Lea Wait's Blog, page 268

True Love Endures

By Brenda Buchanan

By the luck of the draw my February post falls three days after Valentine’s Day, but I’ll tell you a love story anyway.

Seventy-four years ago, these crazy kids eloped.

My Mom, my Dad, their friends Sis and B.G.

On the left are my folks, William “Buck” Buchanan and Irene Kane Buchanan. He was 22. She was 20.

The other two are Sis and B.G., their friends who also eloped that day. It was February 14, 1942 and love was in the air, intensified by the knowledge that both men were about to be shipped overseas.

My father and B.G. were members of the United States Army’s First Infantry Division—known as the Big Red One—training at Fort Devens in Central Massachusetts. My parents met on the base, where Mom had a war-time job delivering mail. She was vivacious young woman, the fifth of six children raised by Irish Catholic immigrants in a nearby mill town. Her mail delivery gig involved zipping around Fort Devens on a motorcycle with a sidecar, and it’s no surprise she caught my father’s attention. Mom was an auburn-haired looker with a fun-loving personality. I never got a satisfactory answer about what most attracted her Dad, but I think it was his soft spoken manner and big heart. Or perhaps those beautiful brown eyes.

My dad, William Buchanan

They’d been a steady couple since the previous year, but Mom had never brought him home to meet her father. She knew better. My father had been raised Methodist in Western North Carolina/East Tennessee, but he may as well have come from the moon as far as my tough-minded grandfather was concerned. John Austin Kane’s wife had died of cancer years earlier and his eldest daughter had joined the convent. He was not about to allow his next daughter to marry someone who wasn’t Catholic.

So Irene and her handsome Buck eloped, together with their friends. In a double wedding ceremony at a nearby Catholic church where each couple served as the other’s maid of honor and best man, they pledged their eternal love.  Then my folks took the train to New York City for a weekend honeymoon, thrilled to have defied the forces that attempted to put a brake on their love.

On Sunday they returned to my mother’s hometown of Fitchburg and walked from the train station to my grandfather’s house. There my dad met his father-in-law for the first time, a meeting that reportedly went quite well. Dad already had converted to Catholicism, which must have helped, but I expect it was his quiet confidence that won my stubborn Irish grandfather over. That, and my mother’s evident love for her new husband.

He got his orders that spring, landing first in Tunisia, then Sicily, and finally England, where the Big Red One (“the point on the spear at Omaha Beach”) prepared for D-Day. Six days after that historic invasion my father was involved in a firefight in the Cerisy Forest that earned him a Silver Star for valor.

As proud as I’m sure my mother was of his medals, she must have lived with her heart in her throat in those first years of their marriage, praying for him to come home in one piece.

That finally happened in mid-1945. They settled down in her hometown of Fitchburg, built a small business together and raised four kids.

Irene and Buck, 50 years later

They were getting ready to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on Valentine’s Day in 1992 when my father fell suddenly, seriously ill. Seven weeks later he died at the age of 72, having had the opportunity to say goodbye to his children and grandchildren (though one was subsequently born) and most importantly, to his beloved wife.

She is 94 now, and her illness makes it difficult for her to communicate. But on Sunday, when my sister told her that it was Valentine’s Day—her 74th anniversary—a wave of emotion washed over Mom’s still-beautiful face.

My mom, one fine day last fall

True love does indeed endure.

Layering Images … and Words

Lea Wait here.

Visitors to art galleries will usually see a piece of paper near each artist’s work called an “Artist’s Statement;” an explanation in words of what the artist hopes to have said in his paintings, photographs, or sculptures. Because their goal is to speak through their work, most artists hate to prepare these statements, but they’re a part of the job. (Yes; art, like writing, is a job.)

Last week my husband, artist Bob Thomas, re-wrote his artist’s statement. It begins,

I remember reacting viscerally to the colors and textures of the ancient walls of Beirut, Lebanon, where I grew up. Sometimes I responded to the walls themselves, and sometimes to the paint and torn posters covering them more than a thousand years after they were built. Torn posters and multiple layers on walls in 1970s New York City had the same effect on me. Now when I paint, color and texture and composition are my tools. 

I’ve been thinking about that paragraph. Writers aren’t required to define their work in “writers statements”; we do it through our work. Marketeers and publicists call what defines our work our brand. Critics call it our theme, or subject, or motif. No matter what genre we write in, our work is identifiable.

And, yes, we, like Bob, express ourselves in layers. (See three of his paintings embedded in this blog.) Our layers are parallel plots and sub-plots; places and words chosen to reflect the emotions of our stories. Like artists, we use colors and textures to deepen our writing. We use the past to add depth, either through our characters’ backstories, or by historical references.

We include details from nature, from migrating birds to spring dandelions to sunsets to drifting snowflakes, to add mood and definition. Or we set our stories inside the kaleidoscopic colors and sounds of a modern-day shopping mall or city street, where the world is created by people, not nature. What our characters hear and touch and taste … and what they experience … add more layers.

In my Shadows of a Down East Summer the 1890 diary of a young Maine woman who posed for Winslow Homer opens a window to late nineteenth century New England and leads the reader on a path through history. Events in 1890 changed the way individuals and families saw themselves, and those images and perceptions were passed down through families, each generation adding to and changing the story to meet their own needs and expectations. In Shadows of a Down East Summer those changes result in a murder today.

Although painting and writing can be private experiences, most artists and writers choose to present the result of their work to others. 

In both cases, the viewer, or reader, or critic, adds the final layer to the work: their interpretation of what the craftsman was saying, and how successfully it was accomplished. As Bob wrote in his statement, My goal is to hook the viewer; to provide a visual experience that he or she can turn into an emotional experience.

Art, like life, does not exist independently. It is made of layers of past and present visions, thoughts, moments, and, yes, stories. It is our job, as their creators, to dig as deeply as we can, to enrich our work as much as we can, and to present our viewers or readers with as intense an experience as we can. By doing that, we give our work life.

Lea Wait writes two mystery series: the Shadows Antique Print Mysteries and the Mainely Needlepoint mysteries. She also writes historical novels for ages eight and up set in the nineteenth century. For more information about Lea and her books, see her website and friend her on Facebook and Goodreads. 

A Key West House Tour

By Barb Ross, sad because I only have two more weeks in paradise

Last summer I wrote about the Boothbay Harbor House and Garden tour. At the time I disclosed that in addition to a love of old houses and beautiful houses, I go on these tours because I am one noisy parker.

In Boothbay, at least I can say I’m scouting locations for scenes in the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Here in Key West, I have no such excuse. I’ve been going to house tours here for years and loving them.

Key West is such a mystery. Sometimes you walk through a front door and find that what looks like three distinct properties are actually a big house, a guest house and a pool house with an enormous pool joining the lots. And then you look out of the window of that $6 million dollar house and the house next door is falling down, it’s yard a tangle of weeds, old cars and feral chickens. That’s Key West.

The tours are run by the Old Island Restoration Foundation, the main organization dedicated to historic preservation in Key West. Let’s take the tour.

This house is in the Truman Annex. This whole neighborhood was built or restored in the 1980s on former military land, named for Harry Truman’s “Little White House,” on the grounds. It’s a luxurious five bedroom, five bath house.

I love these little vest pocket pools, called dipping pools in Key West, shoe-horned in because land is scarce. This one is fairly large by local standards.

This house is a parsonage, home to the Methodist minister at the church next door. The house was built in the 1870s at the height of Key West’s wealth from cigar manufacturing.

The architect built his own house across the street. (Below).

The church was originally wood, but was clad in stone between 1877 and 1892 as donor’s funds permitted.

This house was built on the street originally called Gruntbone Alley, which was where the islanders discarded grunt fish bones. A storm surge from a hurricane in 1844 wiped out almost all the buildings on the island, but it also washed away the grunt bones, which made room for new settlers from the Bahamas to build on the street. This house was built in the 1850s. During a renovation in the 1990s, the original clapboards, with their many layers of paint, were pulled off the outside and turned around, unpainted side out.

The house was built on these wooden pegs which have since petrified. Imagine that in Maine.

At the back of the house is an addition with a covered outdoor kitchen and sleeping loft.

This house was built for his family by a lighthouse keeper who worked out on a reef fifty miles from the island. His work schedule was two months on, one month off, but that assumed the weather permitted. The property, like many in Florida, was bank-owned in 2009. The new owners virtually rebuilt it.

This house is not in Old Town, but in the Casa Marina district, named for a resort hotel there built by Henry Flagler. The lots in the area were divided in the 1920s, but the Great Depression intervened and most of the houses weren’t built until the 40s. The lots are bigger in this part of town, but it’s still an easy walk to the beach. This house was owned by socialite Floy Vance Thompson who gave parties here into her 90s. She and her husband who was a prominent Key West family were introduced by Ernest Hemingway and his wife at their finca in Cuba.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of Key West. I wish they’d let us photograph the interiors.

Weekend Update: February 13-14, 2016

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Barb Ross (Monday), Lea Wait (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Wednesday), Bruce Coffin (Thursday), and Maureen Milliken (Friday).

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

Registration is now open for Maine Crime Wave, April 9 in Portland, Maine. Check out the details at http://mainewriters.org/2016-maine-crime-wave/

Notice how many of the authors listed as presenters are present or past bloggers here at Maine Crime Writers. We are well represented!

Bruce Coffin is too shy to share this, but we’re thrilled to repost this news from Facebook page:

I am pleased to announce that late yesterday afternoon I received an email from Otto Penzler, editor of Best American Mystery Stories, informing me that my short story, “Fool Proof,” which appeared in Best New England Crime Stories 2016, has been selected for inclusion in the 20th edition of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s The Best American Mystery Stories 2016.

This anthology, slated to be released in early October, contains 20 mystery stories regarded as being the most outstanding to have been originally published in North America during the 2015 calendar year.

Our own Barbara Ross was one of the editors of Red Dawn, Best New England Crime Stories, in which Bruce’s story originally appeared. As Barbara noted: Her tenure as an editor at Level Best began with an Edgar nomination for Maine writer Judy Green, and ended with Bruce’s story being chosen for Best American Crime Stories.

It’s a simple fact: there are WONDERFUL writers in Maine

Speaking of wonderful writers, if you’d like to win a handful of books by writers we like, leave a comment to this weekend update. And please share the news about the Maine Crime Wave far and wide.

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: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

Please Stand By

Hey, people, are you reading me? Sorry the connection’s lousy. It’s Chris Holm, broadcasting from my editing bunker. I’m afraid my post is gonna be a little slight today, because I’m in the home stretch of a massive editing jag. What was that? “Mutt rawr poo dead nit zing?”

Sorry. I think my tin cans need new string. I’m pretty sure you said, “What are you editing?”

I’m working on the second Michael Hendricks book. (If you’ve been in a bunker of your own for the past six months, you can find out about the first Michael Hendricks book, THE KILLING KIND, here.) It’s called RED RIGHT HAND, and it’ll be out September 13th courtesy of the fine folks at Mulholland Books. Here’s what it’s about:

If the good guys can’t save you, call a bad guy.

When viral video of a terrorist attack in San Francisco reveals that a Federal witness long thought dead is still alive, the organization he’d agreed to testify against will stop at nothing to put him in the ground.

Special Agent Charlie Thompson is determined to protect him, but her hands are tied; the FBI’s sole priority is catching the terrorists before they strike again. So Charlie calls the only person on the planet who can keep her witness safe: Michael Hendricks.

Once a covert operative for the US military, Hendricks makes his living hitting hitmen… or he did, until the very organization hunting Charlie’s witness—the Council—caught wind and targeted the people he loves. Now Hendricks is determined to take the Council down, even if that means wading into the center of a terror plot whose perpetrators are not what they seem.

It’s available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, if you’re interested. Or you could request it from your local independent bookseller.

But enough about me. It’s been a good week for MCWers. Yesterday, Brenda Buchanan launched TRUTH BEAT, the spectacular third installment of her can’t-miss Joe Gale mystery series. And Bruce Coffin got word that his short story “Foolproof” was selected to appear in THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2016, edited by Elizabeth George and Otto Penzler! “Foolproof” first appeared in BEST NEW ENGLAND CRIME STORIES 2016: RED DAWN, which was co-edited by our very own Barb Ross. Congratulations all around!

What’s In a Name?

Dorothy Cannell: Call me presumptuous but when it comes to my characters I am in disagreement with William Shakespeare’s assertion that ‘a rose by any other name smells just as sweet.’ Before putting type to paper I spend – could be said waste – an exorbitant amount of time endeavoring to fit or contrast first and last names to personality, physical appearance, means of employment, mannerisms, etc. This being the case I shouldn’t need to make the number of changes midstream that I invariably do.

One of the causes for this is suddenly realizing I have a couple, if not more, similar sounding names e.g. – Pilchard, Purdy, Pruitt, that will likely cause the reader to have to flip back through prior pages to see who I am talking about. Another is simply frivolous. A name will pop into my mind. I had a teacher called Miss Holdforth, met a Mrs. Lovely and Mr. Snidge – names too delightful not to be used for no other reason than to indulge myself. This said, the major disruptive factor to name choice is that characters often refuse to toe the line upon arriving on the scene.

In the book I am currently writing the new vicar of St. Peter’s Church in Dovecote Hatch was to be Adrian Macready, a handsome thirty-seven-year-old bachelor with fair hair and dark eyebrows. He stuck to his assigned marital status and eyebrows, but had chosen not to be a Scot. His hair has deepened to brown, and handsomeness was reduced to rugged good looks. He introduced himself as Aiden Forrest – the Adrian making for one R too many. There was no point in arguing with him. It would have made for more effort changing him from masterful to meek.

The sexton cum grave digger was set up in my head as Ezra Dewhurst – think hearse – a gaunt curmudgeon with a grim laugh and a hollow cough. But who showed up was a stout, cheery fellow incapable of not making himself helpful, welcome or not. After the initial irritation I was quite pleased because the alteration of his personality gave me the glimmer of an idea of how he could further serve the plot. On inquiry he informed me kindly his name was Jock Merriweather

And that’s just the start of who in this book wanted to be other than intended.   I wonder if other writers face these insurrections? Warning: There can be unfortunate results if alterations are not thoroughly checked. Global search and replace has its limitations. In my book Sea Glass Summer, I had a dog named Pocket because he was small enough to be put in one. Midway through I changed him to a large dog named Jumbo. This resulted in phrases such as “he stuck his hand in his Jumbo.”

Happy February

Dorothy

Come Back, Margaret Chase Smith

Kate Flora: Back when I was in high school, there was a day when we staged mock political debates. I was pretty apolitical back then, but I was thrilled to be chosen to play Margaret Chase Smith. I only have a vague memory of trying to find something to wear that was appropriately “senatorial” and borrowing my mother’s twinset and her pearls. I’m pretty sure I lost the debate. I remember thinking that she was a woman of great integrity and presence, and that Maine was lucky to have a woman of her courage and stature.

I am drawn back to Senator Smith these days for two reasons. First, I recently watched the movie, “Trumbo,” about McCarthy and blacklisting, about a writer having to make a living by selling his scripts under other people’s names, unable even to claim the credit when movies that he’d written won Academy Awards. We writers are often called on to reinvent ourselves, though fortunately not usually for such appalling reasons. Second, because however much I may try to avoid the ugliness of the current political season, it is impossible to avoid the awful rhetoric that passes for political discourse these days.

For those of you who haven’t read it, the speech that Margaret Chase Smith gave on the Senate floor on June 1, 1950, entitled: A Declaration of Conscience, http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/SmithDeclaration.pdf is an excellent reminder of some of our most cherished American values. Speaking in response to Senator McCarthy and his attacks on people he labeled “communists,” she reminded us of the “Basic Principles of Americanism:”

The right to criticize

The right to hold unpopular beliefs

The right to protest

The right of independent thought

Speaking of the contest between Republicans and Democrats, she urges that her Republican party has enough genuine issues to win on that it does not need to resort to what she labels “The Four Horsemen of Calumny,” which are: fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear. She expresses the hope that the American people will not uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. She reminds her Republican colleagues that they have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, clarifying issues, and allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

The Declaration of Conscience, joined by other senators, declares, in its final paragraph:

It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom.

It is comforting, at a time when the rhetoric is about closing our borders, and hating our immigrants or people of different religions, and stifling open-minded debate for fear that it hurts people’s feelings or doesn’t conform to one particular set of values, to remember that Maine has sent clear and courageous messages (Smith was, after all, the only woman in the Senate and was punished for her courage) onto the national stage.

 

I didn’t win my debate. She didn’t win her bid for the presidency. But more than sixty years later, her wisdom survives. If only we could send her out on the political circuit today.

 

 

Emotional Geography-Looking back at 50 years on Sennebec Hill Farm.

John Clark remembering some of the visual and emotional memories I have from growing up on East Sennebec Road. As a cataloger, I’ve come to be intrigued by some of the more esoteric subject headings used in bibliographic records.

One that intrigues me, particularly in relation to this piece, is Homes and haunts. It’s one of a very few things I’ve Googled and came up empty, but the Library of Congress describes it thusly: “Use as a topical subdivision under names of individual persons, families, and performing groups, classes of persons, and ethnic groups for works on the homes of individual persons, families, or members of the group from an architectural or historical point of view. Also use for works about the favorite places of individual persons or group members or places they habitually frequent or with which they are associated. For works on residential buildings for the group from the standpoint of architecture, construction, ethnology, etc., use the subdivision [Dwellings.] For works on social or economic aspects of the provision of housing for the group, use the subdivision [Housing.]”

I have a simpler definition. It describes a place that sticks with you and has a strong emotional quality. We’ve all read books with settings that have stayed with us. I can’t, for instance, look at a map of the Southwest without thinking of Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee.

My parents bought the 189 acre farm from Jacob Bootsman in 1949. Dad wanted to use the place as a nursery, but my grandfather Clark, who I guess was pretty authoritarian and had kicked in part of the $4900 purchase price said to Dad. “you bought a poultry farm and therefore you’re going to be a poultry farmer.” Pop did put in a small apple orchard, several of which produce apples to this day, but for most of my growing up years, we had laying hens—one hell of a lot of laying hens, especially after we built a new two story henhouse that was a hundred feet long by thirty or so wide.

Mom’s well-composted garden in full bloom.

There were gardens as well, rhubarb across the road, asparagus and a big vegetable garden on the flat area halfway to the lake and Mom’s uber-rich one behind the house. In addition to the apple orchard, we had several acres of blueberries, two sour cherry trees (I used to park our Farmall Cub tractor under them, stand on the seat and eat them until my mouth was sore), three different varieties of pears, a Macintosh tree and a Wolf River. This last one, when it was bearing, produced apples bigger than softballs that made great pies.

I have memories of events as well as specific parts of the property. I think I was six when we were hit with a huge blizzard. Snow piled up so high the plows couldn’t break through. When we ran out of milk, my father skied the five mile round trip to the Union Common and bought some. Growing up, we experienced hard times because the poultry business was a money suck. Grain prices rose while egg and meat prices dropped, so we spent a scary stretch as kids knowing the farm might be in jeopardy, but not feeling like we could bring up our fears.

Sennebec Hill Farm from across the lake

The house overlooks Sennebec Lake which the Georges River runs through before going through Round and Seven Tree Ponds on its way to the ocean near Thomaston. When we were first in school, Kate and I rode to school in a 1947 Woodie station wagon driven by Wilbur Abbott. After picking us, the ‘bus’ crossed the remains of a canal built in part by General Henry Knox in the 1700’s, and the Hills Mills Bridge before picking up kids on the opposite side of the lake. I got kicked off the ‘bus’ early on for using the word pregnant. Censorship was stricter and more prevalent in the 1950s.

I discovered real early in life that I didn’t fit in and living on a big farm with plenty of places to hide was a lifesaver. Over time, I pretty much memorized every bit of our property as well as everything to the top of the ridge and north into Appleton. Dad started taking me hunting when I was nine and I remember looking up into what seemed like monster trees to locate porcupines.

My favorite part of the farm was and probably still is the small hill opposite the house. There was a huge hollow tree on its back side, probably the biggest beech tree I’ve ever seen. Over the years, that tree was home to hundreds of porcupines. One of the more interesting aspects of the hill is the absolute impossibility of getting to the top and surprising the deer who call it home. Even when the wind is blowing steadily at chilling speeds from a particular direction, the topography is such that swirling currents move your scent around so they know you’re there. It’s also a grand place for partridge and rabbits. Even when hunting season isn’t open, it’s a neat place to explore because you never know what you’ll discover. During hunting season of my freshman year in high school, I was walking the woods road on the back side and two mountain lions walked across my path. I was so surprised, the thought of shooting them never entered my mind. Later that winter, one of them returned and spent some time early one morning leaping through the orchard. I attempted to make a plaster cast of its track, but failed. In hindsight, I should have cut it free and kept it frozen. I did measure the track span and the distance between leaps was 16 feet. While the local game warden downplayed the possibility it was a mountain lion, they have been seen over the years by several other hunters along the stretch between Appleton and Union.

When we were involved with youth groups, it was an annual tradition to do treasure hunts on the hill. Three trails, red, white and blue, were blazed through the forest with cans of candy buried near the last mark on each one. For all I know, there may be one still buried that was never found.

Perhaps the most magical time to be on that hill is during a heavy snowfall. Despite my familiarity with it, the moment big flakes descend, my sense of direction vanishes, leaving me bemused and delighted. There’s a unique magic to the hissing silence of snow filtering through thick evergreens.

The apple orchard in winter.

One year, Kate and I became fascinated with the clay deposits along the banks of a small rivulet that starts below an old well behind an abandoned pump house in the orchard. Swampy woodland soon turns into a trench which gradually widens and deepens as it follows a small gully behind mixed oak, fir and beech trees bordering the back edge of the orchard. Years of snow melt and rainstorms have further eroded the banks, leaving large expanses of blue and gray clay, perfect for firing the imaginations of kids as well as making crude pottery. We got it into our heads that there might be gold or some exotic metal in the rust colored bands striping the deposits. Mom, a former lab person at Hoffman LaRoche, sent a sample to Dr. Rudolf Koster, her boss at the drug company and a couple weeks later, we got a genuine chemical analysis. It was a perfect way to fuel already curious minds.

Finished product

After our father got out of the poultry business, he went to work at Merry Gardens in Camden. It was, I’m sure, a more satisfying work experience than cussing chickens all day. One of the projects he took on and liked a lot was the making of partridge berry bowls at Christmas, These miniature terrariums sat in a glass bowl and contained moss, partridge berries and downy rattlesnake plantain. We used to hike across the swamp behind the orchard and collect them while hunting, the berries by the swamp, the plantain halfway up the hill under tall evergreens.

Safest snake in the woods

One of my defining moments happened along the edge of the swamp one October evening just before dusk. I had been on the hill hunting partridge and kept hearing whistling overhead. Ducks in flocks from two to twenty were passing above me before wheeling and dropping toward the small stream flowing through the swamp area. I hadn’t been down there for quite some time and was amazed to find the area was completely flooded thanks to a new beaver dam. The water was several feet deep and duckweed floated in large rafts. It was this green carpet that attracted the Teal, Mallards, Wood Ducks and Black Ducks, along with an occasional Canvasback. The best way to describe it is to liken it to an auditory fireworks display. Birds were swooping in for a landing so rapidly I couldn’t keep up. That evening I caught duck hunting fever, a passion I shared with my friend Jon Marks for the next twenty or so years.

We had a hunter’s double delight when the beavers moved upstream and built another pond bordering the field leading to an abandoned house we called the Teal Place. It became an annual ritual for the two of us to start before sunrise in Jon’s duck boat on Merrymeeting Bay and after a mid morning break for breakfast, we’d hit the beaver ponds as well as a couple spots in Appleton.

The Teal place is memorable for a couple other reasons. Another boyhood friend, Sandy Smith and I were exploring the area one September Saturday when I spotted something shiny in a tree by the old cellar hole. It turned out to be a radiosonde from a weather balloon launched in Illinois several weeks earlier. Instructions in an attached plastic bag identified it and included an address label to use when sending back the transmitter. I got to keep the rest and it made for a neat show and tell item at school. That old cellar hole also had Concord grape vines growing around it that in good years, were loaded with ripe fruit. They sparked an interest I still have, culminating in six vines on trellises down back of our house.

There are enough memories connected to Sennebec Hill Farm to fill ten more pages, but they can wait for another time. I’m curious about YOUR emotional geography.

LOVE AND CHOCOLATE

Susan Vaughan here. Saturday was indeed “Love and Chocolate.” Librarian Sue McClintock, of the Vose Library in Union, Maine, invited me to be the first romance author to do a book talk. The month of Valentine’s Day seemed to be the logical time for a romance author. 

The Vose Library has occupied a modern building with up-to-date services that go way beyond books since 2011, but it began small in 1931 with a bequest of books and money from Helen Ayer Vose, a teacher who was born in the town of Union. As a former teacher, I found this dear to my heart. Sue arranged a table and folding chairs in the sunny and cheerful children’s area, furnished with the best clock for readers and writers.

Guaranteed to draw in library patrons who didn’t know me as an author were yummy refreshments—hot chocolate and chocolate tarts prepared by Sue. My contribution was a Valentine collection of decadent chocolates from Safe Harbor Confections .

The nice-size group collected refreshments and then settled in chairs for my presentation. After Sue’s brief introduction, I shared some of my background as a teacher and what led me to writing romantic suspense. I’ve always read mysteries, and when I discovered that genre folded into romance, I was sold.

Granted, suspense is slightly different from a straight mystery. Usually a mystery is about solving a crime, typically a murder, that has already happened. In a suspense novel, with or without a romance as a large part of the plot, often the reader knows up front the villain’s identity; the plot focuses on stopping his nefarious plot. Most of my romantic suspense books incorporate both suspense and mystery.

I shared some of the background on my newest book Always a Suspect, which is a revised and updated release of my very first book, published in 2001 by Harlequin as Dangerous Attraction.

Although during most of my teaching career I taught in other areas, my college major was French literature, so the French-Canadian heritage in Maine fascinates me. Briefly, here’s how I used that background. I needed a strong internal conflict for Claire and hit on the idea of a curse. Because of tragedy in her childhood, the superstitious French-Canadian aunts who raised her led her to believe her beauty was a curse and that anyone close to her would die. When two husbands and a fiancé are killed under mysterious circumstances, belief in the curse causes her to shut herself off from the world. But an anonymous caller and persecution by the police force her to hire a PI to clear her name.

When I received the publishing rights back, I suspected to do a lot of revision because (I believe) I’m a better writer than I was back when I wrote the original on my huge Gateway computer. In addition to tightening the prose, I needed to update the technology. My audience chuckled as I described those. Land lines became cell phones, an answering machine became voice mail, hand-held police radios became cell phones, and a mini-tape recorder became a digital recorder.

I then read three excerpts from the beginning of the book, to give the audience a sense of the characters and to set up the plot. When I finished, people had lots of questions about research, promotion, and publishing in general. I had a wonderful time chatting with this group and sharing my story with them. I did sell a few books as well.

We authors love our librarians, who not only promote reading and authors, but offer opportunities like this one for particular authors to share snippets of our books and insights into our writing processes. So thank you, Sue and the Union residents who joined me for “Love and Chocolate.” I’m feeling the love!

Weekend Update: February 6-7, 2016

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Susan Vaughan (Monday), John Clark (Tuesday), Kate Flora (Wednesday), Dorothy Cannell (Thursday), and Chris Holm (Friday).

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

From Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: In keeping with my blog last month on Jigsaw Puzzle Therapy I’ve finished another jigsaw puzzle.

And I’m almost finished with the rough (very very rough) draft of the third Mistress Jaffrey Mystery. Then all I’ll have to do is make sense of the plot, fix all the continuity problems, make sure my characters are behaving in a rational manner, correct the thirty gazillion typos and misspellings, and delete all the repetitious and unnecessary words. And, oh yes, think up a title. Wish me luck.

 

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: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com