Barbara Ross's Blog, page 6

We have met the enemy and he is us

by Barb, in Maine, where it is gorgeous, still warm but fall is in the air

“We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry to Major General William Henry Harrison, Battle of Lake Erie, War of 1812

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Walt Kelly, Pogo, Earth Day, 1970

Our next door neighbor when I was in middle school and high school, a good friend of my parents, owned a summer place, an old farmhouse on a dirt road with a pond and a bunk house. It was absolutely nothing special, and yet very, very special. When you were there, somehow all your responsibilities seemed to melt away. The rustic nature of the house was part of what made it so, there was no obligation to keep busy. And there was the isolation. It was the perfect place for reading and napping and taking dips in the pond.

Looking out over the pond

Our friend was there one night, sitting in a folding lounge chair, watching the stars, so beautiful in those places where there is no light pollution, when she heard heavy footsteps in the underbrush nearby. She was completely alone. No one would have heard her scream. She waited, stock still, heart banging, until the steps moved off. When it was over, she had the sudden insight that despite all the scary things it might have been, the species she was most afraid of was her own.

The species we are most afraid of is our own. I have thought of this so often. It always informs my mystery writing.

I’ve been thinking about this insight in a different way lately.

Last year Bill and I were very isolated. We fully stayed inside for two weeks before and after we saw our children and grandchildren, who were pretty much the only people we saw. Meal delivery and Netflix was a big night. This year is different. My grandchildren are in school or daycare, my daughter back in the classroom teaching college freshman. Bill and I are going to outdoor restaurants, and ball games, small gatherings with friends, and having house guests.

Our county in Maine is highly vaccinated and our infection rate is low. Still, we are aware that our three granddaughters are unvaccinated. Throughout 2020, before vaccines and effective treatments, our children tended to treat Bill and I, members of a vulnerable age group, like Faberge Eggs. They never would have forgiven themselves if they’d gotten us sick. Now we feel the same way about the youngest members of the family.

My daughter and family have a wedding and a baby shower to attend this fall. I did Books and Boothbay on Saturday, the biggest event I’ve been to in 18 months.

Books in Boothbay

Around every one of these activities and events, there’s a conversation.

“Is it outdoors?”

“Do we know who will be there? Are they vaccinated?”

“Will people be wearing masks?”

And then there is a weighing of risk, and a decision, to go or to decline.

It occurred to me recently: What we are afraid of is people. Not sworn enemies, people out to kill us. People we like and even love. True, these people are merely potential vessels for the real enemy, the virus, but we are in a constant negotiation about our relationships to and interactions with our fellow human beings.

Even some people who don’t normally suffer from social anxiety are finding re-entry freighted. We have to retrain our fight or flee instinct not to react to friends and loved ones. It’s bizarre and maddening and saddening.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Readers: How are you negotiating this time? I’m not looking for the political. (“Don’t get me stahted,” as we say in New England.) I’m looking for the personal, and if you’re comfortable sharing, the emotional. Let us know in the comments below.

Halloween Party Murder Released–and a #giveaway

by Barb–how is tomorrow September 1st?

It’s release day for Halloween Party Murder–the latest holiday novella collection with stories by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis and me!

(If you follow along on these things and are wondering why Edith/Maddie’s Kensington book, No Grater Crime, was released last Tuesday and Halloween Party Murder was released this Tuesday– I have no idea.)

Here’s the description:

Small town traditions are celebrated throughout Maine during the holiday season. But when it comes to Halloween, some people are more than willing to reap a harvest of murder . . .

HALLOWEEN PARTY MURDER by LESLIE MEIER
Tinker’s Cove newest residents Ty and Heather Moon turn their Victorian home into a haunted house to raise funds for charity. But the Halloween fun turns to horrific fright when Heather overdoses on tainted drugs—and Ty finds himself accused of murder. Digging deep into the story, journalist Lucy Stone uncovers some sinister secrets in the Moons’ past linked to a conspiracy in her hometown . . .
 
DEATH OF A HALLOWEEN PARTY MONSTER by LEE HOLLIS
Everyone attending Island Times Food and Cocktail columnist Hayley Powell’s Halloween bash is dressed as their favorite movie monster from the Bride of Frankenstein and Jaws to Chucky and Pennywise the clown. But when partygoers stumble upon Boris Candy’s bludgeoned costumed corpse, it falls to Hayley to discover who among her guests wanted to stop the man from clowning around permanently . . .
 
SCARED OFF by BARBARA ROSS
Three teenage girls having a sleepover on Halloween night get spooked when high schoolers crash the house for a party. But no one expected to find a crasher like Mrs. Zelisko, the elderly third floor tenant, dead in the backyard—dressed in a sheet like a ghost. With her niece traumatized, Julia Snowden must uncover who among the uninvited guests was responsible for devising such a murderous trick . . .

Giveaway

To celebrate the release, I’m giving one lucky commenter below a complete set of the collections Maine Clambake novellas have appeared in to date.

And, if you want to join the Kensington Mystery and Thriller Launch Party on Facebook at 7:00 PM EDT tonight, August 31, there will be even more chances to win. Thirteen Kensington crime writers will be celebrating, including Maddie Day and Lee Hollis. There will be LOTS of giveaways and some great conversation.

The photo below is my granddaughter, Viola, and me making the pumpkin cookies using the recipe that is included in “Scared Off.” Viola did most of the mixing and all of the decorating. If you’re looking for the recipe, it will appear on the terrific blog Cinnamon and Sugar and a Little Bit of Murder on September 3rd.

I really enjoyed writing “Scared Off” for Halloween Party Murder and I truly hope you enjoy it.

Readers: Have you read any of the Kensington holiday novella collections? Would you like to? Comment below for a chance to win all four holiday novella collections that include a Maine Clambake Mystery story. Yule Log Murder, Haunted House Murder, and Halloween Party Murder will be hardcovers. Eggnog Murder is a trade paperback. Because the box will be heavy and therefore the postage expensive, this giveaway is restricted to U.S. residents only.

Life Lessons

by Barb, vacationing on the Jersey Shore with her extended family

Investing for Your Retirement (Boston Center for Adult Education, Spring, 2011): When you are young, you will work as a paralegal in the trust department of a big law firm and the single observation from that time that will follow you throughout your life is this: Widows and orphans who don’t understand their own money don’t make out so well. Because, honestly, no one cares as much as you do. This is an important life lesson that will also apply to your career, your writing, your writing career, your kids’ educations, and your elderly mother’s care when she is lying in a hospital bed. But specific to finance, for most of your life, you will have no money, so the lesson won’t matter. And then, unexpectedly, the little company you co-found will have a “good exit” and you will have money but will no longer have a job. So, you’ll spend a year reading the financial press and talking to people who speak about Warren Buffet in the reverent tones usually reserved for Bruce Springsteen. At the end of that year, you will decide that you are so bored that you will hire a guy to take care of your money for you. He won’t care as much as you should, but he cares some, which is more than you do.

English 101-102 (University of Pennsylvania, 1971-1972): This is the course you will have to take freshman year in college because you failed senior high school English when you were an exchange student in Colombia. They were diagramming English sentences using Noam Chomsky’s theory on the deep structure of language, and even though that is normally the kind of thing you love, you stubbornly resisted, and you flunked. So, your high school in the States will say you can’t have your diploma until you’ve passed two semesters of freshman college English. You’ve read all the books on the syllabus and the courses won’t count toward an English major, so you will be very annoyed. This is the experience you will come back to all your life whenever you are forced to run through bureaucratic maze to get some piece of cheese that other people think is important. Also, the spring after you pass these courses, your hometown will be wiped out by a devastating flood, and you never will get that high school diploma. Here is the difference that will make in your life: zero. So, remember that whenever someone leads you to the entrance to a maze and tells you to run.

Looking Put Together in a Corporate World for Women (Workshop, 1979): You will be absent that day.

Latin II (Wyoming Seminary Preparatory School, 1967-1968): This is the class where all the girls will warn one another that if the teacher drops a pencil next to your chair you must tuck your skirt around you and cross your legs tightly so he can’t look up your dress. You will learn a lot in this class, almost none of it about Latin. And really, it will not be as bad as it sounds.

Fourth grade, (Edgemont Elementary School, 1961-1962): This is the year your teacher will tell you that you are a very good writer, thereby dooming you for life. 

American Civilization 101-102 (University of Pennsylvania, 1971-1972): This is the course where you will learn everything you feel and believe about being an American to this day, even though, what with DNA and all, we now know that most you learned about the Norseman in Greenland, and the lost colony of Roanoke is absolutely not true. The erstwhile colonizers didn’t die out because they insisted on acting like Christians and Europeans in a hostile landscape. Some survived and bred with the local populations and their genes are with us today. But the point is the right one. Sometimes to survive or even thrive in this unique culture forged by an enormous, diverse geography and people from all over the world, you’ve got to be flexible, look around you, and adapt.

Adulthood 101 (This course is not given in your locality): You will have to figure it out on your own.

Introduction to Parenthood (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 1981): The best you can do is prepare your children to live successfully in your time and place. You can in no way prepare them to live in the time and place they will ultimately occupy. However, there is a flip side to this. Some of the children who are unsuccessful in your time and place will thrive in their own. This is why Ulysses S. Grant could win the Civil War even though he graduated in the bottom half of his class at West Point. And why Benjamin Franklin, stifled and miserable in post-Puritan Boston, could move to Philadelphia and change the world. Keep this in mind both when you encourage and discourage your children.

Advanced Parenthood for Working Mothers (Company lunchroom conversation with an older, wiser mentor, 1982): No one can be with their child 24/7/365. He may take his first steps when you are at work, but you could just as easily have been at Target. Calm the heck down.

Quantum Mechanics for English Majors (School of Life, 1978-1996): A small group of people who take this course will understand the subject matter intuitively. The rest of us will discover it fights everything that feels logical and real to in the world to us. The small group that does understand will separate itself from the rest of us like a space capsule shedding its booster rocket. This separation will happen at some point in your life, even if you never take quantum mechanics. No matter how hard you work, the people in the capsule will move farther and farther away. The best you can do is watch in appreciation and awe.

Time Management for Procrastinators (Random conversation with a work colleague, 1992): Your problem is that you make your chunks too big, so you never feel you get anything done. Break all tasks into manageable chunks so you can cross them off your list and move on with a feeling of accomplishment. (See Management for English Majors). Don’t think in terms of writing a novel. Think in terms of writing a chapter, or a scene, or a paragraph. This is the most important life lesson you will ever learn. (See Adulthood 101).

Management for English Majors (Corporate workshop, 1985): During this workshop you will learn that “Happy people are not productive people. Productive people are happy people.” Most people crave satisfying work and a sense of accomplishment So, your job as a manager is not to make people happy, since this is an impossible task, but instead to focus on removing barriers to your employees’ productivity. If you internalize this lesson, and apply yourself to ruthlessly moving obstacles out of your employees’ way, you may be pretty successful (See Investing for Your Retirement). Or, this advice may not apply at all, especially if your employees are robots (see Introduction to Parenthood). In that case, you are on your own (see Adulthood 101).

Readers: Do you have any life lessons you’d like to share?

 

 

Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler!

by Barb, on a beautiful, warm Maine day

Spoiler alert! I’ve never done this before, but today I am hijacking the blog for a discussion of the end of my latest Maine Clambake Mystery, Shucked Apart.

If you haven’t read Shucked Apart, and think that you might, do not read further.

If you haven’t read Shucked Apart, and are sure you never will, you can read further, but I don’t know why you would.

Okay, now that’s out of the way and it’s just us chickens….

At the end of Shucked Apart, as those who have read this far know, the Maine Clambake protagonist, Julia Snowden, breaks up with her boyfriend Chris Durand. Chris was introduced in the first book in the series, Clammed Up, and their relationship is in place by the third book, Musseled Out. In some of the books and novellas their domestic life has been pretty settled and happy. In others it’s been quite unsettled, often due to secrets spilling out from Chris’s past.

I love hearing from readers and I’m very grateful to those who leave reviews on sites like Goodreads and Amazon. Other books in the series have many more reviews than Shucked Apart does, but none that are so passionate as for this book.

What’s been fascinating to me is that readers have divided neatly into pro-and anti-break up camps. Sentiment has basically run 50-50 from the very first emails and reviews to the present.

A Sampling of Comments from the Pro-Chris, Anti-Break-up Group

“A really great story but sad ending.  I know Julia and Chris have had their problems in the past.  Hope this is just a hiccup in their relationship, and the next book will have a truly happy ending.”

“I really LOVE Chris and Julia. I am really hoping there is more to come and that Chris and Julia will get back together!!!”

“… the ending made me very sad-I kept hoping for a happier ending for Julia and Chris.” 

“Loved Shucked Apart just like I have loved all of the Clambake books.  But I didn’t like the ending.  Please get them back together in the next book!”

“This is one of my favorite series. Thanks for writing it and hope you will do more in the series. I broke my heart to see Julia leave Chris.”

“How much of a bribe will you accept to bring them back together?”

“And that they broke up? I don’t know why you wrote it like this, but you ruined the series for me and I imagine many other people. For the first time in many years, I’m not looking forward to the next book.”

“…the ending of this book left such a bad taste in my mouth and during a hard year of a pandemic, I don’t need that. Sorry Barbara, I have spent my last dollar on your books.”

“I liked the book until the end; that I didn’t like at all. It’s going to be very hard for me to read the next book and if the situation doesn’t resolve itself, I may be done with this series.”

A Sampling of Comments from the Anti-Chris, Pro-Break-up Group

“The conflict with Chris throughout and especially at the end was believable (if somewhat sad).  I like that Julia was so clear-eyed about her need for honesty and trustworthiness.”  

“What a great book! So many emotions. I love Chris but Julia deserves so much more!”

“Julia is so vulnerable despite her accomplishments I never thought she’d make that decision – and then it makes sense.”

“To be honest, I thought the sleuth should have left her boyfriend the last book I read. She should find a super cop boyfriend who can’t find an apple in a bunch of oranges like most of the other cozy protagonists.”

“I am not at all a fan of Chris – have never liked him from the beginning – so was actually cheering on the last page….”

“Julia makes an important life-changing decision that shows her strength and independence. She finally chooses to stand up for herself and understands the importance of meeting her own needs. The ending was quite a shocker – but not a surprise, it makes perfect sense.”

“And I was thrilled that she finally broke it off with Chris. I just hope his fans don’t cause the author to have Julia take him back.”

“I think Flynn is in.”

“There was a surprise towards the end, but I’m not going to give any spoilers away. Let’s just say that I hope things go the way I’m suspecting they’ll go within the next few books!”

What Does the Author Think?

This letter from a fan expresses my feelings almost exactly.

“I was surprised but not really shocked at the Julia-Chris break up. I almost feel sorry for him, because he can’t help being the way he is, but Julia deserves to be with someone she can trust. See how I almost think of them as real people. You’ve done such an amazing job with character development that I’m totally invested in what happens in their lives.”

I, too, feel badly for Chris. And worse I feel guilty–because I made him that way. At least with your human kids you can blame their genes and the larger environment, but with Chris it is all my fault.

What Is Going to Happen?

I’ll never tell. Well, that’s a lie. I will eventually tell. In the meantime, everyone is going to have to wait. I’ll only say that Busman’s Harbor is a small town, so Julia hasn’t seen the last of Chris.

Readers: If you’ve made it this far, it’s because you’re invested. If you’ve been burning to discuss the ending of Shucked Apart, here’s your chance.

Survey Says…and a #giveaway

by Barb, happily typing away in Portland, Maine

Halloween Party Murder Advance Reader Copies are here! These are uncorrected proofs of the novella collection with stories by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and me that will be released on August 31, 2021. I’m giving away one copy of the ARC to two lucky commenters below.

When Shucked Apart was published in February, I conducted a giveaway for a print of my new map of Busman’s Harbor, Maine. When people responded with their names and physical addresses for mailing, we asked them a few (entirely voluntary) survey questions. I thought you might be interested in the answers.

In all, 522 people requested the physical maps, which was, weirdly, almost the exact number I had estimated. The vast majority chose to answer the survey questions. As a survey sample, the responders have to be viewed as unscientific. Unless “people on Barbara Ross’s mailing list, who care about the Maine Clambake Mysteries enough they want a map/and or love maps and/or can’t resist free stuff,” can be taken as a sample.

Here are the results.

How will you read Shucked Apart?

Audiobook 4%Ebook 46%Mass max paperback 50%

How will you access the book?

Amazon 50%Independent bookstore 8%Library 19%Other large retailer (B&N, Chapters/Indigo, Walmart, etc.) 21%Share with or gift from a relative, friend, etc. 2%

Have you read the previous 8 books in the series?

None 9%Some, but not all 30%Yes to the books, no to the novellas, 20%Yes to all of them 41%

The one statistic that surprised me was the 9%, approximately 50 people, who wanted the map, but had read none of the books. I had assumed that the people who would order the map would be diehard fans, especially as it is freely viewable online.

A glance at the comments section, however, indicated that many of these people had some or all of the books sitting in their TBR piles or ebook libraries and saw the map as motivation to dig the books out and read them. I hope it worked!

Speaking of the comments section, there were so many lovely, lovely comments about the series. I blush. Thanks everyone who commented so very much.

Readers: Do any of the survey results surprise you? Comment below or just say “hi” to be entered to win an ARC of Halloween Party Murder.

Another long (slightly less strange) trip

by Barb, posting from Portland, Maine for the first time in 2021

My husband and I just completed our annual 1800 mile drive from Key West, Florida home to Maine. I posted about this trip last year. Driving in the beginning of the pandemic, when we knew next to nothing about the novel coronavirus–how it spread or how to treat it–was harrowing.

Since we make the same trip at the same time every year, I thought describing this year’s journey, compared to last year’s, might tell us some interesting things about how far we’ve come–and how far we still have to go.

The visit

Last year, we arrived in Key West blissfully unaware and watched in horror as the pandemic crept up on us. All the bars closed at 5:00 pm on Saint Patrick’s Day, not to reopen. Slowly, hotels were emptied, then short-term leases, then our own long term lease could not be extended.

This year, the town was open for business–sort of. The bars and restaurants along Duval Street were for the most part operating, except for those that sadly hadn’t made it through the pandemic. However, Key West has long been a town where people cut loose and misbehave, and this year, misbehaving sometimes included mingling, maskless, in crowded spaces. So Bill and I avoided downtown.

Though there were visitors, crowds weren’t nearly at normal levels. For one thing, usually people visit from everywhere in the world and lots of Canadians stay all season. Not this year. And there were no cruise ships discharging thousands of passengers into the streets everyday.

It was a weird year to be sure. No house guests, no indoor restaurant dining, no live theater, or movies. A lot of the reasons we love Key West were not on the agenda. We did learn to throw dinner parties in our backyard quite effectively. Our table is six and a half feet long and one couple could perch at each end. We went to hear music outdoors. We dined in other people’s backyards, courtyards, and on porches and had a few dinners and breakfasts outdoors in restaurants. I swam in our backyard pool everyday. In short, we were very happy to be in Key West, even with restrictions.

When we left Maine in December, we assumed our age group would be vaccine eligible in April, right around the time of our return. However, when we got to Key West we discovered, somewhat to our surprise, that we were eligible in Florida. A lot of you have experienced this. When you’re not eligible, you accept it. But once you are you become obsessed with finding an appointment. We had our first Moderna shot the first weekend in February and the second the first weekend in March, so by the time of our trip home we were more than two weeks past our second shot. What a difference that made.

The trip

Last year’s drive was terrifying. Most of the states were passed through were operating under some sort of stay-at-home order. There were police road blocks at the top of the Florida Keys and on the Georgia/Florida border. We were using Clorox wipes on our car door handles inside and out every time we pumped gas. In each hotel room I wiped everything including the TV remote and the light switches. We had to be really strategic about where to eat and finding rest stops. We made the trip in three days. I texted my son’s family, my brother and his wife, and my daughter’s family as we rode by their exits.

The drive this year was more relaxed, though hardly normal. I posted this photo last year of the Port St. Lucie-Fort Pierce rest area. It was empty and the only open services were the restroom and the little store.

I wish I’d thought to take a photo this year. There were lots of people, though not quite the volume you’d expect to see on the Thursday before Easter. Everywhere we stopped, in every state, 99.8% of people were masked and people stood patiently, politely, and distantly as they waited to order or pay.

Last year I concluded my post by saying, “Every person we met was polite and respectful and doing their absolute best.” That was true again this year. I feel like people are more polite now than I have ever experienced. My son thinks it’s because of the masks. Normally, we use smiles to communicate with strangers–thanks, excuse me, your turn. Cut off from that, instead we speak to one another. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure makes me feel great when it happens.

This year we did the trip in five days instead of three. We spent Saturday and Easter morning with our (vaccinated) son and daughter-in-law and picked up a little stowaway. Then the three of us had dinner Sunday night with my (vaccinated) brother and sister-in-law. None of this would have been imaginable last year.

Our stowaway

Last year when we arrived home, our niece and her best friend were here. They had fled their college in Manhattan in mid-March, telling their friends they would see them in “a couple of weeks”–once we had flattened that curve. They stayed with us until mid-May. They were both musical theater majors and I loved hearing them singing and dancing during their online classes.

This year, my granddaughter is here, taking her second grade classes remotely. I love listening to those, too. She just informed my husband, in her very serious eight-year-old voice, that when her teacher had to be absent for a couple of days, they didn’t have a substitute, but did their homework “asynchronously.” As someone who was present at the birth of learning on the Web, I got a little teary.

Readers: How about you? How does this spring compare to last spring? Has your life changed again or are you still waiting?

The Houses of Busman’s Harbor

In my post here on February 23, I told the story of how my new map of Busman’s Harbor, Maine, the setting for my Maine Clambake Mystery series, came about. You can read that post here. And you can see the full, final map on my website here.

This post is about how the illustrator, Rhys Davies, and I collaborated to create the buildings on the map.

I knew from the beginning which houses I wanted to include and the list was unchanging from the first document I sent to Rhys until the end of the project.

Julia’s mother’s houseSnuggles InnTicket kioskQuentin Tupper’s houseGus’s restaurantDinkum’s LightHerrickson Point LighthouseOn Morrow IslandDining PavilionWindsholme (mansion)

I had, simultaneously, very strong ideas about what these places looked like and no idea how to explain them to anyone else in a way they could be rendered physically. Some of the places had morphed or been given added details over the course of the series and some were like sitcom houses where my picture of the interiors did not line up easily with my picture of the facades.

The project sent me searching through Pinterest, real estate sites, architecture and home improvement websites, and a number of print books I’ve bought about Maine houses over the years. Though time-consuming, this was a pleasure. I love to look at houses. My books are so full of descriptions of buildings a member of my writers group once asked, “Is the narrator an architect?” She was making a point and I heard it.

Julia’s mother’s house

I began with Julia’s mother’s house, the place where Julia and her sister Livvie grew up.

I’ve described Julia’s mother’s house as “Perched at the peak of the hill that formed the residential part of Busman’s Harbor, the house was a solid foursquare with a cupola on top of its flat, mansard roof. It was painted deep yellow with dark green trim and you could see it from anywhere around, land or sea. I always thought it was like a bright beacon leading me home.”

One of the photos I sent to Rhys was of the Russian House at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The house in the above photo doesn’t have a mansard roof, and it’s not quite a foursquare but I felt it is very close to what I was going for. One important change, the double window on the second floor needed to be a triple window because I’d gone on and one about how Julia looks out the windows in her father’s office down to the pier and the Snowden Family Clambake ticket kiosk.

I also sent along a photo from the real Boothbay Harbor that was part of the inspiration. This building is an inn, not a house, but I felt it captured the idea of Julia’s mother’s house–high up on the harbor hill, a beacon of home for those out at sea.

Here is the final house.

The Snuggles Inn

The Snuggles Inn is a B&B across the street from Julia’s mother’s house owned by family friends and honorary great-aunts, Fee and Vee Snugg.  I’d described it often as a Victorian with gingerbread trim. It is based on two different houses in Boothbay Harbor, but my internet searching brought me to Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard where gingerbread trim lives in abundance.

Martha’s Vineyard, MA, USA – September 17, 2014: New England House (Cottage) in Trinity Park (Campground area), Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, on a beautiful autumn day. Martha’s Vineyard is an island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts and is famous as an affluent summer colony. Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. HDR photorealistic image.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever mentioned the color, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t blue. Here’s the final from the map.

The Snowden Family Clambake Ticket Kiosk

The ticket kiosk is a free-standing building that sits out on the concrete town pier. This one took a lot of Googling, mainly because it was hard to figure out what I was looking for. I thought it might look something like this.

Here’s the final. It doesn’t look like it’s on concrete, but I decided that was okay.

Quentin Tupper’s house

Quentin Tupper’s house is new construction. I’ve written, “The house was massive, a three-story wall of dark grey granite, with huge windows all along the front, looking out to the wild North Atlantic and our island.” Lots of people in town call it a monstrosity, but some people, including Julia, like it.

I’ve described it as looking like it was thrust up out of the rocks it sits on. Julia teasingly calls it Quentin’s Fortress of Solitude.

This one also led to an insane level of Googling and oogling some pretty amazing houses.

Here’s where we ended up. Rhys and I discussed adding a third story, but decided the illustration would be too big and loom-y for the scale of the map.

Gus’s Restaurant

This is how I’ve described Gus’s. “Gus’s restaurant had an old gas pump with a round top out front, like something out of an Edward Hopper painting. Inside, you climbed down a long set of stairs into the main room where you found a candlepin-bowling lane on your left and a lunch counter on your right. In back was a dining room with the best view of Busman’s Harbor anywhere.”

This is the actual inspiration, sadly gone now.

However, I moved the restaurant and added added a second story where Julia’s apartment is, so I also did a drawing. Here’s the sketch.

Here’s the final, which I love, especially the Easter egg of the gas pump on the top left.

The Lighthouses

I’ve described the lighthouses frequently as the Jacquie II, the tour boat that brings guests to and from Morrow Island for the clambakes, makes its trips back and forth in the books.

Dinkum’s Light is on a small island in Busman’s Harbor. It is like the real life Burnt Island Light in Boothbay Harbor.

B Lee Mannino, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Here’s the final.

Herrickson Point Lighthouse has a starring role in Steamed Open. It is more elaborate than Dinkum’s Light with a two-story keeper’s cottage. It is based on the Hendricks Head Lighthouse.

Ted Kerwin, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

And the final.

The Dining Pavilion

The dining pavilion on Morrow Island is where the Snowden Family Clambake serves half their guests. (The rest sit at picnic tables scattered around the grounds.) It’s actually a warren of buildings, open at the center, filled with picnic tables, with a gift shop, bar and small kitchen attached.

It’s bigger than the one at the real Cabbage Island Clambake, but in the same architectural genre.

It took a bit to get to the final, since my fictional one is more open, but here it is.

Windsholme

The hardest structure by far was Windsholme. It took the most searching and the most iterations between Rhys and me. I’ve written about some of the inspirations for Windsholme before.

There were two reasons it was hard. 1) I’ve never had a specific building in mind while I described it, but rather pieces of various buildings, and 2) the description has, admittedly, wandered.

When Brenda Erickson created the image for my bookmarks and banner before the first book in the series, Clammed Up, was even published, I was fairly crazed and had no idea what I was doing. I grabbed a super-impressive house I’d been to from the right era, Edith Wharton’s The Mount, and ran with it. Here’s the result, which I’ve always loved.

But over time it became clear to me that Windsholme had a big front porch. The mansion got built out as the books went on, especially in Iced Under and Sealed Off. Also, I was learning a lot more about Maine Shingle-style houses from the time of the Morrow family mansion. But the one thing that had always been true, was that I described it as straight and strong, braced again the strong wind and weather of the Atlantic.

So, after much, much searching and fretting, I went with a photo of Blaine House, the Maine Governor’s mansion.

Albany NY at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

In the end no place was perfect, nor could it be. Rhys removed the cupolas and added dormers for the third floor where important scenes in Clammed Up took place. And he added that front porch.

The houses were in many ways harder than the map, and I think they may be for readers, too. Everyone builds structures in their heads when they read about fictional places, so if you’ve followed the series, you’ll have your own ideas.

Readers: Well, what do you think? If you’ve read any of the books, are the buildings as you imagined them? Are any closer or further from your conception?

A Map of Busman’s Harbor #giveaway

Hi All. Today I’m celebrating the release of Shucked Apart, the ninth book in the Maine Clambake Mystery series, with a giveaway of a map of the setting for the books: Busman’s Harbor, Maine.

Every US resident who completes this survey by March 3, 2021 will receive a map. (I’m sorry to restrict it to US only. Canadian distribution may be available later. I’ll let you know.)

If you want to see the full map, it is here. (Scroll down.)

How did this come about? Several years ago I wrote about the map of Three Pines being offered by Louise Penny’s publisher. The maker of that map, Rhys Davies, reached out to the Wickeds and we’ve been in touch ever since. Last July, Edith did an Ask the Expert post on the blog with Rhys.

I have always been tempted by the idea of a map of Busman’s Harbor. I’ve loved maps of fictional places since I was a kid. I decided that if I signed a contract for Maine Clambake books ten through twelve, my present to myself would be a map.

Once Rhys and I agreed to do the map, the question was–what would it look like? I remember listening to William Kent Krueger on a panel when he said he knew the neighborhood where his protagonist Cork O’Connor lived really well and he knew the area where Cork’s office/burger joint is, but in between was a bit like the old maps, “Here be dragons.”

Busman’s Harbor was the same for me. Even though it is based on a real place, Boothbay Harbor, Maine, I’ve moved things around and made up a bunch of stuff. And, of course, maps of this type, which are really illustrations, simplify a lot even for real places.

We started with our inspiration, which was this map of Boothbay Harbor that hangs on the wall in my living room.

At the bottom it says, “Copyright 1931, Ethel B. Fowler.” In the other bottom corner it says, “This map designed here. The Bridge House Studio. Boothbay Harbor, Maine.” The Bridge House was directly across the water from our former house in Boothbay Harbor. I spent many happy hours on our front porch looking at it. I wrote several of the Maine Clambake Mysteries from that spot. The Bridge House has been a special place for me for a long time.

I used a real map of Boothbay Harbor to guide me for the initial sketch.

I have often described Busman’s Harbor as looking like a lobster hanging in the sea, so I also downloaded a lobster sketch to help me out. (I looked at hundreds.)

Here’ the first sketch I sent to Rhys. I sent along a Word doc with a prose explanation, too.

Note that I had mixed up east and west. Rhys helpfully straightened me out. This is the kind of project I love to do, but not the kind I’m good at.

Rhys and I iterated back and forth, him adding to the map, me sending back notes.

Slowly, slowly we got to the final.

One piece of advice I would give every author reading this, have your map made before you write nine novels and four novellas, putting stakes in the ground every step of the way–some of them contradictory!

Getting the illustrations of the houses was, if anything, more of an adventure. I’ll write about that process in my next Wicked blog post on March 8th.

Louise Penny has said she was reluctant to have a map because she wanted Three Pines to live in each reader’s imagination. I believe that, too. Every reader’s Busman’s Harbor is different and there is a risk in making it concrete, ink on paper, pixels on screen.

The final map isn’t exactly my Busman’s Harbor. But it is the Busman’s Harbor Rhys and I created together.

Readers: What do you think of the map? If you’ve read some of the books, it is the Busman’s Harbor you imagined?

As a reminder, you can sign up to get a printed copy of the map here.

Also, don’t forget to buy Shucked Apart!

Buy links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Chapters/Indigo

Your Local Independent Bookstore

Cute Baby Sells Shucked Apart

by Barb, in Key West

Some of you may remember my previous campaigns, starting with Cute Babies Sell Clammed Up. In 2013, I had a new series, the Maine Clambake Mysteries, and a new granddaughter, a first grandchild, in fact. My son, Rob, sent me a photo of him reading Clammed Up to his daughter and the game was on!

My brother, Rip, got in on the act with his first grandchild, also a baby girl.

As did my cousin, Rob, with his second grandchild, first granddaughter. It’s hard to believe these kids are going to be eight this year!

In 2019, I had a new series–and a new granddaughter. Thus a new model emerged for Cute Baby sells Jane Darrowfield.

Now there’s a new baby on the scene. She was born a year ago, right after the eighth Maine Clambake Mystery, Steamed Open, was released, so she’s a little older than our previous spokesmodels. A true pandemic baby, she’s never stayed with a babysitter while her parents had a night out on the town. On the other hand, she’s extremely proficient at waving bye-bye on a FaceTime call. (Sometimes when you’re done with the call and sometimes when she decides she’s done with you.) A proficient walker, she has a little more control over her environment than previous models, so it took two photo sessions to get the shots..

Enjoy the cuteness!

mmm…delicious.

Readers: Do these photos make you want to run right out and buy Shucked Apart? I promise to donate some portion of every dollar I make to spoiling these cuties.

Cover Reveal and a #giveaway

Hi. Barb here. First post of the new year from Key West.

Today is the cover reveal for Kensington’s next holiday novella collection that includes a story by me, Halloween Party Murder. To celebrate, I’m giving away mass market paperback copies of the previous three books that I was part of in the series, Eggnog Murder, Yule Log Murder, and Haunted House Murder.

Here’s the cover. What do you think? So nice of them to use Wicked Authors’ purple, dontcha think?

This collection will be released on August 31, 2021. Here’s the description.

Small town traditions are celebrated throughout Maine during the holiday season. But when it comes to Halloween, some people are more than willing to reap a harvest of murder . . .

HALLOWEEN PARTY MURDER by LESLIE MEIER
Tinker’s Cove newest residents Ty and Heather Moon turn their Victorian home into a haunted house to raise funds for charity. But the Halloween fun turns to horrific fright when Heather overdoses on tainted drugs—and Ty finds himself accused of murder. Digging deep into the story, journalist Lucy Stone uncovers some sinister secrets in the Moons’ past linked to a conspiracy in her hometown . . .
 
DEATH OF A HALLOWEEN PARTY MONSTER by LEE HOLLIS
Everyone attending Island Times Food and Cocktail columnist Hayley Powell’s Halloween bash is dressed as their favorite movie monster from the Bride of Frankenstein and Jaws to Chucky and Pennywise the clown. But when partygoers stumble upon Boris Candy’s bludgeoned costumed corpse, it falls to Hayley to discover who among her guests wanted to stop the man from clowning around permanently . . .
 
SCARED OFF by BARBARA ROSS
Three teenage girls having a sleepover on Halloween night get spooked when high schoolers crash the house for a party. But no one expected to find a crasher like Mrs. Zelisko, the elderly third floor tenant, dead in the backyard—dressed in a sheet like a ghost. With her niece traumatized, Julia Snowden must uncover who among the uninvited guests was responsible for devising such a murderous trick . . .

I love writing these stories that fill in the time between the Maine Clambake novels. They work especially well because, given the holidays they celebrate, they fall during the off-season at the Snowden Family Clambake. At 25,000 to 30,000 words these novellas are half or a third the length of a typical cozy mystery and five to ten times the length of a typical short story.

Readers: What say you? Novellas yay or nay? Answer the question to be entered to win. If you say you hate novellas in your comment I won’t hold it against you. I’ll see it as a challenge!