Lea Wait's Blog, page 18

Looking Ahead to 2025!

In this post, we will share news about what’s coming from MCW authors in 2025.

Kate Flora: I’m optimistic that the next Burgess police procedural, Those Who Choose Evil, will be published next year. Beyond that? I’m hoping that more of those books that are languishing in my desk drawer will finally find their way into reader’s hands. And of course, I must write another Thea Kozak mystery, right? Let’s all have a great 2025.

Rob Kelley: 2025 is a big year for me. My debut novel, Raven, a historical thriller, will be coming out in late 2025 from High Frequency Press. And I’ll be working on finalizing my edits for my contemporary political thriller, Critical State, also coming out from HFP in 2026!

Maureen Milliken: Expect the fifth book in the Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series in the fall, which gives you plenty of time to read the first four, including Dying for News, which was released in October. I also hope to release a companion book for fans, with character background, outtakes and more, sometime before spring. You can also expect to see me at a lot of author (and other) events throughout 2025. Keep an eye on my website maureenmilliken.com, for updates. You can sign up for my occasional email newsletter there as well.

Matt Cost is breaking in a new publisher, Level Best Books, in April, with the release of The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed. This also breaks new ground in that it is a straight up thriller. The second book in the series, EveryThing vs Max Creed, is written and in the final draft stages to be submitted for publication in April of 2026. Glow Trap, the sixth book in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, will publish this summer. And… I am hoping that my new historical PI mystery set in 1955 Raleigh, aptly titled 1955, will be published in the fall. Write on!

Kathy Lynn Emerson: In 2025 I’ll be continuing to release newly revised trade paperback editions of my Face Down mysteries, with  Face Down O’er the Border (release date 1/9/25) and Lady Appleton’s World: The Complete Short Stories (release date 2/6/25), but the really big news is that rights have reverted to me on the spinoff Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries, so I’ll be giving those another read to find any continuity problems and typos and then reissuing them in trade paperback and in an omnibus e-book, probably titled The Face Down Collection Four to go with the three volumes of Face Down novels and short stories already available. Single-title e-books are also likely (for all thirteen novels), but I have to wait until the current, unrevised versions are all taken down. The only downside to all this is that there will be a short stretch when Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe, Murder in the Merchant’s Hall, and Murder in a Cornish Alehouse won’t be available at all in electronic format and will only be available in print editions if stores already have copies in stock. I promise to proofread as fast as I can and still fix everything that needs to be fixed!

P.S. For those of you who remember my posts on my other project,  Treacherous Visions is currently “resting.” I’ve finished one read through/revision but it still needs more work.

Kait Carson: I’ve decided to take the plunge this year and seek a traditional publisher (and/or maybe an agent???? Where is that fingers crossed emoji when I need it) for No Return the first of a new series set in Maine. That’s not to say I’m abandoning indie publishing. The fourth Hayden Kent book, tentatively titled Death by Deception is in the works as an indie. Beyond that? Lots of ideas bubbling, but nothing has gelled in the cauldron.

Dick Cass: Having finished off the Elder Darrow series with Book 7, Closing Time, I’m working on a follow-on to The Last Altruist with the same characters, set in an unorganized town in far northern Maine. Hope to have that done and out into the marketplace in the first quarter of 2025. My novel By Violent Chance, with a female Vietnam veteran private eye, is making the rounds and I’m hoping for some movement on that. Beyond all these, I’m hoping for more short stories this year, those snacks between the big meals . . . Happy New Year!

John Clark: More short stories of a dark and humorous nature. I’m sure I can find plenty of inspiration from the daily news.

Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button?

Kate Flora: I don’t think that I’ve confessed my fondness for buttons here before. I’m not a collector. I don’t have a nice stack of reference books handy to teach me about buttons–their history, materials, etc, or their value. I do sometimes think that someday I will write a mystery featuring a button collector. I’m thinking about buttons today because a kind family member who knows me well gave me a container of buttons for Christmas. (An aside here…I am always happy to take that button box you don’t know what to do with off your hands.)

 

 

What I like about buttons is two-fold. First, I like to sort buttons. Sorting buttons, like ironing, is a very peaceful activity. It’s something I can do while I’m puzzling about a plot, or when the latest book I’m reading disappoints, or when, like today, it is cold and damp and foggy outside. They can be sorted by size, or by color, or by sets, or by buttons that are very different from the others.

Second, poking around in old button boxes can spark an interesting game of: When were these popular? On what sort of garment were they worn and who wore it? On the shelf where I’ve stacked up all the boxes and tins that hold my buttons, I have my grandmother’s button box, a funny old wooden box that used to hold laundry starch. It is only about a third full now, but back when I first discovered it in my mother’s attic, it was full, and sometimes friends and I, or my sister and I, would spend a happy afternoon sorting buttons.

The prettiest ones, or the ones with most interesting shapes or designs, might get sorted into sets and sewn onto cardboard index cards. That box had a lot of black, fabric covered buttons from a time when buttons were the primary mode of fastening clothes and clothes used a lot of them. There were also a lot of small black jet buttons and many small round buttons that must have gone on shoes.

In time, I inherited my mother’s button box, a purple metal candy tin. I still search it today when I need a button for a blouse or my husband’s pants or shorts. Because it is from my childhood, I can find buttons there that were left over from my 4-H sewing projects, or the suit my mother made to wear for church. In another box, I have buttons from sewing projects I did for my own boys–tiny ducks or dinosaurs. There are also some of the small weights that were sewn into women’s suits to make the hems hang right.

 

In my Christmas tin, there were three tiny handprinted wooden duck buttons, and four wooden buttons with psychedelic patterns. Some odd shaped white buttons that must have gone on a dress or a blouse. A single black spangled button. It also contained a lot of buttons with eagles and other insignia suggested military, or military-style clothes. And of course, fabric covered buttons that tell me what kinds of fabrics and prints the owner wore.

Weekend Update: December 28-29, 2024

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday) and Kate Flora (Friday) with a group post on What’s Ahead in2025 on Tuesday.

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, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

A Bit of Belated Christmas Advice. Maybe next year?

Charlene D’Avanzo: Need to send a late Christmas gift pronto or maybe one for next year, but don’t know what to send?

Here are some “different” ideas from Huffington Post. They include:

Turning your dog into a Grinch

2.  A Cheetos Snuggie

3.  Ugly and tasteless Christmas Sweater

 

4. Turning yourself into a Christmas Tree

 

Because Baseball is Only 51 Days Away

No deep thinking this month–here’s a little baseball story you might enjoy . .

The Nuns’ Day Hit

“Seems like the shit never ends,” Burton said, refolding the Globe.

“What’s that?” Elder polished the rocks glasses, the ones Burton knew he loved the best.

“The priests. With the kids.” He stripped cellophane off a package of orange peanut butter crackers.

Elder grimaced, either at the culinary choice or the topic. The Catholics had no monopoly on abusing children. At his prep school, you knew not to get caught in the sauna with the assistant athletic director or indulge the housemaster’s questions about your sexual practice. The difference Elder saw was that the priests were all about power, the world they ruled. The teachers had been more hangdog than cruel. The effects on children were the same, of course.

“More of it how?”

“One of the brothers at CM.”

“Is that where your sister taught?”

“Oh, hell no,” Burton said. “You don’t mix the sexes at an all-boys high school. Though that could be part of the problem.”

He sipped his milky coffee. Elder had only been back in the Esposito a month, but they’d reacquired their old habits fast. Marina was gone. After she finished culinary school and Carmen died, she left Boston to work as a sous chef on a Disney cruise, out of Fort Lauderdale.

“Huh.”

Burton’s phone buzzed.

“Shit.”

Elder draped the dish towel over the handle of the ice machine.

“I thought you were off today.”

Burton drank the rest of his coffee, checked the display.

“Appears I’m wanted at Fenway Park.”

* * *

“Today was Nun Day.” One of the ball cub’s PR guys hovered at the edge of the crime scene, exercising his spin. “You know, like we did way back in the Sixties. Give ‘em jerseys, roses, wrist bands, bus them in.”

“Familiar with the concept,” Burton said.

He did not love these Boston-come-lately types, who acted as if they invented every tradition. Look, Ma: brass ducks on the Common.

The victim was a hefty woman, lying on her stomach with her head below her feet on the ramp leading down under the stands. She wore a vintage Garciaparra jersey—the expensive wool one—and her simple black and white headpiece was knocked askew, enough to display thinning gray hair and an incongruously pink scalp. A blotch of blood around a slit in the fabric, right in the middle of the number five, hinted at the cause of death.

Dina Jackson, the ME on duty, looked stricken. Burton wondered if she too had a Catholic upbringing.

“Iffy way to kill someone, stabbing,” she said. “Dumb luck to go in through the back and hit something vital. She didn’t suffer.”

Burton straightened up off the concrete, knees popping.

“You’ll verify? I have to go interview a room full of nuns.”

Dina crossed herself, answering his question.

“Go with God, young man.”

He cracked a smile and headed down the ramp into the stadium.

* * *

The responding officers had done a good job of separating the witnesses. There’d been several hundred nuns in the stands, most of them dressed alike, but the uniforms isolated the small group that included Sister Mary Humilitas, the victim. They were from a smallish order in Rhode Island.

A dozen or so sat in the cheap plastic bucket chairs of the room where the ballpark vendors stored their coats and belongings. A wall of blue lockers covered the back wall, a sink and mirror in one corner, and a toilet behind a half-open door. Burton could hear it running.

The minute he stepped inside, a cleric in full purple cassock bustled up to him. Burton thought he must love his vestments awfully well to wear the full regalia to a ball game in the middle of July. He doubted the nuns’ seats were in the shaded overhang.

“You’d be the detective, then?”

Burton took in the priest: pink-faced, overfed, clean-shaven. And nervous. His upper lip shone.

“Daniel Burton, Father. Can we sit down?”

The priest puffed himself up in a way too familiar to Burton, the flesh of the man so certain of the support of institution behind him.

“We’re going to miss the bus back to Providence,” the priest protested. “We must get the Sisters home before Vespers.”

Burton grinned.

“Not vampires, are they?” He got serious. “Let’s all sit down for a moment. I’ll get you on your way as quickly as I can.”

There was no privacy in the room, but he pulled two chairs to the farthest corner and interviewed the sisters one by one. He got nothing but platitudes and God’s-will-be-done until about halfway through the interviews. Until she sat down, he hadn’t noticed she was not wearing a coif or veil or any other sign of habit.

She was also half the age of the other sisters, her dark hair cropped very short and her face marred with acne scars, some old and some fresh. She was dressed modestly, not in baseball gear, but dark blue pants and a white blouse buttoned to the neck. A small wooden cross hung from a rawhide thong around her neck.

“Sister Mary Humilitas was a prick,” she said, looking around to see if anyone else could hear. “A prick and a bully.”

“Strong words. You’re not a nun, then?” He gestured at her head.

“Marjorie O’Toole.” She ducked her head, as if she remembered she was supposed to act humble. “Novitiate, it’s called. You’re not a Catholic?”

“I don’t think that’s germane.”

“Because you’d understand better if you were.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Sister Mary Not-Humble was the Mother Superior. You have a clue what that means?”

“The woman in charge.”

“The dictator,” Marjorie said. “Squeezed her power until it cried for mercy. Telling on people, giving out shit jobs.”

“You’re saying I have a room full of suspects here?”

She nodded.

“One time or another, she probably pissed off everyone in the room.”

“Really. Enough to kill her?”

She nodded and looked at the priest significantly.

“And I’d ask Father Conklin a question or two. I would.”

He wondered if she realized she was dropping herself into the same black kettle she’d dumped everyone else in. He could see Sister Mary Humilitas scrubbing out Marjorie’s mouth with soap and water.

* * *

A uniform from Chelsea Burton recognized from the diversity seminar stuck his head in the door.

“We grabbed this kid running away from the scene. Repeat offender.”

“You know him.”

The uniform, named Talbot, nodded.

“Pickpocket and mugger, as long as the muggee isn’t too young. Or strong.”

Burton picked at something in his teeth.

“Hold him for a minute while I finish up here. How did you eyeball him?”

He would have been a face in the crowd leaving the game. The uniform grinned.

“Carrying a purse. And not a man-bag, if you know what I mean.”

* * *

“Her purse is missing,” Sister Carmelita said, thin fingers tangling in her lap. She was tiny, her upper body swimming in the Betts jersey. Her black eyes glinted like wet stones. “She never let it out of her hands. I believe this was a purse-snatching gone bad.”

Burton read the trembling lips, her shaking hands.

“You and Sister Mary were close?”

“Sister Mary Humilitas, if you please.”

Burton had a minor flashback to grade school, the metal ruler across the knuckles form of education.

“Yes. But you were friends?”

“As much as we could be.” She brought her knuckles, knotted with arthritis, up to her mouth as if she’d said too much.

“How do you mean?”

“We don’t have a lot of time to ourselves,” she said. “I only mean we shared our love of Christ, our work together. Our worship.”

Burton raised a hand to release her. She’d meant something else, but he doubted there were secret lesbian affairs among the nuns. Every one of them was closed-up as a nighttime flower and tough as wire. If something was going on at the convent, he wasn’t going to find out by talking to them.

* * *

He left the priest until last, seeing how much it pricked the man’s impatience. Conklin sat, pulling the literal and figurative vestments of his position around him. He seemed calm for a priest who’d lost one of his flock to violence.

“How well did you know the sister, Father?”

Conklin crossed himself before answering.

“I’m new to this abbey,” he said.

Which pricked up Burton’s ears, knowing why priests sometimes moved from parish to parish.

“And where were you before?”

The priest cast his eyes down, which Burton read as guilt.

“I served in a church in Jamaica Plain.”

The latest of the local suburban parishes to be associated with the too-familiar scandals.

“Transferred out of there pretty quickly, were you?”

Conklin bristled at the implication.

“I was brought in to heal the community. That’s been my role in the diocese for some time.”

Burton didn’t quite believe him, though it was true that public knowledge into what happened forced the diocese to act. Or appear to.

“Blessed are the healers,” Burton said. “Something in the Order needs mending?”

Conklin got cooler and calmer the longer they spoke. Nothing that happened in Jamaica Plain would help solve the murder of Sister Mary Humilitas.

“What do you think happened here, Father?”

Conklin fingered his scapular.

“A mugging, I suspect. Purse snatching? Isn’t that the most likely?”

He nodded to the father.

“Get them on the bus, Father. I’ll be in touch.”

* * *

The kid the uniform was holding looked about fourteen, skinny as a refugee and pale, red-headed with freckles. Burton opened the purse the officer handed him.

“This your pot?” he said.

“No way. Look, I found it on the ramp going out. I was taking it to lost and found.”

Burton delved deeper, found a roll of fifties and hundreds the size of a baseball.

“I guess you didn’t see this, either?”

The kid’s eyes went wide.

“Shit. No. I would’ve . .”

“I know what you would have done,” he said. “Cut him loose.”

The uniform looked irked. Burton wouldn’t have explained himself, but the officer deserved a pat on the head for quick thinking.

“Can’t hold him. Unless someone saw him grab it?”

The uniform shook his head.

“You didn’t find a knife on him? Cut him loose. Any luck at all? You’ll see him again.”

* * *

It was one of those impossible cases. Burton would have liked to believe in the purse-snatch gone bad theory, but abuse scandals or not, there was enough respect left in the city for Catholic clergy, especially nuns, that he didn’t believe anyone would target Sister Mary Humilitas. Anyone with half a brain knew the orders took a vow of poverty and inside a sold-out Fenway Park, 37000 or so souls? A mugger could have found a hundred richer targets.

“I can’t tell if I’m reading too much into it,” he said to Elder.

A brassy big band played in the background. Burton sipped a whiskey sour.

“Every group has its weirdnesses,” Elder said. “Tensions. Relationships. Why should a convent be exempt?”

“If nuns are killing nuns, I’ll never solve it. The father—Conklin—he’s legit, though. They drop him in like a troubleshooter when a parish has a problem. Apparently not one of the priests causing the problems.”

“So. Just means there is a problem. Not the usual one.”

Burton nodded, hating the idea they could talk about abuse as the “usual.”

“Yep. No altar boys in the convent.”

“Financial?”

“No money in being a nun. And the convent finances would be managed by the diocese.”

“You have an itch,” Elder said.

“Random makes no sense. The good sister had a wad of cash and a couple ounces of primo pot. And Conklin refuses to talk to me. It’s the Church thing: we got this taken care of, kindly fuck off.”

The street door of the Esposito creaked open. It was early enough the bar had no customers and without a new cook, Elder wasn’t serving lunch.

“You open?”

The voice was familiar, but he didn’t peg it until the young woman who’d been training as a nun walked down the stairs.

“They told me I could find you here,” she said.

Burton wondered who at the precinct gave him up. He thought the Esposito was his secret.

She was dressed in elegant casual wear: lemon-colored linen shorts to her knee and a gray silk sleeveless blouse. Her hair had grown in enough that she no longer looked like a prisoner. She carried a small red leather clutch purse.

“Sorry,” Burton said. “I’m blanking on your name.”

She reached into the purse, withdrew cigarettes and a lighter.

“You can’t do that in here,” Elder said.

Burton glared, dismissed him with his hand. Elder threw up his hands and retreated down the bar.

“Marjorie,” she said.

“O’Toole.”

She lit up and looked around.

“Nice place.”

“I don’t have a lot of time to screw around,” he said. “You leave the order?”

She glanced at the whiskey sour and exhaled smoke. She’d been with the nuns long enough to perfect that disapproving look.

“I thought it was something that would help. I was wrong.”

He would have asked ‘help what?’ but that wasn’t pertinent.

“You didn’t come all the way up to Boston to tell me that.”

“My Ma lives in Chelsea.” She looked like she was trying to decide whether to trust him. “There’s something wrong down there.”

“Thanks. That’s very helpful.”

She looked flustered.

“It wasn’t a purse-snatch, like Carmelita was saying. Sister Mary Not-So-Humble wasn’t living up to her name.”

“What’s that mean, something wrong?”

“You visit the place?”

He had two other open homicides on his desk right now. A visit to Providence was low on the priority list.

“Not yet.”

“Well, maybe you ought to.” She held up the hand with the cigarette in it. “I wasn’t there long enough to know any details. It’s a feeling I had.”

“Give me your contact information. I’ll want to talk to you again.”

She made a face and dipped into the clutch, handed him a business card.

“We will talk,” he said.

* * *

The three-story brick building of the convent for St. Agatha of the Trees took up half a block in a rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Providence. The neighborhood was what an optimistic realtor would have called transitional and Burton called a slum. The streets were more or less deserted at mid-morning, the sketchier residents home sleeping on their stained mattresses or nodding off in abandoned buildings. The gleaming black Audi parked in front was an insult to the neighborhood. Father Conklin’s, he assumed.

The birdy Sister Carmelita was the new Mother Superior. A novitiate conducted him from the guarded front door to the main office. Sister C seemed to have taken on a certain physical heft, as sometimes happens when a person gains power.

“Officer Burton,” she said.

“Detective.”

She made a vague motion with her hand, not so much a blessing, as an acknowledgement of his presence. A pair of dark blue nitrile gloves rested on her desk. She whisked them into a drawer. Cool air trickled in from an open window.

“Have you solved the murder of our dear sister in Christ?”

He shook his head.

“Sadly, no. I did think I ought to drive down and visit. Perhaps reinterview some of the sisters who were at the ballpark.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said.

As if she understood what a shot in the dark it was for him to be here. She might have convinced him, except that background checking proved that Sister Mary Humilitas owned a six-figure savings account at the Royal Bank of Newfoundland.

But before he could insist, a door behind Sister C opened and a plumpish sister in a long white coat, wearing similar nitrile gloves, burst into the room.

“Oh, I am sorry!” She looked befuddled, then sly. “Reverend Mother, we’re having a slight problem in the, uh, kitchen.”

The furtive look would have told him something shady was going on, even if the sister hadn’t drafted the musk of marijuana into the room.

“Go then,” Sister Carmelita said. “We will deal with it.”

Chastened by the sharp tone, the nun slammed the door behind her, a touch harder than she had to.

He folded his hands in his lap and regarded the Mother Superior. She stared back.

“Well,” he said.

She looked at him for several long moments that recalled grade school for him.

“I suppose.” She stood up. ‘You’re not likely to leave without an explanation.”

He tipped his head to one side, a half-nod.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Sister Mary’s death, you know.”

He noticed the Humilitas honorific was missing now and that Sister C spoke of the murder as if her colleague had been hit by a bus.

“Shall we?” He moved toward the door.

* * *

“We don’t charge a cent for it,” Sister Carmelita said. “We give it away to the needy.”

As drug dens went, the room was pretty benign, a small storeroom with a single stained-glass window of a shepherd and his flock. Four nuns weighed and packaged plastic bags from a kilo-sized bale in the middle of the table.

“Cancer patients, mainly. A few with glaucoma.”

“But not only in this parish.” Not in the amounts they were processing.

“Correct. Father Conklin . . .”

“He’s your distributor.”

“Oh, no. We found Sister Mary was stealing. No money was ever supposed to change hands. Then one of the novitiates, cleaning, found her stash.”

The word sounded foreign in Sister Carmelita’s mouth. She went on, defiant.

“And she was planning to  leave us. And tell what we were doing.”

He doubted that, if only because she’d incriminate herself.

“So there was a good reason for her death.”

Sister Carmelita looked horrified, but not convincingly.

“We’re not gangsters, Detective.”

Same as, as far as he was concerned. Same as the church covering up for priests acting badly, how the church considered itself above the laws of the land. Exactly like gangsters.

“Then who would have done such a thing?”

He doubted any of the sister had the nous to slip a shiv into Sister Mary. But he could think of someone who did.

Sister Carmelita straightened up, her lips tight.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Maybe you should speak to Father Conklin.”

“Of course. The troubleshooter,” Burton said. “Has he been reassigned yet? Off to shoot troubles in other parishes?”

“I believe,” Sister C said, folding her hands. “I believe the Bishop mentioned Brazil.”

And through the open window, Burton heard the Audi start up with a roar, the tires chirp as Father Conklin took off to his next assignment.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Are you watching for Santa tonight? There’s no better place to see him than on a crisp, cold Maine night.

Christmas 2005

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, but as I write this on December 14th, that’s more aspirational than assured. The weather rumor has it that we’ll be experiencing rain on Tuesday, and any predictions beyond that are best guesses. After forty years in Florida, I’m thinking of filing a complaint with the Chamber of Commerce. I live in the Crown of this beautiful state. It’s hard to go much further and still be in the US. Christmas, for those of us who live on the 47th parallel, should be fluffy. Shouldn’t it? It always was before, wasn’t it?

Christmas 2020

Memory is a tricky thing. There’s a reason for the trust but verify phrase familiar to all writers. I turned to my photo album to verify my recollections. Much to my surprise, I discovered that even in late December, it’s possible to experience three of the four seasons on Christmas Day. Something to remember now that I’m writing a series set in the North Woods.

I want to wish our readers, and my blogmates a very happy holiday and a splendid New Year. May your fondest wishes come true in 2025.

 

Christmas 2023

Christmas 2021

Henry David Slept Here: Maine’s Wild Economy

(In 2006 I wrote this column for the Bangor Daily News. I’ve edited and updated it, but … wow … almost every word feels current. Now, nearly a decade later, I’m writing a murder mystery that is essentially about the murder of the north woods. My post’s pics are from my wild-feeling, winter archives.)

Henry David Slept Here: Maine’s Wild Economy

For millions of nature and literature lovers, Henry David Thoreau’s rhapsodic prose about living “simply” in nature is part of their outdoor, spiritual creed.

However, often when Thoreau lovers use his prose to justify conservation, many north woods residents (even folks who own dog-eared copies of his work) are more apt to grumble about “outsiders who know nothing about real life, spouting dumb reasons for not cutting trees.”

Thoreau believed there was a “higher law affecting our relation to pines.”  In his “Maine Woods” (diaries of his travels to Ktaadn (sic), Chesuncook, the Allagash and the East Branch from the years 1846-1957) he asks, “Is it the lumberman, then who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best?”

And confirming some of the locals’ worst fears, he answers, “No, it is the poet, who loves them as his own shadow in the air, and let’s them stand. … It is the living spirit of the tree, not its sprit of turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which heals my cuts. It is as important as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still.”

Well, there you have it. Henry David takes ‘tree hugging’ to a new transcendence, anticipating how uncut trees will tower over him in heaven.  (I do like to think Thoreau is chuckling up there. Maine’s forests, now deliver more non-timber jobs and income than timber-related jobs and income.)

His classic volume is actually an early guide to Maine’s “wild economy.” Only one paragraph after Thoreau’s hymn to trees, Henry David rejoins his party, eats a hearty breakfast of moose meat (shot and prepared by his hired guide), walks around Pine Stream Falls collecting flowers (while guide Joe does the heavy work of navigating rapids), and arrives at Chesuncook Village.

There he describes a thriving north woods business that boasted a blacksmith and forge, large barns sheltering cattle and horses, ninety tons of hay cut on cleared fields, a garden of fresh vegetables “worth as much here as in New York,” and lodging for over a hundred men on the property.

There’s a link below for winter trail info here.

Thoreau was surrounded by Maine’s wild economy.  From his first visit to a bateaux factory in Old Town to his final “hot shave” at Joe Polis’ house on the Indian Island reservation, Thoreau’s “Maine Woods” is a primer on the requirements and value of Maine’s nature-based or wild economy.

An inventory of commercial enterprises supporting him as he discovers Maine’s north woods would include, guides, outfitters, restaurants, boarding houses, steamers and their crew, paddle makers, canoe and bateau craftsmen, lumbering operations that offered transportation logistics and remote camps, stores selling provisions and necessities, businesses that made tents, blankets, pots, boots, clothing and camping gear, firearms and ammunition companies, and train and stagecoach operations.

Finally, because his published essays became extremely popular north woods guides, the publishers, printers, and bookstores that disseminated Thoreau’s work also became part of the “wild economy.”

Thoreau’s Indian guides stopped and climbed a tall tree when they could find no points of reference deep in the woods. Maybe we also need to climb a proverbial tree; find some better perspective on how entwined our wild outdoors is with a vital economy.

Make no mistake, we are losing our wild assets. Rapid growth of both nature-based tourism and real estate development in our wild areas is happening, but we might be stumbling in the forest without a clear view. Seems that often we cannot boldly act on conservation as an economic strategy.

Wildlife recreation alone delivers $1.2 million each year and thousands of jobs to Maine. If we added up the state’s significant recreational businesses (snowmobiling, skiing, rafting, windjammers), wildlife recreation would still … all by itself … be the largest outdoor recreation business sector in Maine.

If a “wild” economic fact like that could motivate local and state decision makers, would they have more to say about the loss of habitat, access, or wildness as they make decisions about land use and development? Or are local and regional entities mostly focused on advertising wild places without conserving them or adding more protected woods, waters, and wildlife habitat?

Intense pressure to develop the shores and adjacent woods of rivers, ponds, and lakes that surround Greenville and Rockwood, Maine (my home territory) is an excellent example of how development pressures might be stronger than our ability to secure our vital “green” infrastructure.

Forces stronger than our awareness of the wild world as a green asset.

Do we have information about the value of some of these same resources if they are not developed?  Do we have good information about how wild-feeling, north woods assets deliver millions of dollars to our rural economies?

Thoreau camped near these Penobscot River rapids.

The fact that we can still visit some of the same “wild” sites Thoreau immortalizes and have some of the same experiences he had is a small but special privilege. I can feel, see, hear, and smell what Thoreau heard in 1846 as he stood next to the Penobscot River.

“In the night I dreamed of trout fishing… So I arose before dawn to test its truth.  There stood Ktaadn with distinct and cloudless outline in the moonlight and the rippling of the rapids was the only sound to break the stillness. Standing on shore I once more cast my line into the stream and found the dream to be real. The specked trout sped swiftly through the moonlight air, describing bright arcs on the side of Ktaadn, until moonlight, now fading into daylight, brought satiety to my mind …”

Baker Mountain vista during a backcountry ski.

In that passage, the fish, the river, the stillness, the wildness, the sleeping guides, the people who manufactured the canoes, clothing and gear, and the people who fed, housed, guided, and transported Thoreau’s party are all contained in that one exquisite moment of pleasure, stillness, and peace. 

That experience and the wildness that experience requires are the core of our “wild economy” even as we cherish wild Maine in our own lives.

I think Thoreau might, sitting under his towering tree, remind us again about something he saw in his Maine woods travels. He’d probably be much more urgent about it though.

“… the mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest out of the country.”

***********

That line made it to my current draft.

I shook my head and squinted at a tiny footnote. Word-for-word, he’d penned a line from Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. “The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest out of the country.”

Oh, yes. Ian was always the clever boy. He knew we could technically have a bit of country without any real forest left in it. He’d chosen those words for a reason, a reason that had to be connected to his Maine mission. He liked missions and he wasn’t afraid of busy demons.

Kate leaned close to my ear. “Mum? Ian? Where’s Ian? You’re scaring me.”

I couldn’t manage an honest answer because no one had made it official.  I could guess though. My friend Ian had to be in a black body bag headed toward a Bangor autopsy.

 “I don’t have a good answer, honey,” I said, “not a good answer at all.”

PS: Share this with your local land trust or planning board. Ed is the country’s (and world’s) expert on the value of place. Here’s the link to Katahdin Woods and Waters Monument’s  winter trails.

Sandy’s debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” was published in 2021. Her third “Deadly” is due out in 2025. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weekend Update: December 21-22, 2024

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Sandra Neily (Monday), Kait Carson (Tuesday), Dick Cass (Thursday) and Charlene D’Avanzo (Friday).

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

Kate Flora: As I have in past years, I’ve written a Christmas story for you. It can be found on my website along with the stories from the past six years. I hope you’ll enjoy The Empty Manger. https://wordpress.com/page/kateclarkflora.com/1296

Maureen Milliken: I’ll be at Barnes & Noble, 200 Running Hill Road, South Portland, today beginning at 1 p.m. to sign my new book, DYING FOR NEWS. Stop by and say hi!

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, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

A great finale for Maine Crime Writers 2024

For the third year in a row, the Maine Crime Writers sponsored a tree at the Augusta Elks Lodge Festival of Trees, which ran from Dec. 10 to 15. You’re probably familiar with these fundraisers — they take place all over Maine in late November and December. Businesses, organizations and groups donate a tree, decorated with a theme. Underneath it are gifts donated by the tree sponsor. The trees are raffled off for charity, with winners winning the tree and everything on and under it.

The Augusta Elks are generous supporters of many local causes, particularly Bread of Life, the Augusta area’s soup kitchen and shelter for unhoused and marginalized people all over central Maine, so the raffle certainly supports a good cause. The challenges that many Mainers face because of lack of housing, high housing costs, lack of transportation, the incredibly high cost of heating a home, access to needed services and a reliable support system, are no secret to anyone in the state. We’re a small state and we can’t hide it.

Adding our tree to the 40-plus others at the Augusta Elks week-long event is one way that the Maine Crime Writers step up and help support the real Maine that is a backdrop for so many of our fictional books.

I’m told yearly what a great addition to the event our tree is. This year while I was setting it up with help from my sister Rebecca (she helps every year!), I met a woman whose daughter won it two years ago. She said that her daughter was delighted by the books and other items. They gifted some, but her daughter didn’t want to give most of them up. That said, they recently donated many of the books to the new warming shelter in the capital city.

The raven on top of our tree has become a Maine Crime Writers signature.

The highlight of the gifts under our tree are signed books donated by Maine Crime Writers. This year’s donors were Kate Flora, John Clark, Kate Emerson, Dick Cass, Jule Selbo, Matt Cost and me. Former Maine Crime Writers Barb Ross and Paul Doiron also chipped in. I also pick up books and other writing and mystery-related items during the year when I see them on sale or at a low cost, to add to the tree.

Festival-goers also get a kick out of the raven tree-topper and crime scene tape garland. Aside from regular ornaments, we have mystery-themed ones (thanks Kate Flora!) and I also hang bookmarks from those who’ve donated books for the cause.

The winner of this year’s tree was Kimberly Lincoln. But I have a feeling many people  will benefit from the 40-plus books and other items that were part of our donation this year.

Not everyone is going to venture to the wilds of Augusta, I know, for a charity event. But when next year rolls around — or any time of the year — if you see a local event that will help out your fellow Mainers, consider taking an hour or so and supporting the cause. Maine gives us so much, and for many of us makes our books what they are. The real Maine, outside our pages, needs our love as well.

Holiday Greetings

Earlier this month I sat down to compose our annual Christmas letter. Right off I hit a snag. We didn’t actually do much this past year. I had total knee replacement surgery. My husband spent time skiing at Saddleback last winter and after the snow was gone, he concentrated on the novel he’s writing. I worked on genealogy and sorted and labeled a couple of hundred early twentieth century family photos. And that was about it—a very short note to go with holiday greetings. It also occurred to me that even though we don’t see most of them in person these days, a good portion of the folks we send this letter to already know all our news because we follow each other on Facebook.

I sent nineteen letters anyway, all in pretty green envelopes. My mailing list used to be larger, but I no longer feel the need to send cards or letters to “business acquaintances” unless they are also personal friends. At the same time, older relatives, as well as friends my own age (77), keep dying on me. Others are still alive, but no longer bother with cards or letters. With luck, I will receive Christmas cards, letters, or e-letters from most of the nineteen in return. Some will include photos, especially if there are grandchildren to brag about.

my parents’ Christmas card in 1951

Once upon a time—way back in the 1950s and 1960s—sending Christmas cards was something huge numbers of people did every year as a matter of course. In fact, my first “job” was helping my mom take orders for Christmas cards. We took three heavy sample books from three Christmas card companies—Wallace Brown, Marion Heath, and Tom-Wat—into people’s homes so they could make their selections. Our customers placed their orders months in advance for hundreds of cards with their names printed on them. With that many cards, not having to sign them by hand was probably a big help.

our Christmas card in 1971 when my husband was stationed at Oceana NAS

Back then, of course, there weren’t anywhere near as many ways to keep in touch with friends, especially those who didn’t live in the same town. No e-mail. No Facebook. No social media at all. Your options were limited to writing letters or calling long distance, and people who were watching their budgets were very aware that long distance rates varied by the time of day and the day of the week. Christmas cards were a once-a-year way to communicate that you were still thinking of them. Handwritten notes could be scribbled on them to add details to the season’s greetings.

At some point, the habit of sending Christmas cards morphed into producing an annual Christmas letter. First they were typed and xeroxed. Later they were generated on a computer and printed and often included pictures. These letters were sometimes included in a card, but just as often went out by themselves. It was a good way to catch up on news, especially with old friends you didn’t see in person. I’m not sure when I switched from cards to letters, but I’d done so by at least 2012. I’ve resisted other options, although e-cards come with computer graphics and music and would be easier on my arthritic fingers and both e-cards and e-letters save on postage.

What about you, MCW readers? Do you still send cards or letters? Do you still receive them? If you don’t, do you miss them? And how do you stay in touch with old friends who aren’t interested in joining Facebook, X, Bluesky, or any other social media platform? Inquiring minds want to know.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. 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. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.