Lea Wait's Blog, page 165

Thanks, Mom

Yes, I know Mother’s Day was last Sunday but this is my day so I’m having my say. I have my mother to thank for introducing me to mystery novels. We seldom agreed on much, but shared the love of a good mystery.

My parents were avid readers and regular patrons of the public library. My father [image error]preferred historical and science fiction novels but my mother read exclusively mysteries. We made weekly trips to the library, where she got me started with Nancy Drew. Here was a detective who was sharp, adventurous, and female. Who knew? And I really wanted a car like Nancy’s roadster.

Years later, I was shocked to learn not only that Carolyn Keene wasn’t the author’s name but she hadn’t even written all the series’ books. Several authors contributed but Mildred Benson wrote twenty-three including the first three. The first Nancy Drew, The Secret of the Old Clock, was first published in 1959 by Grosset and Dunlap. I researched Mildred Benson for one of my books and learned she was a journalist and a bit of an adventurer like her fictional character, even getting lost on an Amazon expedition.

[image error]

After going through all the mysteries for young adults, I switched to the books my mother [image error]read, Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series.  My only disappointment in Perry Mason was the lack of romance, a trend that sadly continued on television. I also read most of Agatha Christie’s wonderful Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot stories. Dame Agatha’s first book, published in 1920, was The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which I don’t remember reading, even in reprint. I particularly loved Book number ten in her Poirot series, Murder on the Orient Express, first published in 1934 by Collins.

Finally, I discovered the beginnings of the romantic suspense sub-genre with Mary Stewart’s and Phyllis Whitney’s books that blended romance and suspense along with the mystery. Mary Stewart’s Nine Coaches Waiting was first published in 1959 by William Morrow. In those early romantic suspense books, the heroines too often put themselves in danger and had to be rescued by the hero. Thankfully today mystery and suspense novels have evolved as have their female characters, whether written by a man or a woman. For today’s romantic suspense novels, we authors want to avoid a heroine who’s TSTL, Too Stupid To Live. Many of today’s heroine sleuths are as sharp and tough and adventurous as Nancy Drew, sometimes more so.

[image error]

So thanks, Mother, for directing me toward the reading that would lead to what I’m doing today, blending romance, suspense, and mystery in my writing. If you’re still reading settled on your heavenly cloud, maybe you’ve picked up one of my books.

Whether or not to use the Weather

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, mulling over another of those questions that writers come up with to drive themselves crazy. If your book—which, remember, is FICTION—is set in a certain time and place and you know what the weather was like on those particular dates, do you stick to the truth or fudge the details to suit the story?

When I wrote historical novels and could discover what the weather conditions were, I always tried to use that information in the books. Even when I couldn’t find a record of what the temperature was or whether it was sunny, raining, or snowing, I was able to look up the phases of the moon. With that information, I made sure to pick a night when the moon was full if my characters needed moonlight to find their way to a midnight rendezvous. That’s a little thing, and most readers will neither know nor care if I got it right, but it was important to me that I not contradict recorded facts.

In cozy mysteries the year events take place is rarely, if ever, mentioned. Nothing dates a novel faster than including references to current events. Here’s a non-weather-related example. In one of my early Liss MacCrimmon mysteries, I had a character refer to the fact that the Red Sox were suffering from “the curse of the Bambino” and, wouldn’t you know it, before that book was published, they managed to reverse the curse. Fortunately, I was able to fix that “mistake” at the copy edit stage.

References to books and movies in novels also tend to be vague. Characters read the latest Nora Roberts novel, go to see a new superhero blockbuster, catch an old movie on television, or watch reruns of a classic sitcom. We often know that a book is set a Christmas or in July or, like next February’s A View to a Kilt, at Moosetookalook, Maine’s March Madness Mud Season Sale, but the text isn’t likely to say the story is taking place in 2019 or 2020 or any other specific year.

[image error]

When I begin writing a new book, I set up a calendar to keep events in the story straight. I have a chronology for the characters’ lives that does include dates. For A Fatal Fiction, the third Deadly Edits Mystery, which I began writing in 2018, I used a calendar for 2019. At mid-April of this year, after having let the manuscript “rest” for several weeks, I started what I hope will be the next-to-last read-thru/revision before the finished book is due on my editor’s desk on the first of June. That was when I realized the my fictional timeline coincided with reality. My first thought was that this must be serendipity. Even if no one reading the finished novel ever realizes it, I’d know I got the weather right. I had ongoing weather reports for the area in which the book is set right at my fingertips, not only from the Weather Channel but also from an individual who posts them every day to the “People who come from Liberty, New York” Facebook group.

[image error]

I was quite excited about the prospect . . . until the weather from April 10 until May 2, the period covered by the story, proved to be consistently cold, rainy, and generally ugly. There were even snow flurries. Spring flowers and flowering trees? Forget about it. That the grass turned green is about the best that could be said for that three week stretch. And, no, I couldn’t just change the story to another year with better weather because my plot calls for the April 15 tax deadline, Passover, Easter, and Patriot’s Day (celebrated only in Maine and Massachusetts) to fall in the same one-week period and that doesn’t happen very often.

[image error]

June’s Deadly Edits entry. You’ll have to wait a year for the one I’m writing now.

As I pressed on with the read-thru/revision, I worked in the weather here and there. It certainly had an impact on a couple of scenes! But no one wants to hear a weather report every few pages, not unless it has some bearing on the story. When I finally came to a day on which Mikki has to do a lot of running around outside, and on which, in reality, it rained the whole darned day, I threw in the towel. For the five chapters that take place on that date, I don’t even mention the rain, or umbrellas, or puddles, or getting soaked, or turning on the windshield wipers.

[image error]

8 PM on Easter Sunday in the town Lenape Hollow is very loosely based upon

I salve my conscience by telling myself I’m writing FICTION, and that novelists are allowed poetic license, too. Besides, if I were to be completely accurate in writing about those few weeks, I’d also have to have my characters react to the fire at Notre Dame and the release of the Mueller Report.

[image error]

 

With the June 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.

 

Gone cruising!

by Barb

No, not that way. Get your head out of the gutter. I meant I have gone cruising the Mediterranean. If all is well, when you are reading this I will be in the Greek village of Fiskardo on the island of Kefalonia.

I promise a report when I get back. In the meantime, I’m thinking you should register for the Maine Crime Wave. The last day to register is May 20, five short days from now. So if you’ve been thinking about attending and haven’t quite gotten around to it, now is the time to do it.

You can register here.

This year’s program is diverse, robust and exciting. The conference takes place Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1, in Portland, Maine. There will be workshops, panels, and interviews. On Friday evening Tess Gerritsen will present Lisa Gardner with the 2019 CrimeMaster Award for distinguished achievement.  You can sign up to pitch your manuscript one-on-one with a distinguished agent. There will be a luncheon keynote by Neil Nyren, Editor in Chief emeritus of G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

Plus, the friendliest bunch of crime writers on the planet. (And that’s pretty friendly, since in my experience 99% of authors of mysteries, thrillers, and suspense are super nice.)

So come join us! We’d love to see you there.

[image error]

Gettin’ The Move On

John Clark on the next chapter in the Clark family saga. After 16 years in Hartland, we’re heading south. Not way south like Florida, but real Mainer south. In our case, Waterville is where we’ll be settling down in a month or so if all goes well.

[image error]

The back yard we’re leaving behind.

There are numerous reasons for this decision, some of which I’ll share, some will be shared privately in the future as necessary. We knew that eventually a three story Victorian was going to be more than we could navigate safely. My bad knee hastened the decision, was strengthened by our commitment to use the pools at the Alfond Center in Waterville and was cemented when we learned a second grandchild was coming to our Belgrade daughter and her husband in November. Beth took care of Piper for the first 2 ½ years of her life and wants to be involved again. At present, we’re 45 miles away. The home we made an offer on is not only 17 miles away, but most of the time, you can be on the interstate in 90 seconds.

[image error]

Gonna be closer to this cutie.

As those of you who have moved recently know, it’s not only a physical process, but a mental and emotional one as well. I must have started subconsciously right after the election because I started selling things on ebay and through Uncle Henry’s. Now, we’re going through the industrial shrinking phase, selling more via Uncle Henry’s, as well as having lawn sales on the weekends (Netted some serious cash in the past three weeks as well as freeing up lots of space.) One nice part of lawn sales is chatting with friends as well as with folks we don’t know. Our neighbor, who’s doing a complete revamp of his mobile home, has been the beneficiary of lots of pipe and pressure treated lumber during the downsizing.

[image error]

We might not get much into a garden this year, but we’ll be ready for 2020.

Since we’ve made an offer that has been accepted on the home we like in Waterville, we’re at the stage where we’re looking at all our furniture and imagining it in each room in the new place. With going from three floors to one, there are lots of pieces that won’t fit in the new puzzle, so we’ll be talking with a local antiques dealer soon. The mental process is possibly the most challenging thing we’ll be working through. More about that below.

What we’ll keep (loosely termed): Vegetable gardening (adequate room in the back yard, albeit much smaller), space for books, space for our personal stuff (My books, computers, contest stuff, Beth’s computer and sewing/quilting stuff)

[image error]

Bernie is gonna be citified.

What we’ll lose: All our mature fruit trees, bushes and vines (at least until we plant new ones in the back yard), our asparagus patch and the wild blackberries on the adjacent town property, playing in recycling at the dump, gathering non-winning lottery tickets to get computers for the local school, walking to the post office and the library, waving to half the town on weekends as they go to the dump, getting Coke caps at Dudo’s redemption center.

What we’ll gain: A more politically friendly town (Waterville’s idiot mayor notwithstanding), a bigger library, a choice of grocery stores, a shorter trip to the Alfond Center as well as to Augusta, the ability to walk to Starbucks, Bangor Savings Bank, Walmart, Home Depot, Hannafords and Bull Moose.

Then there’s the unknown. I’m going to need to find some Waterville area AA groups that feel right, Most of our social and civic obligations and connections will be severed and I hope we’re both going to move slowly on creating new ones, I don’t know about continuing to sell books, but am eager to have more time to read (6 hours a day isn’t nearly enough).

Stay tuned as the adventure goes forth. If you’ve moved recently, or are planning to, what are your thoughts?

The Best Little Known Conference In New England

[image error]

Vaughn

A few years back I attended a single day writer conference in Portland, Maine. I walked into the room expecting to see a bunch of strangers–wrong! I immediately saw Kate Flora and several writers I knew from my years as a committee member for the New England CrimeBake. If nothing else, the Maine Crime Wave (held every spring) is a true example of how something small can quickly morph into something special.

The initial Crime Wave was a single day event with panels and several breakout sessions taught by such well known Maine writers as Julia Spenser-Fleming (who gave a great breakout session on how to structure a scene), Paul Doiron, and several New England crime writers. Two years ago the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (the conference’s sponsor, along with the New England chapters of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime) implemented the CrimeMaster Award for Distinguished Achievement (Tess Gerritsen was presented the 2017 award and Douglas Preston the 2018 award) this year’s recipient is Lisa Gardner. The conference was expanded to a Friday night and all day Saturday event attracting writers from all over New England–I’ve even run into a couple of writers I know from Canada.

I recall the second conference when I saw a tall, lanky man sitting in the back row. My first impression was that he was an interested reader. I had no idea that he was a retired Portland homicide detective and now Bruce Robert Coffin has published three of his popular crime novels (between Bruce’s detective John Byron and Kate Flora’s detective Joe Burgess murder rate in Portland, Maine is the highest in its history–then again so isn’t the Portland PD close rate).

I’ve been to a number of conferences, but none in which attendees had such open access to writers, book reviewers, and literary agents. I have yet to hear a negative review of the conference from anyone attending.

[image error]

Maine Crime Wave

This year’s event is being held on May 31 and June 1. If you haven’t signed up yet don’t wait. Registration closes in 8 days, May 20, 2019. I’ll be there and I hope you will be too.

I will be appearing with Brenda Buchanan and  Dick Cass at the Bangor Public Library on May 14 at 5:30 p.m.

[image error]

Coming July 2, 2019
My Brothers Keeper

Look for My Brother’s Keeper, the next Ed Traynor crime thriller to be released on July 2, 2019 (available online for pre-order).

Weekend Update: May 11-12, 2019

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Vaughn Hardacker (Monday), John Clark (Tuesday) Barb Ross (Wednesday) Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Susan Vaughan (Friday).

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

[image error]More “deal” news from Kaitlyn Dunnett: From May 8-13, as a special Mother’s Day offer, the most recent Liss MacCrimmon mystery, Overkilt, will be on sale in ebook format at Kobo for just $2.99. This seems appropriate since Liss’s mother plays a major role in the story. Some readers have suggested Vi MacCrimmon would make a good victim, but having her as Liss’s reluctantly accepted sleuthing partner is much more fun!

 Don’t forget Maine Crime Wave! It takes place in Portland, Maine on May 31-June 1 and the deadline to register is May 20. All the information you need is here: http://mainewriters.org/maine-crime-wave/

Who will be there? Panelists include current Maine Crime Writers Brenda Buchanan, Richard Cass, Bruce Robert Coffin, Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Flora, Vaughn C. Hardacker, Barbara Ross, and Lea Wait and MCW alums Gerry Boyle, Jessie Crockett (as Jessie Ellicott), James Hayman, Chris Holm, and Julia Spencer-Fleming, plus frequent MCW guest Katherine Hall Page. Also presenting are Maine writers Tess Gerritsen and Gayle Lynds, bestselling author Meg Gardner, and superstar agent Meg Ruley.

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

Stories Are Everywhere Around Us

One thing people always ask me is where do I get the ideas for my novels. I get a real kick out this question. Look around the world, I say. Everywhere you look there’s a story of one kind or another waiting to be told. You can throw a rock in any direction and see something in the air developing.

As a writer, my mind looks at the world in a slightly different way. I see plots and intrigue where others don’t. I often invent it even when there’s nothing remotely interesting happening. One can always find me listening to conversations in stores or in a bar or restaurant. In fact, people are often so open about their private affairs in public that it’s hard NOT to hear what they’re going on about.

I remember one day siting next to a woman as she spoke loudly on her phone. The discussion was heated and she talked in great detail about her finances. Her husband had just died and supposedly there was an issue with his will. She didn’t seem to care at all that I and a few others were sitting next to her and could hear her every word.

Stories are everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and ears to appreciate them.

The other day I saw a man walking in the Whole Foods parking lot. He was about fifty yards ahead of me and he dropped a slip of paper. My mind conjured up all kinds of scenarios. What if he was a spy and dropped an important note listing the names of valuable contacts! Or maybe he was a professional hitman with a list of double-crossing mobsters to knock off. How about a ransom note he would use to rob a bank. I ran over and scooped up the note only to see that it was his grocery list. Then I found him in the store and handed it to him. At least I got three good story ideas from this one encounter.

Stories are everywhere.

When driving through town with my kids, we would often play a game whereby we would make up names for people walking down the street,  and then give them a detailed backstory, To most every activity I see during the course of a day, I create a beginning, middle and end. Narrative abounds.

Stories are everywhere. So if you’re stuck for an idea, look around you. In fact, most writers I know have the opposite problem: there are too many stories to tell and not enough time to tell them all.

Happy creating!

[image error]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weathervanes … Which Way Is the Wind Blowing?

Lea Wait, here. Most people of “a certain age,” including me, immediately recognize Bob Dylan’s famous line from his Subterranean Homesick Blues (1965): “You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.”

Unusual Quill Pen Weathervane

I think of that line often, especially when I think of those devices that actually DO tell you which way the wind blows:  weathervanes. As an antique dealer (one of the hats I grew up wearing, since my mother and grandmother were also antique dealers,) antique weather vanes were part of my world from an early age. Over the years, as folk art became a valuable commodity, nineteenth century weathervanes became more and more difficult to find. A few years ago there was even a group of weathervane thieves operating in the northeast and middle states who audaciously brought ladders to unoccupied homes and barns and stole weathervanes.

There was a good reason for that. Antique weather vanes, especially unusual ones in good condition, can bring $75,000 or up at an auction or antique show. Today several companies reproduce them, so almost anyone can add one to their property. But it’s the old ones that are most fascinating.

Before 1850 most weathervanes were made by hand out of copper, iron, zinc, or even wood. Since farmers and mariners were the most interested in winds, figures of animals (horses, cows, pigs, roosters)  or ships were common subjects. But after the Civil War, and the industrial revolution, several New England companies began mass producing weathervanes of copper, first hand hammered or pressed into molds, and then the two sides soldered together. An antique weathervane of that period usually spent many years out in the elements, doing its job, so most are green, the verdigris patina of old copper. A few that were originally hand painted may retain some traces of paint.

During the later part of the nineteenth century weather vanes were made not only in traditional styles, but also included racing horses, trains, Indians, flags … in short, anything that took the fancy of the manufacturer and buyer. The  value of a weathervane depends on its age, its condition, and whether or not it is a usual or unusual shape. Modern reproductions are common today, so weathervanes are one of the antiques I would never buy; I’m just not educated enough to be able to know the true difference between old and reproduced. If you want to purchase a genuinely old one, be sure to make your purchase from a well-known dealer who knows their stuff.

There’s a weathervane on my barn today, though. It’s a horse, and it’s modern . . . made in the 1970s. One of my sisters gave it to my mother. As many weather vanes do, though, it has a story. My mother was very concerned that her weathervane would be stolen because, although it wasn’t old, it was a reproduction, and thieves probably couldn’t tell the difference from the ground. Sure enough, one year she returned to Maine after visiting me in New Jersey and the weathervane was gone. She mourned it, and often thought of replacing it, but never did.

In 1998 I moved to Maine full-time, in part to take care of my mother, then in her late eighties. Our neighbors to the north, a couple in between my mother’s age and mine, owned a home whose back faced the back of ours.  My mother’d had a minor feud with them years before, so between that dispute and geography, we seldom saw them. But since they had a pier and dock and I had a dingy I wanted to get in the water, I made friends with them. After my boat was established at their pier we’d often chat as I came and went to go rowing.

One day the woman said, “You know, we have your weathervane.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.  Twenty-five years after it had disappeared? She smiled. “One winter we had an awful nor’easter, and it blew off your barn and onto our property. So we took it and put it in our back shed. Would you like it back?”

I assured her I would. I never asked her why she hadn’t volunteered the information years before. I knew the answer. We’d never asked her.

So … the weather vane is now back on the barn.  It just took a few year sabbatical in the neighbors’ shed.

And now we know for certain which way the wind blows.

Inspiration Among the Gravestones

Is it just me, or do all mystery writers feel at home in old cemeteries?

The breeze carries stories of those whose names and dates of death are chiseled into marble headstones, tangible markers of the earthly existence of both the long-lived and those who trod this earth only for a few short years.

Flags denote the final resting place of veterans. Flowers grace the graves of those who are gone but certainly are not forgotten.  Elaborate tombs sit across narrow roadways from flat-to-the-earth markers.

A good wander through a burial ground fills me to the brim with ideas.

[image error]

Old grave marker in the Ventry Burying Ground, County Kerry, Ireland

When we were in Ireland two springs ago, we spent a lot of time exploring an old cemetery overlooking the sea in the town where my maternal ancestors once lived. There’s a newer section and an old one, the latter pocked with holes dug by rabbits who energetically co-exist with the dead.

It’s a place where you must watch your step lest you find yourself face down atop an old grave.

[image error]

We quickly realized it was important to heed this warning.

[image error]

Michael was likely a cousin of my grandmother, from the side of the family that stayed in Ireland when she and her siblings immigrated to the US around the turn of the century.

My grandmother died in this country. She rests next to my grandfather, my parents and other family members in a much more modern cemetery in Massachusetts. I searched the Ventry graveyard unsuccessfully for stones naming her parents, John and Mary (McKenna) Fenton, but was unable to find them. It may well be that their bodies were interred in a private graveyard a mile up the hill in the townland of Baile an Chotaigh  (in English, “Ballincota,” as in the adjacent photo), where the family lived for generations.

I did come upon the grave of Michael and Margaret Fenton who would have been rough contemporaries of my grandmother. He was a cousin, I suspect.  How sad they lost a daughter at age three. How interesting that their son – year older than little Marguerita – lived to the age of 83.

In Portland, we like to walk through Evergreen Cemetery on Stevens Avenue. A National Historic Landmark managed by the City, it covers 239 acres and is known for the “diversity of over 40,000 monuments, including large-scale, distinctive pieces of funerary sculpture of high artistic quality,” according to the City’s website. Evergreen was modeled after Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, founded in 1831 as a “rural cemetery and experimental garden.”

[image error]

If you’ve never strolled through Evergreen, I recommend a springtime visit to this serene, historic place.

We make early morning visits to Evergreen in early May to witness the warbler migration, which is especially active around the ponds near its back boundary. Maine Audubon leads guided bird walks in this area that are free and open to the public. For more information: https://maineaudubon.coursestorm.com/course/warbler-walks-at-evergreen-cemetery1?page=3

Another historic cemetery we make a point to visit each spring is Laurel Hill in Saco. According to its website, this burial ground was created in 1844 “to replace the town common’s crowded, neglected cemetery.”

Also inspired by Cambridge’s Mount Auburn Cemetery, the architect “included meandering paths and roads, with deciduous trees and evergreen shrubs punctuating broad expanses of open lawn. Situated on the banks of the Saco River, the cemetery’s lawn areas merge with marsh grasses at the river’s edge. A Queen Anne-style chapel built in 1890 remains in use.”

[image error]

Laurel Hill Cemetery sits on a bluff above the Saco River.

Like many who have no family buried there, we’re drawn to Laurel Hill in May, when the tens of thousands of daffodils planted over the years are in bloom.

[image error]

Thousands of daffodils are an intentional part of the architectural landscape at Laurel Hill Cemetery.

The search for family history, the bird habitat and the floral burst of spring are secondary, though, to the stories embraced in old cemeteries. Lives are summed up in a few short words, offering writers a thousand ideas on which to ruminate.

Readers: Do you visit cemeteries? When and why? What are your favorites?

Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a diehard Maine newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. Three books—QUICK PIVOT, COVER STORY and TRUTH BEAT—are available everywhere e-books are sold. These days she’s hard at work on new projects.

I’ve Loved Them All

Today Maine Crime Writers welcomes back Katherine Hall Page, who is celebrating her 25th Faith Fairchild mystery.

Katherine Hall Page:  I like anniversaries. I like birthdays too, but anniversaries carry [image error]different meanings. We have birthdays every year, but anniversaries start with, and then mark, unique events. This year is my 61stsummer on Deer Isle. My husband and I have been married for 44 years.  It’s the 50thanniversary of the first moonwalk—as well as my college graduation. And it’s a Silver Anniversary for the Faith Fairchild series with The Body in the Wake, number 25.

When the first book in the series, The Body in the Belfry, was published in February 1990, I was looking more toward a second anniversary—cotton—than a silver one, 29 years later! Writing about Faith and her family has been a golden opportunity for me as a writer. I have been able to sustain one character across a number of significant life events: a prequel as a single woman set in her native Manhattan when she is just starting her catering—and sleuthing—career, continuing through marriage, child rearing (and no, one is never done). through good times and bad.

[image error]I started thinking about the 25th several books ago and there was no question that the milestone had to be a Sanpere (aka Deer Isle) one. The Body in the Wake is the sixth Maine book and the third featuring the character Sophie Maxwell, who was introduced in The Body in the Birches. Right away, I liked writing about these two women, who are in very different stages of life but share the same values and especially a sense of humor. Married for almost three years in this book, Sophie is fretting about not getting pregnant. Faith, who has been married much longer, but would not describe herself as an “old married lady,” has two children in their late teens. Sophie and Faith’s close friendship was forged under unusual circumstances—most bonding does not come about because of murder!

I decided an anniversary book needed a wedding, so The Body in The Wake ends with Samantha Miller and Zach Cohen’s nuptials on a perfect Maine afternoon in a meadow high above The Reach with the Camden Hills on the horizon. However, before getting to this point, Samantha, the daughter of Pix and Sam Miller—the Fairchilds’ closest friends in Massachusetts and Maine—has to wait out several plot twists, one involving her difficult future mother-in-law, the other Faith’s discovery of first one body with an unusual tattoo and then, a week later, another.

I flat out loved writing this book. The temptation was getting carried away by the scenery and anecdotes about the place, but it’s a mystery, not a travel guide. I reined myself in and let go in other ways, such as describing the fiction writing course that Sophie takes at the former Laughing Gull Lodge, now the Sanpere Shores Conference center. Plus, it wouldn’t be a Faith Fairchild mystery without plenty of food. When the Shores’ chef falls ill, Faith takes his place, joining daughter Amy, who had been working there all summer as sous chef. Maine food is delectable with literally an ocean of ingredients close to hand. Faith serves up her own special lobster rolls, seafood risotto, and chowder, as well as old-fashioned wild Blueberry Buckle and a modern farm-to-table chilled fresh pea soup with mint.

I couldn’t resist adding a subplot involving a dispute between two neighbors over clear cutting trees. Think “The Sound of Chainsaws”. Other local references have to do with the Maine Lobster Boat Races and Fishermen’s Day on the town pier in Stonington, complete with Wacky Rowboat races.

Finally, Sanpere is not paradise, despite Faith’s and my deep feelings for it. It is this [image error]feeling that pushed me to write about the very real problem of substance abuse. I dislike what I call “Soapbox Mysteries” in which the author’s opinions are rammed down a reader’s throat. The author is not a storyteller, but a proselytizer. That said, I wanted to write directly about the opioid crisis as it is affecting this one island in Maine. When we have roadside clean-up days now, we are told to be careful not to touch syringes and other trash indicating how widespread the problem is. I wanted to write about the fact that addicts are our friends and family members, not criminals. That relapsing is almost inevitable and we just need to keep trying, supporting those in recovery and helping those who want it to get into the all too few programs.

The character in the book with the addiction problem is Samantha’s matron of honor, a young mother an island native. She becomes addicted to opiates after they were prescribed for a severe injury.I have nothing but deep-seated fury for the drug companies that aggressively marketed opioids knowing how addictive they were even as they marketed recovery drugs for the scourge they created. Win/win. Hell is too good a place for them.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, are the people in Maine, and elsewhere, working to address the epidemic that was created. Healthy Acadia, The Island Health and Wellness Foundation, Deer Isle’s Opiate-Free Island Partnership are the ones I’m working with in Hancock County. These individuals are heroes and I am in awe of them.

Anniversaries. Every book has a bit of all the books that came before it incorporated into it and this one most of all. In the Author’s Note I write that the Beatles’ song, “In My Life” kept running through my mind—“There are places I remember.” So it is with the books. As I’ve traveled through 25 of them with the Fairchilds and friends, as Lennon wrote, “I’ve loved them all.”

[image error]

Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-four previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first, The Body in the Belfry, received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift  and Page’s SS, “The Would-Be-Widower” were also honored with Agathas. The recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Malice Domestic, she has been nominated for the Edgar, Mary Higgins Clark, Macavity, and Maine Literary Awards. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine with her husband.