Lea Wait's Blog, page 37

When You Can’t See the Forest for the Trees.

It’s a good thing I’m writing this latest novel for spec and not on contract. If I had a deadline, I might turn gray overnight. Oh, wait, I am gray. Okay, bad analogy. That’s fine. The novel is still a hot mess no matter what color my hair may currently be.

I love this book, and the characters. It’s tentatively titled No Return. Here’s the blurb: The North Maine woods keeps its secrets close. When Sassy Romano inherits the Tremayne Lodge and Artist Colony, she knows it has been vacant for the past five years. She isn’t prepared to find it occupied by a body in the pottery studio, or that her childhood home is now the epicenter of a crime wave. Someone is using her properties as half-way houses for illegal immigrants and the narcotics trade. A lot has changed since she’s been away. The deeper she pries into local secrets, the more she realizes they are rooted in her past. And the past can be deadly.

Sounds straightforward. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. I know who, what, where, and when. I even know who dun it. That’s epic for me. Often my villain isn’t revealed until sometime into the second (or third) draft. This time, I’ve nailed that sucker. So, what’s the problem?

This is the first book in a new series. That’s a blessing and a curse. It’s fun to create new worlds and meet new imaginary friends and foes. It’s great to explore and take inspiration from new locations. The north Maine woods are made for mystery. It would take a lifetime or two to explore it all. That’s yeast to the creative spirit. The problem, then, is not the setting, or the characters, it’s the story.

The hardest and the most enjoyable part of writing comes after the explosion of words on the page. I’m a “discovery writer.” That’s a nice way to say I travel back roads and paths without a roadmap. I write it as it comes, sometimes multiple chapters at one sitting. Sometimes a few words or sentences. Then I string them all together, stir twice, and see what perks. What usually floats to the top is…a hot mess. That’s where I am now.

I’m deep in the editing process. I spend time sussing out each chapter’s purpose, fixing plot holes, and making sure the foundation supports the overall structure. Multicolored highlights, red ink, and sticky notes cover my pages. In short, right now I’m in the weeds of writing. I know the story is there, but darned if I can make it out.

In another few weeks, all of this will be behind me. I’ll have taken this hot mess and transformed it into a well-ordered story. In the meantime, though, will someone pass the wine?

Writers, do you have a hot mess stage for your works in progress?

Farewell To My Feline Companion

Charlene D’Avanzo: Last week my husband John and I had to put down our cat Rudy, a beloved longtime friend and mate. He was 16-19 years old when he died. Rudy had been with us for fifteen years, so his loss for both of us is enormous.

Rudy traveled with us from Kansas to Maine and was my companion when John returned to Kansas for work. Together we explored the yard and enjoyed late afternoon summer sun on the deck, watching birds high in pine trees. At night he’d jump up on the bed and sleep at my feet.

Rudy was a loving cat and this quote fits him beautifully:

When tomorrow starts without me

don’t think we are far apart.

For every time you think of me

I am in your heart.

COST TALKS and PIRATE TRAP by Matt Cost

Pirate Trap arrives Wednesday. March 27th. Much like a C-section, the birth of my book has been predetermined. A year ago, it was just an idea trickling around in my being, but it is about to become a reality. A living, breathing, entity of setting, plot, characters, twists, and turns.

And just like that, I am at the final stage of a writer’s duties, having traversed the entire spectrum of the creation of a book—idea, research, write, edit, market—and now, promotion. This is the chapter of development that is similar to the raising of the child. It is time to introduce Pirate Trap to the world and hope that friendships and respect develop.

Promotion. This is the part of the job that gets me out from behind my computer screen, up and off my butt, and out to visit the general public and introduce them to my book. At this point, three parts of the marketing campaign come to fruition.

Podcast and radio interviews. I have had two so far, one was Sunday Tea with V and the other was for Big Blend Radio. Check out the links to listen to those and more will follow.

Reviewers who have been sent ARCs (advanced reading copies) of Pirate Trap will now be weighing in with their thoughts on the merits of my newborn. This is out of my hands. I hope that they see the beauty of my creation and heap praise, maybe even a tad of adulation, but it is no longer up to me.

The second phase of marketing coming to bear at this time of promotion is that of book talks. In this case, I am calling them COST TALKS. Over the course of April and May, I have arranged twenty-two such events. These are mostly in Maine, and mostly at libraries, but there are a few exceptions to both rules.

These COST TALKS will be me sharing the evolution of Pirate Trap from idea to promotion. The trials and tribulations, the good and the bad, the essence of creation. I will read a short passage (very short). And best of all, I will get to interact with real-live human beings. Not Zoom nor AI nor telephone nor text. Real people.

The most essential part of a Cost Talk is interaction. Audience participation. Question and answer. Comment and criticism. So, please, if you are in the area of one of these COST TALKS, please stop in, weigh in, and have some fun with me. I was just kidding about that criticism part. Don’t really do that.

There will be more COST TALKS in June and July. Check my website for places, dates, and time. Then, in August, they will rev back up with the release of City Gone Askew. COST TALKS. Write on.

 

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, due out 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 and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

 

Weekend Update: March 23-24, 2024

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

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

Matt Cost was recently on the Big Blend Radio podcast speaking about cannibals, cults, pirates, and every crack in between. Check it out HERE. His latest mystery novel in the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex Trap series, Pirate Trap, is pubbing on Wednesday, March 27th. It can be ordered HERE. Cost will be busy touring libraries and other sites speaking of pirates, writing, and reading from Pirate Trap. This is the April schedule. Future months will be posted as we get closer. This can also be found on his website HERE.

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

 

What’s that Smell?

Walking the Maxwell Farm loop the other morning, I caught a vagrant whiff of cows on the breeze and I don’t mean cows’ breath. I had a teacher once who insisted that the shit of ungulates was not offensive, but he wasn’t a dairyman and I suspect had never been inside a cow barn in deep August. But the encounter reminded me how evocative smells are and how they are sometimes lost in the welter of other kinds of description we use in our writing.

Petrichor—love the sound of that word—is the smell of earth after a rain. History has it that the reason we might find the scent so pleasant is that in ancient times, it would have made us aware that rain had fallen after a long dry period, a boon to life. But beyond that explanation, I would bet you smelled it the instant I named it.

I do wonder if some of the more evocative scents of my youth are lost to most people. I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily, but I can recall the specific odor of the outhouse at my uncle’s farm in Starks, a mix of everything you’d expect overlain with the acrid smell of powdered lime. Who will be left in thirty years who will remember that smell?

There are smells that speak to us of danger, or at least caution: gasoline, propane. I remember the stink of kerosene in the stove in the Waterville apartment I lived in my first year out of college and wondering if my roommate and I were ruining our lungs. Of course both of use smoked at the time. Chlorine reminds me of days at the pool in the YMCA and the L Street Bathhouse, my unremarkable athletic career except for the one race I won that no one expected me to.

What makes smell so evocative is its connection to memory. The olfactory cortex in the brain is in the temporal lobe, which is the location that manages emotion and creates meaning. A single scent—a perfume, say—recalls a person, which opens up an entire section of memory, a flood of imagery.

Which makes it odd that you don’t see as much of it in writing as I’d think would be useful. Could it be that the association to a smell is too personal to ascribe to a fictional character without a ton of explanation? Just because I have a specific memory attached to Cinnabar perfume, can I render that believably in prose? Or is it that the memory reaction is a nonrational response, so the best a writer can do, without getting all weird and flowery, is say something like “the smell reminded her of . .” which is both clunky and interrupts the flow of the story?

There are the moments when a smell is an entire story. What smells trigger your memories? Your stories?

“It’s Never Too Late … “

Sandra Neily here

Hello Maine Crime Writers community,

I posted this in 2018! (Wow, years ago, but I think post-pandemic and then all of us getting older, I’d like to bring it back…. a bit revised.  I found it still speaks to me, so I hope it speaks to you.

If we get out of Maine given all the snow that’s FINALLY coming, we are heading to NC for a while: tiny camper, bit of a table to write on, but now with two dogs. One is a recently gathered-up, untrained rescue project of Bob’s that’s been confined in a puppy mill for 9 years. What could go wrong camping in the Smokies where herds of elk visit the campground? Hahaha.

And the current Maine Crime Wave is coming in June!

**************************

 

Mary Anne Evans once wrote “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

And she did become what she should have been. She became the novelist George Eliot, choosing a man’s pen name to ensure her works were taken seriously. Arguably the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) penned a novel that’s always on lists of the world’s best novels: “Middlemarch,” my favorite.

In the novel, her humor sneaks up on us: “And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.”

And “Middlemarch” also gives us new ways of seeing an old world. “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

But most of all I love the persistence that shines out of Eliot’s own personal quote: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

Last week, the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance event, Crime Wave, treated its participants to tools we can use so we are not “too late” to write something wonderful.

Even though I was on a panel to discuss various ways authors get published (in a world where traditional publishing is almost out of reach), I took notes on how I might persist and carry on despite sometimes feeling it may be “too late.”

I said that Hope Clark’s “Funds for Writers “is an award-winning site with tips, lists of contests to enter, and grants to apply for. (Using her advice, I became a finalist in a Women Fiction Writers Association contest.)

Jane Friedman has a chart that defines the pros and cons of various publishing paths. https://www.janefriedman.com/key-book-publishing-path/  

Jane also has excellent book and book business advice; I never miss her newsletter. Sign up. https://www.janefriedman.com/

Joanna Penn’s writing and publishing assistance at https://www.thecreativepenn.com/

I asked author Kate Flora for nuggets she shared with her “Point of View” craft seminar and she generously sent this message:

“So, with my POV class, I suggested an exercise to test their point of view comfort level, which is one I use with my students. Write a paragraph introducing yourself in first person and third person and see the results of the different points of view. The book I suggested is What If by Pamela Painter and Anne Bernays, which is full of writing exercises.

Doing an exercise is often helpful if you’re stuck in your writing.” Kate Clark Flora | Mystery & Crime Author

There was just too much great stuff at Crime Wave to get it all down, but I’m glad someone reminded us of Elmore Leonard’s best writing rule, “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” https://www.liferichpublishing.com/AuthorResources/General/Elmore-Leonards-Ten-Rules-Of-Writing.aspx

Pretty much the entire event is dedicated to persistence and to the premise that “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

The second Mystery in Maine, Deadly Turn, was published in 2021. Her debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

 

Characters: No that’s NOT you. Thanks for reading.

A few days ago, colleague Kate Flora wrote a great post about “character shopping.”

It highlights a huge part of what we do — thinking about and creating characters. I often wonder if readers and aspiring writers fully understand what goes into creating characters, or further developing characters that we’ve created in earlier books.

It’s something I think about a lot, particularly since I live in a Maine town, probably small by worldwide terms, but average (population 3,200), by Maine standards. People DO know each other and each other’s business, just like in books. People DO gossip. People DO think our town is the center of the universe. That can be tough when you write about a fictional small Maine town. Emphasis on the fictional, people.

Recently, someone in town mentioned to me that another townsperson, one I’m acquainted with but don’t know well, was overheard recommending my books and saying to the person she was talking to, “I know who a lot of these characters are based on.” Or something like that. I picture her saying in a conspiratorial whisper.

First of all, THANK YOU for recommending my books. That’s the most important thing. I guess I shouldn’t give a fig what comes after that. That said, I wrote the first book in my series, Cold Hard News, while I was living in Manchester, New Hampshire. Yes, it was based on the small towns I’ve known in Maine, where I grew up and began my newspaper career, but it certainly was not based on the Maine town I live in now.

There’s a saying, “You don’t [poop] where you eat.” That certainly applies to writing murder mysteries, as far as I’m concerned.

My town. Count me as one mystery writer who doesn’t [poop] where I eat as far as writing characters. (Maureen Milliken photo)

But creating characters is a funny thing. We do shop for them, as Kate pointed out in her post the other day. But she also pointed out that every writer creates different characters out of the same initial seed. It’s a rare writer, I believe, who takes a character wholesale out of life and plops them into a book.

I do have some secondary characters that are drawn from people in my life. These are characters with fewer complications and nuances than more major characters, though. Once you get into a character, it takes off on its own. I’ve had people suggest to me that I put them in a book, as a character. I always answer that they really don’t want that. It’s not that I’d make them a victim or murderer, it’s just that for the rest of their life they’d be thinking, “That’s what she thinks of me?”

People often joke, “I don’t want to make you mad, because then you’ll kill me off in one of  your books!” Ha ha ha! I always respond that, no, I won’t. I reserve the people who make me mad for those who kill people in my books, or at least are jerks in my books. Isn’t that really where the wrath of readers of murder mysteries lies? The bad guys who the good guys bring to justice or at least reveal as the bad guys that they are? I would say, at least with my second and third books — No News is Bad News and Bad News Travels Fast — almost every negative character at least has a germ of someone who’s pissed me off. Most of these germs are people I’ve worked with, so anyone reading this has nothing to worry about on that account. If you see yourself in any of these characters and haven’t been in a newsroom with me, it’s just a coincidence. But also, maybe seek some help? Because you are not a nice person and shouldn’t be doing that stuff. Just saying.

Characters have a way of becoming who they are in fiction, no matter how much real life you draw them from. The last thing you want to do is feel boxed in by creating a character in a way that won’t hurt a real person’s feelings or be taken wrong.

The only characters that I’ve totally drawn from real life are my next-door neighbors, who I put in No News is Bad News. The fictional versions of my neighbors had some information helpful to the case. I can’t remember how it came about that I used them. It could be that Dave snow-blows my driveway in the winter and I thought it would be a nice gesture, since I do absolutely nothing for them except give them cookies at Christmas and try to be as unannoying as possible. But it was tough writing them. They’re very nice people and I was super conscious of how the book could make them look, even though they’re also nice people in the book. People in town, I knew, would automatically assume every single thing I wrote about them was reality. It was exhausting and I don’t want to do it again.

I donated a few books to a local auction a few years ago, and included a bonus of using the name of the person who won the books in my next book. Since then, I’ve come to realize that people think if you give a character their name, the character is “based on” them. It’s not. It’s just a name. Names are hard to come up with, but that’s a post for a different day. Just take my word for it.

This isn’t true for the person who won the books in the auction — I don’t think — but I tried it again the next year, and that winner and I ended up agreeing not to use her name because she was uncomfortable with it.

People ask me to use their names in books. they really do. I always decline because, talking to them, it’s clear that it’s not their name they want in the book, it’s them. I don’t blame them, I want to be in Redimere, Maine, too, hanging out with Bernie and Pete and having all that fun.

Back to the first auction, though. I’m finally well into the meat of writing the book (Dying for News) and the guy who won the naming right is now, in a weird coincidence, just like out of a mystery novel, my next-door neighbor. He’s on the other side, not the same guy who snow-blows my driveway and is in my second book. My instinct was to make him an innocuous character now that I’d see him around all the time. I’d settled on fire marshal arson investigator. A minor part, but with some good lines. The other option was narcissistic and pompous college president who may have something to do with the murder (Or may not! That’s not a spoiler!). I ran into my neighbor one morning as he was cleaning snow off his car and I was coming back from getting a cinnamon bun (since life is so much like a Maine mystery novel), and asked him which part he wanted. My neighbor wants to be the college president. We’ll see how that works out.

People like to draw inferences, no matter how much you try to explain how characters are created. It’s easy to do because small Maine towns, being what they are, are going to have people like the ones in your book.

When I was writing No News is Bad News, I was involved in a minor dispute with the manager of the transfer station (dump) that pissed me off. I was in the midst of firming up the plot and decided I’d make the transfer station in my fake town a big part of it. Those of you blessed with municipal rubbish pickup may not realize it, but the transfer station is often the center of town life, because it’s where everyone has to go at some point. It was a no-brainer.

Now, the guys who worked at the transfer station in my book are not based on the guys who work at the one in my town in any way, shape or form, except for the fact that one has bright red hair, just like one of the kids who worked at the dump at the time. Somehow, though, people in town think the characters are the guys at the real dump. It doesn’t help that the transfer station manager in my book is involved in dealing illicit drugs and there had apparently been a dump manager in my town years ago, long gone by the time I moved here, with the same side gig. I didn’t know that when I wrote the book, but you can’t tell people that. To be honest, knowing it wouldn’t have kept me from writing the book the way I did.

The Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series.

Every town has certain types of people, types we’re all familiar with. It’s hard to fully form minor characters, but I try not to make them caricatures. Since they’re not as in-depth as other characters, people read into them what they want to.

I can’t tell you how other authors do it, just how I do. My characters come to me and form into full people. How they look, how they act and talk, all seems to be there somewhere in my head waiting to be born as a character. Of course, they have elements from real people I’ve known or met, or just seen walking by. But they somehow form into themselves. People assume the protagonist in my books, Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea is me. She is not. I even gave her curly hair and skin that doesn’t burn like mine just to make her different, but people are going to think what they’re going to think. She may have similar characteristics in some way to me, and think some of the things I do, but she is her own person.

One of my goals when I first began writing mystery novels was to have characters who were more relatable than the ones in books I’d been reading. People who weren’t necessarily gorgeous and super-human and right all the time, but more like the people we know and care about. I believe the people in my books are like that. At least I try hard to make them that way. That said, they are not real people I’ve plucked out of real life and plopped into a book.

Here’s something that may make me sound nuts (if my books ever take off to the extent that I’m even a little famous, it’ll become an amusing eccentricity that aspiring writers will try to emulate): The characters in my book actually are alive in an alternate world that’s going on twenty-four hours a day, parallel to the one I live in. I’m often privy to their conversations, meals, and things you’d probably just as soon not know about and will never read in a book. I am not making this up. When I’m in the thick of getting a book written, I’m in that world sometimes more often than the physical one around me. It’s great for writing, but also a pain in the neck when I’m trying to sleep, or have a conversation with a real person, or do any of my money-making work.

In fact, there’s something going on right now that may have something to do with solving the murder. You’ll be able to read about it later this year in Dying for News. Gotta go.

NOTE: Speaking of auctions,  a set of the first three books in the Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea mystery series is one of more than 600 items in the Harrisville Children’s Center Auction. The online auction goes on all month, but go and check it out. There are many books, tickets to events, gift certificates and more. You can even sort by type of item if you don’t want to browse 600-plus items. The children’s center does great work, so I hope you’ll go ahead and bid on something.

Why Revising This One Is Such A Slog

That ought to be a question. Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today writing (complaining) about my progress (or lack thereof) in revising the historical romance originally titled Firebrand (Harper Monogram, 1993) into a better, shorter book to be reissued under a new title, probably Treacherous Visions. Dangerous Visions or A Dangerous Gift would have been better, more accurate title choices, but other books, by authors better known than I am, have already used them and I’d just as soon pick something different.

Title aside, although I’m still using the points of view of both the hero and the heroine (as most romance novels do), it has become much more a life story than a love story. It may always have been. The proposal I submitted began this way: “In the twentieth century she would be called a psychic or a channeler or perhaps a person with a gift. In the first part of the seventeenth century there were other names for such people—names like witch and heretic.”

From the back cover of the original paperback

The basic premise is that when my heroine, Ellen, steps onto a spot where powerful emotions remain from a past event, she experiences that event as if she was a participant. The trancelike state she enters, if only briefly, is treacherous.  Those who observe it fall into two categories—those who suspect she is possessed, or worse, and those who think they may be able to use her “gift” for their own advantage. Either way, she’s on dangerous ground.

map of Norumbega in 1570

After I got my rights back and had reissued Firebrand as an e-book, I plugged it in my “Backlist Tuesday” posts on Facebook with variations on this text: “Part of this novel is very loosely based on stories about an ancestor of mine and his maidservant. The whole family was banished from Plimoth Plantations because she dared smile in church. Most of the book, especially the paranormal bits, is strictly fiction. The story starts in England, then moves to colonial New England, where Ellen Allyn’s visions put her at risk. Her only hope of survival lies with dashing adventurer and treasure-hunter Jamie Mainwaring, who is searching for the legendary city of Norumbega in what is now (more or less) Maine.”

My ancestor, by the way, was also banished from three settlements in what would later become Rhode Island, including Roger Williams’s Providence, before founding a colony of his own at what is now Warwick, Rhode Island. I based my children’s book, Shalla, on another part of his story.

The first time around I had a short deadline—three months to go from a one page synopsis to a 100,000 word book. Now I have as much time as I want to take and can cut as much excess as I like, but it’s still turning out to be a slog. At least this time around I don’t have a stress headache, as I did for the entire three months. The problem now is that a lot needs fixing.

Looking back, I suspect that part of the stress was caused by having been assigned a new editor. The revision letter she sent me suggests that she didn’t read a lot of historical fiction. She wasn’t sure what “tumbled” meant (and this was a romance editor!) and she questioned the well-established fact that among English sailors in centuries past it was a badge of honor not to learn how to swim. Her biggest complaint was that the hero and heroine spent too much time apart. Since that was crucial to the story, I compensated by having them think about each other whenever they were separated. I’ve ended up cutting most of those bits. Aside from being pretty sappy, they don’t ring true in a macho adventurer living in the 1600s.

Oddly enough, this editor thought I had included too much historical detail. In historical novels, the usual complaint is that there isn’t enough. I will admit to way too much “telling” when I should have been “showing” and that’s one of the things I’ve been fixing, along with cuts for wordiness and repetition and moving around passages that were in the wrong place in the text. The result will be a much shorter book, possibly under 80,000 words.

What New England settlers probably looked like in reality

As I write this I haven’t quite made it to the end of the first revision, but I know I have at least two more passes to go. One will be for continuity and to fix the fixes, possibly adding back bits I shouldn’t have cut and/or adding new material to make it clearer why a character behaves a certain way. The final revision will be an attempt to root out all the typos that have somehow crept in.

I’d like to say Treacherous Visions will be published soon, but I suspect it’s going to be several more months before it’s ready to launch. If I follow the practice I developed after the three-month deadline debacle, I’ll be letting the manuscript “rest” for at least a few weeks between each revision.

Meanwhile, stay tuned. In my April post I’ll be writing about the challenge of finding the right cover art to fit this story.

 

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.

 

Weekend Update: March 16-17, 2024

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

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

My setup at the 2023 Maine BookFest, with fellow Maine Crime Writer Vaughn Hardacker (back to camera) doing some serious pitching in the background. This year’s will be the last weekend in August, in Waterville, with details to be announced.

Maureen Milliken here, just giving everyone a heads up to keep an eye out for details for the second annual Maine BookFest. Last year’s, in Hallowell, was a huge success, and the upcoming one promises to be even better. This year’s will be a two-day event the last weekend in August in downtown Waterville. There will be opportunities coming up for authors to sign on. Readers, too, will be thrilled with everything that’s planned. I’ll post an update once more information is available!

If you’re a short story writer, Sisters in Crime New England is offering a webinar on writing short stories with Michael Bracken tomorrow from 3-5. Here’s the registration link. Note that we share these with non-chapter members but hope you’ll consider becoming a sister or brother.

https://sistersincrime-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_V5FBAkZlTCeqRvEbsRLlzw

NEVER TO EARLY TO GET IT ON YOUR CALENDAR!  Maine Crime Wave Conference! JUNE 14-15, 2024.   In Portland Maine, on the USM Campus (at the beautiful Glickman Library that gives us a great view of the city).  Fun starts around 5 pm on Friday night and continues all day Saturday.  Fabulous authors will be talking, and mingling, networking opportunities galore, games, classes and more. Mark your calendars!

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

Character Shopping

Kate Flora: From time to time, I nudge myself away from my keyboard and go out character shopping. Sometimes I character shop on vacation. Sometimes at the mile 25 rest stop on the Maine turnpike. Last summer, Maureen Milliken and I set up our table of books at the Brunswick, Maine Art Walk, and it was a wonderful place to do some shopping. Yes, we were there to sell our books. But with the flow of people coming past, and the many who stopped to chat and sometimes buy books, we were offered a rich bounty of diverse characters to file away for use in a future book. The tattoos alone were worth the price of admission.

Being observant is part of a writer’s job. Back when I used to teach writing, I used to make my students carry notebooks or index cards, and each week they were required to come into class and share something they’d observed. One student came into class the second week empty handed and reported that she’d seen noting of note. A few follow up questions revealed that she had traveled on the subway day after day and not seen anything interesting. Further questioning revealed that she had always been plugged into a device. I told her to take out the earbuds and look around. The next week, she had something to share.

There is so much to observe if we’re willing. The way people dress. How they carry themselves. Hairstyles. Gait. Unusual accessories. What is written on a sweatshirt or tee shirt? Footwear–Sneakers, boots, flipflops or something else? If I step back and watch, I can gather many useful traits simply from observing how people share (or don’t share) the space in the Trader Joe’s produce section. There’s the man who parks his cart and himself blocking a five or six foot span of produce and then makes a phone call to someone checking on what he ought to buy. There’s the sour-faced woman who systematically picks up and examines every bag of carrots. There’s the mom and small child who consider which cheese will be the perfect snack. One of my writing prompts for students was for them to notice an unusual accessory or item of clothing and use it as the jumping off point for creating a character. Another was the girl in the pink skirt (which I will paste in below) using how different people reacted to that pink skirt.

Voice is also something to observe. Tone. Phrasing. Word choice. Accents. Subject matter.

The Maine Mulch Murder by A. Carman Clark

I always think back to my mother’s comment. She’d given the draft of The Maine Mulch Murder to readers, and one of them had gotten back to her with this: Mrs. Clark, I don’t believe everyone in your imagined small Maine town sounds like a seventh grade English teacher. I try to keep that in mind when I’m introducing new characters. Although I used to give my students a “License to be Nosy,” not everyone is comfortable with that. Our mothers were clear about minding our own business. One tip that I discovered for students interested in listening in on conversations without seeming nosy was to linger in a dressing room at Marshalls or T.J. Max. It’s a fabulous place for collecting dialogue. If you’re looking for how differing groups of men speak, Dunkin’ Donuts around 10:30 or 11 when they come in for a coffee break can be great. Just get your own coffee, sit at a table, and snoop.

One of my students years ago spoke of liking to go around her neighborhood observing lights coming on as people returned from work and settled into their homes. She called it “Life Shopping.”

Do you character shop? Life shop? How do you go about it?

Here’s the pink skirt exercise:

For the next class, you will write three separate paragraphs viewing the same event from the point of view of three very different characters, seeing the action through their eyes.  The purpose of this assignment is to make you focus on “voice” in your writing, on how to convey the attitude, vocabulary, world view, etc. of the character who is describing the scene, using your point of view work and your observational vocabulary.

Here is the event:  A woman in a pink skirt, carrying several shopping bags, walks through a mall parking lot to her car.  She puts the packages into the car, gets in, and then, although another driver is waiting for the space, she sits there, not starting the car and driving away.

Think about who else might be in the mall parking lot. In another car.  Walking behind her. Waiting for the space. Then think about how who they are stimulates and colors their reactions to this woman.