Lea Wait's Blog, page 270

Waiting for the Punchline

Jessie: In northern New England, wondering if it is too early, or just plain wrong to gloat about missing out on the snow covering the mid-Atlantic. 

I’ve been thinking about weather a lot lately. Winter has been slow in coming to my part of the world and much bemused merriment shines from my neighbors’ faces. The scraping grind of snowplows is usually the background noise of winter here but instead, all has been eerily quiet. Ice races have been canceled on the lake. The ground has just recently consented to freeze into solid, irregular lumps. Frost heaves and potholes are only now beginning to make nuisances of themselves.

All of this had got me to thinking about how I am not spending the winter this year. I’m not using my slow cooker ever single night. I’m not wearing my bathrobe over a fleece track suit, over thrermals, all day. I’m not considering ordering all our food from Amazon so I don’t have to go out into the cold to the grocer. I’m not thinking about adopting dogs from the local shelter just so they will sit on my lap even though I am horribly allergic. I’m not even typing this post while wearing fingerless gloves.

Sure, the temperatures plummeted to below freezing for a few days last week but they’ve bounced back up and any forecasts for precipitation are calling for snow showers rather than drifts. The days have noticeably lengthened before I’ve lost the will to leave my bed. I haven’t even had to make a desperate run to the pharmacy for tissues and cough syrup for one of my kids.

I ought to be happy but instead I feel uneasy, like I’m waiting for the punchline. Like a tsunami will roll up over my barely snow-dusted lawn or an earthquake will crack my ice-free driveway. Maybe killer bees will arrive come spring or rattlesnakes will start basking on my  flagstone patio by summer.

The worry almost makes me envy those people who are digging out their mailboxes. Almost.

Readers, are you having an unusual winter? If so, what are you or aren’t you doing lately?

 

Weekend Update: January 23-24, 2016

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Jessie Crockett (Monday), Bruce Coffin (Tuesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Wednesday), John Clark (Thursday), and Kate Flora (Friday).

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

Chris Holm is a finalist for the Lefty, given at Left Coast Crime.

See THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and then join Crime Writers Kate Flora, Gayle Lynds, Lea Wait, Chris Holm, Paul Doiron for a discussion immediately following the Sunday, January 31st 2pm Matinee at the Portland Stage, 25 Forest Avenue! Complementary wine and cheese reception to follow discussion. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes story gets a gloriously funny makeover in this cheeky spoof adapted by Stephen Canny and John Nicholson of the hit comedy team Peepolykus. This rollicking good show has Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson unraveling the mystery of Sir Charles’ death and the curse of the hound! Packed full of the verbal and visual ingenuity that Peepolykus is known for, this fast-paced comedy offers a slapstick adaptation of this classic tale featuring three actors in various roles. http://www.portlandstage.org/show/the...

SAVE THE DATES:

Friday, April 8th for Two Minutes in the Slammer–a crime community event as part of the Maine Crime Wave. Portland Public Library in the evening.

Saturday, April 9th: Maine Crime Wave. Our own mystery conference with crime, cops, manuscript workshops and craft sessions. Portland Public Library.

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

The ‘truth’ is never a sure thing: ‘Making a Murderer’ and more

Hi from Maine Crime Writers. Maureen here tonight.

I haven’t had a chance to start watching “Making a Murderer” yet, but I plan to soon. Probably this weekend. The documentary series on Netflix examines the conviction of a man and his teenage nephew for murdering a woman, and apparently (I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers) makes a case for their innocence. While I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers, I did read an article the other day that pointed out prosecutors say important information was left out of the mini-series that shows Steve Avery, the subject of the documentary, is not innocent.

On the other hand, if he was set up for the murder the way he was set up and went to prison for 18 years for a rape he didn’t commit, then, yeah, they’re going to say stuff like that.

I’ll hold off judgment until I’ve watched it. Though even then, I know I won’t know for sure.

It reminds me of a multi-part documentary I watched several years ago, “The Staircase,” which apparently just re-aired on Sundance. The Academy Award-winning mini-series by filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade was incredibly sympathetic to the subject of it, author Michael Peterson, who had been convicted after his wife, Kathleen, was found battered and dead at the bottom of a blood-spattered staircase in their family home in North Carolina.

After I watched it, I read “A Perfect Husband,” by Aphrodite Jones about the same case. And it was a whole different story. I was convinced after reading that, despite the hours of documentary footage that would convince some viewers otherwise, that Peterson is guilty.

It’s a big reminder that we don’t become experts on a topic from watching a TV series or reading a book. The information we’re given is not only shaped by who’s telling the story, but also our own perceptions and comfort zones.

A case here in Maine, that of Dennis Dechaine, is another example. Dechaine was convicted of killing 12-year-old Sarah Cherry in 1988. A tenacious group of supporters believe he’s innocent and are pushing for the case to get another look. A filmmaker who also believes in Dechaine’s innocence is making a documentary.

The general consensus in Maine seems to be that Dechaine is guilty and his supporters are a little nuts. I won’t get into all the details of the case here, but I’ve done a lot of reading on it – more than “The Staircase” case and certainly more than “Making of a Murderer” – and I think there’s a compelling argument for his innocence, including a fairly obvious more likely suspect.

But again, it’s all conjecture.

Even if we sit through every minute of a court case and listen to every word of testimony, we don’t get the full story.

I just finished reading Jon Krakauer’s “Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town,” which is an in-depth look at college campus sexual assault. It’s a depressing reminder that our attitudes about rape and its victims never seems to change. Just as depressing is the farce many of those in the justice system make of “justice.” Particularly when money, power and public image are involved.

I understand that defense lawyers need to defend. In fact, I’m a big supporter of lawyers who defend unsavory defendants. I fully believe in people’s constitutional right to representation and that the justice system only works when those accused of crimes are represented well. Anyone who believes in our Constitution should feel the same. Let’s hear it for our Sixth Amendment rights!

But that can all end up falling apart fast.

The book quotes notorious defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, who says, basically, that defense lawyers will lie like dogs to get an acquittal. It’s all about winning, not about the truth. I don’t know if all lawyers feel that way, but the ones in “Missoula” certainly do. And they get a lot of help from the prosecution and law enforcement.

One of the disturbing things about the book is that most people would rather have their assumptions and general conclusions validated than be forced to look at things a different way. “Making a Murderer” and “The Staircase” lets us believe we’re looking at things from a different angle and shaking up our comfortable perceptions. We get all giddy with the possibilities, that this guy who everyone believe murdered someone maybe didn’t. In the end, though, for us it’s really just fiction and the stakes are low. Most of us are lucky enough that we’ll never have to go through someone in our family or a close friend being murdered. Or see a family member or friend accused, rightly or wrongly, of murder.

“Missoula,” on the other hand, reinforces an all-too-familiar scenario.

We’d rather believe the nice-guy football star really is a nice guy, not a rapist. No matter what the evidence, we will not believe a “friend” or acquaintance, or anyone but the scary stranger in the bushes, would rape a woman. Even if that woman is a friend, too.

We don’t want our world and perceptions shaken up that much. It’s why the huge majority of rape victims never report it or tell a soul. Just about everyone reading this post knows someone who has been raped who has never told. Or is a victim herself. Or himself. There are many more silent rape victims out there than people wrongly convicted of murder.

The documentaries about the possible wrongful convictions, as well as “Missoula,” are studies of how the justice system can go wrong.

They’re also studies of how easily manipulated we can be as observers, not only by the information that’s presented to us that we don’t question, but our own perceptions and comfort zones.

Maureen Milliken is the author of Cold Hard News, the first in the Bernie O’Dea mystery series. Follow her on Twitter at @mmilliken47, like her Facebook page, Maureen Milliken mysteries, sign up for weekly email updates at her website, maureenmilliken.com.

 

Horrid Murder!

Jen Blood on the Maine Crime scene today… I’ve been racking my brain for about a week now, looking for something extraordinary and entertaining for this month’s post with Maine Crime Writers. After Chris’s eloquent article on Monday, I thought I’d take a much less timely or studied approach while nonetheless continuing on the theme of Maine Crime… The crime this time, however, took place over two hundred years ago. I first began researching the grisly tale for a short story I wrote and then produced as a radio drama with WRFR, our local public broadcasting station in Rockland:

IT WASN’T THE GHOSTS THAT DREW ME TO THE STONE HOUSE. It wasn’t even the history, really. Not the mystery, nor the murder. Or murders, actually—eight of them over two hundred years before, when a supposedly upright former Harvard professor named Isaiah Burch took an axe to six of his seven children and his wife one night, then used his finest straight razor to slit his own throat.

But it wasn’t the murders that brought me to the house, either. No. Erin Solomon brought me there that day. The history and the mystery and the murder were just a convenient excuse. Solomon brought me there…

The ghosts just made me stay.

You can listen to the full audio here. It is based, albeit loosely, on the Purrington mass murder of 1806.

I first heard about the Purrington (there is much confusion as to the correct spelling of the name; I’m going with this one, but it’s also referred to as Purington and Purrinton) murders while doing a story on the Maine Greyhound Placement Service for Downeast Dog News a few years ago, because MGPS is actually built either on or near the site where the Purrington house once stood. While interviewing one of the volunteers there, he brought up the story. I promptly went home and researched, and stored it away as something I wanted to draw on at some undefined point in the future.

In 1805, Captain James Purrington moved with his family from Bowdoinham, Maine, to a farm on Old Belgrade Road in Augusta. From everything I’ve read thus far, he was a moody, dark sort of fellow, and my guess based on the highs and lows and what was called “hereditary madness” when people spoke about him after the fact, is that he probably suffered from bipolar or schizophrenia or some other illness that, in another time, might have been treated before things got out of hand. Unfortunately, that’s not the way things happened for the Purrington family.

Here’s an account from a hand-printed bill that detailed the night of the crime, on July 9, 1806:

“Between the hours of 2 and 3, a near neighbor, Mr. Dean Wyman, was awakened by the lad who escaped, with an incoherent account of the horrid scene from which he had just fled; he, with a Mr. Ballard, another neighbor, instantly repaired to the fatal spot, and here, after having lighted a candle, a scene was presented which beggars all description.–In the outer room lay prostrate on his face, and weltering in his gore, the perpetrator of the dreadful deed–his throat cut in the most shocking manner, and the bloody razor lying on a table by his side–In an adjoining bed-room lay Mrs. Purrinton in her bed, her head almost severed from her body; and near her on the floor, a little daughter about ten years old, who probably hearing the cries of her mother, ran to her relief from the apartment in which she slept, and was murdered by her side…”

What always gets me about these sorts of things is the graphic nature of the text. And, beyond that, you’ll note the depiction of the eight caskets on the bill (pictured above) — two large, the others lined up from largest to smallest. Eeks. According to the story, James Purrington was buried apart from the rest of the family, the axe and straight razor in the coffin with him. Though technically pre-Victorian, the account already shows that lurid fascination with the macabre the Victorian era is renowned for. The mid- to late- 1800s saw the return of so-called “mourning jewelry” – first made popular in the 1600s, jewelry made from a loved ones’ clothing, hair, or even bones – as well as the by-now-familiar memento mori death portraits. The Purrington murders pre-date those portraits by decades, but I took some liberties with my short story and included one such portrait – the image was just too chilling to resist.

The full story was that Purrington took an axe and murdered his wife, six of his eight children, and then killed himself with a straight razor. A seventeen-year-old son – the “lad” mentioned in the article – escaped with only minor injuries, while fifteen-year-old daughter Martha survived for another three weeks before she finally succumbed to her injuries.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Midwife’s Tale tells the story of Martha Ballard, a midwife with the incredible reputation of having never lost a mother in over one thousand births. Ballard was the midwife for the younger of the Purrington children, and the night of the murder it was Ballard’s home that the surviving son, seventeen-year-old James Purrington, fled to. The midwife detailed the night of the murder in her journal, and part of that story is told in Midwife’s Tale (which was later made into an award-winning PBS documentary).

I’ve altered other details of the crime to make everything fit within the fabric of my short story, including changing James Purrington from a captain with a history of ups and downs to a former Harvard professor who had been the picture of health. There is no greyhound farm in the story, but rather an old ice house and Freeport’s Stone House – a rambling estate I came to love while attending the University of Southern Maine’s Creative Writing MFA, as most of the MFA’s conferences and workshops were held there. But the spirit of the crime, that chilling knowledge that something dark and inexplicable happened in this place, remains.

The final line that captured my imagination and always makes me pause, is toward the end of the hand-printed bill, and was italicized by the original author.

“The ways of Providence are dark and mysterious! yet God is just! and man, weak man, must tremble and adore!”

You can read the full text from the hand-printed bill here.

Edgar Allan Cozy

by Barb, in Key West, where it’s a brisk 63 degrees today and the natives are shivering and moaning and wearing parkas

Yesterday was Edgar Allan Poe’s 207th birthday, and over at Wicked Cozy Authors we marked the day by publishing our “tribute” book of stories and poems inspired by his work.

Most of you probably know that I also blog at Wicked Cozy. We’re a group of authors and long time friends who were originally bound by our subgenre (cozy mysteries) and our settings (New England from Connecticut to Maine). Since those early days, we’ve branched out quite a bit and have published romantic suspense, short stories and (coming soon) historicals, in settings that range from southern Indiana to Ireland.

Last spring, one of our “Wicked Accomplices” and regular bloggers, Jane Haertel (aka Sadie Hartwell at Kensington and Susannah Hardy at Penguin) proposed that with things going so swimmingly at the blog, we should publish a book of short stories.

My first thought was, “It will never work.” In fairness, this is my first reaction to just about anything. I’m sure that sounds odd for someone who was an executive at three successful start-ups, but I learned early on that resources and time are finite and saying “no,” was often as important as saying, “yes.”

Plus, I had just finished having partial responsibility for an anthology at Level Best Books, and it seemed perverse to jump back in so soon.

But as anyone who knows me will tell you, I usually come around. As I did in this case, especially after the idea took hold that the stories would be inspired by a work by Poe.

Stephen King says that story ideas often come down to seeing two things and having them come together in some new and interesting way. When I thought of Poe, two things that had been rattling in my brain came together.

One was this: What if you moved “The Raven” to modern times and the narrator was harangued not by a bird, but by a telemarketer?

Once upon a weeknight dreary, while I watched, alone and bleary

Leonard on the Big Bang Theory, courting Penny from next door

Suddenly I felt a tingle, then my nether regions jingled

A cell phone call? I’d let it ringle, echoing across the floor.

The other was inspired by a scene in the movie City Slickers when Billy Crystal’s character, who sells advertising time for a radio station, complains that he “sells air.” I liked the idea of someone selling “time,” i.e. selling my hapless narrator a timeshare.

Now I knew she was a scammer, and a flimmer and a flammer

She cut me to the quick, God damn her, when she mentioned my Lenore

“There’s one thing,” I said, “I’m sure of. Time’s the thing you can’t buy more of.

Even rich men have no cure of death when he comes through the door.”

Thus, my version of “The Raven,” was born.

You’d think the hard part would be the keeping the rhythm and finding all the rhymes, but instead, the hard part was finding a story arc, and a middle and an end, just like writing a novel or a short story. The muddling middle gets you every time.

You can read all the stories with the simple expenditure of $2.99 on Amazon.

Here’s the description.

When cozy mystery writers meet Edgar Allan Poe, the result is Edgar Allan Cozy. Each story in this suspenseful new anthology is inspired by the work of Poe. “The Raven,” “The Lighthouse,” “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Annabel Lee” have been updated and set in the fictional town of Raven Harbor, Maine. With stories by Sheila Connolly, Edith Maxwell, Sherry Harris, Barbara Ross and Sadie Hartwell. Edited by Sadie Hartwell.

Readers: What do you think of this project? Whose work should inspire out next collection?

In My Study There’s …

Lea Wait, here! Over the years lots of people have asked me what was in my study. (A crystal ball? A rabbit’s foot?)

Actually, in addition to books and papers I’m actually using on a day-to-day basis, I do have a lot of memories tucked into various corners of my study. There’s the picture of my husband and I dancing in a Paris Street. An antique print of a Great Blue Heron. A button that reads, “STET, DAMMIT!” on my bulletin board. And a lot more. So, today, come with me on a tour … welcome to where I spend most of my days – and some of my nights~!

19th C medical book, books on poisons, costumes

Ceramic Pencil Holder made by my daughter Liz

 

Noted for future books

Books on Needlepoint

My daughters, Xmas, 1987

 

 

 

Agatha Award Nomination

My hero!

Reference Books & Etcs …

Gift from Reader

Winslow Homer wood engraving – “Digging Out”

My writing assistant, making a few edits

Smocked pillow made by my sister Nancy’ Seaward Born pillow quilted by young fan

Teddy Bear I gave the guy I loved when he had heart surgery in 1982. He returned it to me when we moved in together in 2003.

19th C wardrobe re-purposed for office supplies (Blankets for cat on top!)

19th C brass stencils

Mary Queen of Scots paperweight from Edinburgh

 

In Which I Actually Talk About Maine Crime

By Chris Holm

For a blog called Maine Crime Writers, we talk very little about Maine crime. That’s understandable, I suppose. For one thing, there’s damn little of it, per capita. For another, most of us are here because we love the state, and are therefore disinclined to shine a light on its shortcomings. But last week, it seemed Maine crime was all anybody was talking about.

At a recent town hall meeting, Governor LePage described Maine’s heroin problem thusly:

“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty… these types of guys… they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”

LePage’s comments were—by any measure—racist and insulting, and the media’s response was swift. Rachel Maddow and The Daily Show had their fun. Presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle weighed in. A local musician remixed his remarks. A novelty Twitter account parodied them. A second-rate lad-mag hack penned the hastiest of hot takes wondering if the nation would be better off selling our great state to Denmark for a tidy profit.

I’m not here to add fuel to the flames or spark a political discussion in the comment section. In fact, although I found his statements wrongheaded and offensive, I think the governor’s frustration over Maine’s drug problem is sincere, if misplaced. His comments touched on a common misconception among Mainers: namely, that crime (and, in specific, drug crime) is something imported by people From Away.

The fact is, our heroin problem has its roots in prescription opiate abuse, and the recent crackdown on same. This summer, the Washington Post ran a devastating long read about Maine’s heroin epidemic, centering on one well-to-do Falmouth family whose two sons overdosed within twenty-four hours of each other:

They were kids who had it made, at least on paper… They had cars, money and plenty of independence, like many teens in Falmouth, a town of 11,000, a place of privilege just across a short bridge from Portland, the state’s largest city.

It’s a place now ravaged by heroin—four overdoses, two of them fatal, in the past 10 months, in a town more accustomed to nothing of the kind. Maine is at the burning core of a nationwide heroin epidemic, the perverse outcome of a well-intentioned drive to save Americans from the last drug craze, a widespread hunger for heroin’s chemical cousin, prescription opiate pills such as Oxycontin.

Heroin—now cheap, plentiful and more potent than ever—is killing people at record rates. Across the nation, deaths from heroin overdoses nearly quadrupled in the decade ending in 2013, according to a new analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Maine, deaths from heroin overdoses ballooned from seven in 2010 to 57 last year. Two-thirds of the victims were, like David, adults in their 20s and 30s. In 2012, heroin accounted for 8 percent of the caseload for Maine’s Drug Crimes Task Force; last year, it jumped to 32 percent. In Portland, the number of addicts served by the needle exchange nearly doubled in just two years. Today in Maine, a single tablet of Oxycontin often costs $50; addicts can find a single-dose packet of heroin for as little as $10.

I urge you all to read the whole piece if you have a chance. It might just change your perspective on the matter.

To give the governor some small measure of credit, I understand the temptation to see Maine’s drug problem as the result of some easily demonized Other that can be defeated (although I find it troubling that his idea of Other is ‘brown people from New York and Connecticut’), but we’ll never solve it thinking like that.

The problem is us—and the solution is us, too.

We need to expand programs like this one that get addicts into recovery, rather than locking them up or tossing them back onto the street. We need to pressure state lawmakers to approve funds for new rehab facilities. We need to treat drug users with compassion, not hostility.

Oh, and if any of you decide you need a new target for your hostility, I recommend the aforementioned lad-mag hack. Maybe, as this hilarious response to his piece suggests, we can sell him to Denmark for a tidy profit.

Weekend Update: January 16-17, 2016

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Chris Holm (Monday), Lea Wait (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday), Jen Blood (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:

from Kaitlyn Dunnett: The current puzzle is nearly done.

For those who read my post on Monday, I thought you might like to see what it looks like when just the pieces without “clues” remain to be put in place.

 

 

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

The Escape Artist Fails Again!

Kate Flora here, following up on a discovery I recently made: that the only way I can stop working is to leave my desk. When I’m at home, that desk projects an energy field (unless it’s a tractor beam) that pulls me back whenever I stray for too long. So I decided to leave my desk behind, buried under a mound of work that wants my attention, and go west. Hike in Tucson and Sedona, snowshoe at Big Bear Lake, and walk the hills of San Francisco.

Getting ready to leave for any trip makes me long for those days when everything wasn’t instant response, quick turn-around, must be done right now. Before cell phones and scanners and e-mail. Back to the days of the Pony Express, when months could pass between request and response. Beyond the obvious, like paying bills and stopping mail, and arranging for a house sitter, on the eve of departure, there is the Intent to Harvest Timber form that must be filed with the State of Maine. A copy of the family trust must be located and copied and mailed to the attorney. Annual bar registration, languishing unattended, must be filled out on line. The surveyor must be nudged about a property description for the deed. The remaining Christmas gifts–opened and left behind–must be mailed to various parts of the country.

At last, everything is in order for escape and it is time to pack. But no! My beloved Lowa hiking boots, that have traipsed through Scotland, slogged through three days of rain and snow on the Milford Track in New Zealand, hiked sacred mountains in Mexico and through the Canadian woods are . . . MISSING! And a search of every closet and places logical and illogical does not help. I am leaving for a hiking trip and I’ve lost my shoes. No time to shop for new ones—when I bought these, I literally spent 2 ½ hours at L.L. Bean trying on every pair in my size and walking up and down their little artificial hill until I found the perfect boots. Instead, into the bag go the dinosaurs—a pair of boots bought at Goodwill 25 years ago, boots so heavy I can barely lift my feet—but ones that are waterproof, elephant-proof, and indestructible. I finish packing and turn to choose some books to read. I’ve got Ann Patchett’s This is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Geraldine Brooks’s March and the always compelling Jeff Deaver on my iPad and as I am shutting down the computer: BING! I’ve got mail.

High up in Sabino Canyon

Of course, you all know that the long tentacles of publishing don’t ever really let go, and so, as has been the case for the past twenty plus years, on the eve of my departure, the edited manuscript for my spring book A Good Man with a Dog—one that of course wants a quick turn-around—arrives in my “In” box. My suitcase is full of hiking gear, snowshoeing gear, and fancy city restaurant gear. Now it is also full of my desk–in the form of my trusty laptop. This reminds me that I’ve edited books on the beach during a quick escape to Bermuda. On the lanai on a trip to Florida. I’ve negotiated a book deal from the hotel business center in Bangkok. And now I will be editing a book at the elegant Huntington Hotel in San Francisco, and remembering that one of my Thea Kozak mysteries, An Educated Death, opens with Thea and Andre at The Clift just down the street.

I will also be pondering the future of my Joe Burgess series, because another BING! brought the news that Five Star is dropping their mystery line. What will be the fate of Burgess five, And Led Them Thus Astray?

Writers leave home to find new ideas, nurture our sense of observation, and to be reminded that this job is about being creative and curious. Walking trails in the wilderness and the stillness is a great time to think about plots and characters. We are also reminded that yes, magical and creative as it is, writing is a job, with deadlines and obligations we can never really get away from.

Meanwhile, it has snowed in Tucson and Sedona, and so perhaps it is good that I have lined, waterproof boots to slog through the mud and ice on my way to the Kachina Woman vortex. Where the world falls away as a man named Bob sits atop a red rock and plays his flute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dez1E4O78wA

The rock where Bob is sitting as his haunting flute floats over the canyon

 

Kachina Woman presiding over her vortex

Lessons 5 and 6: Be Brave and Keep on Trucking, Baby

By Brenda Buchanan

In November and December, I wrote about some of the lessons I’ve learned during my first year as a published author. It’s been affirming for me to write them down and share them publicly, and I’m grateful to everyone who has offered comments to date. Today’s post covers the final two lessons: find your courage and your true path, then keep moving forward.

Lesson #5: Look Fear in the Face and Don’t Blink

Everyone is rattled by something.  When you’re writing for publication, many things have the potential to freak you out if you allow yourself to dwell on them.

You might not sell any books.

Reviewers will universally hate what you write.

Crippling writer’s block will seize your soul the day after you launch your first book and you’ll never write another coherent paragraph.

None of those particular terrors went bump in my pre-publication nights.

This time last year the dread that had me studying the ceiling at 3 a.m. was the realization that with the April launch of Quick Pivot, I would have to stand up in front of people and talk about my book.

Ridiculous, right?  A significant part of my livelihood as a lawyer involves speaking publicly. Years ago I addressed an enormous crowd as class speaker at my law school graduation. Since then I’ve tried cases in District and Superior Court and argued before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

You would think this experience would help. It did the opposite.

The truth was, lawyer-speaking ruined me (temporarily) for writer-speaking. Over the years I’d learned how to stand up, lay out my case and then defend it, because lawyers are trained to peck at each other’s arguments like famished crows. There’s no precedent to support that proposition. Nobody’s going to buy that story. Your client is living in a fantasy world. 

Though I no longer try cases in court, much of my workday communication continues to be verbal swordplay. It may seem more like convincing, cajoling or creative coaxing, but at bottom, it is arguing. I want something. The person across the table or on the other end of the phone wants something else. It’s a battle, even if we pretend it’s not.

Late last winter I realized I needed an intervention to help me overcome my worry that readers would come to their local library so they could tell me in person about the shortcomings in my books. To deal with my anxiety-driven insomnia I went to the best doctor in town—the amazing Elizabeth Peavey.

For those unfamiliar with Liz, she is an accomplished writer, brilliant performer and public speaking coach par excellence. She lives in Portland and is known statewide (should be worldwide) for her many talents. Here’s a link to her website, for anyone who thinks they might benefit from speaking instruction or would like to know more about her terrific writing. http://elizabethpeavey.com/

Liz helped me with technical stuff (among other things, I had the voice-dropping-off-at-end-of-sentence thing going on) and offered vital breathing and posture tips (“your body is a bellows” she, well, bellowed). But the primo takeaway was her conviction—which she promised was true—that at my readings, people would not attack me or my work. “People show up for these events because they enjoy being read to and they love to meet authors,” she said. “They’re cheering for you. They want you to succeed.”

Liz was right. The nicest people in the world have attended my readings. They’ve grinned at me from the audience. They’ve asked thoughtful questions. They’ve even applauded at the end. Having adopted Liz’s bellows-breathing mantra, I have never once fainted and I always leave these events feeling like a million bucks.

The lesson? When we’re in the grip of any fear, we forget the absolute rush of finally facing it down. My advice for anyone in my (formerly) quaking boots is to brush aside your night-terrors, whatever they may be, and go for it. You’ll be glad you did.

 

Lesson #6:  Be True to Yourself and Keep Going

Like many of you, I always have considered myself a writer. When I left journalism for law school, that essential truth didn’t change. I figured I simply was going to do something else for a while. Eight years ago—20 years after walking away from the keyboard—I decided to get back to it. It was a transformative decision, reconnecting me with my true, core self.

I was well aware that publication would be a long road that I’d need to walk (mostly) by myself, nurturing the blind, radical faith that I’d make it to my destination.

But when I attained my goal of becoming a published author, my journey wasn’t over. In fact, it had just begun.

We all know the sun does not set in glory and the credits do not roll after Book One. One must write more books or short stories. That part of the writing process doesn’t magically get easier the second (or third, or fourth) time around. Whether you have a one-book contract or a multiple-book deal, you must keep your publisher happy, and the challenge of staying a published writer is real and somewhat intimidating.

This is where the part about being a writer, not just playing at it, comes in. You need fortitude. Grit. Resilience. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to face the most difficult parts on your own.

I have been fortunate in my rookie year to get to know many well-established writers (including my talented MCW colleagues) who have blazed a trail for me to follow. Their advice? Stay on course, but be flexible.  It’s guidance I’m taking to heart as I continue to move forward.

My third book launches on February 1. Here’s the cover.

I’m hard at work on a fourth novel, though I don’t have a contract for it. There are a few short story ideas I’m developing without an identified market in mind. I plan to keep on keeping on, maintain the daily rhythm of putting words to paper and leave the tether off my imagination while the future unfolds.

My destination isn’t as clear as it was last year when I was working day and night to fulfill a three-book contract with tight deadlines, but I’m cool with that. I know who I am. I’m a writer. And I’ve got these six lessons in my backpack to keep me on course.

I am so grateful for your company on the journey.

Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a diehard Maine newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. The third book—TRUTH BEAT—will be released by Carina Press on February 1.  Like QUICK PIVOT and COVER STORY, the earlier books in the series, TRUTH BEAT will be available wherever ebooks are sold.