Lea Wait's Blog, page 163

Library Card (Redux)

Bruce Robert Coffin here, manning the helm of the Maine Crime Writer’s Blog, albeit a bit behind my time. This month I thought I would revisit one of my blogs from two years ago. I was curious to see how much had changed. Turns out not as much as you might think. I’m still bingeing (or is it binging?) on audio books and trying to finish up my latest manuscript before the July 1st deadline.

Several weeks ago, before taking a much needed tropical vacation to Florida, I stopped by my town library and obtained a card. You’re probably thinking, what’s the big deal? Everyone has a library card, right? Well, I don’t know if everyone does or not, but this is the first card I’ve had since I was a youngster living in the Southern Maine town of Scarborough (Yes, John Rogers Clark IV, I am ashamed). My old card was from the historic Black Point Library. I got the idea after being told by several librarians, that my novel, Among the Shadows, is always checked out, and has a list of folks waiting to read it.

You might think that I don’t need any more books to read. After all, my to be read pile is already huge and, like most writers, ever-expanding. But like most writers, my love of reading equals my love of writing. Can’t have one without the other, right? It occurred to me that I might make more efficient use of my travel time by listening to audiobooks. Driving to appearances and conferences is time consuming. And since I would rather conserve the bulk of my time for writing, driving is the perfect time to digest books that I’ve been wanting to get me hands on. Assuming that you’re not already on the Cloud Library, you might be surprised how many books are available in this format.

As my intake of new books increases so has my list of favorite authors. As of late I have been enjoying the wonderful sardonic wit of Jeff Lindsey’s Dexter Morgan and the descriptive and insightful prose of James Lee Burke’s private sleuth from the Big Easy, Dave Robicheaux, as read by Will Patton. For the record, if HarperCollins ever gets around to producing my novels in audio, I hope to land a reader half as entertaining as the great Will Patton. (Author note: I did land a great narrator in the form of Adam Verner when Harper produced an audio version of Beyond the Truth. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t!)

 

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Well, I could go on about my new found love of audiobooks all day if you let me, but I’m afraid my writing must come first. Hey, I have deadlines to meet. And there are a few chores that need doing. Chores which will require me to hop in the truck and drive… I wonder what Dexter’s dark passenger is up to now?

Write on!

Care giving

Out of the blue, a violent act. Terrible physical consequences. Then the slow unwinding to figure it out, to understand, to absorb the meaning. Outline of a mystery novel? Not in this case.

After a two-month hiatus I’m happy to resume blogging on Maine Crime Writers. Kate Flora graciously granted me the sabbatical so I could be 24/7 care giver to my wife. In mid-March she was hit from behind by an out-of-control, reckless snowboarder while she was skiing at Sunday River. She’s a life-long and expert skier, but when a big guy on a board crashes into you at high speed, experience and skill can’t mitigate the damage. She was taken by ambulance to Maine Medical Center and underwent a 4-hour surgery that left her with a 14-inch rod, several screws, and a lot of glue to hold together the miscellaneous parts of her broken femur. The trauma surgeon had been a front-line Navy surgeon in Iraq, a posting that prepared him well to handle my wife’s complex injury. We’re grateful. We spent the best part of a month recuperating in our condo in Yarmouth and were then able to return to our home at Sunday River, near what might be called the scene of the crime. Thanks to her initial fitness and her very hard work on physical therapy, she’s progressing well beyond the surgeon’s expectations and is walking, with cane, a mile a day and swimming several times a week. So we’re enormously happy about her current status and future prospects. But the experience was searing, and as it’s reaching a decent end I’m able to begin to think about the meaning of it all. Some random lessons I’ve learned:

*A badly broken femur beats death. At the velocity at which the snowboarder hit her, she could have been killed. Snowboards are truly lethal weapons.

*Revenge is both impossible and ugly. We’ve had many occasions to fantasize about what we’d like to do to or at least say to the perpetrator, but there’s no practical way to do that—and even thinking about it brings out bad qualities in ourselves. What’s over is over.

*Caring for a loved one is its own reward—and a huge one. My wife too often tries to thank me for small and large tasks performed for her. It’s true that the two and a half months of her recovery stopped my own life in its tracks, and there was barely a moment during that period when I wasn’t on call to attend to her. But in all honesty I never felt resentment or anger. After 49 years of blissful marriage, a couple of months of care giving seemed a very small price to pay for all we’ve had together.

*Living in the present is better than reviewing the past or projecting the future. Thurber said we should not “look back in anger or ahead in fear but around in wonder.” Amen. What happened this past ski season and may or may not happen next ski season is irrelevant to how we live right now.

These and other lessons learned may seem too personal, but I record them here with the hope that others who face similar—or even worse—situations will recognize some common thoughts. As I think about where we’ve been, I’m nearly ready to draw a line under this experience and take a little peek ahead, including whether I’m going to finish the still brewing mystery novel that was at the top of my to-do list before a snowboarder recklessly changed our lives. What we underwent has certain elements of the mystery plot described at the beginning, but in fiction you get to control the action, whereas in life you don’t. But in both you move on and try to learn whatever lessons you can. And look around in wonder.

Weekend Update: June 8-9, 2019

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by William Andrews (Monday), Bruce Coffin (Tuesday), Joe Souza (Wednesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday), and Barb Ross (Friday).

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

Here are some photos taken by Diane Kenty at last weekend’s Maine CrimeWave:

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Many Genres panel with past and present MCW bloggers Chris Holm, Brenda Buchanan, Jim Hayman, Bruce Coffin, and Lea Wait

 

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Plot vs. Character panel: Gayle Lynds, moderator, Peter Swanson, and MCW bloggers Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Flora, and Vaughn Hardacker

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MCW alum Gerry Boyle moderating agent Meg Ruley and honoree Lisa Gardner talking about “The Life of a Book”

 

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

Downsizing

Lea Wait, here, feeling overwhelmed by the history of things.

Yes. Things.

I know people are more valuable than possessions. My heart aches for those who lose everything they own, in fires or floods or wars.

But I cherish many possessions, and cling to them as connections to family, love, and home.

You see, I live in a house built in 1774. My family has only lived here since the mid-1950s, but I’m a fourth generation antiques dealer, and those who came before me not only brought family furniture, china, toys, kitchen and workshop tools here … in short, household furnishings … that they had bought or inherited but, in many cases, those things came with stories.

I loved those stories, of the tea kettle my great-great grandmother had used in Edinburgh, and the trunks my great-grandparents took with them on their annual train trip to the Rose Bowl over a hundred years ago. The labels are still there.

But I know in my head, if not in my heart, what so many men and women in my generation know: that my children don’t value these things in the same way. Antiques mean little to them. Silver? It has to be cleaned. Mahogany? It’s heavy. And who uses real linen and lace tablecloths anymore (even I don’t), or values a set of their grandmother’s wedding china that can’t be put in the dishwasher or …

The story goes on. So my house is full of things I love, and that were loved before me. At auctions I see the treasures of other families sold for a tiny percentage of their value as those older than I am “deaccession.” I see stories and heritage and a sense of where families came from being lost.

And I foresee the same happening to those things I treasure, not for their monetary value (although some have that, too,) but for what they meant in good and bad times to those who came before me.

I’ve done some downsizing already; sold some things; given things to children I was certain would value them. I’ve donated collections to museums and libraries. I know that after I’m gone my children will probably sell everything that is still here, and the house itself that I love and that my family has loved for four generations.

And all that hurts. Better for me to find new homes for these things than to leave them all to my children, who won’t value them, I think. Which is where libraries and museums come in.

But still I hold on. Hold on to the memories. The stories. The feeling that when these things go, as they will someday, somehow, they will take with them history and heritage and stories that can never be replaced.

And that makes me very sad.

When All We Had Was Q

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John Clark with my thoughts on Pride Month. I grew up in a small Maine town where the only minority group I knew about was my classmate Nancy Simmons…She was Catholic. That’s how isolated and unaware we were in the 1950s. The only time we saw Blacks was when the rides came to the Union Fair. Then there were those strange people, you know the ones who were whispered about while everyone laughed nervously. I’m talking about Queers.

I was luckier than many of the people I grew up with. I went far away to college, had gay fraternity brothers, one of my two best friends in college was gay, and over time, I watched as he went from agonizing over his sexuality to being OUTrageous and then becoming comfortable in his skin. During my mental health and library career, I made a lot of friends in both professions. As a result of becoming active nationally in the Medical Library Association (MLA), I became a straight member of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Librarians Special Interest Group. As chair of the Mental Health Library Special Interest Group, we had similar interests and during the years I was part of MLA, we did several joint program presentations at the annual conferences, notably in Kansas City and Seattle. I learned a lot over coffee about what their growing up experiences were like.

When I got sober and had some time in recovery, I sponsored both gays and lesbians in recovery. Listening to them talk about their greater sense of loneliness and isolation (and I thought mine was bad), gave me even more insight into how the world viewed and treated people whose sexuality and gender orientation didn’t fit the cookie cutter mentality so prevalent in rural America.

Fast forward a few years to when I was the librarian in Hartland and was reading mostly young adult fiction. I realized that the genre was riding ahead of the wave of awareness in terms of issues facing teens, and by doing so, many titles were throwing a literary lifeline to LBGTQ kids in areas where many felt like they were the only ones who were different. I added a lot of YA fiction that addressed LBGTQ topics and blogged about the collection on the Maine library listserv as well as sharing reviews of the better titles.

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While we’ve come a long way in terms of respecting gender variability and how important caring and respect for others is, we still live in a mean and unsafe world, particularly when you don’t fit any mold deemed ‘appropriate’ by the religious and conservative elements running rampant through our nation. That’s why I was proud as hell that our daughter Sara took Piper to the drag queen reading event in Waterville last week. I want my granddaughter (and her on the way sibling) to grow up feeling good about themselves and sharing that goodness with everyone they meet. That’s how we’ll get to the world most of us want to live in.

Four new books illustrate how the literary curve is moving even further in YA literature. I’ve finished two of them, am reading the third and ordered the fourth as soon as I heard about it two days ago. Below are short descriptions of each.

I Wish You The Best by Mason Deaver is the story of Ben De Becker and what happens when they attempt to tell their parents they’re nonbinary. Instead of any remote form of acceptance, they’re ordered to leave and find themselves shivering and barefoot outside a Walgreens, calling the sister they haven’t seen in ten years. What follows, involves a new school for senior year, PTSD, a renewed fear of coming out to anyone besides their sister and brother-in-law, and a painful, but successful discovery of who they really are.

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Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins is the story of what happens after Millie Hawkins romance with her best friend Jude, who is bisexual, is derailed when Jude’s boyfriend returns after being absent for months. Millie had been accepted at an elite private school in Scotland, a member of the first female class to attend, but she had put that plan on hold while her romance was alive. Desperate to distance herself from the pain of Jude’s rejection, she busts tail to fill out scholarship forms and soon finds herself in the misty highlands of Scotland, determined to focus on studying and avoiding any romantic entanglements.

However, she never expected to be paired as roommates with Flora, a Scottish princess whose reputation and outrageous behavior are frequent fodder for the British tabloids. What starts out as war between them ends up as a quirky friendship, then romance. What makes this so satisfying is the matter of fact way their gender orientation is treated by nearly everyone in the story.

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These Witches Won’t Burn by Isabel Sterling revolves around two teen witches living in Salem, Massachusetts. Hannah and Veronica had been best friends forever, then became girlfriends, but something horrible happened between them while on a class trip to NYC and Hannah can’t let go of her hurt and anger. Details of that event are revealed in just the right manner as more frightening things start happening in Salem. Both girls are in training to reach their full magic ability by their eighteenth birthday, but are forbidden to use any magic where Regs (normal mortals) might see it. Add in the fact that a new girl, Morgan, seems interested in becoming more than Hanna’s friend, a detective assigned to investigate the scary events in town seems determined to nail Hannah for them, not to mention the ramping up of tension, as the book nears its end and you have the first in what I hope is a two or three book series. Once again, the sexual orientation of four girls in the story, the way their parents accept them as well as the inclusion of a transgender fellow employee at the shop where Hannah works, all will help teens feel good about their sexuality. It’s also one heck of a good mystery.

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Finally, the book I’m waiting for is The Stonewall Riots: Coming out in the streets by Gayle E. Pitman. Here is the description from Amazon “This book is about the Stonewall Riots, a series of spontaneous, often violent demonstrations by members of the gay (LGBTQ+) community in reaction to a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The Riots are attributed as the spark that ignited the LGBTQ+ movement. The author describes American gay history leading up to the Riots, the Riots themselves, and the aftermath, and includes her interviews of people involved or witnesses, including a woman who was ten at the time. Profusely illustrated, the book includes contemporary photos, newspaper clippings, and other period objects. A timely and necessary read, The Stonewall Riots helps readers to understand the history and legacy of the LGBTQ+ movement.”

No Spectators

Since we’re getting close to Fathers’ Day, I’d like to move away from our usual topics of Maine and writing and give a little extra appreciation to the Old Man. Though, in fact, he’s been as proud of me as a writer as a father could be and a good part of the reason I ended up here in Maine.

I’ve written elsewhere about his good grin and the Mark Twain quote I find so true:

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”

And I know this: that although he has learned a lot since I was twenty-one, I have too. But as my father moves through his 93d year on the earth, I have other images of him: in a diving suit in Boston Harbor, learning to waterski in his fifties, scuba diving in the Mediterranean, nearly getting arrested in Myanmar. [image error]And I’m coming to appreciate the fact that, like many children, I become more like my parents as I age.

Anne and I recently traveled to Washington, DC, partly because I’d found it difficult to face the Vietnam Memorial until now and partly for a break from the relentlessly glorious spring we were having. We happened on an exhibit at the Renwick Gallery by David Best, known for his large-scale installations at Burning Man. A gallery-sized Temple, built of laser-cut filigreed walls and other intricate structures of wood, was conceived, as Best says, as: “a non-denominational place where someone can go to be forgiven or to seek forgiveness or to seek solitude from grief.”

Visitors are invited to write messages on small pieces of wood and leave them tucked into the walls as tokens for others to read and to meditate on. I left my particular statement there, but I also took away an appreciation from the exhibit’s title, and an exhortation I associate with my father’s approach to life: No Spectators.[image error]

I take Best’s exhortation to encourage people to do some of the things my father has modeled for me all along: to dive in, embrace being an amateur, to try new things, to make a fool of myself occasionally. But not to just sit back and watch.

Which, of course, does tie in neatly with the whole writing thing, yes?  All of us take risks every time we write, trying to say what we mean, what we believe, on paper for others to read and to judge. We push ourselves to try something different, even something we don’t know whether we can achieve, because if we didn’t stretch ourselves beyond what we already know, what we already can do, what would be the point?

I’m nowhere near my nineties, though I do hope to get there. But I also hope along the way I will continue to be able to convince myself to do more of these things: to fail much, to fail big. And never feel content to be only a spectator.

And A Good Time Was Had By All

This past weekend, most of us gathered at the Glickman Library in Portland, along with [image error]perhaps a hundred other people, for the Maine Crime Wave, a mystery conference dedicated to teaching writing skills, building our crime writing community and having fun.

The lovely and generous Lisa Gardner received the well-deserved Crime Master Award. Lisa and her agent, Meg Ruley, talked about the process of a book from manuscript to publication, and the relationship between the author and the agent.

There were workshops on craft, and panels of authors offering diverse opinions on whether plot or character is more important–and an audience that suggested setting, particularly a Maine setting, is also a draw for readers. A panel on the defining elements of different corners of the genre–featuring writers of traditional mysteries, police procedurals, and thriller/suspense.

One panel featured the three nominees for the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction: Lea Wait, Barbara Ross, and Bruce Coffin–all three Maine crime writers who blog here regularly.

Neil Nyren, long time publisher, gave a generous and humorous overview of the publishing industry.

The day ended with Two Minutes in the Slammer–where authors read from their works for two minutes. Two minutes, it turns out, can be enough to hook a reader or lose one, and it is a great opportunity for the audience to be involved in the Wave and share what they are working on.

Most hilarious was the panel called “Let’s Write a Crime Novel,” where audience members submit character names, motives, weapons, occupations and settings, which are placed in bags. By drawing from the five bags, a panel of writers from different corners of the mystery genre will compose a mystery on the fly. Between the panelist and the engaged audience, a very amusing story involving a golf course, a pig farm, amnesia, an intrepid girl reporter, a cop, and an antique sword hidden in the pigpen evolved.

Do you love mysteries? Long to meet your favorite authors? Ever wonder how mysteries are written? You should attend next year, and join the fun!

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Past and present MCW bloggers: Chris Holm, Brenda Buchanan, Jim Hayman, Lea Wait, and Bruce Coffin

 

The Story Inspired by a Mummified Cat

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The real Calpurnia, the cat (not mummified) who inspired the one in the “Deadly Edits” series

Now that I have your attention, this is Kaitlyn Dunnett, blogging today about some of the oddities that turn up when a writer does research for a murder mystery. In Clause & Effect, the second “Deadly Edits” mystery featuring retired teacher turned book doctor Mikki Lincoln, Mikki is present when a mummified body is found behind a bricked-up fireplace at the local historical society.

Oddly, bodies hidden in walls or chimneys are not that rare. Not in fiction and not in real life. Whether the remains are skeletal or mummified when they are discovered years later depends on all kinds of things, including the weather. I’ll spare you the gory details. Suffice it to say that I had a choice about how well preserved I wanted my murder victim to be. I opted for all in one piece, and in researching how and why that would occur, I came across the story of the mummified cat. Ah-hah, I said to myself. If a cat can be that recognizable, so can my corpse.

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It’s a fascinating story, really. In 2009, a 400-year-old mummified cat was found in the walls of a house that was being renovated in Upborough, near Plymouth, England. It turns out that placing a cat in the wall of a house was something that used to be done to keep witches away. Moreover, when a previous owner of the house discovered the same cat in the 1980s, he put it back where he found it. The owner in the article planned to do the same, saying it would add “charm” to the property. Reportedly, his wife wasn’t thrilled by that prospect.

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I found plenty of accounts of human bodies found in walls and chimneys, too. In one case, bones discovered in a chimney in Louisiana turned out to be the remains of a man missing for twenty-seven years. In another, a mummified body was found in a chimney in a cabin in Colorado. The remains were identified as those of a man missing for seven years.

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In all honesty, I can’t say the title of this blog is completely true, since the plot of Clause & Effect was not really “inspired” by that story about the mummified cat. It’s an attention-grabber, though, isn’t it? What did inspire the story was the fact that there was a fireplace in the house I lived in growing up—the house that is the model for Mikki’s house in my fictional Lenape Hollow, New York. I don’t think we ever had a fire in that fireplace, and sometime after a photo was taken of me standing in front of it in 1957, my parents had the fireplace removed and the chimney walled in.

I’m pretty sure there isn’t a body behind that new wall . . . but you never know.

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GIVEAWAY!!!

Leave a comment here or on my Facebook page to be entered in a drawing for an Advance Reading Copy of Clause & Effect. The hardcover and e-book editions will be available for purchase on June 25 with the audiobook to follow. Here’s the (slightly edited) jacket copy:

Nestled in the picturesque Catskills, the village of Lenape Hollow prepares to celebrate the 225th anniversary of its founding. Freelance book editor Mikki Lincoln has been drafted to update and correct the script left over from the town’s bicentennial. The historical society building where it is housed is being renovated for the big day, but when human remains are found walled up in a fireplace Mikki shifts focus from cold-reading to solving a cold case. Just as her investigation seems to have hit a brick wall, a new murder rattles the townspeople. Clearly someone is hiding a few skeletons in the closet. Now Mikki will need to go off script to make a connection between the bicentennial bones and the current homicide, but if this book editor isn’t careful, she may be the next one sentenced to death.

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With the June 25, 2019 publication of Clause & Effect, Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett will have 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.

Weekend Update: June 1-2, 2019

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Dick Cass (Wednesday), John Clark (Thursday), and Lea Wait (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

A Prohibition Primer by Maggie Robinson

[image error]Hello again! Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson kindly invited me to stop in to talk about my second 1920s-set Lady Adelaide Mystery, Who’s Sorry Now? It comes out tomorrow, a Saturday, which is weird, but I’m not in control, LOL.

That’s a super-understatement. At the moment I’m juggling the sale of my house, revisions for Book 3, and promotion of Book 2. How I’d love to go dancing and drinking and debauching like the Bright Young People who feature in Who’s Sorry Now?, but I probably couldn’t stay up that late. After reading what young men and women got up to during the Roaring Twenties, I don’t think I was ever young enough! Frenetic, frenzied fun was sought at all costs, making my college years seem like a sedate tea party. Themed events were big, the wackier the better—adults in diapers and baby bonnets with gin in their bottles, for example. Yikes.

[image error]This was the decade of the cocktail. Some say sweet, fruity drinks were invented to disguise the taste of illegal homebrewed alcohol, which could send you to the hospital if it didn’t send you to jail. Some liquids were so toxic they caused hallucinations, paralysis, and even death. “The real McCoy” means quality, and comes from Captain Bill McCoy smuggling premium rum from the Caribbean that wouldn’t kill you, just Jamaican Me Crazy.

Lady Adelaide doesn’t have to worry about Prohibition, though—the UK was mostly free from the terror of the temperance movement, although plenty of British people signed “The Pledge.” And throughout London, private clubs sprang up to get around the strict licensing laws. If you belonged to my fictional Thieves’ Den in Soho, you might order F. Scott Fitzgerald’s favorite libation, a Gin Rickey at any time of the night without worrying about being arrested. (But you might get poisoned, because that’s the plot!)

[image error]Gin Rickey: 2 oz. gin, ¾ oz. fresh lime juice, club soda, slice of lime. Pour the gin and juice into a tall chilled glass filled with ice cubes. Add club soda, stir, and drop in the lime. Cheers!

My father came of age in the late Twenties, and one of his favorite drinks was a French 75. The original recipe called for gin, but he liked to substitute cognac.

French 75: 2 oz. dry gin, ½ oz. lemon juice, ¼ oz. simple syrup (made by boiling half a cup of sugar with half a cup of water; cool before adding), 5 oz. of champagne, and orange zest. à votre santé !

I’m afraid I’d know who’s sorry now if I tried either of them, but let me know if you’re tempted. Thanks so much to the Maine Crime Writers for hosting me! To read blurbs and first chapters of Nobody’s Sweetheart Now and Who’s Sorry Now?, please visit www.maggierobinson.net

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Maggie Robinson is a former teacher, library clerk, and mother of four who woke up in the middle of the night, absolutely compelled to create the perfect man and use as many adjectives and adverbs as possible doing so. A transplanted New Yorker, she lives with her not-quite perfect husband in Maine, where the cold winters are ideal for staying inside and writing historical mysteries and romances. A two-time Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice nominee, her books have been translated into French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Dutch and Italian. Maggie is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Romance Writers of America, and Maine Romance Writers.