling to find the answer, I’ll give up and go to bed. Sometime during the night, I’ll suddenly wake up and know what I need to write. I used to have to jump out of bed and immediately go and write it down–behavior that my husband found unfriendly. These days, even though I can’t remember my grocery list or why I dashed into a room, I can usually hold a plot idea in my head until morning. Just last night I was immersed in So Dark The Night, the new book I’m finishing, and suddenly I thought: a ring! The vision was so clear I could even see the ring.

This morning I am at my desk, wondering whether I do want to weave a ring through the plot, and it’s very exciting.

We’ve all heard the expression, “to sleep on it,” and for me, this seems particularly true. [image error]Sometimes it not just a plot point or some small detail I need to work out. Sometimes the story I’ve been writing during the day goes on in my sleep like I’m watching a movie. During the wonderful and intense four and half months when I was writing Playing God, I was so deeply into story that it never fully left me. I would drift off to sleep at night with the next scenes from the book beginning to play in my head, and in the half-asleep hour before I woke, I would already find myself composing those next scenes, hearing the dialogue, watching my characters begin the next bits of action in the book. I could put on my robe, stagger to the computer with my coffee, and the part of the story planned in my sleep would pour onto the page.

According to this article in the LA Times, I am not alone. Stephen King has incorporated his dreams into books and William Styron got the opening for Sophie’s Choice while sleeping. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-18-mn-56942-story.html

E.B. White’s Stuart Little was reportedly inspired by a dream, as was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

[image error]As Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 told the Paris Review: “I was lying in bed in my four-room apartment on the West Side when suddenly this line came to me: ‘It was love at first sight. The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone fell madly in love with him.’ I didn’t have the name Yossarian. The chaplain wasn’t necessarily an army chaplain—he could have been a prison chaplain. But as soon as the opening sentence was available, the book began to evolve clearly in my mind—even most of the particulars . . . the tone, the form, many of the characters, including some I eventually couldn’t use. All of this took place within an hour and a half. It got me so excited that I did what the cliché says you’re supposed to do: I jumped out of bed and paced the floor. That morning I went to my job at the advertising agency and wrote out the first chapter in longhand…. I don’t understand the process of imagination—though I know that I am very much at its mercy. I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon.”

More such stories can be found in this article from Paste Magazine: https://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2013/10/10-great-stories-inspired-by-dreams-and-visions.html

So, dear readers, do stories come to you in dreams? Are plot ideas winging at you on the street? In a coffee shop? While you’re driving? A few years ago, I suddenly had this vision of a weary and desperate young woman going into a coffee shop. She orders coffee, goes to the ladies room, and when she comes back, a strange man is sitting at her table. He tells her, “Smile, and pretend you’re glad to see me.” Their story became Wedding Bell Ruse.

My “Want List”

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, wondering if other people make a “want list” to keep track of when new books by favorite authors, and a few select DVDs of recent movies, are due to be published. I’ve done this for ages, in a doc file with a printout for handy reference. I tend to check it on Tuesdays, which is when most new books are released. It’s eclectic, to say the least. The titles on it aren’t so much a reflection of favorite genre as they are of favorite authors. Many of them are fellow writers I’ve actually met. A smattering are acquaintances of long standing, thanks to frequent meetings over the years at assorted conferences and conventions.

On February 4, I downloaded two ebooks, J. D. Robb’s Golden in Death and Charles Todd’s A Divided Loyalty. I’ve already read both. Below is the rest of the current “Want List”:

February

Julia Buckley                  Death  with a Dark Red Rose (2/25)

Knives Out (2/25)

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March

Midsomer Murders Series 21 (3/31)

April

Anne Perry                       One Fatal Flaw (4/7)

C. S. Harris                       Who Speaks for the Damned (4/7)

May

Amanda Quick              Close Up (5/5)

Patricia McLinn            Reaction Shot (5/20)

Nora Roberts                 Hideaway (5/26)

July

Lindsay Davis                The Grove of the Caesars (7/28)

August

Rhys Bowen                  The Last Mrs. Summers (8/4)

Donna Andrews           The Falcon Always Wings Twice (8/4)

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In addition,I have a list of authors whose names I periodically check to see if they have anything new coming out. This doesn’t include everyone. I don’t have to check Amazon for updates to know when my fellow Maine Crime Writers have new books out. Ditto for the folks over at The Wickeds and at a couple of other group blogs I follow.

Donna Andrews

James R. Benn

Rhys Bowen

Jayne Castle

Lindsay Davis

C. S. Harris

Charlaine Harris

Jayne Ann Krentz

Anne Perry

Mary Jo Putney

Amanda Quick

J. D. Robb

Nora Roberts

Charles Todd

Lauren Willig

The final part of the Want List consists of two genres. movies—I wait until the DVD comes out for theatrical releases—and older TV shows, which I tend to buy a season at a time and binge watch. These move up to the main list when I have a release date. Here’s the current list. You’ll note that some of the movies haven’t even been in theaters yet. I tend to plan ahead.

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Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker

Black Widow

Wonder Woman 1984

Miss Fisher movie

The West Wing,  seasons 2-5

Murdock Mysteries, current season

So, what’s on your want list?

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With the June 2019 publication of Clause & Effect, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty 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. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com and she maintains a website about women who lived in England between 1485 and 1603 at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women.

 

‘So what, it’s Maine’ isn’t good enough for the book you’re writing

I was wandering through a local gift shop recently, a little stunned at how such a large store could have so little I wanted to buy, when I came across a small Maine section. Imagine my delight when I saw notecards with “Augusta, Maine” on them. Not only is it my hometown, but it’s not often celebrated on notecards.

When I took a closer look, I saw the cards had a pastoral coastal scene. Definitely NOT Augusta, Maine.  I even took a photo, so you’ll see I’m not making this up:

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When I brought it up later to a Portland acquaintance, he said, “So what? It’s Maine. People from out of state don’t care.”

SIGH.

Granted, he’s not a writer. Nor should he be. But here’s a tip if you are an aspiring writer and wondering about setting: “So what, it’s [fill in the blank]” isn’t good enough.”

I’m sure I’ve discussed in this space before the young woman I was talking to at a conference a few years ago who was writing a book set in Maine. She’s never been here, might visit someday. She’s using guidebooks for information.

The notecard made me wonder if that young woman was going to put Augusta in her book and if that Augusta, too, would have a rocky coast with sailboats. That same day, I also bought the Lonely Planet book “The Unique States of America,” hoping to find some tips for a cross-country drive I’m going to do this summer. [Different store, in case you were wondering.]

The first state I turned to in the book was Maine, just to see what unique things about Maine it had for those not lucky enough to live here.

Oh my head. I think whoever wrote the Maine passage used a guide book for the guide book.

It starts out, “The Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., particularly New England, is often thought of as a manicured, developed place, more well-tended garden than untamed, rugged wilderness.” Um, on what lonely planet is your New England? Have we all turned into Connecticut? Who thinks that? Maybe someone who watched a lot of “Murder, She Wrote.” Which was filmed in California, people.

In any case, it goes on to make the case that no, we’re not all lounging in our developed gardens here — “the cliche is blown away in Maine by a salty wind lashing off the Atlantic Ocean over granite sea cliffs that look as raw as the oysters plucked from a cold-water estuary.”

In other words, a cliche I’m not sure is even a cliche is blown away by a cliche that we all live and suffer under. It may not surprise you the recommendations for food are blueberry pie, lobster and “Portland’s food scene.” Wait! Portland has a food scene? Just kidding. I read the paper and watch TV.

On the next four pages all the natural escapes; art, culture and history; family outings are on the coast except for a nod to Baxter State Park. Lonely planet tip: “There’s a good chance you’ll see a moose.” [Maureen tip: I haven’t seen one the last four times I’ve been there]. One tip it doesn’t have is that if you’re planning on driving up in July or August and camping on a whim, you’re not going to get in since it fills up months in advance. But why quibble with those details?

Oh, and, wait for it… there’s a little sidebar about lighthouses. Just in case you wondered but couldn’t find that information anwhere. And, if you’re wondering where to shop, they recommend L.L. Bean. Hmm, they’re going out a limb, but you never know, people just might check it out.

So, apparently the unique things about Maine are the absolutely most obvious things that anyone who knows anything about Maine thinks about Maine.

I know this sounds like a random rant, but really is a writing tip. I’ll get there soon.

I heard an author say recently than an agent told him “Maine is hot.” In the publishing world, not temperature-wise. Though if this winter is any indication, that’s coming.

I wonder, though, which Maine is hot? Is it the one with the lobsters, lighthouses and craggy coast with the salt sea spray, or the 95 percent of the state that doesn’t have those things?

Anyone can do guidebook Maine. Maybe that’s comforting to the rest of the world, and that’s the Maine they want.

But if it’s the latter, come on up and get us, publishers.

There are writers, many of the Maine Crime Writers, who take a lot of pride in making sure Maine gets its due in their books. Some of them even do it while throwing in a lighthouse or two.

Setting is more important to some writers than others, and to some readers than others. As a reader, I get annoyed (go figure) when I read books set in Maine that seem a lot like that notecard or guidebook. Even worse, they keep saying it’s Maine, but it could be anywhere.

As a writer, I wasn’t going to do that. I aim for writing about a Maine that, if you live here, you say, “Yeah, that’s it.” If you’ve never been here — whether you think it’s a manicured garden state (really? I still don’t get that) or a craggy, sea-driven coast — you say, “Ohhhh, that’s what Maine’s like.”

The real Augusta, rather than the Cabot Cove one on the notecard, is an interesting place, full of history, interesting architecture, winding little streets and some neighborhoods that go back more than 200 years. I’m sure you can find some Adirondack chairs and beach roses, but they’d be the least interesting thing you’d find.

But those are just facts and I won’t go into a lot of detail, because you can probably find all of it in guidebooks. To get the texture of the city, or any other place in Maine, or any other place, period, you need to spend some time there and see how it feels.

Instead of that notecard, how about something like this:

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Pretend both the notecard and this photo are books. Which one would you pick up and read? If it’s the first one, OK. Enjoy the lobster roll and lighthouse tour. I’ll take the second one, because it’s something that I may not have seen before and I’m curious about what I’m going to find.

Seriously, too, which one would you want to write?

I’m not saying books with lighthouses on the coast of Maine are bad books. I’m not saying writers should only write about places they know. I’m just saying know a place before you write about it. Then find a way to make a reader know it, too.