Lea Wait's Blog, page 286

Meet Espionage Fiction Superstar Gayle Lynds

I met Gayle Lynds at a mystery conference many years ago, when she was the tall, glamorous, successful writer and I was the newbie, perched on the cusp of publishing my first book. She was generous and friendly, as well as talented. I was thrilled when I learned that Gayle had moved to Maine, and excited to have a chance to share her fascinating story, and her new book, with Maine readers. Gayle will be talking about her new book, The Assassins, at Longfellow Books in Portland on July 23rd, and you should be there to hear this warm, funny, talented lady talk about the writing life. Kate Flora

You’re a superstar in espionage fiction, which has traditionally been considered the province of male writers. Still, Lee Child calls you “today’s best espionage writer.” Tell us about the background that led you to want to write this kind of book?

I suppose you could say I didn’t know any better. Ultimately I blame Kurt Vonnegut. He was a writer in residence at the University of Iowa while I was studying there. I asked him where he’d come up with the terrific idea for his novel Cat’s Cradle, and he said it all started during a summer job he had at a think tank, where “ideas bounced off the walls.” Since my dream was to write novels, I jumped at the chance a few years later to be an editor at a private think tank that did a lot of government work. There I was vetted for Top Secret security clearance and stepped into an exciting world of research, creativity, hard work — and secrets. Years later, when I was finally able to write my own books, I found myself influenced by those years. I wanted to write about geopolitics, history, and culture. What better place than in espionage?

In a new review, the Associated Press called you a “master of the modern Cold War spy thriller.” Your new book is called “The Assassins.” Tell us about how they relate.

Although I wrote about spies for years, it was only recently I realized people considered assassins to be pretty much the same. Not true. They’re as individual as spies are, or we are. For many, it’s simply business, while others are driven by ideology. The truly insane don’t last decades, as the men in my book have. The six in The Assassins join forces only once, and that’s for a series of wet jobs for Saddam Hussein. Then Saddam stiffs them — doesn’t make his last payment. So as America and the coalition are invading Iraq in 2003, the assassins slip into Baghdad to get what’s theirs. Fast forward to 2015, and someone has discovered their shared past and forces them into a game of last-man-standing. I really enjoyed pitting the best-of-the-best — legendary experts in all ways to manipulate and kill — against each other.

Eva Blake and Judd Ryder starred in your previous novel, The Book of Spies, which Library Journal named one of the Best Thrillers of the Year. Why did you decide to bring them back in The Assassins?

I’d really enjoyed creating Judd and Eva, and I missed them. As I was wandering around my house envisioning the next book, I realized their stories weren’t finished. That was a mighty fine moment for me. So I happily brought them back in The Assassins to put them through their literary paces and discover who they were now and what they did next.

 

Your new book is kind of an old assassins’ reunion. I know that I struggle to keep a few bad guys straight, so what techniques did you use to create six very different international hit men?

It’s tough to write multi-character scenes, and I don’t love them anymore than anyone else. My first rule is to try to make certain the reader isn’t confused. For instance, in the opening scene, which takes place in the Iraq National Museum, I decided the only name we needed was for the lead assassin. That left me with five who could be known by their backgrounds — the Basque, the Russian, the ex jihadist, the retired Mossad operative, and the former Cosa Nostra killer. Then, as the assassins appeared one by one later in the novel, the reader already had a sense of them.

Many people believe the Cold War is over. I’m betting you’d say it’s just changed. How do you do research to keep up with the contemporary world of espionage?

Since my background is journalism, I’ve always stayed abreast of the news. The fun part is to read between the lines. Currently, I take three newspapers every morning and two news magazines a week. Throughout the day I receive situation reports from a noted global intelligence company. Other people follow the horses or play fantasy baseball. Me, I’m just an old-fashioned news addict.

There was a hiatus between your previous book and this one, during which you moved from Santa Barbara, California, to Maine. Can you tell us a bit about that transition? I believe there is quite an amazing romance involved?

As my husband says, I was a Santa Barbarian, and he was a Mainiac … which of course meant we were destined to be together. And as it turns out, he was wonderfully right. I am one lucky ex-Californian.

It all started a few years ago when my publisher asked me to increase my presence on Facebook. I had some 1,500 friends, which seemed plenty to me, but I was a good sport and discovered Facebook provided a list of people with whom I had at least one mutual friend. So I started down the list, clicking the little square beside each name, asking permission to “friend” them.

In a few minutes, I received an email from some guy in Maine who asked whether he knew me, whether we’d ever met. Feeling guilty for bothering him, I apologized, explained about my publisher, and told him he sure didn’t have to be my friend, but if he wanted to be, I promised I wouldn’t post often. Well, one thing led to another. I was widowed; he was divorced. I wrote books; he read a lot of them. We soon moved off Facebook and conducted an old-fashioned correspondence that turned into an across-the-continent courtship. That was 2009. We married in 2011, and I packed up my thousand books and moved to Maine, where today we live happily on the outskirts of Portland. His name, by the way, is John C. Sheldon, retired prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge. We’ve collaborated on three short stories so far.

What is the question that you always want to be asked, and never are, and how would you answer it?

What a terrific question. No one’s every asked me whether I can keep a secret.

The answer is: It’s a secret!

Finally: where can we hear you speak about your book?

I’m excited to be signing at Longfellow Books at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, July 23, at 1 Monument Way in downtown Portland. Please come! http://www.longfellowbooks.com/event/...

Weekend Update: July 18-19, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be a special Sunday guest post by thriller writer Gayle Lynds, and posts by Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett (Monday), Vaughn Hardacker (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Wednesday), Lea Wait (Thursday) and Barb Ross (Friday).

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

This coming Saturday (July 25), Maine crime writers will be very busy. You will find many of us in Lincolnville Beach at the Beyond the Sea Book Festival hosted by the energetic and generous Nanette . Attendees will include Barbara Ross, Dorothy Cannell, Lea Wait, Kate Flora, Susan Vaughan, and Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson. The complete schedule is here: http://www.beyondtheseamaine.com/book-festival-2015.html

 

 

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

FROM BASIL TO BOOKS

Dorothy Cannell: For those of you who grow basil and are looking for more recipes for its use, here’s an easy and tasty one that I came up with years ago.

Crab Bisque:

1 large (family size) can of Campbell’s tomato soup

Half and Half

1 can crabmeat (drained)

1 cup chopped basil

1 cup sweet sherry

Pepper

Put soup in a saucepan. Fill emptied can with Half and Half and stir into soup. Add crabmeat and basil. Bring to just below the boil on stove top. Stir in sherry and season with pepper. Serve accompanied (if desired) with croutons.

My family members always ask for this when coming to Maine. It freezes well and is great for those days when I’m too busy writing to want to stop and cook.

Books: Death at Dovecote Hatch had its U.S. pub date earlier this month.

Just finished reading The Body In The Birches by Katherine Hall Page. It’s wonderful. Highly recommend.

She and I will be participating (along with other Maine crime writers) in the 2015 Beyond the Sea Book Festival in Lincolnville Beach. It runs from July 24th – 26th. For more information as to who will be attending and when check out www.beyondtheseamaine.com. Nannette The owner of store is a delight and it is well worth a visit for its own sake, lots of great merchandize in addition to an eclectic selection of books.

Happy summer,

Dorothy

Roads Not Taken and Making Scents of Maine

John Clark on an unusually chilly July morning.

Rocky channeling Edna St. Vincent Millay

Even though our audience was small on Tuesday night in Dover-Foxcroft, we had plenty of fun and the session went for almost an hour and a half. At one point I mentioned driving by a sign for Dark Mountain Road on my way to do some work with the folks at the Witherle Library in Castine while I was employed at the Maine State Library. I thought about what might be found on that road for the rest of the trip and later included some of what I’d imagined in a story that was bought by Level Best Books. I’m sure most of us who blog here or who are followers and live in rural areas can tell stories about strangely named or mysterious roads. What about the ones we have gone by time after time and never explored because we were too busy. If we have stories to tell about those that have been explored, what might await us on those not yet traveled?

Retirement is affording me a bit more time (although far less than I expected) to satisfy those curious urges. I have yet to explore some of the back roads that have captured my fancy since we moved to Hartland, but I’ve hit enough over the years to create a reservoir of story-possible territories of the mind. In Appleton the next town north of where I grew up, for instance, there are several places I’ve explored that may turn up in future short stories or books. If you drive north past Sennebec Hill Farm where Kate and I grew up, you come to a sharp turn with a tar road bearing to your right. It was here that I drove a Honda 90 into a large elm the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Turn onto that road and you can make a long loop back to East Sennebec Road atop the hill looking over Appleton Village. There are several roads branching off it. One dead ends just above what we used to call the old Gurney Place. Way back when we first moved to Union in 1949, it went further and met the Barret Hill Road that eventually intersects route 17 by my old high school . If I remember right, it was part of an old stage coach line. The road it connects to on the ridge overlooking Sennebec Lake, had only cellar holes and a couple forlorn barns when I was a kid. Today, you can drive past some really fancy places. Personally, I tend to remember the stories about the stage and imagine one flying along that ridge, ghostly passengers outlined by a Halloween moon.

Whatever ya do, Dude, avoid the fog.

If you ignored the turn toward the Gurney Place and kept going, you’d eventually come to another sharp corner that used to be a four-way intersection. Beth and I parked here years ago and walked up the road going to the right. An hour later, we found ourselves on a hilltop where stunted oaks made it look like we had stumbled upon a Greek amphitheater. We could see the ocean and Mt. Battie to the east, Clary Hill to the south and Sennebec Lake down below. When we started down, we followed a small brook that serenaded us as it cascaded over rocks. We came around a bend and found ourselves in the dooryard of some absolute back to the lander’s dwelling. Their place was on the road that led back to where we’d parked and this one was pretty passable. In fact, I’ve gone up it numerous times since then and fished the brook down to a small pond. There are numerous old cellar holes dotting the west side of that road. If you follow it all the way through (best with four-wheel drive), you come out on Route 105 heading to Hope. Not far past the back to the lander’s place, there’s another road which crosses a small stream that feeds the swamp above the little pond that’s loaded with wild rice in October. There’s a structurally sound shed in a small field halfway out this road…Perfect to hide stolen goods or a body.

Does this remind you of an ice cream flavor?

That road eventually comes out on what’s known as the Peabody Road which connects East Sennebec Rd. with Route 105. There are more abandoned houses and cellar holes between it and the Georges River. I walked down through the woods one day about ten years ago and hit the most impenetrable chunk of real estate I’ve ever seen. Dead and dwarf cedar trees were so entwined that not even Godzilla could have made his way through, so I kept moving north until it thinned out enough to allow me to reach the river. I didn’t catch anything, but came home with a perfectly good canoe paddle as a souvenir.

It’s awfully annoying to try eating breakfast when you keep stumbling over multiple corpses.

On the other side of Sennebec Lake is Appleton Ridge. There’s a big old house up there known as the Oakes Mansion. Here’s what accompanies an old photo on the Penobscot Marine Museum website, courtesy of Donovan Bowley, Appleton Historical Society “The Oakes Mansion on Appleton Ridge, high above the village of McClain’s Mills (today’s Appleton Village), was constructed in 1896 in the shingle style by Francis Oakes, a wealthy New York dye manufacturer, for his wife, as an addition to her parents’ home on the Ridge. She was Appleton native, actress, and singer Adelene Sullivan. The house’s extensive outbuildings are gone, but the main house still stands and is undergoing renovation. To the original Sullivan farmhouse at the left, Francis and Adelene added a three-story addition of some twenty rooms. The domed cupola visible above the original section at the left was an observation balcony above the water tower behind the house, which provided storage and pressure for the extensive indoor plumbing, which was unusual for that date and place. The structure is now the home of Selectman Donald Burke.”

It dominates the skyline at sunset, but there are other intriguing places on the ridge. Across the road from the mansion is a narrow, partially overgrown road. My friend John Marks and I decided to explore it years ago. After we reached the end of the blueberry field, the road followed the back side of the ridge down past another abandoned house to the lower end of Pettingil Bog, across an old dam and up to the drivable part of Guinea Ridge Road. The area abounded with wildlife including monster bucks, beaver, turtles and migrating waterfowl. The undrivable portion of Guinea Ridge Road meanders along the west side of of the swamp and there are spots where a careless step would allow the soft ooze to suck you into oblivion.

I’m describing a very few roads near where I grew up to illustrate just how many possibilities exist for the curious writer interested in finding places where both short stories and good full length crime fiction can be set. I hope by reading this you get the urge to go explore one or more of those roads you’ve always wanted to explore, but passed because it wasn’t a good time to enjoy a diversion.

We logged a lot of miles on this expedition.

In addition to mysterious roads that make great settings for criminal activity or ghostly stories, Maine offers the writer some unique smells to enhance a good story. First and foremost are the smells provided by members of the evergreen family. I defy you not to take a deep breath when a semi hauling freshly cut pine passes you. Likewise a load of softwood chips headed for a paper or pellet mill. Cedar, while certainly not unique to Maine, is another distinct and pleasant scent. If you’ve ever spent much time in blueberry fields during the harvest, you’ve encountered a unique blend of smells that can’t be found elsewhere. It’s hard to describe to anyone who has never been there, but imagine a bit of blueberry, a slightly acrid scent from weeds baked under an August sun, the amiably sneezy smell of goldenrod, a bit of bayberry and a hint of boxberries from the wintergreen family, all blended and wafted to your nose by a gentle breeze. Another one that isn’t unique to Maine, but is etched into the minds of pretty much everyone living in farm country, is the smell of freshly cut hay. This week it seems like almost every field in Somerset County is being cut and baled because we’re in a run of perfect haying weather. Another one we enjoy almost every time we go canoeing or kayaking on Great Moose Lake is the tangy smell of a campfire. I swear I can tell when they’re burning white birch. Maine lakes also give off a slightly musty smell about the time the lake turns over in midsummer as the water change brings decaying vegetation to the surface.

On course not all unique smells are pleasant. Ever hear someone whose face has an annoyed expression say “It smells like Rumford in here?” This is, or used to be a common refrain the day after a good bean supper at the local grange or church. They were referring to the similarity between bean-induced flatulence and the eye burning smell from a paper mill. It’s far less prevalent now that so many mills have closed, but when I was a kid and we were going to my grandmother’s house in New Portland, the smell from both the Winslow and Hinkley mills was pretty darn strong. The other one that’s a nose grabber is what comes off a clam flat at low tide. There’s no mistaking this one. I mention these smells because I think that when writing Maine fiction whether it’s in the young adult, urban fantasy, or mystery genres, getting readers involved is often done nicely by adding in things that they can use to create their own vision of your story world. I hope this makes scents to you.

You go first

Guilty Pleasures

Jayne Hitchcock here. As a writer, some people have preconceptions about me. When they hear me speak or see me at a book signing, I’m usually dressed to the nines. I have a BMW (an older one, but it’s in great shape, so it looks newer) and a pretty good looking husband (if I do say so myself). When it comes to Q&A or socializing after an event, it’s funny how many think I sit at home at night with a glass of scotch and read Shakespeare, Tolstoy or some other dead author’s works.

When I tell them I prefer crime thrillers, fantasy, horror and sci-fi, they are mildly appalled.

They would probably be more appalled if they knew what else I liked. For TV shows it ranges from Bones to Rizolli & Isles to Under the Dome, Tosh 2.0, Ridiculousness, Celebrity Name Game, The Following, Warehouse 13, Haven and Antiques Roadshow. Music is mainly new country, rock and hard rock, with a little Lady Gaga, Five Finger Death Punch and Adele thrown in.

Movies range from the Fast & Furious franchise to Star Wars (the original ones, pfft), Lord of the Rings, Red series, Connie & Carla, Moulin Rouge, anything with Harrison Ford or Jason Statham in it and animated movies.

I am just not in documentaries, dramas, historical, political, etc. I like to be entertained. I live enough in the world of cyber crime every day that when my day does end, I want to get lost in a story or music.

So, what are your guilty pleasures when it comes to entertainment?

What the heck is Camel-Nosing?

Kate Flora here, hoping you are wondering: So what the heck is “camel-nosing?” Everyone has heard the old Arab story about the camel trying to get into the tent on a cold night, right? And according to Wikipedia:

The camel’s nose is a metaphor for a situation where the permitting of a small, seemingly innocuous act will open the door for larger, clearly undesirable actions.

Not in my world, though. I made up the term “camel-nosing” for those insidious story ideas that creep into the corners of my consciousness while I think I’m working on something else.

Those sneaky intrusions used to alarm me when they threatened to derail whatever project I had underway. Now that I’ve spent over thirty years in the writer’s chair, though, I’ve learned to embrace them. If a story appears and wants to be written, or if a character keeps sneaking into my mind and demanding my attention, I’ve learned that a sensible writer pays attention. She turns to the newcomer, even when he IS uninvited, and begins to ask the writerly questions that lead to the expansion of character and the development of character. Why is this person here? What has happened in his past that has shaped him into what he is as I encounter him? What will his journey be, what will be the obstacles he has to overcome, and how will that journey change him?

So last week, I was sitting out on the deck reading Nic Pizzolatto’s book, Galveston. (Nic Pizzolatto of True Detective fame, that is.) I was enjoying the story but what I was really loving was the darkness and strength of his writing and the seediness of his characters, and I thought, “Gee. I wonder if I could write something that dark and that strong?”

Authorial aside: Since I sent in the 5th Joe Burgess, And Led Them Thus Astray, I’ve been wondering what I’m supposed to write next. It’s rare that I finish a book without another idea already bumping up against me like a dog that wants to be petted, but this time, that was the case.

Authorial aside #2: This weekend I was at Books in Boothbay, Maine’s wonderful summer author fair, and I was watching men stroll through, picking up mysteries by male authors and ignoring my strong, gritty Burgess books, and it got my “edge” up and I thought, maybe I’ll write a book under a guy’s name and see what happens. (In truth, I also thought about having Lea Wait’s husband Bob Thomas sit behind my stack of books and see what happened, too.)

Well, thank you, Nic, because then this detective shows up in my head. He seems to lack all of the wonderful qualities that make me and my readers like Joe Burgess. He’s just a lousy, drunken, foul-mouthed, explosive ball of anger. It’s like he sits down on the bar stool beside me and keeps slumping against me because he can’t stay upright, and the heat of his rage is coming off him like he’s a human fire pit. As an author, I have to find out who he is, what he’s doing in my imagination, and what has made him so angry. And then he starts to tell me about the little girl.

Well, gentle readers, I fear this is yet another case of “be careful what you wish for,” because he, and his story, are not going to be pleasant to have in my head. So maybe the old metaphor is right after all. Maybe it will be fascinating, yet “largely undesirable,” to be writing about a character this damaged and this angry. Or maybe, as I have learned along the way, when a writer takes chances and writes the things that scare her or the characters who seem too hard, the results are often surprisingly good.

So stick around, dear reader, and let’s see where this journey goes. I have a gorgeous new office to write in, if I can only keep myself in the chair when my view through the window is so gorgeous and my gardens cry out for my attention.

Soon I will be back to you for title suggestions, and some lucky MCW reader will own a fabulous Liberty Graphics tee-shirt.

In the meantime, feel free to toss the term “camel-nosing” around quite freely, and be sure to give me the credit. Perhaps some day it may even end up in a dictionary.

Hear Nic’s advice for aspiring young writers here:

 

The Horse Latitudes

EXT. SOUTHERN MAINE – DAY

Chris Holm briefly emerges from his writing bunker, pale and unshaven.

CHRIS

When the hell did it become summer?

MAILMAN

More importantly, why aren’t you wearing any pants?

The life of a writer is strangely bifurcated. Half our time, the part most people see, is spent shilling our work. Tweeting, blogging, touring, signing, paneling. The other half, the important half, is spent writing. Without it, no amount of all that other stuff is worth a damn.

I’m in writing mode right now, trying to take advantage of the quiet before THE KILLING KIND comes out in September, and my life temporarily gets a whole lot crazier. (You should go preorder it; I hear it’s pretty good.) As of this writing, I’m about 46,000 words into the second Hendricks thriller. Those who’ve never written a novel-length work are probably thinking, “Wow! You’re more than halfway done!” Those who have, and know what a terrible slog the middle third invariably turns out to be, are shaking your heads and saying, “You poor bastard.”

I always think of the middle third as the book’s horse latitudes. Sails sag in the absence of a strong tailwind. Progress slows. Household projects begin to call my name. The shiny objects on the internet that clamor for my attention get a little shinier.

So, how do you combat it? (No, seriously: I’m asking.) In my case, with depression, alcohol, and bouts of crippling panic. (I kid. About the alcohol, at least. I’m getting too old to deal with hangovers.)

In truth, the way I deal is by carving out as much quiet time as I can for my subconscious to work the problem, and figure out the story. (Yes, I’m a pantser, but even when I outline, I find the story’s middle resists writing.) If I could meditate, I would, but every time I try I feel as if I should be doing other things. So instead, I go for a run. I take long walks through my neighborhood, sometimes hashing out plot points with my wife, sometimes not. I leave the radio off when I’m in the car. And most importantly, I step back from the internet a bit.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m as internet-addicted as they come, and I’m not advocating a total blackout. I tend to favor the Timothy Leary method: turn on, tune in, drop out. I still check my email. Still make my usual morning rounds (my Twitter feed, NPR, Portland Food Map, Boing Boing, Wired, Mental Floss… and Maine Crime Writers, of course.) But what I don’t do (or, at least, attempt to avoid) while I’m writing is engage. No Twitter conversations. No Facebook posts. No likes. No faves. No retweets. I find that, when my motivation and inspiration are low, the instant gratification of the internet is a dangerous thing. It scratches the creative itch, but leaves me nothing of any consequence to show for it. As Ben Gibbard, frontman for Death Cab for Cutie, put it in a terrific interview with the AV Club last year:

I just notice this trend among some musician friends of mine who are over-tweeters—they get writer’s block. “I haven’t written a record!” Because you’re burning all your creativity on witty observations about the Kardashians! Fuckin’ write a song! If you have any kind of narcissistic tendencies, and I think all creative people do to a certain extent—before these outlets, if you wanted to be in front of somebody, you had to go out into the world and share the thing you made and kind of get off on the adoration of a crowd. But now that crowd exists in your pocket. Whenever you’re feeling like you need that validation from people who already think you’re great, you can just go online and people are like, “You’re amazing!” It’s cut out the need for people to actually be out in the world sharing their creativity with a crowd, because the crowd is already there. If I can just go on my phone and make witty observations while I’m watching the Emmys, I don’t really need to finish that song that I was working on, because I already did some creative things today.

Gibbard’s observation hit a little closer to home for me than I would have liked, so I’ve tried to scale back on my social media interactions when I’m in writing mode. Instead, I watch. Listen. Absorb. And channel everything I want to say into my writing.

Or, as Robin Williams put it in The Birdcage…

Weekend Update: July 11-12, 2015

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

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

Don’t forget that TODAY (July 11th) is Books in Boothbay, held at the Boothbay Railway Village in Boothbay, Maine. Many, many Maine authors in all genres will be there, including Maine Crime Writers Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson, Kate Flora, Susan Vaughan, and Lea Wait and alums Paul Doiron and Julia Spencer-Fleming. The morning is for children’s and YA books (Lea), the afternoon for the rest of us (and Lea). Check here for more details and a list of all the authors attending.

 

 

 

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

A Maine Bee Update and…THE BEES

Susan Vaughan here. Some of you may remember my October post about my neighborhood’s effort to rescue a colony of honeybees (http://wp.me/p1GTyX-3J0).

In brief, we discovered the bee colony hanging from a tree branch beside a sunny field. The neighbor who owns the field marshaled local beekeepers to organize a rescue because honeybees cannot survive a Maine winter unless in a manmade hive and given food and care. After much effort, the little pollinators were moved into a hive box, and my neighbor tended them all winter.

Alas, last winter was too harsh, too cold and too long. The bees didn’t make it. An April wind and thunderstorm knocked over the hive, spreading the remaining honeycombs on the ground.

Here’s my neighbor’s tribute: “We went up to pay our respects and to see the elaborate and beautiful internal structures they had made to try to get through the winter. We left them as they had fallen. Most likely, as predicted, the winter had been too fierce.

As I looked on each of the series of frames, I could see the elaborate work of the winter colony, some honey, some new comb and many, many dead bees elegantly lying in different layers. I decided to leave the whole architectural structure as it was because that’s what the wind brought, that was the law of nature and how the hive fell apart. I would leave the colony to the winds, the sun, the field just as they lay there dead. I want to know this ending. I want to look at them as they melt back into nature’s hold.”

The saving grace is that other bees scented the honey and collected it to feed their colonies until flowers bloomed and they could gather nectar.

Then thanks to another neighbor, I chanced to read The Bees by Laline Paull. She’s a playwright, screenwriter, and author who lives in England and whose neighbor is a beekeeper, possibly the inspiration for this suspenseful and wildly (yes, wild as in bees) imaginative tale.It’s about honeybees, but it’s also so much more. The protagonist is Flora 717, a sanitation bee (cleaning up dead bees, other debris) in an orchard hive, who is born with unusual abilities that allow her to move between the strict hierarchies of her hive. Throughout the story, she witnesses the brutality and beauty that the various castes of bees exhibit to keep the hive productive, all in service and devotion to the queen. But when Flora discovers she is fertile and can produce an offspring, she dares to rebel and follow a new and daring path.

The Bees is a dark tale, but snatches of humor creep in. I chuckled at Paull’s wry portrayal of the drones as pompous dandies who expected every worker bee to bow to their “maleness” and cater to their every want.

One reviewer wrote, “Taking place within a literal beehive, all societal issues seem to be addressed—placement within a society, governmental bodies, religion, environmental influences (SV: weather, pesticides, etc.), outside evil forces (SV: crows, wasps).” Another said, “The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death.” The book is classified as science fiction and dystopian. And again, yes, it is all that, and more.

Paull creates a totally believable apian world, riveting, poetic and philosophical. If you read The Bees, you’ll never again think of honeybees the same.

*** The third book in my latest series, Cleopatra’s Necklace, has just been released. Suspense and danger but no bees involved. More info at www.susanvaughan.com. Join me and other Maine Crime Writers tomorrow, July 11, at Books in Boothbay. Over 60 authors in many genres will be signing books. FMI, go to http://booksinboothbay.blogspot.com.

Cabbage Island–What’s Different, What’s the Same?

by Barb, working on the front porch in Boothbay Harbor, enjoying the scenery and the lovely breezes

I’ve been open about the fact that my Maine Clambake Mystery Series is “inspired by” the Cabbage Island Clambakes here in Boothbay Harbor. One of my fellow MCW writers Lea Wait’s daughter had her wedding reception there. Lea mentioned it to me in passing, and when my agent told me he was looking for a clambake-themed mystery series–bingo! An idea was born.

But, that idea was born in October, after the real Cabbage Island had closed down for the winter, and the series sold in February, so I wrote the first draft of Clammed Up without ever visiting Cabbage Island. I’ve always believed that was all to the good, because it left my imagination free to roam. I could make up an island, a family, and a “dining experience” that was unique. But in the name of research, my husband and I were the first people on the boat the following June when they reopened.

My husband, my daughter and I getting ready to board the Bennie Alice

Now that the first three books are out, a handful of people have written me to say that inspired by the books, they came to Boothbay Harbor for vacation and have gone to the “real clambake.” Last weekend, which was the long July 4th weekend, my daughter-in-law requested for her birthday that the whole family, including her mom who was up visiting from Virginia, go out to the Cabbage Island Clambake.

In an interview, Hank Phillippi Ryan once asked me if I could ever attend a clambake again and not be working. I’m happy to report the answer is yes. We had a perfect day for the excursion, and I had a lovely, lovely time. I did pick up some island gossip and anecdotes which will probably make their way into a future book, but I was “hardly working.”

I thought, in the interest of setting expectations for potential visitors, I would point out some of the differences between my fictional Snowden Family Clambake and the real thing.

1) On the way to the clambake, you cruise on a former party boat which takes you on a harbor tour.

The same. Also the same, the boats are named for the matriarch. In my books, the boat is the Jackie II, named for protagonist Julia Snowden’s mother, Jacqueline. The real boat is the Bennie Alice, named for 95-year-old Bennie Alice Moore, mother of the owners, who runs the island gift shop.

2) The clambakes are family-owned and run.

My family at the Cabbage Island Clambake

The same, though the families are entirely different. The Cabbage Island Clambakes are owned and run by brothers Wayne and Bob Moore. Four generations of Moores enjoy the island every summer. In the books, Julia Snowden has stepped up to run the Snowden Family Clambake Company along with her sister Livvie and brother-in-law Sonny Ramsey.

3) The island where the clambakes are held is just beyond the harbor mouth, in the Atlantic.

Not the same. Both Boothbay Harbor and the fictional Busman’s Harbor are vast with many islands, inhabited and uninhabited. But though the Snowden Family Clambake is just beyond the harbor mouth, Cabbage Island is inside the harbor in Linekin Bay.

4) There is an abandoned family mansion and a playhouse big enough to live in on the island.

Not the same. The Moores do have residences on Cabbage Island, but the island itself is less than half the size of my fictional Morrow Island. There’s no mansion, playhouse or beach, though there is a lovely lodge built in 1900. My brother is the only person who knows me well enough to have recognized the inspiration for the mansion and playhouse. It’s this little $27 million dollar beauty here, which was next door to my grandparents summer house in Water Mill, Long Island. (And by next door, I mean my grandparents’ modest ranch house was built on property that formerly belonged to the mansion grounds.) It did have a playhouse so complete it was rented out during the summer as a separate residence. The playhouse has been done over and expanded so many times over the years it’s no longer recognizable for what it once was. (On the other hand, the mansion in the books and the original inspiration look nothing alike. It’s just the idea.)

5) The meal consists of clam chowder, steamers, two lobsters, corn, a potato, an onion and an egg. Dessert is blueberry grunt.

Almost the same. The Cabbage Island Clambake serves fish chowder and dessert is blueberry cake, but otherwise the meal is identical.

6) The meal is cooked in a pit, over rocks heated by a roaring wood fire and covered in seaweed and tarps.

Not quite the same. My description in Clammed Up is more “traditional”, but I have to admit I’ve wondered if it would be practical for serving that many people. The Cabbage Island set up includes all of those elements, but is on a raised structure.

7) There is an island cat.

The same. Though not a Maine coon like the Morrow Island cat, Le Roi.

There isn’t an osprey family on Morrow Island, but after seeing this one on Cabbage Island, I wonder if I need to add one in some future book?

The Moores, by the way, have been very gracious to me, answering questions and so on. When I told Bob on this trip that I’d only killed one person on the island, so far, he laughed and said, “As long as it isn’t me.”