Lea Wait's Blog, page 92

The Middle March!

Everyone remembers the great song Stuck in the Middle With You by Stealers Wheel. It played prominently in Tarantino’s classic crime move, Reservoir Dogs. But the song is not what I’m talking about here in this post. What I’m referring to is the writer’s journey into the dreaded middle half of their story. The Middle is where the tent starts to sag. Where we put on those extra pounds. Where the birth order can go very wrong (only joking).

How many times have you started reading a crime novel and it starts out with a bang, only to have the story start to drag halfway through. It’s disappointing and a reason why many readers skim through this part of a book. Believe me, it’s disappointing and difficult for us writers, too. The question is: how do we strengthen the dreaded Middle part of the story in order to keep the reader’s attention?

The dreaded Middle. In the worst case scenario, it’s rudderless filler meant to pad the word count. Oftentimes, what constitutes the Middle of a novel is too much exposition, ill-advised detail, excessive dialogue and nefarious subplots that add nothing to the plot. Suffer through these boring plot devices and we finally get to the climax and denouement.

So how do we avoid this problem as writers? How do we keep the arc of the plot rising to its exciting apex? Then to have the story accelerate like a rollercoaster down its steep tracks, and heading toward its shocking ending?

The key to conquering the dreaded Middle is first not think of it as the middle. Break down your novel into smaller components. Think of each chapter as a story arc unto itself. Now not all chapters need to be as thrilling and exciting as your opening and ending sections, but there needs to be tension and expectation of a payoff. Visually, envision your novel as a hurricane and within it spin hundreds of smaller tornadoes and wind vortices all churning and driving the larger, more destructive storm that is your story.

Dialogue is key to creating this ongoing tension. Every line of it should have meaning, significance and be able to move your plot along. A useful tool is misdirection, meaning that what a character says is not always what they mean. This happens so often in our real lives that it often goes undetected. Ask someone how it’s going and they invariably respond with, “Everything’s great.” But we know from the law of averages that not everything is alway great for people. Sometimes they’re lying to keep face. They don’t want to tell you about their bad diagnosis or that their spouse has a drinking problem. If you really listen to a conversation between people, the dialogue is merely a device to establish proper social etiquette, with varying motivations, and not necessarily an honest representation of what’s really happening.

Your doctor asks how many drinks a week you consume. Your wife asks how she looks in a particular dress. A mother sends out an annual Christmas letter filled with half truths. See what I’m getting at. People often talk past each other to put themselves in a better light. In real life it’s fascinating to observe, but in crime fiction it can really drive the internal forces in your story, helping you tighten up the dreaded Middle.

One visual I use during the writing of my novels is that of a steel bar. If it remains straight while you’re writing the story stays flat and uninteresting. Honestly, I repeatedly have remind myself to keep “Bending the Bar” as ai write. At every step in the novel, I try and Bend the story Bar, meaning that I need to ramp up the tension in every scene. I close my eyes, grip that proverbially steel bar, and use all my strength to bend it for the sake of the plot.

Micromanage your novel. Every sentence should be interesting and tense. Make them little tornados rotating around each other within the paragraph. Then the paragraphs spinning within the chapter. The chapters circulating violently within the novel. In this manner, every part of the novel is churning and moving everything toward it’s thrilling denouement. In this way your story is the equivalent of an F-5 Tornado blazing across the landscape.

In some sense, it’s best not even to think of your Middle as the middle. Just as time is not something readily observable in the universe, the Middle can be crushed by breaking down your novel into subatomic structures, protons, electrons and neutrons all rotating around each other, attracting and repulsing, leading to something resembling the end of the universe. Thus the Middle becomes not a particle but a wave arc through the story ether.

The Middle has plenty of unfortunate connotations. The middle child. Middle age crisis. Middle-of-the-road. The middle that grows around our waist. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing if we don’t view as such. The best writers can make the Middle as exciting and thrilling as the beginning and end.

So be not afraid of your Middle. Embrace it and view it as an opportunity for it to be the best part of your novel. The section where you can shock and awe, and breathe much-needed life into your plot. Think of it as a way to add all sorts of interesting motivations and action. A place where dialogue shines and reveals character. The Middle is what gives your story it’s depth and dimension. The Middle, when you come right down to it, are the fascinating lives we lead between birth and death.

A to Z… Unsolved Homicides

 Jule Selbo

As I am sure many other crime/mystery writers did while being cooped up during Maine’s recent sleety-snowy-icy storm days, I clicked on the Unsolved Homicides on the Maine State Police website. There were 75 entries, one going all the way back to 1954. There were 39 men, the remaining were women.

Of course, certain details are not included on the website. This allows any casual reader trying to block out the sounds of hurricanic gusts of wind to let their minds fill in possible backstories, motives, villains, investigative procedures and emotional tidbits.

I decided to organize my reading alphabetically, from A to Z.

I read of an escaped convict (Maine State Prison) who had been on the run for six months; his body was found in a ditch near the Maine Turnpike north of Biddeford. Cause of death unmentioned, I decided a massive blow to the occipital lobe with a garden gnome or tire iron. Another was (or at least appeared to be) an abducted woman in her early thirties who had been visited by a close friend one night – and then didn’t show up for a planned rendezvous the next day. When friends went to check on her, there were pools of blood in the living room. The woman’s car was gone, but news of it surfaced; it had been involved in a hit and run accident outside of Boston and witnesses described a “good-looking, blond, skinny” driver (made me think of a lean Bradley Cooper or Ryan Gosling). The trail led through a few southern states, the woman’s body was dumped in one of them, the car was finally found in another. Cause of death unmentioned, I decided an angry swing of a kitchen cleaver opened an artery, and the final gasp of breath took place in the trunk of her own car. Motive of the attacker? Still thinking on that.

Some victims were hitchhikers, some picked up hitchhikers. Of this latter category, details of one case struck me as especially odd: A woman had enjoyed (my word, maybe it was not enjoyable) coffee with an ex-husband in an undisclosed urban location. Around midnight, she got into her car and was (supposedly) headed home to her new husband. The ex-husband decided to follow her. (Chivalrous? Predatory? Who knows.) She picked up a hitchhiker on a main drag in downtown Portland. (Why? Who knows. Not something most people (especially women alone?) would do in the early, dark morning hours.)  The ex saw her pick the hitchhiker, then watched the car run multiple stop lights and zip off – and he gave up the follow. (Chivalry now clearly gone) Eight hours later, the woman’s body was found, dead, in her car on a residential street. Cause of death unmentioned, I decided to go with gunshot. Motive? The imagination runs wild.

Some victims are described as known slum landlords. Some victims appear shady (possible gun dealers or purveyors of stolen goods). Some victims may have surprised a burglar. Some pull at your heartstrings because they (at the time of death) were quite old – and lived alone. Some were quite young when foul play befell them. Sad hints of who the villains might be (strange car seen in the neighborhood, someone hanging around a playground, bodies found in odd places) are (for the most part) sketchy and that makes the crimes scarier.

The site states that to get onto this Unsolved Homicide list, a crime of murder (or suspected murder) must be unsolved for at least three years.  Every once in a while, when clicking on a case, I came upon a note stating that an arrest had been made. (One of the homicides was sixteen years old before charges were filed; I celebrated the police work by clocking the mph of the latest gust of wind, counting the icicles on my balcony and making myself a fresh hot toddy.)

I checked out some of the billboards across America featuring the faces of the victims of unsolved crimes. Some states, like Rhode Island and Oklahoma, have issued decks of playing cards with victims faces and details of the crime. (Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation has reported these cards (used in canasta or poker games? or maybe to play ‘Go Fish’ with grandma?) have generated tips.)

Bus stop posters have been used. Milk cartons. TV shows. Flyers. Internet sites. Hollywood unsolved cases, like the Black Dahlia, the Thomas Ince murder as well as William Desmond Taylor and other celebs still catch the public’s – and writers’ imaginations.  No one likes to be denied access to the truth.

Ahh. Another huge gale of wind. The balcony furniture nearly takes flight, but the bungee cords are doing their work.

Time to go back to reading my latest Detective Peter Diamond novel. Special thanks to Peter Lovesey for helping me get through the winter storms.

 

 

It Takes a Village

Almost all my books are set in England, with the occasional Hebridean island thrown in to keep me on my toes. When I began writing, I was reading Regency (1811-1820) romances, so that’s what I wrote. Then I branched out and wandered around the Victorian and Edwardian periods, until I hit the 1920s and decided to kill people instead of make them kiss.

As an avid reader of lite Brit Lit, I was weaned on Agatha Christie’s deadly house parties, E.F. Benson’s village fetes, and the genial idiocy of Bertie Wooster as written by Wodehouse. It seemed natural to make the transition, and I’ve now completed the four-book Lady Adelaide series, cozy mysteries set in the Jazz Age.

Writing means research, right? For years, I very much enjoyed our trips to the UK. Remember when we could travel? Sigh. A week or two was never quite enough time to explore London museums, drive around the countryside on the wrong side of the road, and eat enough fish and chips (hold the mushy peas). We always came home wanting more, which I guess is a sign of a good vacation.

In 2014, we decided to rent a cottage for a whole month in the Cotswolds. The house was utterly adorable, with lots of quirky features, except my tall husband hit his head on all the lintels and broke a dangling ceiling light getting into a sweater. We eventually figured out what the “Duck or Grouse” sign meant. And there was an AGA!

Everything was in walking distance—a glorious estate garden, a couple of excellent restaurants, a pub, an antique store, the village shop. London was less than an hour and a half away by train. When we wanted to make the effort, our rental car took us around the region, which was just chock-full of charm, farms, and sheep. I could picture myself in a twin set and pearls, growing roses and making jam on that AGA.

We enjoyed that trip so much that we rented another cottage in a different area for three weeks in 2016. The new village was not quite as friendly or convenient, and the contemptuous grocery clerk charged me for the plastic shopping bags I was too naïve to know to bring with me. I felt like a hardened criminal having gone in empty-handed.

There was a laminated list in the cottage on how to recycle, and I swear even though I have a college degree, I could not differentiate between the various kinds of detritus. Apparently, a foil yogurt top is not the same as Reynolds Wrap, tissues are not like paper towels, and there are at least 76 kinds of plastic. Who knew? Not me. So, I lived in terror that the dustmen would dump out the improperly sorted trash on the street, which I had been warned they did, and did with great glee.

Despite my fear of an international recycling faux pas, I wish I could go back to either cottage. But I will have to settle for reading the delightful Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper. This slender illustrated volume is for everyone who’s ever watched Midsomer Murders and wondered about the high body count. According to the authors, it must be a Murder Village!

There is peril in the vicarage parlor, danger at the duck pond, mayhem at the manor house. Lord Lumpington is locked in the library and won’t come out. His favorite hunting rifle is missing from the gun cabinet. His newest will has not yet been signed. His shady relatives, who all inexplicably live with him, have no steady income or alibis. Even if you are not a lover of British mysteries or Clue, you know the drill.

I’m working on a new series now, and I get the chance to construct my own Cotswold Murder Village, Woodford Haven. So far, two visitors have died, one in the antique shop and one at the country house hotel. They should have stayed in the city.

As Sherlock Holmes once said, “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

The same could probably be said for rural Maine towns, as Peyton Place and The Beans of Egypt, Maine aptly illustrate. Someday I might get back to a mystery I started writing years ago, set on a Maine island. I lived on one for four years, though no one was ever murdered there as far as I know.

Hm. A fall from the ferry? A leap from the lighthouse? Tangled in the lobster trap lines? Poisoned at the church picnic? The opportunities are pretty much endless for a deserving miscreant to die.

Do you prefer the gritty city or the quaint country? How would you knock off your victim?

P.S.! Sale! The first Lady Adelaide Mystery, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, is $1.99 wherever e-books are sold throughout the month of February. To read the first chapter and access buy links, you can visit the website page.

 

 

 

Weekend Update: February 5-6, 2022

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Maggie Robinson (Monday), Jule Selbo (Tuesday), Joe Souza (Thursday) and Kate Flora (Friday).

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

Maggie’s first book in the Lady Adelaide Mysteries, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, is on sale during February for $1.99 wherever e-books are sold. To read the first chapter and access buy links, please visit the website page. Farewell Blues, the last book in the Lady Adelaide series, has just been reviewed by the Historical Novel Society here.

If you missed Brenda Buchanan’s post yesterday, here’s a link to Sisters in Crime interviews with Kate Flora and alum Barbara Ross. https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/podcast

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

Podcasts Galore

I spent a delightful hour or so this week talking writing with the amazing Julie Hennrikus, executive director of Sisters in Crime and the host of its terrific podcast.

Julie’s a wonderful interviewer who drew me into discussions of my early writing efforts, my current project and the most helpful advice I’ve had along the way. I’m grateful to her and to Sisters in Crime for inviting me to participate in this long-running series. I believe our discussion will be up on the podcast page in six or eight weeks (by then it will be spring!) but in the meantime, you can listen to past interviews with our own Kate Flora and Barbara Ross among many other remarkable writers.  Here’s the link: https://www.sistersincrime.org/page/podcast

For those unfamiliar with Sisters in Crime it is a rockin’ organization with a rich history, now celebrating its 35th year. From the SinC website: Founded in 1986 to represent and advocate for women crime writers, we celebrate and honor this history with our name while we continue to work for all who share our commitment to and love for a vibrant, inclusive community. Our 4,500+ members enjoy access to tools to help them learn, grow, improve, thrive, reinvent if necessary. They also gain a community of supportive fellow writers and readers, both peers to share the peaks and valleys of writing, and mentors to model the way forward.

I’ve been an active member of Sisters in Crime for many years and cannot say enough about its good and essential work. For more information, check out the website, which is chock-full of resources:  https://www.sistersincrime.org/  Note also that SinC welcomes readers as well as writers as members.

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Back to podcasts. I’ve been a bit slow to catch up with the podcasting phenomenon, but during the pandemic times I’ve become a convert. MCW’s own Maureen Milliken and her sister Rebecca produce a consistently interesting podcast called Crime and Stuff, which has the self-effacing tagline “the podcast you would do if you had nothing else to do.” Maureen has written about Crime and Stuff here a time or two, but she’s far too modest about the quality of their work. She and Becky cover the figurative waterfront, a heavy dose of true crime (which comes naturally to longtime journalist Mo) but also favorite songs about crime, book recommendations and reviews of favorite (or not) TV shows and programs you’ll find streaming on Netflix. The sisters are smart, incisive and always leaven the program with humor.  Here’s the link:  http://crimeandstuffonline.com/subscribe-to-podcast/

Other podcasts I recommend, in no particular order:

#SistersInLaw features four brilliant lawyers talking about current legal issues. Joyce Vance (a Bates College alum), Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Jill Wine-Banks and Barb McQuade have deep experience that gives them valuable perspective—Joyce and Barb are former U.S. Attorneys, Kim is a lawyer and journalist who has covered the U.S. Supreme Court and Jill was a member of the Watergate(!) prosecution team. #SistersinLaw is a must-listen for us every Saturday for their keen insight and thoughtful arguments.  It’s free and you’ll thank me for turning you on to it.  Here’s the link: https://politicon.com/podcast-title/sisters-in-law/

Murder She Told, is a fascinating podcast where host and native Mainer Krisen Seavey “explores the dark underbelly of the safest places in America, where everybody knows everyone, and bad things never happen. . . Here’s where you can find it: https://www.murdershetold.com/

Over The Monster has been a bit quiet of late, what with the Major League baseball lockout, but just as spring will return, so will the Red Sox and this will be a good place to get your preseason fix. Go here: https://www.overthemonster.com/red-sox-podcasts

Do you like to cook?  To contemplate food-related issues? If so, tune it to Keep Calm and Cook On with Julia Turshen (who, like me, is a big fan of King Arthur flour). Among other topics, her five-part series on baking, featuring a stellar cast of special guests, is not to be missed.  Here’s the link:  https://www.juliaturshen.com/podcast

Finally, with March right around the corner it’s a good time to tune in to some Celtic music.  You can’t go wrong with the Irish-Celtic Music Podcast hosted by Marc Gunn.  Tunes a-plenty will get you tapping your feet. Here you go: https://marcgunn.com/irish-celtic-music-podcast-466-step-it-out-mary/

That’s it for this month. Now go forth and listen. And sing. And bake. And dance.

But keep reading too, of course.

Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a diehard Maine newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. Her short story, MEANS, MOTIVE, AND OPPORTUNITY appears in BLOODROOT: BEST NEW ENGLAND CRIME STORIES 2021. Her three Joe Gale books— QUICK PIVOT, COVER STORY and TRUTH BEAT—are available everywhere e-books are sold.

 

 

 

 

 

With Sufficient Frosting, Even a Shoe Looks Like Cake

The following alert was issued on the morning of February 3rd by the Waterville police: “City police are searching for the sanity of a local resident. The wife of John Clark, age 73 of Waterville, hasn’t seen her husband’s sanity since late Friday evening when it was wandering around in their garage. It’s described as warped and twisted, uttering frequent puns, while laughing ominously. It is not considered dangerous, although it has been known to make conservatives extremely uncomfortable. If found, please bring to the Waterville Police station.”

A couple years ago, Kate and I contemplated starting a cozy mystery series called the Bodice Repairs. The idea was sparked by remembering when the phrase ‘bodice ripper’ was in vogue as a description for semi-seamy paperbacks. Since we now face a double bind (I’m writing this while the blizzard wails and moans outside my window) of extended COVID isolation and cabin fever, I started thinking about obscure, colloquial, and forgotten phrases. After putting some in a list, I decided this blog would be an exercise in seeing how many I could use in a story without it going completely off the rails. Read on to see how it turns out.

Ichabod Mantel liked spats. Not those you had with paramours, but ones encasing his pedal habiliments, unlike the clodhoppers so many in mixed society were wont to don. He also fancied bowlers and bumbershoots, but seldom espoused his likes in the company of others. In fact, the current debasement of the King’s English, with everyone ejaculating loud and frivolous opinions in the presence of strangers, sent endless chills down his spine.

This evening, Ichabod was on a mission and refused to be deterred by layabout guttersnipes or the crepuscular hordes of harlots and harridans congregating in the immediate environs surrounding his destination, the Lewd and Lascivious. Despite its sensational name, the elegantly appointed club was the epitome of the halcyon times all were currently enjoying and was famed for several things, its lucullan fare, terpsichorean ecdysiasts, and the gobsmacked expressions on those experiencing its ornate aura for the first time.

He walked up the polished marble steps and stopped in front of Suky Tawdry, who was one of the ladies hired to equalize a longstanding gender disparity the previous year. My stars and garters, Ichabod thought, remembering how the women employed in stereotyped roles had suddenly rebelled on a night when the place was stuffed like a ripe sausage. “No more,” they’d roared, alternating between defenestration, giving more portly patrons the bum’s rush, and shouting “out, you lily-livered pantywaists” at those still standing in shock. The end result was a thoroughly cowed owner acceding to the ladies’ demands.

“Evening, my lady,” he said while slipping a tenner into her ample bodice. There weren’t many patrons who could get away with being in such proximity to Suky’s charms, but they both knew that Ichabod was not only still chaste in mind and body, but the epitome of decorum.

Suky smiled demurely, patting him on his ample backside as he passed. “Mind yourself, love, some of the ladies are feeling the effects of that full moon tonight,” feeling a need to alert him, despite whatever innocuous predilection he favored.

Ichabod nodded, not in the least concerned about possible paramours. While he was aware of the plethora of new terms fashionable among his peers in terms of gender and sexual preferences, he hadn’t bothered to determine where on that spectrum if that was the correct term, he belonged. Give him a good cheroot, a glass of French cognac and an interesting tome every time. “Do you know, by chance whether he’s arrived yet?”

Suky nodded quickly before returning to glare at a brace of fops attempting to ogle her charms. “He is waiting in the third floor private room, I believe.”

Ichabod slid past her, entering the gaudily decorated main hall. The Lewd and Lascivious wasn’t your typical nightclub. It was at the very least a sensory emporium, the likes of which couldn’t be found anywhere east of Las Vegas. It was comprised of three floors of constantly changing sensuality, with increasingly orgiastic and libido stimulating shows the further one went into its maze of debauchery.

He’d arrived well over an hour before his appointed meeting time. Past experience had taught Ichabod the wisdom of allowing himself ample time to reach his destination. He shuddered, partly in ecstasy, partly in remembered shock at what transpired during his last excursion through these halls to meet a different contact. Why anyone in their right mind would find pleasure in nude octopus wrestling in a vat of rum-laced lemon jello was beyond him. He’d managed to escape, but when unable to find his clothes, Ichabod had been forced to make do with a hastily constructed g-string thanks to a kindhearted cleaning woman who lent him a number of strings from her still dripping mop head.

Even after such an experience, Ichabod couldn’t resist giving in to his curiosity while passing by open doors. Dialect uttered at machine gun speed, accompanied by pelvis pounding backbeats halted him at the last door by the stairs leading to the second floor. He peeked in to see four very thin black onions singing and dancing under a strobe light. The Rapscallions are in rare form tonight, he thought, as he climbed to the second floor.

He scampered past the Orgone Theater where an X-rated version of The Wizard of Oz was being performed. It was an entertaining production, but time was a-wasting.

One perk of having access to the top floor were the exotic drink carts set at random intervals in the hallway. Ichabod paused to examine the label on a straw slowly swirling in a light purple cocktail. “Hotter than a mermaid on a half-tide ledge,” he read aloud. “Well I most assuredly cannot pass up something so intriguing.” Its initial sensation was sweetness, followed almost immediately by a kick that would make a mule jealous. “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” He muttered while staggering down the hall.

Mingo Snitchmus was old Boston money, like Ichabod, but had the unfortunate fate to have been created by his father and an immigrant chambermaid in a moment of passion, hence his name. He was huge without being fat and had a deceptive appearance. When most met him for the first time, they assumed he must be the most laid back fellow in Bean Town. Ichabod knew differently, the man was wound up tighter than a teddy bear, thanks to a couple bad discs and incipient paranoia.

Were it not for the debt Mingo could help him erase, Ichabod wouldn’t come anywhere near him, but each had something the other coveted. Mingo was obsessed with the heirloom diamond stickpin, Ichabod sported. Ichabod coveted Mingo’s inherited recipe for the candy coating that gave Boston Baked Beans their unique, addictive flavor.

The exchange went smoothly with Mingo being so happy to have acquired the stickpin, he tossed in a couple tons of ingredients for the shells. “I doubt you’ll be willing to tell me why the recipe is so covetous to you, but your zeal to obtain it piques my curiosity.”

Ichabod shrugged, he had no incentive to be coy or evasive about his motive. “I have a cousin who lives in the williwags, or boondocks of northern Maine, I can never determine if there’s a demarcation between them, or not. In any event, despite our vast social and financial gaps, we’ve always been close. Let it suffice that I owe him a debt for his grace and understanding in the past when he helped me survive a terrible experience that was of my own making. I must away, good sir. When next we meet, I will sate your curiosity.”

Two days later, a honking horn dragged him from slumber. Ichabod hurried to gather appropriate sartorial accouterments for a rural excursion while shifting his mindset from proper Bostonian to one more akin to that of his cousin Bub.

Suky’s Jamaican cousin Sucha Dande, dressed in a ripped wifebeater and oversize cargo pants, sat behind the wheel of a van rented for the trip. “Yo, man, did you forget which side of the bed to exit?”

Ichabod shrugged. “We’re headed nearly as far north as one can go sans passport, so we must blend in as much as possible. You’ll understand when we arrive, but in the meantime I must prepare. Get on I-95 and keep going. I’ll provide directions once I’ve shifted to my alter persona.”

If mother could see me now, she’d mess her silken drawers, he mused as he let his mind morph into secret redneck mode. He kept his eyes closed until he felt Sucha stop to pay the toll in Kittery. Ichabod was wearing a Red Sox cap turned backward, a ripped Celtics t-shirt, and pants and sneakers from a thrift shop that he’d paid a buck for on bag day. “Put pedal to the metal, Bro, we’re beating feet for the County.”

When Sucha gave him a puzzled look, Ichabod elaborated. “We’re going to a town north of Patten in Aroostook County. Some folks up there are too poor to pay attention, are a few hamburgers short of a picnic, and only trust real cash money. I owe my cousin a big favor for the time I made him break into my uncle’s cellar and steal a gallon of hard cider. I kept insisting we should go skinny dipping in the farm pond and Bub kept saying I’d be sorry if I did. Of course, I had to show him up, but he was right. That cursed place was infested with leeches on steroids. It took him two hours to rid me of them, and some had muckled onto places that still bring a shiver to my spine.”

“What, exactly are we transporting that fits the repayment requirement?” Sucha asked.

“I traded my fancy stickpin for a recipe and the ingredients we’re hauling. My cousin and his father can’t grow anything but green peas. I figure with all this vegan, gluten-free and GMO nonsense, if they can coat their crop with a sweet shell like our beloved Boston Baked Beans, they’re resourceful enough to use the old potato barn to run the operation and they’re right off route eleven, so trucks pass by all the time headed south. If all goes well, I’ll never have to think about leeches or repayment again.”

If you’re still with me, ponder me this…What caught your eye more? The frosting (descriptions), or the shoe (the story), both, or neither. I had fun cobbling it together.

Making the Old New Again

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. As I’ve mentioned before, now that I’m seventy-four years old and have declared myself to be semi-retired, I’ve been looking back over some of my sixty-four traditionally published books with an eye to new editions. Reissuing older titles has become a pretty common practice among writers who were first published in the 1980s and 1990s because the rights to books that came out in the days before e-book editions of every title were the norm have usually reverted to their authors. That means we can do what we want with them—consign to the scrap heap, republish without any changes, or revise and update before reissuing.

The original hardcover from 1997

All rights on all the books I wrote before I started using the pseudonyms Kaitlyn Dunnett and Kate Emerson have reverted to me, some of them quite a while ago. Around 2002—yes, twenty years ago now—I started making those titles available as e-books. The mix included category romance, historical romance, romantic suspense, young adult romance, nonfiction, and two historical mystery series, one set in sixteenth-century England and the other in the U.S.  in 1888. I proofread each book, made a few corrections of typos and the occasional blooper, and changed a couple of the titles back to what I’d originally named them, but I didn’t make any substantiative alterations.

The single title e-book from 2004

After making those books available, I didn’t give them much thought. Sales led to a small but steady income, with the books in the Face Down series and the nonfiction far outpacing the rest. Then came the pandemic and the completion of Kaitlyn’s last contract and I had plenty of time to consider what to do next. Since writing a proposal for a new series didn’t appeal, I found myself once again considering my older books and what I might do with them.

Volume One of the collection, 2021

I was also reading a lot more and couldn’t help but notice that many writers (or their publishers) were issuing what are variously called omnibus editions, collections, or box sets. Ah-ha, I said to myself. That would work really well with my Face Down titles. It didn’t take me long to come up with a plan to collect all ten novels and the sixteen short stories connected to Susanna, Lady Appleton, sixteenth-century gentlewoman, expert on poisonous herbs, and sleuth into three volumes.

I started out intending only to proofread for typos, but before long I found myself doing some revising, too. The plots are the same, but I’ve smoothed out some passages and eliminated the annoying use of contractions like ’tis and ’twas. I don’t dare change too much. After all, whatever was established in one book may crop up in a later one and I can’t guarantee I’ll remember that I went ahead and made the earlier change.

Volume Two, 2022

The biggest challenge, though, has been technical. I want all the formatting to look the same but the individual books did not always follow the same pattern. Chapter One might be One or I or 1, and I marked scene breaks in some books with * * * and in others with * * * * or with just a blank line. In one short story, I used #. Then there’s what happens during the conversion to various e-book formats. They all provide a table of contents and pagination but they also pick up any stray commands that didn’t get taken out of my manuscript. They sometimes do strange things with spacing, too. If I want to leave a blank line between Chapter One and the start of the text, I need to leave at least two blank lines in the text. There are other fiddly bits as well, but you get the idea. Keeping it all straight and catching the glitches is time-consuming and often frustrating. Volumes One and Two, already available, still need a little cosmetic tweaking.

Volume Three, coming soon

One problem I did not anticipate was the difficulty sellers like Amazon might have distinguishing between books. I deliberately designed covers that were similar (it’s called branding), but that delayed the Kindle edition of Volume Two because the powers that be thought they were the same. The fact that I designated Volume One as “Face Down Mysteries, Book 1” and Volume Two as “Face Down Mysteries, Book 2” also proved confusing to Amazon. Volume One actually contains Books 1-3 and Volume Two has Books 4-7, plus short stories, all in chronological order. For some unknown reason, the Kindle editions of both are linked to the print editions of the fifth book in the series. This adds the very good reviews for Face Down under the Wych Elm to the entries, so I’m not complaining.

I’m still proofreading the three novels and nine short stories to be included in Volume Three. When I publish that one, hopefully sometime next month, I’ll include “Volume Three” in the title and/or designate it as “Face Down Mysteries, Books 8-10” rather than “Book 3” and hope that this time the Kindle bots won’t have a meltdown. Then I’ll go back and change the titles of Volumes One and Two so they’re consistent. Correcting an e-book that has already been published is, in theory, simpler than publishing it in the first place, but of course there can always minor delays and glitches.

And what will I do when that’s done? Why start setting up a “boxed set” of my Diana Spaulding 1888 Mysteries, of course.

For those of you interested in the first two volumes, here are buy links:

For Volume One:

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Face-Down-Collection-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B09N4215N4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2HE4KN92PL2QF&

Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-face-down-collection-kathy-lynn-emerson/1140576749?ean=2940165482397

Other:

https://books2read.com/u/3R6onx

For Volume Two:

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Face-Down-Collection-Mysteries-Book-ebook/dp/B09QDYBM7R/ref=sr_1_1?crid=8RO5PTU5CIXK

Barnes & Noble

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-face-down-collection-2-kathy-lynn-emerson/1140870788?ean=2940166457684

0ther:

https://books2read.com/u/mddjWw

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.

 

Welcome to Maine Winter

We thought we’d end the month of January with a few pictures and stories to share our own Maine winters with you. Enjoy!

Kate Flora: I spend much of my winter hunched over my desk, trying to make the book that won’t write . . . uh . . . write. Otherwise, there are birds at the feeder and patterns in the ice and tracks in the snow. I do wonder why deer are coming right to my back deck. Nothing to see here. Oh, yes, and cooking. In theory, I should have done my baking and eating in the fall, like a bear getting ready for hibernation, but I don’t seem to have stopped. Trying to be more “plant forward” I am experimenting with recipes like this one: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/warm-winter-vegetable-salad-with-halloumi?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=bon-appetit

Right now, on breaks from that darned stubborn book, I am reading “flower porn” and dreaming of spring and summer gardens. Did take a break to go snowshoeing and came back with a new scene for the book!

John Clark, I used to love outside winter, especially ice fishing and sledding with the kids. At almost 74, my body and cold don’t speak to each other much. However, I have had a couple interesting changes recently. I’m watching more football and like most everyone else, I think the second weekend of playoff games was the best series of games EVAH. My reading tastes are changing a bit as well. I’m hooked on dark, dystopian YA fantasy, to the point where I’m trimming romance and angst from my TBR pile. Since the dark stuff is boiling out from multiple publishers, I’m in no danger of running out of reading material. Taking nature photos and marveling at how much easier shoveling a paved driveway is, coupled with writing more short stories rounds out the winter report from Waterville, Maine.

Susan Vaughan: Unlike John, I have never loved winter and always have felt the cold deep in my bones. I do remember loving sledding down the steep hills of my native West Virginia, but didn’t much care for the steep icy sidewalks. We’ve had a couple of pretty snowfalls, lovely to look at. Although the temps have been in the single digits, I take the dog for her daily walks.  Sasha loves the cold and off we go. My TBR pile is a list for the library, mostly historical mysteries. I’m catching up on the Daisy Dobbs mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear and am deep into Ariana Franklin’s second book in her Mistress of Death series, The Serpent’s Tale. My writing brain was temporarily frozen too, but a new writing book, Story Genius by Lisa Cron, has thawed it a bit, reminding me that story is more than just the plot and even more than just the characters. So even if I’m snowed in, I’m busy.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I can’t say I much liked the nights when it got down to -12 here in the Western Maine Mountains, but I still prefer our winters to climates that are hot and humid. That said, my husband and I have different ideas on how to spend a winter’s day. Here’s the view he prefers:

That was taken on one of the ski slopes at Sugarloaf. Now here’s one of my preferred winter views:

The woodstove heats our downstairs up to a comfy temp in the mid-seventies even on the coldest days. And yes, that’s Shadow, formerly Lea Wait’s cat, enjoying both the warmth from the stove and a sunbeam. Works for me, too. I also enjoy looking out the window at our snow-covered back yard.

Maggie Robinson: My kids think I’ve got agoraphobia. While it’s true I’m not tramping merrily about the icy countryside (I have a replaced knee, and a knee that probably needs to be replaced), I do peek out on my front porch every now and again—and then peek right back in. I am an indoor cat.

Of course, I spend a considerable time at the computer working on the current mess. I have, like everyone else in America, discovered Wordle. I subscribe to the New York Times Games page, and am so addicted to the daily Spelling Bee that my oldest daughter bought me this Queen Bee pillow.

I keep myself amused by decorating the artificial Christmas tree, which is now in Valentine’s mode. Soon it will be covered in bunnies and eggs. It stays up all year now because I am basically too lazy to take it down.

And I’ve promised myself to read this research book, which is 813 pages long, including the notes. The print is so small I’m not sure I’ll ever really know why the British aristocracy declined and fell.

 

Snowshoe Rock of Doom   Jule Selbo

This is my first full winter in Maine, and I’ve become a snowshoe fan.  So many Mainers are “outdoorsy” and usually, I prefer to curl up with a book and cook the soup while the hikers and skiers sweat. I’m always ready to make everyone a hot toddy when they return with cold cheeks and frostbitten toes. This year I’ve discovered the joys of snowshoeing, being on a trail with the winter white and the dark trees and the refreshing cold on my face.

So, of course, I always want to get the background. The oldest snowshoe on record? Found it.

Otzi the Iceman’s snowshoe in the Italian Dolomites in a melting glacier. After some carbon dating, historians believe it to be about 6,000 years old. Otzi’s mummified body had been found in the area 25 years before the snowshoe was discovered in 2013. The snowshoe is made out of birch wood that was shaped into a 13-inch oval with thin branches stretched and tied inside the frame. Apparently, the hunting, sheepherding and foraging was good in the Alps in Otzi’s time – and he was also stylish: he wore goatskin leggings, a fur hat, and a coat made out of a combo of goat and sheep hides. One can assume (?) that he used leather to tie the snowshoe to his feet?

Then there was Mellie. In the 1870s, he became a “famous” snowshoe maker in Norway, learning his trade from fellow Norwegian Clarence Smith who, supposedly, made the first snowshoe with a turned-up front toe. Mellie broadened that toe and made long and short styles – and introduced woven rawhide strips webbed across the frame, as well as leather bindings. His model was copied for decades.

One can also go down the rabbit hole of the designs of the Native American snowshoe (designed well before Mellie’s) – all a great read but this is where my research has to end for now, because I need to get back to work on the last chapters of 9 DAYS, A Dee Rommel Mystery.

Except to point out a perfect place for a murder. The Snowshoe Rock of Doom, in York, Maine.  During the Candlemas Massacre in January 1692, Native Americans unleashed a successful attack on a British settlement in York. They marched the British survivors to Canada, making it clear they expected them to stay there. On the long walk, prisoners died.

There’s a large boulder near Chases Pond, with a plaque on it, stating this was the worst Indian attack in history (the article I read debated that claim) and that members of the Abenaki tribe “left their snowshoes on this rock” before destroying the town.

Here’s the mystery novel’s midpoint twist: The plaque is not on the right rock. The real boulder is about a half mile away, but the owner of that property is not fond of tourists wanting to trespass on his land. So, the plaque was affixed to a different rock nearby, close to a public road.

I’m a flatland, one-day-out snowshoer. I’ve read about some of the ski-or-snowshoe-in cabins in the hills of western Maine and New Hampshire. Diehards carry in their own supplies, build fires in the cabin for heat, carry in lanterns because there’s no electricity and hope the weather allows them to get back to civilization when they planned to. Not for me.  Like my reading chair too much.

But, somewhere in there is a perfect place for a murder.

Matt Cost: I have to confess that my wife and I have taken to fleeing from Maine for six weeks in the winter. We don’t much care for heat and humidity, so we are only as far as Emerald Isle, North Carolina. We arrived in an ice storm. Luckily, that has quickly melted, and we have been hovering around fifty degrees all week, which is just about perfect as far as we’re concerned. I don’t mind the cold so much as the ice and short days, and there is less ice and a tad more daylight here. In reality, my life is little different in either place. I spend most of the day writing and doing writing activities. Breaks are mostly to take the dogs for a walk. In Maine, that’s in the woods, in North Carolina, it’s on the beach. A perfect blend of two worlds. As Emerald Isle runs east to west, my writing nook is blessed with both sunrise and sunset. There were several pods of dolphins cavorting out front in the middle of the days and Pelicans parade by in graceful flight. Not that I’m looking. I’m writing. Write on.[image error] [image error]

Sandra Neily here (writing from Moosehead Lake where it’s a 2 paws up wind chill day: when Raven tries to hold her feet off the snow.) Short excursions called for. Like Kate, I am trying to write a book that does not want to “write itself.” My fav winter pic is still of Cousin Annie: the 2017 Haines AK Women’s March. (She’s carrying the Stronger Together sign.) Winter resilience raised to a whole new level.  I do find, for me, the best way out of any discouraging time and … yet another Covid winter is to get outdoors. Here’s a mix of current and past winters. Dog snowshoe. Dog thinking about front door snow drift. Husband and I on a ski outing. My daughter and grandgirls. (Now in our second winter of meeting only outdoors.) Antler Camp. A groomed cross-country trail up at Squaw/Moose Mt. (The volunteers doing this are amazing!) Snow art on the deck. Need a lift? Get out there; look here for places. Even if it’s only the coming in that sparks Joy.

 

Weekend Update: January 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), John Clark (Thursday) and Brenda Buchanan (Friday).

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

In case you missed it, Dick Cass’s post yesterday about tripping chickens is a lot of fun.

The “facing a major storm with a sense of humor” award goes to the Falmouth Library for this:

Don’t miss Monday’s group post about how we winter in Maine, and be ready to share your own Maine winter stories, photos, and adventures.

 

 

 

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

Tripping Chickens

Miss me much? You’ve seen some reruns of my posts over the last half of the year, so I’ll forgive you if you didn’t notice I wasn’t exactly here. In addition to the whole challenging life everyone has been leading, both my parents became ill this summer and died in late fall. I’ve been distracted. Many thanks to Kate and the crew for reposting some of my older entries and keeping me alive on the blog.

This also means I published my sixth Elder Darrow novel in November, the second into the pandemic. Mickey’s Mayhem gives a little more space to a gangster character than he might normally get and I think I like him well enough to not kill him off. Ooops, spoiler. Here’s hoping the next one, we can have a live launch.

A couple weeks ago, I found myself reading one of those end-of-the-year compendium pieces the New York Times does celebrating famous people who died in 2021 and found, stuck in the middle of an appreciation of Beverly Cleary, this description of how she passed her time as a child: “tripping chickens.”

Now beyond the utter beautiful silliness of such an image and what it tells you about the mind of a bored child, I was struck by what a perfect description it is of how writers find ideas.

If you’ve been reading here long enough, you’ll know that the one question a writer at an event can count on being asked is some variation of “where do you get your ideas?” And generally writers touch their noses lightly and say something like: “They’re all over the place, you just need to see them.” Or a snarkier answer might come, like “I buy them at the idea store” (which makes it possible that some writers are buying their ideas at Marden’s.)

But the image of a young Beverly Cleary reaching out with a long stick with maybe a hook at the end, to trip up a bird, made me wonder what she did with the chicken after it was down. Was this how she picked out the victim for dinner for her mother to slaughter? Or was she just inspecting the situation to see what she could learn about chicken behavior? Or was she passing time, displaying the casual cruelty of a child?

You probably see where I’m going with this. If our internal dialogues, our observations of the world, our reading, our day to day actions present us with a long parade of ideas, good, bad, and indifferent, then the process of picking out what to write about is exactly like tripping a chicken.

Something in the particular idea—its color, the tilt of its head, its puffed-out chest, the light in its eyes and the hitch in its gait—catches the writer’s eyes. Zip goes the hook around the bony feet and then wham, the chicken goes down like a WWE wrestler, only more convincingly.

Stunned, the chicken looks up at the writer, wondering. Is it my turn for the ax? Will I find life in a story somewhere? Or is this writer just screwing with me because she’s bored? And the writer, too, has to figure: off to the block? Or help the bird upright, smooth its feathers, and send it back into the parade? Maybe next time, chum.

Writers are thieves for technique. It’s going to be very difficult for me not to answer the next time someone asks where do my ideas come from not to say: “Oh, hell. Usually I just go out and trip some of the chickens.”

And a completely random side issue: E. B. White was a great fan of raising chickens.He carried on enough of an epistolary conversation with a friend over the culture of the birds to create a book of correspondence, highly readable if you’re a fan of the dry wit of White.