Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 185

Wicked Wednesday: Hearts and Other Games

It’s the month that includes Valentine’s Day right smack in the middle, so let’s talk[image error] hearts every Wednesday. Today, what about the card game Hearts? Who plays it? What’s your strategy for shooting the moon? If you don’t play Hearts, what other card games do you like? Dish! (Photo credit: commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?cur...)

Jessie: The only card game I play with any regularity is Rummy. My mother and grandmother used to play when I was a child and they were a bit competitive about it. One afternoon when I got home from school my mother had been having an unusually good run of luck. My grandmother offered to pay me a dollar if I could beat my mother at a hand. It was the first dollar I ever earned.

Liz: I don’t know that I ever played Hearts, but where I come from (the Valley) we had a card game called 45s. I swear it was invented by someone in the Valley and stayed in a radius of ten or so miles, because no one outside of the town where I grew up has ever heard of it. But my brother and I learned to play at a young age, mostly because my grandparents played. They were SERIOUS about it, too. They played for fun with us, but every weekend they had card games with their friends and man, they were worse than high stakes poker games. I remember many a 45s-related disagreement between friends that lasted for weeks!

Edith: Indeed, Liz – I’ve never heard of 45s. We play Hearts when my sons are home. My older son has an amazing memory and he can track who played what when. When our young friends are here we play cards with them. I taught them what grownups call BS but with the kids we call it No Way. It’s a really fun bluffing game. I played rummy growing up, and my mother tried to teach us Canasta but it never stuck. When I listen to my favorite radio shows on Saturdays, I play solitaire. If I just sit and listen, I fall asleep. If I try to do something like cook, I don’t listen carefully. It’s the perfect solution, and I have found I normally win at least once an hour.

Barb: I played way too many games of hearts in college, and pinochle, bridge–basically any trick-oriented game–in the coffee house in the basement of the Quad at Penn. When my kids were growing up we played mad games of poker at our cottage, and then when the kids went to bed the grownups would play pitch. I don’t play many card games lately. I love to sit and read a book and listen to the rest of the family playing card or board games. However, I’m rethinking this. My mother-in-law played kalooki with a group of friends every week until a month before she died. Now they play with a photo of her in attendance. Keeps your mind working and keeps you connected with friends. Who can ask for more?

Sherry: I think I played Hearts once and got the highest score anyone had ever seen. As I recall that’s not a good thing. We grew up playing all kinds of card games: War, Solitaire, Whist, Spades, etc. In college we played Spades ALL THE TIME. As adults we’ve played Euchre and lots of games of rummy. My parent’s tried to teach me Bridge but it seemed more like work than fun.

Julie: I think I’ve played Hearts, but I’m not sure. I grew up playing Gin, and Rummy, and Gin Rummy. My favorite card game is Cribbage. I learned by watching my grandfather teach my parents how to play, and would play for hours with him. BTW, Barb, I love the idea of weekly card games with friends. Wonder if we could Skype one?

Readers: What card games do you play? Anybody up for a game of Wicked Cozy Hearts?

Welcome Guest V. M. Burns

Thank you to the Wicked Cozy Authors and Sherry Harris for inviting me to guest blog today. I’m pleased to give away a copy of my debut novel, THE PLOT IS MURDER to one person who leaves a comment (U.S. ONLY).

Here’s a little bit about the book: Samantha Washington has dreamed of owning her own mystery bookstore for as long as she can remember. And as she prepares for the store’s grand opening, she’s also realizing another dream—penning a cozy mystery set in England between the wars. While Samantha hires employees and fills the shelves with the latest mysteries, quick-witted Lady Penelope Marsh, long-overshadowed by her beautiful sister Daphne, refuses to lose the besotted Victor Carlston to her sibling’s charms. When one of Daphne’s suitors is murdered in a maze, Penelope steps in to solve the labyrinthine puzzle and win Victor.

But as Samantha indulges her imagination, the unimaginable happens in real life. A shady realtor turns up dead in her backyard, and the police suspect her—after all, the owner of a mystery bookstore might know a thing or two about murder. Aided by her feisty grandmother and an enthusiastic ensemble of colorful retirees, Samantha is determined to close the case before she opens her store. But will she live to conclude her own story when the killer has a revised ending in mind for her?

[image error]As an avid cozy mystery reader, I like to think I’m pretty knowledgeable about mysteries and cozy mysteries in particular. Now that I’m also a cozy mystery author as well as a reader, I feel an even closer bond to all things cozy. I belong to a lot of Facebook groups which read, discuss and promote mysteries. Recently, someone posted a question to one of those groups about research which has stuck with me. The poster mentioned traditional mystery writers were known to participate in police ride-a-longs and attend conferences to gain authentic details as research for their books. The question was what types of research techniques do cozy authors use for research?

The question of research most likely stems from the nature of cozies. Unlike hard-boiled P.I. books or police procedurals, cozy mysteries feature an amateur sleuth. The protagonist could be anyone from an elderly village spinster, as in Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, to a busy housewife and single parent like Jill Churchill’s Jane Jeffrey mysteries, or even a baker like Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swenson mysteries. The reader doesn’t expect an amateur sleuth to be knowledgeable about forensics, ballistics, or police procedures. In fact, one major appeal of cozies is the innocence (or sometimes ignorance) of the amateur sleuth who stumbles into precarious situations and yet still manages to find a way to put the pieces of the puzzle together to figure out whodunit. Just because an amateur sleuth doesn’t need to know the difference between the various types of guns or bullets doesn’t mean research isn’t important. In fact, accuracy and research are as important for cozy authors as in any other type of mystery; however the difference is the type of research.

One of the common elements of cozy mysteries is themes. There are cozy mysteries with dogs, cats, culinary cozies with recipes, wine lovers, tea lovers, knitting, and practically any other type of theme you can imagine. As a dog lover, I often flock to cozies featuring dogs and include them in my own series. While I own poodles and know quite a lot about them, I am in no way an expert. I find myself researching information about poodles to make sure I have my facts correct. One of my favorite types of cozies is British historical (or any type of historical). Reading and writing historical mysteries requires a great amount of research (I once spent hours trying to find out where Scotland Yard was located in 1938). In the end, I asked myself does it really matter to the story and moved on. For me personally, I have been blessed to meet several former police officers who graciously allow me to pick their brains and bounce ideas around.

They say the devil is in the details. That holds true not only when writing about blood splatter and bullet striations, but in making sure readers feel a part of the protagonist’s world. In my book, THE PLOT IS MURDER, there is a story within a story. So, I need to make readers see the beauty of the Lake Michigan shoreline of Southwestern Michigan as well as the manor house charm of 1938 England. Between the internet, reference books, and my police friends, I strive to provide enough authentic details that will help the reader stay in the story until the big reveal.

In the twenty-first century, readers have access to a seemingly infinite amount of data along with countless social media outlets. Now, more than ever, it’s important for authors to utilize a variety of research methods to insure accuracy. Regardless of the type of mystery, details matter.

Readers: What kind of research have you done?

Social Media:

Website: http://www.vmburns.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vmburnsbooks/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vmburns

About V.M. Burns

[image error]V.M. Burns was born and raised in northwestern Indiana. She has a degree in Political Science and Urban Studies from Northwestern University, a Master of Science in Administration from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. By day, she is a training supervisor at a call center, and at night she writes cozy mysteries. After spending most of her life in the Midwestern United States, she is now thawing out in eastern Tennessee with her two poodles.

The Big Game

by Sheila Connolly

I hear there was a big game yesterday. (Oh, all right, I watched it. How could I not? I live in Massachusetts, and before that I worked in Philadelphia.)

I’m not a big sports fan. Football is the only public sport I follow, mainly because my high school had a very successful team and half the town turned out on weekends to watch them play. That’s the only reason I know the rules of the game. Stick me in front of a basketball game and I’m lost, and forget about hockey or soccer

And then I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area during the Golden Years of Joe Montana and the 49ers, and I was hooked for life.

I’m not alone—well over half the people in the country watch professional football, both men and women.

So why am I writing about this here? Because we’re all mystery writers, and we kill people. On paper at least—not in the real world (right, ladies?). And I think there’s a connection.

[image error]Can we agree that the human race likes conflict, often bloody? Wars have been around longer than the writing to record them. It seems to be in our blood. What is interesting is that in a number of cases, the deadly wars somehow transformed themselves into entertainment for the masses. It might not have happened all at once, but think about  the gladiator battles of the Roman Empire. Maybe early on they were a convenient way to kill off prisoners or unwanted groups of people, but at some point they became games with cheering crowds (and most likely refreshments and betting).

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Same thing in the Middle Ages. Of course there were still wars, and people died. But again, after a while the messy wars became staged jousts between mounted men in armor, trying to knock each other off their horses, while lords and ladies watched. A different kind of game.

We all know crime exists in the modern world, some sophisticated, some brutal. So why does a pleasant group of not-young, non-violent ladies like us write about killing someone (or more than one someone) in each and every book we write? (Writers of suspense and thrillers are not included in this sample—that’s where you readers can go if you want blood and fear and pain.)

I think it’s the same principle, if a bit watered down. We kill off people (usually not-good people) because it gives readers a small chill—”could that have been me?”—and then we set about making things right by solving the crime. I’d guess than none of us believes that murder is a good or even a necessary thing, so what we do is as close as we can come to fixing the problem.

So, back to football. My theory is that it’s mock warfare, with the emphasis on “mock.” Nobody is supposed to die, or even get seriously injured (although sadly it does happen all too often). But we want the thrill of the battle, the small armies of big men running into each other and chasing after a small useless leather object, and we want to care enough about one team or the other that we feel happy when they win, or sad when they don’t.

Better that people get their anger and hostility out of their system watching a mock battle than taking it out on real people, right?

What about you? Are you a sports fan, do you think games are barbaric, or do you simply not care (and go read a book instead)?

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County Cork Mystery #6. There are no battles, real or mock, in this book, but there is, alas, a body.

Opening Lines

Add your opening line for this picture!

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Liz: Stupid snow. It makes dragging a body so darn hard.

Jessie: Grampa always swore that the legendary snow python existed but no one believed him until now.

Julie: Motorcycling through the snow after consuming a six pack–you can’t always cure stupid. We’ll find Earle after the big thaw. Such a shame. It was a nice bike.

Sherry: The townsfolk focused on the snow trench that hadn’t been there the night before. None of them noticed the shadow of someone, something, holding a sword who was creeping closer. I opened my mouth to scream, but it was too late.

Barb: As soon as the storm cleared, Leonard fled the cabin like the Road Runner with Wile E. Coyote on his tailfeathers. (Meep, meep!)

Growing Up Jersey — Welcome Guest Libby Klein

[image error]I met Libby at a Chessie Chapter of Sisters in Crime meeting last fall and was delighted to hear about her new series, the Poppy McAllister Mystery series, from Kensington. The first book, Class Reunions Are Murder, came out on January 30, 2018. Libby is giving away a copy of the book to a commenter! Please join me in welcoming, Libby!

I grew up in south Jersey. Exit Zero. Technically the Villas which would have been like exit two, but they didn’t make an exit two because no one wants to go to the Villas. I lived down the street from a seemingly defunct button factory. It was apparently in operation until recently, but we never saw anyone there. No cars, no people. It’s like there were secret underground tunnels that only night workers knew about. In a word – creepy.

The Villas was not exactly a hotbed of activity since it was mostly populated by summer homes and settlers who had arrived on the Mayflower. Most of Cape May County was deserted in the off season.  If my dad passed more than four cars during his fifteen-minute drive home from work he was like, “Whoa! What’s with all the traffic!” Then he complained that rush hour was out of control.

When most people refer to New Jersey as the armpit of New York, they mean north Jersey. In south Jersey you’re the armpit of Philly. Yoose eat your cheese steaks and Italian hoagies and root for the Flyers and the Eagles or you’re a mook. Everyone knows it.

My high school was small, my graduating class had roughly 200 students, and I had to walk four blocks to catch the bus – which I think constitutes child abuse in today’s society. After school activities were very popular because there was literally nothing else to do other than going to the mall. And by mall, I mean the tiny little strip of about fifteen shops in Rio Grande with the K-mart, two screen movie theater and Rick’s Pizza.

When I was a kid this was a huge culture shock for me. I came from the urban sprawl of the suburbs just outside of Washington DC. We had high rise apartments, public transportation, and a different nationality of restaurant on every corner. New Jersey was cornfields and asparagus farms. You rode your bike to the deli to get your mom capicola and provolone and the good hoagie rolls because she bought tomatoes at the farm stand on the way home from work. You can’t have a good hoagie without the good hoagie rolls.

In the summer, the population of Cape May exploded from four thousand residents to forty-thousand shoobies. Shoobies are what we call the tourists who wear socks with their sandals and order everything on the side when they know they’re gonna eat it anyway. You want to be known as a shoobie all you gotta do is order a “steak and cheese” or a “sub.” We’ll still sell it to you, but now it comes with a side of disdain. You gotta learn the language if you don’t wanna be a mook.

Our little two-lane roads get so clogged with shoobies it takes forever to go a couple blocks. They descend upon the beaches and bed and breakfasts in a clash of humanity fighting for a blanket sized patch of sand to call their own. They come to rent bicycles and beach chairs, line up for miles to buy water ice and frozen custard with rainbow jimmies. They loll about in the Atlantic Ocean, basking in the blistering sun under the constant rumble of single prop planes pulling banners that advertise everything from Reef and Beef Happy Hour to Marry Me Tina.

Growing up in a resort beach town means you’re the one who works those pancake breakfast shifts before going to your booth on the boardwalk. Your nights are spent trying to cajole shoobies into three for a dollar balloon darts and water gun horse races under the constant drone of “Watch the Tram Car Please.” You gotta mind your Ps and Qs because your tenth-grade science teacher is making the funnel cakes next door.

Everyone works as much as possible in the summer because they gotta make the money last all year. Your uncle works on the fishing boats at the crack of dawn to bring in tonight’s clams casino while grandma chambermaids for tips, so she can blow it all in Atlantic City on her day off. Your teachers don’t got time to put together lesson plans the last few weeks of the school year. They’re too tired from bartending now that the clubs are open. No one’s complaining.

Some people say there’s a rudeness here, a brusque attitude common to south Jersey. Maybe it’s the Philly influence. Maybe it’s the rampant humidity or the mosquitoes the size of salt water taffy. Maybe they’re just tired from working two jobs on their feet all day so they can have the luxury of heat this winter and they don’t got time for no shoobie funnel cake emergency. Whatever it is, they don’t mean anything by it. Once you get to know them, they’ll give you the shirt off their back. Just be aware that the shirt will probably say “Welcome to New Jersey. Now go home.”

Readers: Have you ever lived or visited somewhere that was a culture shock?

[image error]Bio: Libby Klein graduated Lower Cape May Regional High School sometime in the ’80s. Her classes revolved mostly around the culinary sciences and theater, with the occasional nap in Chemistry. She has worked as a stay at home mom, climbing the ladder up the ranks to the coveted position of Grandma. She also dabbles in the position of Vice President of a technology company which mostly involves bossing other people around, making spreadsheets and taking out the trash. She writes from her Northern Virginia office while trying to keep her cat Figaro off her keyboard. Most of her hobbies revolve around eating, and travel, and eating while traveling.

 

Wicked Wednesday: Biscuits and Slashed Browns

[image error]Today we are celebrating Maddie Day’s Biscuits and Slashed Browns release! A reminder about the book:

For country-store owner Robbie Jordan, the National Maple Syrup Festival is a sweet escape from late-winter in South Lick, Indiana—until murder saps the life out of the celebration . . .

As Robbie arranges a breakfast-themed cook-off at Pans ‘N Pancakes, visitors pour into Brown County for the annual maple extravaganza. Unfortunately, that includes Professor Connolly, a know-it-all academic from Boston who makes enemies everywhere he goes—and this time, bad manners prove deadly. Soon after clashing with several scientists at a maple tree panel, the professor is found dead outside a sugar shack, stabbed to death by a local restaurateur’s knife. When an innocent woman gets dragged into the investigation and a biologist mysteriously disappears, Robbie drops her winning maple biscuits to search for answers. But can she help police crack the case before another victim is caught in a sticky situation with a killer?

In honor of the newest Robbie Jordan adventure, let’s talk about breakfast, Wickeds. What is your favorite “eating out” breakfast?

Jessie: I don’t have a specific favorite place for breakfast. What I do favor is breakfast in beautiful hotels. I love to sleep in and then head down to a restaurant in the hotel about an hour before they stop serving. I like to ask the waitstaff for a carafe of coffee and then let them know they needn’t worry about me any further. I sit with a notebook and a stack of postcards and nibble and people watch. It is a bit of a travel ritual for me. I’ve done it in Orlando, Vegas, San Francisco, NY, China, Iceland, Brazil, and in the U.K.

Sherry: Jessie, that sounds like a fabulous way to spend a morning. Congratulations on the new book, Edith. I love to order something more complicate than we would make at home. Sigh, with my cooking skills that’s almost anything. It’s a great time to try something new, especially regional dishes. I have to say I tried fried toast in England and it wasn’t my favorite!

Barb: I love diners. For any meal, really, but especially for breakfast. My two favorites in Portland are Becky’s and the Miss Portland. Favorite orders: Omelet with cheese, ham and onions, or blueberry pancakes with syrup and bacon. I’m making myself hungry just typing this.

Liz: I love diners too! And I especially love when I find a diner that has food I can eat

Biscuits and Slashed Browns Book Birthday

Edith here, writing as Maddie Day from north of Boston.

But first – a special news break: Jessica Ellicott’s Murder in an English Village: A Beryl and Edwina Mystery (Jessica being our own Jessie Crockett) and my Called to Justice: A Quaker Midwife Mystery are BOTH nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel! The nods are cause for much celebration, and you, dear readers, will be hearing more about the nominations in the forthcoming weeks. In the meantime, Jessie and I are happy to accept accolades, toasts, and whatever else seems appropriate.

Now, back to today’s topic – also a cause for celebration…

Yes, it’s my book birthday! I’m so excited for the fourth Country Store Mystery to slide into the hands of eager readers.

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For country-store owner Robbie Jordan, the Maple Syrup Festival is a sweet escape from late-winter in South Lick, Indiana—until murder saps the life out of the celebration. Robbie drops her maple-curry biscuits to crack the case before another victim is caught in a sticky and murderous trap.

Some pretty awesome reviews are already in:

“…wonderful culinary cozy mystery series … great characters, terrific local dialect, a charming setting … engaging mystery”
“…well-plotted and exciting story”
“…vivid characters and locales”
“…fast paced plot… just the right touch of romance … a delightful addition”
” …suspenseful, dangerous climax wraps the story up for an exciting ending”
“…delicious recipes…”

I was amazed when I learned that Brown County, Indiana, has hosted a National Maple Festival, and I knew I had to use it in a book. The county is hilly and wooded and looks a lot like Vermont despite being quite a bit farther to the south, so it’s no surprise one of its products is high-quality maple syrup.

I hope you enjoy the story! Now I’m off to find a cake and a bottle of bubbly to celebrate.

Readers: Do you make the recipes in the back of foodie cozies like mine?  If so, which ones have you liked best? If not, why not?

Some of the Wickeds Plot Our Work

By Julie, scurrying to make January goals!

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Plot Your Work

Jessie told me about the Plot Your Work Planner a few months ago. I bought it, started to use it, and told Liz about it. The three of us are writing several books in 2018, so there are high hopes for the efficacy of this planner. We got several questions about it on a Wicked Wednesday a few weeks ago, so we thought we’d let you all know how it is going.

Jessie: I’ve been really pleased with this partucular planner. I attended a session at the NINC conference back in October about it and was delighted to discover that someone had done the work setting up a planner that addressed the unique challenges multiple deadlines present. I use additional planners for other parts of my life but none of them have really helped me to keep on top of large, long term projects with several stages.

Taking a full year look at how all the moving parts fit and don’t fit together has helped me to have more clarity and accountability about what I can expect and cannot expect to accomplish. A nice extra touch is the paper quality. I love to use fountain pens whenever possible and lower quality paper doesn’t take the ink well. This planner doesn’t allow the ink to ghost, feather or bleed. A total win in my book!

Julie: Jessie, I can’t wait to see you in person and walk through this planner together. I am finding my way in, but am not sure I’m using it “correctly”. That said, one of the things I like is that I can make it work for me. I’ve got the two books I’m writing, the book that’s coming out in August, and the book I’m noodling all in the planner. The prompts for different sections take on different meanings depending on the project. Like Jessie, I find the ability to map it out really helpful.

I also have to agree on the quality of the paper. I’ve taken to fountain pens as well, and there isn’t any bleed. I was also encouraged that they just came out with an A5 size for a travelers notebook, and sort of wish I’d waited. I will likely try that next, since the large size stays at home, and it would be nice to have it with me. For folks wanting to try it out, that may be the ticket.

There’s a Facebook page, and an Etsy shop. I’d recommend ordering from them. This is a writer’s tool that works, at least so far.

Liz: I really like this planner too. Although I have to say I let it overwhelm me a little bit. I haven’t used anything other than pencil yet because I keep screwing up! And I’m terrified to use the stickers in case I mess up…

That said, I love all the pieces it pulls together to get you organized. The weekly action plans are awesome, and you can track your habits, identify the top items to focus on, and even list gratitude lists. And it has lots of notes pages, which is especially helpful. When I’m about three-quarters of the way through a book I often have to go back and write out timelines for both main and subplots, and those always end up getting done in random notebooks that I can never find again when I need them. So this is solving that problem!

Very happy with it, and have to stop being afraid of it and take full advantage of all the benefits.

Readers, any other planners out there that have helped you wrangle your life, writing or otherwise? Leave us a comment! (But don’t tell Julie, because she already has way too many planners going!)

Guest: Keenan Powell

Edith here, happy to welcome Keenan Powell to the blog today! Her new book, Deadly Solution, is just out and she’s giving away an e-copy to one commenter.

[image error]Less than a year after drinking sidelined her career as a public defender in Anchorage, Alaska, Maeve Malloy is asked to defend an Aleut Indian accused of beating another homeless man to death. With no witnesses to the crime and a client who claims to have no knowledge of the night of the murder due to a blackout, the case is stacked against them. When Maeve and investigator Tom Sinclair discover there may be a link to an unusually high number of deaths among the homeless community, the search is on for a killer hunting among the most vulnerable members of society. 

 

Becoming Maeve

In high school, writing seemed like a romantic endeavor. Pounding the keyboard when the muse strikes, laughing and swearing with my friends as we drank coffee on sidewalk cafes, wearing berets, earning oodles of money. But I didn’t have a story to tell of my own.

So, I ended up in law school. Later I realized, I was particularly well-suited for litigation. It’s a storytelling profession where you get paid to fight with other people. What’s there not to like?

Fast forward twenty plus years: On this particular morning, I was sitting in a continuing legal education seminar when the two presenters, a workers’ compensation employee attorney and an insurance defense attorney, were talking about a case they’d had years before. They had to run to court for an order prohibiting the medical examiner from disposing of the remains of a man who had died working on the North Slope so that their experts could examine the body. Little known law: the medical examiner in Alaska can declare the cause of death without doing an autopsy and dispose of the remains within seventy-two hours. If no one claims the body, it’s cremated.

A light flashed in my head. I slapped the table in front of me and yelled, “That’s how he did it!” startling the lady who was knitting beside me. A few years earlier, a dozen homeless people had died during the summer within weeks of each other. The thing is, homeless people in Anchorage, Alaska, generally die from exposure during the winter. Having made it through the winter, it’s unlikely they’d start dropping in the summer. The city was in an uproar, convinced that there was a serial killer afoot. However, the police insisted that the medical examinations revealed that there had been no foul play. Then, the murders stopped as mysteriously as they started.

Sitting in that seminar next to the knitter, I’d realized: If the medical examiner determines the cause of death without doing an autopsy, and then destroys the remains, who’s to say he’s right?

I had a story.

Readers: How have twists and turns shaped your life? Share a “flash of light” moment in your life for the chance to win a e-copy of Deadly Solution. This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only and ends January 28, 2018.

[image error]Keenan Powell was born in Roswell, New Mexico, several years after certain out-of-towners visited. Her first artistic endeavor was drawing, which led to illustrating the original Dungeons and Dragons when still in high school. A past winner of the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic grant, her publications include Criminal Law 101 in the June 2015 issue of The Writer magazine and several short stories. She writes the legal column, Ipso Facto, for the Guppies’ newsletter, First Draft, and blogs with the Mysteristas. She lives, and practices law, in Anchorage, Alaska. When not writing or lawyering, she can be found riding her bike, hanging out with her Irish Wolfhound, studying the concert harp, or dinking around with oil paints.

Visit Keenan at: www.keenanpowellauthor.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/keenanwrites

 

G is for . . . Goodbye

From Jane/Sadie/Susannah, who is heading off on retreat in Vermont tomorrow and can’t wait …

Hey, Wicked People. Don’t let the title of this post surprise (or, dare I say, concern) you. I’m not going anywhere, except on the aforementioned retreat. But the mystery world got some sad news last month: the death of beloved mystery author Sue Grafton. That’s the goodbye I’m talking about.

While I never met her in person (I was not at the Crime Bake she attended, and it’s probably just as well because I would have fangirled all over her and embarrassed everyone), I have been deeply influenced by her work. Yes, I have read every single one of her novels, in order. She, along with Diane Mott Davidson, Janet Evanovich, and Rett MacPherson, are the modern authors who inspired me to write a mystery. Not only did these writers get me started toward living my own dream of authorship, they’ve given me countless hours of reading pleasure. How many people you’ve never met can you truthfully say changed your life? And when my first Sadie novel came out (Yarned and Dangerous), it was shelved right next to Sue Grafton’s book X at my Barnes and Noble. I actually cried. I sometimes still tear up when I think about it.

When I heard about her death, my first, very selfish thought, was But What About Z???? Which was followed almost immediately by guilt at my self-centeredness and then empathy for her family. I too have lost more family members than I care to count to lingering illnesses, so believe me, I understand something of what they went through. It didn’t take me long to realize that the family is absolutely right to carry out Sue’s wishes that the alphabet –and the series–now ends at Y. (Although, again, selfishly, I really hoped that she had finished that last manuscript and that it would be released).

Before I got there, though, I did the But Surely exercise. But surely she left notes! But surely she told someone what was going to happen to Kinsey! But surely somebody could finish that novel…

And then, I thought back to another author who left an unfinished manuscript: Elizabeth Peters (a/k/a Barbara Michaels/Barbara Mertz) . She died while The Painted Queen was in process and it was finished by her friend Joan Hess (who also recently passed). And while Joan, who is a legend in her own right, did a really good job, it just wasn’t the same. And it couldn’t be the same, not ever, because there was only one Elizabeth Peters. Just like there was only one Joan Hess. And one Sue Grafton. And one you, dear reader. So I’m just going to be grateful for what these authors gave me, and stop gluttonously wishing for more.

And now I get the joy of imagining my own ending to the series. I’m certain I know which guy she ended up with (it’s been fairly obvious to me for quite  few books where that was going). I’m less certain, but suspicious, about the fate of Henry, Kinsey’s nonagenarian landlord, and her cousin Anna’s onboard passenger, and whether Kinsey will break down and get some 1990-vintage electronics.

If you haven’t read the series, who are the authors whose work you miss dreadfully? If you have, any predictions about what happened to Kinsey after the events of Y is for Yesterday?