Lea Wait's Blog, page 181

Election Day! (You HAVE Voted, Right?)

I’ll admit, I’ve been a political junkie since my grandmother bought our first (small, black and white) television so we could watch the Democratic and Republication conventions. I lay, sprawled on the floor of what was then our summer home in Maine (now my full-time home,) fascinated, and with permission to stay up VERY late.

After that I began collecting political memorabilia — buttons, bumper stickers, tee shirts, jewelry, convention tickets, and (from the 19th century) tokens, ads, women’s suffrage pins and postcards … tickets to Johnson’s impeachment … and so many more.[image error]

As soon as I was old enough to have my own checking account (with deposits from my after-school job sorting books at my local library) I bid on political items in catalog auctions (predecessors of today’s on-line auctions) and begged my father, who was a numismatist, and my grandmother, whose antique doll and toy business included 19th century valentines and 20th century paper dolls, to take me with them to paper shows. (Later in my life I was an antique print dealer and became even more familiar with paper shows. My protagonist Maggie Summer attends one in my Shadows on the Ivy.)

My grandmother took me to Washington, D.C. during a junior high school winter vacation and we got tickets to the Senate visitors’ gallery. I’ll never forget hearing both Senators Bartlett and Gruening, the first senators from Alaska, speak on the floor. I dreamed of being a senator myself some day.

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Example of political memorabilia

Of course, I also wanted to be a writer. In college I had a hard time choosing between majoring in English or in political science — but drama fit better into my schedule, so I majored in English and drama, and read the political science books on my own. In graduate school I majored in American Civilization – Intellectual History – and was able to fill in some empty spaces in my knowledge. I still collected political memorabilia.

When I lived in Greenwich Village I registered to vote for the first time — for George McGovern in the primary.  I’ve rarely, if ever, skipped an election since. I’ve campaigned in some elections, from being a member of the Village Independent Democrats back in my NYC days, to making telephone calls during the 2008 election.

And since Maine is one of the few states still using paper ballots, both my husband Bob and I, in different elections, counted ballots in our small town. I did that in the last presidential election, and then headed home to watch CNN.

I no longer have my political collection. I sold it several years ago. But I’m still a campaign addict.

I’ll vote this morning. My daughter Liz, who’s staying with me now, sent her absentee ballot to  Philadelphia last week. My sister Nancy and her husband, who live in North Carolina, voted early.

And, you? No matter who you’ll be voting for: this is the time for our voices to be heard. No excuses.  After all — it’s Election Day.

Why We Do It (Besides the Money)

Dick here, prepping madly for the launch of Burton’s Solo on Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at Longfellow Books in Portland. 7:00 PM. [image error]Actually not prepping too madly because the book has been dribbling out into the universe over the past couple weeks and the cookies are baked. Please come, I would love to see you, and you don’t even need to buy books. The occasion of a new book this year started me thinking about the manifold joys of writing and publishing and though we writers tend to the lugubrious and depressive, I’m here to remind you that there is joy to be had.

Attended a family memorial service on Cape Cod a couple weeks ago, for my father’s brother, who died at 90. Thomas Cass was a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and one of the most poignant aspects of the memorial was the presence of three cadets from the Academy, rock-steady at attention for the duration, in honor of my uncle’s service. [image error]It moves me as I write to think of the respect they showed a shipmate seventy years removed.

In the social time afterwards, I sat with cousins I hadn’t seen in some years, including two who grew up around the corner from us in Hyde Park. I have a very small family (it keeps getting smaller) and we are not terribly close, either geographically or temperamentally, but I was tickled to find out that at least one of the cousins had discovered my Elder Darrow books and was reading them. After a certain amount of gentle joshing about my being the famous cousin now, Gordon said something to me that I will treasure more than if I ever sell a million books.

He allowed as how only twice in his life had he read something in a book that articulated for him something that he felt but could not put fully into words. Once was when he read the description in George V. Higgins’s book Progress of the Seasons [image error]of the young George walking up the ramp in Fenway Park for the first time and seeing how green the grass was. The second was something (I’ll omit the specific detail out of respect for how it affected him) in one of my books.

It reminded me of another time when I was a featured writer at a conference in the West. I read a story I’d written from the point of view of an old woman confined to a wheelchair, deciding whether to end her own life with painkillers. A very good writer named John Rember took me aside after my reading and thanked me for the story, telling me it helped him understand his own mother’s situation after the stroke that put her in a chair.

You might think published writers are concerned about the sales, number of readers, the acclaim (such as it is), and we are. But these other things drive me, and many of the writers I know, as much as the desire to tell a good story and entertain someone: saying for readers, or at least helping them hear, the things they know but can’t quite say themselves. There is pure joy in that, and if you are ever a reader so moved, I encourage you to offer this bit of gold to any writer who has so moved you.

Weekend Update: November 3-4, 2018

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will posts by Dick Cass (Monday), Lea Wait (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday) John Clark (Thursday), and Bruce Coffin (Friday).

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

Dick Cass and Kate Flora joined crime writers Hallie Ephron and Sheila Connolly at the Concord Festival of Authors mystery night:

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Bruce Robert Coffin launched Beyond the Truth the third novel in his Detective Byron mystery series on the past Tuesday at DiMillo’s on the Water.

Kate Flora is celebrating the arrival of two new books this week. Her crime story collection, Careful What You Wish For and the 9th Thea Kozak mystery, Schooled in Death.

      

Bruce Robert Coffin has several appearances scheduled for the coming week. On Monday, November 5th at 6 p.m. he will be at the Kennebunk Free Library with Paula and Ann from Mainely Murders.

On Wednesday, November 7th from 2-8 p.m. he will be signing books at the Diane Snow Gallery, 705 Foss Road, Limerick, Maine.

On Thursday, November 8th at 6 p.m. he will be appearing in Groveland, Massachusetts at the Langley-Adams Library.

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DON’T MISS! NOIR AT THE BAR: MAINE CRIME & MYSTERY WRITERS EVENT & RAFFLE

Location: Banded Brewing Co., 32 Maine St. Biddeford  When: November 18, 3-5 p.m.  https://bandedbrewing.com/

Maine Writers Treat You to a ‘Peeerfect’ Sunday afternoon! Listen to eleven writers share enticing bits of their thrillers and mysteries. Sip craft brews. (Beelzebubbles and Swarm should fit the mood.)

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Order up a taster of 4 craft brews!

Enter a free raffle and win a large basket of signed authors’ books. (Great for gifts!) Kelly’s Books to Go will also be on hand to sell all authors’ works.

 

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

 

 

HE WAS RIGHT. HE WAS RIGHT …

Sandra Neily writing here. My husband tells that I’m trying to do too much. And someone at a library presentation recently asked me how I had time to write. Good question.

I thought I might journal my week, just to investigate the issue. Spoiler alert: my husband’s right. He was right. 

MY WEEK:

Kitchen Highlights (of course there was more cooking than this):  I made blueberry muffins and two friends asked for my secrets. I sent emails: “add about 2 tablespoons of yogurt to all quick breads, a mashed banana, and a handful of real cranberries as well. (I freeze dead bananas and bags of fresh cranberries.) [image error]

Wildlife Research: I researched and gathered new wildlife information to enhance my Deadly Turn manuscript. (To be published in 2019.) Some  highlights.

Chickadees: listen closely to a chickadee’s call. One dee indicates there’s no threat, but five dees at the end of the call could indicate that there’s an owl or some other threat.[image error]

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Squirrel for dinner.

Pine Martens: Good news for people bemoaning this summer’s squirrel invasion. Pine martens love to dine on them and hunt them ferociously on the ground and in trees.

Moose: Biologists are wondering if the soft skin and blood vessels that grow over and nourish early antler growth might allow moose to echolocate their way through the forest. Somehow the sensitive tissue might return signals that allow bull moose to turn aside from trees and brush that impede their progress. (Early days on that research.)

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Lil sharpening claws for her cat sitter.

Cat Sitting: Each day I’m paid to drive down Westport Island to cat sit for a few hours. I can type there when felines are not rubbing on my legs.

Doctor: I had to get antibiotics to cure cat scratches, so no more tummy rubs.

 

Family Fun: I went to the Maine Wildlife Park with my daughter and granddaughter. Bobcats and lynx were “big kitties,” coyotes and bears were “big doggies,” and ducks were…”DUCKS!” (It’s still open!)

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An orphaned moose calf eats lunch.

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My rescued lab Raven and I aren’t thinking ticks. We should be.

Dog Walks: Walked Raven and found amazing ferns.

Workouts:  I went to the YMCA at least twice. (Lifting weights is good for pre-election drama.)

Author Time: I wrote each day, even if just a few pages. Some days I made my 1,000-word goal (or more) and did a happy dance in front of the cats. Here are my favorite lines from this week:

Kate slipped off her T-shirt and wiggled into one of her father’s old shirts. “You should change your stinky fish stuff, too, Mum. Bears from far away will come here.”

“I hate clothes,” I said.

“No you don’t.” She tossed me another old Evan shirt that still had beetle parts on it from when I’d cleaned the screens with it. “You just hate shopping. Don’t blame you. And what have they done to jeans making them hang so low women’s middles are squeezed up like ripe fruit?”

Press Release: (Pay attention now.) You are invited to win a basket of signed mystery and thriller books from Maine authors!  I wrote a press release to advertise Noir at the Bar. Hope to see you there!

NOIR AT THE BAR:  CRIME & MYSTERY WRITERS EVENT & RAFFLE                 Location: Banded Brewing Co., 32 Maine St. Biddeford   When: November 18, 3-5 p.m.

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Tasters: 4 for $10.00

Maine Writers Treat You to a ‘Peeerfect’ Sunday afternoon! Listen to eleven Maine writers share enticing bits of their thrillers and mysteries. Sip craft brews. (Beelzebubbles and Swarm should fit the mood.)

Enter a free raffle and win a large basket of signed authors’ books. (Great for gifts!) Kelly’s Books to Go will also be on hand to sell all authors’ works.

Author Barbara Ross explains the appeal. “We thriller and mystery mystery authors are mild-mannered, lovely people. We help you shovel your driveways and take care of your cats while you’re away. You’d never guess we have a flair for mayhem until we read you a bit of it. We’ve got seaweed-snarled bodies pulled up by fishermen, trees dropped on best friends, a charred corpse under a clambake grate, a world-class assassin who dispatches other assassins—and lots more of that kind of thing.”

Asked why Maine has so many successful and prolific crime and mystery authors, Sandra Neily (who uses the north woods), thinks it’s a combination of ideal settings and a fairly safe environment. “Maine is just chock full of dramatic and varied locations that allow us to pull readers deeply into a story. We also have a reputation as a pretty safe state so perhaps our readers can dive into the literature of what’s not safe …  with a kind of curious freedom.”

This year Noir at the Bar has moved its yearly event to Banded Brewing Company in Biddeford. There’s a good view of the brewing tanks, inspired bakery treats (like Buffalo Chicken Croissants), or the opportunity to bring in pizza from Portland Pie, next door.

See you there!

Sandy’s novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a Mystery Writers of America award and was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest. This year, she’s been nominated for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novel at all Shermans Books and on Amazon. Find more info on the video trailer and Sandy’s website.  The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” will be published in 2019.

 

 

 

Mothers and Daughters

[image error]Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, once again writing about Overkilt, the new Liss MacCrimmon mystery, now available in hardcover and e-book formats.

For the first time since Bagpipes, Brides, and Homicides, where Liss and her mother clashed over Liss’s wedding plans, Violet MacCrimmon is back in Moosetookalook and this time she and Liss’s father have come to stay. After years in Arizona, they have decided to return home. Liss still isn’t sure why.

Okay. I admit it. I based Vi on my own mother and her relationship with Liss on the prickly one my mom and I had. All those annoying little characteristics, like not telling Liss when she needed surgery, never giving a word of praise, and always carping on the “right” way to do things (her way, of course) come straight from real life.

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Mom and me, 1980

That’s not to say I didn’t love my mother. There were just times when I didn’t like her very much. The feeling, I’m sure, was mutual. That said, more than twenty-five years after her death, I still miss her, and I wish I’d had the chance I’m giving Liss to work toward a better relationship with Vi.

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my favorite photo of my mom, sometime in the late 1960s

On the other hand, their ups and downs, and the observation by others that they bump heads so often because they are too much alike, are providing me with ample opportunities for comic relief. Vi constantly surprised me during the writing of this book, from her reaction to the discovery of the body to a certain unlikely object she has in her possession.

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Mom and me before there was any conflict

Look for Violet MacCrimmon to return as one of Liss’s sleuthing partners in the next book in the series (A View to a Kilt, February 2020). Hey, when you’ve got a character with, well, character, it would be a crime not to let her play a bigger role in the story.

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Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of nearly sixty traditionally published books written under several names. 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 (Overkilt) and the “Deadly Edits” series (Crime & Punctuation) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries (Murder in a Cornish Alehouse) as Kathy. The latter series is a spin-off from her earlier “Face Down” mysteries and is set in Elizabethan England. Her most recent collection of short stories is 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 www.TudorWomen.com

Frightening Thoughts From the Group

John Clark encouraging MCW members to participate in a game of Halloween Two Truths and a Dare. Each set of statements below has one that’s false. Your challenge is to decide which ones they are. Best guesser wins something interesting.  Here are mine.

1-I once saw a rocking chair move on its own in an abandoned house.

2-My collection of shrunken heads was confiscated by the Maine State Police.

3-The Hells Angels let me sleep in an abandoned car while they played with fire inside a house.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson chiming in with two truths and a lie. Can you tell which one is untrue?

1-A short story I wrote is included in a horror anthology.

2-Every Halloween we dress up a dead tree in our front yard so that it looks like a witch.

3-When I was compiling his memoirs for the family, my dead grandfather sent me a “sign” that he approved of the project.

Maureen Milliken two truths and a lie! [Or do we  just say “alternate facts” these days?]

1.-There’s something in the walls, eaves and between the floors of my house — too big to be mice, or even squirrels. I can hear it running through the ceiling when I’m in the living room. It — or they — is/are big and loud and I expect one day it’s going to burst through the walls like the monster in the movie “Aliens.”

2-The college I went to (Catholic college buildings from the 1840s) had a hidden exorcism room in secret tunnels under the older buildings on the campus, and particularly on Halloween, we’d go looking for it. Though we never found the room, we heard enough whispers and cries to know that the spirit of something was there.

3-Every time I open the door of a remote place — particularly state park and rest area outhouses, but also walk-in refrigerators and closets in public buildings — I expect there to be a body. I’m relieved, yet disappointed, when there isn’t one.

From Sandra Neily

1.     I navigated a dangerous mountain pass in a blizzard driving a Cadillac that carried a trunk-load of marijuana.

2.     A game warden with a spotting scope saw me skinny dipping in what I thought was a remote stream; he shared it state-wide.

3.     My boyfriend and I survived a cougar attack in Glacier National Park only to meet the animal again on the trail further down the mountain.

From Lea Wait:

1) Being at home alone when someone breaks into my home.

2) Getting off a plane in a third world country and being greeted by soldiers carrying machine guns.

3) Taking a taxi from the airport to my hotel and having the taxi (engine, underneath, inside, trunk) searched for bombs before I could be dropped off at the door.

From Barb Ross

1) One of the bedrooms in our old sea captain’s house in Boothbay Harbor is said to be haunted. On one of the rare nights Bill and I slept in that room, our cocker spaniel couldn’t settle. He paced and paced, panting, until we threw him out into the hall, whereupon he promptly lay down and fell fast asleep.

2) One of my ancestors was hanged as a witch just outside of Salem, MA.

3) I once trick or treated as the backend of a horse. I do not recommend it for many reasons, most especially because many grownups do not see the second candy bag sticking out from the back.

Kate Flora

1 While driving on a foggy night on Route 128, a woman suddenly appeared in the middle lane, waving her arms wildly for me to stop. I rolled down my window and she approached the car and said, “Pull over to the side and stop.” When I continued to stare, she said, “It’s okay, Fraulein. It’s what the Fuhrer wants you to do.”

2 Once, while I was on a visit to New York, there was a man on the subway staring at me. Unnerved, I got off and explored above ground, but an hour later, there he was again, staring. So I went back to hotel, more than a little bit spooked. When I went out a few hours later to get some dinner, he was eating in the restaurant I choose. Was I being followed?

3 A few years ago, on a Sisters in Crime field trip to the New Hampshire Medical Examiner’s office, she showed us the morgue freezer where the bodies were stored, and once we were all inside, she went out, shut the door, and turned off the light. That sure made the visit memorable.

Brenda Buchanan

1- Many people fret about roller coasters, but I love ‘em. The steeper and twistier, the better.

2 – I’m not afraid of spiders or snakes.

3 – I love to camp in remote places, sharing the woods with animals but no other people.[image error]

Jen Blood

1 – As teenagers, my friends and I regularly broke into a creepy abandoned inn in Northport for seances and canoodling.

2 – At seventeen, my ex-bf and his buddies took me out trick o’treating as their little sister, dressing me in a sheet topped with a Winnie the Pooh baseball hat because I was short enough to pass for a child.

3 – When I was in my late twenties, a woman in white appeared in my room at Kirkpatrick Hall my first night at Goddard College, whispered something that I couldn’t understand, and then vanished. I was wide awake at the time, and to this day wonder if someone spiked the punch at that first Goddard dinner.

I Don’t Mean to be a Problem

Dorothy Cannell: When I was about seven my pet chicken Rhoda showed up on the [image error]Christmas dinner table. I don’t mean she went hopscotching between the platters of vegetables chirping out ‘Jingle bells’.  She was dinner, stuffed and roasted.  Horrible – repulsive in her plucked nakedness.  My parents kept chickens and I’d known one would be selected to fill our tummies.  But Rhoda was different.  She was mine. Perhaps originally I would have preferred a dog or cat, but I talked to her every day, thought her prettier and cleverer than her sisters, was convinced she returned my affection.  And now I felt ill.

I don’t remember how the announcement had been made that this was Rhoda.  I know it could not have crossed my mother’s mind that I would react as I did.  She enjoyed taking care of the chickens – feeding them and collecting the eggs.  She didn’t mind cleaning out the henhouse.  She took good care of them.  And named every one of them.  But she didn’t have a deep emotional feel for them.  Perhaps only a child who desperately wanted a pet of any sort would go off the deep end about the festive sacrifice of a Rhode Island Red with a name to suit.  I do remember that my mother was regretful and compassionate.  She understood my reaction though it was outside her own thinking.  I don’t know what, if anything, I ate of that meal, but I do know that she never expected me to eat chicken again.  When it was served there was always another choice – usually ham.

[image error]The memory of that carcass turned me against partaking off any kind of bird – turkey, duck, pheasant, or whatever else is regarded as edible.  My husband Julian took this quirk in his stride, and I don’t think our children thought me odd.  Dad took them out for fried chicken or brought it home, made chicken sandwiches for them, and at Thanksgiving there was always turkey.  Julian purchased the turkey and did all preparations.  I made the sage and onion stuffing, but he was chef while I got well out of the way.  By the time I re-engaged, the skeleton had been disposed of and remains innocuously sliced.  My offerings of cranberry sauce, vegetables and pecan pie always gave me a pleasant sense of virtue triumphing over travail.

I confess to frequently feeling that the world is against me when it comes to this issue.  When eating out I have to scan through item after item on menus featuring, Chicken Alfredo, Chicken Tacos, Curried Chicken Salad, Chicken Florentine, etc. in hope of finding something feather free.  Fowl has become the favorite offering at weddings, banquets and dinner parties. Family and friends know about my quirk. The rest of the time I hope it won’t be noticed that I’ve done a camouflage job from what’s left of the vegetables, rice or pasta I could have eaten twice as much of.  “Not eating bird is a social handicap” I frequently muse, hoping to sound pitifully charming, rather than a pain in the neck.  Though the latter is what I have to be for anyone considering inviting me for lunch or dinner.

My sad story of Rhoda has to pale in comparison to the irritation of having to scour for a recipe involving, beef, pork or fish to substitute for that tried and true chicken in mushroom soup casserole with its dash of paprika and liberal slosh of sherry that everyone thinks takes hours to make.

It is during moments of introspection that I will think of myself as a character in one of my books.  So often in writing it is something seemingly trivial, an idiosyncrasy that sows the seeds for fleshing out personality.  I select a setting.  Because I do traditional mysteries, and the current one takes place in an English village during the nineteen thirties, I will go with such.  In this environment the fictional Dorothy (we’ll call her Edith) plays bridge.  Not very well, but sufficiently to make up a table if the Major or the Vicar is unavailable.  Unfortunately for those doing the inviting such occasions often include a luncheon or dinner and if it’s not bad enough that Edith variably leaves her reading glasses at home and has false teeth that click and has a tendency to sniff, she doesn’t ‘do feathers.’

I can hear Miss Willis from The Rookery grumbling to Mrs. Gillman of Spring Cottage: ‘Tiresome creature!  Some ridiculous story about a pet chicken that showed up on the dinner table when she was a child.  The need to draw attention to herself would be pathetic if not so irritating.  One shouldn’t laugh at her for looking so like an old hen herself – that scraggy neck and yellow skin.  And talk about a beak!  You could stab yourself on her nose.  I’ve always said you can tell lot about people’s characters by their noses. All that twittering on about good works, but she’s not a nice woman.  Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if she got herself murdered before too long, particularly if those whispers about why the church sewing circle disbanded has a grain of truth.’

A little bit of me transferred and trasnsformed.  Merely a fragment.  But fragments have impact which can sometimes turn into consequences.  What I love about writing mysteries is turning a trait that does not herald menace into something dire.

Happy reading,

Dorothy

THREAD HERRINGS: Pieces Of My Life, Stitched Together

Tomorrow, October 30, is the publication day for THREAD HERRINGS, the seventh in my Mainely Needlepoint mystery series, set in the small working waterfront town of Haven Harbor, Maine.[image error]

My protagonist, Angie Curtis, runs a custom needlepoint business which includes a group of idiosyncratic Mainers who have in common a talent for doing needlepoint: Sarah, an antique dealer from Australia; Dave, a high school teacher who has a poison garden; Captain Ob, who runs a charter fishing boat in season; Ruth, who writes erotica; and Angie’s grandmother, now the wife of the local minister.  In each book in the series Angie not only solves one (or more) crimes, but she also learns a little more about one or more of her fellow needlepointers.

In THREAD HERRINGS Angie accompanies her friend Sarah to an estate auction: her very first. As a fourth-generation antique dealer, auctions were familiar venues for me from the time I was about eight. (I made my first auction purchase, a first edition Encyclopedia Americana, when I was ten.) It was fun to introduce Angie (via Sarah) to the ways, means, customs, courtesies, and traditions of an auction. And, of course, Angie had to be intrigued by one item, and buy it.

And of course, it is a piece of old needlepoint. And, of course, it has a story.

As a long-time adoption advocate, adoptive parent and history buff, I’ve always been fascinated by what happened to orphaned children throughout history, and have collected information about it for years. So it isn’t surprising that a piece of that history is connected to Angie’s eighteenth century needlepoint. Nor is it surprising that soon a twenty-first century crime is also woven into the story.

How did I fit those pieces into the plot of a book set on the coast of Maine? You’ll have to read it to see. And remember … you’ll also find some red herrings in THREAD HERRINGS!    

Available in mass market paperback and e-book.

Weekend Update: October 27-28, 2018

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will posts by Lea Wait (Monday), Dorothy Cannell (Tuesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Sandra Neily (Friday). On Wednesday, for Halloween, we’ll present our “Frightening Thoughts from the Group”

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

 [image error]from Kathy Lynn Emerson: my short story, “Lady Appleton and the Creature of the Night,” previously published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, is included in the new digital anthology, Terror at the Crossroads. It’s available now on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Crossroads-Tales-Horror-Delusion-ebook/dp/B07JK8RSX6

and soon, if not already, at Barnes & Noble, Magzter, Kobo, GooglePlay, and the iTunes store. Truthfully, I don’t know if I’d classify my story as “horror” but in it my sixteenth-century sleuth does solve a mystery involving a shapeshifter.

 

 

 

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

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign

Kate Flora: As part of personally carrying out my oft repeated exhortation to writers to pay attention to the world, I tend to take a lot of pictures. One of my favorite things to photograph is signs. All kinds of signs. Since this week I am on a cruise ship somewhere along the coast of Italy, I am going to skip a lot of text in favor of a collection of these signs. Maybe you have some signs you’d like to share as well?

These signs are from the Czech Republic, Amsterdam, India, California, Germany, San Francisco, the Berkshires, Maine, etc. They are from store windows, street signs, lamp posts, and parks. There are signs everywhere and many of them are amusing or inspiring. Sweety’s Tattoos will appear in the next Joe Burgess mystery.