Lea Wait's Blog, page 69

Weekend Update: December 31, 2022-January 1, 2023

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday), and Jule Selbo (Friday).

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

 

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

Maine Crime Writers Look Ahead to 2023

In today’s group post, we’re sharing some what lies ahead for us in the next year. New books or stories being published, new ventures undertaken. Whatever the journey will be in the year ahead.

Kate Flora: I am absurdly excited that a domestic suspense novel I’ve worked on, loved, and revised for at least twelve years, Teach Her a Lesson, will be published in May by Encircle Publications. 

I’m also looking forward to a new published short story, Fideau Saves the Day, in an as yet untitled anthology of short stories featuring characters in contributor’s mystery series. It was fun to write about the clever dog Joe Burgess acquired from a bad guy who was arrested.

What do your, our readers, think about a our doing a MCW holiday story anthology?

 

 

Maggie Robinson: With any luck, The Book That Will Not Finish Itself will somehow get finished, a holiday novella related to it will miraculously appear thereafter, and the seeds of Something New, Contemporary and Quirky will germinate. 2022 was a somewhat lackadaisical writing year for me, and I have all the good intentions to change that. Of course, you know where that road leads.

John Clark hopes to be ambitious in 2023. With ten or so unpublished books and a potential anthology of mystery/horror stories demanding to be published, Something Gotta Give.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I’m still plugging along on the total rewrite of my 1991 historical novel, Winter Tapestry. Originally written as a mystery, it didn’t sell in that genre but I was offered the chance to have it published as historical romance if I’d just “add 10,000 words” and beef up the romantic elements. The novel ended up being described as “a romantic adventure in Tudor England” and never quite fit into either the mystery or the romance genre. That version had multiple point of view characters. The current effort has just one and I think it’s going to be much better for it. I hope to finish a complete draft by the end of 2022 and then take as much time as I need in 2023 to revise and polish. Still up in the air is whether I will self-publish or try to get my agent interested in hawking it as a “new” book. I haven’t changed the characters or who gets murdered or why, but just about everything else is completely different. Wish me luck.

Jule Selbo: I will be storming ahead on 8 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery and have put as a deadline for myself for a solid draft – the end of February, 2023. I am at a juncture in it now where I am tearing my hair out – but I hope this misery will pass and I can get it down. That means I could get it to my publisher end of March – and since it is a series, they have pushed the edit/cover/etc stuff through pretty quickly. If it could come out end of June????(cross fingers) I’d be two months ahead of how 9 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery took.  I finish my last semester of university professor-ing May 2023 and though I’ll miss reading my students’ screenplays and adding guidance/thoughts/opinions to them – it will be marvelous to have that time back into “my creative life”.  CRIME BAKE and CRIME WAVE and probably KILLER NASHVILLE are the conferences ahead.

Matt Cost: My historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry, will be published on April 12th. Hungarian detective, 8 Ballo, is hired to find a missing young flapper as the tale weaves through legendary celebrities, gangsters, and gets complicated very quickly. Mainely Wicked, the fifth book in my Mainely Mystery series, will be published in August, in which Langdon is hired to find a missing man and becomes involved with witches, Wiccans, and a Wendigo. Pirate Trap, the fifth book in my Clay Wolfe Trap series, will publish in December, in which Clay and Baylee are hired to find a centuries old pirate treasure off the coast of Port Essex.

 

In audio books, Wolfe Trap was just released, and will be followed over the first few months of the year by Mind Trap, Mouse Trap, and Cosmic Trap. Mainely Fear will come to listeners ears at the end of January, hopefully with the rest of the series to follow throughout the year. Velma Gone Awry will debut in audio in the middle of January, three months before the paperback release. At Every Hazard will be available in early February. I hope to follow Jule around to Crime Wave, Killer Nashville, and Crime Bake. And of course, I plan to WRITE ON.

Maureen Milliken: I truly honestly plan on finishing the book I’ve been working on for four years, working title “The Most Dangerous Month.” It is not part of my three-book Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea series, but once I get MDM done and am flogging it to agents, I plan to write the fourth Bernie O’Dea. I won’t go on and on because after four years everyone, including me, is sick of hearing about it.

Open mouth, insert river and magical days.

Sandra Neily: I can relate to Maggie’s “Book That Will Not Finish Itself.” I do plan to get as close as I can to a finished draft of the 3rd Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Assault.” During the writing, four possible murderers are auditioning for the part of The One That Did It. I heard about this strategy from an A List author at Crime Bake and I did that in Deadly Turn.  And I’d like to serialize a sort of memoir that’s part river-guiding anecdotes (folks have begged me to go public with these for years) and part dam fight that hung over the fate of the free-flowing river, even as thousands of us fished, paddled or just loved it … daily. Oh, and if the stock market ever bounces back, I plan to bring out an audio book of Deadly Trespass.

Christmas Mysteries

Charlene D’Avanzo: Many eminent crime writers have penned Christmas-themed stories, so, in the spirit of the season, here are a few:

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie: On Christmas Eve the Lee Family is shocked by a loud crash followed by a wailing scream. They rush upstairs to find overbearing Simeon Lee dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. Poirot, who is in the neighborhood visiting a friend, offers to help. The problem is that many in the household have motive, but it seems nobody had opportunity.

“You yearned for a ‘good violent murder with lots of blood’ So this is your special story–written for you–Agatha Christie, from the dedication

 

The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories: The Mistletoe Murder collects four of veteran crime writer P. D. James’ Christmas murder mysteries penned for magazines that wanted a good, festive murder. Two of the stories feature her famous detective Dalgliesh, making it an ideal read for newcomers and fans alike.

Fatal Grace by Louise Penny “Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.” With this opening line, Louise Penny, author of the fabulous Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries, informs us that even though we are in the magical (and perhaps even mystical) Canadian town of Three Pines, there is still a gritty reality to be faced, even at Christmas time.

Christmas Carol Murder by Leslie Meir is a terrific holiday cozy set in tiny scenic Tinker’s Cove, Maine. Main character Lucy Stone, a local reporter, stars in the town’s production of A Christmas Carol while the town suffers in a severe recession, especially hard at holiday time. But Jake Marlowe, who owns the Downeast Mortgage company, profits from the town’s struggles. When he turns up dead, there’s no shortage of potential killers. Lucy is tasked with getting to the bottom of this murder.

Enjoy!

Audio Books & Movies by Matt Cost

I have recently become engaged with the process of turning my novels into audio books. This has been a fascinating journey and has created a few questions in my mind.

I believe writers and readers have long thought it was almost impossible to make a good adaptation from book to movie. This is not an easy process as I became aware when I went to write a screenplay on my novel Wolfe Trap. You must strip away just about everything and then allow the director to recreate it in their vision.

Thoughts inside the heads of characters disappear. Description of people and places are peeled back to expose the underlying structure but not the flesh and bones of the people nor the richness of the place. The story created by the author is denuded and left to the mercy of the elements in a Maine winter.

I can think of several movies that were as enjoyable, maybe even as the book, but certainly not better. The Shining with Jack Nicholson was pretty darn good, but did it exceed the writing of Stephen King? In mystery books to film you’d have to include Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Big Sleep (1946), and The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Perhaps the best book to flick adaptation was The Godfather. Francis Ford Coppola worked closely with Mario Puzo to create an honest replication of that towering and intense novel. I’d be glad to hear feedback from others on what books to movie adaptations they think were wildly successful.

I recently heard an author saying they didn’t care if the movie made from their book was any good or not (I can’t remember who it was). Their reasoning made perfect sense. Either way, they got paid for the rights. If the movie was a bomb, everybody would say the book was better. If the movie was a success, everybody would say good book, good movie. Win, win.

This brings us to audio books which is much easier to adapt, as everything from the book goes into the audio. But there are other factors to consider. For my Trap books, I have a narrator who is pretty straight forward. Jason Arnold. I like his approach and his voice is a perfect match for Clay Wolfe.

He has only a slight change of inflection, accent, and dialect from character to character, which works well for Maine. I’ve heard male narrators who try to sound like females and vice versa and it is usually a disaster. In a perfect world, you have a male and female narrator, or an entire cast, but that is not my reality.

Wolfe Trap is now available, Mind Trap will be next month, followed by Mouse Trap, and then Cosmic Trap.

And then there is the dreaded mispronunciation. My narrator for Mainely Power did a marvelous job, and nailed toughies like Topsham, but thought that Bowdoin College was pronounced like it is spelled, with an oin on the end. This has hopefully been corrected to the release next month of book two, Mainely Fear.

 

It turns out the narrator for my At Every Hazard historical about Joshua Chamberlain during the Civil War is a pastor. This worked fine for that particular book, but it raised problems for the sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as that book has graphic violence, sex, and language. It looks like Emmett Collins’ voice will be changing between books….

My upcoming book, Velma Gone Awry, coming in April, posed another set of difficulties. It is set in the melting pot of Brooklyn in the 1920’s. The protagonist, 8 Ballo, is a second generation American, so his voice is pretty straightforward. But you also have the Irish cop, the Jewish journalist, the Black entrepreneur, as well as a whole host of Italians, Germans, and eccentric characters.

For Velma Gone Awry, a narrator with a wide range of voices was necessary, and I absolutely love the job that Colin Martin is doing. It should be available in the middle of January. His range is wonderful and brings the book to life. I find myself thinking, oh, that’s how so and so sounds. Are there any audio books that do that for you? I’d love to hear.

I am quite excited to announce the paperback release this past week of the fourth book in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, Cosmic Trap. This time, a government task forces hires Clay and Baylee to investigate unexplained aerial phenomena over the skies of Port Essex.

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 four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, due out in August of 2023. He has also published three books in the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex series, with the fourth, Cosmic Trap, due out in December of 2022.

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 will combine his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry.

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.

Garlic is Better than Ten Mothers

Jim Harrison, the poet, talks frequently in his food writing about discovering garlic for the first time when he moved away from home in the Midwest to New York. I learned about garlic in 1967, in the kitchen of my friend Dominic Giaccobi’s mother, down at the end of Huntington Ave. in Hyde Park.

My mother was a decent cook, though because she worked, our dinners often consisted of the standard: meat, starch, and vegetable, some of it miracle space-age instant food and some of it (vegetables, especially) frozen. Tasting the homemade tomato sauce in Mrs. Giaccobi’s kitchen, sitting at the table after school with her hovering over me saying “Eat, Eat,” introduced me to the wonders of spices and the warmth of the kitchen.

In my hippie headband days, I wore a purple-gray bandana with the legend Garlic is As Good As Ten Mothers. What I didn’t realize until lately was that it referred to a 1980 documentary film about the benefits of garlic called Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers. Appropriately enough, it was filmed at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California.

Garlic was my gateway drug to cooking with flavor and spice. As soon as I was away from home and cooking for myself, a woman friend introduced me to rosemary, the sharp piney-resin flavor that enhances roast chicken and lamb. I’ve forgotten her name, but the power of the memory is that I’ve grown rosemary (and garlic) everywhere I’ve lived since then. And oregano, thyme, dill, and parsley.

A recent dinner with friends, hosted by a couple whose husband is, like me, the family cook, reminded me of Mrs. Giaccobi. Bill, who is also Italian, put together what his family called the Sunday Sauce, slow-cooked meat (sausage, beef, and meatballs), rigatoni pasta, and a dousing of marinara sauce to keep things moist. It was, as many of our gatherings are, a raucous meal, and just what we all needed after this long stretch of not feeling able to meet in groups.

It’s such a cliché to say that food is love, and yet—we forget. The care Mrs. Giaccobi put into her food was her daily gift, the daylong slow-cooking and tasting from the back of Bill’s stove one of the most potent ways to say that you love people. It’s a way to care for people, to love in the mode of philia, the love for the friends in your circle and the ones who may someday be.

The original phrase, of course, was that garlic is better than ten mothers for keeping the “girls” away. I much prefer the shorter, less specific form. For love, for care of your circle, garlic is as good than ten mothers. Maybe better.

Weekend Update: December 24-25, 2022

Merry Christmas everyone!

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Dick Cass (Monday), Matt Cost (Tuesday), and Charlene D’Avanzo (Thursday), and there will be 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 published the fourth book in his Clay Wolfe/Port Essex Trap series, Cosmic Trap, this past week. The first book in the series, Wolfe Trap, came out on Audible this week as well. The second book, Mind Trap, will be out on audible next month.

Kate Flora: A new Apple program to produce audio books has chosen some of my Joe Burgess mysteries as part of their initial rollout. Here’s a link to Redemption: https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/redemption-a-joe-burgess-mystery-book-3/id1640348627?itsct=books_box_link&itscg=30200&ls=1

 And here’s their blurb about the book:

This is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator.
“Great characters, interesting plot, action-galore and ‘cop-speak’ that is realistic enough to put you right in the thick of things, this is a police-procedural that is not to be missed.” ~John E. Donovan, Verified Reviewer

Burgess’s hopes for a calm Columbus Day picnic slam up against reality when two boys spot a dead body in the water.

It’s Reggie the Can Man—a damaged, alcoholic veteran who Burgess has tried to patch back together since they returned from Vietnam. Now, Reggie’s fight for redemption is over.

Then the ME questions Reggie’s accidental drowning, giving Burgess one last chance.

As Burgess dives deep, he uncovers Reggie’s ex-wife, his scofflaw son, industrial toxins, corrupt businessmen, and that Reggie isn’t the only one in need of redemption.

“Redemption was right up there with those by my favorite mystery writers (Ian Rankin, Carolyn Rose, Felix and Dick Francis).” ~David Edgar Cournoyer, Verified Reviewer

“Excellent, fast pace, intriguing story line. Well developed characters and storytelling. Loved the series, can’t wait for next novel.” ~Normy, Verified Reviewer

THE JOE BURGESS MYSTERIES
Playing God
The Angel of Knowlton Park
Redemption
And Grant You Peace
Led Astray
A Child Shall Lead Them
A World of Deceit

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

The Snake. Jane Goodall. River Evil …

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil and feeling the power of evil way too much.

And then I watched President Zelensky’s speech to the U.S. Congress (12.25.22). It struck me that this man has come to symbolize both. He is willing to hold close the evil done to his country and his people—hold it so close that he can spill it out raw to people who need to know and even feel it. But the part of him that shines triumphant, even in this dark, brutal winter, is his goodness and his willingness to share the goodness and sacrifice of his people so we can also share it and lean toward it.

Over two decades ago I wrote a letter about good and evil to my daughter as she was deep in despair after September 11th. Today I share it with you on the darkest night of the year. More light coming soon…

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

September 12, 2001

Today I woke, thinking of the plane hitting the World Trade Center… and thought of you and how you told me last night that you did not want to live in such a bad world.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I turned away from my “church” religion because no one at my church could explain why children suffered and died in huge famines, floods, and wars. Years later, in college, reading widely about how people have always tried to reconcile the nature of both good and evil existing in the world, reading about how we have evolved into better creatures while at the same time committing atrocities against each other, I must have come to my own resolution about good and evil.

I hope that you will also come to your own understanding and not feel defeated by yesterday’s horrors.

“It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.” ― Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

In fact, recently, you gave me a reminder of how we accept evil and good as part of our world, how we find triumph and goodness in the middle of despair. You asked me to read Jane Goodall’s book “A Reason For Hope” and I did. Jane thought the world of the chimps was a more perfect, natural world. Their society was caring and nurturing; how could humans be destroying such creatures, she thought. She and her research staff were shocked to witness the chimp wars where (probably maintaining territorial control) they snatched and killed the babies of family members, pulled apart chimps they had known for years, and committed various atrocities against each other.

It was a dark time for her. This darkness was reflected in the evil Jane felt around her as the jungle was destroyed and as she came to feel strongly about our cruelty to animals in labs and research. At the end of her book, she comes through the darkness, sees beyond the evil to the essential goodness in the chimps, to our ability as humans to make progress: regrow the jungle, plant trees, enact new laws and procedures for lab animals, develop products without animal testing. Faced with evil in a very personal way, she decides that hope and goodness are the stronger element and she finds clear examples of their stronger powers.

I hope that you do too.

Humans have always had to deal with the problem of evil. Every culture tries to explain how they are related, linked, even useful to each other. Without the blackest darkness of night, could we celebrate the rippling sunshine on rivers. Can we know the light—feel the joy of light—without knowing the darkness? That is the question.

Christians believe the Bible’s good and evil origin story. Eve is expelled from the Garden of Eden (a perfect place where there is no good or evil), because she listens to the devil (serpent) and eats the apple that gives her the knowledge of good and evil. God expels her from the garden, saying she will live this knowledge. She will “bring forth children in pain.”

So he sent us out with pain, but in this story, he sent us out with children. And for me, (as you know) that has been the greatest gift. In our creation story, we were sent out with both pain and joy … and children.

All cultures around the world have stories about the origins of good and evil, but always the good—the hope—triumphs.

Magazine cover: Bill Cosby’s accusers.

I can-actually see that around me. When I was your age, assaulting women was considered a private affair or not worthy of much attention. Unless the woman died. Now we have evolved to understand the evil of the misuse of power and rage. Women (in many countries) have the right to a safe life. Does this stop the evil of abuse? Not always, but we made progress recognizing the value of women and their right to be protected.

I see this evolution as the triumph of good, not in a perfect world, but the growth of goodness because we are working to protect and take care of people and we did not do that before.

Haines, Alaska’s version of the Women’s March. January 21, 2017

In Maine, The Great Works dam comes down. In the text, check the amazing video link to the story.

Years ago, people tried to dam every river in sight. Even today in China, the mighty and gorgeous Yangzee is dying underneath the crime of the biggest dam on the planet. I believe that one day, the Chinese will know the evil of this crime against nature. Here today, in our country the dams are starting to come down. I never thought that in my life, I would see this turn of events, that people would see this particular evil, this crime against the value and health of rivers and actually begin to reverse the process. I do see examples of the triumph of goodness and knowledge over the forces of darkness, evil and ignorance.

But I do believe we will always have both in the world.

Last night after you went to bed, on the news they showed the long lines of New Yorkers waiting to give blood: out the hospital doors, down the streets—people all waiting hours to give blood, to do what they could. That is an image of powerful good that is at least as powerful to me as the one of the plane slamming into the building.

I know that you have experienced your own darkness, but you have been lifted up and carried on by the goodness and light of the many people who love you and have helped you through the darkness. I know you must sort out your own personal truth about good and evil.

I wrote you this letter to let you know that we are all on a search, we all have moments of doubt, and that we all have questions about evil. For me, the goodness of your being here outweighs any evil the world may toss my way. I have confidence that you will find your way as you walk between the darkness and the light; and I DO love you more than all the chocolate chip cookies on earth.

Moo

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

Thank you, Bob!

Sandy’s 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. The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” was published in 2021. Her third “Deadly” is due out in 2023. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

The Snake. Jane Goodall. River Evil Reversed.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil and feeling the power of evil way too much.

And then I watched President Zelensky’s speech to the U.S. Congress (12.25.22). It struck me that this man has come to symbolize both. He is willing to hold close the evil done to his country and his people—hold it so close that he can spill it out raw to people who need to know and even feel it. But the part of him that shines triumphant, even in this dark, brutal winter, is his goodness and his willingness to share the goodness and sacrifice of his people so we can also share it and lean toward it.

Over two decades ago I wrote a letter about good and evil to my daughter as she was deep in despair after September 11th. Today I share it with you on the darkest night of the year. More light coming soon…

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

September 12, 2001

Today I woke, thinking of the plane hitting the World Trade Center… and thought of you and how you told me last night that you did not want to live in such a bad world.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I turned away from my “church” religion because no one at my church could explain why children suffered and died in huge famines, floods, and wars. Years later, in college, reading widely about how people have always tried to reconcile the nature of both good and evil existing in the world, reading about how we have evolved into better creatures while at the same time committing atrocities against each other, I must have come to my own resolution about good and evil.

I hope that you will also come to your own understanding and not feel defeated by yesterday’s horrors.

“It is these undeniable qualities of human love and compassion and self-sacrifice that give me hope for the future. We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.” ― Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

In fact, recently, you gave me a reminder of how we accept evil and good as part of our world, how we find triumph and goodness in the middle of despair. You asked me to read Jane Goodall’s book “A Reason For Hope” and I did. Jane thought the world of the chimps was a more perfect, natural world. Their society was caring and nurturing; how could humans be destroying such creatures, she thought. She and her research staff were shocked to witness the chimp wars where (probably maintaining territorial control) they snatched and killed the babies of family members, pulled apart chimps they had known for years, and committed various atrocities against each other.

It was a dark time for her. This darkness was reflected in the evil Jane felt around her as the jungle was destroyed and as she came to feel strongly about our cruelty to animals in labs and research. At the end of her book, she comes through the darkness, sees beyond the evil to the essential goodness in the chimps, to our ability as humans to make progress: regrow the jungle, plant trees, enact new laws and procedures for lab animals, develop products without animal testing. Faced with evil in a very personal way, she decides that hope and goodness are the stronger element and she finds clear examples of their stronger powers.

I hope that you do too.

Humans have always had to deal with the problem of evil. Every culture tries to explain how they are related, linked, even useful to each other. Without the blackest darkness of night, could we celebrate the rippling sunshine on rivers. Can we know the light—feel the joy of light—without knowing the darkness? That is the question.

Christians believe the Bible’s good and evil origin story. Eve is expelled from the Garden of Eden (a perfect place where there is no good or evil), because she listens to the devil (serpent) and eats the apple that gives her the knowledge of good and evil. God expels her from the garden, saying she will live this knowledge. She will “bring forth children in pain.”

So he sent us out with pain, but in this story, he sent us out with children. And for me, (as you know) that has been the greatest gift. In our creation story, we were sent out with both pain and joy … and children.

All cultures around the world have stories about the origins of good and evil, but always the good—the hope—triumphs.

Magazine cover: Bill Cosby’s accusers.

I can-actually see that around me. When I was your age, assaulting women was considered a private affair or not worthy of much attention. Unless the woman died. Now we have evolved to understand the evil of the misuse of power and rage. Women (in many countries) have the right to a safe life. Does this stop the evil of abuse? Not always, but we made progress recognizing the value of women and their right to be protected.

I see this evolution as the triumph of good, not in a perfect world, but the growth of goodness because we are working to protect and take care of people and we did not do that before.

Haines, Alaska’s version of the Women’s March. January 21, 2017

In Maine, The Great Works dam comes down. In the text, check the amazing video link to the story.

Years ago, people tried to dam every river in sight. Even today in China, the mighty and gorgeous Yangzee is dying underneath the crime of the biggest dam on the planet. I believe that one day, the Chinese will know the evil of this crime against nature. Here today, in our country the dams are starting to come down. I never thought that in my life, I would see this turn of events, that people would see this particular evil, this crime against the value and health of rivers and actually begin to reverse the process. I do see examples of the triumph of goodness and knowledge over the forces of darkness, evil and ignorance.

But I do believe we will always have both in the world.

Last night after you went to bed, on the news they showed the long lines of New Yorkers waiting to give blood: out the hospital doors, down the streets—people all waiting hours to give blood, to do what they could. That is an image of powerful good that is at least as powerful to me as the one of the plane slamming into the building.

I know that you have experienced your own darkness, but you have been lifted up and carried on by the goodness and light of the many people who love you and have helped you through the darkness. I know you must sort out your own personal truth about good and evil.

I wrote you this letter to let you know that we are all on a search, we all have moments of doubt, and that we all have questions about evil. For me, the goodness of your being here outweighs any evil the world may toss my way. I have confidence that you will find your way as you walk between the darkness and the light; and I DO love you more than all the chocolate chip cookies on earth.

Moo

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

Thank you, Bob!

Sandy’s 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. The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” was published in 2021. Her third “Deadly” is due out in 2023. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

A Man with a Gun, or a Beaver, or a Bear?

Kate Flora: I am progressing, much more slowly than I’d hoped, toward the end of the next Joe Burgess mystery, Book eight, Such a Good Man. I’ve known since long before I started the book who the killer and victim are and why the victim was killed. Unlike many of my books, I didn’t know much beyond that. In a way, writing the book has been a lot like reading a book. I am discovering what the story is about as I go along, just as my readers will.

Recently, I was working on a section of the book and found myself feeling bored. I wasn’t sure whether it was my plotting, or the pace of the story, or my writing (all equally upsetting, I think.)  I jokingly posted on Facebook that since I was finding my storytelling boring, it was probably time to bring in a man with a gun. My helpful FB friends suggested that instead of a man, I should bring in a beaver. Or perhaps a bear. Or was that a bear with a gun?

Those suggestions helped to lighten my mood and make me stop worrying about whether the book is sufficiently compelling to keep my readers reading. For the draft, at least, I’ve put in a bear, although a bear without a gun. Whether he gets to stay in the book depends on rewrite, of course. But in earlier books, Burgess has noted that while most people don’t see them, if you’re a cop driving around a city at night, especially a city with parks and rural surroundings, you’ll see all sorts of wildlife. So it is possible that the bear will stay.

Thinking about the bear, and whether a book can be boring, and how a writer constructs a story’s plot, reminds me that at this point, with 24+ published books, and another five or six in the drawer, I’ve written enough books to know that every book is going to be different. I may think I’ve got the process knocked and I know what I’m doing, and then a book will come along that refuses to conform to what I know. Books have their own rhythms and their own needs. Sometimes it will feel almost like automatic writing. The characters will be telling the story and I am just along to take notes. Once, they did that for nineteen chapters and then decamped. When I protested that they’d abandoned me, they said, “You’re the writer. Figure it out.”

Back when I had less experience, it used to scare the heck out of me when characters took over. I used to protest that I was in charge and I used to be terrified about how I could make the story work when I didn’t know why my characters were doing what they were doing. Now, when a character does something unexpected, or steers the story in a new direction, I’ve learned to go with it. Let them show me where they want to go.

Years ago, when I was just learning about how characters could misbehave, or stubbornly refuse to let themselves be written, I was listening to a panel of authors at the Exeter, New Hampshire library. A writer in the audience described a book she was writing in which her central character was being difficult and she disliked the character and didn’t know what to do about it. Two of the panelists gave her advice. The first said to tell the character to straighten out and cooperate or she was out of the book. The second said the writer should take the character for a ride in the car and talk over their difficulties.

To me, very new to the writing game, hearing experienced writers articulate both strategies was fascinating. It was also fascinating, at an early writers’ conference, to hear writers talking about the voices in their heads, and how they got increasingly insistent as the day wore on until the writer sat down and “let them out.” It’s cool to be part of a profession where hearing voices in our heads is actually okay and normal.

I’ve also learned, often from going back and rereading a draft of a book, how much of writing is taking place on an unconscious level. I’m struggling with making scenes vivid and making dialogue fit the characters and keeping the pace of the story brisk. When I reread, I will find, on another level, that I’ve been using colors, and time, and the weather to underscore my character’s mood and challenges. In Led Astray, it wasn’t until I’d read the draft that I realized the weather was dark and gloomy from the opening scene and didn’t lighten until Burgess has solved the crime and rescued a child at risk.

No doubt there are many, many more lessons ahead. I’ve come to see my writing process as a wheel. It goes around, and along the way I master parts of my craft, and then I start over at a different level and learn a whole new set of skills or refine the ones I’ve learned. Or, as I sometimes see it, it is an endless uphill trajectory. Not a daunting trajectory but an exciting one, one on which I am always learning, always getting challenged by what I need to learn, always, I hope, getting better at the job or at least some aspects of the job.

Lately I haven’t been very excited about the process—that boring writing problem I began with—but writing this down reminds me that it will always be this way. Probably there is an important lesson about from writing a boring scene that will inform many future scenes. Maybe the that brown bear, ambling down a city street, is more than just a bear. It’s a surprise and challenge for me as well as for my readers. It may jar me and my characters out of traditional thinking to consider something new.

Enough. Happy Holidays to all our MCW faithful. We appreciate your presence, your comments and your thoughts. If you haven’t read it yet, I’ve written you a new holiday story for 2022, The Rescue. I hope you enjoy it. The Rescue. kateclarkflora.com/the–rescue/

Reform School: A Christmas Story

Christmas in Moosetookalook

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. Although I haven’t written any new Liss MacCrimmon mysteries in the last few years, the fictional village of Moosetookalook, Maine and the characters who live there are still close to my heart. For one thing, although Moosetookalook may not be a real place, it could be. There are certainly plenty of similar communities in my part of the state, and some of them get quite festive for the holiday season.

Meetinghouse Park, Farmington (photo by Don Waterhouse)

Take Farmington, Maine, the next town over from mine. They have Christmas traditions, of course, but they also celebrate Chester Greenwood Day. Chester, back in the late nineteenth century, invented earmuffs and manufactured them right there in his home town. Originally the state legislature declared December 21, the first day of winter, as Chester Greenwood Day. Farmington held a parade and hosted assorted competitions and concerts. But before long it occurred to the organizers that they could get even more mileage out of the fame of their local hero if they moved the festivities to the first Saturday of December, before the students at U. Maine Farmington left for Christmas vacation. It seems to have worked. If you decide to attend next year, keep in mind that everyone is expected to wear earmuffs, even pets. There are even extra large pairs to go on vehicles.

But getting back to Moosetookalook, two of the thirteen books in my series are set during the Christmas season. This wasn’t my idea. Editors of cozy mysteries really like Christmas books. But I was happy to comply with the suggestion, as long as I got to add my own strange little twists.

The idea for A Wee Christmas Homicide came from a column I had clipped out of one of Maine’s daily newspapers way back in May of 1998. Remember Beanie Babies? For a year, maybe two, they were all the rage—the Christmas present every kid wanted to find under the tree. When they were in short supply, some clever but dishonest entrepreneurs came up with the idea of smuggling the Canadian version across the border into Maine. For my book, which was published in 2009, I invented Tiny Teddies and gave three shops in Moosetookalook, including Liss MacCrimmon’s Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium, the last stockpile of the legitimate article. Then I added a “Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas” promotion, sponsored by local businesses, a chase on snowmobiles, a love triangle, whoopie pies for desert on Christmas Day, and (of course) a murder.

The second Christmas mystery, Ho-Ho-Homicide, was inspired by something very close to home. When it was published in 2014, my husband and I were operating a mom-and-pop, cut-your-own Christmas tree farm that opened the day after Thanksgiving and continued selling trees until Christmas Eve. For fictional purposes, I enlarged the operation, changing it into one that shipped trees to the city instead of selling them locally. Liss is roped into helping an old high school friend who has just inherited the Christmas tree farm from a relative who vanished mysteriously years before—right after a body turned up, neatly netted, in a shipment of his trees. I must admit, I got a kick out of finding a unique use for the netter that was essential to our little business.

Of course there are lots of twists and turns to the story, and an assortment crimes in addition to murder and attempted murder. I hoped readers would enjoy all the Christmas-related details and recommend the book to their friends, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what would happen the following year. It was shortly after the paperback reprint edition came out that someone on the Tonight Show staff came across a copy and thought the title and subject matter might be good for a few laughs. The result? Jimmy Fallon held up Ho-Ho-Homicide, wisecracked about the possibility of a “ho” in the plot (which wasn’t actually too far from the truth), and then gave me the kind of pull-quote many a writer would kill for: “It’s got two things that everyone likes: Christmas . . . and murder.”

Although both books are getting hard to find in print editions, they are still available through libraries and in electronic format. Other books in the series that are set in winter are The Corpse Wore Tartan, The Scottie Barked at Midnight, and A View to A Kilt.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others, including several children’s books. 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. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Her most recent publications are The Valentine Veilleux Mysteries (a collection of three short stories and a novella, written as Kaitlyn) and I Kill People for a Living: A Collection of Essays by a Writer of Cozy Mysteries (written as Kathy). She maintains websites at www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.