Lea Wait's Blog, page 291

Sometimes S#&T Just Happens or When I Knew I Would Become A Writer

Al Lamanda here. Sometimes in life, s#&t just happens all by itself and seemingly for no good reason. Trust me; there is a reason, and a cause and an outcome. Most of the time, we’re too busy leading our lives to recognize the reason and cause, just the s#&t that happened to us and the outcome, and sometimes not even the outcome is revealed to us until much later down the road.

Some prime examples of some s#&t that happened to me for no good reason over this past miserable winter (stop me if you’ve heard any of this before) started in late December. It snowed (yeah, I know, you too) often and a lot. Except that it didn’t snow as scheduled. By this, I mean I would watch the weather report and it would say to expect up to a half foot of new snow the next day. I would prepare for the snow beginning with the exotic dance of moving the cars so the plow guy can plow the driveway and backyard. The dance of the cars is followed by positioning the shovels and boots for early morning use. Come morning, I would be fully prepared to shovel the walkway, deck and return the cars to their regular less exotic spots. Except that in the morning, there wasn’t a hint of snow on the ground. Odd, but the weather channel does make mistakes from time to time. Except that a few days later, the weather report didn’t mention snow and I woke up to nearly a foot of snow on the ground. No fair as I didn’t get the chance to conduct the exotic dance of the moving cars. This, it will, it won’t weather reporting went on for weeks leading up to the storm of the millennium, nicknamed by the weather gods, the snowicane. The snowicane had people running to the stores for bottled water, canned goods, bread, candles and batteries as if they were all contestants on The Price is Right and their names had just been called. Expected snowfall totals of three feet, with hurricane winds and power outages, so the weather gods predicted. I went to bed fully prepared and awoke to a few inches of fluffy snow that I swept off the walkway with a broom. And went about my business of packing and preparing for a planned vacation to Puerto Rico. Then, thirty-six hours before the flight, the airlines and weather reports issued a travel advisory. Snow. Winds. Snowicane conditions. The day of my flight, which was canceled by the way, the news stations were gloom and dooming about the raging storm while I was looking out my window at a calm, sunny day. My flight was rescheduled for the following morning, a day that no mention of snow or storm was in the forecast. So as I drove to the airport in a whiteout conditions, two things crossed my mind. The first was that I would never make it to the airport. The second was that I would never make it to Puerto Rico. Although we took off in a white out, the flight was surprisingly smooth sailing the entire trip.

While in Puerto Rico, enjoying the 85-90 degree sun, I kept hearing reports of snow and frigid cold back home, but decided to worry about that later and relaxed on the beach. A few days before leaving for Puerto Rico, this happened.

I was writing at my desk when I noticed that my cat was taking a keen interest in something on the rug. I investigated and discovered that my cat was watching a lady bug. I was about to squash said lady bug when my better half intervened on the lady bug’s behalf. Because lady bugs are cute little creatures that bring to mind Herbie the Love Bug, my better half had a fit that I wanted to kill it. She wanted to set it free. When I politely pointed out that it was six degrees outside and said Herbie would freeze to death, the result was the same as squishing the little bugger. Lady Bugs are beetles, smaller cousins to the dung beetles who spend most of their time rolling around in … well, you get the idea. Also, they bite. So while the better half and I were discussing the merits of squishing or freezing the lady bug, it up and vanished. We conducted a search of the living room, but the little bugger was nowhere to be had. I suspected that my cat had solved the matter by simply making a snack of the little creature and didn’t give it a second thought. Until the warm sunshine of Puerto Rico was behind us and freezing cold and snow greeted us at the airport. Along with hundreds of lady bugs in the house. They were everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. In lamp shades, the rugs, window ledges, my desk, my keyboard and even the bathroom sink. About the only place the lady bugs weren’t was inside my cat’s stomach, because as it turns out my cat doesn’t like to eat them, just watch them crawl around. My better half changed her tune of save the lady bug and you can guess the rest.

A few days after returning from Puerto Rico and dealing with the lady bug situation, this happened. I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Usually brushing your teeth is about as exciting as, well, brushing your teeth. Except that usually when I run the water in the sink, the water drains. Usually. Not that day, no, no, no. That day the sink just filled and filled even though the drain hole was wide open. I checked the kitchen sink, same thing. My pipes weren’t frozen, but the septic tank was. According to the company that deals with this sort of thing, while I was away basking in the sun, the lack of running water coupled with the sub-zero temperatures resulted in a frozen septic tank. The first order of business was to remove the snow from where the tank is buried in the backyard and then await their arrival. Easier said than done when there is six feet of snow covering the location of the tank. The emergency company said they would be there within the hour, which meant three, so I had plenty of time to remove the snow. Three hours later, when they arrived, I had the area clear. And the ground was frozen. Rock hard. So on a freezing February day, I stood by and watched as men with jackhammers tore up my yard. To unfreeze the tank that froze because I flew to Puerto Rico in a blizzard on a day when it wasn’t supposed to snow but did anyway. And while I was standing there in my yard that now resembled a construction site and smelled like a three-hundred-cow dairy farm, I felt something nibble on my left ear. I removed my hat and, you guessed it, found a lady bug.

So sometimes in life s#&t happens and most of the time we don’t know why and what the outcome will be, but sometimes we do. If we reflect back upon it.

At a recent library event, I was asked by a young woman if I always knew I would be a writer, and if so, when did I know? The answer to that question goes back a very long ways to some s#&t that happened to me when I was eleven-years-old.

My roots are in The Bronx, a borough of New York City. I grew up with cement sidewalks, three-sewer stickball and open fire hydrants in the summer as my beach getaway. Summer tans were acquired on Tar Beach, otherwise known as flat, tar-covered rooftops. We didn’t swim or water ski or play volley ball in the sand. Snow was good for just one thing, snowball fights. Nobody skied down a mountain and drank a hot toddy afterward at the lodge in front of a crackling fire. The only crackling fire I ever stood in front of as a kid was when a neighborhood house burned down, which was a frequent occurrence in The Bronx. People would bring lawn chairs and we would sit and cheer on the fire department and hope they would leave the hydrant on afterward. Sometimes, if the fire was big enough, people would bring food and drink for the firefighters and make it an all day event. Bets were placed on how much furniture the firefighters could save so that afterward the owners of the burned down house could have a fire sale.

I was, I believe eleven-years-old before I ever set foot out of The Bronx. Some distant relatives got together with my parents and decided it was a good idea to have me spend a month with said distant relatives at their place in the country. Which turned out to be a three-hundred cow dairy farm in upstate New York (which is how I knew what my backyard smelled like on that cold day in February some fifty plus years later.) My first impression of my distant cousin’s farm was that (you guessed it) it smelled really bad. There were no sidewalks or tall buildings and nothing was made of cement. There were a lot of cows and they seemed not to do much of anything except stand around and chew a lot. The large farmhouse was clustered with old stuff in every corner of every room, and the television was a small black and white set that sat on a small stand in the kitchen that didn’t get much use due to poor reception. Why, of why, was this happening to me? My distant cousin was an avid reader, as were his kids and books were everywhere. There must have been five hundred books scattered about the house. Now I’d read books before, it was required for school, but never for fun and usually meant a written book report to follow. Why read when you can watch Bonanza, Have Gun Will Travel and Gunsmoke?

That opinion changed during the second week on the farm. After dinner one night, when there was nothing to do except watch my cousins read, it was suggested to me to dig through the library and find a book to read. Up to that point, I had learned to milk a cow by hand, something still done to warm the cow up before using the milking machine, to shovel manure without getting any on me, to bail hay and make my own butter, so why not try reading a book.

I went through the library and found a paperback copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. My first impression was what’s a league and do you need twenty thousand of them? But, bored with nothing else to do, I sat on the living room sofa and started to read. It was the first time in my life that I read something for pleasure and not because a book report was due. Without ever leaving the sofa, I was transported to faraway lands on wild adventures and met exciting heroes and characters, and all without turning a knob or buying a ticket. I finished the book in two nights and read Around the World in Eighty Days next. After that I discovered H. G. Wells, Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle. On the day I was to return home, my cousin allowed me to take whatever books I wanted to read. I took about a dozen. On the drive home, my dad put a ballgame on the radio, but I was too busy reading in the back seat to listen. It was then, at age eleven that I knew that one day I would be a writer, and hopefully to be able to transport someone to a faraway place and take them on an adventure without them ever having to leave their living room. That burning desire to be a storyteller has stayed with me since and burns as brightly today as when I was eleven.

So sometimes s#&t happens in life, and sometimes it may smell like a three-hundred-cow dairy farm, but sometimes that’s not such a bad thing.

Creating a Character Bible

Lea Wait, here,. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about what I needed to do after I’d finished a book. One task I mentioned was updating my Character Bible. E.J. Runyon contacted me and asked that I explain what that was. So today I’m sharing how to create a writing tool I develop for each book I write. I find it important for stand-alone books — and indispensable for writing a series.

A character Bible.

No; I’m not referring to THE Bible.

I’m referring to a place — a notebook, an electronic file, a folder …. whatever you choose … that contains the important facts about the people and places in your book. Who wants a character to change eye colors between chapters two and twenty?

Everyone has to find their own “best way” to create a useful Bible. I’ve found a hand-written loose leaf notebook is easiest for me. I can update it by hand either while I’m writing or after … I can refer to it easily … and I can add (or sometimes subtract) pages when necessary. Some years ago I treated myself to a really nice leather “circa” notebook from Levenger, because it’s a comfortable size to take with me if I’m writing on the road, 6.5 x 8.5 inches, and I love the way it looks and feels. Since I use it all the time,I think of it as an investment. At the moment it contains information about the people and places in both my Shadows Antique Print Mystery series and my Mainely Needlepoint Series.

OK — what’s in there? Maps of the major towns where the books are set — in these cases, Haven Harbor and Weymouth, Maine, and the campus where Maggie Summer teaches in New Jersey. If another town appears in a book I also draw maps … but usually I leave them in the folder of back-up information (research, ideas, outline, etc) I keep for each book.

Most of my Bible is made up of alphabetical listings of information about each character. A character who only appears in one book may have a short listing — how old he or she is, what they look like, and specific quirks they have, what their secret is, what they want, and what they’re willing to do to get it, and perhaps their relation to my series protagonist and to the specific plot line.

In a mystery, if they’re either murdered or the murderer, that may be all I need — they’ll only appear in one, or maybe two, books.

For my major, repeating, characters, I include not only that basic information but other details.

For instance, my Bible tells me Maggie Summer (in the Shadows series) has never smoked, drinks Diet Pepsi, and loves chocolate covered cherries. She pays high taxes on her house in NJ. She drinks Dry Sack sherry out of Edinburgh Crystal. She likes to treat herself to baths with lavender-scented soap. Her father took her deer hunting when she was 13 but she refused to shoot, even though he’d taught her how to use a gun. She cried when he killed a doe. (He never took her hunting again.) And so forth

Angie Curtis, the protagonist of the Mainely Needlepint series? Her Gram calls her “Angel.” She has a birthmark on her shoulder that matches one her mother had. She has scars on her toes from walking on barnacle-covered rocks as a child. She drives a small red Honda, likes her coffee black, and is pretty flexible about her choice of beers – but prefers those made in Maine.

Gussie White reads late at night, so it’s OK to call her then. Aunt Nettie has a Thursday morning appointment every week at Cut ‘n’ Curl. Angie Curtis’ fashion-plate friend Clem Walker was fat as a teenager and now works for Channel 7 in Portland.

Not all those details appear in all my books — but they have been mentioned in at least one. The real purpose of the Bible is to ensure that my words don’t contradict themselves. I don’t want Maggie eating chocolate covered cherries in one book and being allergic to cherries in another. (If I don’t notice, one of my readers definitely will!)

The character Bible is also the place to include backstories, phobias, hair styles, fears and goals.

In addition to characters, I have pages for specific places — Harbor Haunts, a restaurant in Haven Harbor, has red Formica counters. Maggie Summer’s kitchen table is pine. What kind of trees are on the main street of town? What do characters’ houses look like? How far away are local hospitals, and how long does it take to drive there? All details that may be important in more than one book.

When do I put information in my Bible? I used to create or add information when I was planning my book. But although I do a general outline of each book before I start writing, I tend to change details as I write. So, for me, the time to create my Bible is when I’ve finished a strong draft, or when I send the manuscript to my editor.

Having the Bible helps avoid changing a character’s hair color, or height, or the name of his or her ex-spouse. It’s also a convenient place to check that I haven’t created two characters with the same first name (ouch! yes, that’s happened) or even two characters with similar last names. I try, in fact, to have all character names in one book start with different letters. That makes it easier for readers to keep them straight. (Me, too.)

Reading through the Bible not only makes sure I don’t make continuity mistakes; it also gives me ideas for future plots, and doesn’t let me forget minor characters who might have key roles to play in future books.

It is right next to my thesaurus and dictionary on my desk.

It is essential.

Weekend Update: March 21-22, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Lea Wait (Monday), Al Lamanda (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday), Dorothy Cannell (Thursday), and Katherine Hall Page (Friday).

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

If you’re not sure you’re up for an all-day conference, but you’d love to meet Maine’s crime writers and/or try out your deathless prose why not come to the Friday night pre-Crime Wave social at the Portland Public Library on April 10? Here are the details::

Two Minutes in the Slammer April 10 event

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. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

 

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

Talking Heads

Kaitlyn Dunnett here. Earlier this month I finished the first of numerous drafts of what will eventually be published in 2016 as the tenth Liss MacCrimmon mystery, Kilt at the Highland Games. My preferred name for this version is the “rough draft” because it is, indeed, very very rough writing. Other writers have other names for it, many of them scatological. This is the draft that no one else will ever see, the one that reads like the work of a rank amateur, full of typos, continuity errors, and other even more egregious sins. A few extremely rare individuals are able to write just one nearly perfect draft the first time around. I suspect this is because they were revising in their heads as they wrote. I also suspect they’d register at genius level on an IQ test.

I am not one of them.

Like most writers I know, I slog through this initial effort wondering how I ever thought I could write anything longer or more complicated than a grocery list. It’s tough to keep going, knowing that what I’ve already put down on paper is garbage. Partway through, I do go back and fix a few things. I move some scenes around and add others. I might even insert a clue, if I’ve thought of some twist that will be important later in the story. For the most part, though, I force myself to keep plodding along, moving steadily toward the end of the novel. My chapters generally consist of three scenes. I try to rough out at least one new scene each day. I don’t aim for a specific word count, although most days I seem to end up with 1000 to 1500 new words. They aren’t great words, you understand, but each one brings me closer to completing a draft of the novel.

My rough drafts are always considerably shorter than the finished book. Each time I revise, the word count goes up. My contract for the Liss MacCrimmon series requires that the manuscript I send in be between 75,000 and 100,000 words in length. I’ve had some rough drafts come in at around 70,000 words. Others were closer to 60,000. In every case, during revision, I had no trouble hitting 75,000, although my books don’t tend to be much longer than that. The word count at the end of the day I officially wrote the last scene in the last chapter of Kilt at the Highland Games for the first time was 50,829.

Oops.

And yet, not a crisis. I already have ideas for beefing up the subplot, which kind of fell by the wayside as I concentrated on the primary mystery, a case that involves both missing persons and murder. It would have been nice to start revising with a longer rough draft, but it’s not an impossible task to add another 25,000 words. How? Well, not by throwing in any old words just to get the word count up. That’s called padding and it is always painfully obvious to readers. No, a big part of the solution lies in looking at all those scenes that, at present, consist of talking heads.

You know the ones I mean—two or three characters are together somewhere. Maybe they are meeting to exchange information, or one is interrogating the other, or this is just a casual encounter but the dialogue contains a clue that will be important later. Whatever the reason, they talk. The dialogue is written. Maybe it will need a little tweaking, but essentially what they say to each other moves the story forward. But therein lies the problem—these scenes are almost all dialogue. Talking heads. There’s no sense of place. There are no indications, other than in the words they speak, of how the characters feel about or react to each other. Without descriptive, especially sensory, details, scenes with talking heads are flat and uninteresting, no matter how important the information in the dialogue.

As I revise, that’s what I’ll be looking for—not details to pad but details that enhance. I’ll be trying to imagine what each character sees and hears, what impinges upon him or her as the dialogue continues. There are endless possibilities. Is it raining? Uncomfortably hot and humid. Dusty? This novel is set in July, so I won’t have to wonder if they freezing their butts off trying to find privacy by slipping outside in mid-February, but whenever a story is set, the physical environment should play a role.

That includes other people. Who else is around, both near at hand and at a distance? Are there animals in the scene? And what about the sound the speakers hear? Does something momentarily distract one of the characters from an exchange of words? Maybe what’s important to mention is that a character sees or hears something but doesn’t pay attention to it at the time. Whether it’s with action, descriptive details, physical reactions, or the addition of the thoughts of the point of view character, scenes that feature taking heads can be salvaged . . . and so can the roughest of rough drafts.

Growth Spurt

Hello again from Sarah Graves, writing to you from beneath fourteen feet of snow in Eastport, Maine, and what better location for some gardening dreams? Snow is the poor (wo)man’s fertilizer, after all, and considering how much of it we’ve gotten we should all be harvesting giant string beans and house-sized tomatoes come August. Personally, I feel I put up with enough “fertilizer” all year round, but never mind; at left is a hydrangea that came as a “free gift” (my favorite kind!) with a nursery order. They’re not supposed to like wintering indoors but this one didn’t read its own instructions, apparently.

 

At right is a three-dollar Walmart orchid, about a year old. It’s in a north window and has been re-potted once, with new bark chips, and given a half-hour water plunge each week. For that piddling amount of trouble it has repaid me with big purple blooms that last and last, even putting up a whole new stalk of them instead of going dormant as I’d expected. The one you see here is the tail end of the flowering. I’m going to clip off the flower stems soon, and hope it takes a well-deserved rest. I don’t know what to do to make it take its nap, though, and I confess I’ll be watching to see if it stubbornly puts out even more flower stalks from the small bumps on the bits of stalk remaining. If you’ve got three bucks and a north window, you might want to bring one of these home.

 

African violets like north light, too. This one is an offspring given to me by a neighbor who was trying to find homes for a lot of violet babies. That’s the trouble with violets; if they do poorly, they sulk and glare accusingly while drooping flabby yellow leaves and refusing to bloom. Happy ones, though, grow madly, flower exuberantly, and produce so many offshoots that you’re forced to divide them, and then what do you do with all those bouncing infants? Here also is a packet of seeds that I’m planning to start indoors soon, under the same lights I’m using now for more of the African violet baby-boom. Last year’s nursery-bought tomato plants had plenty of stem but not much root system, a deficiency I’m hoping to cure this time around with a nice fluffy seed-starting mixture, better-balanced nutrients, and lots of TLC overall.

 

Thomas Jefferson grew cardoons in his wonderful garden at Monticello, where today’s gardeners have recreated many of the flower and vegetable beds that flourished when he was there. The plant has beautiful blue flowers and grey-green frilly leaves on thick, celery-like stems that can be cooked and eaten — if you are very hungry, that is, and very determined. Because the thing is, first you cut the leafy portion off the stem, then peel off the tough stringy parts, then chop the trimmed stems and parboil them. And then you egg them and bread them and fry them, which seems to me like a whole lot of work for a vegetable dish. Nevertheless I am determined to try them — growing them, I mean, not necessarily eating them — this summer, mostly on account of the flowers.

 

Here is a cardoon in bloom. I think you’ll agree it’s worth an experiment. Blue flowers are a particular favorite of mine, and spiky, ball-shaped blooms are also right up my alley. They give variety to the shapes in the garden, and since I tend to combine colors with the abandon of a toddler playing with crayons, it’s good to have plenty of blue to help pull it all together. White works well also, so there’ll be lots of white lobelia and Shasta daisies, white phlox, and if I can find any some white coneflowers. Oh, and white dahlias? I’ll have to order some. I’m a little afraid to go up to the attic to check on the dahlias we do have; ordinarily they winter over nicely there, wrapped up in newspapers and brown paper bags, but this winter has been a (insert expletive here) so fingers crossed — for the dahlias, and for spring which believe it or not really will be here soon.

 

THE DREADED SYNOPSIS

Vaughn Hardacker here. Many literary agents and publishers in the United States require that a synopsis (usually one page) accompany a query letter. I cannot think of anything that will make a writer shudder and curse more than being required to write a synopsis. In fact, many with whom I have spoken don’t really know what a synopsis should be and what one should not be. So with that in mind, let’s discuss the synopsis.

If requested (I recommend you never send a literary agent or an editor more than they ask for. Unless you are very, very confident in your abilities, each additional item you include with the query letter may give the agent/editor another source of information to use in rejecting you.) include a one page synopsis of your book. Unlike the query letter, whose purpose is to peak the agent/editor’s interest, the object of the synopsis is to provide a short overview of the book’s plot and major themes. Don’t make the mistake I made several years ago of trying to summarize the entire novel in two paragraphs; this is a pitch, not an outline. Therefore you should concentrate on those elements that are most likely to attract the attention of a reader/agent/editor. Some of these are: The primary characters, the basic plot, the setting, the primary source of conflict, and the theme. Let’s briefly look at each of these.

The Primary Characters. In the query you may only have room to introduce two or three major characters. The synopsis is where you should introduce all the major players (The first time I introduce a character I always type the name in CAPs).

The Basic Plot. Identify the basic what if? Keep in mind that plot is more than the sequence of events—it’s also the reason for them.

The Setting. When and where does the story take place? If the setting is crucial to the plot, say so. However, if the setting is merely background, don’t spend a lot of time describing it. There is nothing that will turn me off quicker than a travelogue that does nothing to move the plot along.

The Primary Source of Conflict. What are the key obstacles your protagonist must overcome? From where does the conflict originate? Is it external or internal or both. Is it with another character, society or nature? Focus on the conflict that is central to the plot.

The Theme. Is there an underlying message to the story? If there is what is it that is beyond the basic plot. Are any important issues revealed as a consequence of the theme? Be careful that you don’t sound as if you’re in a pulpit; you can raise questions or ideas without giving the reader a sermon.

Remember that the synopsis is supposed to illustrate that your novel is coherent, logical, carefully thought out and well written.

Cyberbullying and the Wild, Wild Web

Jayne here – sorry for posting so late, but I honestly forgot! The title of this post is the title of my new book I am currently writing. It will be aimed at adults, but I am hoping teens will get something out of it as well. I will be mostly writing about cyberbullying in schools from the middle grades on up through college/university and how adults can deal with it and know the signs of it. It should be coming out late 2016 or early 2017.

It is amazing how many students feel they will be punished if they talk to their parents or another adult about being cyberbullied. They are afraid their Internet and smartphone privileges will be taken away. I have to try to remove that stigma for them.

Almost every chapter will have a case about cyberbullying to open, then go into various advice modes and I will also have a chapter about parents of cyberbullies and how to get them to realize that what they are doing is wrong.

Here’s where I reach out to you – although I have a few parents and students who are willing to be interviewed, I am in need of more. If you know someone who was or is being cyberbullied and would be willing to let me interview them, please let me know. I can change their names to keep them anonymous if they want. If you know someone who was or is a cyberbully, the same goes. Email me at netcrimes@netcrimes.net with the info.

I can’t promise a free copy of the book (I am only getting 10 comp copies and those are going to family and friends already), but I can get you my author’s discount if you help me out.

Next question for you – what would you like to see covered? What questions do you have about cyberbullying you would like me to answer in my book?

Have a great St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow!

Weekend Update: March 14-15, 2015

 

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Jayne Hitchcock (Monday), Vaughn Hardacker (Tuesday), Sarah Graves (Wednesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett (Thursday), and Vicki Doudera (Friday).

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

It’s less than one month until Maine Crime Wave comes to South Portland on April 11. This all-day event features workshops and panels and folks from your friendly Maine Crime Writers blog are well represented. Adding to the excitement, there is also a pre-event event on at the Portland Public Library on Friday night. For details on that, click here: Two Minutes in the Slammer April 10 event

Lea Wait: Are you a teacher or school librarian whose students have read any of my historical novels set in 19th century Maine? I can still fit in some school visits or Skype visits this spring. For details, see my website, http://www.leawait.com. (Fifteen minute Skype visits are free!) In the coming week I’ll be Skyping for 90 minutes about my Wintering Well with fourth graders from Dexter, Maine, and then visiting seventh graders at the Bristol Consolidated School to share some prints and artifacts from the Civil War era and talk about Uncertain Glory.

Have you written a New England-based crime story? If so, you might want to enter it for the Al Blanchard Award. Here are the details:

The 2015 Al Blanchard Award

The 2015 Al Blanchard Award is open for submissions.

In memory of Al Blanchard, co-chair of the first three New England Crime Bake Conferences, the New England Crime

Bake Committee established the Al Blanchard Award to annually honor the best crime short story by a New England Writer or set in a New England setting.

THE PRIZE:

$100 cash award.

Publication in Level Best Books’ Crime Fiction anthology.

Admission to the Crime Bake Conference.

You’ll find guidelines and instructions on how to submit at http://crimebake.org/al-blanchard-award/

There is NO entry fee, and the deadline is April 30, 2015.

The winner is not required to attend conference.

Also open for submissions until April 30, 2015 are crime stories by New England writers for the next Level Best Books anthology. Details are here: http://levelbestbooks.com/submissions/

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. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

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: mail to: kateflora@gmail.com

Random Thoughts, A Contest and Some Book Reviews.

John Clark bringing you some random thoughts as well as a bunch of book reviews. Thus far I’ve read 64 books in 2015 and reviewed most of them for various online entities. Even so, the TBR pile keeps growing…and growing… and growing. Since retirement is getting closer and this has been a pretty dismal winter in terms of any outside activities, I’ve changed my routine when getting home. I used to wash the dishes after supper and head up to my computer room immediately to do some library-related catching up. Now, I head for the recliner by the pellet stove and read for a couple hours before going upstairs. I’m beginning to think that an interesting book is the perfect rationalization for blowing off so-called responsible stuff. In addition, the sheer number of interesting books I discover every week are changing another long standing habit. I used to bull my way through a book no matter how bad it got. Now if I’m losing interest, I simply put it down and start another one. This is why almost every review I write is a positive one.

On to a challenge I hope some of you will accept. One of my down the road fantasies is to write a book with sixteen short crime stories, each one set in a different Maine county. One of the really cool things about our state is the number of unusual place names that are real. Ever been to Pripet? How about Wonderland, Pumpkin Valley, Sabino or Slab City (there are three of them). Given such a richness, one could spend hours just coming up with names for each story that would spur a reader’s imagination before they even start reading. Here are a few that I pulled off the top of my Head. The Revenge of the Roque Bluffs Rogue, A Plague of Poison Ployes in Plaisted, The Cardinal Sinner of Sabbathday Lake, Night of Nastiness in Norridgewock and The Twisted Temptress of T9, R7.

Hard to believe Katahdin will look like this not far in the future.

So, good readers, Below are the sixteen county names. Grab your handy Delorme Atlas or similar tool and come up with the best story titles for each one. Post them here or email them to me at berek@tds.net I will award the list I think is most creative with a worthwhile prize mailed to the winner after being announced in my next post here at MCW.

Androscoggin

Aroostook

Cumberland

Franklin

Hancock

Kennebec

Knox

Lincoln

Oxford

Penobscot

Piscataquis

Sagadahoc

Somerset

Waldo

Washington

York

Now for some reviews of books I’ve read recently that are worth sharing.

First up is Hung Up by Kristen Tracy, Simon Pulse reprint edition, 2015 ISBN: 9781442460775. We’ve all called the wrong number. Usually you apologize and hang up as soon as you realize your mistake, but what if? Lucy never meant to call James. She was trying to reach the deadbeat who accepted her money for a plaque she special ordered, but never received. After leaving several fairly irate messages, James picks up on the next one. This is where 99% of the time that would be the end of it, but this is that magical 100th call and it turns into an ongoing telephone relationship that segues from James identifying himself so Lucy might actually realize she got the person who inherited the deadbeat’s number, to a little bit of everything.

Lucy is extremely guarded for reasons that don’t come out until quite late in the book, but they’re very sad and very real reasons. Fortunately, James is pretty cool with her skittishness and has some quirks of his own. When their plan to go to his formal dance falls through and he fails to contact Lucy for several days, it could easily have been the deal breaker for their fragile, but evolving relationship. Instead, it helps her understand that he has family issues, that, while nowhere near as traumatic as hers, are still distressing to him. By the end of the book, readers will feel like they’ve been on an emotional roller coaster, wondering if these two are EVER going to meet face to face.

This is a smart, emotional read that will appeal to teens who have experienced loss or who are skittish about the dating scene. It has a touch of mystery mixed in with neat dialogue and romance. All in all, it’s another good book for libraries who care about offering decent reads to teens.

How (Not) To Find A Boyfriend by Allyson Valentine. Philomel Books, 2014. ISBN: 9780399257711. Sadly, the stereotype of the smart girl who thinks she must play dumb to be popular isn’t a fiction. In this book, Laura Fullbright is an extremely smart girl who decides when she changes high schools that she’ll hide her past academic achievements so she can become popular. She joins the cheering squad where her gymnastics experience makes her a valuable addition. Her best friend Krista who has been with the same guy since she was twelve, is pushing Laura to go out with Jake who is good looking, but dumber than a box of rocks. She’s tempted. After all, hasn’t her goal this year to be popular and shouldn’t that include a hot boyfriend?

Of course, things always get complicated when you try scripting your future. The day before school begins, Laura is playing soccer with her little brother when the ball goes astray. It’s kicked back by a stranger and hits her in the head. Enter Adam, new to town and possibly better looking than Jake. It’s instant swoon for Laura and she senses that there’s interest on Adam’s part.

Would that getting his attention long enough to pursue her attraction be so simple—Not. Laura makes mistake after mistake in her attempts to connect with him. After switching out of her AP classes to help cement her popularity quest, she discovers that Adam is probably her equal in the brains department, so she initiates a series of well-intentioned, but disastrous swaps with other kids in an effort to get in the same classes and work on some projects with him, all the while trying to keep Jake far enough away so she doesn’t have to go to the prom with him.

Reading as she navigates her way through this minefield, as well as finally realizing that being smart is as much a part of her as anything, is fun and cringeworthy in a very good way. The chemistry between Laura and Adam, coupled with her re-evaluation of her broken relationship with her dad, make this a great book for teens. Those who wrestle with the smart vs popular dilemma, who have parent estrangement issues and those who experienced high school social disasters will particularly enjoy this book. It’s a great one for any high school or public library.

#16thingsithoughtweretrue (16 Things I Thought Were True) by Janet Gurtler, Sourceboooks Fire 2014. ISBN: 9781402277979. Blame is a tricky thing. Morgan McLean has discovered this painful fact when the dancing she did boys underwear while singing, was filmed by her best friend and posted online. Needless to say, their friendship has fractured. If that weren’t bad enough, her mother starts having cardiac issues, scaring Morgan big time.

Mom can be quite the drama queen and has led Morgan to believe that her father abandoned mom as soon as he learned that she was pregnant. Morgan has no idea who he is or where he went. The cardiac issues, however, are enough to scare her mother into telling that she knows more about the absent dad than she’s let on. Morgan has to pry the information out bit by bit while trying to put the embarrassing video behind her.

When she gets a summer job at an amusement park, she has an immediate dislike for Adam, the slightly older guy who runs the staff. She’s not wild about her assignment in a gift shop, but with Mom ill and health coverage iffy, she needs money. In fact, she’s starting to think about giving her mother the money she’s saved so she can get far away and go to college.

Her conversations with Adam about her mom’s illness and his interest in becoming a doctor begin changing her initial impression, especially when he starts giving her emotional support as well as explaining what’s happening to her mother. Add to the mix diminutive, but bubbly Amy, her co-worker in the gift shop who is at first annoying, but grows on Morgan quickly, and you have three very interesting teens who form a solid friendship.

When Morgan learns that her father lives near Vancouver, she’s determined to go there and confront him. Adam and Amy, who was home-schooled and has few friends, insist on accompanying her. Their road trip to end all road trips involves secrets, a missed ferry and some life changing discoveries when Morgan finally meets her father.

I liked this book very much. Teens with family secret issues, majorly embarrassing experiences and missing parents will relate to a lot in this book as will those who have a liking for romances that start off a bit antagonistic. I’ve read everything Janet has written and like all her books a lot. This is a good addition for both public and school libraries.

I’m Glad I Did by Cynthia Weil, Soho Teen, 2015. ISBN: 9781616953560. Take yourself back to 1963 (if you’re old enough…I was 15). Justice (JJ) Green was born to write songs, but can’t get her lawyer parents or her in-law-school older brother to believe her passion. They expect her to follow the family script and become one, too. When her parents issue an ultimatum-get a summer job in a week or she’ll be filing in mom’s office next week, she gathers her courage and applies for an intern position with Good Music, a song publishing company in the same building where her disgraced uncle (her mom’s brother) Bernie has an office. When she starts losing her courage in the elevator, she confides in Nick, the elevator operator, including telling him who her uncle is.

While she does well singing her two compositions during the interview, she’s told that her style isn’t modern enough. Convinced she’s failed, JJ returns home, resigned to the eventuality that she’ll have to follow the family script. When she gets a call telling her she’s been hired, her elation turns to suspicion that Nick might have spilled the beans to her uncle. It’s true, but despite her initial anger, JJ’s soon immersed in the action and intrigue of the song publishing world, even creating the melody and some basic lyrics to a song she hopes will catch her boss’s ear.

What follows is an excellent YA historical mystery that weaves her attraction to Luke Silver, a guy her age with emerald eyes that writes lyrics which seem to meld perfectly with her notes, as well as her friendship with a cleaning lady, Dulcie Brown who was once a top singer before drugs pulled her into the gutter. Dulcie loves JJ’s music and they form a fast friendship that is headed toward helping Dulcie make a possible comeback Together, JJ and Luke have to convince the cops that Dulcie’s death wasn’t suicide, navigate the prejudices of the times and decipher the disturbing evidence that Luke uncovers as he sorts through his late father’s (a contemporary of JJ’s uncle Bernie) papers.

This is a fascinating and extremely well-crafted story, one that teens who like history, romance or music will welcome with open arms. Cynthia Weil’s background as a song writer really helps make this book sound authentic. I highly recommend it for all school and public libraries.

Sizzle by Lee McLain, Marshall Cavendish, 2011. ISBN: 9780761459811. Fourteen year old Linda Delgado has lived with her aunt Elba for as long as she can remember. Her father is a mystery, her mom deceased. They get by, but barely, thanks to the Mexican restaurant Elba has run for years. When her aunt’s health goes bad, Linda is sent to stay with her other aunt Pat in Pittsburgh. Not only is Linda losing everything that’s familiar (Arizona, cooking, her school and her best friend Julia), but she goes from just a household comprised of her and Elba to a chaotic one with two parents and seven kids, six of whom are either adopted or foster kids.

Chloe, the only biological child, isn’t happy about having to share her room and her family with a girl her age, and in the beginning, the tension between them is pretty high, especially since both girls like Dino Moretti, a boy in their class. Linda’s biggest frustration is Aunt Pat’s refusal to let her cook anything at all. This is mainly because Pat is host of a local cable TV show where everything she cooks, with the exception of things like hamburg and stew beef, comes from cans. This horrifies Linda and she deals with it by making fun of it on her food blog.

When the blog gets noticed, Linda finds herself in hot water. How she makes amends to Pat, works things out with Chloe and what happens to her love of cooking and her crush on Dino make this a fun read for tweens, especially those who love cooking or have foster family connections. In fact, Lee has written three more quick reads (My Abnormal Life, My Alternate Life and My Loco Life) that are nice reads about spunky foster kids.

The Question of Miracles by Elana K. Arnold. Houghton Mifflin, 2015. ISBN: 9780544334649.

When you’re eleven, losing your best friend in a tragic accident is a pretty devastating experience. Add to that being uprooted from your home on the California coast and moving to perpetually rainy Corvallis, Oregon and you have the potential for a full bore meltdown. This is what Iris is dealing with as the story begins. In addition to these changes, she has to adjust from living in a house with others close by to an old farmhouse with a long driveway and riding on a school bus instead of walking to school or having one of her parents transport her. Then, there’s the matter of not knowing a single kid at the new school. The move has been easy for Mom, who got a new job as a genetic researcher, while her stay-at-home dad is excited about starting a garden and raising most of their food. Iris has nothing like these to look forward to, just the hurting, angry ache left by Sarah’s death.

On her first day at school, she meets Boris who is friendly, but socially awkward and kind of a know it all. Still, as time goes on, he grows on her and becomes her only real friend. Iris wonders whether he realizes how he’s perceived by the other kids, but isn’t ready to go there with him.

Letting go of her grief is the hardest thing imaginable for Iris. She’s sure that part of Sarah lives in their new house, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t ‘see’ her. Boris is pretty sympathetic and understanding, partly because of what happened to him before he was born. As Iris gets to know his family, his mother calls him her miracle baby and encourages Iris to have Boris tell her the whole story.

His miracle, coupled with her gradual acceptance about Sarah’s death, thanks in part to a very understanding therapist, and her awareness that they both need to expand their friendship circle, bring the story to a positive and satisfying conclusion. This is a great book about pre-teen friendship and how to get through the grieving process. It’s a great one for both school and public libraries to add.

I Was Here by Gayle Forman, Viking, 2015. ISBN:9780451471475. Friendships are a lot like the weather, hard to control, challenging to adapt to, frequently mysterious and ever changeable. Cody and Meg’s was like that. Best friends since kindergarten, Cody was practically raised by Meg’s parents because she had almost no idea who her own father was and her biological mother, Tricia, has never been capable of much more than putting a roof over her head and being snarky in between her flings with loser boyfriends.

The girls planned on going to Seattle and rooming while in college, but Meg got a scholarship to a different school and Cody stayed behind because money was tight and her grades weren’t good enough for financial help. Communication between them started to drop off and the only time Cody went to see Meg, it felt odd and she came home early. Then Meg killed herself with a rare and highly toxic cleaner in a locked motel room. She set up a final email to go to Cody, her parents and Ben, the guy she had been involved with, telling them what she was going to do and ending with: “This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. It’s not your fault.”

Despite what Meg wrote, Cody can’t help being angry and self-blaming. When she reluctantly agrees to go and get Meg’s belongings from the house she shared with several other students, She begins what turns out to be a very torturous and involved role as amateur detective. The more she hears and the more she’s able to dig out of what emails she finds on Meg’s laptop, the stronger her conviction grows that there were others involved and bigger secrets that anyone knows in Meg’s death. Her unlikely co-conspirator, Ben, starts out as someone she hates because she believes he was responsible for sending Meg over the edge. However, the deeper she digs, the less sure she is about her initial feeling and there’s that subtle spark, the one that makes her realize that he feels much the same way she does and every time she’s with him, things seem just a bit better.

Their journey to find what really happened is both physical and emotional, making for a terrific read. Yes, there are a lot of F-bombs, but they shouldn’t deter either school or public libraries from adding this to their collections. It does for teen suicide what Laurie Halse Anderson’s The Impossible Knife of Memory does for the devastating effects of PTSD on those close to the one who suffers. Gayle also wrote If I Stay which was made into a pretty good movie last year.

If you have read a really good juvenile or young adult mystery recently, I’d love to hear about it because many Maine librarians are eager to find more to add to their collections.

FIRST MYSTERY NOVELS

Susan Vaughan here. Some friends and I were sharing what were the first novels for adults that really hooked us. For me, it was mysteries. Every Saturday as far back as I can recall, I went to the local library with my mother. Once I’d gone through all the Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden mysteries, I started reading what my mother read.The first adult mystery I remember absolutely loving was Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, a Hercule Poirot. The puzzle fascinated me, and I thought Poirot was a hoot. After that, I read all of Christie’s books and moved on to Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series.

 

So when I asked authors online to share with me what was the first mystery that drew them into the genre, I was inundated with responses. Agatha Christie’s books were the doorway into adult mysteries for several people. For Marni Graff (The Scarlet Wench) the book that drew her into reading mysteries was 4.50 From Paddington, a Miss Marple. She wrote, “I was fascinated by the premise and it led me to read ALL of her books in print at that time.” Kathryn Jane (Voices) loved Christie’s books “as she kept me guessing and turning pages to find out the answers. Later when buying my own books, I discovered Mary Stewart, and romantic suspense/mystery took root in my soul.”

I too loved Mary Stewart’s books with the combination of mystery and romance. She even made the romance mysterious because often the heroine, as well as the reader, didn’t know if the handsome man hanging around was a villain or her hero. The Moonspinners was a favorite, as it was for Kate George (Crazy Little Thing Called Dead, Take Two), and she followed up with mysteries that were quite different, ones by Dame Agatha and P.D. James. “The detectives were flawed, but astute,” she wrote.

Rebecca Grace (Blues at 11) found mystery authored by another pioneer in the romantic-suspense genre, Phyllis A. Whitney. Rebecca wrote, “She set the books in different parts of the country, and I always learned something about the location from her books.” Marsha R. West (Second Act) echoed that sentiment. “I still have visuals I developed from some of her books in foreign lands.” More than one author named another early romantic-suspense luminary—Daphne du Maurier. Marsha R. West wrote that Rebecca set the standard for her. Vicki Batman (Temporarily Employed) was instantly entranced by the opening lines of that book. And for her, it is always “the unraveling of the puzzle and heroes and heroines I could identify with.”

Beth Kanell (Cold Midnight) particularly loved mysteries by John Dickson Carr, John Creasey, and Mary Roberts Rinehart, for the “combination of dark suspense with confidence that somehow, under pressure, the protagonist would solve the crime.” J.E. Seymour (Stress Fractures) read all of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series. “I loved everything about Nero Wolfe, the fact that he stayed at home and solved mysteries with just the power of his mind, the greenhouse full of prized orchids, and his sidekick who did all the legwork.” What Nancy Eady liked about those books was the “interplay between the regular cast of characters and the challenge of the mysteries.”

And no discussion of the power of a mystery novel would be complete without a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

Even at age ten, Edith Maxwell (Farmed and Dangerous) was fascinated by Sherlock’s methods and by the storytelling. Margaret Carroll (Riptide) shared that she has trouble to this day with crossword puzzles because she read Sherlock instead of paying attention in seventh grade to the unit on Greek mythology. (I hope none of my seventh-grade students didn’t tune out when I taught that unit.)

Other authors were mentioned, but I chose to share the ones who most often inspired readers to dig into the mystery genre in a big way. I’d love to know what authors and titles lured you into the mystery genre.