Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 98

Eight in the Morning

Since we are celebrating eight years of blogging this month and thus all things eight, I was wondering what you are normally doing at eight in the morning?

Edith/Maddie: It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me – personally or as an author or both – that by eight I have been up for at least two hours. I’ve promoted that day’s Wicked Authors post, perused the Internet and email, and had one cup of coffee before seven. And then I’ve fetched another cup and gone back upstairs for my first hour of writing from seven to eight. It’s not everybody’s chosen schedule, but it suits me and my biorhythms, and I’m sticking to it.

Barb: At eight in the morning I am sound, sound asleep, usually the best sleep.

Julie: Like Barb, I am a night person. At 8 o’clock in the morning, I’m usually stirring, but hardly awake.

Liz: At eight, lately I’ve been trying to get my word count in before my day job or trying to get a workout in. By then I’ve usually gotten up, made coffee, cleaned up after the cats, taken the dogs out, served everyone breakfast, and gotten my journaling and meditation in. If I can also squeeze in the word count or the workout, depending on my mood, I can feel accomplished before the phone starts ringing and the nonstop meetings start…

Jessie: I seem to be a whenever sort of person so long as I have slept for 7.5 hours but my dog is definitely a morning creature. So I am usually up between 6:00-6:30 to take him for our morning jaunt round the village. By 8:00 I am starting my morning routine which involves a coffee with my husband, meditating, intention setting, and reflecting on my goals, notes in my five-year journal, and then reading nonfiction from which I take copious notes.

Sherry: I’m often awake, but groggy. I don’t like getting up or apparently waking up. I do wish I was more of a morning person, but I’m just not. I also wish I woke up fully awake and energized instead of thinking, “I’ll just stay here for five more minutes.”

Readers: What are you doing at eight in the morning?

Critical Essays on Cozy Mysteries

I’m so pleased to have Phyllis Betz as our guest today. I met Phyllis at the Popular Culture Association conference in Washington DC a couple of years ago when I was on a panel. It was thrilling to find out that there would be a scholarly study of cozy mysteries.

Phyllis: My name is Phyllis Betz, an associate professor of English at La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA.  I am the editor of an anthology of critical articles on the cozy mystery called Reading the Cozy Mystery: Critical Essays on an Underappreciated Subgenre, published by McFarland & Company.

As the subtitle states, the contributors to this volume take the cozy mystery very seriously; they have brought sharp critical attention to a type of mystery that is often discounted as not being seen as serious and, therefore, not worthy of critical study.  While it has taken many years for all popular forms to receive this kind of valuable analysis, the cozy, like the popular romance, is often shunted aside so that the hard-boiled detective or the police procedural gets the lion’s share of attention.

The idea for an anthology on the cozy came out of mine and others’ presentations at the Popular Culture Association over the course of two years. The majority of the essays in the anthology began as papers at those panels. Clearly, we all thought, and still believe, that the cozy offers a rich field for exploring genre, representation, themes, and cultural commentary.

While this anthology only scratches the surface of the cozy, its writers and readers, the essays provide in-depth examinations of the form. Four of the authors engage with the question of what exactly a cozy mystery is.  Some of you may be surprised to discover that Marty Knepper doesn’t see Agatha Christie as a cozy writer.  Four essays examine the impact of setting on the development of the cozy narrative and characters and consider how those places expand and contract over a series. The last set of four essays looks closely at some of the characters who appear in the cozy. These authors may offer the most surprising views as Stephen Cloutier makes the case for Lt. Colombo as a cozy detective as does Sally Beresford-Sheridan for Nero Wolfe.

Reading the Cozy Mystery is the first text, but I hope not the last, to consider the cozy as a subject deserving of close critical attention. I feel confident critics will continue, as the contributors to this work have done, to find that cozy mysteries, beside telling a good story, offer insights into the way popular literature provides entry into the wider world.

Readers: My question is a broad one to the readers of this blog: what do you read cozies for—the mystery, the characters, or the setting?

Biography: Phyllis M. Betz teaches English literature and composition. She also words in the field of popular culture and literature and has written three books on lesbian popular fiction.

Celebrating Eight Wicked Years of Blogging

I can’t believe we’ve been blogging for eight years! When we started the blog, we had three books out between us — one each by Jessie, Edith, and Barb–now there are seventy-five books out between us! In the past eight years we’ve experienced all the highs and lows that come with being published. The joy of signing a new contract, the disappointment when a series ends, the delight of a well-designed cover, the fights over book titles, the joy of a series renewal and starting a new series. On a personal level we’ve shared triumphs – marriages, grandchildren, kids graduating, new jobs, retiring from jobs to write full time, starting businesses, and changing jobs.

We’ve shared sorrows from the death of our blog mate and friend, Sheila Connolly, to other personal losses. Behind the scenes we’re each other’s cheerleaders and sympathizers. We’ve had hundreds of guests and many giveaways. We’re so glad to have all of you here celebrating and sharing your lives with us in the comment section. Thank you so much for being a part of The Wickeds!

Wickeds, how did you feel eight years ago right before the first post? How do you feel now?

Julie: Time is so odd, isn’t it? I feel like it was yesterday in so many ways. When we published our first post, I was the only Wicked without a contract. I was excited, and thrilled for my friends, but uncertain about my own journey. Now? I just turned in what will be my tenth published novel, I have two other names, and I’ve got dozens of characters living in my head. One thing I know for sure–I wouldn’t want to be on this journey with anyone else. You all cheerlead, provide wise counsel, and make my life much more joyous. My best writing advice: the journey is better with friends.

Jessie: Julie, it does seem like yesterday to me too, in some ways! I think that is partly because even though we’ve been it for a while, there is always so much more to learn and to experience. Before the first post I felt a bit overwhelmed by every aspect of the job, not least of which was how to navigate a blogging platform! Now I feel inspired and eager for more ways to grow and to try new things. Eight years of journeying with all of you, Wickeds, Accomplices, guests and readers, reminds me of a saying. “If you want to travel fast go alone. If you want to travel far, take a friend.” What a lovely, long trip it has been!

Liz: I can’t believe it’s been eight years! This whole journey is still so amazing to me but like Julie, I can’t imagine doing it with anyone other than all of you. Before the blog went live I think I was just in shock that I was also about to see my first book published (we launched to coincide with my book release) and both of these things were so exciting and overwhelming. But one thing is for sure, it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun on my own. I am grateful for all of you more than you will ever know!

Edith/Maddie: I echo what these dear ladies have said. My first Local Foods mystery was going to launch the following month and I was hugely excited. I didn’t yet have the name Maddie, but had used Tace Baker as a pseudonym. I had had a personal blog (with very few regular readers), so the concept of blogging didn’t daunt me. I think mainly I felt grateful – and still do – for having found such stellar fellow authors to travel this path with. Readers, you might not know that our eight years of behind-the-scenes emails are sometimes way more frequent than our posts as we cheer and gripe and mourn and celebrate with each other.

Barb: Eight years ago, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Clammed Up, the first book in the Maine Clambake Mystery series, which came out that September. I remember, at the first retreat at which we all had contracts, saying in very solemn tones, “One or more of us will be out of contract at some point.” I was trying to manage expectations. All of us had friends who’d lost contracts and had challenges getting back in print. Plus, I wanted to make the point we should keep blogging, even at the low points. Well, here we are. We’ve survived multiple publishers going out of business, some series cancellations, and some coming to their natural ends. Yet we’re all still under contract. All writing away and still blogging together. Pretty remarkable.

Sherry: Oh, Barb, I remember you saying that. What a journey this has been from idea to blog to eight years of blog posts. I confess, I was terrified. I didn’t read many blogs and I wondered if I’d have anything to say that would be worth reading. Edith, very generously, read my posts for the first few months before I put them up. My first book, Tagged for Death, was coming out in December. That was also terrifying, but you all eased my fears. I’ve learned many lessons over the past years from the Wickeds, our guests, and all of the people who leave comments. I’m grateful for all of it!

Readers: What were you doing eight years ago?

Guest-Amanda Flower

Jessie: In New Hampshire, wishing the black fly population had heard about social distancing!

I am just delighted to welcome Amanda Flower to the Wickeds today! I have had the pleasure of running into her in the past at conferences and am looking forward to chatting with her in real life again someday soon. Until then, I am so pleased she can vist virtually today!

My two favorite flavors are lemon and cilantro, so writing foodie mysteries like the ones I do for the Amish Candy Shop Mysteries, I have been waiting to use those ingredients in a book. As far as I know there are no cilantro candies out in the world. After a quick internet search for “cilantro candy” some very odd recipes and products come up. To be honest, they all sound terrible.

Because cilantro was out of the running for one my Amish Candy Shop books, I knew lemon would one day have her day. She finally has with the release of Lemon Drop Dead, and boy, did I hit the lemon hard in this story. The mystery is built around Emily Esh, who is Amish and pregnant with her second child. Her first child is part of the mystery that I won’t give away here. Emily loves lemon, just like I do, so the village of Harvest throws her a lemon-themed baby shower. However the lemon doesn’t stop there. It continues through the story and is tided in the murder and other crimes in the novel. Even more fun, there is an easy (because I like my recipes easy) lemon recipe in the back of the book.

I think all this talk of lemons and my love for them reminds me how much writers put of ourselves in our writing, even when we write mystery. No, I have never seen a murder nor investigated one nor do I want to either of those things to happen. However, there are bits of me throughout all my books. I think it would be impossible as a writer to keep yourself from spilling over into a story, and honestly, I learn a lot about myself when I’m writing fiction. It clarifies what I believe about justice, love, faith, and all those big ideas and important topics. And at the same time, it lets me share my love of mystery fiction, Amish culture, and yes, lemons. 

I hope you will give the novel a try, and remember even though lemons may be sour they make the sweetest desserts.

Amanda Flower, a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author of over twenty-five cozy mystery novels, started her writing career in elementary school when she read a story she wrote to her sixth grade class and had the class in stitches with her description of being stuck on the top of a Ferris wheel. She knew at that moment she’d found her calling of making people laugh with her words. In addition to being an author, Amanda is a former librarian with fifteen years of experience in Northeast Ohio.

Guest Kathleen Kalb: She Works Hard for the “Brava”

Liz here, happy to be hosting Kathleen Kalb today to talk about her Ella Shane Mysteries! Welcome, Kathleen!

Do the work.

It’s not just my personal philosophy. It’s also the driving force for my main character, Ella Shane. 

Neither of us would have gotten much of anywhere without work ethic, determination and some lucky breaks. I’m a Western Pennsylvania country girl who worked her way up to the radio anchor desk in New York, and I couldn’t imagine writing a character who just had it handed to her.

Ella took shape as a classic Victorian orphan made good. She was born Ellen O’Shaughnessy, the daughter of an Irish father and a Jewish mother, in the tenements of the Lower East Side in the late 1860s. Her early years were spent helping her widowed mother sew piecework in their freezing room, and later, as a poor relation living with her Aunt Ellen’s big family.

From the start, she learned that she had to carry more than her weight just to survive. And as her world widened beyond that tiny tenement room, she realized that people looked at poverty in a certain way. They still do, of course, but this was the era of the “deserving poor,” and the upper class only deigned to help those who conformed to their ideas of appropriate behavior.

The simple fact of being Irish or Jewish, never mind both, would have raised questions about whether one was “deserving,” since there was still plenty of anti-immigrant prejudice at the time.  Young Ellen would have learned very quickly to present herself as a hard-working good girl, rather than one of those lazy street urchins. 

Even her big break comes because she’s working hard. One day, she’s singing as she’s helping her aunt clean a house, and the mistress hears her extraordinary voice. The woman is the sister of a famous diva, and soon, our girl is the protégée and star student of Madame Suzanne Lentini. 

In her opera career, all of that determination and willingness to put in the effort becomes a talent of its own. Ella (as she becomes when she takes a neutral stage name to avoid ethnic prejudice) is that rarest of all things: a brilliantly talented person with a great work ethic. 

Gift and grit are a winning combination, then and now.

She’s also fun to write, and relatable to read. There’s probably an author out there who can make an enjoyable character out of a genteel diva from a fine conservatory…but I’m not her. Ella hasn’t forgotten her tough early life, and she confronts her current adventures with the same wry humor and determination she brought to the climb from the tenements.

Might as well admit it. When it comes to work ethic, Ella and I are exactly alike. She’d probably even say it the same way:

There may be people who are more talented than me, who have better connections – maybe even someone who’s smarter than me. There is no one who will out-work me. 

Question: Is a main character who’s come through a difficult life or other challenges more relatable to you as a reader?  (One randomly chosen commenter gets a copy of A FATAL FIRST NIGHT)

ART: From the NYPL Digital Collections: Sew With Mother: Louis Hine Photo of tenement family; Concert Diva: Jules Cheret Poster 

Kathleen Marple Kalb grew up in front of a microphone, and a keyboard. She’s now a weekend morning anchor at 1010 WINS New York, capping a career begun as a teenage DJ in Brookville, Pennsylvania. She worked her way up through newsrooms in Pittsburgh, Vermont and Connecticut, developing her skills and a deep and abiding distaste for snowstorms. She, her husband the Professor, and their son the Imp, live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.

A FATAL FIRST NIGHT opens with a murder in Richard III’s dressing room after the premiere of the Ella Shane Opera Company’s new production, The Princes in the Tower.  The killer seems obvious, but Ella and friends aren’t so sure. Meanwhile, newspaper reporter Hetty MacNaughten has finally escaped hats to cover a sensational murder trial. Before it’s over, the cast will have to sort out several interlocking mysteries, welcome an unexpected visitor…and find another Richard III. Will everyone survive to the final curtain? 

Wicked Wednesday-Anticipation

Jessie: Looking forward to long walks on the beach in the coming weeks!

This is our last week chatting about anticipation. We talked about patience last week and that got me wondering about strategies for waiting with good humor. So, of course I thought of pastimes. Do you have any pastimes you love? Do your sleuths? And what about overlaps? Do your sleuths delight in the same things you do or is the fictional world a place for you to indulge in pastimes that you would not, or do not do in real life?

Sherry: Other than taking walks and reading I really don’t have a pastime. I used to do a lot of cross stitch but don’t anymore. Sarah and I share a love of garage sales and Chloe and I share a love of beaches (okay, and beach bars.) Chloe is very involved in water sports that I would never do!

Julie: I love to knit, and have picked it back up again lately. I found a particular scarf I love that is complicated enough to keep me interested, but simple enough to so. I suspect a lot of people will be receiving versions of it this year. I like to cook and bake, but living alone doesn’t give me a lot of opportunity to practice. In the Garden Squad series, Lilly gardens, of course. She also knits. You’ll learn that Ernie bakes when stressed, much to the benefit of all.

Edith/Maddie: I like to garden in the good weather and tend my houseplants indoors all year long. I also enjoy cooking, but that’s not really a pastime. Robbie Jordan bikes a lot, and Mac Almeida just got an adult coloring book. Rose Carroll Dodge knits – but we’ve never seen anything she finished!

Barb: I turned my pastime of writing into my profession, so I find myself without a hobby. I used to do a lot of scrapbooking and dabble (and I do mean dabble) in genealogy and family history. I spent quarantine quarancleaning, going through generations of photos and documents. I’d like to organize them some day. My kids won’t have a clue who these people are.

Jessie: Like Julie, and my sleuth Edwina, I love to knit. We also share a love of gardens and walking a dog. I have started to do a bit of painting, inspired by several characters I have been writing recently. Like Beryl, I drive a red motorcar and love to take it out on a nice day with the top down.

Readers, which pastimes do you enjoy in your own life?

Cover Reveal – Witch Trial!

Happy Tuesday! Liz here, excited to share with you my hot-off-the-presses cover for book two in the Full Moon Mystery Series, Witch Trial!

Here it is!

I love it…it so captures the essence of Violet and her shop! What do you think, readers? Let me know in the comments below.

The Earth (Day) and Me

Edith writing from north of Boston where, as usual, April presents whiplash weather as well as lovely flowers. One day it’s 72 out and I’m wearing sandals. The next day’s high is 39, I don my lighter winter coat to go walking, and get snowed on coming home.

Last Thursday was my fiftieth Earth Day. (Yes, I know it was the fifty-first, but bear with me.)

Ed Muskie at the 1970 Earth Week. Photo permission from Peter54321, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0

In April 1971 I’d been back from an exchange student year in southern Brazil for three months. I was living at home and attending community college until I could start at the University of California Irvine in the fall.

My next older sister was already a student at UCI, and I would occasionally drive Daddy’s VW bug the hour south to spend a few days with her. She and her friends, as well as my fellow students, were talking about the “Ecology Movement.” Saving the environment and living simply made a lot of sense to me, especially living in the smog pocket that was the San Gabriel Valley (can you say inversion layer?), an area to the east of Los Angeles. And signs were going up all over Pasadena City College about Earth Day celebrations.

I decided it was wasteful to drive the family car to school. I bought a used boy’s no-speed bike and cycled the six and a half miles uphill from Temple City to Pasadena every day. Oh, to be eighteen again! I started buying my jeans at thrift stores and turning off lights.

Earth Day Flag from Dcoetzee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I fully participated in the 1971 Earth Day festival at PCC. I kept using a bike for transportation through college and grad school and to my first few jobs.

Now, fifty years later, what has changed? Well, there’s good news and bad news.

On the personal front, I’ve been composting and recycling for decades, plus hanging the laundry on the clothesline when weather permits.

Our driveway holds two older-model Priuses. I still buy some of my clothes at consignment shops. I walk everywhere I can, doing my errands while I get my exercise (and plotting the next scene). We have solar panels on the roof and an organic garden behind the house. My adult children are highly eco-conscious and active, reducing their carbon footprint more than I do in some areas.

But Hugh and I also live in a three-bedroom (albeit modest, insulated, tight-windowed) house with three laptops and two cell phones and a television (his) and a microwave and lights and heat and all that entails. We are possibly overconsuming.

Everybody around me seems to drive giant vehicles that they leave empty and running while they go into a store. Our town provides twice-a-month recycling, but some of my neighbors never put out a bin, instead stuffing multiple trash barrels every week. The oceans are filling with plastic refuse, from discarded bags to micro-beads. Climate change is a real thing, endangering birds, animals, and coastal dwellers, to name a few. What kind of a climate am I leaving my sons and future (hopefully) grandchildren? All the rest of the children, all the rest of the world? Can we realistically turn global warming around?

Gah. This post is getting too depressing. Sorry. How does it relate to writing, you might fairly ask?

Without being pedantic about a social issue, I can certainly channel those feelings of hope and pessimism into characters. I can write a character who observes someone else acting differently with respect to climate habits (or any life choice) and reacts according to that character’s personality. Maybe I’ll have Robbie Jordan’s Aunt Adele or Mac Almeida’s grandmother Reba talk about the first Earth Day and about what it meant to her at the time. I can definitely describe a clothesline fanatic (write what you know…). And more.

See? For fiction writers, it’s all material!

Readers: What’s your experience of Earth Day? Do you try to take steps to help the environment?

Guest-Winnie Archer

Jessie-In N.H. working away on the sixth Beryl and Edwina mystery.

It is always a pleasure to welcome guests to the Wickeds and Winnie Archer is no exception! I love bread, both baking it and eating it so Winnie’s series caught my eye. Over to you, Winnie!

The Wickeds. What an amazing group of women! They invited me here today to chat about my upcoming book (on April 27th!), Death Gone a-Rye. Thank you, ladies!

So. Death Gone a-Rye. This book is the 6th book in my Bread Shop mysteries. If you haven’t heard about it, here’s a little into to the series (from Kneaded to Death, book 1):

Struggling photographer Ivy Culpepper has lots of soul-searching to do since returning to seaside Santa Sofia, California. That is, until the thirty-six-year-old enters a bread making class at Yeast of Eden. Whether it’s the aroma of fresh  conchas  in the oven, or her instant connection with owner Olaya Solis, Ivy just knows the missing ingredients in her life are hidden among the secrets of Olaya’s bakery . . .

This series is for anybody who loves cozy mysteries, baking, and bread. It’s set in the fictional central California coastal town of Santa Sofia, a place I’d love to live. Seems almost all of my books feature versions of my dream towns. Minus the murders, of course.

As I was writing this post, I got to thinking about why I write mysteries.  What I came up with is that they are close to my heart. Truly all books are close to my heart, but mysteries, in particular. 

The mystery can be large or small.  It can be the central focus of the story, or play a supporting role. It really doesn’t matter to me the scope of the mystery elements, as long as it’s there in one way, shape, or form.

My love of mysteries started, like most young girls of a certain age, with Nancy Drew.  From there I graduated straight to Agatha Christie.  I have a distinct memory of going with my mom to our town’s library so she could check out the last Hercule Poirot novel, Curtain.  She was crushed that it was to be Poirot’s last, and her love of these book intrigued me enough to start reading them.

I spent almost all of my high school lunches in one classroom or another reading, mostly mysteries. I love the deduction and the sense of justice at the end.

So, of course, I when my passion for writing grew, it was no surprise that it manifested itself in the form of mysteries. I began with the Lola Cruz , mystery series. Then I wrote 2 suspense mysteries. They’re based on Mexican legends (see them on my website).

Then came my cozies: A Magical Dressmaking mysteries and the Bread Shop, as well as the brand new Book Magic mysteries, have brought me full circle to the kind of books I love the most.  They are small town, feel good whodunnits.  They are like comfort food.  They just make me want to curl up in front of a fire and escape. 

Mystery, mystery, mystery.  The characters.  The communities.  The crime.  The puzzle.  The deductions.  The justice.  All of makes for such a satisfying read.

I’d love to hear more from all of you! Join me on Facebook or Instagram, or at my online book club, the Book Warriors. 

Happy reading!

Melissa / Winnie

Melissa Bourbon is the national bestselling author of more than twenty mystery books, including the Book Magic mysteries, the Lola Cruz Mysteries, A Magical Dressmaking Mystery series, and the Bread Shop Mysteries, written as Winnie Archer. She is a former middle school English teacher who gave up the classroom in order to live in her imagination full time. Melissa lives in North Carolina with her educator husband, Carlos, and the youngest of their five children. She is beyond fortunate to be living the life of her dreams. Learn more about Melissa at her website, www.melissabourbon.com, on Facebook @MelissaBourbon/Winnie ArcherBooks, and on Instagram @bookishly_cozy.

Social Media Platforms

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Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BookWarriors

Guest-Jodi Thomas

Jessie: In New Hampshire where my quince is about to burst into bloom!

As a part of our ongoing series featuring authors writing in non-mystery genres, I am delighted to welcome NYT Bestselling author Jodi Thomas to the blog today! Thanks for visiting with us!

Somedays I think of myself as a contractor, not a writer.  I build a house for my people to live in. At first, it was a ranch house, the hotels and cafés. As the books kept coming, I continued to build oil fields, hospitals, and finally towns.

With each town came a series. I loved how characters played off one another as the series moved from book to book. New characters dropped in now and then, but as the books came into my head the core people made the town come alive.

I am now launching the second book in the Honey Creek Series in April 2021 and working hard on book 4. Book 3 is already finished and will be out in October.

Why are writers driven crazy? (Actually, we don’t need to be driven, most of us could walk.) When we promote one book, we are usually editing the next book, writing another and putting together an outline for one down the road. I once gave an entire interview on the wrong book and no one noticed.

At least when I write a series, I can stay in town!

I love living in Honey Creek. I started writing the series during the pandemic. All the world seemed darker and I was alone. 

One cold March day I stepped into a town where people cared about each other. All at once I was going skinny dipping at the creek and worrying about my ‘want to be’ Texas ranger and feeling sorry for the barmaid who fell in love with a bum.

As the months passed, I spent my time upstairs looking out my windows at a world I couldn’t go out into. But, I was smiling as I walked into the town of Honey Creek.  I got into bar fights, danced on the town square and fell in love a few times.

I invite you all to visit me in Honey Creek with BREAKFAST AT THE HONEY CREEK CAFÉ and stay to read PICNIC IN SOMEDAY VALLEY released April, 2021.

Readers, which genres besides mystery do you like to read? Who are some of your favorite non-mystery authors?