Lea Wait's Blog, page 91

A Different Light

 

Yes, there’s really a “different light” going on……

Sandra Neily here.

This has been a very strange weather-winter. If I’d known it was going to offer up only a few special days when skiing or snowshoeing would work, I would have sought out each special day more carefully and treasured it.  Between the rain and the constant ice, ice, ice, and the crust layers that collapse unevenly under one’s skis pitching the body forward and the lake hiding layers of slush until one is knee-deep in it, it’s been a strange winter.

I’ve worn ice cleats on my boots just to make it to the car or fill the wood box and or pop out to give the dog a quick pee in the dark. (The full moon shining on thick, unbroken driveway ice has been lovely though.)

Check out the link to the video!

I can count the special days on one hand and a few fingers, but I am glad I stopped to video and record this one.

For this post I looked around for some powerful winter images and found Andrew Wyeth’s amazing line: “the bone structure of the landscape.” And I am sharing more here.

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”
― Mary Oliver

“Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores on Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells.”
― Mark Helprin Winters Tale

“I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future – the timelessness of the rocks and the hills – all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
― Andrew Wyeth

“In winter the very ground seemed to reach up and grab the elderly, yanking them to earth as though hungry for them.”
― Louise Penny Bury Your Dead

“You can’t get too much winter in the winter.”
― Robert Frost

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last days of winter frame up my next novel…… last days when snow and ice are tricky to deal with. Excerpt:

 We both saw where my dog had disappeared at the same time. The otter slide angled downhill into a gigantic crack in the ice. It was slick with black dog hair. Most Labs like a good slide on snow as much as the otter community. Pock must have turned on his back and wiggled his way down the slide toward the lake—down toward two upended slabs of ice. I thought I could flop down on my back, follow him down, and yell into what looked like an ice cave, but Moz grabbed my elbow.

“We cannot go there.”

“What do you mean? I’ve got to get him. What if he finds the lake under there, goes for a swim, and can’t find his way out again?”

Moz used one arm to pull me tight against his side. “He needs to return to you by his own wits and skills.”

I sagged against Moz. I had a very clear picture of Pock seeing light and swimming toward it only to find ice over his head when he’d run out of air. He was my best friend. Sometimes he felt like my only friend. Sleeping on my feet at night, he was more reliable than any hot water bottle or heating pad. Sometimes he was the only thing I could grab onto when I felt like I was drowning.

I pulled against Moz’s arm. “I can yell from here. You can’t stop me. Let go so I can do it right.” He dropped his arm, and I cupped hands by my mouth and yelled the reliable call for greasy meat. “Yip, Yip! Zip, Zip.. C’mon, Pock. Burgers! Streak! Hot dogs! Yip, Yip! Zip, Zip.”

I felt Moz’s hand return on my elbow. “I know you can probably catch me while I’m stuck up to my groin in snow down there, but I’m not going anywhere.” Tears soaked my fingers. “Leave me alone.”

He stepped back and reached for his phone, fingers flying across the keys. I knelt in the snow and bent my head into my crossed arms. Breathe, I thought. Breathe. This probably isn’t the worst mess my dog’s been in before, but we’d been in those messes together. Caged with wolves. Almost buried alive in a culvert dump, Now Pock was on his own—and I was on my own.

Moz stopped typing as high-pitched squeaks echoed up from the ice cave. “Heads up,” he said. “Company.”

Three otters raced from the ice and clawed their way up the slide until they saw us and froze. Water rolled off their dark brown coats as if the trio had bathed in an oil slick, not a lake. They wiggled long whiskers, testing the air, and then slid over and around each other chirping until I couldn’t tell one otter body from another.

“Confusion,” said Moz, “We appear to be blocking their escape route.” He reached down and helped me to my feet just as Pock appeared outside the ice cave and gave us all a joyful bark.

The otters heard it as an invitation to flee. Jumping over each other to see who could maintain the lead, they scrambled up into the woods, propelled by longer rear legs that gave them almost a humping kind of bounding gait. The last otter turned at the tree line. “You’re welcome.”

You helped him?

Not what we intended, but we have watched him before and know him to be playful so we waited for him. He’s a very slow swimmer.

How can I ever thank you?

The otter turned. Take away the crawfish traps under your neighbor’s dock. Crawfish die there now he’s gone. We’d rather eat them.

“Done,” I said out loud.

My granddaughter (2 1/2) happy to be skiing even in beyond brrrrr weather.

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 2022. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

Some random notes from office cleaning

Kate Flora: I was thinking that I should tidy up my office today. Books and papers have a tendency to spread out until they cover every surface. As is often the case with tidying, I got as far as putting away a handful of books and got stuck in Marjorie Mosser’s Good Maine Food. Mosser was Kenneth Roberts’ secretary for many years, and the cookbook came about, in part, because of a chapter he wrote in one of his books about Maine food. The chapter was published in The Saturday Evening Post and resulted in a flood of mail sharing old family recipes. The end result of those responses and other cogitations on Maine food resulted in the cookbook.

The book is full of comments by Mr. Roberts and excerpts from his books, and I landed on the chapter called “Beverages” which begins with Hot Buttered Rum (1):

  Hot buttered rum, Maine’s earliest drink, was doubtless of inestimable benefit to hardy pioneers who needed internal warmth to protect them from the rigors of a Maine winter. It’s a dangerous drink, however, from delicately nurtured moderns. It’s not only heavy in the stomach and violent in its action but the butter seals the fumes of the alcohol within the drinker. When other drinks are poured in on top of hot buttered rub, the effects are frequently both disastrous and lasting.

 From this introduction we get, not a recipe for the rum, but a section from Northwest Passage:

  Cap placed his keg upon a table; slapped it affectionately. “This here’s the medicine for food-poisoning, like what you fellers pro’ly got from your insides not being built up strong and seasoned. It aint no ordinary rum, that’s had all the good taken out of it by being strained and doctored and allowed to grow weak with age. This here’s third-run rum, real powerful, more like food than drink. When you drink it, you can taste it. Rum’s intended to take hold of you, and that’s what this does.

 After another page and a half extolling the benefits of rum and its effects, we have reached the recipe:

A single portion of hot buttered rum is made as follows:

Half fill an ordinary tumble with boiling water; then throw out the water

Into the hot tumbler, put ½ inch of hot water and in it dissolve 1 teaspoon full of sugar, white or brown

Add a pat of butter the size of an individual helping in a hotel

Pour in a jigger of rum about ¾ of an inch

Add ½ teaspoonful of powdered cinnamon, fill up with hot water, stir vigorously and serve

Or: This recipe, made famous by Trader Vic, which was dubbed “Northwest Passage”

Make a batter by mixing together 5 pounds of yellow sugar, 1 pound of butter, 1 oz. vanilla. Put batter in a mason jar.

Have stick cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla beans nearby

In a fair-sized tumbler, put 1 teaspoon of batter, a piece of stick cinnamon, 1 vanilla bean and 3 cloves. Pour in a good-sized jigger of good rum that tastes like rum and fill the tumbler with boiling water.

Onward in the chapter comes a recipe for Rumrousal (ever heard of it?)

1 Quart of Jamaica rum

3 quarts whole milk

1 ½ c. honey

½ pint of bourbon

Serve chilled or hot, as desired.

Hot rum and milk? Rum and cold milk? Perhaps once there’s rum, temperature doesn’t matter.

Along with recipes, each chapter has some tips from Maine kitchens. Perhaps some of these will be useful.

If food is too salty, stretch a clean cloth tightly over the container, sprinkle a handful of flour on the cloth and let container simmer. In a few moments, the flour will absorb the surplus salt.

  To clean silverware without rubbing, let it stand overnight in sour milk. In the morning, heat milk to the boiling point.

  Tinware is best cleaned with sifted wood ashes.

  And for cooking vegetables:

To bake tomatoes or peppers more handily, put them in muffin tins

  The odor of garlic or onion may be removed from hands and mouth by eating celery and rubbing the hands with the tops

 Go forth and rub yourselves with celery.

The book also has recipes for wild goose, coot stew, and porcupine livers.

In the next pile, a list of editing symbols, my character list from The Darker the Night and my notes on runes. A small yellow sticky that reads: Dammit I’m Mad. Another that simply says: Oh Yuk Jetted Tub Cleaner. Yet another has shorthand for text messaging: CYT IRK CM CU

You can see why I never get my office cleaned.

THE THREE ACTS OF A NOVEL ARE MUCH LIKE SEX —Thoughts by Matt Cost on the writing process

[image error]The three acts of a novel are much like sex. Foreplay, building tension, and climax. In doing a radio interview yesterday for The House of Mystery (https://www.alanrwarren.com/house-of-mystery-radioshow), I realized that writers and readers might be interested in the particular model that I’ve adopted and tweaked for my own writing.

I further break up the three acts of a novel into eight parts. Much like if I were to try to run a mile (yes, just one), I wouldn’t be able to do it if I didn’t break it down into smaller parts, the same is true in writing a book. It’s a massive undertaking and can be daunting if you think of the blood, sweat, tears, failure, success, and ultimately, critique, that you will face on this journey. It’s enough to keep one scrolling through Facebook instead of writing.

Therefore, I break my books into eight equal parts. I’ve decided after much research that the length of a mystery novel would best be 88,000. Some would say shorter, some would say longer. This works for me.

I’m also a sprinter regarding writing. I like momentum. Because of this, I have to go back and flesh out characters and scenes when the first draft is complete. In my WIP, at the midpoint of the book Mainely Wicked, I just realized who the antagonist is. This means that I’ll have to go back and build their character with subtle references and tweak the plot line.

Thus, my model suggests that I’m going to write 80,000 words, and then add 8,000 words with the edits. I’m hoping this isn’t too much math for the readers and writers out there. Don’t worry, this actually simplifies things. This means that I have eight equal parts of 10,000 words each. Every eighth of the book, every 12.5%, every 10,000 words, something must happen.

This breaks my novel into eight short stories in effect. While I generally start with an idea, I usually have no idea where I’m going until I get there. Sometimes I have a general destination in mind, but no idea of how I’m going to get there. Occasionally, I just have no idea. So, I try to come up with the action that drives the book every eighth of the way through. Take the first checkpoint, the inciting event. What is it? I establish that, and then I work toward it.

Let’s look at those eight pieces of pizza equally cut and what each has on it for a topping.

12.5%—or 10,000-words
Now, I don’t fish, but even I know that you if you don’t throw a hook in the water, you’re not going to catch anything. At the beginning of every book, I throw a hook in the water, just to get the attention of the reader (sorry for comparing you to a fish). I will then propel the story toward the first checkpoint, the one/eighth- or 10,000-word mark. This is the inciting event that really gets the novel rolling, the point where I hope to have hooked the reader into not being able to put my book down.

25%–or 20,000-words
This is what the story is about, even if the main character has not yet grasped all of the intricacies of what is going on, the dye is now cast. At this point in the story, the life of the protagonist is completely changed. This is also the transfer point from the end of the first act and into the second act of the book, or the point of rising tension.

37.5%–or 30,000-words
This is known as the first pinch point. It is here that the antagonist flexes their muscles and makes a statement. The protagonist begins to get an inkling of the truth of the nature of the conflict in which they have become embroiled. For the first time, the reader is aware of the stakes, and that this might not be all nice and pretty. The game is on.

50%–or 40,000-words
The midpoint of the mystery is the moment when the protagonist stops taking punches and starts fighting back. Up until this point, they have been on the defensive, but here, something happens to put them on the offensive. They are no longer being reactive but become proactive.

62.5%–or 50,000-words
Okay, the antagonist must flex their muscles again, and show that this is no gravy train. Just as the protagonist starts to get a handle of the nature of the conflict, they get a slap to the face, a punch to the gut—a rude awakening that this is going to be a dogfight.

75%–or 60,000-words
It all falls apart. The antagonist gains the upper hand, and the protagonist is up a tree, with the bears circling below and no help in sight. Things are not looking good. The fish has slipped the hook. This propels us into the third act of the book and hurtling toward climax.

87.5%–or 70,000-words
This is when the protagonist regroups and begins to make plans to turn the tables and reach a successful conclusion. The cards are now all on the table, the stakes are set, and the final confrontation looms.

98%–or 78,400-words
Okay, I tweak things a bit here to leave a little room at the end for the summary. A little pillow time to recap the events and outcomes of the book. But at this mark, climax occurs, and the protagonist (or the antagonist) wins the day in a spectacular fireworks fashion that leaves the reader gasping at what just happened.

Do I follow this model to a T? Of course not. There are blemishes, hiccups, and detours along the way. But, as Robin William’s says in Good Will Hunting, those imperfections are the good things. I hope I’ve inspired some, given insight to others, and welcome any feedback, or pillow talk, on what I’ve set forth here today.

 

Matt Cost is the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of the Mainely Mystery series. The first book, Mainely Power, was selected as the Maine Humanities Council Read ME fiction book of 2020. This was followed by Mainely Fear, Mainely Money, and Mainely Angst.

I Am Cuba: Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution was his first traditionally published novel. He had another historical released in August of 2021, Love in a Time of Hate.

Wolfe Trap and Mind Trap were the first two in the Clay Wolfe Port Essex Trap series. Mouse Trap, coming out April 13th, is the third in this series.

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 now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.

 

Weekend Update: February 19-20, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Matt Cost (Monday), Kate Flora  (Tuesday), Sandra Neily (Thursday) and Maureen Milliken (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. We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Why I Love Crime Fiction

Maybe I’m suffering from the February blues, but things seem pretty chaotic out there. Just look at the headlines – “Ukraine crisis escalates”, “Flights diverted due to unruly passengers”, “Western megadrought worse in 1200 years”. Even the Olympics, usually pretty good escapism, is tainted by human rights issues, environmental impact, censorship, and more.

So why, when I sample the newest books in my library, do I inevitably pick up crime fiction that features peoples’ darkest moment – murders, deceit, greed, and all the rest?

Paul Dorion’s superb and latest book is a perfect example of why. In “Dead By Dawn” Maine game warden Mike Bowditch faces pretty bad odds (spoiler alert) – immersion in a freezing river followed by a nighttime trek through the snowy woods stalked by a persistent villain who’d like to slice through Mike’s limbs with a chainsaw. Dorion’s skill interlinking an indifferent, brutal natural world with raw human cruelty is stunning.

I keep on reading because I know that, however bad things are, evil will be punished, Mike will be okay, and all will become right in the world. That’s why I love crime fiction.A few examples:
 − In Dorothy L. Sayers’s Strong Poison Harriet Vane is on trial for murder. The brilliant Lord Peter Wimsey proves that Harriet did not kill anyone and ends up marrying her.

− A horrendous kidnapping is put right in Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient  Express.

− A black man accused of raping a white woman is shown to be innocent in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

You’ll have to read Dead By Dawn to learn what happens to Mike.

Here are a few more reasons why crime fiction, mystery, and thriller books consistently top the bestseller charts and why are they generally regarded one of the most popular literary genres:

– People love solving puzzles. Be it thriller or classic whodunit there’s always something both readers and the characters need to work out. As we read along we try to figure out what’s really going on until we think we have the bad guy. We are detectives who work through puzzles, clues, and dead ends.

– All crime stories have a dark side and sometimes it is very dark: kidnapping, murder, gang crime, people who lie as a game. But unlike the actual world out there, we can step away from what’s dark and simply close the book. We are in control.

Fun in the Snow

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here in the Western Maine Mountains. With snowbanks piled high outside my windows and the groundhog predicting six more weeks (at least) of cold winter weather, it occurs to me that the only people still taking unmitigated delight in all that white stuff are probably under the age of twelve. Even the skier in my family is getting tired of having to clear out the dooryard and driveway after every storm.

These days, when it’s blustery outside, I’m content to stay indoors, woodstove pouring out warmth, and read a good book, but that wasn’t always the case. Writers mine their memories for details to use in their books. Today my mind keeps drifting back to that distant time when a winter’s day with no school meant bundling up in the aptly named snowsuit and spending a good part of the daylight hours outside.

When I was growing up there wasn’t much available in the way of organized activities. There were ski areas near my home in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, but learning to ski cost money even then. Mostly we amused ourselves by making use of all that free snow to have snowball fights, build snowmen, snow forts, and snow caves, and make snow angels. Just about everyone had a sled and there were plenty of hills to ride them down.

Jamuary 1954

Although I played in the snow with the neighborhood kids in my home town, I also spent many snowy days during the first decade of my life on my grandparents’ farm in Hurleyville, New York. Some of those memories are so vivid because my father took pictures. I don’t know that I went ice fishing on the farm pond on the property more than once, but that once has been immortalized. I do remember that, shortly after this photo was taken, my dog, Skippy, fell into the hole my grandfather had made in the ice and had to be rescued.

Another lasting memory is the time my grandfather produced a toboggan and took me for the scariest ride of my life. We sledded right down the middle of the road that ran past the farmhouse. There wasn’t any traffic, and I don’t suppose the hill was all that steep, but it scared the dickens out of me all the same. Oddly, that didn’t stop me from taking my little wooden sled down a steep, snow-covered driveway that would have shot me out into the middle of Main Street if I hadn’t been able to stop at the bottom. All the neighborhood kids loved that run. Our parents? Not so much.

Did we really get more snow in those days? Or was it just that the piled-up snow looked higher because I was shorter? Whatever the truth of the matter, I wouldn’t have missed growing up in a snowy climate for anything, and in spite of grousing about the cold in the present day, I love this part of the world in the winter. It’s truly a mystery to me why people choose to trade Maine (or New York) for Florida at this time of year.

What about you, dear readers? Can you still find the beauty, and the fun, in a northern winter? Or would you prefer to embrace the lifestyle of a “snowbird” and flee to warmer climes?

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. A third, at A Who’s Who of Tudor Women, is the gateway to over 2300 mini-biographies of sixteenth-century Englishwomen.

 

THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES

Vaughn C. Hardacker

Vaughn Hardacker here: I’m a pantser. I try to be a plotter but can’t seem to get through the process. Lately, I’ve been researching not for a new novel but into the craft itself.

Enter Joseph Campbell. I came across his book THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES and was intrigued. Campbell had a life-long fascination with mythology and comparative religions. In this book, he presents his findings. What immediately caught my interest was a quote from his book. “It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.”

Campbell states that across all cultures, “from the mumbo jumbo of a witch doctor of the Congo, the sonnets of the mystic Lao-tse, the hard nutshell argument of Aquinas there will always be the “one, shape-shifting yet marvelously constant story…” He called this The Monomyth.

The Monomyth, based on his concept of The Hero’s Journey, consists of three stages: Departure, Initiation, and Return. Each of these stages has several steps. To discuss these components in a single blog would create a blog entry too long. Therefore I will discuss each of the three elements in individual blogs. In this blog, I will discuss the first.

Departure (Disrupture and Awakening): The Departure deals primarily with disrupting the hero’s everyday world.

Everyday World

The world in which the hero exists before his present story begins, oblivious of the adventures to come. It’s his safe place. His everyday life is where we learn crucial details about our hero, his true nature, capabilities, and outlook on life. It establishes the hero as a human, just like you and me, and makes it easier for us to identify with him and, later, empathize with his plight.

1. Call To Adventure

The hero’s adventure begins when he receives a call to action, such as a direct threat to his safety, family, way of life, or the peace of the community in which he lives. It may not be as dramatic as a gunshot, but simply a phone call or conversation, but whatever the call is, and however it manifests itself, it ultimately disrupts the comfort of the Hero’s Ordinary World and presents a challenge or quest that the protagonist must undertake.

2. Refusal Of The Call

Although the hero may be eager to accept the quest, he will have fears that need overcoming at this stage. Second thoughts or even deep personal doubts about whether or not he is up to the challenge. When this happens, the hero will refuse the call and, as a result, may suffer somehow. The problem he faces may seem too much to handle and the comfort of home far more attractive than the perilous road ahead. This refusal would also be our response and once again helps us bond further with the reluctant hero.

3. Supernatural Aid

At this crucial turning point where the hero desperately needs guidance, he meets a mentor figure who gives him something he needs. It could be an object of great importance, insight into the dilemma he faces, wise advice, practical training, or even self-confidence. Whatever the mentor provides the hero with, it dispels his doubts and fears and gives him the strength and courage to begin his quest.

4. Crossing The Threshold

The hero is now ready to act upon his call to adventure and truly begin his quest, whether physical, spiritual, or emotional. Whether they go willingly or pushed, they finally cross the threshold between the familiar world and that in which they are not. It may be leaving home for the first time in his life or just doing something he has always been scared to do. However the threshold presents itself, this action signifies the hero’s commitment to his journey and whatever it may have in store for him.

5. The Belly of the Whale.

The passage through the magical threshold illustrates a rebirth that symbolizes the worldwide womb image, represented by the belly of the whale. Rather than conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, the hero is swallowed into the unknown and appears to have died. The emphasis is on the lesson that that passage is a form of self-annihilation.

Campbell based his writings on mythology, and all mythology is a story. I believe that even in our genre of choice, the Monomyth model holds. All we have to do is change the hero to read protagonist and go from there. The model easily fits the amateur detective as the hero but also works when the protagonist is a professional investigator. IWhen I took time to study the Monomyth diagram above, I said to myself, “Hey, this is really a plot outline!” I am working on the sequel to WENDIGO and have been using Campbell’s model as well as a Three Act Template. I’ve plotted out better than half the book and it has really helped. (If you are interested in reviewing the template email me at vhardacker@gmail.com and I will gladly forward it to you.

Until my next post, when I will discuss Initiation, the second phase of the Hero’s Journey, STAY WARM & KEEP WRITING!

 

ANNA, IDA B., AND MARY

I should be writing about hearts and flowers and Cupid on this Valentine’s Day. The day is special to me because it’s the day my husband asked me to marry him nearly 50 years ago. I had a dreadful cold, but went out to dinner with him anyway, at a French restaurant no less.

But the strife here at home and abroad has me feeling more somber this year. So I’m revisiting a post from a couple years ago. When I was growing up, I remember reading about women’s efforts to gain the right to vote. The suffragettes I read about in history class were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Julia Ward Howe and others—who were all white. None of those older books told the stories of Black women’s efforts toward citizenship and voting rights.

In this Black History Month, I’d like to honor three of the many suffragette heroines who were African American. I learned about several in These Truths: a History of the United States (W.W. Norton, 2018) by award-winning historian Jill Lepore. She examines the “American experiment” through the lens of how the country lives up to the ideals of its founders. She says this in the preface: “The American experiment rests on these truths, Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people”—three ideals that should be emblazoned on the walls of Congress. I’m drawing on this book and other sources for this post.

First, a little background. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1868, granted citizenship rights to all “persons” born in the United States. Black people were not then considered “persons.” Ratified in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment granted Black men the right to vote. Neither white nor Black women, still not considered “persons,” could vote until the nineteenth amendment was ratified in 1920. After the Civil War, woman suffrage supporters began organizing and forming official associations. The National American Woman Suffrage Association took a state-by-state approach to gaining the vote. But this movement by white women excluded African American women. Often Black women worked in their own clubs and suffrage associations.

Anna Julia Cooper, born into slavery in 1858 in North Carolina became an author, educator, speaker, Black Liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African-American scholars of her time. She made many speeches calling for civil rights and women’s rights. Her book, A Voice from the South, was one of the first arguments for black feminism. She is best known for emphasizing to Black women that they required the ballot to counter the belief that Black men’s experiences and needs were the same as theirs. She was honored in 2009 by having her image on a postage stamp.

Ida B. Wells, the daughter of former slaves, was born in Mississippi in 1862. In 1883, while working as a schoolteacher, she was riding in what was termed “the ladies’ car” of a train, when she was told to move to the car for Blacks. She refused, filed a court suit, and began writing for Black newspapers, eventually being elected secretary of the Black-run National Press Association.

In the late nineteenth century, along with Anna Julia Cooper, Frederick Douglass, and others, she led an anti-lynching campaign. She organized the Alpha Suffrage Club among Black women in Chicago. She and other members went to Washington, D.C. in 1913 to participate in a suffrage parade, but the white organizers insisted they march at the end of the parade. Ida B. Wells refused to march at all. But later during the parade, she slipped into the white Illinois delegation and marched between two white women.

When she published her first book, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, in 1892, Frederick Douglass wrote a testimonial, declaring “his voice was feeble by comparison.” In 2022, thanks to more activism about Black history, Ida B. Wells’s name is widely recognized as a journalist and brave and dedicated suffragist. And there’s even an Ida B. Wells Barbie doll.

Activist Mary Church Terrell was born in 1863 in Tennessee. She graduated in 1884 from Oberlin College as one of the first African American women to attend that school, the first college to accept African Americans and female students. She taught at Wilberforce College in Ohio and the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. She went on to assist in the founding of the National Association of Colored Women, which was focused on proving that African Americans were worthy of honor. Harriet Tubman was also affiliated with the group.

Mary Church Terrell worked for the rights of women and Black people and protested for the cause of suffrage outside the White House during Woodrow Wilson’s administration. She lived through the very beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and died a few months after the Brown v. Board of Education case was resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954.

These women and others were heroines in African Americans’ struggle for respect and equality. So much of America’s past informs today’s issues. Given all the current division, polarization, and the violence against people of color and people of non-Christian faiths, living up to America’s founding ideals is less a work in progress and more a struggle.

Weekend Update: February 12-13, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Susan Vaughan (Monday), Vaughn Hardacker (Tuesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (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:

For Valentine’s Day, SUSAN VAUGHAN is celebrating with two sales. The Kindle version of her romantic suspense novel ALWAYS A SUSPECT is only 99 CENTS through February 28. Here’s a short book description: Federal agent Michael Quinn thinks the widow Claire Saint-Ange is a criminal, but her gentle soul and passion make him long to believe in her innocence.

http://getBook.at/Always-a-Suspect

And… the Kindle version of CLEOPATRA’S NECKLACE is FREE Feb. 13-17. Here’s a short book description: Security CEO Thomas Devlin and his old flame, artist Cleo Chandler, race terrorists and a
smuggling syndicate to recover a priceless treasure.
http://getbook.at/cleopatrasnecklace

 

 

 

Kate Flora: And also for Valentine’s Day, check out my romantic suspense novel, Wedding Bell Ruse. https://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Bell-Ruse-Kate-Flora-ebook/dp/B086K46QHX

And if you missed some posts this past week, there was advice about how to fix the flabby middle–of your book, that is. Writing books to check out that might speak to you. Maine’s cold case homicides? And cozy English villages. There’s always something new.

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. We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

The Writing Reference Books You’ll Really Use

Kate Flora: In the early days of my efforts at writing, I joined the Writer’s Digest book club, and got regular infusions of writing books. Some of them I read. Some piled up on my desk and on the bookshelf. Along the way, I learned that not every book that purports to teach us how to write, how to edit, and how to be inspired works for every writer. Sometimes the books don’t speak to us. They don’t make sense for our style or our process. Sometimes, a book that is incomprehensible or off-putting at one phase of the writing life may speak to us later.

Books giving us advice about writing fall into many different categories. There are the books for inspiration or insight into what it means to be a writer. Among those is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamotte. It is very reassuring to a beginning writer to be reminded that before you can craft your work into something worth reading, you need to begin with “a shitty first draft” and that crappy writing is okay. Dream of writing all you want, but the actuality is something different. Writers write, whether the words are inspiration or gravel, and we don’t wait until the fluttery muse lands on our shoulder and whispers the words in our ears.

As Lamotte puts it:

You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you teach your unconscious to kick in for you creatively…You put a piece of paper in the typewriter or turn on your computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind—a scene, a locale, a character, whatever—and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt.

A book recently suggested by a friend that I’ve just added to my toolkit is Jane Yolen’s Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft. It’s a comforting small book for when you’re feeling discouraged.

Looking for general books to help you with craft? Among my favorite go-tos are Stein on Writing by Sol Stein. My copy bristles with post-it notes like a yellow porcupine.

As Stein puts it:

Nonfiction conveys information

Fiction evokes emotion.

In fiction, when information obtrudes, the experience of the story pauses. Raw information comes across as an interruption, the author filling in. The fiction writer must avoid anything that distracts from the experience even momentarily.

Want beautifully written advice? On Teaching and Writing Fiction by Wallace Stegner.

For ideas and prompts to get you going? What If by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.

Sustaining inspiration and budgeting your time? A Writer’s Time by Kenneth Atchity and Motivate Your Writing by Stephen Kelner.

For mystery writing in particular? The Mystery Writers of America How to Write a Mystery edited by Lee Child and the earlier version edited by Sue Grafton. Hallie Ephron’s Writing and Selling the Mystery Novel. If you can find it, The Elements of Mystery Fiction by the late (and wonderful) William Tapply.

Books to help you when you are ready to edit that manuscript? I like Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. The wonderful Chris Roerden has two versions of her editing book, Don’t Murder Your Mystery and Don’t Sabotage Your Submission. Valuable books since these days, you have to go into the market with a nearly perfect book. Editors are usually too busy to fix your flawed by promising book.

How about books about the writing biz? Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Biggest Bestsellers by James W. Hall or The Career Novelist by Donald Maass. A reminder, though—you’ll never really find the answers to how to write that best seller in someone else’s book. You have to sweat and die and bleed on the page and then rewrite five or six times and maybe one of those books will be a hit. But it has to come from your imagination telling your story, and no writing teacher can teach you that. We can coach but in the end it’s up to you.

When I asked my friends what writing books they turn to, I got quite an interesting list of books I don’t know but plan to check into. These include:

On Writing by George V. Higgins

How to Write a Damned Good Novel James N. Frey

The Art of Dramatic Writing Lajos Egi

Scene and Structure Jack Bickham

Story Trumps Structure Steven James

The Lies that Tell the Truth John Dufresne

GMC: Coal, Motivation and Conflict Debra Dixon

The Anatomy of Story John Truby

When I first started writing, I read The Art of Fiction by John Gardner. What he said about writing made me think that I wasn’t a writer. Five years later, it had more to say to me, and I’ve returned to it again and again over the years. Thirty years later, I still return to what he said about psychic distance, or the distance the reader feels between himself and the events in the story.

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway

Henry J. Warburton had never cared much for snowstorms

Henry hated snowstorms.

God how he hated these damned snowstorms

Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul

Reiterating what I said above, not every book is for you, and that’s okay. Don’t rush out to buy a book just because someone suggests it. One inexpensive way to determine whether a book belongs on your shelf is to check it out of the library first.

And here, because I love these rules, is a link to Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules for Writers:

https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/elmore-leonard-10-rules-for-good-writing

You will never forget “easy on the hooptedoodle.”