Lea Wait's Blog, page 316

Book Events

Dorothy Cannell here. Had a great time at Boothbay Book Festival last Saturday. Appreciate Sherman’s providing copies of my books Murder at Mullings and Sea Glass Summer for sale. Enjoyed talking to readers.and being at a table with other Maine crime writers. Always fun getting together and talking shop. Some of us, including Kathy Lynn Emerson, Kate Flora, and Lea Wait, will also be signing books at Beyond the Sea in Lincolnville Beach, Saturday July 26th. My time slot is 11 – 1p.m. The store is owned by Nanette Geonfriddo and it is a great favorite of mine. If ever I need to send a gift to someone and am not sure what to get, I go there and always find exactly the exactly the right thing. If you would like to know which other Maine authors will be attending you can email info@BeyondTheSeaMaine.com. Another benefit of the signings is that Lincolnville Beach is charming.

I just heard from my publisher Severn House that the hard cover run of Murder at Mullings has sold out apart from a few copies. Nanette will have some available along with the trade paperback of Sea Glass Summer. Another short run of Murder is planned for end of July. The trade paper edition will be available in three months. I’m extremely pleased sales have done so well.

Meanwhile I am racing to the finish of Death at Dovecote Hatch, second in this new series, by the August 31st deadline. I could be done now if summertime in Maine weren’t so delightful that I keep succumbing to the urge to be outside instead of holed up in my basement office. Luckily, it has only one tiny window high on the wall, but there’s a rose bush outside and sometimes the scent pours in.

In my next life I plan to be a Carmelite nun with very bad adenoids. Also another problem – I’ve come to sympathize with my murderer and it’s been waking me in the night. Wonder if I’m becoming too soft hearted for this job.

Hope to see some of you at Beyond the Sea.

Dorothy

 

 

Training Law Enforcement

When I was asked to apply to be a presenter at the NOBLE Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I didn’t think anything of it. I sent in my application, was accepted and when I was notified, I made the guy who booked me laugh. NOBLE stands for National Organization of Black Law Enforcement. I told him, “I hope you realize I am not black.”

Thus the laugh, and yes, they knew I wasn’t black.

My training is today at the DEVOS Convention Center. For almost two hours, I will show law enforcement from around the country how to track down a cybercriminal from emails and web sites, how to contact ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) and how to work effectively with victims.

That’s one thing about the Internet – it doesn’t know the meaning of race, gender, age or sexual orientation. No matter who you are, you could be a victim. And no matter what type of law enforcement you are, you need to know how to handle these type of cases.

An interesting aside: At the Manchester, NH airport, I was behind a woman at the TSA Precheck line (if you travel a lot, make sure you take advantage of this – you whiz through security). We chatted, walked to Starbucks together and she bought me a latte. Turns out we were both going to Grand Rapids for different reasons, but on the same flights.

On the first one, she couldn’t save me a seat, but on the second, she did, in the middle. The woman in the aisle seat was a witch with a capital B if you get my drift and refused to stand up to let me in. She made me climb over her legs with my bag, proceeded to jab me in my side with her elbow throughout the trip, fidgeted uncontrollably and was a pain in the you-know-what. She was listening to music, so we commented just loud enough for her to hear.

Me: “It’s hard when you come down from that kind of high.”

My new friend: “It’s a shame when you are that young and feel you need plastic surgery” (you could see the scars on her face)

Me: “It’s sad when you are that angry at the world when there is so much to be happy about.”

My new friend: “Definitely!”

At one point, the male flight attendant had had enough of her putting her legs in the aisle and kicked her feet, told her to keep them in her seat area and then proceeded to be very nice to us.

Now I have a new character for one of my stories.

See? You can get good ideas and characters from the negative people out there, LOL (that’s laugh out loud for you newbies).

Alan Glynn’s Bloodland

A Beautifully-Plotted Thriller Full of Unexpected Twists and Turns.

James Hayman:  About an hour into Alan Glynn’s political thriller Bloodland, I turned to my wife and said, “I can’t follow what the heck is going on in this book.  The author keeps introducing new characters and new situations that, as far as I can tell, have absolutely nothing to do with each other.”  I thought about tossing the book aside and starting another but decided to go a little further before doing that.  I’m very glad I did. By the time I got to the end I was telling her that Bloodland was one of the best political thrillers I’d read in a very long time.

Bloodland is a tale of political and financial duplicity and amoral double-dealing that is both breathtaking in its scope and yet, given the world we live in today, entirely believable.

The story straddles the globe from Dublin to the Congo to London to Italy to New York and is told from the points of view of a whole stable of characters, all male.

The hero, if there can be said to be one, is Jimmy Gilroy, a young Irish journalist thrown out of work by the great recession and struggling to pay the rent.  To make ends meet Gilroy accepts an advance to write a quickie biography of a professional celebrity named Susie Monaghan, who was killed three years earlier in an unexplained helicopter crash off the Irish coast. Five other people died with her.

That decision by Gilroy (the only genuine good guy in the book) sets off a chain reaction of events that involve all the key players in the book.

The tale involves a frighteningly plausible array of movers, shakers and loose cannons.  In no particular order we see the plot unfold through the eyes of:

-A not particularly competant US senator who is eager to make a run for the White House.

-The senator’s much smarter older brother who is the ruthlessly ambitious CEO of a major international mining company.

-A Congolese rebel commander who controls vast mineral deposits in the jungle and who is trying to play the American company off against the Chinese for his own benefit.

-An alcoholic former Prime Minister (or Taoiseach) of the Irish Republic with too much time on his hands who believes that people in high places owe him personal and professional favors.

-An Irish real estate developer now on the verge of bankruptcy who once had a financial interest in the Congolese mine.

-An Italian UN official who was on the same helicopter flight as the starlet.

-And two military contractors who work for a private security firm that looks, feels and smells a lot like Blackwater.

I fully agree with the reviewer for Britain’s Guardian who wrote of Bloodland: “I’ve not read such a multi-layered, expertly plotted portrayal of arrogance, greed and hubris for a long time – there are, as the publishers claim, echoes of John le Carré, 24 and James Ellroy here, but Glynn’s talent is all his own, and his ability to ratchet up the tension is eye-popping.”

Weekend Update: July 12-13, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by James Hayman (Monday), Jayne Hitchcock (Tuesday), Dorothy Cannell (Wednesday), Barbara Ross (Thursday), and John Clark (Friday).

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

Please welcome Vaughn Hardacker, who will be joining our line-up later this month. You can read an interview with him here: http://mainecrimewriters.com/group-po...

Vaughn is the author of Sniper and will be at Portland Public Library on July 18 from 12-1 PM and at the Freeport Community Library at 7 PM on August 11.

Barb: Clammed Up is available from most e-retailers right now for $1.99, so if you’ve avoided my entreaties up to now….

Kate: Girls’ Night Out, my story about a woman’s book group taking revenge on a man who assaulted their friend, was published this week by Shebooks. Shebooks.net

Here’s the link: http://www.shebooks.net/book/ebook/girls-night-out/9781940838557

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 availble to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: kateflora@gmail.com

 

Boothbay Railway Village — Tomorrow, Plus Books!

Lea Wait here, packing up my mailing list sign-up sheets and bookmarks … because tomorrow is the wonderful one-day Books In Boothbay Festival, sponsored by the Boothbay Region Public Library and Sherman’s Bookstore. Most of us Maine Crime Writers will be there (with about forty other authors of books for adults) from 1-4:00 in the afternoon. I’ll have the fun of being there all day .. because from 9-12:00 authors and illustrators for children will be featured. Writing in two genres has some advantages!

Ride on the train!

So .. where is this wonderful festival? at the Boothbay Railway Village on route 27 (586 Wiscasset Road) in Boothbay, Maine.

And if you live nearby, or are vacationing in Maine, it’s a wonderful place to stop. Not only tomorrow, July 12, for the book festival … but any summer day from 9:30-5:00.  Why?

Well, of course, there’s the train .. a 2-foot (narrow gauge) coal-fired engine plus cars that you can ride on the 3/4 mile track. Then there is the village … an old schoolhouse, a country store, a pharmacy, and the 1847 Town Hall (where the book festival will be held). Each summer there are a few animals to feed — maybe goats? Or cows? There’s a small playground with sandboxes and swings for the younger set.

One of the autos, with some visitors … but you don’t have to come in costume!

And if trains aren’t your thing .. the museum includes about sixty old vehicles, ranging from an 1830 one-horse shay and an 1860-era horse-drawn taxi to a 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. Old fire engines and cars. (You and the kids can climb on some of the fire engines.)

Don’t forget to visit the museum gift shop, complete with old photos and books about trains, and all things Thomas (Thomas Train, that is … he’ll be visiting the Village August 8-10 and August 15-17) plus some country store items. (Great place to pick up some Christmas gifts to put away … and, by the way, signed books make great gifts, too.)

My children loved the Railway Village, and now my grandchildren do. But a lot of adults make a point of stopping in every year. I suspect you might like it, too!

For more information, see http://railwayvillage.org 

And hope to see you at Books in Boothbay tomorrow!

Death Before Breakfast

Vicki Doudera here, with a classic locked door puzzle that happened last week, right here in Camden. So close to home that I was still in my p.j.’s when I discovered the body.

I will probably never know the whole story, but let me tell you what I do know.

At approximately six a.m., I trudged across the dewy lawn of my backyard and unlocked a small door. It swung open to reveal a scene that made me exhale in horror.

Penny lay still on some cedar shavings, her eyes closed. A few of her roommates milled nervously around her body, while others peered down from their vantage point high in the corner. I asked what had happened, but no one was talking. Finally I released the seven roommates (or should I say, suspects?) into a holding pen and turned my attention to the corpse.

My first thought was that an intruder had forced his way into the small structure. Glancing at the exits, I saw no sign of forced entry, and all windows were closed.

I then examined Penny for bruising or signs of blood. She looked untouched, her feathers golden in the early morning light.

In fact, she looked so good that I lay my hand on her breast, looking for a heartbeat. Nothing – and yet her body was still warm. Whatever had happened to this poor chick had taken place only minutes before I arrived.

Sitting back on my haunches, I tried to figure out why she’d died. Was she pushed off the perch?  Was this a case of murder most fowl?

Was it merely a misstep? Had Penny plunged to her death accidentally before the other hens’ horrified eyes?

Or was Penny simply sick and tired of being cooped up in her luxurious hen house? Had she

made the fateful decision to end it all on that sunny summer morning?

Here’s the bigger question, and one I know what you’re all wondering — did I eat her for dinner?

I did not. 

Instead,  I trudged back across the lawn in search of a spade, dug a hole amongst some hostas, and gave poor Penny a proper pet burial. She was a good chicken, and a reliable layer, and I wouldn’t have enjoyed roasting her (not to mention plucking all those feathers.)

I have a theory as to what happened. What about you? Care to solve the Case of the Cold Chicken with me?

The Tail of the Cat Burglar

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, actually, it was around four in the morning and sunrise here in Western Maine on the twenty-sixth of June was around four-thirty, but it was raining.

Fade In: Our Intrepid Sleuth (henceforth OIS), half asleep, comes stumbling downstairs, heading from the second floor bedroom to the first floor bathroom. As she approaches the bottom of the stairwell, something flies past at the speed of light and a good two feet off the floor. It is Feral, the oldest of three cats in the household. He’s at least fourteen and probably older (the other two, litter mates Nefret and Bala, are thirteen) and no, he doesn’t usually move this fast. He also doesn’t meow or howl. Occasionally, he makes a hiss/spit sound, but that’s it.

By the time OIS catches up, he is leaping toward the window in her office. He caroms off the wall, knocking the stuffed toy Garfield off the top of a bookcase, lands behind the love seat, and tears back out through the living room, heading for the kitchen. He comes to a dead stop just as another cat abandons the food dishes and bolts for the cat door giving access to the cellar.

But wait! OIS gets a good look at the back end of said cat as it goes through the flap and it is not Bala or Nefret!

Stunned and, remember, not 100% with it since it is the wee hours of the morning, OIS still manages to spring into action. Somehow, a feline intruder got into the cellar. Squirrels have managed it in the past. OIS grabs the piece of wood that fits into the cat door to seal it off, used when the cellar door is open so the house cats don’t get outside, and fastens it in place.

OIS pauses for a moment in shock. How the heck . . . ?

OIS takes a look around. The other two cats appear. Apparently, they missed the whole thing. There are no puffed up tails in sight. Since they’re Maine Coon cats, their tails really puff up when they are confronted by a strange cat or a dog, a wild turkey, or a deer, moose, or bear, even if it is on the far side of the sliding glass door to the back deck. With squirrels, chipmunks, and birds, not so much.

Next step: check for damage. It turns out that the intruder did steal something. The three legitimate feline residents of the house never leave their dishes this clean. When OIS went to bed, all three contained portions of a particularly stinky flavor of cat food.

OIS then proceeds to check out the escape route. There is no strange cat in the cellar, but two windows have been left open since the weather warmed up. Turns out, there’s a cat-sized hole in one of the screens. In fact, it looks like the cat made the hole. Could the smell of the cat food have been that strong? That mystery has no solution.

Clearly, the burglar has escaped and is not likely to be caught and brought in for questioning. However, OIS is able to make an ID. The back end disappearing through the cat door had dark legs, a dark tail, and white paws. One of the two neighborhood cats who occasionally appear on the other side of that sliding glass door to the deck fits that description.

“the prime suspect”

When interviewed, potential witnesses made the following statements.

Nefret: Intruder? What intruder? What did I miss?

Bala: I’m sleeping here. Go away.

Feral: Let me at him. Let me at him. I’ll murderize him, I will! Oh. Forgot. I’ve been declawed. Never mind.

Exhausted by all this excitement in the middle of the night, OIS goes back to bed. All three cats, deciding they’d been traumatized, pile in on top of her.

OIS, unable to get back to sleep, arises at six and works on her current writing project.

By afternoon, the screen is repaired with sturdier mesh but Feral, ever-vigilant, continues to keep watch in case there’s another incursion.

If it happens again, he’s ready to sound the alarm.

 

Art Walk Without Leaving Home

Kate Flora here. One of the best parts of a Maine summer are the art walks–those special nights when artists open their studios and everyone goes from gallery to gallery, admiring the paintings, the sculptures, and the photographs by Maine’s wonderfully talented artists.

We always try to get up to Rockland once a summer, a trip down memory lane for me because Rockland was the “big city” when I was growing up in Union. It was where we went for doctors and dentists and shopping at Senter Cranes and visiting the bookstore. It was where we discovered Andrew Wyeth as kids at the Farnsworth Museum. Now the city is amazingly changed, and art is everywhere. A perfect summer night is strolling and sipping wine, meeting people, and then having a late dinner. artwalkmaine.org/rockland-first-friday-artwalk

Also at some time during the summer, we will get up to Damariscotta, to walk studios and especially to visit Lea Wait’s husband, Bob Thomas, at The Stable Gallery stablegallerymaine.com. Our Stable Gallery nights always put a dent in our purses and deck our walls, because the artists who exhibit there are simply amazing. Last summer’s visit put the notion of owning a new Bob Thomas painting in our heads, and we recently hung it on the wall. Sometimes art has to percolate, but it wouldn’t be summer without something new.

 

 

My first Bob Thomas painting. Spotted during dinner at his house and later leaving with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Galleries aren’t the only places to score art, either. Maine’s antique stores of full of treasures, small and large, to fill the empty spaces on your walls. Overthe years, we’ve come home with a lovely, unsigned Hudson River School painting, several small mountains, and a darling little gem that looks like an illustration for a child’s storybook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the title of this blog comes from decades of art walks, and from

Watercolor of the rocks near the Giant Stairs on Bailey Island

having two parents who also loved and collected art. So, to whet your appetite for art, and hopefully to send you out to Rockland, or Damariscotta, to Belfast or to Portland, to find something great for your walls, here’s a

Watercolor from Italy my dad brought back from World War II.

sampling of what I see when I walk through my own house.

One of the treats of walking my own “gallery” is knowing the stories of how each piece came to live with us. There are the paintings my father and my great aunt Kate, after whom I was named, did, including a painting of my grandfather fishing. There are the pictures that came back from Europe when my father returned from the war.

 

It isn’t just paintings, either. When I cleaned out my mother’s house, I found a stunning photograph by Neal Parent that he had signed and given her as a gift. My photo of his photo won’t do it justice, but it is so amazing that I never pass it without pausing and wondering how on earth he took it. Where he was standing when he took it and how it didn’t come out a huge blur. You can ask that question yourself when you visit his gallery in Belfast. www.nealparent.com 

Would you believe this is a slinky?

 

 

Photograph by Neal Parent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the summer art shows that used to be a regular at Library Hall on Bailey Island, I first encountered Lee Hargadon’s photography. A friend bought one of her pictures as a cottage-warming present. Later we bought another one, and still later, when I was one of the editors at Level Best Books, we bought her photograph of boats in the fog in Mackerel Cove to use on the cover of one of our anthologies.

Art. A way to bring a piece of Maine home to savor all year long. It doesn’t have to be lobster pots or sunsets or a stand of rugged trees. It can be whatever speaks to you.

Hour(s) of (No)Power

Hello again from Sarah Graves, writing to you from Eastport, Maine.  If you’re reading this on Monday, we got the power back. It went off Saturday morning after a night of wild wind and heavy rain called Hurricane Arthur. Eastport has a generator for emergencies but as of Saturday afternoon it hasn’t kicked in. Maybe the large number of trees and big limbs down is complicating the situation, or maybe the darned thing just won’t start.

We don’t know, and we don’t know how long we’ll be out of power, either, which right now is the most uncomfortable part of it for us; the not knowing, I mean. We’re not cold or hungry, and we’re on city water, so our basics are covered. Batteries and candles are on hand, as are plenty of flashlights, and for now I have a decent battery life left on the laptop that I’m using to write this.

And we don’t have a houseful of Fourth of July visitors, as many around us do. Two people like us managing to feed themselves out of a stocked pantry is one thing; the whole extended family sitting around the kitchen table, wanting hot showers, drinking cold coffee or lukewarm milk, and wondering aloud what to do with themselves for a whole day indoors is another, especially if kids are involved. No TV or internet access plus storm-driven rain outside is not a recipe for family happiness, particularly after the beer runs out.

The Fourth itself was as usual a whiz-bang affair, a bright, warm day and blue sky making the day perfect for a parade and for most of the rest of the traditional activities. There were rides and arcade games, cotton candy and fried dough, a pet show, and a chainsaw-sculpture demonstration. We had the greasy-pole contest (you scamper out onto it to grab a flag, or if not, you fall into the harbor), and the haddock relay race (you carry it in your teeth). Silly string, bomb bags, and more personal fireworks than I personally needed to hear added to the festivities, as did lots of walking around downtown gawking at each other. But there was a sneaky breeze snapping the flags even while I signed books in front of Wadworth’s in the early afternoon, the sky had that creamy look that it gets when it’s brewing something nasty up behind your back, and by evening the fireworks were cancelled due to rain.

Which it did all night, hard, so that when I peeked out at the streaming street at 2 AM the raindrops were hitting the pavement like bullets. In the morning, the worst was most definitely not over. I had to take the dog out, so I put on my yellow slicker and black sou’wester and ventured into the yard, then into a puddle that went up to my ankle. The gale was still blowing so I was forced to lean forward to walk, and it had been blowing for a long time; the peas are all knocked over, cabbage and broccoli leaning every which way, the baby beets and carrots look stepped-on, and if the tomatoes survive after the battering they took, I’ll be amazed.

And over it all, the wind went on howling and shrieking and snapping off big branches, or if it couldn’t do that then it just went ahead and uprooted the whole tree; seriously, it’s a mess.

While we were out surveying the damage, though, we came upon our neighbor David, up to his thighs in wet weeds in the yard of an abandoned house. When we got nearer we saw that he was picking peonies from the border some long-gone someone had planted years ago, the big pink blooms rain-drenched but somehow unruined. With debris still practically sailing through the sky I thought it was a funny time to be out picking flowers, but David explained with a smile that he wanted them for the altar at church, tomorrow.  “And isn’t this amazing?” he added, gazing around in wonder.

Which made me stop and give myself a mental shake, because David was right. Big weather really is pretty awe-inspiring, isn’t it? Also, the power probably will go back on sooner or later, and even though I can’t see the radar I have to assume that the storm is moving along to the northeast just as it was when I did last observed it. Any minute the sky will clear, tropical-storm-force winds will subside, and we’ll hear birds. And chainsaws. And if you’re reading this on Monday, they did and we are.

Weekend Update: July 5-6, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Sarah Graves (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett (Wednesday), Vicki Doudera (Thursday), and Lea Wait (Friday).

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

Lea Wait: Wednesday evening July 9 at 7 p.m. I’ll be speaking about “Why Write in Two Genres?” at the Rockport, Massachusetts Library on 17 School Street.

Books in Boothbay: Join us (and 30 other authors!) at a wonderful book festival in Maine on Saturday, July 12, at the Boothbay Railway Village (Route 27 in Boothbay)! Children’s and Young Adult authors (including Lea Wait) will be signing from 9 a.m. until noon, and authors of books for adults will sign from 1 until 4 p.m.. Maine Crime Writers will be well represented: come and meet Gerry Boyle, Dorothy Cannell, Paul Doiron, Vicki Doudera, Kate Flora, James Hayman, Al Lamanda, Barbara Ross, Julia Spencer-Fleming, and Lea Wait. Mystery authors Jessie Crockett and Tess Gerritsen will also be there … along with many other authors of fiction and nonfiction.

Kaitlyn Dunnett: The winner of an advance reading copy of Ho-Ho Homicide (pub. date October 28) is Judith Mehl. Congrats to Judith.

In case you missed it, MCW alum Paul Doiron had a hilarious post on Buzz Feed recently on why Maine is one of the scariest placea in the world:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/stmartinspress/13-reasons-maine-is-the-scariest-place-in-the-worl-7rut

Be sure to visit us in Boothbay next Saturday to win a chance to have your name, or a name of your choosing, given to a character in Kate Flora’s next Thea Kozak mystery, Death Warmed Over.

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 availble to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: kateflora@gmail.com