Lea Wait's Blog, page 73

Weekend Update: October 29-30, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be a group post on Monday and posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday), Kate Flora (Thursday), and Maggie Robinson (Friday).

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

Here’s a chance to get a book by Katherine Hall Page, one of our frequent guest authors, for a great price. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HD61FE?_bbid=91401177&tag=dealsemailsite-20

 Matt Cost will be at the Boston Book Festival on October 29th. He will be at the IPNE table from 11-12 a.m. and the Sisters in Crime table from 1-2 p.m. signing books (along with Kate Flora!)

Matt Cost and Encircle Publications have signed an audible contract with Colin Martin through ACX for the April 2023 release of Velma Gone Awry; A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery.

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

 

Public Libraries for Everyone? Not So Fast . . .

“Travel New England and you are bound to see Carnegie libraries”

Charlene D’Avanzo: Earlier this week I spoke to a great group of readers at the Baxter Library in Gorham, Maine. My talk – “why a scientist who never wrote a word of fiction became a mystery writer” is one I’ve given many times.  Like many writers, I love libraries and am delighted to support them.

U.S. public libraries, which have been around for nearly 200 year, have an interesting history. The first U.S. tax-supported library was in New England – Peterborough New Hampshire – in 1833. Reverend Abiel Abbot proposed that the new library be owned by the people and free to all of the town’s inhabitants. Inspired by Abbot’s idea, in 1849 New Hampshire was the first state to pass a law authorizing towns to raise money to establish and maintain their own libraries.

Philanthropists, especially Andrew Carnegie, helped increase the number of publiclibraries in the late 19th century. Carnegie built over 2000 libraries in the US and many more in the British Commonwealth. By 1919 there were 3,500 in the U.S., nearly half of them known as “Carnegie libraries”. Carnegie believed in giving to the “industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by the help of others”.

Travel New England and you are bound to see Carnegie libraries. In Freeport, for example, the previous library is a classic example.

I’ve spent pretty much my whole life in New England, where libraries were, I assumed, for everyone, everywhere. Unfortunately, libraries in the south were segregated until very recently.

When we think about the civil rights movement many of us picture, I assume, Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat or Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. Lesser known is the issue of library segregation, and the great lengths that college-aged students went to in order to integrate them.

In his memoirs, Justice Clarence Thomas said he used a black library as a boy. The public library system was finally desegregated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act that outlawed discrimination in public places like public libraries. It is truly a shocking and sad reality that library desegregation took place so recently in our country.

To Kill or Not to Kill by Matt Cost

To kill or not to kill. That is the question that we all must ask ourselves at one point or another. Well, at least, if we are mystery writers.

In a cozy mystery, there is usually no killing on the page. A body, delicately placed on a floor is the closest we get to murder. My mysteries (sometimes verging on thrillers) are not cozy. People die on the pages. The Bad and the Good.

So, if you read my books, you know people are going to die. My very first mystery, Mainely Power, starts with the murder of a security guard at a nuclear power plant. This is the type of killing that is easy for the author to get away with as the reader is not invested in this man yet, so the impact is minimal.

Of course, killing the baddies on the page is almost always acceptable. Whether they be flunkies or kingpins, those readers who don’t possess overly squeamish stomachs, get a thrill out of the villains getting their comeuppance. I have killed many of those over the years and have yet to receive any flak in that regard from readers.

As a matter of fact, I believe that readers probably cheer when the villain of Love in a Time of Hate is revealed and then dispensed. The baddie in this case has few grey areas, even if initially presented as a good person.

But what of the complicated antagonist who has redeeming features or has been driven to their bad actions by a difficult childhood, trauma in life, or had their faith and trust in the institutions of the world destroyed? These are more difficult to simply kill and often create a sense of unease or even disappointment in the reader.

Even more delicate of a proposition is the killing of a beloved character. This happens in Mainely Power, and I am still accused of being a terrible person for the murder I wrote upon the pages. As a matter of fact, it got me temporarily barred from Facebook, but that’s another story.

I kill one such cherished character in the upcoming December release of Cosmic Trap. I’m not revealing who but be advised. Death will occur, the stakes will be raised, and hopefully, the reader will be rapt within the pages. The same will happen with the next August release of Mainely Wicked.

My belief is that if you never kill any of the beloved and main characters, the risk and stakes are lowered, and the reader can coast along knowing that nothing bad as death will happen. This glossed over reality of life and death concerns me for its falseness. We don’t live in a world where only the bad die and the good live. You can only escape into a fictional world as long as that place is believable on some level.

What say you? To kill or not to kill?

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.

Slouching Toward November

Been running around quite a bit this month, promoting the new book. The response to The Last Altruist has been very gratifying, more so than any of the previous books. I’m particularly grateful to Longfellow Books, Sherman’s Maine Coast Books, and the South Portland library for the boosts. And, of course, thank you to everyone who’s read and/or bought The Last Altruist.

It’s a bleary rainy October Tuesday morning on Trout Brook, which reminds me how close November is. November has always been a mixed blessing for me. We’re more clearly losing the light (commonly rendered as “the days grow shorter,” which isn’t quite accurate). The garden is cleared out, the soil turned. Garlic planted, the dead asparagus fronds cut back and composted. More bulbs and perennials planted against the need for color when we need it the most: come spring.

Most of my life I’ve dreaded November, feeling it deeply as the dying of the year. The brown and the gray take over the green, the rain takes over from the sun, the chill buries the memory of warmth. It’s always a temptation in November to indulge the lugubrious side of my nature.

This past year, I added a couple of rocks to that bag. As some of you know, I lost both my parents in quick succession last year at this time, my father on November 7, my mother on December 12. I still think of them every day, of course, and though the loss doesn’t diminish, it becomes more manageable with time. But it darkens November that little bit more.

I’ve learned to manage my own response to the slow dance of November, though, by not taking on grand new projects, by doing my best to recognize it’s a better time for me to batten down the physical and emotional hatches against the cold dark days and nights ahead. What sustains me, too, in a transition to rest is the love of my remaining family and the care and feeding of, and by, my friends.

We speak knowingly of natural cycles, acknowledge how weather and the natural world undergo periods of activity and contraction, flourishing and rest. We wax on about the gorgeous foliage without remembering that the death of the leaves makes possible the next crop. And we rarely apply our knowledge of nature’s cycles to our own natures.

We push ourselves through our schedules and our disciplines, often without acknowledging our need, like everything else in the world, to rest and regroup. Which is why I’m trying to learn to see November as an opportunity, rather than a time to be gotten through on the way to somewhere else, an opportunity to rest, to be calm.

If you can find it in yourself to breathe, to allow yourself a little rest here and there, I’d recommend it. The work will always be there, as will the responsibilities and the expectations we carry. The road is long. A breathing space will not brighten your month of November, but it could very well ease your heart.

NaNoWriMo Revisited: You Still have Permission to Suck

This post appeared several years ago. As I, and many, many others, are on the cusp of trying again this November, I am reposting it with a few updates. Haven’t tried it yet? Why not this year? It’s fun!

Kate Flora: Permission to suck? A pretty provocative statement, yes? So I guess I should explain. Yesterday was a cold, rainy, miserable day and I was wrestling with a manuscript that felt like an octopus with a thousand legs. Or arms. Or both. I couldn’t handle it, subdue it, make it behave in any way, and the process was making me grouchy. Then I decided I’d write this blog post, and stared at the blank screen and couldn’t come up with an idea. So I went to my friends on Facebook and asked for help.

Help they did, of course. I now have enough topics to carry me through to the New Year. And the first one was so absolutely timely that I decided to take it up: Tips for NaNoWriMo.

In case there is a soul somewhere on the planet who doesn’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writers Month. Every November, writers sign up to write a 50,000 word novel during the month. Signing up means you’ll probably be put into a group where you can go to meetings if you want that for support, and you will be able to log in to chart your word counts and your progress, and get encouraging e-mails throughout the month.

The internet is absolutely full of advice about how to prep for NaNoWriMo, how to do NaNoWriMo. So much advice, in short, that you could probably write a novel using the tips as prompts or just aggregate the advice into a short book. Or is that aggravate? Because with so much advice out there, it can be aggravating. Confusing. Overwhelming. And pretty often, those who are offering the advice are quite certain that they are right.

Should you outline in advance? Have the plot of the work all sketched out? Perhaps have it all storyboarded and taped to your office wall?

The possibilities are endless. And the bottom line, in my opinion, depends entirely on what kind of a writer you are. Or, if this is an early foray into the world of writing, what kind of person you otherwise are. Do you like to do a lot of prepping or do you like sail into an adventure and wing it and see what life brings?

On your behalf, I went out and waded through a bunch of those advicely blogs. And like a retriever, I have brought back the wisdom that speaks to me. You can snap up my thoughts and make them your own, or go atrolling for yourself.

So here, in no particular order, are the bits of advice that I think are most useful if you are going to have fun with NaNoWriMo.

Embrace a new mindset.

Answer “YES!”

Just start and keep going.

Silence your editor, that picky little voice that tells you you’re doing it wrong. If necessary, draw a picture of your editor and stick pins in it. Be silly if you need to be. This is your adventure. Own it.

Write fearlessly.

Write “TK” for missing facts. Don’t stop to look things up. Don’t obsess over what you can’t remember. You can fix all that later.

Embrace Anne Lamott’s advice: it’s okay to write a shitty first draft. You can edit a draft and make it better. You can’t edit a blank page.

Embrace the word discipline.

For once, elevate quantity above quality. Don’t edit. Just keep going. Do keep track of your word count. It’s part of the game.

Keep telling yourself: The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

Remember that you’re not trying to win, you’re trying to be

Don’t let the risk of obsession scare you off

You have permission to suck. Who cares. You may make amazing discoveries in the process.

Unplug. No phone calls. No checking e-mail. No selfies.

Exception: You can make yourself, or your story, a playlist. It can become part of the ritual.

Write in the same place if you can, because the ritual of place can become part of the ritual of writing.

Finally, a bit of heretical advice. The rules say you’re supposed to write something new. But you are writing for you, not for them. If you’ve got the half-finished story in the drawer you’ve never had time to get back to…you are allowed to take it out and finish it. (Don’t tell them I said this.)

November. Your month. You’re the writer. The only thing you have to do is honor your desire to write by giving it the time it deserves. And see where story takes you.

A lot of advice is about prepping…but hey, you’re out of time, and about not bothering agents or editors with your unedited glop at the end. But you wouldn’t do that anyway.

Here are a couple of blogs I used to compile the above. And below, a snippet from a book I wrote during NaNoWriMo one year.

https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/nanowrimo-prep-30-tips-resources-strategies-for-writing-a-book-in-30-days

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/10/04/25-things-you-should-know-about-nanowrimo/

Wedding Bell Ruse

Air-horn blaring, the eighteen-wheeler came barreling at her out of the dark. Callie yanked the wheel, adrenaline surging, as she rocked back into her lane. The Jeep fishtailed wildly as she fought for control. Horn still blaring, the truck rushed past and disappeared into the night. Her breath quick and shallow, nerve-trees tingling, she clung to the wheel. Adrenaline carried her on its sharp, acid flow for another mile before it faded, leaving her drained and alone in a night as dark as Galen’s heart. Then, arms trembling, she abandoned her determined press forward, pulled onto the unpaved shoulder and parked, numb from exhaustion. All she could feel was the biting pressure of her nails–hard, sharp slices of sensation–against the palm of her hands. She had no idea where she was or where she was going. Her only plan had been to keep moving, putting time and distance between herself and the mess her life had become.

How long had she been driving? Ten hours? Twelve? Drive too long without a break and your eyes start playing tricks. You see things that aren’t there, like patches of blood spreading across the road, and you don’t see things that are, like eighteen-wheelers coming at you like Leviathan from the depths. She should get out. Stretch. Walk around in the cold night air and wake herself up. Her body resisted the urging of her brain, stayed inert in the seat.

The night was pure black. No streetlights. No house lights. Wind battered the car, rattling the wipers, panting to get at her as it tore away dried leaves that had sheltered in the depression below the windshield. She watched, eyes at half-mast, as they rustled across the glass like the small animals. It was cold out there. Before she shut off the engine, she’d seen the outside temperature was 38.

She’d left Pennsylvania running on an instinct born of desperation. Get out of town, away from the suspicious looks, the comments, the humiliation. Out of her ransacked apartment and her shredded life. Several hundred miles later, she’d run out of gas—spiritual gas, not petroleum—here on this lonely roadside somewhere in Vermont.

The whole ugly mess had exploded on her a few weeks ago, when she’d woken one morning feeling drugged and groggy, not to her fiancé Galen’s head beside her but to a barren apartment, a stripped office, emptied bank accounts, and note, pinned to his pillowcase by a chip clip that said, “Thanks for everything.” https://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Bell-Ruse-Kate-Flora-ebook/dp/B086K46QHX/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1EBUX2GF5JTN&keywords=wedding+bell+ruse&qid=1666568833&sprefix=wedding+bell+ruse%2Caps%2C114&sr=8-2

You’ve always wanted to write, right? Or you’ve got that half-finished book the drawer that you can’t seem to find the time for? Why not now? True, November is the WORST month for this, but as the cold and dark drive us inside, why not take advantage of that. You’ll be writing about 1700 words a day. It may help to find a writing buddy to keep you on track, and NaNoWriMo can help with that.

Give it a try? What have you got to lose? It may be that the adventure, and the sheer breathless pace will leave you, at the end of the month, excited to keep on writing and finish what you’ve started.

https://nanowrimo.org

Weekend Update: October 22-23, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Dick Cass (Tuesday), Matt Cost (Thursday), and Charlene D’Avanzo (Friday).

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

Maine Crime Writers John Clark, Brenda Buchanan, Vaughn Hardacker, and Kate Flora, along with alum Bruce Coffin, have stories in the new collection from Crime Spell Books.

Results of drawing for giveaway:
The winner of a print copy of guest Sanford Emerson’s Well, Hell is Kait Carson. Congrats and thanks to all who left comments.

Kate Flora: Excited to share the news that my latest Thea Kozak mystery is out:Death Sends a Message (the Thea Kozak Mystery Series, Book 11)NEW RELEASEPUBLISHER DESCRIPTION

A Newborn, a Baby Carriage, and an Ice Cream Cone Leads to a Lingering Mystery in DEATH SENDS A MESSAGE by Kate Flora

–Freeport, Maine, Present Day–

Independent school consultant Thea Kozak is adjusting to motherhood and enjoying maternity leave, having just purchased a hat for her newborn son, when a hysterical woman gains her attention. The woman, also a new mother, claims her baby has just been kidnapped. Determined not to get involved, Thea flags down a police officer and hands off the problem. She returns home to her husband Andre, intending to enjoy their precious weeks of parental leave.

But Thea’s kindness soon brings trouble to her doorstep when a police officer asks questions about her relationship with Addison Shirley, the mother of the kidnapped child, who claimed Thea was a friend before she disappeared.

The couple’s hopes for a peaceful respite are quickly replaced with a break-in, a stalker, and a private school crisis involving star athletes and sexual assault that only Thea can handle. Thea and Andre wrestle with the lingering mystery and competing priorities while reexamining their future…if they live to face it.

Publisher’s Note: Kate Flora is known for taking readers on a near breathless experience with a surprise at every turn. Fans of Sara Paretsky, Laura Lippman, Sue Grafton, and Julia Spencer-Fleming will not want to miss this series.

“If you like your heroines smart, brave, tough, and exuberantly aware of the possibilities of the human heart, look no further than Thea Kozak.” ~S.J. Rozan

”…a terrific, in-your-face, stand-up gal…Stephanie Plum and Thea Kozak have a lot to say to each other.” ~Janet Evanovich

“Kate Flora does what all the great writers do: she takes you inside unfamiliar territory and makes you feel right at home; you climb in and are along for the whole ride.” ~Michael Connelly

“I’ll follow Thea Kozak anywhere. She is simply one of the most refreshing and original heroines in mystery fiction today. And Kate Flora is the rare, graceful writer who pays close attention to how long it takes the body and the heart to heal.” ~Laura Lippman

 

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

“A Mother Moose Won’t Stop Until She Gets You”

Sandy Interviews Wildlife Biologist Ron Joseph on his upcoming book.

I got to know Ron Joseph when he was the wildlife biologist stationed in Greenville where I have a home on Moosehead Lake. I asked Ron to review my first novel, knowing that he’d let me know if I’d strayed from accurate wildlife science or had somehow ducked the threat to Maine’s forest.

He wrote a Deadly Trespass review that still warms my heart:”…a beautiful book that brilliantly captures the battle to conserve Maine’s mythical woods…”

Now Ron’s collected essays and columns and wonderful, delightful but also poignant stories will published in December.  I think he brings the “mythical woods” home to us by opening his history and his heart.

As we talked this week, there was lots of laughter as well as serious moments where he shared his concerns, especially about songbirds: his specialty and also the animals that have his heart.

You can hear Ron relate more of his life and spellbinding stories in this Maine Historical Society interview. It’s great! He’s great!

More than that, you can preorder his book now. ….. Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermits: Memoirs of a Wildlife Biologist. It comes out in early December, and I know exactly who’s going to get one from me as a holiday gift.

I interviewed Ron on October 13th.

Many people have encouraged you to share your wildlife biologist stories. Why?

Ron … simply chopping wood

“I think there’s a growing interest in a simple life and in the natural world. And I think people want to disconnect from their devices and live that life and hear about that life as well.” Ron also thinks encounters and relationships with the natural world increase empathy for others and empathy for wildlife.  (See his goose story … coming up.)

What story has most resonated with readers?

Ron says he’s had the most feedback on a story about a declining goose who approached people for companionship. After people kept telling him about the unusual goose, he traveled north to see for himself. Ron was “surprised and stunned” when the goose came to him and, with cloudy, almost-blind eyes, wanted to be close to him. She held her, felt her backbone and how desperately thin she was, and he checked her band. She was thirteen years old and had traveled from the Northwest Territories, almost 4,000 miles. Ron’s story about the goose seeking out and needing humans and his strong feelings for her resonated strongly with readers of his columns. “When I started out as a biologist, it was scientific consensus that animals didn’t have emotions like we do. Clearly, the science on that has really changed.”

What are some of the tensions wildlife biologists (everywhere) must navigate as they go about their tasks?

Anti-coyote bumper sticker

Ron was quick to answer. “A declining faith in science. Distrust in science.” He thinks in Maine some of this came from the coyote controversy where scientists were clear that killing coyotes would not reduce their numbers. The sporting community felt that was untrue and was very visible and loud about reducing coyotes to protect the deer herd. “However, Maine now has both more deer and more coyotes, even though we have the most liberal coyote hunting laws in the country. There’s no bag limit; hunters can take out as many as they want,” Ron said.

And speaking of deer, Ron shared that it was frustrating to have too many deer in southern Maine. Professionals recommended that the herd be reduced. “Residents who resisted the science came to realize that deer overpopulations ate their gardens and even potted plants on their porches, and they increased the spread of Lyme disease and were dangerous roadway hazards.”

What are some uniquely Maine wildlife biologist challenges?

Ron with a lynx kitten

“Maine has two forest ecosystems that exist next to each other in a transition zone.” He explained that the eastern deciduous forest lies up against the northern boreal forest that needs cold temperatures to support a mix of conifers and other species.

pine marten

“With warming, the deciduous forest moves further north, displacing the boreal forest and animals that need the cold, a shorter warm season, and the trees, plants and habitat in a boreal forest. Lynx, moose, pine marten, and the rare Bicknell’s thrush and many species that live in our boreal forest face increasing stress.”

What’s the most dangerous Maine animal and why? (Are humans involved in causing this danger?)

When a cow moose pulls her ears back, look out.

“A cow moose with a calf. I always tell people to never try and take a picture of a moose calf. I have been charged by a mother bear with cubs, but she stopped short in a bluff charge. Mother moose don’t stop until they get you. I was out in the woods taking a breeding bird survey when a calf came out of the woods and then a female moose showed up on the other side of me. I knew I couldn’t outrun her, so I climbed up a slash pile and she tried to climb up after me, but tangled branches caught her legs and stopped her.” He chuckled. “I was so lucky to have that slash pile.”

In a recent interview you mentioned that song birds are in trouble. Why?

“Songbirds are highly migratory. They spend over half the year in South America. There’s loss of habitat there as well as here, so it’s like the candle’s being burned at both ends. I remember doing breeding bird surveys in the 80’s and 90’s and there were so many singing we couldn’t really count the birds. Twenty years later I could go out and hear and count each individual bird. That’s how many we’ve lost.”

I asked him about clear cutting. “I don’t think it’s necessarily bad. For example, after a cut, the raspberries come in thick and this early successional forest supports many birds who feed there. I don’t support using herbicides after a cut to create site conversions over to softwoods. We still need the kind of diversity that comes after a cut, but I think when biologists from all over the world look at Maine’s north woods, they think we are very lucky to have what we have.”

People love wildlife. What are some things they do right or wrong?

“People are planting more native species to feed birds and animals that depend on Maine plants. That’s good. But in general, just give wildlife room. If you find a fawn, leave it there. Give wildlife space to be.”

Please leash dogs on beaches when sandpipers are present. Yup, that’s me with Jackie and Tiggie.

And Ron was clear about some people not understanding how dogs can affect even small species. When an area has dog limitations (on leash) or prohibitions, he wants people to follow the rules. “Like the sandpipers on the coast. Dogs like to chase them, but after traveling from the arctic, the birds have to double their weight to make the trip to South America. If their feeding regime get interrupted, they have to land in a place like New Jersey to bulk up and that place is like a buzzsaw of hazards for those birds.”

Folks fled to more remote, rural locations during the pandemic. What’s your take on that?

Boreal forest on top of Moose Mt. in Greenville

Ron shared a very large laugh. “I’d like to interview them after black fly season.” He knows many are staying and building big homes, so he’s concerned that trend will “fragment the forest.”  He wants people “to build near existing towns.”

If you could wave a magic wand to benefit wildlife, what would you wish?

His answer was quick. “I want us to get greenhouse gasses to 350 parts per million. We need to avoid the huge increases that are happening now. I think we are now at 415 parts per million, way over where we need to be if we want to protect what we care about.”

(A Sandy note;  Find more info on this dramatic increase here.)

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In His Book, Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermits: Memoirs of a Wildlife Biologist, Ron shares his stories of growing up in rural Maine and working as a wildlife biologist. The book includes humorous stories, such as one about the time he had to count piles of deer dung on designated mile-long lines and encountered a woman who bluntly asked, “So you went to college for that?” Other stories border on the absurd, including one of an influential legislator who pressured Ron to spray concentrated wolf urine on 30 miles of Route 201 in a harebrained waste of taxpayer money to supposedly reduce moose-vehicle collisions. Many of the book’s stories have previously been published in Down East, Maine Boats Homes and Harbors, Bangor Daily News, Moosehead Messenger, PenBay Pilot, and elsewhere.

Ron, birding in Norway

More About Ron: Ronald Joseph was born in Waterville, Maine. Spending childhood summers on his maternal grandparents’ nearby dairy farm, he became fascinated with songbirds, often spending hours perched on stacks of hay bales in a post-and-beam barn watching swallows feed their nestlings. Ron’s mother encouraged his love of birds by giving him a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds. His first bull moose sighting would also leave a deep impression: chased by his grandparents’ dog, the moose ducked beneath a clothesline, and escaped across a hayfield with a bra attached to his antler. Birdwatching, though, became Ron’s passion, inspiring him to pursue a B.S. degree in wildlife conservation and a M.S. in zoology. In 1978, he began a 33-year career, first as a state wildlife biologist, and later as a federal biologist specializing in the restoration of eagles, peregrines, and other endangered species in Maine. Now retired, Ron volunteers for the Kennebec Land Trust, participates in the Maine Bird Atlas, a statewide citizen science project evaluating songbird population trends, and he also leads Maine birding trips.

********

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.

 

New England Crime Bake should be on every writer’s calendar

Like all writers, I’m often asked by aspiring writers about how to get started, as well as many other “how to” things (get published, get an agent, punctuate a clause… you name it).

The number one thing I always suggest, no matter what the question, is that they should attend the New England Crime Bake, which takes place in Dedham, Massachusetts, the second weekend of November every year. (Except 2020, when it was online in a very excellent way).

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve heard  me preach this before around this time of year. Others on this blog write about it, too. There’s a reason for that.

Barbara Ross, Paula Munier and Hank Phillippi Ryan on a panel at the 2015 Crime Bake.

New England Crime Bake is where you can attend conferences about writing, talk to agents and publishers, get a manuscript critique, rub shoulders with your writing heroes, but best of all, hang out with 250 other writers, editors, publishers, agents and people who just love mysteries and writing, who can offer information, support and a lifetime of friendship.

There are also tables of books to buy, fun times in the bar, plenty of coffee, raffles, games and all sorts of other fun.

It also, like nothong else, will give you motivation to write and the belief that writing is a thing you, too, can do. Your genre doesn’t have to be mystery to get something out of it — much of what’s discussed is applicable to writing in general.

Me and my sister Rebecca at 2015 Crime Bake — her first, my eighth.

You also don’t have to be an aspiring writer to attend. Many of the writers there are, well, whatever you are when aspiring is way back beyond your rearview mirror. I’m past aspiring, and have gone every year since my first one in 2008. My sister, Rebecca, tagged along in 2015 because one of her favorite writers, Elizabeth George, was the guest of honor, and has attended every year since because she has so much fun.

This year’s will be my 15th and it’s always my favorite weekend of the year.

This year’s New England Crime Bake is Nov. 11-13 at the Dedham-Boston Hilton in Dedham, Massachusetts. If you can’t make it this year, put it on your calendar for next year. You won’t regret it.

 

Momma, don’t let your babies grow up to be writers! (and a giveaway)

Hello, there. Sandy Emerson here. I’m Kathy/Kaitlyn’s husband and this is my first-ever attempt at writing a blog; so years from now, when you talk of this—and you will—be kind.

“Are you sure?” Kathy asked, looking at me with a raised eyebrow as I sat nervously next to her on the edge of a kitchen chair that I’d hauled into her office. Shadow the cat peered at us around the corner of a nearby filing cabinet.

“OK,” I said, as my stomach did a flipflop and my mind took an imaginary swan dive off one of those jeezley high cliffs way down in Mexico that we used to see on Wide World of Sports. “Do it.”

Shadow padded from the room, shaking her head in disgust.

With a knowing grin on her face my darling wife of fifty-three years clicked the button on her computer mouse and launched into the world the result of seven years’ work, for once not her own but, believe it or not, mine. Well, Hell—The Yarns of Constable Bobby Wing of Skedaddle Gore, Maine was finally loosed upon an unsuspecting and no doubt largely indifferent reading world.

I looked at Kathy and said, with a sigh, “Is it always this exhausting?”

She smiled knowingly. “Yup.”

On March 13, 2015, the redoubtable John Clark posted to this blog: On to a challenge I hope some of you will accept. One of my down the road fantasies is to write a book with sixteen short crime stories, each one set in a different Maine county. One of the really cool things about our state is the number of unusual place names that are real. Ever been to Pripet? How about Wonderland, Pumpkin Valley, Sabino or Slab City (there are three of them). Given such a richness, one could spend hours just coming up with names for each story that would spur a reader’s imagination before they even start reading. Here are a few that I pulled off the top of my Head. The Revenge of the Roque Bluffs Rogue, A Plague of Poison Ployes in Plaisted, The Cardinal Sinner of Sabbathday Lake, Night of Nastiness in Norridgewock and The Twisted Temptress of T9, R7…. So, good readers, Below are the sixteen county names. Grab your handy Delorme Atlas or similar tool and come up with the best story titles for each one. Post them here or email them to me the list I think is most creative with a worthwhile prize mailed to the winner after being announced in my next post here at MCW.”

Brenda Buchanan immediately posted sixteen titles, one for each county. She’s wicked smart, for a lawyer. I posted one—”Deceitful Doings in Dallas (Plantation).”

We were the only takers and John never chose a winner, which is just as well as Brenda should have won for sheer volume—and imagination!

The next morning I woke up with a first sentence running through my head.

“Frenchy Plourde had a reputation as a wicked dink, so it was no real surprise that he had a nasty, pissed-off expression on what was left of his face that January morning when I found him frozen to the floor of his cabin.”

During the next six days Bobby Wing and his world were born. A native Mainer and Coast Guard veteran, Bobby retires to a tiny western Maine mountain town, where, after gaining the friendship and trust of the locals, he is appointed Constable, Fence Viewer, Deputy Fire Warden and Animal Control Officer. The hitch is, because of the Maine state law on police training, which is very expensive and time consuming, Bobby is not granted any police powers to go with his titles. He must, therefore, handle the “stuff” that comes up in town—some of which can get pretty weird—using only his local knowledge and understanding of his neighbors, his senses of humor, whimsy and empathy and his gift of gab. The stories are presented in Bobby’s voice and point of view, as if they are being told directly to the reader over a beer at Sally’s Motel and Bar and Live Bait and Convenience Store. Bobby’s humorous stories of murder, romance, mystery, redemption, adventure, reluctant derring-do and the wages of sin often tend to go on some and staying on topic isn’t always his strong suit, especially if he’s had a couple.

The 4350 word first draft of what came to be titled “Devious Doings in Dallas” was complete six days later on March19. Since I have been her first beta reader over fifty times, Kathy returned the favor. Her first comment was “This is actually pretty funny,” which was encouraging. She suggested that I might consider submitting it to the yearly anthology Best New England Crime Stories. After a bit of tweaking here and there I submitted the final draft of 4400 words on April 2, 2015.

To my amazement I received an email on July 6, from the then editors of the anthology—which included alumna of this blog Barb Ross—accepting “Devious Doings in Dallas” for Red Dawn, the 2015 installment. Upon signing the publication contract I received a check for the magnificent sum of $25.00—signed by Barb, by the way! It also survived the first round of judging for the yearly Al Blanchard award. Amazing! With some revision it has become the second yarn “Devious Doings” in Well, Hell.

Four more “Bobby Wing” stories were to follow between March 13, 2015, and April 15, 2017. All were submitted to Best New England Crime Stories anthologies. Two of them were not taken and appear in print, with significant improvement, for the first time in Well, Hell. “Daybreak Dismay in Dallas” appeared in Windward in 2016. It appears in Well, Hell as a yarn entitled “Wicked Lust and Dismay.” “Deadly Discovery in Dallas” was written and submitted to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in September of 2015 and sat there for 11 months before being rejected. It was accepted for Busted in 2016 and appeared in the 2017 anthology. It has become “Deadly Discoveries,” the third of Bobby’s yarns.

There was a hiatus in my writing between 2016 and 2019 but from then to date I have written five more stories in the series. According to my records I decided on July 25, 2021 to rewrite all my “Bobby Wing” yarns and change the locale to the fictional town of Skedaddle Gore, which was named after a local story of Civil War draft dodgers who “skedaddled” from New York to a spot on the shore of remote Kennebago Lake in Davis Township north of Rangeley which became known locally as Skedaddle Cove.

Four of the five most recently written yarns erupted from my keyboard in a six-month burst I still have a problem believing, from late 2021 to July of this year. At that point I realized that I probably should do something about getting them into print, otherwise what was the point? After watching Kathy/Kaitlyn deal with the writing process in the traditional manner for almost forty years, I decided that at my age I just wasn’t patient enough to go through the rigmarole of getting an agent, signing a representation contract and then sitting around, maybe for years, waiting for said agent to do something.

With modest success Kathy has been republishing several of her earlier books through Draft2Digital, an online self-publishing service which charges the writer a fee—which is far less than most agents charge—only upon sales, which they arrange through a whole raft of platforms such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, and many others. She offered to help me through the process and I hired her as my copy editor and publisher on the spot. What the heck, she works cheap!

I had not counted on the possibility that there might be a downside to this arrangement but over the next two months my lovely and talented spouse suddenly became a professional tyrant, putting me through every agonizing bit of the editing process. Microsoft Spellcheck was, I soon learned, woefully insufficient for our purpose and my seventh-grade punctuation and sentence structure training was totally inadequate—Oxford comma, anyone? I also learned that “stet” only works if your editor is not making dinner.

I truly believe that I have now read and reread Well, Hell so many times that I could probably recite it from memory. Despite some “interesting” discussions and a crushing ego deflation or two, my manuscript and our marriage appear to have survived, and . . . it’s out! It’s even selling! Break out the bubbly! Oh, wait . . . I don’t drink. Right. I forgot. Diet Mountain Dew will have to suffice.

Just for giggles I checked the Microsoft Word meta data on all the files that eventually made up Well, Hell and learned a few interesting things. The final draft contained 69,328 words and was, over the years, actively being written or edited for a total of 452 hours, which works out to 56.5 eight-hour days or 2.8 working months. I also apparently made a total of 9502 edits while producing this book. No wonder I felt exhausted when Kathy hit “send.” At the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. I should therefore realize an income, before taxes of course, of at least $3,277.00, right? Maine’s minimum wage is $12.75 so I actually should get the “Maine bonus” of $5,763.00, or about eight cents a word. Now I just have to sell 1213 e-copies to achieve that goal. Piece of cake!

UPDATE: AUTHOR COPIES HAVE ARRIVED!
The trade paperback edition is now available, too. To be entered to win a print copy of Well, Hell, simply leave a comment on this post. The winner will be drawn on Friday the 21st and announced in the Weekend Update for October 22-23.

 

Sanford Emerson is a native Maine-iac and “boomer” who came of age in the 1960’s and still remembers most of it. Retired after a thirty-five year law enforcement career, he owns a woodworking business and writes humorous mystery stories set in the western Maine mountains. He is married and his wife is still alive. To buy a copy of Well, Hell, follow this link

Putting the Dead in Deadline

Limbo: an uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution; an intermediate state or condition.

We don’t need to discuss the religious or ethnochoreography* definitions. (*the study of dance. Now you’ve learned a new word. Good luck pronouncing it and using it in conversation. How low can you go?)

I am writing, but I have no deadline. Yes, I’m out on submission, a fraught place for any traditionally published writer to be. When Farewell Blues came out a year ago, I was prepared to follow it up with another 1920s-era mystery series. I wrote a proposal for three books and several sample chapters. Alas, my publisher (who had acquired my original publishing company, thus inheriting me) passed, claiming historical mysteries were not selling well enough for them to buy any more at the moment. I got the best kiss-off e-mail. They loved me, loved my work, but business is, indeed, business.

What could I do? Continue to write, of course. But. Very. Slowly. It took me forever to finish the first book, and it’s taking me another forever to write the second. I have a little over 52,000 words, and as I have referenced in past blog posts, I feel mired. Not blocked, exactly, but as no one is holding a poison pen to my head, why worry? Why hurry? Apart from the fact I’m not going to live forever, I can write at my leisure and get the books out whenever if I decide to self-publish.

Which I really, really don’t want to do. So many of my writing friends tout its benefits, but I feel unequal to the task. The writing/editing part is fine; it’s the promotion and distribution angle which defeats me. I’ve been to workshops on algorithms and advertising and keywords and networking and have wanted to run screaming from the room.

So, I’ll continue to peck away anyhow and hope my agent finds a home for the series eventually. I’ve had around 25 books published, which is nothing to sneeze at if I have to rest upon my dubious laurels. I even have a couple of ideas for some Maine mysteries, which I am not allowing myself to explore further until I get through the current swamp. Only 20,000 words to go.

I’m wondering—instead of dawdling, should I set my own deadline? Is Christmas too far away? Halloween is entirely unrealistic. Thanksgiving? Valentine’s Day, just to give myself plenty of time to procrastinate? I need someone to tie me to the desk chair and crack that whip.

If you write, how many words a day do you aim for? Do you work better under pressure? I won’t tell you how many times I woke up at 4 A.M. in college to write a paper for an 8 A.M. class. And yes, my scheduling skills were really deficient. 8 A.M.!!! What was I thinking?

If you’d like to check out my latest amorphous idea, click here. Lady May and the Memoir of Death | Maggie Robinson