Lea Wait's Blog, page 322

Unwritten Books

Lea Wait, here, just looking around my study and taking a deep breath.

I met my March 1 Kensington deadline for the first in my Haven Harbor Mainely Needlework series. Today I sent what I hope are final revisions on a middle grades contemporary mystery to my agent. Next challenge: writing an outline of the second book in the Needlework series.

But as I look around my study, I hear other stories calling to me.

Green, blue and yellow file folders marked with key words that mean nothing to anyone but me hold notes, paragraphs, character studies, sources to check and, even, in some cases, notebooks full of research materials that have at some point fascinated me and may someday again. One in particular tugs at me right now. It’s a book for young people set in 1970, and my agent would love me to write it. I’d love to write it, too.

So … why aren’t I doing just that? And why have all those other piles of research and folders of plots and characters not become books?

I could give you reasons. Because another book was under contract. Because my agent said “it’s not the right time,” for a certain subject. Because I started to fill out a plot and got stuck. Moved on to another folder. Had too many promotional opportunities or family obligations, and too little time.

I’ve completed the research and outlines for three of those books – the one set in 1970, another set in 1778, that was to be the sequel to a book that hasn’t sold, and a third set in 1848. That one my agent had serious doubt about, despite my enthusiasm. So I didn’t write it. I want to. I may still.

And there are other less assembled visions. Ideas; plots; settings. All of them are possibilities, and all of them wait, sometimes patiently, sometimes not.

For now, the brightly colored folders just remind me there is always another book to write.

My next Needlepoint book is due September 1, so that one has to be on top of the pile.

But if some days that writing hits a wall, I may pick up one of those other folders and write a little, or do a little more research, or a little plot thickening. Who knows? Some day one of them may become a book.

In the meantime, those folders are waiting for me. Always in the back of my mind. Just waiting.

Reminding me there is never enough time.

Weekend Update: March 8-9, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers we’ll be featuring posts from Lea Wait (Monday) Jim Hayman (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday), Dorothy Cannell (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:

Barb: The other Level Best Books editors and I heard the good news this week that three, count’em three, of the stories in Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold were finalists for the Derringer Best Long Story Award given by the Short Mystery Fiction Society: “Myrna,” the Al Blanchard Award-winning story by John Bubar, “Give Me a Dollar,” by Ray Daniel and “A Dangerous Life,” by Adam Purple. Congratulations, all!

Lea Wait: That’s fantastic news, Barb! I’m smiling this week, too .. Kirkus Reviews wrote about my UNCERTAIN GLORY (April 4 publication,)  ”Wait nicely captures the infrequently depicted Northern homefront effects of the Civil War, as well as the entrepreneurial drive that some teens shared when there were fewer age-based labor restrictions. Joe’s homespun voice captures the full flavor of a smart and determined kid with his eyes firmly on the future, richly evoking time and place .. a worth and entertaining trip back through time.”

My protagonist, Joe Wood, really did publish a town newspaper in Wiscasset, Maine in the mid-19th century, and went on to publish newspapers in other Maine towns and cities. Currently there’s a giveaway of copies of UNCERTAIN GLORY on Goodreads.

Kate Flora: A while back, I promised I’d let people know when my mother’s mystery became available as an e-book. I’m excited to say that it’s finally available on kindle. She published this when she was 83, and I always hold her up as an example for people who say they always wanted to write but it’s too late. Here’s a description of the story:

Sixty-year-old Amy Creighton, an independent small-town Mainer, has her life arranged the way she likes it. She’s got her work as a free-lance editor, her gardens, her dog, and a pond to swim in. When she uncovers a body in the sawdust pile at the local sawmill, where she’s gone to get sawdust to mulch her strawberry bed, everything is turned topsy-turvy. The investigating officer is her long-ago sweetheart Dort Adams. The dead young man looks familiar, though no one admits to knowing him. Together, Amy and Dort fall into a easy alliance to solve the man’s death—one that forces them to recognize that they don’t know their neighbors as well as they thought, and that some people will go to great lengths to keep their family secrets.

On the domestic front, John Clark became a grandfather this week, welcoming little Piper Alexis Lozefski to the family.

Kaitlyn Dunnett here, although my news is from my evil twin, Kate Emerson, writer of non-mystery historical novels set at the court of Henry VIII of England. Awhile back, my agent sold translation rights for one of those books, The King’s Damsel, to a publisher in Russia. I received an advance and in due time a copy of the book arrived. With most foreign editions, that’s it. Imagine my surprise when I got a call to tell me that because The King’s Damsel was issued as the lead title in a Russian book club, it had sold . . . wait for it!! . . . 140,000 copies. I have to tell you, that’s a whole lot more copies than any of my books sell in the U.S. Color me gobsmacked.

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

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: kateflora@gmail.com

 

What Lies Beneath

I became a diver in 1986, taking an open water SCUBA class at the YMCA on Huntington Avenue in Boston. I was in my early 20’s and had always been drawn to the ocean. Growing up through the 70’s, Jacques Cousteau and his boat Calypso were huge influences on me, but also my father was an early and enthusiastic diver, and I loved hearing about the adventures he had off the tip of Provincetown as part of a diving club.

Enter Ed, my boyfriend at the time (now husband of 28 years) who loved the sport, and showed me his log describing dives he’d done all over the world, including one in Mexico that took him to the Cave of the Sleeping Sharks. (He says he’s fortunate that they weren’t home.)

My motivation for getting certified myself was complete when we became engaged, and so, the spring before we left Boston, before we packed up and moved to Maine, before we got married (at which time Ed gave me a mask, fins, and snorkel) and before we honeymooned in Mexico (at which time I did my check-out dives)  before all that –  I rode the T every Wednesday night to the Y for my SCUBA instruction.

I will never forget one of the classes. The instructor had us:sitting on the bottom of the pool without masks, practicing something called “buddy breathing” with four other people. If you’re not familiar with SCUBA, buddy breathing is an emergency technique designed to save your life should you ever run out of air underwater. Back in the mid 1980’s when I was first learning, it meant sharing someone’s demand valve on a regulator, the piece of equipment that goes in your mouth and from which you breathe.  Today, virtually every regulator worn by divers has two hoses with a second mouthpiece called an Octopus, used by a diver in trouble. (In fact, buddy breathing isn’t taught anymore because of the new equipment.) But back then, there were only single mouthpieces, so buddy breathing meant relinquishing (temporarily, you hoped) the source of your precious air.

The exercise on the bottom of that pool felt like a kind of torture: the water pressing against my face, the rising panic as I waited for my turn at the regulator, my lungs desperately wanting that piece of rubber hose that meant life. Lifeguards know that a drowning person will do anything to get air, and after my experiences on the floor of that old pool, I  believe it.

Of course, I had only to swim upwards fifteen feet or so, and I could gulp all the air I wanted.  No fear of sharks, or nitrogen narcosis. We were in a pool, in the middle of Back Bay – not the middle of the ocean.

Now imagine that scenario in open water – 80, 100, or maybe even 140 – feet down, and you’ll see where my head’s been at the past few days.

Vicki Doudera here. Today I’m flying back to Maine after spending a week with my family in St. Croix, where our oldest son, Matt, is the Captain of a 120-foot yacht. It’s been a fabulous week of sunshine, sandy beaches, cool rum drinks and warm ocean water, along with several dives to explore the island’s coral reefs. Matt’s a dive master, and the yacht has all the equipment necessary – tanks, regulators, weight belts, buoyancy compensators – to take our family of certified divers out to explore what lies beneath the pretty turquoise waves.

All three days of diving were impressive, but our first excursion, on a part of St. Croix called Cane Bay, was one of the many experiences that got my writer’s mind thinking. 

We’d driven out to Cane Bay the day before for “Mardi Croix,” a fun, funky, all-day Mardi Gras celebration complete with a festive parade, strand upon strand of colorful beads, and the requisite rum drinks served from beach bars full of locals and a few vacationers like us. Located on the North Shore of the island, Cane Bay boasts beautiful sand, gorgeous vistas, and, a hundred yards or so from the beach, “The Wall,” a drop-off that descends 13,000 feet down from the reef. 

That’s right – thirteen thousand feet, down into a dark blue void.

Except it’s not a void, even if you peer into it and see nothing. Matt told us as we were strapping on our tanks and preparing to wade into the ocean that we might see humpback whales, and a guy at a shop (where I made the last-minute purchase of a rash guard to keep the steel tank from chafing my back) said he’d seen them from shore.  WHALES???  Never mind sharks, which Matt mentioned we might also see (and in fact did see, although on a different dive) but WHALES?

We dove that day to 140 feet, one of the deepest dives I’ve ever done. We did not see any whales, although on another dive we heard their eerie, echo-y underwater cries.  We did see some spectacular sights – massive, globe-like brain corals, schools of blue tang, skinny pilot fish, and big-eyed squirrel fish. And we saw the very impressive drop-off: The Wall.

I have to admit that it freaked me out a little. Okay – a lot, although I was the only one in our family that it seemed to bother. I just did not like the sight of all of that deep, dark blueness so close that it could swallow me up. I don’t think it was what could come swimming up from out of that blueness that panicked me (although I knew it would if I let myself ponder it for even a second) but rather the fact that it was so dark, and so deep. To say that I found The Wall unsettling is putting it mildly.

After our dive, while we sipped rum drinks (you do a lot of that on St. Croix) and ate burgers with a reggae band jammin’ in the background, Matt told us about the only recorded shark attack at Cane Bay.  It happened back in the 1980’s. Two guys were diving The Wall when a shark rose from the depths and grabbed one of the men, dragging him down into the cerulean fathoms.  His body was never found, and none of his equipment was recovered.

I took a big swig of my rum drink, thankful my son had shared his tale after the dive and not before, but he wasn’t quite finished with the story.

The shark attack is the official, accepted version of what happened some thirty years ago. But Matt, who has lived on St. Croix for close to three years now, says he’s heard a few locals describe a very different account.

Apparently the two men were more than just dive buddies. They were business partners, known to be in the middle of a disagreement regarding their finances.

We sat with our rum drinks and discussed how easy it would be to kill someone while diving, especially in that incredibly deep water. A simple matter of cutting the oxygen supply, watching the victim drown, and then weighting the body — perhaps by releasing any remaining air from the buoyancy compensator, or adding a weight from one’s own weight belt. In 140 feet of water or deeper, a body wearing a steel tank and other weights would never float up to the surface, and most likely an Apex predator or two roaming the depths would enjoy the unexpected snack.

I’m pretty sure most families don’t sit around sipping rum and contemplating murder, but when Mom writes crime novels, it’s bound to happen.

I used the drama of the deep in Killer Listing, writing the SCUBA scenes from my own experiences with Matt as my consultant.  I’d originally thought that my character, a depressed diver, would commit suicide underwater, but as I got further along with the writing, it became clear that a planned suicide with a last-minute change of heart was what needed to happen. Reading those scenes makes my heart pound, and hopefully yours does, too.

The thing of it is, diving is a dangerous sport, often done in very small groups. If two people are diving and one of them disappears, no one but the survivor can relate what happened. A shark conveniently putting an end to a messy quarrel?  Here’s my theory. Many misdeeds can be buried in the vast ocean – perhaps forever.

Detectives in Glasses

The other day I was noodling a possible scene for the Liss MacCrimmon mystery I’m currently writing. I don’t know if this scene will appear in this book (or some future book) or not, but the gist of it is that Liss is taken out into the wilderness and left there by the villain, who needs to get her out of the way for a certain period of time but doesn’t particularly want to murder her. She’s given a fighting chance to make it back to civilization safely. She’s not tied up. She is warmly dressed (it’s March in Maine). And a couple of hours of walking, if she doesn’t end up going around in circles, should bring her to a house with a phone. It is nighttime, which makes things harder. Maybe she’s been hit on the head and is still dizzy or seeing double. I’m not sure about that part. And that bad knee of hers could act up to cause her some problems. There was a story in the news here in Maine just recently about a man who, after breaking his leg in a nighttime snowmobile accident, had to crawl a mile and a half to reach the house of a friend and get help. It took him six hours. Liss could probably do that, but I’m not sure I want to put her through that much trauma.

Whatever I end up doing, she’s obviously going to survive the ordeal and get back in time to foil the villain’s evil plan. To create such a scene and make it believable, a writer (in this case, me) has to try to get into the head of the character, to feel what she’s feeling, react as she’s reacting. Liss is a lot younger and much more physically fit than I am. She’s also considerably braver. But the thing that stood out in my mind as I attempted to put myself in her place in this situation was that her eyesight is also a heck of a lot better than mine. If I was the one being abandoned in the wilderness and the villain wanted to make sure I’d have trouble finding my way out, all he or she would have to do is take away my glasses.

That may explain why most fictional series detectives appear to have excellent eyesight. I tried to think of mysteries I’ve read where the sleuth wore glasses, or even contact lenses. The only example I could come up with was Elizabeth Peters’s librarian sleuth Jacqueline Kirby (The Seventh Sinner), whose mood can be judged by how far down her nose her glasses have slipped. In search of other examples, I posted a request on two listservs, Dorothy L and Sisters in Crime, and Googled “Fictional Detectives Who Wear Glasses” and the results confirmed my suspicion that bespectacled sleuths are few and far between.  

Many of the names people came up with were older, either in the sense of series written quite some time ago, or because the detective is getting on in years. Terry Shames’s detective, Samuel Craddock (A Killing at Cotton Hill), wears glasses. So does James Montgomery Jackson’s Seamus McCree (Bad Policy). Ilene Schneider’s protagonist in Chanukah Guilt is “blind as a bat with its sonar jammed” without her glasses. Dennis Palumbo’s psychologist sleuth Daniel Rinaldi (Mirror Image) wears glasses. Marni Graff’s Nora Tierney (The Blue Virgin) wears them, but she switches to contact lenses for the third book in the series (The Scarlet Wench, 2014). In historical mysteries, Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell is nearsighted and Edith Maxwell’s Quaker midwife, Rose Carroll, in her new series in progress, set in 1888 (Breaking the Silence), wasn’t originally going to wear glasses but is now.

Bespectacled sleuths from days gone by include Ellery Queen (pince-nez glasses), Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion (horn-rimmed glasses), Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey (a monacle), and Dorothy Dunnett’s Johnson Johnson (bifocals). Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple wears glasses, too, but only, apparently, when she’s knitting. There have been a number of detectives, past and present, who use reading glasses or wear contact lenses, but even they are somewhat rare in crime fiction.

Let’s face it. If a sleuth is going to flirt with danger, wearing glasses could put him or her at a distinct disadvantage. Vision problems may add dimension to a character and allow for a few interesting twists, too, but it isn’t hard to understand why most protagonists in mystery novels have excellent eyesight.

Then again, there have been at least two successful detectives who couldn’t see at all, Caroline Roe’s Isaac of Girona, a blind physician in a series set in medieval Spain (Remedy for Treason), and Bruce Alexander’s 18th century magistrate, Sir John Fielding (Blind Justice). 

In With the Old—and the New

Hey all. Gerry Boyle here, and I’ve been looking forward and backward of late. Forward because Islandport Press, a smart independent publisher in Maine, is going to publish my next Jack McMorrow novel, ONCE BURNED. Backward because Islandport has made plans to reissue the first eight McMorrow novels as well. So all those books written over the past 20 years will have new life, new covers, and new readers.

Yee-hah!

This is good news for a couple of reasons. For one, the business end of the book business—all those flipping percentages!) is work. Two, it’s been hard to hear in past years that readers who have just become acquainted with McMorrow have to search for the early books. Some have gone out of print (three of a writer’s least favorite words) and some are just hard to find. This is more and more common as major national publishers scramble to make big money and decide keeping a writer’s last six books in the warehouse isn’t a good return on investment.

That’s their problem. I’ve found a new publishing home, right here in Maine, with kindred spirits who care about good writing. A lot.

I’ve been fortunate in my writing life, in that I’ve had one (many very talented writers haven’t been so lucky) and it’s going into it’s third decade. That’s a lot of making stuff up, and you could fill a bus with the people I’ve invented, grown fond of, killed off. In that order. Now I’ve been given the bonus of looking back at the early books as I write new introductions to new editions of DEADLINE (1993), BLOODLINE (1995), LIFELINE (1996), and on up the line. Where did these books come from? What was I thinking?

That sort of retrospection is a hell of a luxury. When it’s coupled with immersion in a new book, with new characters (and some I just love to hate), well, that’s the sh–. As my characters would say.

I have a good friend, a renowned and wonderfully talented poet. We talk about baseball mostly, but when we don’t talk baseball we occasionally talk about why we write, and wonder if we would do it if there were no audience. We don’t come to a conclusion and, in the end, we’re glad we haven’t had to. We put pen to paper and words come out. Miraculously, people want to read them. I think I can speak for all of the Maine Crime Writers when I say we don’t take that—or you—for granted. Not for a second.

Yee-hah!

So that last bit is the point of this ramble. Sorry if I’ve indulged a bit here. Next time, back to business. Tonight I’m just sitting by the fire in my village in Central Maine. It’s cold outside but inside I’m just glowing.

Refilling the Well

Kate Flora here, about to say something that’s going to make you not like me very much. I am in Florida. Yeah. I feel guilty every time I say that to someone who is still back home suffering in the cold and snow. But as I’ve written here before, sometimes you have to go away to be able to see what’s around you. And sometimes writers have to shift their locations to refill their imaginations, tune up their powers of observation, and collect some new characters for the books that wait down the road.

We’ve been spending the month of March in Florida for a few years. This year, we decided to drive instead of fly, and that has been a very interesting experience. The first stop was in Philadelphia, where we visited with my friend, artist Barbara Schaff http://www.barbaraschaff.com. I met Barbara when we were both fellows at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, http://www.vcca.com. VCCA is an incredible place for writers, artists, and composers to have undisturbed time to concentrate on their work. Fellows get meals and rooms and studios and weeks on a gorgeous Virginia farm to do nothing but practice their craft. (During one residency, I wrote 163 pages in 11 days!) Barbara and I bonded over an illicit lunchtime martini and became fast friends.

Small bites at Garces Trading Company

After showing us her condo, which would make any sentient being green with envy (art, pottery, color, taste, sunlight, quiet), she took me and my husband Ken downstairs, where her building has an amazing amenity: Garces Trading Company restaurant http://philadelphia.garcestradingcompany.com on the ground floor. More martinis, happy hour bites including flatbread pizzas and boar meatballs that were off the chart amazing.

For those of us who live pretty far from urban settings or many good restaurants, this was fabulous. Watch the well filling with art, downtown Philly architecture, food.

Then we scooped up my husband’s high school buddy, a Philadelphia lawyer, and went to his house, where I learned how to actually pronounce Bala Cynwyd. (It’s kinwid, btw) Some hours of reliving high school stories and then out to dinner at a local restaurant, Al Dar Bistro. The food was fine, the company great, but what stood out was how our host and hostess knew everyone in the restaurant. First, the staff, including their background and stories. Then pretty much everyone in the room. You might expect it in a small town diner. It was unexpected here. And doesn’t that lend itself to a scene in a book? Watch the well fill with how old friends interact. With the ambiance and camaraderie of neighborhood restaurants.

Onward from snowy Philadelphia south to Charlotte, North Carolina, for a quick visit with our younger son. An elevator ride up to our hotel room with a group of Germans who were embarrassed when my husband addressed them in German. It’s easy to assume that Americans know no other languages. The city was stuffed with people there for a basketball tournament. Last time, it was people there for NASCAR. Given that our son will be in his Ph.D. program for about five years, we’re going to have a lot of time to observe North Carolina. It was 8 degrees when we left New England. Eight degrees when we left Philadelphia. A balmy 14 or so when we left Charlotte and headed into South Carolina. Watch the well fill with religious billboards and huge ads for gun shows. With ethnic diversity and the beaming woman behind the desk in that golden jacket holding her tiny, pink-blanket-wrapped grand baby.

On that part of the route, two things were striking. First, people stayed in the right lane except to pass unless they were from New York. Who ever saw that happen? Second, as a result of the ice storm, the roadsides were devastated. Snapped-off trees, a chaos of broken branches, and trees bent nearly to the ground. As we drove, we watched the thermometer climb. Up to 30, then 32, and then to dizzying heights in the 40′s. Then, suddenly, shortly before the Georgia border, there was green grass in the median. Watch the well fill with changing seasons, with the physical impact of a devastated landscape.

When I notice these things, I think about the differences in my characters. Joe Burgess is a close observer of the natural world; Thea Kozak has taught herself to be an observer of people. Both wonder about human psychology. Both use the cues in their environments.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be sitting at a different desk. Typing on the same keyboard. Reworking a novel that I love that has never quite worked. Son and wife and 5-year-old and skittish hound Daisy will visit. Cousins will visit. Good old friends will visit. My sister-in-law will visit. Back home in Maine, the first baby in the next generation has been born and I’ve become a great aunt.

And then I will drive home, again charting the changes in the season, the ads on local billboards, the driving habits and bumper stickers of the people we pass. I will have a bunch of new characters, habits, and voices for my stories. And I will probably not have a tan.

 

Demons, Corpses and Love at First Sight: How 27 years in an asylum changed my way of looking at life

John Clark posting today: I don’t count sheep when I have insomnia, I count people I knew who killed themselves instead. Working in a long term mental health facility makes you do things like that. The number, by the way, is well over thirty people who decided the pain of living was greater that the act of taking their own life. Not all of them were patients, some were co-workers, others good friends. Having looked that demon in the face a few times myself, I can empathize with those souls who weren’t able to pull back from the abyss in time.

I’ve shared bits and pieces of what happened between November, 1970 and August, 1997, but this is the first time I’ve attempted to write something tying my experiences to why I became a writer and how I look at the world in a very different way. I ended up working at the Augusta Mental Health Institute when my draft board accepted my contention that I was a conscientious objector. How I became one is an interesting tale and fit for a column of its own. I had two options: Work for two years at AMHI or do a similar stint at BMHI. Since I lived in Union, AMHI made more sense.

I had one day of orientation to a locked ward on the Harlow Building before being assigned to the 4-12 shift. That certainly prepared me to manage 30+ chronic male patients the next night when the other staff member assigned to the floor called in sick. Fortunately I was too clueless to be as scared as I should have been, even when I had to put an older guy who was in the manic stage of bipolar disorder in a seclusion room without any help. It went okay, but he could just as easily have taken me apart.

Since I wasn’t allowed to live in Union, per draft board regulations, I took a room in the old chapel building. Rooms were assigned by seniority, so I was on the top floor where cubicle rooms were separated by eight foot partitions. There wasn’t much in the way of creature comforts, quiet or privacy, but they were free and that was a big plus when you’re making $86.50 a week.

My head was still messed up from things that happened while I was at Arizona State; Anti-war activity, substance abuse, fraying friendships and family stress had made my life an unpleasant circus. None of it was stuff I was willing or able to talk about or dump, so I embraced the dysfunctional world I found at the state hospital with abandon. It didn’t take long to discover that many of my new co-workers were walking a similar path and before long, there was a core group I took to calling ‘Interchangeable Parts’ because we seemed to fall into short relationships with each other that lasted a couple weeks, before moving on to someone else in the group. The evening shift was perfect for an alcoholic like me. I could party after work, crash, get it together enough to arrive at work in reasonably presentable shape (the day shift was so eager to leave and party or take care of families, they barely noticed my condition on those days when I did arrive still buzzed), slowly return to what passed for normal and then when the midnight shift (many of whom were stoned), arrived, bust out the door to repeat the same insane routine.

If I’d had any sort of mental health or sobriety, I would have left after my two years were up, but things conspired to keep me there. One was an experience I’d wish everyone could have at least once in their life, albeit with happier results. Several hospitals in the area used AMHI for the psychiatric portion of their training programs for nurses. St. Mary’s in Lewiston was one of them. When their group arrived in September of my second year, I walked into the cafeteria for supper one evening and stopped dead in my tracks. A young woman with amazing blue eyes and blonde hair turned and looked at me. When she smiled, time froze momentarily and I was a goner. It took a day to learn her name and where she was assigned. That afternoon, she was part of a pickup volleyball game and when the ball hit her finger, it broke. I was able to overcome a serious case of shyness and helped her get medical attention. Over the next few weeks, we started to develop a relationship that was amazing. There are people who have a spiritual connection so strong they often don’t need to speak in order to communicate. We had one and it was scary. There was one slight problem. She already had a boyfriend, but we set that thorny issue aside and after she returned to school full time, we continued to see each other whenever possible, even going to Montreal and Washington, DC on our way to North Carolina where we walked along the shore at Kill Devil Dunes.

My substance abuse was stronger than the bonds between us and I ended up running away when things got tough. She married the other guy and I haven’t seen her in 35 years.

Despite being a walking moral and spiritual disaster, I made some wonderful friends while working there. The summer after my romance fell apart, I was assigned a willowy blonde who was working as a summer replacement. There was immediate friction between us. My arrogance bugged her, her effete Boston snobbery annoyed me, even though she was from Augusta. This was the time I learned that strong reactions during first impressions are often 180 degrees out of phase. Shannon and I were able to work through our initial dislike and became friends. We realized there were more things we had in common than either wanted to admit. When she returned to school, we stayed in touch and I got in the habit of visiting her in Boston when I had longer weekends. We’dexplore the Combat Zone, Boston Commons and frequently ended up at a night game in Fenway Park. We even explored the historic areas in Lexington and Concord. Perhaps the most vivid memory I have from that friendship happened one night when a bunch of us were sitting in her living room with the lights off, mellowing out and listening to WBCN. This mind-blowing version of “These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things” came on and everyone stopped talking to listen. I was enthralled, but the DJ never said who the artist was. It wasn’t as easy to figure out things in those days, so it took several years before I learned that the artist who hooked me that night was John Coltrane. Shannon and I headed in different directions, but I still remember those times in Boston and they bring a smile to my face.

There was no such thing as political correctness in my early days at AMHI. If something needed to be done, you did it and to hell with such silly things as feelings. Three events during my early years have helped me understand and empathize with people who suffer from PTSD. Before the suicide fence was installed on the big bridge in Augusta, it was a common thing for one of our patients to jump into the Kennebec River. One woman who did so in November, wasn’t found until the following February. The frigid water had delayed decomposition, but her face had rubbed against rocks along the shore and she had frozen into the fetal position. In short, she wasn’t pretty to look at, but we had to get her into a position where we could put her in a body bag and slide her into one of the cadaver slots in our morgue. This necessitated three of us pushing on her knees until her legs were straight. The resulting cracking and crunching is something I can still hear to this day.

Two years later, I was the assistant team leader on a treatment unit serving Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin Counties. Although it was ill advised, I was dating my supervisor and we took a van load of patients to a hockey game at Colby College. When the game was over, one of the men we brought bolted for the door and we couldn’t find him. Despite searching on foot and spending almost an hour driving around, he remained missing. After reporting the incident to the Waterville Police Department, we returned to AMHI. The following week was an agonizing one. The man was found dead in a corn field half a mile from the college two days later. He had died from exposure. While we had gone on the outing with the best of intentions, the implication during numerous interviews with the police and AMHI administrators was that our personal relationship had made us lax and in some way contributed to this death. That wasn’t as all true, but cast a pall over work and our personal lives for a long time.

The following summer, the most bizarre experience I’ve ever had (or ever will have, I expect) took place. We had established a semi-supervised floor on Upper Elkins where patients who were in the process of transitioning back to the community were housed. The protocol was for a staff member to check on the folks living there every four hours as well as remind them when it was time to eat or get their medication. One Saturday afternoon, the staff member who was doing the 4 pm check came back with a strange look on his face. “You better come with me,” he said. When we returned to the top floor, one of the male patients was hanging from a sprinkler pipe. We removed the necktie he’d used to hang himself, attempted CPR and called for stat medical help. The physician on duty checked for vital signs, pronounced him dead and ordered us to process the body. We did so, removing his outer clothing and zipping him into a body bag before taking him to the morgue in the basement. When we returned, the physician, an excitable gentleman of middle eastern extraction, realized we had violated procedure by not waiting for the medical examiner. He ordered us to retrieve the deceased, then dress and re-hang him. We did so, waited a couple hours for the ME to arrive and do his job, before repeating the steps we’d done before realizing the error. That would have been plenty of trauma for one evening, but after we returned a second time from the morgue, the physician looked at me, threw up his hands and said, “I can’t deal with this situation any longer. I want you to call his wife and give her the bad news.” He stalked off while I was wrapping my head around his order. I did so, but made certain I got as hammered as possible after work.

After that, the workplace insanity assumed more subtle forms. Following another reorganization, I was assigned responsibility for patient education even though I had no formal training as a teacher. I had a small staff and the upper wing of a building. How to figure all this out? It was during the early part of this career change that I got sober. It didn’t take long to realize how overwhelmed I felt. One thing most sober drunks will agree upon is that in early sobriety, you feel like a raw nerve lying on a busy sidewalk. It’s like having to learn to walk all over again. In hindsight, I’m extremely grateful I learned what was happening pretty quickly, because there’s nothing scarier than having a 32 year old body with a 14 year old trapped inside when the world expects you to be responsible and mature. Unfortunately, the people I reported to had serious substance abuse issues of their own and my recovery made them very uncomfortable. That situation was exacerbated when I was moved under the supervision of a woman who was full of bottled up rage at an ex-husband who was a drunk and walked out on her. She found very creative ways to exact revenge on any males working for her and I had a double bulls eye because I was sober. It reached a point where I knew that every time I returned from vacation, either I’d lose a staff member or have my schedule revised without any input from me. It certainly tested my sobriety on a regular basis.

Fortunately, I had negotiated an agreement with the administration that accomplished two important things. I got permission to set up a weekly AA meeting on the grounds for patients and community members. That meeting, known as the Monday Noon Eye-opener, ran for more than ten years. In addition, I was given the okay to use a van and transport patients to AA meetings in the community. For a period lasting about four years, I took people to meetings 6 times a week and in the process, got to witness plenty of miracles. On the flip side, I saw how deep the disease of addiction could dig its claws into some who were unable to recover. I befriended one teen from the Portland area and must have taken her to over 700 meetings, but she was never able to stay sober. I wonder at times whether she’s still alive.

Mental health underwent a sea change in the late 1980s. People coming to AMHI started showing much less motivation at the same time that the patient rights movement went berserk. The patient education program went from providing meaningful education and coping skills to over 100 students per week to having less than a dozen show any interest. I lost my staff and there were days when I felt like I was auditioning for the Maytag Repairman’s role. Fortunately, I had gotten a Commodore 64 computer with some federal grant money and when things were dead, I started playing around with some basic hacking while killing time with some role playing games. That time spent playing with a primitive computer would play big dividends in my next role at the institute.

When Joe Craig, the librarian and man who married us, decided to retire, I went to the assistant superintendent and out of sheer desperation made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. “Let me take on the patient and medical libraries and I’ll modernize them while still teaching anyone who wants to learn.” I had no experience as a librarian, but desperation makes us do the impossible sometimes. He assented and the first thing I did was ask for help. The medical library had a great journal collection, but Joe hadn’t been interested in working with other librarians. I was taken under the capable wings of the medical librarians at St. Marys and Central Maine Medical Center. They answered every question I could throw at them, got me involved with HSLIC (The Health Sciences Libraries Information Consortium) and talked me into joining DOCLINE. This was the National Library of Medicine’s national interlibrary loan service and because I had a really good collection of mental health periodicals, libraries all over the U.S and Canada were eager to establish reciprocal agreements with my library. I also got talked into joining the Medical Library Association and that led to attending and eventually presenting at the annual Medical Library conference. I went to Washington, DC, Kansas City and Seattle. Each time, I made more friends from all over the world. One was Mary Johnson, director of the library at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health. She was the person responsible for my first major piece of writing when she talked me into doing a chapter in Library Services In Mental Health Settings, published by Scarecrow Press in 1997. A year later, she took over as editor of Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian, a journal published by Haworth Press. Once again, she talked me into writing, this time a column on internet and social science libraries. I continued to do so for the next ten years.

At the same time, I completely revamped the patient library. After I discovered that an endowment had been left by the late Col. John Black of Ellsworth to buy books, I had a field day, poring over the reviews in Booklist every month and adding things that sounded really interesting to the collection. Both patients and staff responded with enthusiasm and in the process, I began learning about the art of matching people with books they’d want to read.

When the late Walt Taranko and Tom Abbott arranged for the University of South Carolina to offer their masters in library science degree via ITV and on-site classes here in Maine, I was initially ambivalent, but realized it was a golden opportunity to move on from AMHI if need be. It was a life changing experience. Because most of those enrolled in the first cohort were older and already working as librarians, the faculty let us do projects in areas where we really had an interest. I loved that.

Unfortunately, while I had more than fulfilled my pledge to modernize the library, AMHI was battling its own demons. Patient rights had gone too far and the staff had very little in the way of power to make patients comply with treatment. Many of my male co-workers were badly injured when patients went out of control. (Several have since died at a much younger age than they should have). Every time there was a crisis, management seemed to come up with another way to circle the wagons and shoot inward.

In late 1996, I was told that in order to retain my job, I had to assume the role of director of staff development in addition to my library duties. In essence, I was to do two full time jobs for one salary. Despite having both resentments and reservations, I went along, but it was an impossible situation from day one. Staff had to meet certain training requirements in order for AMHI to retain Joint Commission on Hospital Accreditation certification. Similar requirements were in effect if we wanted to keep federal money from Medicare coming in. Unfortunately, while I was mandated to get people to training, I had no leverage when it came to forcing staff to come to their scheduled classes. Invariably, they’d be frozen or scheduled for mandatory overtime. When the statistics were discussed at meetings with the administration, my comments about having no power to make people attend, carried no weight. It was still my fault.

By the time I graduated from library school in July of 1997, I was in a very dangerous mindset. I was beginning to understand why people went postal in the workplace. When the thought of wearing a trench coat to work with my Remington 1100 underneath it started having real appeal, I took early retirement instead. I had no job lined up and plenty of bitter feelings toward the mental health system.

Those feelings have subsided over the years, but the experiences during those 27 years still effect my outlook on life every day. Fortunately, I’ve been able to take my darker thoughts and turn them into some pretty decent writing and as time goes on, I’m sure there will be further opportunities based on some of what I’ve shared here as well as things that there wasn’t room for. I think differently and see the world in ways ordinary folks can’t as a result of what happened at AMHI.

I have many other interesting memories of my time at the asylum, things like cleaning hornpout in the medication room and neglecting to let people know the guts were in the contaminated waste can, the giant cockroaches in the tunnels, the midnight motorcycle races through those tunnels and the kids we helped to understand that they were okay, but came from families hell-bent on making them scapegoats. Those may show up in a Level Best story some year.

Weekend Update: March 1-2, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers we’ll be featuring posts from John Clark (Monday) Kate Flora (Tuesday), Gerry Boyle (Wednesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett (Thursday), and Vicki Doudera (Friday). 

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

Don’t forget about the upcoming Maine Crime Wave. The link below takes you to the information page. Check it out. Participating from Maine Crime Writers blog, current and alums, are Gerry Boyle, Paul Doiron, Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Flora, and Julia Spencer-Fleming.

http://mainewriters.org/2014-maine-crime-wave/

Lea Wait:  Excited that my Uncertain Glory, to be published April 4, got a wonderful Kirkus review …”Wait … captures the infrequently depicted Northern homefront effects of the Civil War … Joe’s homespun voice captures the full flavor of a smart and determined kid with his eyes firmly on the future, richly evoking time and place.” Hurrah!  Taking a few deep breaths after completed Twisted Threads, my first needlepoint mystery, and editing Pizza To Die For … a middle grade contemporary mystery. Definitely not bored!

Kaitlyn Dunnett: Just got my first look at the cover for my October book, Ho-Ho-Homicide. It will probably be tweaked a little before publication. They usually insert quotes and such, but this will give you the idea. My editor sent it with the comment “feel free to share” so I figure that means I can post it here. Enjoy!

 

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

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: kateflora@gmail.com

 

Goodreads for Writers

Hi. Barb here. Talking about Goodreads.

Goodreads is the well-know social media site for readers, purchased by Amazon in March of 2013. It’s a great way to shelve and rate books as you read them, to keep track of books you’ve read and what you thought of them.

It’s also a social place where you can recommend books to friends and strangers and talk about books endlessly in discussion forums.

For authors, Goodreads is a great way to connect with readers. In many cases very devoted readers who read multiple books per week and tell others about them.

What can authors do on Goodreads–

You can create a welcoming profile: In many cases if you’re a well-published author, Goodreads will already have a profile for you, but you can improve it with a recent photo and updated bio. You can add your blog and make sure all the books listed are yours and all your books are listed.

You can use the author dashboard: The author dashboard is your home as an author on Goodreads. You can use it to see who’s marked your book “to read” and even who’s reading it right now and track all sorts of statistics about your book.

You can do a Goodreads giveaway: You can offer copies of your book to garner ratings and text reviews. 40,000 readers enter a Goodreads giveaway everyday and the average giveaway attracts 825 entries. Many of those entering put the book on their “to read” shelf, which means they are notified when the book is published. 60% of Goodreads giveaway winners review a book.

You can run and ad: Goodreads ads are relatively inexpensive and highly targeted. You can not only target a particular genre, you can supply a list of authors and the system will show your ad only to readers who have rated a book by one of those authors at least a “3″. The ads can support a giveaway or can be for general awareness. The object is to get people to add your book to their “to read” shelf.

You can participate in discussions: This January I was the featured author in one cozy discussion group and this week I will be featured in another. This is great fun and motivates dozens of people to buy your book or get it from the library.

You will find among writers a certain amount of trepidation about vicious, negative reviews on Goodreads, but I always tell people this:

1) I’ve been really lucky. Even the people who hate my book have obviously read it. I think mysteries generally draw a crowd that is less prone to this sort of thing than say, fantasy or romance.

2) But here’s the thing, all this is going on on Goodreads whether you are there or not. You have nothing to gain by not being there.

3) The key is don’t engage about your work unless you’re invited to. The authors who’ve gotten in the biggest trouble are those who have responded to negative reviews or even worse, have asked people who are shown as “currently reading” their book when they are going to finish and write a review. Crazy, stupid stuff. So if someone asks a question, answer, but don’t butt in if you’re not asked.

If anyone has a specific question about Goodreads, post it in the comments. I’m happy to help.

Can a Writer Retire?

Philip Roth, long one of my favorite writers, recently announced his retirement. In his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side there’s reportedly a post-it note stuck on his computer screen that says, “The struggle with writing is over.”

But how does a writer retire?  Particularly one as single-mindedly devoted to his craft as Roth.

Philip Roth

For more than fifty years Roth wrote constantly, turning out book after book from the novella Goodbye Columbus in his early twenties in 1959 to his last, Nemesis published in 2010.  More than thirty books, some better than others, but all with legitimate literary merit.

According to a piece by David Remnick in the New Yorker, “Roth’s writing days were spent in long silence-no distractions, no invitations entertained, no calls, no e-mails. After I wrote a Profile of Roth, around the time of the publication of “The Human Stain,” we would meet every so often, and he told me the story of how a friend had asked him to take care of his kitten. “For a day or two, I played with the cat, but, in the end, it demanded too much attention,” he said. “It consumed me, you see. So I had to ask my friend to take it back.” Four years ago, he told me that he was interested in trying to break the “fanatical habit” of writing, if only as an experiment in alternative living. “So I went to the Met and saw a big show they had. It was wonderful. Astonishing paintings. I went back the next day. I saw it again. Great. But what was I supposed to do next, go a third time? So I started writing again.”

My question is what will he do this time?  Go back to the Met over and over and over?

Nevertheless Roth claims he has already said what he had to say.   In Remnick’s piece, Roth quotes the boxer Joe Louis  “‘I did the best I could with what I had.’ It’s exactly what I would say of my work: I did the best I could with what I had… I don’t think a new book will change what I’ve already done, and if I write a new book it will probably be a failure. Who needs to read one more mediocre book?”

I repeat my question, what will he do this time.  Keep returning to the Met?  He’s not young.  He turns eighty this year. But his mind is still sharp. His skills have barely diminished, if at all.  And writing a book is not an effort that demands physical strength like mining for coal or loading heavy furniture onto a moving van to help a still-active crime writer move from his island home to Portland.  Most writers, with some obvious exceptions, are not people who worked simply to make money, to amass a fortune and, having amassed it, now want to spend the rest of their days doing something more fun like chasing potential trophy wives. Or doing something more noble like helping hungry children in Africa or starting a foundation.

Philip Roth is and I believe always will be a writer. Being a writer requires a certain turn of mind. To sit (or in Roth’s case stand) at a desk and dream what it is like to live someone else’s life.  Whether you’re Roth who, no doubt, will be long remembered for his best works or James Hayman who almost certainly won’t, a writer writes. And both Roth and I are writers.

Somebody once asked Mel Brooks who is 87, when, if ever, he planned to retire.  He reportedly responded “Retire? Retire from what? I sit in a chair with a pencil and pad and when I think of something that makes me laugh, I write it down.”

I’m considerably younger than either Roth or Brooks. I’ve still got most of my hair, though now it’s mostly silver instead of its original black. And I’m certainly not as obsessive or disciplined about my writing as Roth.  I do go to parties. I do go to movies and museums. I do have lunch with friends. But at the end of the day, or more accurately, at the beginning of the next day, I go back to my writing.  I feel pretty much the way Brooks does. There’s never any reason to retire from a writing career other than Alzheimers , the horrible disease that felled British writer Iris Murdoch.

Harper Lee wrote one book. She published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1961. And, as far as anyone knows, has written little, if anything since.  Like Mel Brooks she’s now 87.  I don’t know how she did it or how she spends her days. But I think she’s an anomaly.

Some retirees play golf.  Others do good works. Or take care of their grandchildren. Or travel. I’m not a golfer and at this point I have no grandchildren. I have enough money not to be forced to put on a blue jacket and welcome people to Walmart. While I’ve served on a few boards, I’m not very good at it. I’d like to be able to travel but nobody ever said you can’t travel and still write. In fact, writers have the unique luxury of legitimately being able to deduct the cost of travel from their taxes as research or reading tours. Even Amtrak is reportedly offering writers free train rides as “fellowships,” to write and I for one love writing on trains.

Having recently completed and survived a move from our island home to a house in Portland, I’ve started, after an enforced hiatus, to get back to writing my fourth McCabe/Savage thriller.  I’m 17,000 words in and I like what I’ve got so far and, more importantly, I’m enjoying the days I get to spend inside my characters’ heads.  It’s where I want to be.

I hope, like Elmore Leonard or Mel Brooks, I’ll still be at it when (and if) I hit 87. I just hope that if I am, someone will want to read about the people I bring to life inside my head and on my computer.