Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 100

Okay, But Seriously, What Should I DO? (About Book Promotion)

Hi All. Barb here. Finally back in Maine on a gorgeous summer day.

Back in the spring, I wrote a post called Four Lies Book Publicists Will Tell You about some of the false and outright damaging advice new writers get about marketing their books. In an effort to be more positive, I also wrote a post about Four Principles of Book Promotion. In that post, I explained the philosophical underpinnings of my approach.

A few people have written me and asked for more concrete advice. Philosophy is great and all, but the question is, what should I DO?

So I’ve come up with this timeline of what I think you should do. As always, there are caveats.

This is the opinion of one moderately successful, traditionally-published, mid-list writer, who has published four books. Read it through that filter.
This list is my advice about what you should do, wherever you are in the first book writing-publishing-publicity cycle now. If you are just starting your first draft, the actual activities further along in the cycle will have changed from the ones I list by the time you get there. Be flexible and be a learning animal. That’s part of the fun, right?
The to-do list is underpinned by my Book Promotion Principles, to wit:

Find Your Niche
Be A Person
Seek Safety in Numbers
Calm the Heck Down.


I am 100% sure there are multiple other approaches that will work.

Stage One To-Dos: As soon as you start a writing project that you seriously think might turn into a book

1. Join at least one, and maybe more organizations for writers. If you know what genre you’re working in,  join organizations in that arena. If you’re working in crime writing, look at Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. If you’re working in Romance, join Romance Writers, etc. Be sure to also join the local chapters, even if you don’t live near the place where the meetings are held. Lots of local chapters have online groups and courses, as well as conferences that are worth traveling to. Also consider more general writing centers and groups in your geography. In Maine, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, in Mass., Grub Street, in NH, NH Writer’s Project, etc.

Comment: This can be a hard thing to do. For one thing, if you’re still working on that first draft, you may feel like a fraud and be intimidated. Don’t be. Everyone in the organization was once where you are now. Also, you may be reluctant because you’re already stealing time from your family and job to write your novel. Now, I’m advising you to steal more time. But believe me, it will be worth it to do this early. For one thing, you’ll have access to craft classes and other things that will make you a better writer and to psychological support that will keep you going. For another, it takes time to build a professional network and it may even take time to find the organization that is the right fit. So do it early. (Read Maureen Milliken’s excellent post about the value of community here.)

2. Reserve your domain name. Reserve the url with your name, or pseudonym if you already know you are going to use one. You can also reserve your protagonist’s name or your series name, but remember, these things may change. If you have a common name (like I do) get as close as you can. This is relatively cheap and easy.

3. If you don’t do so already, play around with social media. Try Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Goodreads, etc. Don’t do it as an author. Do it as a person. Reconnect with cousins, classmates and former colleagues on Facebook. Follow people you admire on Twitter or Instagram. Create boards of pictures you love on Pinterest. Review the books you read on Goodreads. No agenda. Have fun. (Read Chris Holm’s excellent post on the Tao of Networking here.)

Comment: You will have a huge hill to climb once you sell your book. It will help if you are comfortable with some of the basic tools of book marketing. It will take time to figure out what you like and can sustain and to build a mental map of these services if you are not currently familiar with them. Of course, don’t spend all your time on social media. Writing the best book you are capable of is your most important job.

Stage Two To-Dos. When you’re rounding the turn to that third or fourth draft and you’re thinking, my gosh, this may be a book I can actually sell (or self-publish)

1) Remember those organizations I told you to join? Volunteer at one or more of them.

Comment: So, you’re already stealing time to finish your book, and I’m telling you to sink time into volunteer activities. Am I crazy? Hear me out. a) You’ll learn more about a whole lot of things, including the lives of working writers and the publishing industry, from the inside than from the outside. b) If possible, volunteer to do things that will expand skills you will need to develop anyway. Put out the group’s online newsletter (and learn how to use a program like Constant Contact or MailChimp). Work on the organization’s blog and learn WordPress or Blogger. If you learn WordPress, you’ll be able to create and maintain your own website. (There are other programs that make this easy, too.) Unless you work at a small company or are self-employed in your day job and do all your own marketing, it is unlikely you have all the skills you will need to market your book. Volunteering is a way to bring yourself up the learning curve, while having fun and making friends. And finally, c) You think you don’t have any time now? Just wait until you are a working writer with contract deadlines, book publicity, and let’s be realistic, probably still a day job. Pay your dues now.

2) Figure out what genre and subgenre you are writing in. Find blogs, Facebook groups, Goodreads groups, etc. dedicated to the genre or subgenre. Actively follow some of the leading lights in your field on Twitter or Instagram, and maybe some agents and publishers who publish your kind of book. Participate as a reader. Be a person.

3) Take a class. Go to a conference. I know it’s expensive, but focus on local to save on travel. Do your research to make sure it’s the right opportunity. (If it’s the right conference is a question you can ask that network of fellow writers you’ve been growing.) There’s not a single business you can get into without the investment of some capital, and that includes writing.

Note: At this point, the self-published and traditionally published paths diverge pretty dramatically. Since this post is already crazy long, I’m going to stick with traditional, since that’s the one I know most about.

Stage Three To-Dos: When you’ve started pitching agents and when you have an agent who has started submitting to publishers.

Comment: Okay this is where it gets murky. As I said in the previous posts, I don’t think an agent or publisher should judge a debut fiction author by the number of Twitter followers they have, or their web presence, or the size of their e-mail list. And as Jane Friedman commented on the earlier post, “Get a platform,” has become a gentle way for agents and publishers to say, “no.” (When I was raising venture capital for start-up businesses, we used to call this “Bring me the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West.” Quests you will be sent on that will only lead to more quests. Useful if they are things you should be doing anyway but otherwise, not.)

On the other hand, it is completely legitimate for an agent or publisher to want to be reassured that you are prepared to be a partner in supporting your book and that you have the skills necessary to do that.

1. So to that end, it may be useful to build a rudimentary author website at this point. Things you will do anyway in the process of preparing pitches–creating a log line, a query, a synopsis, a bio, etc–will come in handy in helping you shape content. Choose a look and feel for your website that says you understand your genre. Make sure the website provides a way to sign up for your e-mail newsletter.

2. Do whatever your agent tells you to do. Unless, of course, your agent is crazy and/or you feel he/she is using your lack of promotion as an excuse for why he/she can’t sell your book. In which case, drop your agent and move on. (Incredibly painful decision, I know.) But otherwise, do whatever your agent tells you.

Stage Four To-Dos: After your book has been sold to a publisher.

1. Three day party! Enjoy it before you have your inevitable meltdown about how you’ll never be able to make your book perfect, and you don’t know how to market it, and your mom is going to read your sex scenes.

In my experience, writers are terrible about enjoying their accomplishments. Don’t forget, this is what you’ve wanted for years.

2. Work with your publisher to fill out all all those marketing forms. Aren’t you glad you reserved your domain name way back in Stage One?

3. Get blurbs if this is your responsibility. (Remember that network you started on back in Stage One? Use that.) Plus approach some aspirationals. Your agent and/or publisher may be willing to help with this.

4. Once you have a cover, cover copy and blurbs, update your website and bring it into conformance with the look and feel and marketing positioning of your book.

5. As soon as your book is listed on Amazon and Goodreads, (which may be much earlier than you think) create an author page for each and “claim” your books. And probably do a Facebook author page at this point, too.

5. Get clear with your publisher’s publicist/marketing person who is doing what. Are they arranging a blog tour? Who are they submitting review copies too? Is your book going to be on NetGalley? Are they doing a Goodreads giveaway? You’re going to end up doing whatever they do not.

6. Get some tchotchkes. Bookmarks at a minimum. Decent stationery for cover notes for review copies (the ones that are hardcopy). Envelopes, shipping labels. All that stuff.

7. Get rid of every single Advanced Read Copy. Take one for sentimental reasons, and make sure the rest are gone. They’re not doing any good sitting in a box under your desk. Remember those book bloggers you identified in Stage Two? Where you’ve been participating as a person? Approach them. (Most will have review guidelines on their sites. Be respectful.) Do a Goodreads giveaway if your publisher isn’t going to.

8. Find some peers. Join a group blog or start one. (Not every one agrees with this advice, but it has been invaluable to me.) Find local authors (remember your network) who have books coming out at the same time as you. Set up some gigs at libraries, book stores, etc, with author friends. Remember, seek safety in numbers. Only 3 people may come to see not-yet-famous you, but if you have 3 friends and your friend has 3 friends, etc.

9. Plan your launch. Remember all those cousins, former colleagues and school friends you found on Facebook in Stage One? Make sure they know about your book and your launch. You’ve been living surrounded by people writing books, probably for years now, but to your non-writer friends, your first book launch is a big deal, particularly if they know it’s the culmination of a lifelong dream. You’ll be amazed at how many of them come out. Or just buy the book in their far-flung corner of the country. Or the world.

10. Send out an e-mail blast announcing your book, your appearances, your launch, include some early reviews, etc.

11. Try to relax and enjoy it. You love your book. You want to support your book. If you could, you would take a killer mortgage and move to a good school district so your book could have a better chance at a good college and a fulfilling life. But you can’t. You can only do what you can do. What happens from here depends on your book, your publisher and a little bit on you. You can only help so much, and you probably can’t screw it up.

Overwhelmed by this list? Don’t be. Some final pieces of advice.

Just focus on the tasks for the stage you are at now. Don’t worry about what’s coming next. By the time you get there, you’ll have more experience and a better foundation. What seems unthinkable now will be thinkable by then.
Don’t be freaked out by something you hate. If you would rather be killed than do an appearance at a bookstore, or if you hate, hate Facebook, skip it. Don’t let these hang ups prevent you from doing the other stuff.
You can always pay for stuff. This is a pretty DYI list. You can’t pay others to be you (or at least I think that rarely works on social media and never in person) but you can pay them to build websites or send e-mail newsletters or whatever.

So that’s all of what I know about my little corner of the universe today. Happily, the world is always changing and I am always learning, so I might have to do an entirely new list a year from now.

Walking

Lea Wait, here, admitting there are a few downsides to being an author.

One is that I spend most of my time (sometimes 8-12 hours a day) sitting and staring at a keyboard and screen. And getting up to stretch can lead to cups of tea and snacks. Or meals.

Last fall I knew I should do something about my weight — I weighed more than I ever had. But then snows were deep, the YMCA gym and pool half an hour away, and I had deadlines … and migraines.

My neurologist prescribed meds to help with the headaches, and I forged on. No one could help with the deadlines. (Yes: all manuscripts were in on time.)

This spring, knowing my clothes-to-wear-in-public were a little tight, I was still shocked when my doctor told me I’d gained (gulp) twenty MORE pounds during the winter.

I got that news in the middle of a series of weeks I was speaking (sometimes in different states) several times a week. Dieting and exercise didn’t seem realistic. I had too much to juggle in my life already.

Then my headaches got worse. When I spoke with my neurologist again he mentioned, casually, that, well, those meds he’d put me on in December sometimes caused weight gain

Early 19th C stone wall

 

 

I threw out the rest of the bottle and by Memorial Day I was serious. I had to lose weight. A LOT of weight. I asked my Facebook friends about devices that counted steps, and ended up with a Garmin I love. It sets goals for me, counts my steps, and keeps track of my weight. Now, almost two months later, I walk 3-5 miles a day, am still counting calories, and have lost over ten pounds. Yes, I have a bad knee. Recovering from a walk requires an ice pack. But the pain is worth it. Slowly but surely I’m returning to a body

Graveyard, late 18th -early 19th C

I’m comfortable with. But I still have a long way to go.

Almost every day I walk down a road near my home that I’ve come to know well. It’s along the shore of a river, so houses on one side have waterfront. Houses on the other side have woods. And there are many acres of woods without homes.

I head down that road, not knowing what I’ll see. I’ve met deer. I found a perfect (dead) luna moth. Great blue herons hang out in one area. Neighbors who seem to work in their gardens no matter when I walk, greet me. When cars pass, we wave at each other. Even in parts of the road where woods are deep, I hear lobster boats working their traps, and pleasure boats speeding along. I’ve met most of the dogs who live along the road, and we’ve made peace with each other.

I’ve grown selfish about my walks. It’s my time to think. To plan. To listen to crows and bees and the rustle of squirrels and chipmunks in the woods. To plot my next chapter, or my next meal.

My Garmin nags me to make sure I walk at least 10,000 steps. When I started, I thought 5,000 steps was a good day. Now I miss my goal only on days when weather is really awful (when I walk on a treadmill, which is much more boring) or when I have a signing or book festival or other “away from home” event that takes most of the day.

Maine is a beautiful place. And walking in it is, yes, helping me get my body back to where it should be. But it’s also helping me focus more. There’s more to my world than a computer screen, and it’s good to be reminded of that. So, today, I’m taking you all along with me on my walk. All the pictures I’ve posted are scenes I pass along the way.

Welcome to my world.

Falling Into The Precipice

 By Brenda Buchanan

Paul Doiron was in my doghouse last week. His newest Mike Bowditch novel, The Precipice, had me awake until well after midnight two nights in a row, and I’m a girl who needs her sleep. The book is so good I’m giving over my real estate here at Maine Crime Writers today to explain why I’ll be betting on it when 2015 award season rolls around.

First off, Dorion, a Maine Crime Writers blog alum, knows how to write the heck out of the Maine wilderness. He demonstrated that with his 2010 debut, The Poacher’s Son, which won a Barry and a Strand Critics Award for Best First Novel, and was nominated for a slew of others, including an Edgar. Readers hung on by their fingernails as Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch took them deep into the Maine woods in an effort to prove his reprobate father was not responsible for murdering two men, one of them a state trooper.

Doiron followed up with Trespasser, Bad Little Falls, Massacre Pond and The Bone Orchard, each set in a different part of Maine because his protagonist’s reckless approach to his job had a tendency to irritate the hell out of his chain-of-command respecting bosses. In fact, by the time The Bone Orchard rolled around, Bowditch had resigned from the Warden Service, aware that he was one more headlong pursuit away from being fired. But when his longtime mentor was attacked and nearly killed, the impulsive warden realized his drive to be in the middle of the action didn’t go away when he turned in his badge. By the end of that book Bowditch was back in uniform, having realized the value of being a team player in a job that involves busting bad guys in Maine’s wildlands.

In The Precipice, Doiron shows us a more mature, confident Mike Bowditch, who is summoned along with all other available wardens to the North Woods when a pair of young, female Appalachian Trail thru-hikers disappears in the Hundred Mile Wilderness. The all-boots-on-the-ground call interrupts an idyllic getaway Bowditch hoped would impress his new girlfriend. He wears his disappointment on his sleeve. Her reaction is more muted. That turns out to be their ongoing relationship dynamic, but she’s not playing hard to get, she is hard to get.

Stacey Stevens is a wildlife biologist, pilot and wilderness first responder. The daughter of a retired warden pilot who has long been something of a father figure to Mike, Stacy is as comfortable as Mike in the outdoors. She can match him step for step when hiking a backwoods trail and identify birdsong and scat as fast as he can. In short, Stacey Stevens is Mike Bowditch’s dream woman, but she gives no consistent indication he is her dream man. In a lovely role reversal, a more seasoned Bowditch has mastered impulse control, and Stacey—at 30 a couple of years older than Mike—is the one prone to take crazy risks while trying to solve the case.

Doiron is particularly skilled at describing Maine in all of its beautiful, perilous seasons. The Precipice takes place in the fall, when AT thru hikers are finishing their long walk from Georgia. He provides the reader with a palpable sense of Maine’s wildness, and the very real dangers that are a fact of life in untamed areas of the state.

Having ascended Katahdin and several other of Baxter’s peaks before the cartilage in my knees got too old, my heart pounded with remembered fear when Mike struggled for footing on a rocky trail that a thunderstorm turned into a raging stream. Readers of The Precipice who’ve never spent time in the remote areas of Maine should heed this chilling passage:

I stopped in a sheltered crevice between two boulders and took a swig from my water bottle. I’d nearly drained both of the quart containers on my climb up Chairback. It felt strange to be soaked to the skin and yet so dehydrated at the same time. An hour earlier, I’d been on the verge of heat stroke; now I was goose-pimpled from the cold. Every warden has seen fatal cases of hypothermia in the middle of summer: swimmers who overestimate the warmth of a spring-fed pond, mountain climbers who wander into pouring rain above the treeline. All it takes is enough cold water to depress your body temperature ten degrees. There are so many ways a person can die in the woods.

In The Precipice, the hunt for the missing women is compelling. The characters are memorable. The tension is exquisite. Best of all, the reader is given an unmitigated opportunity to cheer for Mike Bowditch, who is turning into the kind of man he always had the potential to be.

Get your hands on a copy of The Precipice and be prepared for it to keep you reading deep into the night. It’s that good.

 

 

 

 

Don’t Ignore Local Venues

Vaughn Hardacker here: It’s been a month since the release of my second novel, THE FISHERMAN, and it’s been a struggle to schedule events at libraries throughout Aroostook County. My novel SNIPER was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award (along with Kate Flora, Paul Doiron, and John Corrigan–writing as D. A. Keeley) and I sent mailings to a number of libraries through out Maine. My experience has been that library venues aren’t the best place to sell books. People go to the library to borrow books; not buy them. When I read in a local newspaper that John Corrigan was making a tour of Aroostook County with stops at libraries in Houlton, Presque Isle, and Caribou, I decided to attend the Caribou event so John would have at least one person in attendance. As it turned out, John told me that Caribou was the high point of the trip–in fact it paid for the trip. Rather than set up at the library itself, the Caribou Library arranged for him to have a vendor slot at Thursday on Sweden.

TOS is a bi-weekly venue held throughout the summer on Caribou’s main drag (Sweden Street) it features music (both via D. J. and live bands) as well as craft and food vendors. I located John and he told me that he’d sold more books that he had expected to sell. He also added, “This is the way to do it, rather than the library.”

When SNIPER was released I did a Caribou Library event and three people attended (one, an old friend from high school bought a book). This is the second year that TOS has been a bi-weekly summer event in Caribou and I had not attended a single one. However, I took John’s advice and contacted the people in charge of the event and was told there was no fee for being a vendor all I had to do was submit a form available online. I did so and was assigned a spot for the rest of the summer.

On July 2 I set up a table and boy was I surprised! Remember those three people who attended my SNIPER event? Here’s a picture of who attended TOS!

After the first hour and a half I netted over a hundred dollars in sales!

Moral of this story…check out your local venues, they may be more lucrative than you ever thought and cost less.

First or Third?

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, reflecting on one of the choices writers need to make when they start work on a new novel. I am currently working on a proposal for a contemporary cozy series. I’m not ready to share much detail about character, setting, or plot just yet, but there is one aspect of the project that I can discuss—point of view.

The majority of cozy mysteries are written in first person point of view and use a single narrator, usually a female. She is the amateur-detective protagonist and readers are in her mind, and her mind only, as she tries to solve a mystery. She’s essentially talking to the reader, telling us what happened to her. Every once in awhile, the first person narrator will be a “Watson” instead—the sidekick reporting on the protagonist’s actions. Once again, the reader will only see the story unfold through the narrator’s eyes.

The second most popular option is to use third person point of view. Instead of reading how “I” went about looking for clues, we follow the actions of the protagonist from the outside, although at times privy to her thoughts, as in “Liss MacCrimmon loved the sound of bagpipes. She just wished her husband felt the same.”

I’ve written novels in first person. I’ve also written novels in third person. In general, I prefer third person because it is more flexible. While some writers do limit themselves to one point of view, that isn’t a requirement. The story can be told from multiple viewpoints. There’s even something called omniscient viewpoint, which lets the author in on everything everyone is seeing and thinking. In romance novels, the usual practice is to use two points of view, the hero and the heroine. In many mystery novels, the use of four or five different point of view characters is not uncommon . . . except in cozies.

In the Liss MacCrimmon series, the number of point of view characters depends on the plot. In the forthcoming (October 2015) The Scottie Barked at Midnight, I used only Liss’s point of view, but in the rest of the series I have scenes where I get into someone else’s head. This is especially useful when I want to let the reader in on something Liss couldn’t possibly be a witness to. In historical mysteries, it is even more useful to follow another character’s movements because men had access to places where women could not go. On occasion, I’ve even used the villain’s point of view.

Can you use more than one point of view character and still write in first person? Sure. But, at least in my opinion, it is harder to do so and still differentiate between characters. Mine all end up sounding alike. That’s less of a problem when I write in third person. It’s also possible to use both first person and third person in the same book. Joan Hess does this in her series featuring Arly Hanks. Arly’s point of view scenes are in first person. Scenes in the point of view of other characters are in third person.

one of the books I wrote in first person

I haven’t written all that many novels in first person. Of the non-mystery historical novels I wrote as Kate Emerson, some demanded multiple points of view. For those that did not, I chose to write in first person. One of the books I wrote for ages eight to twelve is in first person. The rest are in third. Similarly, with short stories, I’ve generally chosen third person, even though the length almost always dictates only one point of view.

For a time, I toyed with taking a secondary character who appears in The Scottie Barked at Midnight and making her the sleuth in a new cozy series. I experimented by using her as the detective in a couple of short stories. I wrote them both in first person. I’m not sure why. The novel she appeared in was written in third person.

That brings me back to this latest effort, the new series proposal. Which will it be—first or third? At the moment I’m inclined toward first person, in part because there’s going to be a lot of myself in the protagonist. She’s my age, for one thing. We speak the same language. So, at least for the section of text that will go with the proposal—the first fifty to a hundred pages—the plan is that “I” will tell the story. We’ll see how it goes.

And if I decide first person isn’t working? Thankfully, there’s an easy fix—just switch to third.

Meet Espionage Fiction Superstar Gayle Lynds

I met Gayle Lynds at a mystery conference many years ago, when she was the tall, glamorous, successful writer and I was the newbie, perched on the cusp of publishing my first book. She was generous and friendly, as well as talented. I was thrilled when I learned that Gayle had moved to Maine, and excited to have a chance to share her fascinating story, and her new book, with Maine readers. Gayle will be talking about her new book, The Assassins, at Longfellow Books in Portland on July 23rd, and you should be there to hear this warm, funny, talented lady talk about the writing life. Kate Flora

You’re a superstar in espionage fiction, which has traditionally been considered the province of male writers. Still, Lee Child calls you “today’s best espionage writer.” Tell us about the background that led you to want to write this kind of book?

I suppose you could say I didn’t know any better. Ultimately I blame Kurt Vonnegut. He was a writer in residence at the University of Iowa while I was studying there. I asked him where he’d come up with the terrific idea for his novel Cat’s Cradle, and he said it all started during a summer job he had at a think tank, where “ideas bounced off the walls.” Since my dream was to write novels, I jumped at the chance a few years later to be an editor at a private think tank that did a lot of government work. There I was vetted for Top Secret security clearance and stepped into an exciting world of research, creativity, hard work — and secrets. Years later, when I was finally able to write my own books, I found myself influenced by those years. I wanted to write about geopolitics, history, and culture. What better place than in espionage?

In a new review, the Associated Press called you a “master of the modern Cold War spy thriller.” Your new book is called “The Assassins.” Tell us about how they relate.

Although I wrote about spies for years, it was only recently I realized people considered assassins to be pretty much the same. Not true. They’re as individual as spies are, or we are. For many, it’s simply business, while others are driven by ideology. The truly insane don’t last decades, as the men in my book have. The six in The Assassins join forces only once, and that’s for a series of wet jobs for Saddam Hussein. Then Saddam stiffs them — doesn’t make his last payment. So as America and the coalition are invading Iraq in 2003, the assassins slip into Baghdad to get what’s theirs. Fast forward to 2015, and someone has discovered their shared past and forces them into a game of last-man-standing. I really enjoyed pitting the best-of-the-best — legendary experts in all ways to manipulate and kill — against each other.

Eva Blake and Judd Ryder starred in your previous novel, The Book of Spies, which Library Journal named one of the Best Thrillers of the Year. Why did you decide to bring them back in The Assassins?

I’d really enjoyed creating Judd and Eva, and I missed them. As I was wandering around my house envisioning the next book, I realized their stories weren’t finished. That was a mighty fine moment for me. So I happily brought them back in The Assassins to put them through their literary paces and discover who they were now and what they did next.

 

Your new book is kind of an old assassins’ reunion. I know that I struggle to keep a few bad guys straight, so what techniques did you use to create six very different international hit men?

It’s tough to write multi-character scenes, and I don’t love them anymore than anyone else. My first rule is to try to make certain the reader isn’t confused. For instance, in the opening scene, which takes place in the Iraq National Museum, I decided the only name we needed was for the lead assassin. That left me with five who could be known by their backgrounds — the Basque, the Russian, the ex jihadist, the retired Mossad operative, and the former Cosa Nostra killer. Then, as the assassins appeared one by one later in the novel, the reader already had a sense of them.

Many people believe the Cold War is over. I’m betting you’d say it’s just changed. How do you do research to keep up with the contemporary world of espionage?

Since my background is journalism, I’ve always stayed abreast of the news. The fun part is to read between the lines. Currently, I take three newspapers every morning and two news magazines a week. Throughout the day I receive situation reports from a noted global intelligence company. Other people follow the horses or play fantasy baseball. Me, I’m just an old-fashioned news addict.

There was a hiatus between your previous book and this one, during which you moved from Santa Barbara, California, to Maine. Can you tell us a bit about that transition? I believe there is quite an amazing romance involved?

As my husband says, I was a Santa Barbarian, and he was a Mainiac … which of course meant we were destined to be together. And as it turns out, he was wonderfully right. I am one lucky ex-Californian.

It all started a few years ago when my publisher asked me to increase my presence on Facebook. I had some 1,500 friends, which seemed plenty to me, but I was a good sport and discovered Facebook provided a list of people with whom I had at least one mutual friend. So I started down the list, clicking the little square beside each name, asking permission to “friend” them.

In a few minutes, I received an email from some guy in Maine who asked whether he knew me, whether we’d ever met. Feeling guilty for bothering him, I apologized, explained about my publisher, and told him he sure didn’t have to be my friend, but if he wanted to be, I promised I wouldn’t post often. Well, one thing led to another. I was widowed; he was divorced. I wrote books; he read a lot of them. We soon moved off Facebook and conducted an old-fashioned correspondence that turned into an across-the-continent courtship. That was 2009. We married in 2011, and I packed up my thousand books and moved to Maine, where today we live happily on the outskirts of Portland. His name, by the way, is John C. Sheldon, retired prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge. We’ve collaborated on three short stories so far.

What is the question that you always want to be asked, and never are, and how would you answer it?

What a terrific question. No one’s every asked me whether I can keep a secret.

The answer is: It’s a secret!

Finally: where can we hear you speak about your book?

I’m excited to be signing at Longfellow Books at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, July 23, at 1 Monument Way in downtown Portland. Please come! http://www.longfellowbooks.com/event/...

Weekend Update: July 18-19, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be a special Sunday guest post by thriller writer Gayle Lynds, and posts by Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett (Monday), Vaughn Hardacker (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Wednesday), Lea Wait (Thursday) and Barb Ross (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

This coming Saturday (July 25), Maine crime writers will be very busy. You will find many of us in Lincolnville Beach at the Beyond the Sea Book Festival hosted by the energetic and generous Nanette . Attendees will include Barbara Ross, Dorothy Cannell, Lea Wait, Kate Flora, Susan Vaughan, and Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson. The complete schedule is here: http://www.beyondtheseamaine.com/book-festival-2015.html

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

FROM BASIL TO BOOKS

Dorothy Cannell: For those of you who grow basil and are looking for more recipes for its use, here’s an easy and tasty one that I came up with years ago.

Crab Bisque:

1 large (family size) can of Campbell’s tomato soup

Half and Half

1 can crabmeat (drained)

1 cup chopped basil

1 cup sweet sherry

Pepper

Put soup in a saucepan. Fill emptied can with Half and Half and stir into soup. Add crabmeat and basil. Bring to just below the boil on stove top. Stir in sherry and season with pepper. Serve accompanied (if desired) with croutons.

My family members always ask for this when coming to Maine. It freezes well and is great for those days when I’m too busy writing to want to stop and cook.

Books: Death at Dovecote Hatch had its U.S. pub date earlier this month.

Just finished reading The Body In The Birches by Katherine Hall Page. It’s wonderful. Highly recommend.

She and I will be participating (along with other Maine crime writers) in the 2015 Beyond the Sea Book Festival in Lincolnville Beach. It runs from July 24th – 26th. For more information as to who will be attending and when check out www.beyondtheseamaine.com. Nannette The owner of store is a delight and it is well worth a visit for its own sake, lots of great merchandize in addition to an eclectic selection of books.

Happy summer,

Dorothy

Roads Not Taken and Making Scents of Maine

John Clark on an unusually chilly July morning.

Rocky channeling Edna St. Vincent Millay

Even though our audience was small on Tuesday night in Dover-Foxcroft, we had plenty of fun and the session went for almost an hour and a half. At one point I mentioned driving by a sign for Dark Mountain Road on my way to do some work with the folks at the Witherle Library in Castine while I was employed at the Maine State Library. I thought about what might be found on that road for the rest of the trip and later included some of what I’d imagined in a story that was bought by Level Best Books. I’m sure most of us who blog here or who are followers and live in rural areas can tell stories about strangely named or mysterious roads. What about the ones we have gone by time after time and never explored because we were too busy. If we have stories to tell about those that have been explored, what might await us on those not yet traveled?

Retirement is affording me a bit more time (although far less than I expected) to satisfy those curious urges. I have yet to explore some of the back roads that have captured my fancy since we moved to Hartland, but I’ve hit enough over the years to create a reservoir of story-possible territories of the mind. In Appleton the next town north of where I grew up, for instance, there are several places I’ve explored that may turn up in future short stories or books. If you drive north past Sennebec Hill Farm where Kate and I grew up, you come to a sharp turn with a tar road bearing to your right. It was here that I drove a Honda 90 into a large elm the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. Turn onto that road and you can make a long loop back to East Sennebec Road atop the hill looking over Appleton Village. There are several roads branching off it. One dead ends just above what we used to call the old Gurney Place. Way back when we first moved to Union in 1949, it went further and met the Barret Hill Road that eventually intersects route 17 by my old high school . If I remember right, it was part of an old stage coach line. The road it connects to on the ridge overlooking Sennebec Lake, had only cellar holes and a couple forlorn barns when I was a kid. Today, you can drive past some really fancy places. Personally, I tend to remember the stories about the stage and imagine one flying along that ridge, ghostly passengers outlined by a Halloween moon.

Whatever ya do, Dude, avoid the fog.

If you ignored the turn toward the Gurney Place and kept going, you’d eventually come to another sharp corner that used to be a four-way intersection. Beth and I parked here years ago and walked up the road going to the right. An hour later, we found ourselves on a hilltop where stunted oaks made it look like we had stumbled upon a Greek amphitheater. We could see the ocean and Mt. Battie to the east, Clary Hill to the south and Sennebec Lake down below. When we started down, we followed a small brook that serenaded us as it cascaded over rocks. We came around a bend and found ourselves in the dooryard of some absolute back to the lander’s dwelling. Their place was on the road that led back to where we’d parked and this one was pretty passable. In fact, I’ve gone up it numerous times since then and fished the brook down to a small pond. There are numerous old cellar holes dotting the west side of that road. If you follow it all the way through (best with four-wheel drive), you come out on Route 105 heading to Hope. Not far past the back to the lander’s place, there’s another road which crosses a small stream that feeds the swamp above the little pond that’s loaded with wild rice in October. There’s a structurally sound shed in a small field halfway out this road…Perfect to hide stolen goods or a body.

Does this remind you of an ice cream flavor?

That road eventually comes out on what’s known as the Peabody Road which connects East Sennebec Rd. with Route 105. There are more abandoned houses and cellar holes between it and the Georges River. I walked down through the woods one day about ten years ago and hit the most impenetrable chunk of real estate I’ve ever seen. Dead and dwarf cedar trees were so entwined that not even Godzilla could have made his way through, so I kept moving north until it thinned out enough to allow me to reach the river. I didn’t catch anything, but came home with a perfectly good canoe paddle as a souvenir.

It’s awfully annoying to try eating breakfast when you keep stumbling over multiple corpses.

On the other side of Sennebec Lake is Appleton Ridge. There’s a big old house up there known as the Oakes Mansion. Here’s what accompanies an old photo on the Penobscot Marine Museum website, courtesy of Donovan Bowley, Appleton Historical Society “The Oakes Mansion on Appleton Ridge, high above the village of McClain’s Mills (today’s Appleton Village), was constructed in 1896 in the shingle style by Francis Oakes, a wealthy New York dye manufacturer, for his wife, as an addition to her parents’ home on the Ridge. She was Appleton native, actress, and singer Adelene Sullivan. The house’s extensive outbuildings are gone, but the main house still stands and is undergoing renovation. To the original Sullivan farmhouse at the left, Francis and Adelene added a three-story addition of some twenty rooms. The domed cupola visible above the original section at the left was an observation balcony above the water tower behind the house, which provided storage and pressure for the extensive indoor plumbing, which was unusual for that date and place. The structure is now the home of Selectman Donald Burke.”

It dominates the skyline at sunset, but there are other intriguing places on the ridge. Across the road from the mansion is a narrow, partially overgrown road. My friend John Marks and I decided to explore it years ago. After we reached the end of the blueberry field, the road followed the back side of the ridge down past another abandoned house to the lower end of Pettingil Bog, across an old dam and up to the drivable part of Guinea Ridge Road. The area abounded with wildlife including monster bucks, beaver, turtles and migrating waterfowl. The undrivable portion of Guinea Ridge Road meanders along the west side of of the swamp and there are spots where a careless step would allow the soft ooze to suck you into oblivion.

I’m describing a very few roads near where I grew up to illustrate just how many possibilities exist for the curious writer interested in finding places where both short stories and good full length crime fiction can be set. I hope by reading this you get the urge to go explore one or more of those roads you’ve always wanted to explore, but passed because it wasn’t a good time to enjoy a diversion.

We logged a lot of miles on this expedition.

In addition to mysterious roads that make great settings for criminal activity or ghostly stories, Maine offers the writer some unique smells to enhance a good story. First and foremost are the smells provided by members of the evergreen family. I defy you not to take a deep breath when a semi hauling freshly cut pine passes you. Likewise a load of softwood chips headed for a paper or pellet mill. Cedar, while certainly not unique to Maine, is another distinct and pleasant scent. If you’ve ever spent much time in blueberry fields during the harvest, you’ve encountered a unique blend of smells that can’t be found elsewhere. It’s hard to describe to anyone who has never been there, but imagine a bit of blueberry, a slightly acrid scent from weeds baked under an August sun, the amiably sneezy smell of goldenrod, a bit of bayberry and a hint of boxberries from the wintergreen family, all blended and wafted to your nose by a gentle breeze. Another one that isn’t unique to Maine, but is etched into the minds of pretty much everyone living in farm country, is the smell of freshly cut hay. This week it seems like almost every field in Somerset County is being cut and baled because we’re in a run of perfect haying weather. Another one we enjoy almost every time we go canoeing or kayaking on Great Moose Lake is the tangy smell of a campfire. I swear I can tell when they’re burning white birch. Maine lakes also give off a slightly musty smell about the time the lake turns over in midsummer as the water change brings decaying vegetation to the surface.

On course not all unique smells are pleasant. Ever hear someone whose face has an annoyed expression say “It smells like Rumford in here?” This is, or used to be a common refrain the day after a good bean supper at the local grange or church. They were referring to the similarity between bean-induced flatulence and the eye burning smell from a paper mill. It’s far less prevalent now that so many mills have closed, but when I was a kid and we were going to my grandmother’s house in New Portland, the smell from both the Winslow and Hinkley mills was pretty darn strong. The other one that’s a nose grabber is what comes off a clam flat at low tide. There’s no mistaking this one. I mention these smells because I think that when writing Maine fiction whether it’s in the young adult, urban fantasy, or mystery genres, getting readers involved is often done nicely by adding in things that they can use to create their own vision of your story world. I hope this makes scents to you.

You go first

Guilty Pleasures

Jayne Hitchcock here. As a writer, some people have preconceptions about me. When they hear me speak or see me at a book signing, I’m usually dressed to the nines. I have a BMW (an older one, but it’s in great shape, so it looks newer) and a pretty good looking husband (if I do say so myself). When it comes to Q&A or socializing after an event, it’s funny how many think I sit at home at night with a glass of scotch and read Shakespeare, Tolstoy or some other dead author’s works.

When I tell them I prefer crime thrillers, fantasy, horror and sci-fi, they are mildly appalled.

They would probably be more appalled if they knew what else I liked. For TV shows it ranges from Bones to Rizolli & Isles to Under the Dome, Tosh 2.0, Ridiculousness, Celebrity Name Game, The Following, Warehouse 13, Haven and Antiques Roadshow. Music is mainly new country, rock and hard rock, with a little Lady Gaga, Five Finger Death Punch and Adele thrown in.

Movies range from the Fast & Furious franchise to Star Wars (the original ones, pfft), Lord of the Rings, Red series, Connie & Carla, Moulin Rouge, anything with Harrison Ford or Jason Statham in it and animated movies.

I am just not in documentaries, dramas, historical, political, etc. I like to be entertained. I live enough in the world of cyber crime every day that when my day does end, I want to get lost in a story or music.

So, what are your guilty pleasures when it comes to entertainment?