Lea Wait's Blog, page 287

Recidivism

Hey, all! Chris Holm here. Wait. Who?

Oh, right. Since this is my first official post as a contributor to Maine Crime Writers, I should probably introduce myself. Here’s my fancypants official bio:

Chris Holm is an award-winning short-story writer whose work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, and THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. His critically acclaimed trilogy of Collector novels, which blends fantasy with old-fashioned crime pulp, appeared on over forty Year’s Best lists. He lives in Portland, Maine.

One or two of you might read that and think, “Oh, I remember that guy from his guest posts, or Maine Crime Wave. He’s the one who writes the weird stuff.” And it’s true, my Collector series tips more toward fantasy than crime. So what the heck am I doing here?

The fact is, my most of my short fiction is straight-up crime. The first story I ever published was in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Doyle, Poe, and Christie were among my earliest literary loves. And as it happens, my upcoming novel, THE KILLING KIND, returns me to my criminal roots—it’s a big ol’ thriller, with nary a supernatural element to be found.

THE KILLING KIND, which comes out September 15th from Mulholland Books, is the story of Michael Hendricks. He kills people for money—but that aside, he’s not so bad a guy. Once a covert operative for a false-flag unit of the U.S. military, Hendricks was presumed dead after a mission in Afghanistan went sideways. He left behind his old life—and beloved fiancée—and set out on a path of redemption… or perhaps one of willful self-destruction.

Now Hendricks makes his living as a hitman entrepreneur of sorts: he only hits other hitmen. For ten times the price on your head, he’ll make sure whoever’s coming to kill you winds up in the ground instead. Not a bad way for a guy with his skill-set to make a living—but a great way to make himself a target.

It’s early yet, but thus far, buzz has been good. David Baldacci called THE KILLING KIND “a story of rare, compelling brilliance.” Chelsea Cain said, “THE KILLING KIND crackles with muscle and moxie and wit. I will read it again and again.” (Bonus points to Chelsea for inadvertently referencing Maine’s State Soft Drink!) And according to Joseph Finder, “THE KILLING KIND is sleek and smart, and will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading.”

Mighty kind of them to say, particularly because I’m such a fan of theirs. I’d like to think it’s because I wrote a terrific book—but chances are, they were just relieved to open their advance copy and discover it wasn’t more weird stuff.

Speaking of advance copies, my publisher will be giving away 500 of them at BEA this year, and I’ll be on hand to sign ’em. If you’re attending, be sure to grab one! And if you can’t attend, maybe next post I’ll give a few away. I expect I’ll give some copies away on Facebook and Twitter in the coming months as well, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you’d like a sneak peek, you can download Publishers Marketplace’s free Buzz Books 2015 sampler to read an excerpt of THE KILLING KIND and thirty-two other upcoming releases!

The Pile

by Barb, who expected to be in Maine by now, but who is marooned in Mass with a bad knee

Yes it’s that time of year–the time when everywhere I go I am accompanied by a tote bag full of submissions for the Level Best Books anthology. We get 130+  submissions every year, and this year is no different.

The pile

Somehow, that will get whittled down to 25 to 30 stories that go into Best New England Crime Stories 2016: Red Dawn. In the meantime, I have a lot of reading to do. All four editors read every submission. In the past six years, I can think of only three stories I haven’t read to the end–one bit of violent pornography, one bit of pornographic violence and one story that was so far outside our guidelines for length so as to be considered a novel. But if a story meets our guidelines for content and length and submission deadline, we’re reading it.

I’ve tried a variety of rating schemes over the years. Sometimes I go elaborate–a ten point scale. Other times I swear I’ll keep it simple–yes-no-maybe. But then along comes a yes+ (I’ll fight hard for this one) or a no, no, no, no, no (I’ll quit if this gets in).

The spreadsheet

Over the next month or so, the editors will meet three times. The first meeting is the easiest, we weed out the definite “nos.” We also look for stories where all four of us are in the yes+ column. Those are IN.

The next couple of meetings get harder and more heated. Until we have a list of the finalists. Then we start arguing about the order they will appear in the book.

This year’s activity will have a bittersweet quality. My fellow editors, Mark Ammons, Kathy Fast, Leslie Wheeler and I have announced this anthology will be our last. We still have hopes some other group might pick up the mantel and the anthology will go on, but we are done.

But in the meantime, I have to keep reading. We’ve got an anthology to produce.

Why I’m Against Mother’s Day

Lea Wait, here, two days past Mother’s Day. My husband calls that day (and Father’s Day — he’s an equal opportunity cynic) a “Hallmark holiday.”

And it probably is. Parents who do their best should be honored and respected every day. Especially on the days when children (of all ages) have conflicts with them. After all, if it weren’t for mothers and fathers …. But the end of that sentence is obvious.  And it’s equally obvious that there are parents who don’t deserve to be honored.

And “mothering” can be done by adoptive parents, foster parents, step parents, godparents, aunts, and just about anyone with a close relationship to a child or young person. Some of those people don’t have the official title of “mother” (and think of the bad rap step mothers get in all those fairy tales,) but they should also be given credit for everything they do to raise children. “It takes a village” …. not just a mother.

Having said all that, yes, I had a mother and a grandmother, and I think of them often, if not daily. Neither were perfect (who is?) but they both did the best they could, each under different circumstances. (My second grandmother was killed when my father was three years old, so I never knew her.)

And the question of being a mother has been one that defined my life in many ways.

Daughter Elizabeth, the day she came home.

I wanted very much to be a mother in the classic sense. I wanted to conceive and carry and give birth to one or two children. At one time in my mid-twenties I wanted that so much that I’d tear up seeing a woman who was pregnant, or hearing about a friend who’d had a baby.

But life conspired against my giving birth. I married when I was 25, but my husband was ill, and I was single again at 29. I thought seriously about having a baby as a single parent, but decided it would be too difficult to do that and continue working full-time, which I’d have to do to support my family. I also realized that although babies were wonderful, what I really looked forward to doing as a parent was sharing books and history and art and trips to the beach and the city. My vision of parenting was being a parent to a child old enough to talk, and listen, and share experiences.

So, as a single parent, I adopted four girls. They were ages 4, 8, 9, and 10 when they came home from Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. Their experiences before I met them were different from each other’s, and from mine. Challenges of all sorts defined our household.

One of those challenges was Mother’s Day.

To an adopted child the word “mother” is loaded. They had at least two mothers .. a birthmother, or biological mother, and an adoptive mother. (Some also had foster mothers.) And to children of a single mother, Father’s Day was also an issue.

The first year I was a mother we got through Mother’s Day without much fuss. My daughter hardly spoke English and we were just getting to know each other. It certainly wasn’t a time to make any fuss about me. But by Father’s Day, she came home from her kindergarten class with a Father’s Day

Lea and her daughters, 1985

card. I thanked her for it, although I wasn’t a father. And she asked, “What do fathers do?”

I panicked for a moment. What DID fathers do? Aside from the biology of fatherhood, none of the stereotypes worked. At our house, I did everything, from mowing the lawn and building bookcases to working and paying the bills to cooking dinner and reading bedtime stories. So I said, simply, “Fathers help mothers.”

My daughter nodded. I hoped it made sense to her. She didn’t remember having a mother or father – once she’d told me she didn’t know what a mother was until she came home to live with me.

But my second daughter remembered her biological parents. Her father had died, and she often re-enacted his funeral with her sister. Her mother had relinquished her for adoption, choosing, for an assortment of reasons, to keep her brother. She had very strong opinions about parents.

By that time we’d joined a church that, in celebration of Mother’s Day, placed white roses on the altar for mothers who had died, and red roses for mother who were still alive. I had two red roses put on the altar for my daughters’ biological mothers. We didn’t know if they were alive or dead, and it seemed the right thing to do. I gave gifts to each of my daughters, to thank them for honoring me by making me their mother. Two years  later the minister of the church handed me a red rose, and I started crying. Yes; I was a mother, too.

When my fourth daughter came home, from India, where she’d lived for a while in one of the Missionaries of Charity homes, I overheard my mother, who then lived with us, explaining to her that Mother’s Day was a special day, and that she was lucky. She now had a mother and a grandmother. My daughter replied, “In India I had two mothers, too, I had Mother Theresa and Mother Mary Margaret.”

The word “mother” meant something very different to her.

For all these reasons, Mother’s Day was not a holiday we paid a lot of attention to in our house. My girls didn’t have fathers to encourage the celebration. And for at least two of them, honoring me as their “mother” seemed to them they were dishonoring their biological moms. I understood that. It was an awkward day.

Today, my daughters are grown, and three have husbands and children of their own. None live close by, so I can’t say exactly what happens in their homes on Mother’s Day, but I hope they celebrate. Some years one or two of them call me. This year I received lovely flowers from one of my girls, and a “Happy Mother’s Day” Facebook message from one. I didn’t hear from the other two.

But, after all, it is a “Hallmark Holiday.” Our relationship doesn’t depend on their feeling guilty if they don’t say nice things on one particular day of the year.

Our relationship depends on love, and on being a family.

We’re doing okay.

So –  whether or not you celebrated Mother’s Day this year, for whatever reasons, I wish you well, and wish you peace. After all .. it’s only one day. What happens the other 364 days of the year is what defines a family.

Little Stories — Big Challenges

Vicki Doudera here. I’ve been thinking lots about short stories lately: what makes me want to read them, how they can satisfy us, and how they work in general. Most likely this is because I really enjoyed writing one over the winter, and spent some of those cold nights reading a collection of Andre Dubus’ that I found in a used bookstore in Boston, but also because right now I’m serving as a judge for a short story competition. When my work with the contest is through — in a week or so — I will have read and critiqued close to fifty short stories. So, needless to say, this form of fiction is top of mind.

A few years ago I took my first stab since college at writing one. Truthfully, I found it hard to begin. At that point in my writing life at least two Darby Farr Mysteries had been published, I’d penned three non-fiction books and countless magazine articles, and yet this form of writing eluded me. I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around just how to do it. At a Sisters in Crime event that I helped put together in Portland, I peppered some of the writers there with questions. I recall Leslie Wheeler, author of the Miranda Lewis “living history” mysteries, explaining that the world of a short story needs to be very small. Only a few characters, she said, one or two settings, and limited points of view.

I started to think in that vein and one day a tiny experience I had with a mean real estate client prompted me to pick up my pen. “A Neighbor’s Story,” the tale of an elderly woman with a chilling past, was the resulting story. I was absolutely thrilled when it was chosen for inclusion in Mystery Writers of America’s anthology, ICE COLD, and more determined than ever to continue my struggle with short fiction.

V.S. Pritchett’s definition of a short story is “Something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.” I like that explanation, because it implies noticing something very telling, just barely, and then exploring it. An interesting nugget is certainly a great start to fiction — long or short — but it can work especially well when crafting a tale that will be brief.

What are some of the challenges presented by short fiction? Outside of the usual — injecting enough tension to keep the reader guessing, keeping the point of view consistent, and crafting compelling, believable characters, the use of clear and specific language is probably the most important point. Without precise words, the details won’t come to life on the page. There simply isn’t enough time in a short story for vagueness, a truism I encountered while reading some of the contest entries. Brevity means each word has to count — something a poet knows all too well.

We all write for different reasons. Some of us are paying bills with our work; some of us are looking to make a name for ourselves. When the idea for a short story takes hold of me, I’m doing it for the pure love of the challenge. Like putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, the joy’s in the process of getting all the details right so that the result will be a finished whole. Unlike a puzzle, the final story will be my unique way of looking at the world — in 5000 words or less.

Weekend Update: May 9-10, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Vicki Doudera (Monday), Lea Wait (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday), Chris Holm (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 Kate Flora:  On Wednesday, May 13th at 6:30, I’ll be at the Raymond, Maine library.

On Thursday, May 14th at 7:00, I’ll be on a short stories panel at the Leominster (MA) Public Library with Ruth McCarty, Susan Oleksiw, and Janet Halpin.

I’m also thrilled to be able to announce that retired Maine Game Warden Roger Guay and I have sold his memoir, A Good Man with a Dog: A Retired Warden’s Twenty-Five Years in the Maine Woods, to Skyhorse. We don’t have a pub date yet–sometime in 2016 is all I can say, but it was an honor to work with Roger and I’m very excited that the story can soon be read.

Stay tuned for more announcements about MCW summer events. We’re going to be EVERYWHERE!

Also, gearing up for a Maine summer, we want to do a weekend special on Maine recipes, so if you have an original recipe to share, please send it along. Some lucky person will be getting Moose and Lobster cookie cutters.

from Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett: And what Kate is too modest to share is that she has just been named a finalist for the Anthony Award in the category of “best critical or non-fiction work” for Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice. The winner will be announced at Bouchercon in Raleigh, North Carolina in October. Way to go, Kate!

 

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

 

Master of All Masters.

Vaughn Hardacker here: Recently, I was talking to a young couple, parents of two children, four and six, and the topic of how we entertain our kids came up. As I expected several techniques were mentioned, all of which were technology-based. I thought back to my childhood and wondered how we survived in the days before personal computers, DVDs, CDs, the internet, cable TV, and of course video games. The answer of course, BOOKS!

I learned to read, and thus started a life-long love affair with books, reading fairy tales to my younger brother (four years my junior). As children we listened to them and laughed or cringed with fear (keep in mind this was before Disney stole the genre and romanticized all of the stories) never realizing that each of them had a point to make. Hans Christian Anderson’s immortal The Little Mermaid was written as a warning to his society that what we do does have consequences.

One of my favorites was a short little story entitled Master of All Masters. The story illustrates the problems that can occur when people who use different words to describe things. It is short so I will include it here. The version below is the English one, although similar tales exist in multiple cultures such as Scotland and in India. For those who would rather let someone else do the reading you can see a famous version of the story told by Danny Kaye at https://vimeo.com/59088091.

Master of All Masters: An English Fairy Tale

A long time ago in England, there was a very poor family: a mother, a father and a daughter named Jane. They were so poor that they didn’t have enough to eat. So one night, the mother didn’t eat supper, and the next night the father didn’t eat supper. And when Jane was fully-grown, she too took a turn and didn’t eat supper every third night.

After several months, Jane thought, “I think my parents can manage this farm on their own. If I got a job on another farm, I could eat there. Then we all would have enough to eat. That’s what I need to do – find a job on another farm.”

So Jane told her parents of her plan.

“But Jane,” cried her mother, “We would miss you so!”

“And it’s so close to Christmas, too!” said her father sadly.

“I will miss you too,” replied Jane, “I know – I will only take a job if I can spend every Sunday and every holiday with you.”

So Jane’s parents reluctantly agreed. That very afternoon, after Jane had finished her chores, she packed a tiny bundle of her extra clothes, and started walking to the village.

On the way, she met a man, also walking to the village.

“Well, young lady,” he said heartily and haughtily, “Why are you walking to the village this afternoon?”

“I’m looking for a job on a farm.”

“Really? Is that true? What a coincidence! I am going to the village to hire someone to work on my farm. I just decided this very morning that I had enough money to do that.” He looked at her very carefully, from the top of her head all the way down to her toes. “Just what sort of work can you do on a farm?”

“Why sir, I’ve been doing all sorts of work on my parents’ farm my whole life. I can plant and harvest the crops, I’m very good with the animals, and I can cook and take care of the house.”

“Well, well, well,” he said. “You’re just the sort of worker I’m looking for.”

So they started discussing how much he would pay her.

“Sir, I will only be working for you 6 days a week. I must go home and spend each Sunday with my parents.”

“That’s fine, Jane,” he replied, “As long as you make me a good hot meal on Saturday night, leave me enough prepared food for Sunday, and are back in time to serve me a hot breakfast on Monday morning.”

“Very good, sir. Why don’t we try this for a week to see if we’re both happy with this arrangement?”

“That’s a good idea, Jane, a very good idea.”

So they turned around and started walking back to his farm. He was thinking,

“Isn’t that just like me? I decide to hire someone in the morning and even before I get to the village, I’ve hired someone that very afternoon! Hmm, isn’t that just like me?” And he let out a great sigh of contentment.

Then he turned to Jane. “What will you call me, Jane?”

“Why, sir, or master, or whatever you wish.”

“Jane, I want you to call me Master of all Masters.”

“Alright, Master of all Masters, whatever you wish.”

When they got to his farm, he said, “It’s getting late, Jane. I’ll show you around the outside of this prosperous farm tomorrow morning. Right now, let’s go inside.”

So he led her to the kitchen. “Over there, in the corner, is where you’ll be sleeping, Jane.

What do you call what you’ll be sleeping on?”

“Why, a bed or a couch, or whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

“Jane, I want you to call that,” he said thoughtfully, “A barnacle.”

“A barnacle,” Jane repeated, rather doubtfully. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”  

“What do you call what I’m wearing on my legs?”

“Why, trousers or pants, or whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

“Jane, I want you to call them,” he said thoughtfully, “Squibs and crackers.”

“Squibs and crackers,” Jane repeated, again rather doubtfully. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

But she was thinking, “I think he’s a little crackers!” 

Just then a cat dashed across the kitchen floor.

“What do you call that, Jane?”

“Why, a cat or a kitten, or whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

“Jane, I want you to call that,” he said thoughtfully, “White-faced simony.”

“White-faced simony,” Jane repeated carefully. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

 Pointing to something in another corner, he asked, “What do you call that, Jane?”

“Why, that’s a Christmas tree, Master of all Masters.”

“Jane, I want you to call that,” he said thoughtfully, “A Druid’s arbor.”

“A Druid’s arbor,” Jane repeated slowly. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

 “And what is next to the, ah, Druid’s arbor, Jane?”

“Why, the fire or flame, or whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

“Jane, I want you to call that,” he said thoughtfully, “Hot cockalorum.”

“Hot cockalorum,” Jane repeated very slowly. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

Jane was getting very tired, trying to remember all these silly words, and keep straight which was what… 

“What is in this bucket, Jane?”

“Why, I call that water but I imagine that you call it something else, Master of all Masters.”

“Yes, I do. Jane, I want you to call that,” he said thoughtfully, “Pondalorum.”

“Pondalorum,” Jane repeated with a sigh. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.” 

“What do you call everything you see, Jane?”

“Why, I call that your farm but you call it ?”

“I call it,” he said thoughtfully, “High Topper Mountain.”

“High Topper Mountain,” Jane repeated with an enormous sigh. “Whatever you wish, Master of all Masters.”

“Jane, you seem to be a little tired, hopefully because of all the walking you did today. Why don’t you just fix us a quick meal and then go right to, ah, barnacle?”

“Thank you, Master of all Masters.”

And that’s just what Jane did. But when she fell asleep, she had a few nightmares about words crawling in her ears and out of her mouth and swarming all around. She finally fell into a sound sleep until she was woken up by a crash and a whoosh. The cat had knocked the Christmas tree into the fireplace, and the tree had caught fire! Jane pulled the tree out of the fireplace and threw the water left in the bucket on the burning tree. But the tree was still burning and Jane didn’t know where the well was!

So Jane ran to her master’s room and shook him, yelling haltingly,

“Master of all Masters, get out of your barnacle and put on your squibs and crackers. The white-faced simony knocked the Druid’s arbor into the hot cockalorum. If we don’t get more pondalorum, the whole High Topper Mountain will be on hot cockalorum!”

“Yuh?”, he said, yawning broadly.

She repeated faster:

“Master of all Masters, get out of your barnacle and put on your squibs and crackers. The white-faced simony knocked the Druid’s arbor into the hot cockalorum. If we don’t get more pondalorum, the whole High Topper Mountain will be on hot cockalorum!”

  “Jane, WHAT are you talking about???!?”

“Master, get out of your bed and put on your pants. The cat knocked the Xmas tree into the fire. If we don’t get more water, the whole farm will be on fire!”

“OH! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?,” he exclaimed. He did just what Jane told him to do. Jane followed him to the well and they eventually put out the fire.

And while Jane continued to work for him for many years, never again did she use any of those silly words.

My brother always laughed when he heard about hot cockalorum and pondalorum. My favorite rendition was always a one time performance by my father. I enticed him to read a story to us one rainy afternoon (keep in mind that my father had a grammar school education and worked hard as a truck driver his entire life. Reading was not something that came easy to him). He started stumbling over many of the words such as pondalorum and each time I would correct him and tell him how to pronounce it. After several minutes of this he tossed the book at me and said, “There you smart little #@^&!, you read it!”.

It probably didn’t help him much that my brother and I were rolling on the floor in fits of laughter nor did my mother telling him, “He set you up,” help matters any.

When I think about the great memories today’s technology may be taking from this and future generations of kids, I can’t help but feel sorry for them.

 

Post-Malice Ramblings

Kathy/Kaitlyn, Kate, Dorothy and Lea

tall milfs cougars that crave black cocks

As most folks reading this blog already know, Kate, Lea, Dorothy, Brenda and I spent last weekend at Malice Domestic in Bethesda, Maryland, along with six hundred or so like-minded folks. I stayed over till Monday before flying home to Maine. By the time you read this on Thursday, my brain may be functional again, but I wouldn’t bet money on it. I may be caught up on laundry . . . or not. What I will be, is glad I went. I always am. I can’t say for certain how many Malice Domestics I’ve attended, but I’m thinking it’s upward of twenty. I started with Malice III and this year was Malice 27. I don’t know when they switched from Roman numerals, either. I should find out.

Anyway, don’t expect too much coherence in this post. I’m just going to ramble a bit about this year’s experience. I was going to take pictures and did, in fact, take a few, but I’m a terrible photographer. The blurry ones are mine. The ones in focus were taken by people with more skill and steadier hands than I have.

It’s always a shock to head south in the spring. Maine still had brown grass, no leaves on the trees, and precious few flowers when I left on the last day of April. The Washington D.C. area, including Bethesda, is incredibly green. Plus all those flowering trees and bushes. And it’s warmer than here. And it’s humid!! It always takes me a day or so just to adjust to being at sea level. Did you know that our nation’s capitol was built on a swamp? Still feels like one when you’re used cold and dry.

projected image above lobby bar

But onward to Malice itself. I flew down on the same plane with Lea, and with Steve Steinbock, who has guest posted here. He does the book reviews for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. We shared a cab to the hotel, about a half hour ride through all that greenery. It didn’t take long after arriving to start seeing familiar faces. In fact, my room was right next door to Sherry Harris from the Wicked Cozy blog. We were on the first floor, which is kind of cool. You can take the elevator down, or you can walk through the area used for book signings and down the grand staircase to the lobby. There’s also an excellent view of the lobby bar, since the hotel is designed atrium style (I think that’s the right term)—good for spotting who’s already there.

Lea Wait at group signing–photo by Morgan Elwell of Kensington Books

 

Now I don’t want you to think I’m a barfly. In fact, I don’t usually drink at all (bad reaction with my blood pressure meds), but the hotel lobby bar is THE place to meet both old friends and new ones. I had a very interesting chat with Cheryl Hollon, who is writing a cozy series based around a stained glass shop. The first entry, Pane and Suffering, will be out in September. I connected with old friend Jan Giles, who comes to Malice every year . . . from her home in Bahrain. That’s an 18 hour flight. I finally met and had the chance to talk with Mo Heedles, from New Hampshire, who won character-naming rights in a future Liss MacCrimmon novel at last year’s Malice Domestic charity auction. Mo will be in this fall’s entry, The Scottie Barked at Midnight. And of course I reconnected with long-time conference-going pals—yes, Dina, I mean you—and caught up on cats, books, and all the other things traditional mystery readers have in common.

Historical mysteries seem to be alive and well. Jessie Crockett, another of the Wicked Cozies (we think of them as our “sister blog” because we share Barb Ross) is researching one, which led to a conversation about library and historical society holdings. And speaking of history, the first session I attended was put on by two archaeologists who explained how they discovered the identity of a body found in an iron coffin during an excavation. Thanks to DNA testing, they succeeded in reuniting this young man with his family after nearly two hundred years. Fascinating stuff.

good friend JoAnna Carl

Some of my own favorite authors are old friends as well as Malice regulars—Rhys Bowen, JoAnna Carl, Margaret Maron, and Victoria Thompson (who is next year’s Guest of Honor). If you haven’t read relatively new writer Gigi Pandian, give her Jaya Jones series a try. Then there was what’s becoming a semi-regular tradition, going out to eat on Friday night with Lea Wait, Maddy Hunter, Kathleen Earnst, and Kathleen’s sister Barbara.

I met with my agent, Christina Hogrebe, with unexpected (but good) results. You never know how those conversations will turn out! We’re planning ahead. Way ahead. For the time after I turn in the tenth book in the Liss MacCrimmon series. That manuscript is currently “resting” so I will have a bit of perspective on it when I go back to it to revise. First though, sometime very soon, I will be receiving edits from my new editor for the Rosamond Jaffrey historical mysteries. I have no idea what to expect there, but my fingers are crossed that not much will need changing. On the other hand, a good editor makes a book better, so I’m always open to suggestions.

My panel, consisting of the nominees for best short story (me, Barb Goffman, Edith Maxwell, and Art Taylor), was moderated by Linda Landrigan, editor of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and was a continuation of the blog tour we all went on together during the last couple of months. In person, it was even better. I enjoyed spending time chatting with the other nominees and even ended up getting some valuable feedback from Barb Goffman, who is very good at that sort of thing, during a casual conversation on the lobby bar. Oh, did you want to know about the Agatha award? Nope. Didn’t win. It went to Art Taylor. His acceptance speech mentioned our blog tour and the good feelings it engendered among us. Sure, I would have loved to bring home a Malice teapot, but I don’t feel bad about returning to Maine without one.

I spent some time in the dealer room with old friend Chris Cowan, who makes and sells jewelry. Not as much as I’d have liked to. My arthritic ankles were giving me fits, making it hard to do a lot of walking around. Chris found an adorable Scottie pin to go with The Scottie Barked at Midnight. I’ll save a picture of that for a later post.

Morgan Elwell, armed with camera

Another new acquaintance was Morgan Elwell, Communications and Marketing Manager for Kensington Books. She brought freebies: little sewing kits with Kensington’s name and a URL printed on them. She tells me she brought 400. They disappeared fast. Someone else was giving away pill cases. For the most part, though, the PR material consisted of postcards, flyers, pens, and buttons.

I did warn you I was going to ramble. Oddly enough, one of the prevalent topics of conversation was other conferences, particularly ones where some of us might meet again in the not-to-distant future. Some of us will be at the Historical Novel Society conference in Denver next month. Others are already registered for Bouchercon in Raleigh, North Carolina in October. Registration is about to open for the next New England Crime Bake in Massachusetts. And it wasn’t too soon to talk about the next Maine Crime Wave, either, even though it doesn’t yet have a set date. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the Malice people make it to Maine next April.

One thing everyone at Malice has in common is a love of mysteries. This year, three of the remaining long-time mystery booksellers were represented in the Dealer Room: Aunt Agatha’s, Mystery Loves Company, and Scene of the Crime. I made a point of buying books from all three of them, even though, to be honest, these days it is easier for me to read on my iPad and enlarge the font. Why? Because if we don’t support independent booksellers when we can and, yes, pay full price for those books, even though it would be cheaper to buy them on Amazon, then even more bookstores will go out of business. Trust me, no one wants that!

Now, however, I am faced with a dilemma. Which one of the fifteen hardcover and paperback books I schlepped home from Malice do I read first?

 

Feel the Mystery Burn

Hello, friends:

Gerry Boyle here. My friend Kate Flora graciously invited me to write something to coincide with the launch of ONCE BURNED, the new and 10th Jack McMorrow novel, to be released by Islandport Press next week. The book is about arson. The need to keep on writing these stories is burning, too.

This has been on my mind these last few weeks. I turned in the manuscript for the McMorrow No. 11, STRAW MAN, last month. Since then I’ve had plenty to do—a revision of an Irish crime novel (co-written with my Irish daughter, Emily Westbrooks), my Colby Magazine work, a quick trip to the Southwest, cleaning up the yard after a long Maine winter, getting the boat ready for the season, hanging out with family—but I feel unsettled.

A little jumpy.

Hard to sit still.

I wasn’t sure why until last week when I was doing an interview with Caroline Cornish, for the WCSH television show 207. Caroline asked me how I keep coming up with ideas for McMorrow novels after 20 years. I don’t recall my response. But I know now what I should have said: “How can I help it?”

The truth is that writing a mystery series is like a relationship. It is a relationship, with a character who may be the person—imagined, yes—you spend as much time with as any actual person. You are inside that protagonist’s head. You’re thinking about their life. You’re with them in very dangerous situations, and you’re with them in their quiet moments as well. You invented them, and their significant others, their cast of supporting characters, and if you get lucky, and readers keep reading, you’re with them until death does you part.

If you get very lucky, you’ll go first.

It’s a little whacked. I mean, you could be writing literary novels. You could be writing poetry. You could be writing your memoir. Instead, you’ve tied the knot with this one person, and that person is in constant trouble, turmoil, physical danger, and at psychological risk. You need them as much as they need you. Or maybe more.

My main man is McMorrow, the rogue newspaper reporter who for 20 years has been exploring the minefields of Maine. He and I go way back, to when I was a cub reporter and he was the jaded veteran late of the New York Times. I gave him raison d’etre and in return he took me under his wing. He’s one interesting guy, I think. Tough, principled, vigilant in his determination that the truth be revealed and justice served.

His best friend, Clair, is a Marine, a Vietnam veteran, ex-special forces philosopher. His wife, Roxanne, works with troubled kids and keeps her most troubled kid, McMorrow himself, from going over the edge. She’s the second-strongest woman I know.

So here we are, me and McMorrow. Joined at the keyboard, which might as well be the hip.

I have no trouble coming up with ideas, no more than McMorrow has trouble picking battles. When I’m not with him, I have this uneasy feeling (see above) that he’s out there without me. And I hate to miss a minute.

Of course, I could be writing these books for myself. I’m fortunate that I’m not the only one who finds McMorrow interesting—a real blessing, that.

It’s not something you do lightly. I thought that as I read Brenda Buchanan’s nice post here about joining the ranks of mystery novelists. All those years of work. All those hours with someone you’ll grow very close to over the years. All those near-death experiences you share and learn from. Best of luck to you both.

Brenda made reference to Robert B. Parker, the wonderful writer who taught her in college and was a big help to me when I was starting out. Parker died very suddenly, at his writing desk. It was very unexpected and devastating to his family and friends and many thousands of fans. But he was spared one thing: he didn’t have to part with Spenser, his fictional counterpart for more than 30 years.

That sort of parting is difficult to contemplate. So I’m not. In the words of Ruth Rendell, who died last week, wrote wonderful mystery novels all of her life, “I couldn’t do that.” Writing, Rendell said “is essential to my life.”

So on we go. ONCE BURNED is about arson and revenge. STRAW MAN is about guns and true faith. The next one? We’re mulling. For me and McMorrow, it’s full speed ahead.

Loony, Light and Dark

Everyone wore a rock band related t-shirt to the party

John Clark, sitting in the most cluttered writing space in Maine. We’ve lived in this house for 12 years. When we first looked at it, Beth and I were excited because we saw personal space possibilities that had been unavailable in our previous home. I chose the room across the hall from our bedroom that looks out over where the town pool used to be. In fact, the remains complete with stagnant water, were still extant that first summer and we were serenaded every night by enough frogs to make one think they were in Africa.

The room remains essentially unchanged to this day. There’s a newer computer desk that’s already begging to retire, four computers and a ton of peripheral storage drives. It has a neat window seat thingy with storage space under it, but there’s so much clutter on top that I don’t think I’ve looked to see what I’ve stashed there in a couple years. Most of the remaining floor space is covered with piles of books, DVDs and music CDs. Some are waiting to be cataloged, but more are waiting to be read or listened to. There’s a subtle delight in the insanity of anticipation. Last time I checked, I had 80 gigabytes of music, all legally copied from my CDs or purchased online. If I started listening now, I’d be dead before I finished, but I still trade CDs online at swapacd.com, a sister site of paperbackswap.com where I’ve traded several thousand books and audio books. These two have another allied site, swapadvd.com where I trade duplicate DVDs for the library. Lately, I’ve been accumulating horror movies that no other library in Maine has because my patrons are really into that genre. See how easy it is to digress. Anyhow, there must be at least a hundred books in my TBR piles, but that doesn’t stop me from adding more.

You might think with traffic going by constantly, the subtle lure of a book begging to be read, etc. that writing in this mancave of clutter would be difficult. Oddly enough, it’s not, mainly because between the internet and the stuff lying around, I can find the information or the spark I need to move forward. Here’s an example. I had this great scene in my head for the current book where Skye and her new friend, Tina who also is a really good basketball player, but has almost no money, decide to go on a girls day out shopping spree to a number of thrift stores, starting in Ellsworth. It took a bit of convincing for Skye to get Tina to agree to being treated to whatever the heck caught her fancy, but once that happens, they start in Ellsworth and then go up Rt. 1A to Bangor. On the way back coming over the Airline, they’re chased by a couple really evil bikers and what happens is pretty dramatic, requiring cops and an ambulance. I needed to be sure that the place where it happened was across the line into Washington County so the right sheriff’s department would show up. That’s why I have my DeLorme Atlas sitting on top of the box of books next to my desk. The scene came out perfectly after I moved it about five miles east of where I’d planned to have it happen.

Daddy taught me to applaud a good performance.

On to the light portion of this blog entry. March third was my granddaughter Piper’s first birthday, but Sara and Russ decided they wanted a big celebration, not only because there were a lot of cousins who hadn’t met Piper yet, but also as a celebration of Sara coming back from a pretty severe case of postpartum depression. They rented the community building in North Belgrade and it was a great time. Lots of laughter, games, eats and cake. Since there were younger cousins from both sides of the family, it was great fun to watch them look at each other, grin and start playing like they’d known each other for years. Too bad that wonderful trait seems to evaporate by the time we become adults. One of the things Sara put together for Piper is a time capsule in the form of a chest for her to open on her eighteenth birthday. Anyone at the party who wanted to, was encouraged to write a memory or a wish for her and these were all sealed in envelopes. It will be interesting to see how she reacts when it gets opened.

Hey dude, check out my cool threads

She sure is an outgoing and happy kid. We’ve gotten in the habit of saving a bit of our supper so Beth, who takes care of her during the week, can feed it to her the next day. Thus far, we have yet to find a fruit or vegetable that she hasn’t liked. She also loves to blow kisses to anyone who’s leaving. I’m excited for the time when she’s learned to speak and I can help her develop a vocabulary second to none to go with the sense of humor I just know she’ll have.

She has her great grandmother’s red hair, will she become a mystery writer too?

The first story I ever had published was called In Your Dreams and appeared in one of the earlier Level Best anthologies. It was actually written as self-therapy because I kept having a recurring dream about killing a woman back when I was still drinking and getting away with it. It was a very dark story. Oddly enough, as soon as I wrote it, I stopped having the dream. I pretty much got away from really dark stories after a while, but this year, when it came time for submissions to both Level Best and the Al Blanchard contest, I got back to my dark roots and sent in two that had fermented in my head very nicely. They’re both fairly short. The shorter of the two took 45 minutes to write and came out much better than the original muddy version in my brain. I’m hoping one of them makes it into the anthology. Over the past ten years, I’ve accumulated a number of short stories I’ve liked, but weren’t selected. Perhaps they’ll end up in an ebook called Somerset County Rejects.

Next time I post, I’ll be introducing you to my replacement at the Hartland Public Library. The search took an unexpected turn, but one that I think is going to work out very nicely and be well received by the library patrons.

How Did I Get Here?

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself-Well…How did I get here? – The Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

 I am 57 years old, and my debut novel, Quick Pivot, was released last Monday.

I started imagining this scenario—being a published mystery author—at about the age of ten, when I faced up to the fact that being a cowgirl wasn’t a viable career plan for someone raised in a Massachusetts mill town. I moved a small table and chair into the bedroom I shared with my sister and claimed it as my writing space. I am sure I was insufferable about needing time to create. I no longer have any of the stories I wrote at that little table, which is an excellent thing.

A couple of years later I appropriated my mother’s stand up Underwood and set up shop in the basement playroom, where my hunt-and-peck style was less audible to the rest of the family. After passing through the requisite bad poetry stage, I circled back to crime stories, inspired by the amateur and professional detectives in the mysteries I read constantly.

The moment I got to high school I joined the school paper, and eventually became its editor. I went on to study journalism at Northeastern University in Boston, spending my co-op terms at the Boston Globe, but during my academic semesters I managed to sneak in some courses in writing fiction. In one of those truth-is-stranger experiences, my writing prof was Robert B. Parker, who was a few books into his Spenser series and still teaching on the side. I was 20 years old, and my work reflected my limited life experience. But Parker offered feedback and enough encouragement for me to stick into my back pocket the idea that I was capable of writing a publishable novel.

After a number of years working as a newspaper reporter, I went to law school, and have practiced that profession for the past 25 years. For reasons I cannot quite explain, about seven years ago the characters in my Joe Gale Mystery Series began creeping into my consciousness. When their voices grew insistent I realized if I were ever going to write fiction in a serious way, it was then or never.

I took some classes. I read a few books. I began going to Crime Bake every fall and took copious notes during the workshops on character, tension and voice. Some friends and I formed a critique group. I gave myself a two-pages-a-night goal. Two pages a night is 15 pages a week, rounding up. That added up to 60 pages a month, I told myself, which would translate to a novel-length manuscript in about six months.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way. It took years for the first manuscript to be written, many months for me to realize it was far from ready for prime time, maybe a year and a half to write the second book. That one became Quick Pivot, with enormous help from thoughtful beta readers, many kind colleagues who bucked me up when I felt discouraged, and an incredibly supportive spouse.

Now I’m finally moving into the world of published writers. I know the work ahead makes the work I’ve already done seem like zippo. But I’m not mystified about how I got here. It was always my destination. I simply took a circuitous route.

  Brenda Buchanan is a former newspaper reporter with a deep reverence for small town journalism. Her Joe Gale Mystery Series features an old-school reporter with modern media savvy who covers the Maine crime beat. Brenda holds a journalism degree from Northeastern University and a law degree from the University of Maine. She writes and practices law in Portland, where she lives with her spouse.

Brenda can be found on the web at www.brendabuchananwrites.com and on Twitter at @buchananbrenda

Quick Pivot is available in digital format wherever fine ebooks are sold.

Here’s a plot summary: In 1968, a cunning thief skimmed a half a million dollars from the textile mill that was the beating heart of Riverside, Maine. Sharp-eyed accountant George Desmond discovered the discrepancy, but was killed before he could report it. After stashing the body, the thief-turned-killer manipulated evidence to make it appear Desmond skipped town with the stolen money, ruining his good name forever.

In 2014, veteran journalist Joe Gale is covering a story for the Portland Daily Chronicle when a skeleton falls at his feet: Desmond’s bones have been found a basement crawl space at the long-shuttered mill. For Joe, digging into the past means retracing the steps his mentor Paulie Finnegan had taken years ago, when the case was still open. But the same people who bird-dogged Paulie four decades ago are watching Joe now. As he closes in on the truth, his every move is tracked, and the murderer proves more than willing to kill again.