Lea Wait's Blog, page 294

Midwinter Funk

This essay is from a book by my late mother, A. Carman Clark, called From The Orange Mailbox, notes from a few country acres.

Midwinter funk begins at 3 p.m. on Sunday. Some doctors, social workers and psychologists have already taken trips south to soak up sunshine and fresh fruit supplements so they’ll have the energy to cope with the anxiety attacks this season brings to their offices.

Cabin fever, which often begins as early as Jan. 10, is usually treated with the advice to either get out of the cabin or invite some fellow human beings in.

But with the advent of the midwinter funk period, many northern residents have reached the point of snarling at their most congenial friends and mewling about fears of running out of wood, money and enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. Although medical textbooks neither list this seasonal malady nor suggest specific treatments, most people who have spent more than two winters north of latitude 42 begin to avoid slack jawed, bent shouldered neighbors who only want to moan about the misery of winter.

During these weeks when–as the old almanacs stated–“Days lengthen; cold strengthens,” other citizen dash forth to scale ice-covered cliffs, race snowmobiles across frozen ponds or just waddle about layered in down-filled garments exclaiming, “Isn’t this invigorating?”

Beween the anxious and the active are the “snugged-in” types–those who have been anticipating these winter weeks. They don’t enjoy driving on icy roads but accept such inconveniences as a natural part of winter. And in accepting he fact that winter does exist and the weather sometimes is nasty, these folks settle down to celebrate the season.

Looking forward to winter weeks seems to start with an attitude toward the whole cycle of seasons. Spring planting and summer harvesting provide foods for February meals. The messy peeling and cleaning was done before the freezing and canning. If, during those preparatory activities, pleasant thoughts of being snugged-in with plenty to eat were allowed to expand and grow, the confinement by weather can be a welcome reward–planned leisure with time to relax and think.

There’s an up-country story about a friendly couple who moved up from the city and after a winter storm decided to call on a neighbor whom they heard lived alone. The neighbor was not grateful. No, he didn’t need anything. And he did not care to be interrupted. “I been just waiting for a slow-down storm so’s I could get acquainted with myself again. February’s my reckoning time.”

Could it be that some of the discontent and unrest associated with midwinter funk periods comes from avoiding a time of reckoning and getting acquainted with one’s self?

Celebrating winter as a time to settle in and relax, a time to indulge in some of the “someday I’m going to . . .” activities, tends to make the weeks fly by. A special pile of books reserved to dip into, another good try at sketching the starkness of white birches against a clump of pines, updating family albums and genealogical records or learning to play a recorder can be personal rewards.

Midwinter is a time for cooking sprees–for trying out something new. With the stoves pouring out heat, the sourdough starter can be reactivated while reading tales of the Old West and the Yukon gold rush when the prospectors were called “sourdoughs” because they carried their wild yeast cultures inside their shirts to keep it bubbling. Keading a bath of sourdough pumpernickel dark with a bit of bitter chocolate and rye and whole wheat flours can bring back memories of other breads tasted in far away places.

Peppercorns–once so highly prized they changed the course of history–are reputed to aid digestion and dispositions. Yeast bread with onions and a full teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper will fill a winter house with aromas. Peppercorns crushed roughly (hammer whacked within a plastic bag) and patted into steak for a lively steak au poivre deserves a place with February taste treats.

Individual reactions to cold and to confinement when weather discourages driving can be irritability, unrest  or pleasure and probably the mind-set was programmed while setting in the storm windows last fall. Seek out some cheerful, snugged-in types. The way they deal with the “Februaries” just might be contagious.

Where to Begin?

Dorothy Cannell here: In response to a request from publisher I spent the better part of last week slogging out an outline for the third book in my mystery series featuring Florence Norris, housekeeper at an ancestral home in the English village of Dovecote Hatch. Period – early nineteen-thirties. This was not a fifty-page requirement, just a couple of paragraphs giving the gist of the plot; but on sitting down at the keyboard – forget fingers – I became all thumbs and toes. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the plot in my head. Indeed, I have whiled away considerable time during the past few months telling myself the story of Peril in the Parish, until it developed the feel of a movie – clear in places, grainy in others that I’d watched many times over. But, herein lay the problem with the outline; the movie didn’t always open in the same place. I had three chapter ones. And choosing among them fluctuated on weighing the benefits of each.

My original intent was to immediately introduce twenty-three-year-old Sophie Dawson who has an unfortunate history of unwillingly attracting the attentions of married men. After one particularly unfortunate episode she feels compelled to leave her London lodgings and seek sanctuary with an aunt in Dovecote Hatch. There the possibility of true love awaits her upon meeting the handsome new vicar of St. Peter’s Church, if she can survive a murderer’s plans for her to share the same fate as another young woman many years ago.

My second idea was to start with the aforementioned vicar, Aiden Carr, being informed by the sexton that there was a skeleton in a churchyard grave where it did not belong. The discovery being made when it was redug in order for an elderly woman to rejoin her twenty-year deceased husband beneath the sod. The skeleton could not have been his because it was female. I liked this opening because it focused immediately on a long held secret, whose revelation could endanger present lives.

Third thought was that I could get to the heart of current situation quicker if I provided an early indication as to the identity of the skeleton. Finally I decided to go with this one:

OUTLINE

On a January night in 1933 The Dog and Whistle is empty of customers due to inclement weather until a stranger enters and over the course of several drinks confides in the proprietor, George Bird, a story from his past. He begins by saying that twenty years ago to the day he buried a loved one. George takes this in the accepted sense, of having attended her funeral, but the man proceeds to make clear he is speaking literally. As a fifteen-year-old boy he had been awakened by his parents in the early hours of a morning with the news that his sister (aged twenty) had bled to death after slashing her wrists in a tin bath tub. Amidst the grief was the awareness that a suicide burial would not be permitted in the churchyard, but the father had come up with an idea to circumvent this prohibition. This was to place her body in grave of a man who had been buried a few days before. Accomplishing this had required the son’s help. An act he now said had haunted him ever since. George was left wondering why he had been made the confidante of this tale.

This event finds connection the following May when the handsome new vicar of St. Peter’s Church is informed by the sexton that upon digging a grave for an elderly woman he had discovered a skeleton. One that could not be that of her twenty-year deceased husband because it had been buried only three feet deep. Shortly afterwards the vicar’s new bride receives a series of vicious anonymous letters, and in seeking into their origin, Florence Norris and George discover a link to that long ago suicide. One that a murderer will put to use for his or her own advantage.

I wonder if other writers dither half as much as I do about where to begin. It’s silly because nothing is cast in stone. I had written Chapter Three of Dovecote Hatch – due out in a few months, before coming up with an entirely new idea, bringing in a previously un-thought of character leading to my changing the identity of the murderer. But to put paid to dithering in getting going with the actual writing of Peril in the Parish. I have typed the first sentence:

“On a March evening in 1933 a pronouncement by Jimmy Griggs that the dingy, bedraggled mist looked like to thicken into fog made for a rare occurrence at the Dog and Whistle. By eight o’clock the taproom had emptied of customers. George Bird stood wiping down the bar …. “

 

So You Think You Want to Be a Crime Writer?

Warning: This is a blog about process. If a writer’s process bores you, go bake brownies or something.

My back deck, mid storm on Monday

Kate Flora here, watching the snow come down, trying to remind myself that winter is a great season for writing. Not that I don’t know that. I’m at my desk every day. And yesterday, after putting it off for a month, I finally started working on my new Joe Burgess mystery, Who Leads the World Astray. As you know, there’s always a lot of talk in the writing world about whether a writer is an outliner who carefully plots out the entire book beforehand, or whether a writer is a “pantser” or one who plots by the seat of her pants, following the story as it emerges from her fingers or her pen.

I am neither. I’ve decided to call myself a cooker. By this I mean that I cook a plot for several months inside my head before the first word ever lands on paper or my screen. It means that I go bumbling around, mulling the plot over and wondering about various aspects of the story for a long time before I start the actual writing. I’ve joked with bookstore and library audiences about this period, in which I think I should have a label affixed which, in the way of Paddington Bear, urges people: Please Look After This Writer. Thank You. If Found, Please Return To…etc. It isn’t entirely a joke, because what will happen is that I’ll be going along, running an errand or shopping for groceries, and suddenly another part of the plot will become clear and I’ll be stuck there, staring at the frozen peas, while I’m walking Burgess through some event in the story.

In general, at some level of detail, I will know what the crime scene looks like, who the victim or victims are, who did it, why they did it, and who my other suspects will be. The rest, like the pantsers, I discover along the way.

Which brings me to yesterday and the opening chapter of the book. Years ago, when I first started

Officer Wes Mecham’s car trunk.

writing mysteries, I cherished the misguided notion that what a writer did was sit at her desk and make things up. It’s true. That’s what we do. But when we’re writing in the crime arena, there’s a whole lot we can’t make up. And that is particularly true in the realm of the police procedural. There has been a Bob Seger song running through my head today. The song is Against the Wind, and the particular line from the song goes like this: “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” http://yhoo.it/1DTY52t

Before I spent all these hours reading criminalistics textbooks, Practical Homicide Investigation, forensic entomology, and attending the Writers’ Police Academy http://www.writerspoliceacademy.com , I was comfortable with my imagination. Now I have a question at almost every step. I’ve very envious of my friends Brian Thiem and Bruce Coffin, who are retired police detectives, because when they write about this stuff, they’ve been there and done it. I have to ask a thousand questions, and then imagine it for my characters.

Mock accident scene, Writers’ Police Academy

So, here’s what happened yesterday. I planned that Burgess would be driving back from South Portland where he’d gone to interview a witness, and on the way he got a call asking him to check on two officers who’d gone to answer a shots fired call and weren’t answering their phones or responding to their radios. Burgess was looking at the sky and thinking that it was about to rain. And a little voice in my head said: Never open a book with the weather. Elmore Leonard’s rules for writing: http://nyti.ms/1g4zRt3

I revised my opening so that he’s thinking about the little snot he’s just interviewed, who’s the witness in an assault but now “doesn’t want to be involved.” It gives me a chance to show Burgess’s attitude, his compassion for victims, his disdain for people who won’t step up. And then I get to talk about the clouds as he arrives at the scene and starts down an overgrown road into the woods.

But it’s winter and I’m sitting at my desk, and have I really chosen the right place to set this scene? So

Blood spatter analysis. Arterial spray.

I call up my map of Portland and check out the satellite images and make sure I’ve identified the right roads leading to that location, and now I’m back to work. I skip trying to identify what trees are growing along the road, something the brilliant Gerry Boyle would know at once, and I can answer later. Get on with it already, I remind myself. Nothing has happened yet. Why will the reader care? But then, just around a bend in the road, there’s a body. A uniformed body. Lying in the road.

Okay. So now I face the challenge of leading my detective through the opening crime scene and the dual challenge of a police detective coming upon a fellow officer who has been shot, which is an emotional firestorm. He has to examine the body. Determine that the officer—a rookie, a kid with his whole life ahead of him, newly married, hopeful, coming into this career to do good—is dead. Simultaneous dealing the fact of this death, and all that means for the thin blue line, and taking mental notes about the crime scene, making the calls to bring a crime scene team in ASAP, and realizing that that previously interesting gray sky is now starting to spit rain, which will disperse the blood spatter patterns on the dirt and may destroy footprints or other significant evidence. I quickly hope back onto the internet to look at blood spatter patterns from an arterial spray. http://science.howstuffworks.com/bloo...

If it’s going to rain, we’ll need a tent to protect the scene.

And that’s not all. It looks like a rifle shot. Maybe a sniper? Is the shooter still out there, and Burgess a sitting duck? And there is still the second officer to account for. Will he be shot, too? And what on earth is this about?

Dear readers, I am only five pages into this book. The first 1000 words out of 80,000. A decade ago, maybe I could have made it all up. Now? I will limp along, sending frantic memos out to cops, doing research, and settling back into the amazing part—rejoining characters I’ve come to care deeply about. The adventure begins.

 

 

 

 

Key West Corners

Hi. Barb here. Or rather there.

My husband and I are in Key West for January and February

At times, I’ve felt a little guilty as I’ve seen Facebook friends from frozen New England posting about All the Damn Snow. But mostly, I’ve felt relieved.

I’m slogging through the first draft of the next Maine Clambake Mystery, Fogged Inn. (Personal motto: I slog, so you don’t have to. What would that be in Latin?) So here is my routine.

Morning: Send out ARCs of Musseled Out, attend to various blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc., redesign back of bookmarks, line up appearances for spring and summer, etc., do financial bits and pieces for Level Best, talk to agent about exciting new opportunity, (etc., etc, etc.) Everything I put in the bucket I call “the business of writing.”

Afternoon: Work toward first draft word count goal. Sigh. Panic. Sigh more deeply. (Is it possible this is getting harder and not easier with each book? Is it possible my first drafts are getting worse and not better? Reminder to self: You think this every time.)

Late afternoon: Swim in pool. The swim assures I get outside and move around. Given that most pools in Key West, including ours at this rental house, are characterized as “dipping pools,” I do not claim it as exercise, but as movement.

So as you can see, though I’d like to write you a lovely post about Key West, I am not seeing a lot of it. Which is fine, because I’ve been coming here for 23 years, so I’m not deprived.

My husband, Bill Carito, on the other hand, has been on a tear. He took a class in taking photos on your iphone at the Studios of Key West, and has been posting a photo a day to his Facebook page ever since. (To see more, you can friend him here.)

So here, in the spirit of supplying some pretty to your day, and a respite from the snow, are some the photos, which he calls Key West Corners.

The backyard dipping pool.

What’s going on behind our fence.

I hope you enjoyed a little time away from the snow.

 

 

Weekend Update: February 7-8, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Barb Ross (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Dorothy Cannell (Wednesday), John Clark (Thursday), and Sarah Graves (Friday).

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

From Kaitlyn Dunnett: Although it won’t be in stores until October 27, the cover for the next Liss MacCrimmon mystery, The Scottie Barked at Midnight, is already up at Amazon and Goodreads, so I expect it’s okay to share it here. There are actually two Scottish terriers in the story, Dandy and Dondi, two-thirds of an act called Deidre’s Dancing Doggies.

The novel takes place at the taping of a fictional televised competition called Variety LIve! and, of course, there’s a murder. Look for more details designed to tantalize in the coming months.

 

Love that cover, Kaitlyn!  Lea Wait, here. Saturday February 7 I’ll be at the KIDABALOO Festival at 58 Fore Street in Portland, Maine, talking about and signing copies of my UNCERTAIN GLORY from 11:30-12:30. If you have kids and you’re within an hour of Portland, check this festival out — TV stars from the Disney channel will be there, lots of sports and games to play, food vendors, martial arts,  laser tag … this event has it all for anyone weary of staying home. The event is from 10 am until 3 p.m.  And Wednesday I’ll be visiting Kensington (NH) Elementary School via Skype.

 

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

First Years … First Memories

Lea Wait, here. I’ve been working on the third book in my Mainely Needlepoint series. If you haven’t read the first one, Twisted Threads, published earlier this month: Angie Curtis, the main character, is from Haven Harbor, Maine. Her mother disappeared when she was ten years old. Angie left Maine when she was eighteen, but now she’s back, to find her mother’s killer and start a new life.

Lea at age 2 1/2

As Angie visits places she hasn’t seen since her childhood, and meets people she knew as a little girl, her memories haunt her. Good memories and not-so-good memories. When I’m writing from her point of view, memories are on my mind.

So when I saw an article in This Week magazine called “Why We Forget Our First Years” I read it.

Some of us have memories of our early childhoods. But this article said that most adults do not remember their first three or four years, and have very few memories of what happened before they were about 7. Would returning to a home where they’d lived as a child or meeting a long-lost relative bring those memories back? Not according to this author. He wrote that until the 1980s, that was what was believed. But a 1987 study showed that many 2 1/-2 year-old children could describe events that had taken place 6 months before. Even many children between the ages of 4 and 10 could recall incidents that happened when they were only two years old. But interviewed again two years later, two-thirds of these same children had forgotten those incidents. Called “childhood amnesia,” the study showed that most of our childhood is forgotten. Gone. The memories we do keep are sometimes connected to emotions … sometimes totally random.

Does what happened in those early years matter, if we can’t remember them? Psychologists say yes, even if we can’t remember the details of our early life, those events imprinted on our emotions, so in later years we believe circuses are fun (or scary;) dogs are good; cats scratch. Grownups can be trusted. Or not.

I have three memories from before I was 2 1/2. I remember being outdoors, bending down to look through a cellar window, and seeing a bunny. I remember climbing a lot of stairs and finding a room at the top of the stairs on the right that was filled with cartons … and my doll’s swing, on top of the boxes, in a spot of sunlight by the far window. I remember holding my grandmother’s hand and walking through a tunnel of white snow, away from my house.

When my mother was still alive I shared those memories with her, and she agreed they were real. The bunny lived in the basement of the house next door to where we lived until I was 2 1/2. The room I remembered (and which became my own room years later) was on the third floor of the house we moved into a month before my little sister was born. And my grandmother came from Boston to New Jersey and took me back to Boston with her so my mother could unpack and rest before her next baby was born. My grandmother and I left New Jersey right after a heavy snowfall and took the train to New York, and then to Boston. I have no recollection of that train ride.

I have other memories, too … many of them of my grandparents’ house, and people and things there. They left that house to move in with us when I was nine, so the memories were of events before then, but I can’t date them.

When I’m writing Angie Curtis’ memories, I’m assuming she can remember repeated events, like Fourth of July fireworks and Christmas. And she can remember emotional events, like special days she spent with her mother.

But, of course, I’m writing fiction.

How far back do your memories go? And how often do you think of them? I’m not a psychologist, but I suspect those are important questions. And, as a writer, even if I can’t answer the questions for myself … I can answer them for my characters.

A Visit to Ivan the Terrible’s Muscovy

Kathy Lynn Emerson here, getting ready for the U. S. launch of Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe at the beginning of March. Most of the book takes place in Elizabethan England, but the plot revolves around the desire of Russia’s Ivan the Terrible to marry an English “princess” and a number of scenes are therefore set in Russia, which was then more commonly known as Muscovy.

Sixteenth-century Russia was new territory for me. Pretty much all I knew came from reading Dorothy Dunnett’s The Ringed Castle. Fortunately, several English travelers left accounts of all they saw. Then, to my great surprise and pleasure, I discovered that the very house where English merchants lived in Moscow is still there. More than that, it has been turned into a museum and is set up to show what it was like in the time period I write about.

The Muscovy Company was a joint stock company that had the monopoly on trade with Russia. They sent a fleet of ships from London to Rose Island (now Yagry Island) at the mouth of the Dvina River in May or June, bringing not only trade goods (broadcloth, kersey, pewter, wine) but also craftsmen, and sometimes a physician or an apothecary. Of course, what Ivan really wanted were weapons, but the queen preferred not to abet foreign wars. The Muscovy Fleet arrived back in England in August or September, loaded with furs, wax, honey, tallow, train oil (from seals), caviar, and tar. The furs were the big moneymakers and included black fox, sable, lynx, dun fox, marten, ermine, miniver, beaver, wolverine, gray squirrel, red squirrel, red and white fox, muskrat, white wolf, and white bear. Marten and miniver were the most prized furs. Englishmen from the company also established other bases in Russia, including one in Moscow. Ivan gave them a house in the city to serve as their headquarters and servants to look after their needs . . . and to spy on the foreigners. On occasion, Queen Elizabeth also sent an ambassador, but diplomatic relations were uneven at best. Ivan was not the most rational of monarchs and his nickname was well deserved. In 1578, for example, he ordered a deadly attack on all merchants from Livonia who were then living in Moscow. Dutch merchants residing in the same area of the city were burned out and assaulted right along with their neighbors. The same thing, or worse, could have happened to the English contingent, and they were well aware of that fact.

In a few cases, people from one country entered the service of the monarch of the other. Some of those apothecaries and physicians I mentioned were sent by Queen Elizabeth and did double duty as intelligence gatherers. Earlier, in the spring of 1559, Anthony Jenkinson of the Muscovy Company returned to Moscow from a trip to Bokhara bringing with him a captured Tartar girl he would then take back to England as a gift for Queen Elizabeth. Most histories say nothing more about this girl after her arrival at court in 1560, but I have my own theory about what happened to her. There are records, you see, of one “Ippolyta the Tartarian” at Queen Elizabeth’s court.

Scholars who take note of Ippolyta usually speculate that she was a child, a dwarf, or one of Queen Elizabeth’s fools because the queen stood as godmother at her christening in 1561 and gave her a “baby of pewter” as a gift in 1562. However, in 1564, Ippolyta is referred to as “our dear and well beloved woman.” It makes sense to me that she was christened because she’d converted to Christianity. As for the pewter baby, many grown women collected dolls, including Queen Jane Seymour. There are later records of livery, shoes, and other clothing given to Ippolyta and paid for by the queen. In 1564, even excluding the most expensive items—two gowns and a kirtle—the cost of these items came to over £15.

At least one Englishwoman traveled from London to Moscow. She was Jane Richards, English wife of Eleazar Bomelius, a Westphalian physician recruited by the Russian ambassador to England in 1570. He took his family with him when he became Ivan’s personal physician and when he fell out of favor in 1579 and eventually died in prison, Jane was left on her own. Ivan refused to let her return to her family in London until 1584.

If Ippolyta had still been alive in 1582-3, I would have loved to use her as a character in my novel, but the last record of her is in 1569, when a skinner was paid for five dozen black coney skins to fur her short damask cloak. I could and do use Jane.

Tsar Ivan receiving ambassadors from Europe

In Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe, the plot revolves around Tsar Ivan’s proposal to marry a specific Englishwoman, Lady Mary Hastings, the queen’s distant cousin. Not everyone was thrilled by this idea. For one thing, Ivan was already married at the time . . . to his fourth wife. Political factions at the English court also had conflicting views on the subject of any alliance with Muscovy.

The protagonist in Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe is Rosamond Jaffrey (neé Appleton). Although illegitimate, she was raised and educated by the sleuth from my Face Down series, Susanna, Lady Appleton. Rosamond’s father, Lady Appleton’s late, unlamented husband, was a spy. So was the man Rosamond’s birth mother married. And Rosamond just happens to have learned to speak Russian from Lady Appleton’s very good friend, wealthy merchant Nicholas Baldwin, who spent time in both Russia and Persia as a young man and still has ties to the Muscovy Company.

Sir Francis Walsingham

Rosamond is asked to enter Lady Mary Hastings’s household in the guise of a waiting gentlewoman and report to Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, on any suspicious conversations she overhears. The incentive? Rosamond’s husband is in Moscow and could be in considerable danger if the marriage alliance falls through. He faces another sort of danger when he meets Jane Bomelius. Meanwhile, back in England, murder is added to the mix, putting Rosamond in jeopardy, too.

In my next post (February 17), I’ll tell you more about Rosamond and what makes her uniquely suited to be both sleuth and spy in Murder in the Queen’s Wardrobe.

Dig Dig Dig

Hello again from Sarah Graves, writing to you from the farthest northern reaches of the Arctic Circle…no, wait, I’m still in Eastport, Maine. It only feels like the Arctic north, partly due to the 47 inches of snow we got last week and the 15 more inches that will start any minute, so sayeth the weather guessers. We had been coasting along on a mild December and January, one in which we took long walks around the island and wore only three layers — silk long underwear, sweatshirt, really big sweatshirt — for them. Now that’s the outfit you wear to bed around here, and a wool hat to go with it. The wind has gone from briskly friendly to frankly murderous, and when you go outside at night you can hear the elements murmuring among themselves, plotting your icy demise.

Not everyone thinks it’s too cold to play outdoors. Evelyn thinks the word ‘snow’ comes naturally attached to the phrase, ‘dashing through the.’ Being a pet, though, means having servants to pry the ice from between your toes and give you a brisk rub-a-dub with a thick, warm towel after your wintry fun. Some dogs would disdain all this but Evelyn knows creature comforts were made for her . After all, it’s creature comforts, and she is one, right? Meanwhile the ice between my toes seems destined to remain there until spring; the old cast iron radiators in this house work great but when it’s this cold what I really want is radiant floor heating. I want it to radiate so hard that it glows in the dark.

Our trusty garden shed is half buried; I’m expecting it will be three-quarters covered or more by tomorrow. To clear our driveway we have a Plow Guy; the sight of the whirling yellow roof-beacon on his truck is among the pleasures of winter. Afterwards, though, there’s still plenty of unplowed area that, like everyone else, we just get out there and shovel: digging out the car, clearing off both porches, and opening up in front of the shed so the doors can swing open. Otherwise we’d be having to hoard our trash until spring, since at this time of year you don’t dare leave the trash cans out. Hungry raccoons and skunks can open them, even if they’re bungie-corded, faster than I’m able to, and I expect the sea gulls to get the hang of it any day, now. Probably they’ll learn to cooperate to do it, and if they ever develop thumbs we’re doomed (and not just about the trash cans).

Here’s what it looks like outside my window. The house in the foreground had British officers living in it during the War of 1812, when Eastport was occupied after the taking of Fort Sullivan and its citizens were made to sign loyalty oaths. (That’s one reason why the 4th of July is a big deal in Eastport.)  After that it was continuously inhabited, most recently by the Varney sisters who were born and grew up there and lived there until they were in their nineties, until only a few years ago. There was a very old  decorative iron fence set into the very old granite slabs marking the front edge of the front yard; the Varney sisters, I imagine, enjoyed the shade of the stately elms that lined Key Street then, arching over it to form a tunnel that carriage-horses clip-clopped through. Now the house stands empty, awaiting a promised rehabilitation. I think the new owners should hurry up; if they let it sit too long with all its history that place is sure to develop ghosts.

I don’t know about you, but all this indoor-ness is making me feel a little crazy. Not that there isn’t plenty to do (she said, weeping quietly) but I thrive on much more outdoor time than I’ve been getting, even with all the snow shoveling. But…idea! (Picture a light bulb going on suddenly over my head.) I have a pair of cross country skis, and the boots might even fit me, and… And very soon, now, Key Street will be snow-covered, not yet plowed or sanded, perfect for… Well, that’s it. To combat my bout of cabin fever I’m going to make chicken tortillas, and bake some oatmeal raisin cookies. That way there’ll be plenty to eat even if I do manage to suffer some small cross-country-ski kerfluffle.  Not that I think there’ll be one. After all, it’s just me with my feet strapped onto long, slippery-skinny sticks, sliding along not quite well-controlled on a Very Hard Surface…really, what could go wrong?

So, What exactly is Value, Good Sir?

Kate and I were talking about some of the ways I’ve taken a small rural library in a town that’s closer to hardscrabble than most and made it busy and well-respected throughout the state. “You should write more about that stuff,” she said. So, at the risk of beating a deceased equine past viable function, I’ll share more history of how I came to be known as the Radar O’Reily of the Maine library world.

Let’s hop in the wayback machine and head to the mid to late 1950s. Kate was six or seven and I was a year older. Our father would tell us to get into the truck or sit on the tailgate (things like child safety were a lot looser in those days). We’d head up the road toward Appleton and whenever we spotted a returnable in the ditch, one of us would alert Dad and he’d stop while we retrieved it. When ‘ditch mining’ was really good (usually right after the snow melted), we’d end up with a decent haul and we’d stop at the little store in Appleton where Dad would buy beer and we’d split the proceeds from our finds. When we got a little older and had our own bikes, we’d ride off, hunting on our own.

That activity, which netted us real cash money, left an indelible mark on my personality. When our daughters Sara and Lisa were about the same age, we started our own ditch mining routine, generally after the snow melt. Over a period of several years, we found enough returnables so the money, along with any rebate checks from stuff we sent in after buying products, went into mutual funds for the girls. By the time Sara was ready for college, her share, coupled with what we could afford to spend, meant that she was able to graduate with no college debt. We couldn’t do quite as well for Lisa (she went to graduate school as well as getting her B.A.), but within a year of her getting her first masters degree, she, too was debt free.

After the kids were in high school, I continued to stop and pick up returnables whenever I wasn’t in a hurry. A couple times I found things that were a heck of a lot more valuable than a five cent deposit. Once in Coopers Mills, I found a V8 can with an entry form on the reverse side of the label. I filled it out, sent it in and a month later, got a check for $1,000. Several years later, while picking cans from the roadside at Sennebec Hill Farm, I spotted a bag with a plastic needle inside. It was attached to a note that said: “Congratulations, you have found a needle placed here by a representative of Birds and Blooms Magazine. We have placed 50 of them around the U.S. to see how many are picked up by people who care about the appearance of their community. Mail it in and you will be rewarded.” This time, I received a check for $50.00. In essence, the whole look for and grab returnables business was, for me, classic Pavlovian conditioning. Heck, I still stop every now and then and grab a few if time permits. Until the redemption center here in Hartland closed, I bought their Coke caps and the money we would have gotten for our returnables went to help support the town swimming pool.

Aye, Matey, Them Was the Days. How i miss a bit of hack ‘n’ slash after a hearty breakfast.

When I discovered computers (the first was a Commodore 64), the thing that hooked me and made me want to get under the hood, were role playing games-RPGs. Between 1982 and 2005, I owned and probably played every RPG that came out. I loved the ability to get so immersed in a game that I forgot where I was, who I was and what time it was. I called in sick more often to waste 12 hours getting into a new game than because I was really ill. Some games stood out like the Might and Magic series, The Bards Tale, Ultima Underworld 1&2, The Elder Scrolls series and the original Diablo (I played that one all the way through 9 times) to mention a few. Two aspects of the genre totally hooked me. I liked fighting monsters, but I liked checking treasure chests after I vanquished them a lot more. I never knew whether they were going to contain an Awesome Ring of Dude Invincibility or the ubiquitous Fizbin of Misfortune. It was the moment of AHA when the lid swung back that was so addictive.

Ice worms ahead. Better get out your crossbow.

When I was running the adult education program at the old state hospital in Augusta, I met the late Walter Taranko. He hated to see resources go to waste, so whenever a school or library got rid of books, he’d find a way to get them to Augusta and store them in the warehouse used by the Maine State Library. He gave me carte blanche to roam through his treasures and take anything I thought might be useful as a library for patients in our education program. The result was twofold. First, our students had a new and oft-used resource and second, I found that I liked the concept of keeping stuff out of the trash stream.

When I took over as the librarian there, I soon realized that there was a national network online that was dedicated to sharing unwanted issues of medical and psychiatric journals in return for postage reimbursement. I was able to convince the administration that getting in on this was a great and very cost-effective way to expand our professional journal collection. In a matter of a couple years, we had the best such collection north of Boston. Twice I took my truck to libraries that were closing or downsizing and returned with full loads. One came from MacLean Hospital in Belmont, MA., the other culminated in my rescue of the mental retardation periodicals at Pineland that were headed for the trash until I raised hell and finally got the higher-ups in the Dept. of Mental Health to let me assimilate them into my holdings. This obsession paid off nicely because it didn’t take long for big medical facilities all over the US and Canada to recognize that I was happy to lend and borrow on a reciprocal basis through the National Library of Medicine’s interlibrary lending software known as DOCLINE. They got access to rare psychiatric journals and our medical staff got access to cutting edge medical journal articles quickly and at no cost.

I discovered a new variation of real world Might & Magic when I became the director at the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library after leaving AMHI. The Friends of the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library ran a used bookstore in the building next to the library and generated a really amazing amount of money each year. Books were frequently dropped off at the library when the book store was closed and I got in the habit of triaging them and pulling anything I thought was worth adding to the collection. In addition, I pulled ones in better shape than the copies in circulation. We ended up replacing about 200 of ours with better copies each year. There were other, unexpected bonuses that came with triaging books. I’d find unused postcards from all over the world as well as money that had been used as bookmarks.

As time went on, I started contacting some of the people who brought in books, thanking them personally and telling them a bit about how their donated stuff was being used. I ended up referring to this as ‘selling the donation’ and people really liked it. Most of the time when we donate something, the best we get is an acknowledgment and/or a thank you, but we don’t really know what effect the item or the money really has. I discovered that people really get excited when they find out you added a book they gave you because you knew a specific patron who would be excited to read it, or that three of the Janet Evanovich hardcovers they dropped off replaced ones that were falling apart because they were so popular. I frequently highlighted specific donations we got in my weekly library column in the Boothbay Register. These weekly snapshots of what was going on at the library were quite popular and resulted in an increase in donations as well as bringing in new patrons. In the process, I discovered another interesting fact. People new to an area learn a lot about it from reading what goes into the local news. I had many people tell me that they felt more comfortable coming to the library and getting a card because of what they read in my column.

Sorry, my friends, but the 4 pm coffee break has been cancelled.

When I moved on to the Maine State Library in 2002, awareness of my interest in maximizing the value and lifespan of unwanted stuff had grown via things I had shared on the Maine Library Listserv MELIBS-L. Even though I wasn’t part of a public library with a direct venue to use unwanted stuff, I still got calls and emails asking if I wanted such and such. Some items, like 30 year old encyclopedias, were easy to decline. Others, like psychiatric reference books and signed copies of books by Maine authors, were impossible to refuse and I started selling a few items on Half.com. I was shocked at how much some of them sold for.

I was on the board of trustees at the Hartland Public Library when Kerry Baldwin, an energetic librarian in her first professional position decided to move home to Colorado. Everyone on the board had the same initial thought. We hired someone who could turn the library around, she’s been doing a great job, so what do we do now? I went home and started thinking about making one more career change. It was a pretty big pay cut, but instead of being on the road by 7 am every morning and driving 5-700 miles a week, I’d go to work at ten and drive three blocks. Another huge plus was the freedom of being my own boss as a one person operation.

One of my first projects was weeding aggressively. There was a lot of stuff on the shelves that hadn’t been checked out for 15 years or more. Because Kerry had asked me to help her get the collection into the statewide system, seeing which books weren’t unique to Hartland was easy. Because of my work at the Maine State Library I knew that with Hartland participating in the statewide van delivery, we could justify getting rid of a lot more items because we still had access to them in a short time frame through interlibrary loan. Once the shelves started looking uncrowded, people began borrowing more, in part because the library looked different, but also because they no longer needed a crowbar to get a book off the shelf.

It was around this time that I discovered www.bookmooch.com, an online book swapping site that had members all over the world. I listed several hundred of the weeded books and in short order, was sending them to people as eager to get them as I was to get rid of them. The concept was simple. Scan in the ISBN or type in the title, add notes regarding the condition and save the listing. You got 1/10th of a point for each book listed, a point for each one sent in the US and three points for any sent to another country. In the eight years since I started participating, I have given or received 7230 books. Almost every one I’ve received has been added to the library collection. A year or so later, I discovered another swapping site called www.paperbackswap.com This one is only for US residents, but also allows members to swap for audio books on CD. Despite the title, both hardcover and paperback books are listed. It also allows members to create special searches and save them for regular use. I have four that I run almost every day: Orca and Flux look for YA books published by these two firms, an audio one searches for unabridged audios on CD and Teen searches for young adult books that have been published since 2010. Once again, I’ve swapped several thousand books and audio books here, most of which have been added to the collection. In the process, I’ve made friends with a dozen or so swappers who have been giving me deals and extras because they know these freebies will go into our collection, and by proxy into the statewide system so almost anyone in the state can enjoy them.

It was through PaperbackSwap that I first started getting audio books in MP3 format on CD. We now have arguably the largest collection of them in Maine. If you’re unfamiliar with them, they’re audio books on disc that use the same encoding that Itunes uses for music. They have two advantages. One, they can easily be ripped to an iPod or similar device so you can listen to them anywhere and, two, they have a very large capacity, so most of them hold an entire book on one or two discs. There is one small downside, though. Because almost no libraries have them in their collection at this time, I end up having to create a new bibliographic record for most of them. It’s a time consuming process, but is good payback for all the records others have created that I can grab and use in less than a minute.

Last year, PaperbackSwap expanded and opened up two sister sites, SwapaCD (http://www.swapacd.com) and SwapaDVD (http://www.swapadvd.com/home.php). Both charge a nominal handling fee for each trade. I’ve used both to get and give CDs and DVDs. In fact, we have added close to a dozen full seasons of obscure TV series to the library collection this way.

All of these experiences culminated in my realizing that for a one person library, there had to be a better way to turn donations and weeded items into something better. I tried a book sale in the first year I was here, but we barely broke the $100 level and it tied up several people for almost a full day. The catalyst for getting serious with selling online was when a nearby library posted all their weeded items as freebies on Melibs-L. After a week, the list was re-posted and when I looked at it, the number of items hadn’t decreased much. I called my friend who was the assistant there and said that I’d be happy to take everything off his hands. It took two trips, but when I started listing items (I was selling only on Half.com at the time), I was shocked at the prices some items were fetching. Old reference books and certain ten year old textbooks sold for almost as much individually as we’d made in that book sale.

After a couple months, I realized that Half.com had an annoying flaw. Another seller could file a complaint about one of my items and Half.com would remove it before I had a chance to determine whether it was a valid beef. That got so annoying I pulled all my listings and started selling on Amazon. In addition to not having to deal with the anonymous complaint issue, Amazon allowed me to list items that were too old to have an ISBN.

Two things came out of this new way of generating revenue for the library. I ‘sold’ this new way of using donations through a weekly newspaper column as well as through individual conversations and patrons came on board in droves. Secondly, I got better at guessing in advance which items would be worth listing. One day, I was in one of the Goodwill thrift stores and realized I knew enough to try buying stuff to sell online to make a few bucks on the side for myself. Right from the git-go, my average was above 70% (7 of every ten items was worth listing on Amazon) It didn’t take long to realize that going to a thrift shop or to a library book sale, taking the stuff home and spend an evening adding merchandise to my seller account was just as much fun as playing those old RPGs. Instead of slaying Orcs and opening imaginary treasure chests, I was scanning ISBNs on books I’d never heard of and seeing absurd figures as the lowest price available.

In short order, I started a routine that I follow every day now. If a patron brings in donations or I get them from another library, I start by deciding what’s worth adding to the collection. Then I run everything through Amazon and list those items worth selling. There are now several additional steps in the overall process. Step #3 and 4 are often flipped, depending on my gut feeling. I either see if BetterWorld Books thinks the item is one they can sell, or I run it through PaperbackSwap/Bookmooch to see if it’s on someone’s wish list. If it is, then I list it. If not, I put it in one of three areas in the library that patrons know hold free for the taking stuff. There’s an area inside the front door for adults, a bright red bookcase for teens and juveniles and a decorated box on a chair in the kid’s area for picture books. Despite the occasional messy look, people really look forward to browsing these areas. I’m willing to bet that over 100 items each week find a home this way. When things start to pile up, the last stage of the triaging process kicks in. I box the rest and take it to the Salvation Army store in Palmyra. As a result, almost nothing ends up in the waste stream and we make plenty of people happy. At times, this free for the taking has expanded to include unwanted, but fully operational computers, surplus vegetables, Christmas decorations and even a working light/ceiling fan combo.

What child doesn’t love a free book?

Last fall, another friend who works in a library called me and said he needed a big favor. They were hurting for storage space and could I help by taking a bunch of stuff off their hands. He hesitated before telling me that it was mostly audio books on cassette and VHS videos. Given how seldom these two types circulate any more, I can tell you that almost every other librarian would have declined to take these. However, my experience selling on Amazon has taught me a valuable lesson. Any audio book that wasn’t recorded on CD and any video (especially older documentaries) that wasn’t converted to DVD is valuable in its older format, so I agreed to take all the stuff. It turned out to be in excess of a hundred boxes and I’m still not finished going through it. What I have handled, however, has resulted in some eye popping sales to benefit the Hartland Public Library directly, and every other library in Maine indirectly. Since we plow all revenue generated this way back into the collection, it has allowed us to buy a large number of TV series on DVD (Downton Abbey Season 5 arrived yesterday and Game of Thrones, Season 4 has been pre-ordered). Books that I couldn’t ordinarily justify because of low circulation, get bought via my Amazon Prime account and we have them in just a few days. We just added Salesman Angler by Maine author Bob Leeman as well as Charcuterie : the craft of salting, smoking, and curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. We’re the only Maine library with the Leeman book and one of just two owning the other one. Without the flexibility of Amazon revenue, there’s no way we could meet these wants that patrons have.

The chapter book freebies.

I know this column is much longer than most, but I wanted to give readers a thorough look behind the scenes. I’ll finish up with a list of ten recent sales of non-book items so you can see for yourself why I’m a firm believer in the old adage that “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

1-A Confederacy of Dunces [Audio CD] [2005] Toole, John Kennedy; Whitener, Barrett. Your earnings: $15.89

2-Bookman’s Wake [Audio Cassette] [2000] John Dunning; George Guidall. Your earnings: $22.90

3-Travels of Jaimie McPheeters [Audio Cassette] [1993] Taylor, Robert Lewis. Your earnings: $44.15

4-Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist [Audio Cassette] [1997] Dorothy Gilman; Barbara Rosenblat. Your earnings: $16.10

5-Life and Death in Shanghai [Audio Cassette] [1987] Nien Cheng; Penelope Dellaporta. Your earnings: $22.90

6-Understanding World Religions What is Islam? [VHS Tape]. Your earnings: $22.90

7-The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss – Volume 5 [VHS] [VHS Tape] [1999]. Your earnings: $14.40

8-he Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss – Volume 6 [VHS] [VHS Tape] [1999]. Your earnings: $10.15

9-With This Ring [Audio Cassette] [1998] Amanda Quick; Barbara Rosenblat. Your earnings: $9.85

10-Duets [Audio CD] Pass, Joe; Pisano, John. Your earnings: $18.65

Weekend Update: January 31-February 1, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by John Clark (Monday), Sarah Graves (Tuesday), Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett (Wednesday), Vicki Doudera (Thursday), and Lea Wait (Friday).

It’s a slow weekend in the news department, possibly because there’s so much snow on the ground here in Maine. Kathy Lynn Emerson will have something to report soon, but she can’t talk about it quite yet. Possibly there will be an addition to this post later in the weekend. Stay tuned.

NEWS FLASH, NOONISH ON SATURDAY, WITH EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS THAN KATHY/KAITLYN EXPECTED:

The Agatha Award nominations are out and three (count ‘em) three of our little band of Maine Crime Writers are up for awards when Malice Domestic takes place in May.

Kate Flora‘s Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice is nominated for Best Nonfiction

Kathy Lynn Emerson‘s “The Blessing Witch” (from Best New England Crime Stories 2015: Rogue Wave, co-edited by Barb Ross) is nominated for Best Short Story

Lea Wait‘s Uncertain Glory is nominated for Best Children’s/Young Adult

We promise to share smiles and pictures, including photos of our teapots, if we win them, with you the first week in May.

Yay, us!

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