Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 250

Two Writers, One Author Name

Edith here, happy to introduce two Maine authors who write as one person! Take it away, Lee Hollis.

Hello everyone!

I want to thank Edith Maxwell for inviting me to write a guest post this week. I thought the best thing for me to do first is introduce myself and tell you a little about Lee Hollis and how the Hayley Powell Food & Cocktail Mysteries came about.

Lee Hollis is a pen name. I’m Holly Simason and I co-author the books with my brother Rick Copp, who has been a writer for film and television for 27 years and has also written two separate series of mystery novels under his own name. But I’ll let him tell you all about that in a future post!

Our family goes back several generations in Bar Harbor, Maine. We were born and raised there, and even though we both moved away, Rick to New York and then to Los Angeles and me to Italy and then Northern California, our hearts and souls have always been in New England. I eventually moved back to our hometown in 1997 after a divorce to raise my three young kids, and was working as an office manager/food and cocktail columnist at the Mount Desert Islander Newspaper. It was actually going surprisingly well. Readers seemed to enjoy my columns and recipes and I even won a Maine Press Association award and a New England Press award.

Rick mentioned my burgeoning writing career to his publisher John Scognamiglio at Kensington Publishing and John immediately suggested we team up and create a story about a small town food columnist and send it to him. Rick has always loved mysteries and crime stories and I, of course, have always loved cocktail recipes. We thought there just might be something there.

So my brother (who knows me too well) flew to Maine and arrived at my house armed with two of my biggest weaknesses– a bottle of Merlot wine and another bottle of Merlot wine. As he filled our wine glasses, he casually broached the subject of writing a Cozy Mystery together. I immediately said, “No way!” I didn’t even know what a cozy was. But after the wine bottles were emptied, I found myself agreeing just as long as we wrote under a pen name and didn’t use our real names to save myself from embarrassment if the book was a disaster.

Lee is my middle name and Hollis is Rick’s middle name and, voila, Lee Hollis was born!

We brainstormed that evening and came up with a story about a single mother with two kids struggling to make ends meet while working in a newspaper office. She has two crazy best friends and is close to her bar owner brother, who just happens to be married to the Chief of Police. The first book in the series, Death of a Kitchen Diva, was released in 2012 two years after that first wine-soaked creative session.

Six books later we’re still having a ball. Combining our two favorite obsessions, and mixing in the names of our favorite hometown places, and creating characters that may or may not be based on people we knew growing up has turned out to be great entertainment for our friends and family. Especially because everyone takes great joy in trying to guess who’s who in the books. We always swear the characters in Hayley’s world are completely made up, but truth be told, sometimes there is a thin line between fact and fiction. Death of a Cupcake Queen came out this year.

Recently we completed our seventh book, Death of a Bacon Heiress, due out in March 2016 and we are now working on our eighth book, Death of a Pumpkin Carver, due out in the fall of 2016. Also as some of you may know, we are very excited to be collaborating on an upcoming Cozy Mystery Christmas Novella book with one of your own Wicked Cozy Authors, Barbara Ross, and also Leslie Meier. The book will be out in October 2016.

I still to this day can’t wrap my head around the phrase “published author”. It’s been one crazy, wonderful ride and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that readers keep following Hayley Powell’s adventures for years to come!

You can find Lee Hollis on Facebook and at www.leehollismysteries.com.

Readers: Questions for the team?

Filed under: Guest posts Tagged: Death of a Bacon Heiress, Death of a Cupcake Queen, Death of a Kitchen Diva, Haley Powell, Holly Simason, Lee Hollis, Rick Copp

Happy Birthday Agatha!!

Agatha Christie’s 125th birthday was Tuesday, September 15. Molly MacRae, author of the Yarn Shop Mystery series, was the host of a wonderful party to celebrate. It’s been almost 48 hours, and the party is still going strong–on Facebook. I put up a few posts, and chimed in on others. It was a lot of fun to celebrate, even virtually, with some other Christie fans.

I am a huge fan of Agatha Christie, and blogged about that a bit yesterday on Live to Write/Write to Live on “Happy Birthday to a Great Dame”. I’ve written about her on this blog as well. As some of you know, I wrote a thesis about Agatha Christie, her use of point of view, and its contributions to the genre. In prepping for the thesis, I read a lot of support materials, including her autobiography, and Laura Thompson’s biography. Christie was a very reserved person, so I won’t say that I know her. I will say that adding humanity to her fictional output helps put things in a different context for me. I posted about my expectations of her being upended last month. This month I’ve had two more Agatha surprises.

First, several previously unpublished plays have recently been unearthed and are being published later this year. I have my copy on pre-order, of course. Though we may think of her as a fiction writer, she was a playwright as well. MOUSETRAP is the longest running play in history. She also wrote a good adaptation of AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, with a different ending. Looking forward to reading this treasure trove.

The other book I am excited about is inspired rather than written by Agatha Christie. A IS FOR ARSENIC by Kathryn Harkup is a book about the various poisons Christie used in her novels. I’ve just started reading it, and am having a great time. It is both an homage to the stories of Christie, and a writer’s toolkit for poisons. Don’t be surprised if poison plays a role in the 3rd Clock Shop Mystery

One final note–Agatha Christie died 39 years ago. Despite that, people know who she is, buy her books, and create new work based on her stories. I find that remarkable, and enviable.

Happy Birthday to a great Dame!

Filed under: Julie's posts Tagged: agatha christie

Wicked Wednesday: Memories of School

Wicked Wednesday again. School has been back in session for a couple of weeks in most places. Wickeds, what’s one memory of when you were in school that really sticks out for you? Good or bad, we want to  know!

Barb: Goodness, so many memories. It’s hard to pick one. I’ll go one my friend Hilary tells about me. I think I remember it, though she remembers more vividly. When I was nine, in fourth grade, our teacher asked me to define a saucer. Without hesitating, I said, “It’s a small plate with an indentation intended for a cup.” She says she knew then I would be a writer! (Or maybe, as is a more accurate description, I would spend my life ‘splaining things to people.)

Edith, in her fifth grade Girl Scout uniform. Which she wore to school whenever she had a meeting after school.

Edith: I love it, Barb! For me, so many goofy moments. When I crawled under the desks to get to the circle rug in first grade instead of going around. When I got hot and took off my petticoat, layering it over my dress instead, and walked home that way. When I showed up at the end of the last day of fifth grade, already knowing I would have Mr. Edward Aguirre for sixth, at his classroom, called, “See ya next year, Eddie!” and dashed away. When I got kicked out of senior year biology for knitting in class (well-deserved). It’s a wonder I ever matured…or have I? Nothing so profound as to predict I’d be a writer, although I was Cub Editor of our school newspaper, the Rampage, my freshman year in high school.

Liz: I’ve actually told this story at job interviews – in my junior year of high school, we had to write a paper about A Tale of Two Cities. Being geeky enough to enjoy that sort of thing, I put a ton of effort into my paper. I’d loved the book, so it was a fun project for me. I turned it in, sat back and waited for my A. When Sister Virginia passed the papers out, I had a C+. I was horrified – and angry. After class, I marched up to speak with her about it. Her response? “This was too well-written for your age group. I thought you’d copied it from the CliffNotes.” Needless to say, she changed my grade!

Edith: Don’t suppose she bothered to check the Cliff Notes and see that yours was completely different? What a nerve…

Julie: Love these memories. And Edith, what a cutie you were! School memories are such a sorted lot. Some good, some bad. I remember trying out for the 9th grade play. I’d never done it before, but just thought I might like it. Plus I liked the drama kids. I was (am still, to a degree) very shy, so it took everything to sign up. Plus, it was for a musical, and my second grade teacher had already told me I couldn’t sing, and I’d believed her. (Still do, probably why I am such a champion for the kids in my life.) Anyway, I did the reading, and the director (English teacher by day) said “that was pretty good, Hennrikus. Would have been better if I could have heard you!” I blushed beet red, stammered, and didn’t get in the show. I did work backstage on costumes, but the theater bug was delayed until my senior year, when I volunteered to assistant direct. I’ve been in love ever since.

Jessie: Like Julie, I was extremely shy and for me, school required a lot of energy to endure. One of my most vivid memories is of my first day of first grade. My teacher noticed a child had scribbled with crayon on the walls of the in-class bathroom. When no one confessed she said we would all have to take turn scrubbing it off. Faced with the threat, a skinny boy with curly hair admitted he did it. The teacher dragged him to the front of the class, yanked down his pants, exposing his bare bottom to us all and spanked him until he howled. I never did get so I liked school.

Sherry: Oh, Jessie that is awful! My second grade teacher should have retired. She’d leave our room for prolonged periods and fall asleep. One day we were standing in line to have our papers graded and she fell asleep. We stood and stood until my best friend Betty picked up a wooden ruler and whapped it down on the wooden desk. Our teacher woke with a start but Betty didn’t get in trouble.

Readers: What’s your vivid school memory? Do tell!

Filed under: Wicked Wednesday Tagged: A Tale of Two Cities, first grade, girl scouts, Temple City High School

The Detective’s Daughter – Learning To Fly

Kim in Baltimore enjoying some peace and quiet.

I have an empty nest at my house. No, really, it’s an empty bird’s nest and it sits on my porch mocking me. You see, I have an empty nest in my heart as well.

Louis, my youngest child, has left for college. People tell me not to be sad and that York College is only a forty-five minute drive away. They say he’ll be home on weekends and holidays and at some point I’ll even look forward to him going to school. I know they’re right, but I am still sad.

When Louis was nine he was a Boy Scout and went away to camp for the first time. Neither of my children had ever been away overnight before without me. I was sick to my stomach with worry over the endless possibilities of what could go wrong. He would be with his leaders, people I knew well and trusted, but that gave me no comfort. One thing I worried about was that he wouldn’t receive any letters at mail call. Yes, that’s right, lack of mail was my greatest fear.

I knew a lot about how kids treated one another and how slippery the slope was from one of the gang to being completely ostracized. I had taught elementary school for years and saw up close how the game was played. I didn’t want him standing alone while the other boys received letters and packages. I spent a week phoning relatives and neighbors giving them Louis’s camp address. At night I sat up cutting out comic strips from the newspaper and copying jokes from books that he could share with his group. I started sending the letters a few days before he left so that he would be sure to receive one on his first day.

The time he was away flew by and soon we were on our way to pick him up. He had had a great time and nothing had gone wrong…except for one little thing. It seemed that asking people to write to your child is not the same as inviting them to a party, you don’t need to pad the list. If you ask thirty-two people to write a little boy, thirty-two people will do just that. Louis said he was embarrassed every morning when his name was called because he would receive a pile of letters and the other boys never had any mail at all. Some were still unopened in his sack when we got home. He said he didn’t have enough time to read them all. I guess I really shouldn’t have sent two letters a day.

I promised next time I would organize things better, but Louis informed me there had better not be a next time. Don’t you just hate parents who get overly involved in their kid’s lives? In the years that followed whenever he went away, whether to camp or the National Young Leaders group, I kept my writing to journal entries. I realized it wasn’t Louis who needed the letters, it was me. I needed that connection to him.

It has been one and a half weeks since Louis left for college. We had dinner last night. He made sure I had the address for his post box. I better get started on those letters.

Readers: How did your parents handle things when you left home?

Filed under: The Detective's Daughter Tagged: boy scouts, camp, empty nest, empty nest syndrome, gratitude journal, letters, writing letters

Maps in Books

by Barb, who’s headed in for knee replacement surgery tomorrow

I have a friend who says, “No book with a map in it can ever be all bad,” to which I heartily reply, “Amen!” I’ve loved books that contain maps going back to reading my mother’s 1935 edition of Winnie the Pooh.

More recently, I’ve so enjoyed the maps by Laura Hartman Maestro in Deborah Crombie’s books. When a new book comes out, I’m excited to read the mystery and to see what has happened to Gemma and Duncan, because I am a huge fan and have been from the beginning of the series. But I’m also excited to see the map. I examine it before I start reading because Maestro’s hand-drawn maps are so aesthetically pleasing, but the maps don’t mean much before I’ve begun the book. It’s going back to them that gives me so much pleasure, layer upon layer over the course of the story. If you haven’t seen these wonderful maps, they are here. You can click on them to enlarge them.

I once startled Attica Locke at a book signing at Newtonvile Books, when I opened The Cutting Season and exclaimed, “A map by Laura Hartman Maestro!” Attica was gracious, explaining that her publisher thought it was important for her readers to be able to visualize the “living history” sugar plantation where the story takes place.

So when I read that Minotaur was doing a giveaway of a map of Three Pines, the fictional town at the center of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache mysteries, I was all over it. All you had to do to enter was to fill out a form telling Minotaur where you pre-ordered the latest, The Nature of the Beast.

There was no question that I would buy The Nature of the Beast on release day. The prospect of having a Louise Penny novel to read over the long Labor Day weekend was too good to pass up. And I knew where I would purchase it–our local bookstore in Boothbay Harbor–Sherman’s Books & Stationery. So bing, bang, boom, I entered.

Two weeks ago a flat package from Minotaur showed up in my mail. I honestly wondered what it was, so much time had gone by. So it was a delightful surprise to open the flatpack and find my copy of the map of Three Pines.

It’s copyrighted, and I’ve looked all over the web to see if they’re using it promotionally, but couldn’t find it, so I’m not going to post it on the blog. You can see the piece of the draft they used to promote it here.

Louise Penny has said she resisted having a map done for years because she wanted readers to picture Three Pines in their own minds. This seems to me to be true for any well-rendered fictional location, but particularly so for Three Pines, which Penny tells us does not appear on any map or GPS. Even in the books, it is a place of the imagination. So, I opened the package with some trepidation.

The Three Pines of the map is almost exactly as I had pictured it, which is a tribute to both Penny and the mapmaker, Rhys Davies–the same person who make this marvelous map for G.M. Malliet. I’m one to make up lots of stuff in my head–having clear pictures of characters and places that are sometimes at odds with what’s in the books. The houses of Three Pines weren’t labelled. Some I recognized instantly, but going forward I will need to pay more attention as various characters troop home from the bistro.

As for The Nature of the Beast–I loved it. It’s particularly appropriate that the map should come out now, because this book takes place entirely in Three Pines. Inspector Gamache has retired there, so there’s no back and forth in this book to Montreal or other parts of Canada.

All of this naturally made me wonder if I would ever like to have a map of Busman’s Harbor, the fictional location of my Maine Clambake Mysteries. As the series progresses, the town gets richer and fuller. We find out in Clammed Up that Gleason’s Hardware with an apartment above it is on Main Street, since several key scenes take place there. In Fogged Inn (Feb, 2016) we learn that next to Gleason’s is the double storefront of Walker’s Art Supplies and Frameshop. And on the corner of Main and Main, at the only stoplight in town, where Main Street curves back around, hugging the shape of the harbor hill and crosses itself, is Gordon’s Jewelry. Gus’s restaurant is in the back harbor, along with the marina, the shipbuilders, and Bud Barbour’s marine repair shop which appeared in Boiled Over. In Fogged Inn we learn that the Busman’s Harbor Yacht Club is also there. And then there’s what’s out on Eastclaw and Westclaw Points, and, of course, on Morrow Island.

So I think a map would be fun, but probably premature. I’m still filling in the town.

What about you, readers. Maps of fictional places, yay or nay?

Filed under: Barb's posts Tagged: Attica Locke, Busman's Harbor, deborah crombie, Fictional towns, Gin Malliet, Laura Hartman Maestro, louise penny, Rhys Davies, The Cutting Season, The Nature of the Beast, Three Pines

Ask the Expert: Sarah Knight, Bookseller

Edith here. I’m so happy Sarah Knight could join us today to talk about her job at the fabulous and thriving independent Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. Author Sara Henry introduced Sheila, Tiger Wiseman, and me to Sarah this summer when we were on a writing retreat at Tiger’s Vermont home. Sarah agreed to visit and tell us all about the different hats she wears on the job. Take it away, Sarah!

Sheila Connolly, Sarah Knight, Sara J. Henry, and Edith. Picture taken by Tiger Wiseman (Edith thinks)

Sarah: My area of expertise at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont is as an adult bookseller, the adult book merchandiser, and adult mass market buyer.

As a bookseller I’m often asked for recommendations.  I have a series of questions I ask to find out what type of books the customer likes to read. I begin with very general questions like fiction or nonfiction, hardcover or paperback. Then my questions become more specific. If it’s a mystery the customer would like to read I ask what was the last mystery the person read and liked. Then I suggest a few titles and, if they like one or two, we’re set. If not, I continue on.

As a merchandiser I’m in charge of the displays and work with other booksellers to select interesting titles for our customers to buy. I’m in charge of the mystery section. After listening to cozy readers’ comments and questions, I decided to have a dedicated cozy section within the larger mystery section. This has been very successful and the number of customers who buy cozies has increased. Plans are in with works to enlarge the cozy mysteries both in number of titles and space in the section.

Edith: The Wicked Cozy Authors approve, Sarah!

Sarah: As an adult mass market buyer, I buy what I think our customers might be interested in both established and new authors. Also, I like to bring in titles that might surprise our readers. I try and buy a variety of cozy mysteries. I order electronically online from publisher catalogs.

Edith: How did you start working at Northshire?

The sculpture outside the store.

Sarah: One evening I mentioned to my husband that, rather than sell Asian antiques, I would like to work at the Northshire Bookstore. The next afternoon on our kitchen table, I noticed a copy of our local paper open to the help wanted section. A big red circle was drawn around an ad for a bookseller at the Northshire. That was 25 years ago and seems like yesterday.

Edith: It was meant to be!What are three things we should know about your area of expertise?

Sarah: You don’t have to read every book you sell, but it helps to read some of them. If I’ve met an author, I will work harder to sell their books and prominently display them in the store (one of the perks of being in charge of displays). After I met you, Edith, I brought in several of your titles and faced them out. All sold.

Edith: Aw, thank you! That’s awesome.
Is there a general characteristic that experts in this field all share?

Sarah: A general characteristic of booksellers is that they are passionate about books and reading and have homes or rooms that have so many books they qualify to be featured on a hoarders reality show.

Edith: What do people usually get wrong when writing about your field?

Sarah: Booksellers do NOT get to read while on the job, I repeat, booksellers do NOT get to read while on the job.  We are there to sell books to customers to read.

Edith: I did not know that! Next question: what is a great idea you’d love to share?

Sarah: Find time to read everywhere you go (except when you’re a bookseller at work).

The lake where Sarah wrote these answers. Yes, Vermont is beautiful.

Edith: And what are you working on now?

Sarah: I am looking for a cozy mystery which features a protagonist who loves adult coloring books that are all the rage now. Any thoughts? I am organizing my advanced readers copies by publication month trying to read them in this order. It’s hard when the publisher sends me an advance copy of a book by a favorite and the book release date in next February. I’m trying to be a more disciplined reader.

Edith: That’s sounds like a great premise for a new series if it hasn’t been done yet. Sarah, thanks so much for visiting us. I’m looking forward to getting back to Northshire for another visit.

Readers: What else do you want to know about the job of a bookseller, bookbuyer, and book merchandiser? Ask Sarah – she’ll be popping by today to reply to comments.

Filed under: Ask the Expert Tagged: book merchandiser, Manchester Vermont, Northshire Bookstore, Sarah Knight

Fickle

Jessie: Back in New Hampshire, dreaming of wood smoke and apple cider

I’m sure I don’t need to remind any of our readers that the days are noticeably shorter and the leaves on the trees are showing their age. Despite the heat wave earlier this week cold weather will be upon us before long. Bathing suits will go into hibernation and Icelandic sweaters will take their turn at center stage. The BBQ grill will languish forlornly in a far corner of the deck and the slow cooker will assume pride of place on the kitchen counter. Freshly baked bread will replace cool garden salads and layers of body fat will seem like good planning instead of evidence of gluttony.

I love summer. I adore the languid pace, the bone-deep heat, the time I spend on the beach inhaling the salt breeze, lulled by the sound of the waves. I relish the abundance of fresh produce and the way I feel all hopped up on Vitamin D. I delight in hearing the twitter of birds and the buzzing of bees. I revel in clipping bountiful bouquets from my gardens. I rejoice in making plans that won’t be derailed by snowstorms.

But, in my heart of hearts I know I am a faithless lover. By late August my thoughts have turned to pencil boxes and composition notebooks. I crave a cool rainy day custom made for roasting a chicken and tucking up under a quilt with a book. I unabashedly cruise the knitting website Ravelry for cabled sweater patterns. I pull out my favorite knee-high leather boots and try them on just because I miss them.

Before the jack-o-lanterns are carved I find myself thinking of snow and tinsel and counting down to the new year. By Valentine’s Day I am searching online for deals on a Caribbean cruise and planning a menu for Easter dinner. Before the last of the Easter ham has been turned into pea soup I book a pedicure for sandal season.

It helps that with a few strokes of the keys I can create a world where the season perfectly aligns with my fickle heart. In the dead of winter I am free to imagine characters suffering from heat stroke. In the midst of a heat wave I can drum up a squall or a skating party or a foot plagued by frostbitten toes. What more could I possibly ask for?

Readers, do you ever wish for the pleasures of other seasons? If so, which ones do you most miss? Writers, do you find yourself writing out of season? Do you like to do so or is it difficult?

Filed under: Jessie's posts, Uncategorized Tagged: beach, fall, seasonal changes, summer

Wicked Wednesday: Post-release Promotion

It’s Wednesday. Let’s talk craft again today. Last week we talked about what to do before the book comes out. What about afterwards, from the book birthday onward? Wickeds, which post-release strategy do you find most successful in getting the word out about your book? Have you ever poured a lot of time/money/energy into a strategy that bombed? How long do you keep promoting one book before turning to the next one?

Jessie: I like to have launch parties. Mostly because I love to throw parities in general. I pick a theme and then I go a little crazy. My first book, Live Free or Die, has a fire chief as the protagonist and I centered the menu around foods that were smoked, charred and melted. And I held a New Hampshire trivia contest with local wine and a fire extinguisher as prizes. Such fun!

Edith: You gave away a fire extinguisher, Jessie? That’s fabulous! One of the things I like to do post-release is donate naming rights for a character in my next book to a charity auction. A couple of years ago they put the offer in the live auction and brought me up on stage to introduce it, and there was a real bidding war, finally raising something like $350 for the name. It raises awareness of me as an author and all my post-release books, and also lets people know more books are coming. People seem to really like the idea of their name in a book. I do state it won’t be the name for the protagonist, the villain, or the victim. But I don’t think we ever stop promoting our books, do we?

Barb: One thing I advocate is careful tracking of the publicity your book does get. I have a Google alert on my name (practically useless because my name is so common) and one on my title (much more useful) and on “Maine Clambake Mystery” (most useful of all). That way, I do find out about most of the blog reviews and other stories about the books on the Web. I link to them from my website (for example, you can find the reviews of Musseled Out here and other articles about me or the books here), but more important it creates a record of who reviewed the book for next time, so I can approach people about Advance Reader copies or let them know NetGalley previews are available. Fans are the most precious thing an author has, and it’s important to reach out to them if you can.

Sherry: Barb, you are so good about tracking! Like Jessie I’ve done launch parties for my first two books. But I look at them more as a celebration than marketing opportunity. The last one I did with Maya Corrigan — we share an agent, publisher, and this summer a release date. Barb Goffman interviewed us and it was a lot of fun — see the picture to the left. I’ve done a number of books signings and average selling 15 books. I have a love/hate relationship with these events. I meet new people who might not have heard of me otherwise but I always feel like a wet noodle afterwards. When I don’t want to do them my friend/publicist Mary Titone always says: It’s your job!

Liz: Since I’m lucky enough to be part of the animal community and my books strongly feature animals, I try to have events and parties at animal-related places. The launch party for my first book was at a doggie bakery and it was tons of fun! Shaggy even got her own cake :)

Fellow writers: What works and doesn’t work for you? Readers: Has something an author done helped you find her books?

Filed under: Wicked Wednesday Tagged: Barb Goffman, Book promotion, Book signings, charity auction, Launch Parties, Maya Corrigan, naming rights, trivia contests

Meet Sadie Hartwell

Hey, Wicked People, it’s Jane/Susannah, back from her little cabin in the North Woods and happy to be home and back at work and away from the mosquitoes.

Today I thought I’d introduce you to, well, me. Another me.

Meet Coco, Josie’s cat

Most of you know about my Greek to Me Mysteries, starting with Feta Attraction which released in January. The second book in that series, Olive and Let Die, releases November 3 and is available for preorder now (everybody knows how much preorders help an author, right? Right.).

But what I haven’t generally made known until today is that I have a new series debuting in November. On November 24, I will release Yarned and Dangerous, Book 1 of the Tangled Web Mysteries from Kensington. A new publisher means a new pen name. And do you love this cover or what?

I had SO much fun writing this book. My main character, Josie Blair, moved away from Dorset Falls, Connecticut, right after high school to pursue a career in fashion design. But when her crotchety great-uncle, Eben Lloyd, breaks his leg in a car accident, the same accident that killed Cora, his wife of a few months, Josie’s the only one available to care for him. While she’s there, she is tasked with closing up Cora’s yarn shop, even though she doesn’t know anything about knitting. But the day after she arrives, one of the shop’s regular customers ends up dead, lying on a pile of expensive cashmere yarn in the storeroom. Josie begins to investigate, and in the process learns a little about herself, and a lot about what she wants–and doesn’t want–for her life.

Here’s what somebody we all know and love had to say about Yarned and Dangerous:

“A tale of murder and intrigue that will ensnare knitters and non-knitters alike. I couldn’t put it down.”—Barbara Ross, author of Musseled Out

 

Thanks, Barb!

Sadie’s website, Facebook, and Twitter will be live soon.

I hope you’ll join me–the Sadie Hartwell me–in November!

Filed under: Book Release, Jane's posts, Sadie's Posts, Susannah's posts Tagged: Feta Attraction, Greek to Me Mysteries, Kensington Publishing, knitting, Olive and Let Die, Sadie Hartwell, Susannah Hardy, Tangled Web Mysteries, yarn, Yarned and Dangerous

A Book for All Seasons

by Sheila Connolly

The Wickeds were talking here last week about fall and how we feel about it. To me, September feels like a time of beginnings (can you tell I liked school?). Some people say it’s a time of endings, since summer is over and the leaves on the trees are dying. But how gloriously they go out, in a blaze of color!

A Gala Event, coming October 6th

My Orchard Mysteries are released in October (I didn’t ask, but it just sort of happened that way), which is the heart of the apple harvest season. That works well, at least as a reminder to myself (calendar for October: new book coming! New manuscript due!). But in the books the seasons change and it isn’t always autumn. The next book, A Gala Event, takes place in December, as does the one coming out next year, which doesn’t have a name yet. My protagonists actually leave Granford for a short time—but they can only because the harvest is over and there’s nothing to do in the orchard.

As writers we often talk about setting as a character in our books, and it’s true that where you set a story had a real impact on the story itself. Is the place mountainous or flat? Wet or dry? Urban or rural? Crowded or empty?

But the time of year also makes a difference. I just finished Craig Johnson’s 2014 book Any Other Name (signed by him when he was our Guest of Honor at Crime Bake last year), which is set at the end of December in Wyoming.  I’ve never been to Wyoming, and I never gave much thought to snow in the West, but Johnson certainly makes the weather there very real, and he never lets you ignore it. The snow is definitely a character in the story, and figures in everything from knocking the snow off a hat to trying to catch a plane between storms.

The impact of seasons on an urban setting, which I use in my Museum Mysteries, also matters. Bostonians know what havoc a lot of snow can wreak on rail travel, but in the Philadelphia area trains are often slowed by “leaves on the tracks” in fall: they make the tracks slippery, so speed is reduced. For that matter, extreme and prolonged heat in summer can warp the tracks, or can cause the overhead electrical connections to sag dangerously, both of which can be serious problems. Summer brings thunderstorms, tornadoes (yes, even Philadelphia gets the occasional tornado), torrential rains—or droughts. And you don’t know about the, uh, pungent blasts of hot air emerging from the city subway entrances unless you’ve walked by them in summer.

Can you imagine reading a book (or writing one) where the weather never changes? Wouldn’t that feel like a stage set to you, where the characters just walk through their roles, ignoring their surroundings? With the seasons, visibility changes, smells change, the ability of your characters to get from one place to another changes—and you’ve got to remember to put coats and gloves and scarves on people. I’m thinking of setting my next Irish mystery during a blizzard that leaves everyone stranded wherever they are—in my case, in the pub, of course. Blizzards are rare in Ireland, but they do happen, and given the number of small, half-paved lanes in most of the country, it doesn’t take much snow to bring everything there to a halt.

Thousands of years ago, prehistoric tribes in Europe built monuments that followed the courses of the sun and the moon. It gave them hope, and reassurance that the world would keep moving forward. There was an order to the universe. And so should the seasons change in our books, moving steadily forward, marked by the changing weather.

Drombeg Stone Circle

How do you feel about weather in a book? Is it important to the story, or is it a distraction?

Filed under: Sheila's Posts Tagged: A Gala Event, Museum Mysteries, Orchard Mysteries, Seasons, sheila connolly