Lea Wait's Blog, page 284

Murder without the Gore: Part I

Kathy Lynn Emerson/ Kaitlyn Dunnett here, chiming in on that ever popular topic of categorizing mystery novels. I’m breaking this down into three parts—there is no way to cover everything in one post of reasonable length. The text in all three is an updated version of a workshop I gave at the 2015 Maine Crime Wave.

Let me just say first that I hate labels. They are the invention of booksellers and publishers. Unfortunately, writers are stuck with them. That means we have to try to understand what those labels mean if we ever hope to have our novels published and made available to the general public.

When I wrote How To Write Killer Historical Mysteries, I devoted the entire first chapter to definitions. It could have been twice as long as it is. It can also be ignored in favor of getting down to the nuts and bolts advice that begins at chapter two. My point is that, as much as I’d like to be able to skim lightly over definitions, we’re stuck with them. There is no way to talk about “traditional mysteries” without defining both the genre and its subgenres.

The subgenres are what cause most of the trouble, especially the one labeled “cozy.”

In the broadest sense, the two ends of the mystery spectrum go by the names “hard boiled” and “traditional.” There’s obviously a lot of territory in between. Since I’m looking at the traditional end, let me quote the official definition used by the Malice Domestic convention in determining what works are eligible for the Agatha award for traditional mysteries. It has two parts. First, “books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie” and second, “a genre loosely defined as mysteries which contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence.”

That’s it, but those two guidelines cover a lot of territory, especially when you remember that Christie created Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence, and a quite a few stand-alone detectives, as well as Miss Marple. If you take a look at the books that have been finalists for the Agatha award over the years, you’ll see that they cover a wide spectrum.

This year, in contemporary novel, there were The Good, the Bad, and the Emus by Donna Andrews, A Demon Summer by G. M. Malliet, Truth be Told by Hank Phillippi Ryan, The Long Way Home by Louise Penny, and Designated Daughters by Margaret Maron. In historical novels, the finalists were Queen of Hearts by Rhys Bowen, Wouldn’t it be Deadly by D. E. Ireland, Murder in Murray Hill by Victoria Thompson, and two books, one from each series, by Malice Guest of Honor Charles Todd, Hunting Shadows and An Unwilling Accomplice. Other recent finalists include Maine authors Barbara Ross and Julia Spencer-Fleming. You can go online to see twenty-seven years worth of traditional mysteries that were finalists for the Agatha.

Protagonists include law enforcement personnel and private detectives as well as amateur sleuths. The setting is anywhere and in any time period. There can even be paranormal elements. Donna Andrews won an Agatha some years back for a novel in which the sleuth was a computer with artificial intelligence.

The plots usually involve one or more murders, but some traditional mysteries deal with lesser crimes. Once in a great while, a traditional mystery will end with the revelation that no crime at all has been committed, but there will be closure for both the reader and the characters by the end of the book. Solving the mystery, the puzzle, is actually more important that what laws may have been broken. Unlike real life, things are resolved, usually well for the good guys and badly for the villains.

These days, many traditional mysteries are marketed under the label “cozy.” What is a cozy? There’s a whole lot of debate about that, but in the most general sense it is a traditional mystery on the lightest end of the scale. Some who like their mysteries to have a harder edge will sometimes use the term in a derogatory way. That’s not difficult to do when so many cozies have similar warm, fuzzy elements. There is a fine line between clever and cutesy.

In most cozies, the murder is solved by an amateur sleuth whose hobby or occupation—owning a specialty store of some sort is popular—brings him or her in contact with the crime. There is a confined setting, often in a small town, a closed community, or a place such as a country house or a hotel, that is temporarily cut off from the rest of the world by, say, a blizzard. But there is also such a thing as an urban cozy—set in a city but with characters who already know each other. A recent offering of this type is set in a spice shop near Seattle’s Public Market.

There are often humorous elements in cozies. These are usually in the form of eccentric characters who provide comic relief. There are also, almost always, animals and/or children, most frequently of the feline persuasion. The majority of cozies are written in first person from a single point of view . . . but not all. My own Liss MacCrimmon books are written in third person. The number of point of view characters varies from book to book. In one, I used only Liss. In most I also let you into the minds of her gal pal, Sherri, who is conveniently employed in law enforcement, and her love interest and later husband, Dan, who is not.

I’ve always said I write cozies, both with my three historical series and in the Liss MacCrimmon mysteries set in Moosetookalook, Maine. In the latter, Liss owns Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium. There are lots of eccentric characters, both among the townspeople (population 1007) and among the guests at the grand hotel on the outskirts of town. There are two cats.

That said, I’ve received emails from a number of readers writing to tell me that don’t consider my books to be true cozies. Their reasons vary. One is that I put my sleuth in too much danger. Another is that she occasionally swears when she’s upset. And, a third is that, horror of horrors, I occasionally refer, in passing, to the fact that Liss has a sex life.

Other series that carry the cozy label commit these same sins, some of them to a greater degree than I do. In fact, I recently heard from a reliable source that there is at least one editor actively seeking “cozies with sex.” Go figure!

I’ll have more to say on this subject when I blog again on August 26th. Stay tuned.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of over fifty books written under several names. She won the Agatha Award in 2008 for best mystery nonfiction for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2014 in the best mystery short story category for “The Blessing Witch.” Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries (The Scottie Barked at Midnight) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries as Kathy (Murder in the Merchant’s Hall). The latter series is a spin-off from her earlier “Face Down” series and is set in Elizabethan England. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com

 

 

Can You Afford to Get Published?

Kate Flora here, with a question I’ve been pondering on this week. Usually, published writers like to paint a glowy picture of the world we inhabit. It is true that, having struggled often for years to finally become published, we are grateful for the chance to get our work out there and have it read, and I beam with pride when I look at my row of published books. But this week, after putting together some figures for the past twelve months, I estimate that I’m working for about a dollar a day. I thought it might be interesting to readers to have some insight into the published author’s reality.

I published my first mystery, Chosen for Death, back in 1994. For those early books in my Thea Kozak series, the advances ran around $5-6,000, and I usually earned royalties on top of that. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the way publishing works, when a publisher buys a book, they usually give the writer an advance of some amount that will be offset against the amount of money the work ultimately earns. Often this is divided with some money due on signing the contract, and another part due when the book is actually published, which may be a year or more down the road.

I puttered along with my advances in this range until I sold my breakthrough book, Steal Away, (published as Katharine Clark) which had a big advance, was a book club selection, and was sold as an audio book. The book did not earn back that big advance and so, since publishers considering buying a book look at sales numbers, my happy midlist career was ruined.

But I am stubborn, so I kept on writing, and eventually sold my Joe Burgess series. Some time had passed and the advances had gotten smaller. Then I sold my first true crime, Finding Amy, to a university press. Another small advance that I shared with co-writer, Joe Loughlin.

And so it has gone. Selling something it has taken a year or more to write for a few thousand dollars does not seem like a sensible economic model.

Last year, I had two books published, my second true crime, Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice, which I had worked on for five years, and the fourth Joe Burgess. The advances, combined, didn’t add up to the $6,000 I used to receive.

There are a lot of expenses involved in promoting a book. Many readers (and even writers aspiring to be published) don’t realize how many expenses are not covered by the publisher. For example: designing and maintaining a website, designing and printing publicity materials like flyers and bookmarks, buying copies of the book to give to people who’d helped me during the writing process, and buying copies of galleys to mail out for reviews, along with the expenses of the 3000 miles I put on my car.

And that’s not all. I was lucky enough to have Death Dealer be named an Agatha finalist, so I attended the Malice Domestic conference in Bethesda in June, along with Sleuthfest in Florida in February. With airfare, hotels, and registration, a conference can easily cost a thousand dollars. In addition, I decided to take a chance on hiring a publicist to see if I could break out and get my books greater recognition.

Even when a book earns royalties, publisher routinely pay them only once or twice a year, and usually several months after the money has been earned, and traditionally hold back part of those earnings “against returns.”

So here I sit, nearly a year after my books have been published. The writing community has been generous. Death Dealer is an Agatha and Anthony finalist, and won the Public Safety Writers Association 2015 award for nonfiction. And Grant You Peace won the 2015 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. I am humbled at the recognition and deeply grateful to my peers.

I have received nothing beyond those initial advances.

I am deeply in the hole, though I am lucky enough to have my backlist available as e-books, which brings in some steady income.

Obviously, I am not going to stop writing, and neither should you. But you should be warned: despite the honor of the thing, unless you have a best-seller, it is hard to make a living at this. That’s why we speak and teach and do manuscript reviews and a zillion other things and why we tell aspiring writers: don’t quit your day job, or be lucky enough to have a partner with benefits.

Weekend Update: August 8-9, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Wednesday), Jen Blood (Thursday) and Jayne Hitchcock (Friday).

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

from Kathy Lynn Emerson: The October issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine goes on sale on Tuesday, August 11. Why is this news? Because it includes the second “Old Mother Malyn” short story, “The Cunning Woman,” set in Elizabethan England. The first of Malyn’s adventures, related by her granddaughter and apprentice, Joan, was “The Blessing Witch,” a finalist for last year’s Agatha Award for best mystery short story. My fingers are crossed that readers like this one as well.

from Barb Ross: Barbara Ross’s multi-state, I-forgot-to-do-a-tour-when-Musseled-Out-came-out Book Tour continues.

Tuesday, August 11, at 7:00 pm I’ll be appearing with Edith Maxwell and Liz Mugavero at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA
Thursday, August 13, at 7:00 pm, I’ll be at the Vose Library , in Union, ME.

That’s the end of the tour until after my knee surgery in September.

In other news, I received the happy news that Boiled Over, the second Maine Clambake Mystery, is being reprinted. Thank you Maine booksellers (three of whom discovered it was out of stock and let me and Kensington know).

 

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

 

Keep one eye open for the dark world outside your window

Hi all. Maureen Milliken here.

Of the many things I love about my house, the large windows in my bedroom that overlook my narrow street and the tangle of woods across the street top the list. They face west, and in the evening when the sun is going down, the room glows. There trees across the street take on a different character every day of the year and the fascinating show from the huge windows changes with the seasons. I feel like I live in a tree house.

The summer morning view out the window.

But what I really like is lying in bed at night — I’m a light sleeper and it usually takes some time for me to fall asleep — and seeing the trees outside, the moon filtering through. This time of year all the windows are open, and I fall asleep listening to the loons and owls and occasional tractor-trailer rig barreling down Route 27.

Last night I was lying awake (something about knowing I have to get up earlier than I’ve ever voluntarily gotten up in my life, to write, makes it hard to fall asleep), when my faithful cat, on the bed next to me bristled and growled. She did it very lightly, almost tentatively, but that just made  more eerie. I opened my eyes and looked out the window — I don’t have to to move to do it, it’s right there — and saw something gliding down the middle of the street.

It was too big to be a cat and didn’t move like a dog. Gliding is the only word for it. Without my glasses on and with only the light from the almost non-existent moon and my neighbor’s porch, I couldn’t even begin to tell what it was. It seemed light colored, long, thin. Maybe a coyote? It didn’t bob or sway.  It wasn’t running, but it was moving swiftly and soundlessly.

Binti always keeps a close watch on the other world outside the window.

My cat, Binti, and I watched as it disappeared down the block, a strange interlude in our night.

The other day I wrote a column for the newspapers I work for about the “real” Maine, the one largely hidden from summer visitors. About the strange little dance we do between our reality and their fantasy, and how little they know of what goes on in our towns, in the woods and behind closed doors.

But as I watched that apparition disappear down my narrow lane, I thought how little even those of us who live here really know about what’s going on around us. Our towns are carved out of tangled woods, jammed in between the rocks, the mountains and the lakes. We’re surrounded by natural forces that we see, but just the surface. There’s a whole world going on right under our noses that we rarely think about and are mostly oblivious to. But I don’t think it’s oblivious to us.

The view out my window is fascinating any time of year.

As I watched that long thin shape soundlessly glide down the street last night, I knew it was aware of our world. Not that it was interloping, but that we were, and once we’re put away for the night, it’s free to take it back.

Now there’s something to keep me up at night.

Maureen Milliken is news editor of the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal. Her mystery novel, Cold Hard News, the first in the Bernie O’Dea mystery series, was released in June.

Questionable Behavior

Jake, Max, Lisa and Sara when they were really young, sitting on Grandma Clark’s front steps

John Clark pondering whether to get a ouija board or go to a psychic. I’m thinking about all the unanswered questions that have accumulated over the years, the ones I was too young, too in a hurry, too self-centered, or too sure there would be a time in the future, to ask. If you take a few moments, I’ll bet you can put together the beginnings of a pretty important/interesting batch yourself. Looking back over my life, I have to agree with Mark Twain. Youth IS wasted on the young. If that wasn’t true, every kid who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s would have bought plastic sleeves and carefully inserted those comic books and sports cards in them instead of inserting the cards between bicycle spokes and riding hell-bent through mud puddles. Likewise, we wouldn’t have spilled chocolate milk or strawberry soda all over issue #1 of Weird Tales. Ah, well.

Seriously though, I really wish I’d had my act together to ask some questions or pay better attention when my now departed relatives took the time to talk to me. Granted there were some, like my grandfather Clark, who died before I was old enough to even contemplate asking questions, but most everyone else hung around long enough so I might have gathered a mother lode of interesting and enlightening information and family history. Even so, it didn’t really hit me until after Mom died and I’d catch myself trying to remember something about growing up or some fragment of a memory that I knew I couldn’t be able to unlock without asking her and by then, that was impossible.

My father and my grandmother Della

I’m sharing some of the questions I will probably never have answers to and doing so for a couple reasons. First, I hope you can ponder them to get a sense of what I’m missing and then put together your own list. I suspect that some of you will figure out pretty quickly that you have an ‘impossible’ list equal to mine. That goes with the reality that many of us who read and/or blog here are up there in age and let’s be honest, the relative making machine isn’t working so well any more. However, by sharing this maybe some of you will realize that a resource for one (or more) of those ‘I was gonna get around to asking it’ questions is still accessible. I’d be very interested in hearing from anyone who gets lucky.

Growing up, my favorite relative was my great uncle, Leland Look, particularly when I was in my late teens and early twenties. He and Aunt Ruby lived in a big house on the corner of Rt. 27 and High Street in New Vineyard. He was postmaster there for a long time and was my grandmother Della Look Clark’s baby (and only) brother. I used to do a lot of brook and river fishing for trout in those days and whenever I wanted a fishing partner, Leland was ready to hop in my truck and off we’d go. We used to fish the west branch of the Carrabasset, more commonly known as Salem Stream, often starting just down the hill from where Mount Abram High is located. There was a stretch of close to two miles where the stream wandered through wilderness with no camps or houses. Sometimes we saw beaver or deer and once when I fished it by myself after he died, I was returning via an old woods road and nearly kicked a young bear in the rear while he was ripping open an ant hill.

My grandmother, me and her ‘baby’ brother Leland

Anyhow Leland and Ruby were as good as it gets for making you feel welcome and appreciated, feelings that I seldom experienced at home in those days. It didn’t matter what time of day or night I arrived, I was met with a smile, food, hot coffee and on occasion a warm bath and a clean bed. In addition to being a postmaster and avid fisherman, Leland loved to raise dinner plate dahlias. In fact I’m surprised more accidents didn’t happen in late summer due to tourists getting distracted by the wall of giant flowers that followed the porch around two sides of the house. He was also an excellent hunter and trapper. If memory serves me, he had the antlers from one of his big bucks mounted in the woodshed and it was twenty points of more.

I was too messed up to get out of my own head back then, so despite the warmth and affection Leland and Ruby showered on me, I didn’t tend to stat around and chat nearly as often as I should have. As a result, I never got to ask Leland what it was like for him growing up with four sisters and what he could tell me about the Look family. Granted, my mother did a heck of a lot of work putting together a family tree chart (well before the days of online searching), but those are never as satisfying as hearing someone talk about a great great uncle as they personally remembered him. My biggest lament is that with all the brook and river fishing we did together, I never bothered to ask him the one thing that made him stand out from the other fishermen in the area. Leland seldom, if ever got skunked on Porter Lake where he and Ruby had a camp. He’d head out in his canoe with his electric trolling motor and an hour later, he’d be back with a decent togue, sometimes more than one. I’d love to know where and how he did it.

Most of my unanswered questions reside on that side of the family, mainly because Mom’s kin lived in upstate New York, so we weren’t nearly as well connected. However, if I could hop in the wayback machine and go to Old Forge, I’d ask my grandfather Earl Carman what it was like growing up with an identical twin brother. I’d also ask him about some of the more famous sports he let through Bisbee Gate, the access point to a huge private reserve. He and my grandmother Martha lived in the gatehouse and controlled access for a very long time and I’m sure they had more than their share of diplomats, royalty and celebrities pass through at one time or another.

My maternal grandparents, Martha and Earl Carman with Mom and her three brothers at the 50th wedding anniversary party

Another mystery I’d like to solve, at least partially, would have involved asking my paternal grandmother Della what she remembered about my grandfather finding the big gold nugget I used to get to hold when I was a kid. Supposedly he found it while fly fishing the north branch of the Dead River, but I bet she knew at least a little bit about his favorite spots on that stretch of water. I’d love to hit them with my new metal detector.

If I could, I’d have set aside my animosity toward my father and asked him to share some of his experiences during World War II. He was a forward artillery spotter with the 45th Division and I know he saw some hellish stuff because he had a photo album I found when I was about ten and it contained some really shocking pictures from one of the death camps he helped liberate.

Even my mother who I spent many hours talking to, especially after we both got sober, died with answers I really wish I had. I have a letter in my desk from some Australian cousins. Unfortunately, it’s from the late 1960s and despite the miraculous things one can find online, I’ve hit a dead end in terms of tracking them down. Another mystery is a great great aunt or grandmother who was quite probably manic as well as wealthy. After her husband and my namesake (probably John Rogers Clark III) died, she loaded her fancy car onto a steamship and took off for Europe with a new beau. She and her fortune were never heard from again, although I remember Mom saying something about her ashes arriving in a fancy urn a few years later. If I’d been more persistent, maybe I’d have enough information in one or both instances so I could make a little progress.

My parents with their first granddaughter Sara Beth

Of course, the flip side of these laments is what they have taught me in terms of sharing stuff with my children, and I hope with granddaughter Piper when she’s a little older. Both girls came with me to a lot of AA meetings in the early part of my recovery, especially when Beth had to work on a Monday holiday. That was because I set up the Monday Noon Eye-opener meeting at AMHI, so I had to bring the kids along. You can never be completely surprised by what children absorb about things like recovery. There was a stretch of several years where every time we drove along Route 17 as it passed Chickawaukee Lake in Rockland, they’d look at me and say, “That’s the one you drove your car into, dad?” I’d nod and smile because it was good for them to know a bit of what it was like for me before they were born and how different things are now.

I’d be very interested in hearing some of the things you still wonder about because you never got the chance to ask. I also leave you with the thought that every unanswered question is an opportunity to create a dandy short story.

The Boothbay Home and Garden Tour

Hi. Barb here, working away on the porch in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. So far today we’ve had rain, fog, cool wind, sun, humidity, heat and repeat. Waiting for the hail.

On July 24, my husband Bill and I went on the Boothbay Home and Garden Tour, sponsored by the Boothbay Region Garden Club. We love these types of tours and often take them when we are in Key West in the winter, but this was my first time in Boothbay.

Why do we do this? Well, because the houses and gardens are lovely, that’s for sure. I have always loved houses, beautiful houses, big houses, old houses, tree houses. You name it. And house porn is my favorite kind of porn. Whenever I am in need of mindless entertainment, I head straight for HGTV. My favorite episodes of House Hunters are the ones where a twenty-three year old bride with a deep Texas accent looks at a room that would make a nice child’s bedroom here in the crowded northeast and says, “That’s the master closet?” (shudder) “I just couldn’t live like that.” Somehow that sort of thing never fails to amuse me.

My excuse for taking the day off from writing was that I was looking for settings, since my series takes place in an area very like Boothbay Harbor. And I did get some good ideas.

But the main reason I go on these tours is because I am nosy as heck. I just love to see how people live and what better way than to tour five houses? Or actually ten houses, since four of the five had guest houses and one had both a guest house and a carriage house. (Which might have seemed excessive, if the carriage house hadn’t looked like the best writing studio ever.)

And the houses were gorgeous, and luxurious. “I’ve finally learned to go on these things without envy,” I heard a man say to his wife. “Think of them like house museums,” I told him. “You can look but you can’t touch.” Of course, then I did remind my husband on the way home to buy a lottery ticket.

Unfortunately, the houses were all heavily staged, as if for sale, so my nosiness was unrequited. Not that I blame the owners. I don’t think I’d leave personal stuff about if my house was going to be trekked through by hundreds of people, either.

You could tell the gardeners from the house people on the tour. My attitude toward the gardens is, “Oh, how beautiful!” but I have no interest in discussing what plant is what, or how to cultivate it. I want to see fine furniture and antiques and paintings and views, views, views. And I got everything I wished for.

Enjoy!

The octagonal room on the right side of this photo is a library/study lined with bookshelves in dark wood with a writing desk at the center with a view of the harbor and islands. Think you could work there?

This house was the oldest on the tour, the “in town” house, with a wonderful mural in the dining room.

Here’s the front garden for the house at left.

 

This screened porch was beautiful–complete with stone fireplace for those cool Maine evenings. Another place I could work.

The hydrangreas on the water-side of the house were humungous.

I thought this garden sign was a little creepy–not the usual soothing sentiments. Googling tells me the quote comes from the gate to the rose garden at Lynch Park in Beverly, MA. But I don’t know what the original quote comes from–if anything. Does anyone know?

The dock out front.

 

Porch Sitting

Lea Wait, here, enjoying summer in Maine. Temperatures and humidity have been a bit higher than usual this summer, but compared to other parts of the country we have nothing to complain about. (Although occasionally we complain anyway. I suspect complaining about weather is part of human DNA.)

When I used to vacation in Maine for two or three weeks in the summer I swallowed the Maine experience in large gulps. Sometimes literally. I ate lobsters, clams, scallops, mussels, haddock, salmon … every day at least once. I went on boat rides. I attended auctions and checked out flea markets and antique shops and shows. I read as much as I could, when I wasn’t at a farmer’s market, or picking blueberries, or shopping the outlets with my daughters for back-to-school-and-work clothes. The many gift and craft shops in our area provided a good start on my Christmas gift shopping.

In short … being in Maine meant doing everything I loved to do, that my life in New York or New Jersey couldn’t provide. 

Now that I live here, though, there are no vacations.  Sure, I eat more seafood than I did when I lived in other places. (The lobsters pictured in my kitchen sink are dinner.) And my husband (who does most of our cooking) checks out a couple of farmers’ markets each week.

But this year I’m under deadline. My next mystery (Shadows on a Morning in Maine, the eighth in my Shadows Antique Print Mystery series,) is due to the editor September 1. My fellow Maine Crime Writes refer to this period of last-month panic as “writers’ jail.” No vacationing involved.

Still, it is summer in Maine, so I try to sneak in bits of outside time. A walk. An occasional day-trip. And, most often, I sit on my porch, overlooking the Sheepscot River. If I’m there during the day it’s usually because I’m editing the hard copy of pages I’ve written. Yesterday about 150 pages I thought were well-secured escaped … flying all over the porch and (a few) into the yard. Bob and I raced after them, grateful that, yes, they had page numbers. If it’s late in the day, I’m sipping wine (or lemonade, if I’ll be working later that night) accompanied by Bob, and often, by neighbors who find our porch welcoming. Friends sometimes bring their own libations and nibbles. A couple of days ago neighbors even brought their own glasses!

We don’t ask them to do that. But it’s become a quiet summer ritual.

Sitting, sipping, nibbling, enjoying late afternoon sea breezes and the company of friends … every day it makes me thankful that I’m lucky enough to live and work on the coast of Maine. The gift shops and boat rides will wait.

In the meantime, when I’m not in my study, you can find me on my porch. No place is better.  

An Amazing Journey

Russell Warnburg: I begin my eighth decade on this mortal plain with great gratitude for a long and satisfying life. My writing career did not begin until I was 66, in my final year of teaching. I began teaching in Lewiston, then taught in Minneapolis, followed by 21 years in Gray, and ended in Windham. Having come through two bouts of cancer, a third if you count a small skin lesion, I knew it was time to begin that novel I had planned to write since my college days. My first novel was Edge of Redemption that was released in 2012, followed by Chalk Line Killer and Gateway Murders. These three are part of the Detective Cole Sullivan series, all set primarily in Maine, as is my fifth novel that will come out next year.

After getting my first novel published, I decided a goal was necessary, so I added to my bucket list that I would write ten novels, at least one a year. In How To Become An Author, Arnold Bennett advises that: “But it must never be forgotten, that while the reputation is being formed, the…public needs continuous diplomatic treatment. It must not be permitted to ignore his existence. At least once a year and oftener if possible, a good solid well made book should be flung into the libraries.” I am attempting to follow that solid advice.

I have now reached 71, and wait for my fourth novel, 2064 A Warning, that will be released October 1st. It is a dystopian novel and also a love story between two young lovers, Robert and Celia, who struggle to survive in a very difficult and tragic future. There may be a sequel but who knows? Right now I am interested in continuing the Sullivan series.

While I am in the quoting mood, I thought it worthwhile to pass on something of interest by P.G. Wodehouse. In a letter to his friend Bill in 1945:

“You say you tend to get tired nowadays. Me, too. After all, we’re both heading for seventy. Silver threads among the gold, laddie. Extract from a book I was reading the other day: ‘Latterly his mind had been going to seed rather. He was getting toward seventy, you see.’ Have you ever noticed, by the way, what peculiar ideas writers have as to what constitutes old age? ‘He was a man not far from fifty, but still erect and able to cross the room under his own steam,’ they write. Or ‘Old though the Squire was, his forty-six years sat lightly upon him.’ At sixty eight I have reached the stage when, picking up a novel and finding that new character the author has introduce is sixty, I say to myself, ‘Ah, the young love interest.’ ”

My thoughts exactly. Isn’t this ability to tell a story something? And somehow my mind is not going to seed, nor am I feeling tired. I have become a story teller and wouldn’t trade it for the world. I must admit, however, that there are infrequent times when I wonder if all this hard work is worth it, but then something, anything will trigger an idea and that creative urge bubbles back to the surface. That urge is not always satisfied by writing however. Sometimes I paint, design and build a piece of furniture, or get an idea for an interesting photograph. A few years back I displayed some of my furniture and photos at Gallery 302 in Bridgeton and sold a few of each.

I have always wondered why I must create. I have a hunch that some of you reading this, have wondered the same thing.

Weekend Update: August 1-2, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Lea Wait (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday), John Clark (Thursday) and Maureen Milliken (Friday),with a special guest post from Russ Warnberg on Monday.

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

from Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett: Next weekend I will be one of the Wilton authors participating in this year’s Wilton Blueberry Festival. The theme is “Reading and Writing” and I’ll be reading from my books, answering questions about writing, and signing books at the Wilton Free Public Library from 2-3 PM on Friday, August 7. I will have both current and backlist titles available for purchase.

And on Sunday, August 2, Lea Wait, Maureen Milliken and Vaughn Hardacker will be at the Maine Crime Writers booth at Belgrade’s juried Lakeside Artisan Show, 1 Center Drive, in Belgrade, from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. Their books will be available for purchase and signing — of course! Crafts and books – what could be more fun! (Christmas gifts, anyone?)

from Barb Ross: On Monday, August 3, at 7:00 pm I’ll be at the Witherle Memorial Library in Castine, Maine, speaking as a part of their Maine Writers Series.

And in case you’ve resisted us until now, in August, Vampires, Bones and Treacle Scones, (Liss MacCrimmon Mystery Book 7) by Kaitlyn Dunnett, Twisted Threads, (Mainely Needlepoint Mystery Book 1) by Lea Wait, and Clammed Up, (Maine Clambake Mystery Book 1) by Barbara Ross will be on sale for $1.99 in various ebook formats all month.

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

Words, Words, and More Words

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett here, today musing on the English language, the origins of words, and some of their meanings.

Every year, major dictionaries add more words. Some have been around for quite a while before they officially become part of the English language. Others make the cut quickly, thanks in part to their frequent appearance in social media. This year, in May, Merriam-Webster added 1,700 new words.

Many aren’t all that new. Some aren’t exactly words at all. Take “WTF” for example. I hope I don’t have to tell you what the letters stand for. It’s classed as an “abbreviation,” that is “used especially to express or describe outraged surprise, recklessness, confusion of bemusement.” Hmmm.

“Selfie” made Merriam-Webster list. So did “frenemy” and “twerk.” More on that last one in a minute.

A little over a month later, in June, the Oxford English Dictionary, affectionately known as the OED, also added new words. It also created new sub-entries and added new senses to the meanings of words already in the dictionary. I couldn’t find a total number of “new” words, but suffice it to say that “a whole bunch” covers it.

The OED is a resource frequently used by writers because it makes every effort to trace each word to its earliest use in print in English. This helps writers of historical novels avoid anachronisms. Sometimes, when the OED assures us a word was in use much earlier than we thought, we still avoid using it because it just doesn’t “sound right” for the period. Case in point: the updated OED traces the meaning of “twerk” back to 1820. Who knew?

Of local interest here in Maine is the addition of the word “Masshole” as a term of contempt for someone from Massachusetts. The OED dates this word to c.1989. Personally, I’d date it a lot earlier, and apply it specifically to people in cars with Massachusetts license plates driving recklessly on Maine roads. That’s the thing about words—not only are they often in use far earlier than their first appearance in print, but their meanings tend to vary from region to region.

Other goodies from the OED list are:

carnapping

crowdfunding

declutter

e-edition

forensics

hard-bodied

meh (adjective and interjection)

netbook

retweet

webisode

wuss

Some of these started out as made-up words. Now they’re real. Hey, this is nothing new. Shakespeare alone is credited with adding over 1,700 words to the English language. They weren’t all totally new. He changed nouns to verbs, added prefixes and suffixes, and otherwise altered meanings of existing words . . . just as someone did to create many of the words on this year’s lists. Some of my favorites among Shakespeare’s contributions to the language, with particular emphasis on those relating to crime and criminals, are bandit, circumstantial, cold-blooded, and premeditated. The Bard of Avon also gets credit for “obscene.”

Don’t you just love a living language?

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of over fifty books written under several names. She won the Agatha Award in 2008 for best mystery nonfiction for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2014 in the best mystery short story category for “The Blessing Witch.” Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries (Ho-Ho-Homicide, 2014) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries as Kathy (Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe, 2015). The latter series is a spin-off from the Face Down series and is set in Elizabethan England. Her webpages are www.KathyLynnEmerson.com and www.KaitlynDunnett.com