Lea Wait's Blog, page 5

Weekend Update: July12-13, 2025

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Vaughn Hardacker (Monday), Gabi Stiteler (Tuesday), Rob Kelley (Thursday), and Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Friday).

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

All Kathy Lynn Emerson’s reissued titles are on sale (25% off) in e-book format for the entire month of July at Smashwords. This includes all four Face Down Collections, other omnibus editions, and the single title childrens’ books and mystery stand alones. To see the complete list, click here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Kathy_LynnEmerson

Kate Flora and Maureen Milliken will have a table at the Women Owned Business Market 1-4 p.m. Saturday, July 19, in the Beer Garden at Sidereal Farm Brewery, 37 Sidereal Way, Vassalboro. Besides mystery novels by two of Maine’s award-winning crime writers, the event will also feature jewelry, art, crafts and more.

Matt Cost will be giving a COST TALK on The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, July 16 at the Readfield Community Library in Readfield, ME.

Matt Cost will be signing books at Shermans Maine Coast Bookshop on Saturday, July 19 from 1-3 PM in Freeport, ME.

 

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

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

Let’s Talk Some More About AI

Over the 4th of a July I spent the time in the hills of New Hampshire, biking through the woods and enjoying being outside. Despite a deadline for a book that needed to be edited, I put everything aside to enjoy nature to its fullest.

All around me I saw signs of natural intelligence and it made me think of AI and the current state of writing.

Let’s have a talk about AI. Do you use it any capacity in your writing? In query’s to agents or creating a synopsis of your novel. Do you submit chapters into ChatGPT and ask for feedback? If so, you are using AI in your writing.

Have I done it? Yes, I’ve done it. Have I had reservations about using AI to assist me with my writing? By all means. It doesn’t feel ‘natural’ to me, despite it being an incredible tool that helps me hone my craft. It has also saved me a lot of time. Where I draw the line with AI is having it write, or rewrite, parts of my novel. I just can’t go there yet. But writers have used it in that way. In more than one example a writer, and publisher, has left an AI prompt in the middle of their novel, angering readers.

What do publishers think of writers using AI in their writing? Penguin Random House’s view on AI is murky. While the publisher promotes human creativity and intellectual property, it also says “we will use generative AI tools selectively and responsibly, where we see a clear case that they can advance our goals.” Hachette UK frowns upon machine creativity but advocates for “responsible experimentation with AI for operational uses”while also appreciating “the benefits of remaining curious and embracing technology.”

What is our responsibility to the reader? To simply put out the best product regardless of how it’s made? Or do we need to advise the reader how much of our work product was aided and assisted by AI? These are questions that are as complex as they are confusing.

As helpful as AI is as a tool to us writers, I must admit that this technology scares the hell out of me. But should it? I’m sure future generations will have no problem embracing it. More probable, however, is the fact that AI in the future will be solely responsible for writing books, creating music and making movies. I hate fretting about this development because the cat’s out of the bag and never going back. And with the advent of quantum computers, which will be a million times faster, AI will get much better at drawing from all sources to create something marketable and entertaining.

The reality is that computers don’t think. They gather up existing information and use it to synthesize. Humans think and that might be the one thing that gives me hope for the future. To quote Alva Noe, a philosophy professor at the University of California, “If there is intelligence in the vicinity of pencils, shoes, cigarette lighters, maps or calculators, it is the intelligence of their users and inventors. The digital is no different.”

For now, I’m using AI as a tool to help me become a better writer, but I’m drawing the line at letting it actually do the hard work of creating a story out of thin air.

DISTRACTION WARNING

July Blog 2025

Jule Selbo

I’ve been beating myself over the head lately because I’m so distracted with what’s going on in the world. Yeah, hard to ignore.  That chapters that I would “normally” write, rewrite and rewrite again and then hopefully polish are getting rewritten five more times than normal – because I’m ‘not in the zone’.

The zone I am in is DISTRACTION.

I think I spent a whole week last month watching ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL (the original series (1978-1980, BBC, based on James Herriot books). Morning. Afternoon. Night. Total binge.

Not my usual fare – feel good melodram-edy with little plot, way too likeable characters (can people be this kind and respectful?) and lots of rolling, remote English countryside. But I think I needed (knew I needed) to live where life was simpler, where people were kind, where they cared about each other – and for the cow and sheep in distress.

 

I even wrote a 10-minute play called DISTRACTION WARNING.  There’s a group called Crowbait that meets the first Sunday night of every month at the Footlights Theatre in Falmouth. (The group has been around Portland for years, in different locales, it was created by April Singley-Masters, Cullen T.M. McGough, and Michael Tooher. They conceived the idea late one night at a bar, lamenting the lack of local playwrights being produced.)

Who attends Crowbait regularly? Doctors, engineers, theatre lovers, students, actors, writers, musicians, techies, retirees from different professions, baristas, construction workers, well-heeled and low-heeled folks who pay the ten buck entry fee (to cover rental of space). Those who feel like doing some writing, show up with a 10-minute play (about 5 pages of mostly dialogue). There is a prompt given every month, some people write to that, others write about whatever else is on their mind.

The names of the playwrights get put into a bag or sorting “hat”. The names of those who want to be among the acting pool that night get put into another “hat”.  Each meeting night will feature 10 plays. If your play is pulled out of the hat, you dip your hand into the actor hat and randomly choose the cast.  Genders/age/the ‘right’ casting for a role makes no difference. At one meeting I had a fifty-year-old man playing a ten-year-old girl and two thirty-year-old guys playing teenage ballerinas.

Maybe some of you readers have participated (in Maine or other places, one of the co-founders moved to the UK so it’s there too) and know that it’s all ‘cold readings’. Meaning that the actors have had no chance to read the short play ahead of time – they don’t know their character or the beginning, middle or end of the play. The author gets two minutes to tell them if it’s a comedy or drama and “the point” of the play (if the author even knows it) and one or two salient tips. That’s it.

Sometimes the casting works. Sometimes it doesn’t.  That’s the beauty/looseness of it. Some of the writers are first-timers, some are doing silly send-ups, some are working on craft.

FUN RULES: If the play goes over the strict ten-minute limit, it’s BUZZED down by a guy with a duck whistle. If the play goes over ten minutes, it’s not eligible to be considered for any prizes (which might be a Snickers and a package of gum).

People come to see each other (great community), to laugh, to get a chance to act or have their words/ideas/stories presented. To be distracted.

The play I wrote for last Sunday’s Crowbait was about a novelist who couldn’t write the last chapter of his book. Fear. Worry. Self-doubt. Avoiding judgments he was sure to come. So, he took a job writing the Warning/Caution labels on drugs.

You know things like – “Opepoflux users are at increased risk of ketoacidosis, dehydration, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, nasal spew, eye twitching, flop sweat, confusion, anxiety, serious infections in the urinary tract and BoBo’s gangrene…” etc.  That kind of thing. He becomes the favorite of the Surgeon General. He totally distracts himself with writing pessimistic harbingers of possible doom. He’s become obsessed, he’s not paying attention to his young child or wife (who fell in love with a risk-taking, deep-thinking author and know who is he?). The family is falling apart –

Why did I write it? Where did the idea come from? I know it was a warning to me.  That I wrote the silly play to get my mind back on the work I really care about. Telling me to not be distracted  SO much.

Are You An Elevator?

Reid helping with the great 2024 clean-up

John Clark, semi-piggybacking on Kate’s post about growing up on Sennebec Hill Farm last week. One aspect of being a writer is the constant flow of thoughts that run through my (and hopefully your) mind. Last week, they took an interesting turn, inviting me to hover outside myself and ponder how even the most simple utterance or deed can create one of those better than average ripples in the pond of life.

It started when I watched two of my three grandchildren help us plant stuff in the garden. First off, it was soon to be five year old Reid helping me plant pole beans behind the garage. I poked the holes and he dropped seeds into them. A week later, it was even sooner to be five year old Gemma helping us plant broccoli. In both instances, Beth and I held back any orders or corrections, letting each child participate in their way. Reid’s beans are now beginning to climb through strands of string on their way to bearing pods while Gemma’s efforts are growing just as nicely.

Reid’s Beans

I remember Judi Redding, a very wise family therapist saying at a workshop on family systems many years ago that the three words kids hear the most while growing up are “no, don’t, and stop!”

Unlearning the instinct to use those admonishments and let kids feel a part of the bigger world around them is challenging, particularly when that’s how you grew up, but I am doing my best to back off as well as encouraging all three of my grandkids to feel like they’re an important part of our immediate world.

Last summer we took Piper, then age ten, on a Road Scholar grandparent/grandchild week in Virginia where we learned hands-on about marine life and ecology as well as seeing the wild ponies up close. Next month, we’re taking her to a working ‘rope and ride’ ranch outside Tucson, Arizona on a similar Road Scholar adventure. Every time I watch my grandchildren involved in a family activity, I flash back to when I was their age. My experiences were different, partly out of necessity. We grew up on a poultry farm and times were often hard. I was more pressed into service without explanation than invited to become a part of the family operation. There were exceptions, like the annual bean factory event where we, and often friends or summer guests, snipped, snapped, washed and packed fresh beans in canning jars.

Beth and I bought the half acre lot behind our house last year, for privacy and to avoid a house being built there. It was full of brush, fallen limbs and downed trees that were in varied stages of decay. After I’d cut up as much as I could, we rented a 30 cubic yard dumpster to haul it away. On the day we had a family cleanup party, Piper, Gemma, and Reid all did themselves proud, carrying whatever they could to the dumpster where the adults thanked them and added their contributions to the pile.

Last weekend, everyone got together to erect and enjoy a slack line that included various climbing apparati. Reid and Gemma kept busy chopping some of the huge crop of jewel weed that has overtaken the back property. I’m slowly weeding it by hand (my OCD tendency to count how many weeds I’ve pulled in each session (upwards of fourteen thousand at present), and their knocking it all over slightly complicates my cleanup. However, watching two almost five year olds merrily hoeing and hacking, is a most satisfying sight.

Last Saturday at Kate’s cottage in Harpswell, the family gathered again with Reid and Gemma having a delightful time with their cousin Robbie, a personal trainer who is as much a kid at heart as they are. Between finding perfect little pinecones to to toss into the ocean and making a sand and rock castle with a plastic pail of crabs as guardians, it was a most enjoyable family event.

There’s no way to protect their generation from the evil being inflicted by those in power, but we can make certain that they, and others we encounter on a daily basis, feel involved in things that are nurturing and mind healing, hopefully creating good memories to get them through dark moments.

Summer and Fall Opportunities

Summer is here, the season of long days, beautiful sunsets, strawberries with breakfast, lunch and dinner and blueberry season ahead. I’m doing my best to ignore the heat dome, the humidity index and all of the rainy Saturdays. Soon we’ll be on vacation, two precious weeks when I’ll have hours each day to write. A decade ago, it was relatively easy to switch from my lawyer to my writer brain after working all day. For a variety of reasons, that’s less true now.

A stunning summer sunset.

As I’ve made peace with my slower process, I’ve come to treasure all the more the summer weeks when I can immerse myself in writing, fueled by blueberry pie and punctuated by icy plunges into the sharp, salty, sea.  I have three works in process right now—two short stories and a novel-in-process that’s it’s time to revisit—and I’m eager to get to work.

As newspaper editor Bernie O’Dea is fond of saying in the Maine Literary Award-winning novel DYING FOR NEWS by MCW’s own Maureen Milliken, I’m going to move forward like a shark.  Many thanks for that inspiring mental image, Mo.

My summer vacation writing spot.

 

**

In no way do I want to rush the season, but two conferences are coming up this fall that readers of this blog won’t want to miss.

Maine Crime Wave has been moved from the spring, where it tended to collide with many other events, to September 27, and from the USM campus to Mechanics’ Hall in downtown Portland.

As MCW emeritus Barbara Ross blogged on May 27 (go here:  https://mainecrimewriters.com/2025/05/27/what-happened-to-crime-wave )  Crime Wave 2025 will focus on building and connecting the crime writing community. The planning committee has designed a conference that’s far more interactive than in the past, with roundtables for discussion, more craft workshops, and a couple of special events on the Friday afternoon and evening before the conference itself.

At 4 p.m. Friday there’ll be a group tour of the Maine Historical Society’s exhibit NOTORIOUS: MAINE CRIME IN THE PUBLIE EYE, 1690 – 1940, which promises to be spectacular. Here’s the link for more info.   https://www.mainehistory.org/all-exhibitions/notorious-maine-crime-in-the-public-eye/

Also on Friday, at 7:00 p.m., Novel, the book bar and café on Congress Street, will host NOIR @ THE BAR, where crime writers will read from their work in what is sure to be an uproarious, wonderful event.  Novel is just down the block from Mechanics’ Hall, and more information is here: https://www.novelmaine.com/

As for Saturday’s events, Paul Doiron, author of the award-winning Mike Bowditch series, is 2025 Crime Master. Julia Spencer-Fleming, author of the award-winning Rev. Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne mystery series, will interview Paul during the lunch hour. That discussion alone will be worth the price of admission, but the entire day will be packed with interesting conversations and opportunities to connect with Maine Crime Writers of all sorts.

Crime Wave includes a flash fiction contest open to all comers. The deadline to enter is August 1.  The challenge is to write 500 words with the following opening line, devised by Paul: “The first recorded incident of cannibalism in Maine occurred in 1710 at Boon Island. The most recent incident was discovered last week.”

Inspired? Send your best work . . .

More details are on the Crime Wave website. The full schedule is here: https://www.mainewriters.org/events/crime-wave-schedule-2025  and the registration link is here: https://mainewriters.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/mainewriters/eventRegistration.jsp?event=941&%20%20

**

On the weekend of November 7 – 9,  New England Crime Bake will take place outside of Boston. A large contingent of Maine crime writers attends each year, along with folks from all over New England as well as other parts of the country.

Lori Rader-Day, a marvelous writer and wonderful human being, is 2025 Guest of Honor. She’ll be launching her newest book, WRECK  YOUR HEART, in early winter, so Crime Bake will offer the opportunity to hear from Lori about its protagonist, an up-and- coming country musician from her hometown of Chicago. You’ll als0 have a chance to do a some boot scooting to a live band at the Saturday evening banquet.

The aforementioned Barbara Ross, renowned not only for her writing but for her consistent support for other crime writers, will be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Saturday evening’s banquet. Barb is also teaching a on Friday afternoon a Master Class called “What I’ve Learned.”  If you’ve ever heard Barb speak, you know it will be (1) inspiring and (2) hilarious.

As a craft-focused conference, Crime Bake offers all kinds of opportunities to plug in with the region-wide crime writing community, and one of us probably will preview it again as summer moves to fall.

But don’t wait for that!  This conference tends to sell out, so if you’re interested, this is the time to sign up. The full schedule is here: https://www.crimebake.org/event/b37885aa-3475-44c8-80a2-3a16206ce929/schedule

and here’s the link to register: https://www.crimebake.org/event/b37885aa-3475-44c8-80a2-3a16206ce929/regProcessStep1

Brenda Buchanan sets her novels in and around Portland. Her three-book Joe Gale series features a contemporary newspaper reporter with old-school style who covers the courts and crime beat at the fictional Portland Daily Chronicle. Brenda’s short story, “Means, Motive, and Opportunity,” was in the anthology Bloodroot: Best New England Crime Stories 2021 and received an honorable mention in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. Her story Assumptions Can Get You Killed appears in Wolfsbane: Best New England Crime Stories 2023.   In 2025 she is staying busy with new projects.

 

 

 

 

Weekend Update: July 5-6, 2025

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Brenda Buchanan (Monday), John Clark (Tuesday), Jule Selbo (Thursday), and Joe Souza (Friday).

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

 Kate Flora is thrilled that she’s a finalist for the Claymore Award for her police procedural The Darker the Night

Find Us in Readfield on the 10th!

Matt Cost kicks back into high gear on the 10th for a busy finish to July. On that day he will be at the Readfield Community Library in Readfield, Maine, with Kate Flora and Maureen Milliken, making a mystery with audience participation, starting at 6 p.m.

On Friday, July 11th, Cost will be signing and selling books at the Second Friday in Brunswick, Maine, from 4-7 p.m.

On Wednesday, July 16th, he will be back at the Readfield Community Library at 6:30 p.m. giving a COST TALK on the Evolution of a Book with an emphasis on The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed.

On Saturday, July 19th, Cost will be signing books at Shermans Maine Coast Bookshop in Freeport, Maine, from 1-3 p.m.

On Sunday, July 20th, at 1 p.m., he will be at East Madison Days in East Madison, Maine, giving a COST TALK on the Evolution of a Book with an emphasis on The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed.

On Wednesday, July 23rd, he will be at the Shaw Public Library in Greenville, Maine, giving a COST TALK on the Evolution of a Book with an emphasis on The Not So Merry Adventures of Max Creed.

On Saturday, July 26, Cost will be at the Grand Opening of Books-A-Million in Auburn, Maine, signing books from 1-2:30.

On Sunday, July 27th, Cost will be selling and signing books at the Lakes Inn Book Festival in Belgrade, Maine, from 10-2 p.m.

On July 31st, Cost will be doing an interview for WABI TV 5 out of Bangor, Maine.

Most of Kathy Lynn Emerson’s e-book titles are on sale at 25% off at Smashwords for the entire month of July. Check out what’s available here: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Kathy_LynnEmerson

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? Are there topics you’d like to see us write about? 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

Happy 4th of July

Remembering Summers Past

The farmhouse on Sennebec Hill, painting by Karin Rector

Kate Flora: Starting another Maine summer always makes me nostalgic for the summers of my youth. Yes, it’s true that we always think we are eighteen forever, unless it’s twenty-seven, but now I’m at the stage of life where I can say things like, “It’s been sixty years since I got my driver’s license” or “Was that really half a century ago?”

 

Recently, I was clearing out a box that had come out of my mother’s attic, and I found my old prom dresses. There was the one that I made from upholstery fabric that I took to 4-H state dress review. A pink satin dress with a wide white tie at the waist. A purple one that I think I wore to a prom in Camden. My school was too small to have a prom. Sewing was something I was always doing. My mother, who was clever (and we didn’t have any money) would always say, when I admired some piece of clothing in a store, “You can make that more cheaply.” I don’t think my taste was very good, as I remember making an orange vest and straight skirt that I wore with a purple blouse.

Sheep farmer Kate

Wrap-around skirts were also one of my summer projects. The summer I was taking driver’s ed, the teacher required all the girls to wear skirts, so I made one that I could wrap over my shorts. Unfortunately, I used to put it on just before I got in the car, which I am sure she resented. In any case, I know that she hated me. And that rattled me so much that when I took my driver’s test, I bumped the car behind me while parallel parking. I did get it on the second try.

Pie from my Union blueberries.

Summers on the farm meant no school, a lot of reading and swimming, and on many days, a typed chore list from my mother. Whatever was on that list had to be done before we go down to the lake and swim. I guess from her point of view, it was a great way to get things done and keep her three children occupied. I certainly never considered that other children didn’t get those lists. It’s always a surprise when you leave home and learn about other people’s families and discover that their lives were radically different. Did the girls I met later in life iron all the sheets, table cloths, my father’s handkerchiefs and tee shirts? Did they pull an entire row of weeds in the hot summer sun? Did they have a chicken hospital where they tended to wounded chickens and nursed them back to healthy? Did their family have a white chicken named Asabanana who rode around on the back of a steer named Raisins? Probably not.

Summer nights were often spent preparing for “the long, cold winter.” Pitting cherries, snapping beans, shelling dried shell beans, making applesauce, canning pears or plums. When my parents’ friends were visiting from New York and New Jersey, they would join in, everyone sitting around a big table, hands busy, talking. When that was done, we’d clear away the food and play cards. I can’t remember the rules for Oh Hell, but I logged in many hours playing it.

Blueberries coming off the belt

I doubt that many of the girls on my floor my freshman year at Jackson (Tufts) had raked blueberries or worked in the blueberry processing plant picking clods of dirt, spiders, leaves and other oddities out of the berries as they rolled past on a conveyer belt. It was the quintessential agricultural work: we stayed as long as there were berries to be processed, whether that was five or eight or one a.m. They probably hadn’t been a housekeeper at Whitehall Inn in Camden or worked one summer on Islesboro as a maid for an eccentric millionaire. That summer was quite the revelation about how the 1% lived. There was a cook and her assistant, a captain to manage the boats, the nanny who had little to do looking after indulged fourteen year old twins, and three of us local girls hired for the summer.

Every night, the beds had to be turned down, and we had to carry an iron to ensure that the folded down sheet was perfectly smooth. In a pocket, we’d carry cans of Brasso and cleaning rags because the doorknobs and other fixtures in the house were brass, and quickly tarnished by the sea air. The three of us had uniforms. In the daytime, stretch jeans and burgundy sweatshirts. In the afternoons, Lacoste dresses. In the evening, if there were guests and we were serving, strange hippy dresses that our boss had sourced from some hippie seamstress in Camden. There were several dogs underfoot that were not housebroken, so that while we prowled around with our Brasso, polishing up the fixtures, we also patrolled the floors in case one of the animals had had an accident. Accidents were very common!

Wow! I didn’t expect to be taking this trip down memory lane. But there it is. Working since the age of thirteen, and lucky enough to have grown up on a hill, beside a lake, in a small town where everyone knew each other. And had secrets. And gossiped. And gave me a lot of fodder to become a writer.

Cover Copy—Can You Help?

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, today asking for some feedback from those who read the Maine Crime Writers’ blog.

I’ve written twice before about the 1993 historical romance I’ve been completely rewriting to shift the focus to the heroine’s journey. You can read those here and here if you’re interested. Finally, Treacherous Visions is just about ready to launch. Only one more proofread (I hope!) to go. Well, that and writing the promo/cover copy and designing the cover.

That’s where I could use some help. The basic book description isn’t a problem.  Here’s what it will probably say:

In today’s world, she would be called psychic, or a channeler, or perhaps a person with a gift. In the first half of the seventeenth century there were other names for such people—words like witch and sorcerer.

On the surface, Mercy Browne seems like an ordinary young Englishwoman, but she has known since childhood that she must keep secret the fact that she has disturbing visions. That they always involve violence and death is bad enough, but when she is in the thrall of one, she enters a trancelike state. Every vision throws her into treacherous waters, for if the wrong person notices her odd behavior, in England or in the New World, she will be in mortal danger.

Just for grins, this is what AI came up with from a description

In the case of most books, cover copy also includes blurbs—quotes from other authors or from reviews of the author’s previous work in reputable review journals like Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, or (in the case of historical novels) Historical Novels Review.

Therein lies the problem. I already have plenty of potential quotes, but I am not sure which ones to use. Further, I am not sure it’s fair to readers to use quotes that don’t apply to this specific book, even if I specify what book they do refer to. Yes, I could ask writer friends to read the new version and blurb it, but that route has, frankly, always bothered me. Of course my friends are going to say nice things about it. And I’m not at all convinced that readers think another writer’s opinion of a work is all that important anyhow, at least not compared to the opinion of a professional, unbiased reviewer.

What do you think? I’d really appreciate your comments, especially in relation to the sampling of quotes I’m including below.

current front runner for cover with review quote

Reviews of original 1993 version, which  had a different title, different character names, started in what is now Chapter Six, and was 24,000 words longer than the present book:

“a unique, action-packed, well-written supernatural historical . . . an exciting novel that readers will want to finish in one sitting.” The Talisman

“Vivid.” RT

An “enchanting tale.” Maine in Print

Reviews of other historical novels I’ve written:

“Rich and lushly detailed, teeming with passion and intrigue, this is a novel in which you can happily immerse yourself in another time and place.” RT on The Pleasure Palace

“Emerson skillfully crafts a strong heroine.” Publishers Weekly on Between Two Queens

 “A solid historical with a refreshingly willful, sexually liberated heroine.” Publishers Weekly on By Royal Decree

 “A first-rate read.” Booklist on By Royal Decree

“Emerson has written a wonderfully absorbing novel that . . . beautifully depicts the difficulty of living in a treacherous period.” Library Journal on At the King’s Pleasure

 “Gifted author Kate Emerson crafts a fascinating novel by weaving historical facts into a winning piece of fiction.” Single Titles on Royal Inheritance

alternate cover background (it’s a boulder in the woods)

So, to reiterate my questions:

Is it cheating to use review quotes from the earlier version?

Is it better to use quotes about other historical novels I’ve written (clearly identified) even though none of them involve paranormal elements?

Has a blurb from a well-known writer or a writer you like ever persuaded you to try a book by someone you’ve never heard of?

Do “customer reviews” such as those at Amazon or on Goodreads make effective blurbs?

Thanks in advance, everyone, and feel free to chime in on cover art as well.

also an alternative, but probably not enough white space for text

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 editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

 

The Unsolved Murder of Dorothy Milliken

From time to time, we introduce you, our readers, with a new Maine author. Today we’re excited to share a blog from Sharon Kitchens about her new true crime, The Murder of Dorothy Milliken.

Sharon Kitchens: When my editor first asked me if I’d consider writing a true crime book, I told him absolutely not. The genre, to me, felt macabre—a space more focused on the lurid details than the real people left behind. Yet, the morning after the call, I found myself settling into my favorite reading chair and pulling up the Maine State Police’s Unsolved Homicides webpage. A few clicks in, and I was reading about Dorothy Milliken, a woman found lying outside a laundromat in Lewiston at 4:45 a.m. on a cold November morning in 1976.

She had left home around 11 p.m., I read, something she often did—laundry was a late-night ritual for her. That detail made me pause. There was something so intimate, so vulnerable, about a woman alone in the quiet hours doing something as ordinary as washing clothes. I started scribbling lines of questions in a notebook.

Not long after, I reached out to a couple of people I know—both former detectives—asking them if I was completely out of my mind for thinking I might write this story. They told me I wasn’t and that I should—that I could bring attention to the case. One offered to connect me with a sergeant at the Maine State Police. That was the turning point. I met with the detective currently assigned to the case and then with Dorothy’s daughter, Tonia. In both meetings, I told them the same thing: I’ll walk away if you want. I wasn’t there to promise closure. I was there to listen.

Because for me, Dorothy is the story. She’s a full person, not just the victim of a violent act. A woman who lived, who loved, who people missed.

Throughout my research, I tried to be responsible. I hope I was. Every meeting I set up and every call or text I made, I was asking people to relive what may be the worst day of their life. Because details matter. The brand of cigarettes she smoked. The length of a high school senior class trip. The color of a shirt. These are the things loved ones hold onto. And when the press gets them wrong, the pain is real.

True crime, if done carelessly, can retraumatize people. My hope with this book was to tell Dorothy’s story with her family. With the understanding that these are real people and what happened to them decades ago still traumatizes them today.

There were limits, of course. Many of the original investigators had died or drifted into quiet retirement by the time I started asking questions. But remarkably, nearly four dozen people—friends, relatives, experts, classmates, neighbors, and former law enforcement—answered my emails and calls. Some opened doors I didn’t even know to knock on. Others helped me drag information previously hidden away into the light.

The Office of the Maine Attorney General and the Maine State Police would not allow me access to case files—even those of closed cases. They weren’t prepared for how far I would dig—or how much I’d find about what had been overlooked or pushed aside. That was deeply frustrating. But I got the chance to know Dorothy and the people who loved her. What I found wasn’t a cautionary tale or a cold case cliché—but a woman who adored her children, made people laugh, and gave more than she took. She loved Ringo Starr, had a sharp eye for fashion, and could drink coffee like a prizefighter—black, no sugar, no cream. She wasn’t just a headline. She was a total badass, really.

Sharon Kitchens has lived in Maine for over two decades. Her debut, Stephen King’s Maine: A History & Guide (Arcadia Publishing, 2024), a Maine bestseller, is an oral history rooted in the real towns behind King’s fictional landscape—endorsed by King himself: “This book by Sharon Kitchens is really interesting. Not all of it is right, but most of it is.”  Her second book, The Murder of Dorothy Milliken, Cold Case in Maine (Arcadia Publishing, 2025) is a meticulously researched account of a nearly half-century-old unsolved homicide. Publishers Weekly called it a “complex, ethical retelling of a life ended far too soon.” Sharon is currently querying agents for her next project—a cultural study of Stephen King’s female characters. She’s a regular at her local library and cafés, where she’s usually found with a stack of books and a lavender latte. Her fondness for Patti Smith’s poetry is matched only by her love of Taylor Swift’s lyrics. She is a cat and dog person.