Lea Wait's Blog, page 31

Where Book Ideas Come From by Matt Cost

Book ideas are like apples on an apple tree in the fall. Abundant and ripe for the picking. Some people fill a basket with them and then pull them out when wanted while others just pluck one off and bite right into it. I fall into the third camp of gathering a few of them and biting in when the time is ripe.

Many of these ideas come from the world around us. Mind Trap was inspired by a newspaper story about a cult, which led down the rabbit hole of cults. They are all around us, large and small, radical and reserved, and in all shapes and forms. The ones that go bad are the ones we hear about. Jonestown. Waco. Manson. But what about the ones we don’t hear about?

Mouse Trap originated in a news story about Jackson Laboratories in Bar Harbor. They have been experimenting on mice to alter the DNA in the embryo of the pregnant females in an effort to eradicate disease such as diabetes and cancer in humans. It turns out that mice and people share almost 99% of the same DNA. In other words, the experiment on mice is in preparation for being used on humans through a process called CRISPR. This presents the reality that it can also be used to create Super Babies.

Cosmic Trap is based on the fact that NASA, airplane pilots, and radar technicians on a regular basis see aerial phenomena that cannot be explained. As a result, Congress appointed a task force a few years back to investigate this Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs. They recently got back with their findings. There is definitely something up there. They have no idea what. Is it the Russians or Chinese? Is it a secret U.S. wing of the military? Is it aliens? A mysterious world CABAL? All good questions.

The idea that germinated and grew into Pirate Trap occurred when I was a bit shy of four years old. My mother owned a bookstore in Henniker, New Hampshire, and the local college kids would hang out there and in front with me, making me their unofficial mascot. We had many a bizarre discussion that sparked my creative juices at that age, but much later, realized was probably sparked by them being on hallucinogenic drugs. One day they took me on a treasure hunt through town, culminating in finding a chest filled with gold-foil chocolate coins, eye patches, water pistols, and good ole pirate things. Followed by Peter Pan and Treasure Island and you get a book.

Fidel Castro, Joshua Chamberlain, and the fight for equal rights in New Orleans after the Civil War sparked historical fiction ideas into books. Recently, I decided to put my love of histories and mysteries together and Velma Gone Awry was created, about a PI in 1923 Brooklyn. The sequel to that, City Gone Askew, is the reverse idea of Mouse Trap. Before we had genome editing to curry popular traits and negate supposed unfavorable traits, we had the eugenics movement. This was very popular in the U.S. in the 1920s and was the basis for a great deal of Adolf Hitler’s ideology.

What would happen if the Eugenics Movement, the KKK, and Hitler had banded together? Terrifying. But a good idea for a book. City Gone Askew.

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published five books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, just released in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, Pirate Trap, just released on March 27th, 2024.

For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. In April of 2023, Cost combined his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry. City Gone Askew will follow in July of 2024.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab, a basset hound, and a chihuahua round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

Invasive Species

I was this many years old when I found out that the classic flower of Maine, the lupine, is not a native species to the state. Lupines are good for pollinators and are hugely popular as perennials because they proliferate so easily, but their seeds are also poisonous to farm animals and native herbivores. There was one native lupine species, the sundial lupine, but it has been extinct in Maine for some time. But those fields of waving purple, blue, and pink flowers? They didn’t grow up here and they come from away.

I’m not against flowers—who could be?—but the problem with the introduction of invasive species is that they often crowd out native ones. And when we lose native species, we lose the plants and fauna that are adapted to the environment and are often interdependent. Lupine, for example, can have a deleterious impact on the migratory monarch butterfly, whose larvae cannot eat lupine. The larvae’s survival depends on native milkweed and lupine crowds that out.

It’s hard not to think of invasive species in the summer time in Maine. I’ve lived in and around tourist popular areas all my life and the seasonal influx is as familiar to me as the pain in my knees. And like nearly everyone who lives here, I have a mixed feeling about the incomers.

First off, I like it when they spend money and support local businesses. Our economy is beholden to them and because of that, I have taken to standing by the dock at the Ocean Gateway Terminal and chanting to the tourists as they come off the boat “Spend money, spend money.”

At the same time I’m sympathetic to the view of John D. Macdonald, whose beloved Florida has been overrun with tourists since time immemorial, or at least since the motorcar came along. I can’t remember in which of the Travis McGee novels he posits this, but I’d like to have the Maine Department of Tourism consider supplying all tourists with a small machine they could strap to their backs that would, every half hour or so, dispense a twenty-dollar bill for the nearest recipient. It might go a long way to making the traffic, vehicular and sidewalkian, more bearable.

I jest, of course, though it seems possible to me that the summer influx, not to mention the popularity of Maine as a place for people to move to, has some potential to crowd out the native. I’m not thinking about people so much as some of the more pleasurable aspects of being in the state, even in the cities. For example, drivers from elsewhere often don’t understand that the thick white stripes in a crosswalk denote a safe place for pedestrians to cross and thus, a notice to those drivers to stop and let them go. Or just because you notice a cashier opening a new lane before anyone else doesn’t mean you get to jump the line.

But the longest-lasting native species are hardy and that’s the consolation I have. No Audi-driver in a hurry to get to Kettle Cove Creamery is going to drive old Dave at the small engine repair shop out of his place. There is native and not, and even if we need the fresh air and income of the incomers, it is pleasant to believe that we will survive. Those of us who came in and closed the door behind us, that is.

 

What’s in a Name?

Plot, setting, characters, all of those elements go into creating a story. Plot and setting usually complement each other. Although, it’s true I’ve been colder in Florida than I ever was in Maine and hotter in Maine than I ever was in Florida. Last week, anyone? That’s the exception, and used well, an ingredient that creates conflict. Playing against expectation is always fun.

Characters are the bane of my existence. Not creating them. They usually arrive full-blown, warts and all. Naming them is my problem. I often want to shake them and beg them to tell me who they are. Instead, they laugh. Outside of fiction, I have never named a human being. And my friends who have had children stuck with family names. Precious little help there. As an author, Uncle Bancroft may have a place in the family hierarchy, but as a character, not so much. At least not without explanation. The only way I can picture him is sitting behind a mahogany partner’s desk puffing on a cigar. Great if I wrote British-style novels, not so good for the north woods of Maine or the Florida Keys.

There are two major considerations for naming characters. Location and generation. Saddling a character with a certain name evokes expectation. For example, when I was a kid, my mom bought me a Barbie game. Bear in mind, this was the early 1960s. The potential boyfriend names were Ken, Tom, Bob, and, inexplicably, Poindexter. No player willingly selected Poindexter. Even to a bunch of eight-year-olds, the name screamed nerd. I often wonder if Dexter Morgan’s first name wasn’t Poindexter. Look where it got him. Yes, names matter.

Names waft in and out of fashion. There are websites that list popular names by birth year and generation. My character, Sassy Romano, was born in the early 1990s. Sassy topped the list in 1994. Perfect for my character. Romano is her married name. She was born a Tremayne. While not a common surname in the Northwoods, it is an English name which sets it squarely in the Allagash. Her friends have surnames of Caron, Hafford, and Pelletier. All common in the area. Pairing local surnames with generation appropriate first names anchors the story in the Allagash and the St. John Valley.

Those same names would jar the reader if used in a Florida mystery. Spanish names are far more common in the area. Hayden Kent, my protagonist, descends from the Bahamian settlers of the Keys born of British stock. Her boss is Luis Alvarez. A man who has a hard time communicating in Spanish, but whose ancestry is clearly Cuban. Those names work in South Florida, but not in northern Maine.

None of this is to suggest that either area lacks diversity. That wouldn’t be true or fair. The truth of the matter is that character names provide a shorthand. A way for the reader to connect quickly with and identify characters. That’s not to say authors shouldn’t mix it up. That can be fun, and can serve a story purpose. But brief explanations should accompany the anomalies to avoid the reader wandering off.

There is one other consideration when naming characters. Variety for the sake of clarity. Shake up the alphabet and use those letters. Your readers will thank you.

Weekend Update: June22-23, 2024

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kait Carson (Monday), Dick Cass (Tuesday), Matt Cost (Thursday) and Charlene D’Avanzo (Friday).

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

Matt Cost will be giving a COST TALK at the Thomas Memorial Library in Cape Elizabeth on Tuesday, June 25th, at 6:30 p.m. On Wednesday, there will be another COST TALK at the Falmouth Memorial Library at 6:00 p.m. These talks will be about the evolution of a book with a focus on his latest release, Pirate Trap, and will include a short reading.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Let’s revisit: Joyce? Wordsworth? They’re just like us!

Hi all, I can’t hit the keyboard this month, so for your reading pleasure, I’m reprising a favorite column. Enjoy! 

For several years, I was a judge in nationwide self-published book contest. I was a first-tier judge, which meant I read a hundred or more books, sending one for every batch of 25 back  to the next tier. Duties included ranking each on a 1-5 scale for several criterea (character development, structure, grammar, etc), and also giving a 200 to 300-word critique. (Top tip: If you’re self publishing, pay for an editor, for the love of god). I always used the “critique sandwich” approach — positive opening, the real criticism, positive ending. Example: “You obviously worked very hard on this book… to bring it up to the next level, you may want to consider… you should be proud of your accomplishment.”

James Joyce and me in Dublin.

Sometimes — often — it was very hard to find positive things to say. One memorable one that I struggled with was a stream of consciousness mish-mash with no attention to the rules of punctuation, spelling, sentence structure, or anything else that resembled writing. The writer responded to my critique (an option they had but, in my memory, only two writers — both male and jarringly bad — used). His reply was, basically, “James Joyce wrote like this and he was considered a genuis!”

My rule with that contest was the same as when I was a newspaper editor — if I got a ridiculous email from someone who just didn’t get it, they got one brief and to-the-point response. To this fellow, I wrote something like, “Joyce understood the rules enough to know how to break them.” (Not that this is what this is about, but another tip for aspiring writers: Know the rules in and out before you break them, and if you do, have a plan for it. Don’t just break them because you’re too lazy to write correctly.)

I knew what I spoke of regarding Joyce — one piece of my very excellent liberal arts education was a semester on Joyce from one of the top Joyce scholars of the era. I’m embarrassed to say that the professor, Ed Callahan (who I also had for Shakespeare), was awesome, but I struggled mightily to understand what I was reading and I likely got a bad grade. I plan to revisit Joyce now that I’m older, smarter and on ADHD medication.

I enjoyed being an English major. Besides critical thinking skills and all sorts of stuff about literature and writing, I also learned things that no one in high school ever told me. Thoreau thought Walt Whitman was a slob! Thoreau, while “roughing it” at Walden Pond would go to the Emerson’s for lunch every day, where Mrs. Emerson would cook him a nice hot meal! Etc. I don’t rememember learning anything like that about Joyce, though. So I was delighted to learn, when I was in Dublin and visited the fantastic (but flawed) brand-new Museum of Literature in Ireland, that Joyce was, well… kind of whiner.

Joyce complaining about his publisher to Yeats.

The museum has an entire floor dedicated to Dublin’s favorite writer — as it should. Among the exhibits are letters he wrote to W.B. Yeats complaining about his publisher and asking for help.

In one he complains that the potential publisher refused to publish his book “The Dubliners,” then sold it back to him, but the printer destroyed all the copies. I look at this letter as just softening Yeats up, because the next letter, written on Christmas day no less, asks Yeats to help him get the book published.

The exhibits imply the two guys didn’t know each other well, but were acquainted. I can picture Yeats sitting there saying, “WTF, can’t this guy get a grip? I have my own issues to deal with!” One of the flaws of the museum — a blog post for another day — is that they have very little on Yeats. So we don’t know how he felt about Joyce.

Joyce closing the deal by asking Yeats for help.

But, as we all know, Joyce eventually got the attention he deserved, whether Yeats helped him out or not.

A week or so after my visit to Dublin, I was in England’s Lake District (it was a great trip with my sister Liz — another blog post for another day), and visited Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Museum. It was interesting to see that Wordsworth, too, had written whiney letters to people of influence complaining about publishers and more.

Don’t worry, I did have more takeaways about these two writers than the whininess. For instance, as I read Wordsworth’s “Boat Stealing,” part of his major work “The Prelude,” I had a strong flashback to my Introduction to Poetry Class first semester of freshman year in college  43 years ago (yes, I was an English major), and the startling revelation that A LOT of poems are about sex. Here’s an excerpt from that poem:

And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again…

See? It’s not just about the boat! Something stirred in me as I read it. No, not that. It was the realization that, nearly 40 years after graduating from college and 43 years after I took the class, I was remembering and drawing on something specific I’d learned. It’s always nice to feel that the money both I and the American taxpayers spent on those four years is paying off. (Though more like two years for the taxpayers, since Reagan decimated financial aid programs when I was mid-way through).

I no longer have the book with “Boat Stealing,” but here’s proof that, yes, I did pay at least minimal attention in college.

I even looked for the textbook with “Boat Stealing” when I got home (because yes, I’m a dork who saved some of my college textbooks), but I no longer have it. I did, however, find my notes on another Wordsworth poem, which, unininspiring as they are, showed I was at least paying enough attention to know that it would be on the final.

I found it interesting that both Joyce and Wordsworth had women at their beck and call who typed, mailed, compiled, soothed, cooked, gave ideas to, allowed the guy to take snippets of their own writing as his, etc. It reminded me a little of my mother’s refrain: “I notice a lot of writers have husbands or wives who work, so they have health insurance and can take time to write…” Thanks Mom! In 2022, I don’t see getting married as a solution to finding time to write. I think the picking up dirty socks, trying to tune out the NFL or “Game of Thrones” or whatever other random thing is constantly droning on the TV, negotiating meal content, and all the other aspects of living with another person would negate any “writing time” I would gain. And the Affordable Care Act is treating me better as far as health care goes than any employer-based insurance I’ve had in the past decade. Sorry, digressing!

Back yard of Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home in Grasmere, England. Nice place, but would’ve been a little crowded for my taste.

In Wordsworth’s defense, I shudder to think of how crowded his sweet little Dove Cottage must’ve been with his wife, sister, various friends and hangers-on, and growing brood of what eventually became five kids all crammed in. Though they moved to a bigger place after kid no. 3. Oh, and he had a bequest from a friend who’d died that allowed him to live comfortably while he wrote, with the proviso that his sister live with him and be taken care of. That sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, wasn’t a bad writer herself. And as I touched on earlier, she and Wordsworth’s wife, Mary, did a lot of his heavy lifting, including transcribing all his writing, walking four miles one-way to the post office in Ambleside to mail stuff for him, letting him use their ideas, and more. So he got the better of the deal.

But I digress again.

I knew traveling to the homes of some of the greatest writers the world has ever known would be motivating as I struggle along finishing my own book. But the best motivation was that no matter how great they were, they were people, too, with issues and insecurities of their own. And yet they got it done. A lesson for us all.

Now, if any of you guys happen to have Yeats’ mailing address, could you send it along? Just want to drop him a little note…

And I Chose Writing

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. Some years ago, a close friend I first got to know when we were working in our college theater department asked me why I was no longer involved in community theater. Once upon a time I’d been a dedicated backstage person, occasionally acting, and also dabbling in choreography, since I had a fairly extensive background in ballet and modern dance. In the normal way of things, I might have moved on to directing plays, as my friend had.

dance team rehearsal, The Music Man, Liberty High School 1965

I had to think for a moment before I answered her. In high school, college, and during the years when my husband was stationed in Virginia Beach in the Navy, I loved being part of putting on a play—the sense of community, the friendships formed, the euphoria of creating something others enjoyed. Of course there was a downside, too. A play’s run inevitably ended. Afterward, cast and crew members moved on to other things and tended to drift apart. Furthermore, recapturing the “magic” of one theatrical experience isn’t always possible with the next show.

cast and crew of The Fantasticks at the Little Theater of Virginia Beach 1973

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the process of preparing and presenting a play to the public is remarkably similar to writing a novel. A director (who is usually also acting as the producer in an amateur company) not only has to wrangle actors (characters), but also supervise the selection and arrangement of sets, props, costumes, lighting, sound, and is (perhaps most importantly) also responsible for interpreting the script. No matter what the playwright originally wrote, a director can always make changes, even altering the sex of a main character or the time period in which the play is set.

Much Ado About Nothing, Bates College, 1968

Obviously, the creative processes in directing and writing a novel have similarities. They have something else in common, too—the need for total immersion in a project for a significant period of time in order to achieve a satisfactory result. And there was the answer to my friend’s question. Being creative takes a lot of time and energy. If I’d tried to participate in putting on a play, in any capacity, while also attempting to produce full-length works of fiction suitable for publication (a task best accomplished without distractions), both endeavors would have suffered.

scenes from Androcles and the Lion performed by 7th grade students at Wilton Academy 1976

So, dear reader, I chose writing. I have no regrets, and I can still look back fondly on my early theatrical experiences. A few of them even turn up in my novels.

As You Like It, acting class project when I taught at Tidewater Community College, 1973

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new omnibus e-book editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

 

And A Good Time Was Had By All

Kate Flora: Yesterday, members of the crime writing community gathered at the Glickman Library at the University of Maine for what I believe was the 10th annual Maine Crime Wave sponsored by Maine Writers and Publishers. Although writers spend most of their time toiling alone at their desks, we love getting together and hearing what everyone else is working on. We love engaging panels. We love celebrating writers who have sold a new book or a new short story or who have found an agent. It’s a very generous community.

I’ve been going to conferences for decades and it’s a rare one where I don’t come home thinking about how to revise my current work in progress. That was definitely the case yesterday listening the keynote speaker, Juliet Grames from SoHo Press, talk about The Genre Writer as Artist, Editor, and Publishing Professional. I had to work to keep my mind on her talk after she had me thinking about how to enhance the scenes I’d just written, but her blunt statement that the publishing industry is dysfunctional and makes no sense, using the delicious phrase “a maelstrom of malfeasance.” She told us we can’t control for luck or nepotism, but you can control your craft.

She reminded us to be mindful of the reader and ask whether your work meet the needs of readers. That craft consists of three overlapping circles: story telling, ideology or interiority or what’s in your character’s head, and language. What is keeping readers turning the pages? Does your story have voice? Use revision to tune up language. Remember that it takes stamina to do the amount of self-editing your book probably needs. Is the book too long or too short? Does it have a baggy middle. Tighten your pacing and your scenes. Suggested a book by Matt Bell on editing: Refuse to Be Dumb. Described a method of editing called “the worse sentence project” where you delete the worst sentence on every page. Work harder to make every sentence more interesting. Use specificity to amp up your atmosphere/sense of place.

Great advice. And great lines were definitely in attendance. I try to scribble things down and usually either only get half phrases or can’t read what I’ve written, but here are some of the other gems I recorded. Crime Master Award winner Michael Koryta (a fabulous writer) reminded us that: Nothing seems as cool as when you were new. A feeling that can be recaptured by trying something new and different in another corner of the big crime writing tent. He also shared something we should always keep in mind: Terror is in the anticipation of the bang.

Approach your writing career with strategic pessimism.

Read outside your chosen genre to open up new neural pathways.

I was honored to receive the Lea Wait Award. Lea was a dear friend and blogged here for many years.

Here are some photos of the event:

Dick Cass and the panel he moderated

Kate Flora and the panel she moderated, including Tess Gerritsen, Michael Koryta, Tiffany Ford and B.J. Magnani

Kate’s Lea Wait award

Short or Long panel with Stephen Rogers, Katherine Hall Page, Vaughn Hardacker, and Gabby Stiteler

Dick Cass at his moderator’s podium

MCW alum Gerry Boyle moderating the short story panel.

Weekend Update: June 15-16, 2024

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be a Maine Crime Wave report (Monday), and posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday), Maureen Milliken (Thursday) and Sandra Neily (Friday).

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

 Matt Cost will be at the Maine Crime Wave today, Saturday, June 15th. He will be on a panel blabbing about something or other and listening to many a Lit Legend expound on the craft of writing. On June 18th, he will be doing a COST TALK at the York Public Library at 7:00 p.m. On June 20th, he will be presenting a COST TALK at the Charlotte Hobbs Library in Lovell. And finally, on June 21st, Cost will be signing books at the Bath Art Hop from 4:00-7:00 p.m.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Welcome to Maine Crime Wave and More!

Rob Kelley here, talking about writer’s conferences, particularly for as-yet-unpublished authors.

I’ve talked before about how writing is a solo sport for much of the journey, only becoming a team sport once you enter the publication process. But that’s not entirely true. There is another team sport: writing conferences.

It took me a while to figure this out. At first, it was hard to sit out in the audience and listen to these successful writers talking from the other side of the great publication divide (jealous much?). They’d solved the mythical equation of writing, revising, getting an agent, getting a publisher, and getting their book out in the world.

But that was exactly what became the real joy of conferences for me: talking to real writers–even super successful ones–whose journey was exactly like my own.

Let’s face it, many of us writers aren’t our most outgoing in the first place, so putting yourself out there, introducing yourself, talking about your own project, is pretty intimidating. But that was the core of my realization: it’s the same for almost everyone else. Sure, when you’re 10+ books into a series you have a little more confidence, but the basic daily work, the market challenges, and the desire to make great work and get it in the hands of readers is the same for all of us, published or no.

During a ThrillerFest in New York several years back, I got invited along with a group of Maine thriller and mystery writers for an impromptu lunch. The topic that day was book titles, and even the most successful New York Times best seller in the group expressed their frustration at their publisher’s stubborn insistence on an exceptionally boring book title.

The lunch was a blast, but it was also a healthy reminder of the fact that behind the desk, in front of the computer, we’re all doing the same thing. We have good days when it works and bad days when everything we write is crap, or, worse, when we stare into the abyss of the empty screen, the blinking cursor taunting us.

Not only have all those other writers faced what you face, which is heartening, but there’s something even better in getting to know other writers, those on their way and those already there. Writers adore other writers. They want to be your cheerleaders. They want–no, they crave–seeing other writers blossom.

I mean, let’s face it; there aren’t that many wins in the life of a writer. There are the negative word days when you delete more than you add. There are bookstore readings with almost no, or actually no, attendees.  (If you haven’t stumbled across this gem, please enjoy the reaction to debut author Chelsea Banning’s sparsely-attended bookstore reading.)

But if you are part of a community, like the glorious, generous Maine Crime Wave community, then you see other writers go from unpublished to published, and you cheer them on. You listen to writers whose work you adore talk about writer’s block and push through your own when it comes. You hear challenges with agents, publishers, sales, licensing, audio rights, and experiences with self, hybrid, and traditional publishing. And you discover that you are all doing the same darn thing: spinning out words that you hope transport another human to a place that, until that time, existed exclusively in your own head.

It’s not like conferences come with a user manual. I thought I should go and listen to successful authors and divine out what made them successful. But what I learned was that while I was not yet published, I had more in common with them than I realized. They too struggled with their books, with editing and revising, with a plot that wouldn’t go the direction it was supposed to. What they collectively helped me understand is that the work is the same for everyone, pretty much all the time. And that for that small stretch of time at a writer’s conference, like tonight and tomorrow at Maine Crime Wave, you know we are all in this together.

So chat up that person next to you between conference sessions. Learn what they like to read, or what they love to, or want to, write. Find your book-loving and book-writing brothers and sisters. They are there for you, and you can be there for them.

While Traveling

Jule Selbo

Because of losing track of days and locations (where I am waking up each morning) due to travel (family events, conferences, friends’ milestones that cannot be missed, teaching commitments that were made way too early and couldn’t be gotten out of) and not being used to living out of a suitcase, my mind is a bit of a jumble.  And I’m homesick. Mostly for my writing routine and for not being able to attend the very important event in Maine –  Maine Crime Wave.

 The desire to be home grew after reading John Clark’s recent post in Maine Crime Writers Blog about the ills of ILL in Maine. And after seeing the huge varieties of people traveling through airports (those with smiles, nice luggage and relatively fat pocketbooks and those

with lives stuffed into ragged suitcases, juggling three or four children, an aged, sad grandma and most likely fleeing from an old, possibly unfair, dangerous life).

And more homesick after noticing the ills of drug addiction in a very nice German town – (taking a left out of the of my hotel led me to beautiful waterfront and happy bike riders and happier beer drinkers in historic cafes BUT taking a right out of my hotel led me to SROs, needles on the pavement, maimed, terribly thin and twisted personages swerving across the sidewalk).

The homesick feeling was exacerbated by (my choice)  listening to oral histories of a few who had been living in 1933-1945 Germany. And also after touring a Cathedral that took nearly 600 years and the back-breaking work of nearly 2000 craftsmen to build and was built “for the people” but had the most beautiful, most sacred area walled off so that only the most highly risen clergy could gather in its space.

So I decided to concentrate on doing something more positive than noticing the have-and- have-nots on my trips, and since I’m in Germany, I decided to explore female German crime writers that do I not know about (turns out there are a whole bunch but here’s a few…)

I’ll start with Thea Dorn. Thea is a German writer of crime fiction and TV host. (The Brain Queen (1999) and Madchenmorder(2008) She lives in Berlin, she was initially trained as a singer, then turn to the study of philosophy and theatre. She graduated in philosophy with a work on self-deception.  SELF-DECEPTION.  Ahh. Was that the seed that sent her into crime writing?

Also landed on Petra Hammesfar who is a successful mystery writer –  she writes short stories and novels. She is just now being translated into English. What she’s known for: “Accurate descriptions, psychological insights and surprising endings.  Explorations of why good people turn into criminals…

                                             

She thinks it’s perhaps because the monotony and madness of daily life can become too much to bear. Or perhaps highly functional people can become criminally delinquent when one moment in time makes them snap. Hammesfahr combines the very ordinary with the uncanny, the sick, the revolting. The outcast who may not be guilty, the housewife who may be.” (quote is from some review I read).

Then there’s the well-lauded Charlotte Link – who is very very famous in Germany and now, very recently, has had a book translated into English. I learned from her internet bio that her crime novels are highly regarded because she examines contemporary life through her psychological detective novels written in the ‘English manner’.

ENGLISH MANNER?

What does that mean? Anyone know?

In searching out what the term ‘English manner’ means to those in Germany, this is what I found: “The keystone of Link’s popularity is an intelligent mix of suspense and emotion set in evocative historical periods such as Victorian England and WW1-era Germany. Modern day settings and psycho-thrillers are also among them – gripping tales of human relationships and finely wrought intrigues.” Link has been nominated for the German Book Prize, and a few of her books have been adapted for German television – anyone getting much German TV on their streaming devices?  I know I don’t – I will have to look when I get home.

Charlotte Link also writes YA crime mysteries. (I assume in the ‘English Manner’).

Home soon.