Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 10

Loving Halloween from Ellen Byron #giveaway

Edith/Maddie, writing from north of Boston, while I watch the leaves start to turn even as the tomatoes finally ripen.

It’s not quite Halloween, but I’m welcoming Ellen Byron back to the blog with her second fabulous release in two months! French Quarter Fright Night, her new Vintage Cookbook mystery, came out last week and it’s a great read. She’s giving away a copy of one of the first two books!

Check out the blurb: Welcome to the Bon Veeevil Festival of Fear! Prepare for the spookiest night of your life… It’s Halloween in New Orleans, and the staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum has set up a fantastic haunted house tour for their visitors. But when flashy movie star Blaine Taggart and his entourage move into the mansion next door, gift shop proprietor Ricki James-Diaz gets a fright of her own.

While Ricki is excited about the potential business the tours will bring to her vintage cookbook shop, she’s less thrilled by former friend Blaine’s arrival in town. Then Bon Vee’s prop tomb becomes a real tomb for Blaine’s nasty assistant, and suddenly everyone at Bon Vee is a murder suspect. There isn’t a ghost of a chance one of them committed the crime, but with NOPD busy tackling the mischief and mayhem generated by the spooky holiday, it falls on Ricki and her friends to catch the killer.

As the Big Easy gears up for the Big Scary, it seems everyone has skeletons in their closets. Can Ricki reveal the shadowy killer before someone else becomes part of the Halloween horror show?

Learning to Love Halloween

Hi, everyone! Does it feel like I was just here? That’s because I kind of was. You see, I’ve had the high class problem of two books launching within five weeks of each other. A Very Woodsy Murder released on July 23rd; French Quarter Fright Night came out September 3rd.

Woodsy, as I call it, was inspired by my past career as a sitcom writer and love for California’s gorgeous locations like Gold Rush Country and the Sierra Nevada mountains. French Quarter Fright Night was inspired by an almost 180 turn – the raucous, irresistible Halloween happenings in the Big Easy.

Here’s something that might surprise you. I was not a fan of Halloween as a child. All the candy in the world couldn’t make up for the fear of wandering a neighborhood in the dark, terrified a bully would jump out from behind a tree and spray me with shaving cream.

But two things taught me to love the spookiest of holidays. The first was seeing it through my daughter’s eyes. It was so much fun helping her find the right costume every year and then hitting the streets for literally buckets of candy. Eliza even generously allowed me to use some of the photos of her in costume as part of my Shameless Shilling Campaign for my first Halloween-themed mystery, Murder in the Bayou Boneyard.

But what’s made me appreciate All Hallow’s Eve from an adult perspective are the visits to New Orleans I’ve made that serendipitously coincided with the city’s celebrations. ..

Every third Sunday in October, a Mardi Gras-like parade called the Krewe of Boo rolls, and it is a blast. I have a friend in one of the marching dance troops, the Amelia Earhawts…

And one year, our visit timed to the Anne Rice Memorial Second Line, which began with a somber trip up the street from her home in the Garden District and then like most Big Easy funeral processions, erupted into a joyful second line. (The second line is made up of those following the brass band leading the procession, which is the first line.)

In French Quarter Fright Night, I tried to capture as much of the city’s Big Boo Energy as I could. It’s protagonist Ricki’s first Halloween back in NOLA since she was eight years old. But her enjoyment of the festivities is married  when the Brad-Pitt level movie star she considers responsible for her estranged husband’s death buys the mansion next door to Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, where Ricki runs Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbook and Kitchenware Shop.

I hope this post and my new mystery inspire you to add “Spend Halloween in New Orleans” to your bucket list. Take it from me, here’s nothing better than celebrating the spooky holiday in the city that proudly calls itself the most haunted in America.

Readers: Where do you stand on Halloween? For or against? In a big city or hiding out at home?

I’ll send one commenter a copy of Bayou Book Thief, the first book in the series or the second, Wined and Died in New Orleans.

Ellen Byron is a USA Today bestselling author, Anthony Award nominee, and recipient of multiple Agatha and Lefty awards for her Cajun Country Mysteries, Vintage Cookbook Mysteries, and Catering Hall Mysteries (as Maria DiRico). A Very Woodsy Murder is the first book in her new Golden Motel Mystery series. She is also an award-winning playwright and non-award-winning writer of TV hits like Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Fairly OddParents, but considers her most impressive achievement working as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart.

Visit her at Cozy Mysteries | Ellen Byron | Author

Time’s Wicked Warped

by Julie, wringing summer to the last

There’s a meme going around that says, roughly:

1990 was 20 years ago 1995 was 20 years ago 2000 was 10 years ago 2010 was 10 years ago 2016 was a couple of years ago 2019 was last year 2020 was last year 2021 didn’t happen2024 it’s only January

Anyone else feel like this is true? It’s all blurring together. Sure, I’m getting older. And the nieces and nephews are mostly adults now. But it’s more than that. I feel as though time has warped. The pandemic is a black hole that sucked time, so there’s that. But I also blame reading.

There are some books, like the Amelia Peabody series, that are grounded in time. But many series compress book time over a long publication history. Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swenson series has been published over 23 years, but in book time it’s maybe five. The Vicky Bliss series was written over 35 years, but again in book time it’s five years. I love the Finlay Donovan series by Elle Cosimano. The publication dates have been over four years, but book time it’s been a few months.

I am all for suspension of disbelief and heightened reality. That’s why I love reading series. BUT I think it’s messing with my brain, and my sense of time. Characters like Mary Russell, Finlay Donovan, Amelia Peabody, Vicky Bliss–they feel real to me. I revisit them in binges. But I wonder why my life moves at a different pace, where time speeds up instead of slowing down. Where years are missed, and pockets of time feel like yesterday, but they are decades ago.

As writers, how we deal with time is a choice we make. Would that that were true in life.

Readers, is time wicked warped for you as well? How do your favorite series deal with time?

Wicked Wednesday- Surprisingly Good

Jessie: Admiring the fall roses and asters blooming in the garden.

This week as we continue to chat about positive surprises I want to turn our attention to movies. Is there a movie, or even genre of movies that you have ended up enjoying far more than you would have expected? Or, is there one that you would have expected to love, but didn’t?

Sherry: I love action movies. I love the diehard movies and the mission impossible movies anything that has a lot of big sometimes silly action scenes. There was one movie that Ididn’t libe up to the hype. It was one of those movies you keep hearing about how wonderful it is over and over again and then when you see it, it’s just OK for you. That movie for me was Good Will Hunting. I’ve always thought I should watch it again and see if I loved it the second time.

Barb: I love Good Will Hunting! I was thinking about it just the other day. Probably because Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are out doing publicity for The Instigators. Anyway, I feel like this happens to me all the time, things are better than I expected. Maybe I have chronically low expectations. I have two recent examples. Bill and I laughed out loud at the Jerry Seinfeld movie Unfrosted. It got mixed/bad reviews and no wonder. No one under sixty would get half the jokes or references, which go back to our Cold War childhoods. But if you do get the jokes/references, it is very funny. (And Jerry Seinfeld was shooting his mouth off in unhelpful ways during the publicity tour, which didn’t help, but that’s a whole separate post for another day.) My second example is not a movie but a show. We went with friends to the Ross Family Ceilidh when we were vacationing on Prince Edward Island two weeks ago. It’s not so much that I had low expections. I had no expectations. What I got was a delightful celebration not just of the Scottish traditions on the island, but the French, the Irish, the Mic Mac, and with nods to the much more newly arrived. There were original songs, traditional songs, amazing fiddling, and tap dancing even while standing on one’s head. Really! A delight.

Edith: Wow, Barb, that show sounds fabulous. I don’t know if it’s a genre, but I’ve seen some stellar Asian movies recently that I didn’t know I would love as much as I did. One, which I was lucky to watch shortly before I visited Japan last spring, was called Perfect Days. It follows the life of a gentle man who is a Tokyo public toilet cleaner, and it’s slow and lovely (truly – see it if you can). Another is Parasite, a Korean movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2020. It starts out entertaining and ends up a little bit horrifying but remains intriguing enough to keep watching. Everything Everywhere All at Once won in 2022, and Past Lives was nominated in 2023. Both are primarily in English and primarily feature Chinese-origin characters. I’m happy to be surprised that I like Asian-based movies as much as I do.

Jessie: I’ve never gotten around to watching Good Will Hunting. Sherry and Barb, you’ve inspired me to add it to my queue! I am a bit surprised that I love both martial arts movies and westerns. The costumes, the scenery, and the action sequences make for perfect viewing to go with a somewhat complex knitting project! I love making dual use of my screen time!

Readers, which movie took you by surprise?

Never Give Up from Guest Laura Jensen Walker #giveaway

Edith, writing in lovely fall weather north of Boston.

What’s also lovely is the book I have the great pleasure to introduce you to. Death of a Flying Nightingale by Laura Jensen Walker is a new WWII historical mystery based on the women who flew in the service of their country. I was lucky enough to read an early version and absolutely loved it. You won’t want to miss this book, which releases today, and one lucky commenter will win a copy.

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Here’s the blurb: Three very different young women serve as air ambulance nurses bravely flying into WWII combat zones risking their lives to evacuate the wounded. Irish Maeve joined the RAF after her fiancé was killed; streetwise Etta fled London’s slums in search of a better life, and farm girl Betty enlisted to prevent the wounded from dying like her brother.

Newspapers have given these women a romantic nickname: “The Flying Nightingales.” Not that there’s anything romantic about what they do. The horrific injuries they encounter on a daily basis take their toll, so when one of the Nightingales is found dead, they wonder: Was it an accident? Suicide? Or something else?

After another nursing orderly dies mysteriously, they think: Someone’s killing Nightingales. The friends grapple with their loss all while keeping a stiff upper lip and continuing to care for casualties as they’re being strafed by the Luftwaffe. Inspired by true events, this novel is a tribute to a group of overlooked heroes who kept calm and carried on while the fighting raged about them. These courageous women, including Edith “Titch” (Lord) Joyce, proudly did their bit for King and country and found solace and camaraderie in the last friendships forged in war.

Photo used with permission from Edith’s daughter, taken at her 107th birthday celebration a few months before she died.

Never Give Up!

Thanks so much to Edith and The Wickeds for having me back again. It’s been a couple years since I’ve been here. There’s a reason for that—it’s called rejection. After rejection.

Some backstory. I’d written my first historical fiction (a book I’d been wanting to write for decades, ever since I’d been stationed in England; a gentle, semi-epistolary tale) but my agent hadn’t been able to find a home for it so I set it aside. Then I heard about the Flying Nightingales and knew I had to tell their story. I drafted the first two chapters and sent them to my agent.

“Now THIS is a story I can sell!” he said. “How much of the book is written?”

“Only those two chapters.”

He told me to keep writing. A few months later I lost my longtime literary agent when he decided to pursue other opportunities. Our parting was amicable and we’re still friends. My former agent said I’d have no trouble finding a new agent.

It hasn’t worked out that way.

I raced to finish my second WWII novel, an exciting tale about overlooked women heroes who’d been the first British women to go into active combat zones. I finished the book, after writing in a two-month frenzy, since there was a specific agent I wanted to approach the moment she reopened to queries. It was an agent that a writer friend and client of hers had recommended. I pitched her with THE NIGHTINGALE GIRLS, the original title. Since I’d gotten both of my two former agents as referrals from author client friends more than 25 years ago, I assumed this new agent referral would be a slam dunk.

It wasn’t. Things had changed in the past two decades. Although the agent said nice things about my writing, ultimately, the book wasn’t for her. I then immediately queried half a dozen of the top agents out there, my “dream” agents. The form rejections soon followed.

I hired an editor to review and edit my query letter. She immediately saw the problem. “Your word count is too low for historical fiction—most agents will automatically reject it.” And so I wrote more chapters until I got to an acceptable word count, then queried new agents. Again and again. I refused to give up. I believed in this book and knew it was a story that needed to be told.

More rejections.

I rewrote my manuscript, making the book stronger and better. But after forty agents rejected it, saying, “editors aren’t buying WWII novels; the market’s saturated,” I was ready to give up.

Then a successful writer friend told me she’d gotten sixty rejections before finding her agent and encouraged me to carry on. And so I did.

More rejections followed. Along with self-doubt and despair.

I told another writer friend about the myriad rejections and how discouraged I felt. She suggested I check out her publisher, which didn’t require agented submissions.

Knowing Level Best Books was a mystery publisher, I took the barest whisper of a mystery sub-plot within THE NIGHTINGALE GIRLS and expanded it. I added new scenes and chapters to make the book into crime fiction, changed the title to DEATH OF A FLYING NIGHTINGALE, and submitted it directly to Level Best, feeling I’d done the best I could.

Not only did they accept my novel, but they also offered me a three-book contract.

Now writers I admire are singing this book’s praises:

“Riveting and affecting… a touching and heartfelt celebration of three “ordinary” women who achieved the extraordinary.”

 –Susan Elia MacNeal, New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope mysteries

“A compelling tale of courageous young women in WWII . . . the reader will soar and weep alike reading Walker’s well-told story.”

–Edith Maxwell/Maddie Day, Agatha-Award-winning author

“A gripping plot and a tender heart . . . luxuriate in the company of a writer who does both romantic and unflinching brilliantly.”

–Catriona McPherson, multi-award-winning author of In Place of Fear

Readers: Have you ever felt like giving up after myriad rejections? Comment for the chance to win an ARC of Death of a Flying Nightingale.

Laura Jensen Walker is a former journalist and the award-winning author of more than twenty books, including the Agatha-nominated MURDER MOST SWEET. Laura flew a typewriter across Europe in the Air Force and fell in love with all things English while stationed at an RAF base in the UK. Death of a Flying Nightingale is her historical debut. Laura lives in Northern California.

Tag, You’re It!

by Barb, just back from a wonderful week on Prince Edward Island

I’m here with the fourth post in my series about what I’ve learned while writing my 15 published mystery novels, 6 novellas, and dozen or so short stories. (You can see the previous posts here, and here, and here.)

So much writing advice and instruction is aimed at beginners. Learning opportunities get harder to find as you get more advanced. Yes, if you’re lucky, you’re getting feedback from your agent and/or editor, but that’s usually specific to a manuscript. Julie Hennrikus and I have often bemoaned the lack of a support group specifically for the Middies–mid-career, mid-list, middle-aged. (Ha, ha. Well, not necessarily that last one.)

What I’ve tried to do with this series is capture things it took me a while to catch onto. But, of course, writing doesn’t work like that. What is easy or obvious to one person has to be learned by dint of hard work by another. And vice versus. Also, I’ve found I’ve had to learn things in layers. Something that made no sense when I first heard it will click into place when I’ve had more experience.

I’m doing my best to pass on hard-earned wisdom in this series but your mileage may vary.

One of the things you have to do along the way is discard a lot of advice that was good, or at least well-meant, when you were a beginner. I mean by that lessons that were intended to steer you away from the most obvious pitfalls. “Show, don’t tell,” is a good example. Er, yes, but not always.

Another example is about dialogue tags. The first level of advice about dialogue tags that you get is that you should never add an adverb, as in, “Thanks for the fish,” Joe said, gratefully. Yes, that is bad, redundant, and does have the whiff of Dick and Jane about it. But it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who has read a lot of contemporary fiction would even think to do that.

The next layer of prohibition is that you should use no tag but “said.” No whispered, shouted, asked, wondered, queried, explained, complained, etc. The theory here is two-fold. One, you should be able to get anything you need beyond said from the context. The reader should be able to tell from the quote if someone is screaming or musing. Two, said is the least disruptive, most invisible of dialogue tags. It all but disappears in the reader’s mind and therefore doesn’t interrupt the flow of the characters’ conversation.

My reaction to these first two layers of prohibition is often something like, “English is a big, beautiful language and I can use any part of it I want!” (Which is patently untrue since I spent most of my career writing cozy mysteries and there were words I couldn’t use. George Carlin listed most of them in 1972.) I do understand this advice, though my characters do occasionally ask, respond, whisper, or stage-whisper and so on.

The third level of prohibition is that you shouldn’t use dialogue tags at all. Every character, this piece of advice goes, should have such a distinct voice that the reader will know who is saying what.

My reaction to this is three-fold. 1) Great when it works, but as anyone who has ever had to read backwards through three pages of dialogue to figure out which character is speaking will tell you, having to do that definitely takes you out of the story. 2) While I buy that I need to understand who my minor characters are and why they’re saying what they’re saying, short of giving each minor character some kind of accent or speech impediment, endowing each one some instantly recognizable speech pattern seems unduly burdensome to both reader and writer. And 3) if I had known dialogue tags were undesirable, I wouldn’t have had a team of two police detectives and an amateur sleuth because that combination results a in a lot of three-way and four-way conversations.

Seriously, what I have found is that dialogue tags are often unnecessary, but not because of distinct ways of speaking, or thoughts that could only be expressed by one specific character (though that’s good if you can achieve it). Instead I find the best way to eliminate dialogue tags is via bits of business that anchor the conversation in time and space, add to character development, and slow down and open up the conversation, allowing it (and the reader) to breathe.

Example (with tags):

“Where are you going?” Jack asked.

“Dunno.” I answered.

“Really?” Jack said. He was skeptical.

“Let’s go to the spring house,” I responded.

Example (but did you really need them?):

“Where are you going?” Jack drew alongside me, his boots scuffing in the dry dirt of the trail.

“Dunno.” I’d fled the house knowing only that I had to get I had to get away from the oppressive atmosphere that followed the discover of Esme’s body. I’d been walking with no destination in mind.

Jack raised an eyebrow. He didn’t believe me.

“Let’s go to the spring house.” I realized the moment I spoke the words that I’d unwittingly invited him along.

As I’ve said in previous posts in this series these are things I’ve learned along the way, so you’ll see me adding unnecessary tags all the way through to the last book. There is one “said” in Torn Asunder that I justified keeping in “for rhythm” through a dozen revisions. Then, finally, when I read the book in print, I realized (at long last and way too late) the tag was unneeded. (Smacks forehead. Doh!)

Readers and writers: How do you feel about dialogue tags? Do you adhere to the rule of “said” only or none at all? Do you notice dialogue tags? All the time, or only when they’re done badly?

Guest- Michael Falco, and a giveaway!

Jessie: In Northern New England where the weather is swaying back and forth between hot and chilly!

I am so pleased to welcome guest Michael Falco, author of The Bria Bartolucci Mystery series!
Michael is giving away two copies of MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFE to two readers
who leave a comment on the blog.  Here’s a bit about MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFÉ, the second book in a new mystery series.

MURDER, ITALIAN STYLE

Ciao bellas!  Welcome to the idyllic coastal village of Positano nestled in Italy’s alluring Amalfi Coast.  Here, everything is beautiful.  The food, the people, the landscape, even the murder.  

Meet your sleuth.  Bria Bartolucci is a 33-year-old widow raising her nine-year-old son, Marco, on her own after her husband, Carlo, was killed in a plane crash.  Devastated by the loss, but determined to fulfill their dream of opening up a Bed and Breakfast in Positano, Bria forges ahead and quicker than you can say, “Mamma mia!” Bria has turned Bella Bella into one of the hottest B and B’s in the village.  

Having already solved a string of murders, Bria’s gained a reputation as an Italian Miss Marple.  So when Chef Lugo – a visiting culinary celebrity – dies right next to her while they’re filming the pilot of his new television show, Bria immediately suspects foul play.  At first no one believes her, but quickly they all change their minds.  Especially Luca Vivaldi, the chief of police.  And Bria’s love interest.

As they work closely together to solve the murder, Bria and Luca can’t deny their growing romantic attraction.  It doesn’t hurt that he’s got smoldering Neapolitan features and she looks like she stepped out of a 1960s Fellini film.  Or that his play-it-by-the-rulebook approach constantly clashes with her follow-my-gut instinct.  They may not realize it, but Bria and Luca make the perfect pair.  

While their romance blossoms, there’s a murder to solve.  Bria enlists the help of Rosalie, her best friend and Luca’s younger sister, to dig into Lugo’s past to find out if he had any enemies who’d want him dead.  What they uncover is a tangled web of lies, deceit, and cover-ups that shock the village and bring to light long-buried secrets.  

MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFÉ boasts a colorful cast of characters from the commanding Imperia Bartolucci, Bria’s ice-cold mother-in-law and Annamaria Antonelli, the village gossip, to Valentina Travanti, the sexy new tour guide and Massimo Angelini, the mysterious television producer.  Some are locals, some are visitors, all are suspects.  And Bria won’t rest until she finds out who killed the man who she witnessed take his last breath on earth.  

This is murder, Italian style.  Filled with passion and romance, food and laughter, family and friends.  So come join Bria and spend some time in Positano to relax and savor the international flair of this picture-perfect village.  But do be careful and remember that just because it’s paradise, doesn’t mean it isn’t deadly.  

Readers:  Be the first person to tell me Bria’s full name and you can win a signed copy of MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFÉ.  I’ll also randomly pick one name from all those who leave a comment or ask me a question and choose another winner. 

Grazie!  And arrivederci!

Jessie: In Northern New England where the weather is sway...

Jessie: In Northern New England where the weather is swaying back and forth between hot and chilly!

I am so pleased to welcome guest Michael Falco, author of The Bria Bartolucci Mystery series!
Michael is giving away two copies of MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFE to two readers
who leave a comment on the blog.  Here’s a bit about MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFÉ, the second book in a new mystery series.

MURDER, ITALIAN STYLE

Ciao bellas!  Welcome to the idyllic coastal village of Positano nestled in Italy’s alluring Amalfi Coast.  Here, everything is beautiful.  The food, the people, the landscape, even the murder.  

Meet your sleuth.  Bria Bartolucci is a 33-year-old widow raising her nine-year-old son, Marco, on her own after her husband, Carlo, was killed in a plane crash.  Devastated by the loss, but determined to fulfill their dream of opening up a Bed and Breakfast in Positano, Bria forges ahead and quicker than you can say, “Mamma mia!” Bria has turned Bella Bella into one of the hottest B and B’s in the village.  

Having already solved a string of murders, Bria’s gained a reputation as an Italian Miss Marple.  So when Chef Lugo – a visiting culinary celebrity – dies right next to her while they’re filming the pilot of his new television show, Bria immediately suspects foul play.  At first no one believes her, but quickly they all change their minds.  Especially Luca Vivaldi, the chief of police.  And Bria’s love interest.

As they work closely together to solve the murder, Bria and Luca can’t deny their growing romantic attraction.  It doesn’t hurt that he’s got smoldering Neapolitan features and she looks like she stepped out of a 1960s Fellini film.  Or that his play-it-by-the-rulebook approach constantly clashes with her follow-my-gut instinct.  They may not realize it, but Bria and Luca make the perfect pair.  

While their romance blossoms, there’s a murder to solve.  Bria enlists the help of Rosalie, her best friend and Luca’s younger sister, to dig into Lugo’s past to find out if he had any enemies who’d want him dead.  What they uncover is a tangled web of lies, deceit, and cover-ups that shock the village and bring to light long-buried secrets.  

MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFÉ boasts a colorful cast of characters from the commanding Imperia Bartolucci, Bria’s ice-cold mother-in-law and Annamaria Antonelli, the village gossip, to Valentina Travanti, the sexy new tour guide and Massimo Angelini, the mysterious television producer.  Some are locals, some are visitors, all are suspects.  And Bria won’t rest until she finds out who killed the man who she witnessed take his last breath on earth.  

This is murder, Italian style.  Filled with passion and romance, food and laughter, family and friends.  So come join Bria and spend some time in Positano to relax and savor the international flair of this picture-perfect village.  But do be careful and remember that just because it’s paradise, doesn’t mean it isn’t deadly.  

Readers:  Be the first person to tell me Bria’s full name and you can win a signed copy of MURDER IN AN ITALIAN CAFÉ.  I’ll also randomly pick one name from all those who leave a comment or ask me a question and choose another winner. 

Grazie!  And arrivederci!

Are You Adventurous?

I’ve been pondering how adventurous I am lately. I’ve had my moments, but they weren’t big ones and a lot of them occurred when I was younger. When I see those lists on social media that are about have you done these things, I usually score pretty high. Trust me, I wish I didn’t have to mark yes to: have you been in an ambulance.

Most of my adventures are things like seeing a sign for the Ozarks and deciding on a whim to go for a couple of days instead of back to college to study. Or deciding at midnight that it was a good idea to drive ninety miles to go have breakfast at an IHop. We made it within thirty miles when one person in the car decided they had to get back for a seven-thirty class so we turned around. (The person fell asleep and didn’t go to her class!)  

Me in the Ozarks in college

I’ve never been one for thrill rides. The Tilt-a-Whirl is too much for me. Although, I made an exception to go on a Rock-O-Plane ride at the county fair because a cute boy asked me to in ninth grade. And I did finally (in my fifties) go on a roller coaster that did one loop. I went on it twice and trust me, that was more than enough. Looping is not for me.

I went hitchhiking once with two friends in the small college town where I went to college. The guy who picked us up was from a small town fourteen miles from our hometown. He drove us approximately a mile. (Sorry, mom!)

I’ve ridden on motorcycles, gone on long road trips with friends, moved to a lot of places I didn’t want to, and have survived hurricanes, tornados, floods, and earthquakes. Most of it kicking and muttering under my breath instead of screaming. The moves all ended in meeting the most wonderful people.

Getting published was a big adventure. You have to psych yourself up for a lot of rejection from agents and publishers. I had years of rejections before Tagged for Death hit the shelves ten years ago. You have to prepare yourself for the bad reviews and the people who write to tell you there was a comma out of place on page 126. (But those are balanced by all the good notes and reviews!)

So why am I rambling on about this? Because if all has gone as planned, I’m currently on the Gold Coast of Australia at an Ultimate Frisbee World Championship tournament. Wait – you went all the way to Australia for Ultimate Frisbee? No. We were planning to go to see our friend Christine and her sons this summer.  One of her sons just happened to have a tournament so why not go?! We’ve watched him play for the last two years here in the States. And, if all has gone well, we’ve already been to Perth and taken a train across Australia back to Sydney.

Readers: Are you adventurous? Do you have a favorite adventure? Update: below are a few pictures from our trip.

Wicked Wednesday- Surprisingly Good

Jessie: On the coast of Maine soaking up every bit of sea and sun left before the crisp autumn air arrives!

September is full of fresh starts, new experiences, and even some unexpected results. Each week this month I wanted to ask about something that ended up being surprisingly good. So today, since it is the first week of school for so many students I wondered about a class or a bit of research that ended up being more interesting than you would have expected.

Edith/Maddie: I had a youngish woman for a history/civics/social studies (memory fails me on specifics) class in high school, Mrs. Belmont, whom I liked a lot. One day Mr. Thompson, also youngish, came in. The two of them started arguing out loud about something. Both were insulting and unreasonable. We were all horrified. It turned out to be a planned performance that they turned into a lesson about conflict resolution. At a time when the Vietnam War was in full swing and many were in conflict domestically as well, the lesson made a big impact on me.

Sherry: It’s hard to pick just one incident. I was blessed with many wonderful teachers. I think one of my favorite and hardest classes was in advanced Shakespeare class. The teacher was tough, the students were brilliant, and I learned to look at those plays in a whole different light.

Barb: In the early 1970s campuses were in turmoil. And so with the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. Until my sophomore year, the department required a two-semester senior seminar to graduate with an English major. That was done away with and a new two-semester freshman seminar was put in its place to enter the major. I was one of the students who slipped through, required to do neither. As I result, I realized I could graduate a semester early if I added one more English class to my fall schedule senior year. I was already dating Bill, who would become my husband and who lived in Boston at the time, so I had carefully stacked all my classes into Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday. (Which turned out to be a disaster but that’s a different story.) One class met my schedule and criteria of 4:00-5:30 pm Tuesday and Thursday, “The Western Through Film and Literature.” I started it expecting nothing. It turned out to be one of the hardest courses I took in college and probably had more impact on my thinking about the world and about myself than all but one other course. I wrote my term paper on the expanding universes of Larry McMurtry’s first three novels, Horseman, Pass By (Hud), Leaving Cheyenne (Loving Molly), and the Last Picture Show. I like to think it may have been among the first college papers ever written about his work.

Jessie: Wow, Barb! I wonder if any of that experience can be seen in your novels and the way that you construct them. I find that the research that I do always leads to surprising discoveries which often turn out to be useful and interesting. To date, one of the things most surprising was the research I did on pigeon racing in the interwar period and how it was influenced by the economic class structure of the UK at the time. Fascinating!

Readers, your turn! Tell us about a learning experience that turned out to be better than you would have guessed it would be.

Stones and Fairyfolk with Guest Catriona McPherson #giveaway

Edith/Maddie writing from north of Boston where fall is looming, the school year has begun, and, sigh, the end of summer produce season is in my distant sights.

That said, nothing cheers me more than welcoming one of the best and most cheering authors around, my friend Catriona McPherson! She has a new installment out in her long-running historical Dandy Gilver series, a favorite. (Well, it’s been out in the UK and released today in the US!)

Here’s the blurb: In spring of 1939, Dandy Gilver, the mother of two grown sons, can’t think of anything except the deteriorating state of Europe and the threat of war. It takes a desperate cri de coeur from an old friend to persuade her to take on a case. Daisy Esslemont’s husband Silas has vanished. When Dandy and her side-kick, Alec Osborne, track the wandering Silas down to the quaint East Lothian village of Dirleton, he is dead, lying on the village green with his head bashed in, in full view of a row of alms houses, two pubs, a manse, a school and even the watchtowers of Dirleton Castle. And yet not a single one of the villagers admits to seeing a thing.

As Dandy and Alec begin to chip away at the determined silence of the Dirletonites, only one person – Mither Golane, the oldest resident of the village – is loose-lipped enough to let something slip, but her quiet aside must surely be the rambling of a woman in her second childhood. Dandy and Alec know that Silas was no angel but “He’s the devil” is too outlandish a claim to help them find his killer. The detecting pair despair of ever finding answers, but are they asking the right questions?

Stones and Burrs and Fairyfolk

Hey! It’s lovely to be back with the Wickeds. And, given the clue in your name, your location in the land of Salem and the fact that the new Dandy Gilver mystery is called The Witching Hour, no one is going to faint from shock that I’m writing about folklore today.

I’m from a folklore-saturated part of the world – Scotland – where, just for example, children brought up with both the old Celtic stories and the newer Christianity might, like me, have no clear sense of the difference between a fairy and an angel. I remember learning: angels have halos and fairies have feelers. Otherwise . . . pretty much the same thing, right?

All over Scotland, bits of folklore survive not only alongside organised religion but helped out by it. (Naughty sprites and mischievous pixies haven’t had nearly the work they used to get since the devil came along and stole their thunder.)

In my home burgh of South Queensferry it has just been Burry Man’s Day on the second Friday in August, when a local lad, covered from head to toe in the prickly seeds of the burdock plant, walks the town boundaries all day being given nips of whisky or money (for charity, these days), having his burrs plucked off his linen undergarments and replaced with flowers.

Why?

Fertility, good harvest, fending off evil . . . the usual reasons. (The church decided a while back, however, to start saying the origins of the practice were “lost in the mists of time”, which keeps everyone happy.) When I was a beginning writer, the Burry Man was impossible to resist and he’s got a starring role in Dandy Gilver No.2.

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The bit of folklore that offered itself up for The Witching Hour was the lowping stane (leaping stone) set into the ground in the village of Dirleton in East Lothian. It’s by no means a henge but it had an important place in village life during earlier times. Still, on the last day of school, it’s draped with stinging nettles and all the schoolchildren jump over it before they go home.

Why?

I’m guessing fertility, good harvest, warding off evil . . . Specifically, this time it would make folkloric sense to test the local people for devilry before they went out into the fields to blight the crops they were supposed to be bringing in. It’s no surprise that, these days, only children do the leap – most practices are recast as childhood games when modern education replaces the old beliefs. It’s no more of a surprise to read that the origins are “lost in the mists of time”.

I’ve given the lowping stane more resonance for my fictional Dirletonites than the real one has in the world as far as I could find out. In the book, it’s the scene of a murder and either the victim was trying to get there for sanctuary – crawling along the ground in the dark – or he died there because he was a minion of You Know Who.

He’s got a lot of names in Scotland: Auld Nick – perhaps because Machiavelli’s first name was Niccolo; Auld Clootie – because of his cloven hooves; the Wee Man – to diminish his power; and confusingly Himself – because of a taboo about naming him. The confusion comes from the fact that Scotland also has a version of the widespread taboo about naming the deity. So Himself could also be God, who goes by many further names – my favourites being “the Dear” and “Jock Tamson”. In fact, the working title for The Witching Hour was Jock Tamson’s Bairns, after the Scottish saying “We’re all Jock Tamson’s Bairns” i.e. we’re all God’s children. My editor was soooooo right to suggest changing it.

I changed it very happily because I love a witch almost as much as I love a stone. And I do love a stone. My favourite I’ve ever written was in The Child Garden, where there’s a rocking stone just outside Gloria’s house – a large oval boulder that sits in a cup it’s not connected to and is capable of rocking back and forth on. These stones are real but rare. Most of them have been rocked off their cups and rolled away over the ages. In my story, I had the devil trapped in the stone after being tricked into crossing a bridge. (He never does wise up to that, does he?) Gloria’s responsibility as the householder is to rock the stone twelve times a day to keep him addled so he can’t escape. But not thirteen times. Because of Judas at the last supper. And there we are again hopelessly confused between stone imps, Satan, God and gods, angels and fairies. It’s the Scottish way and we wouldn’t change it.

Readers: I’d love to hear the bits of folklore from your bit of the world or the place of your ancestors. If there’s a stone involved, so much the better. I’ll send one commenter a copy of the new book!

Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. She writes: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories, including September 2024’s THE WITCHING HOUR; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about a medical social worker; and contemporary psychological standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comedies about a Scot out of water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California. She is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com