Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 102
July 1, 2015
Teach Her a Lesson
Kate Flora: Summer is a great time to refill the well of creativity. A quick trip to L.A. for The Sound of Music sing-along at the Hollywood Bowl. Passing banks of roses at the edge of the sea and admiring the swaths of lupines along the Maine roads.
Every summer I make the same vow: No, I will not teach. I will sit on my porch in an armchair and stare out at the sea and read books and play in my garden and work on a book and take it easy. And every summer, without fail, when I get the e-mail asking if I’d like to teach, I find myself saying yes. Why? Because, also without fail, spending three hours a week in a room full of writers is wonderful.
What do they teach me, you ask? What could they have to teach a writer who has been at
The cell phone flashlight app becomes magical at the Hollywood Bowl
this for thirty years and is working on her twenty-sixth book? In a nutshell–everything. Much in the same amazing way that having a small child teaches us to see the world anew, spending time each week listening to writers take the same homework assignment and give it a dozen individual spins reminds me of all the tools we bring to the table when we sit down to write, and the many ways we can wield them.
Language? You bet. This room has writers from all over the world, from different age groups, who work at different careers. They may all be doing a sensory isolation exercise where they go to a place and write three paragraphs of description, each using a different sense, but when they share their work, they will take us into many different places and firmly anchor us there. From the deadly serious to the highly comedic, their writing helps them to understand their distinctive voices and world views, and reminds me of the importance of choosing the best word. Of crunchy nouns. Of the challenges of describing smells or the tactile nature of surfaces. Of dynamic flow. I am awed–and jealous–as I listen.
Voice? Again, you bet. Stunning opening lines. Powerful contrasts. Undisclosed yet evident character. Simple descriptions that manage to reveal deep emotional connections.
Writerly choices are all over the place.
How about a sense of place so powerful you can feel the blisters on your feet, the crunch of pine needles, smell the mingled scents of a summer commuter train or dining at an outside restaurant? How about an observing eye that makes things architectural? Or one that operates cinematically, beginning with the wide, establishment shot and then zooming in on the essence of the piece?
Or a sense of taste so vivid the entire class is hungry?
Or combining three such different smells that each one is elevated, giving the piece more depth?
There are no rules about where the place must be, and their writing flows from dark, fraught interior spaces and the cramped immediacy of a car seat to towering trees twisting in the wind and the varied grays of stormy skies.
I think you get the picture. Every summer I break my vow and teach another writing class because there’s a kind of magic that comes from doing it. Magic in the many ways that different writers can write. And a reminder that as writers, we never have have this craft knocked. We’re always learning. A reminder that we all began with the blank page, and all
of those endless editing heads, perched on our shoulders like a many-headed hydra, telling us we’ll fail. We won’t get it right. We don’t know what we’re doing. So part of the magic is watching writers shrug off those don’ts, and you can’ts, and you musts, and finding their way to their own writing practice.
So sorry, lonely white L.L.Bean chair. I’m not on the porch after all. I’m spending time being inspired by writers. Maybe next year.
June 30, 2015
Where Do You Find the Joy in Writing?
What part of the writing process gives you joy?
Since every writer’s process is different, and since we each take pleasure in different aspects of the craft, I asked the group at Maine Crime Writers this question: Where do you find the joy in writing? Below are their fascinating replies.
Maureen Milliken: I find the joy in actually doing it, and the more I write the more the story works itself out and becomes clear to me. The discovery part just blows my mind.
Chris Holm: Nothing gives me a bigger thrill than when my characters do something unexpected. I live for the moments they take over and surprise me. I suspect that’s why I’m not fond of outlining: I’m a junkie looking for a fix. I’d rather fly without a net than go a whole book without once getting that jolt.
Susan Vaughan: I sweat out the first draft, but seeing it come together as I get past the middle is a triumph. Even more, (don’t hit me), I find joy in the revision process, tweaking scenes and making the wording sing.
Lea Wait: Simply … I love making something (a story) out of nothing … or, perhaps, more correctly, out of bits and pieces of places, people, ideas, history, nature … it’s like making a patchwork quilt. Individually the pieces may be bright, or dull, or contrasting .. but stitched together in the right way they can become (when the quilt or story works) art. That’s always the challenge .. to find the right pieces and put them together in the best way possible.
John Clark: Since I’m not a plotter, most of my books and stories are created as I’m writing, so I’m entertaining myself and discovering things much like I hope readers will.
Kathy Lynn Emerson: Good question, Kate.
Since I don’t plot much in advance, I’m always thrilled and energized when pieces fall into place and I suddenly know what happens next or why a character has been acting in a certain way. Those “ah-ha” moments can make my day.
Vaughn Hardacker: For me it’s those times when the story takes over and I just type along behind!
Dorothy Cannell: “…From being invited into the world of my characters and encouraging them to surprise me.”
Barbara Ross: I’m with Susan. I love revising. I love the feel of rounding the bend and seeing the finish line in the distance. I especially love it that when revising, so often you discover that somehow, during the first draft, you’ve subconsciously stashed characters, scenes and settings away for later, unaware of how critical they would turn out to be.
Brenda Buchanan: Hi Kate, great question. When I am writing I feel most like my true self. That is not to say I find writing to be easy. But it is my most comfortable psychic habitat, where I am most at home, and that brings me joy.
Jayne Hitchcock: Just writing brings me joy.
Kate Flora: I’m with Chris—it’s those surprises that I live for. Those moments when I 
have a plan and my characters have another, and they simply take over. I also love those moments Barb Ross refers to when you discover that unconsciously you’ve laid the groundwork for how things will end up. And yes, Jayne and Brenda, just writing gives me joy. Especially first draft, when, as John notes, I’m discovering the story the way my readers will. And may I put in a plug for research? Making those discoveries that help bring my characters alive and give me the small, telling details?
And now, readers and writers out there…please join the conversation. What brings you joy?
June 29, 2015
Strawberry Dreams
Hi. Barb here.
It’s finally strawberry season in Maine. We had a long, cold spring (okay, a longer, colder spring) and a long, snowy winter. Snow, it turns out, is good for strawberries because it protects them, and indeed, this year’s crop is delicious and super juicy.
For me, strawberries are always the most welcome indication that summer has finally arrived. When I was a kid, my father’s parents owned a summer home in Water Mill, Long Island. On the last day of school every year, my grandmother would pick me and my brother up, and whisk us, along with her father, my great-grandfather, out to Long Island Expressway for two weeks at the beach. We always stopped along the way and picked up the first strawberries of the season. Some of them even made it all the way to the house, where my grandmother would prepare her special shortcake biscuits. (So special, the recipe was miraculously printed on the Biscuit box.)
I love seasons, and I love things that are special because you can only get them in a certain season, for a limited time. Now that I’m a grown up, you can get strawberries at the supermarket almost all year round. Those berries don’t interest me.
But give me local berries straight out of the fields and I will eat them for three weeks straight, or however long they stay around. They’re precious, because they’re rare. And they tap our memories because we associate them with a time and a feeling.
So enjoy, because, what, honestly, could be better?
June 28, 2015
My Bathtub, My Refuge
This is Lea Wait, and no, I haven’t yet taken shelter in a bathtub – although I’ve heard they’re good places to be (empty) during a tornado. Handy information if, like one of my daughters, you live in Kansas. But here in Maine bathtubs perform simpler, more classic, functions.
I grew up in houses, both our winter home in New Jersey and our summer home in Maine, that had large, footed, bathtubs and no showers.
I don’t ever remember anyone asking for one. Our house was full as I was growing up: my parents, my grandparents, and my three sisters and I all managed (with the help of a set-in-concrete morning schedule) to stay clean with 1 1/2 bathrooms. Baths were taken at night, to speed up the morning ablutions, and my grandparents waited until all three girls and my father had left the house before venturing out of their bedrooms and claiming their bathroom time. It worked.
I first encountered serious showers in college, when I was faced with shared bathrooms with a dozen shower stalls and one bathtub per floor in my dorm. I showered, like everyone else. But I didn’t like showering. It was expedient, but nothing more. I longed for the reassurance and relaxation of a bath. I learned the hours that lone bathtub was apt to be available … and not filled with Jello or other strange substances. (It WAS a college dorm.) I managed to take a bath perhaps once every couple of weeks. I survived.
After college I lived in a series of apartments in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Two of them were equipped with both bathtubs and showers. I happily used the tubs. The third apartment, however, and the one I lived in the longest, not only didn’t have a bathtub, it didn’t have a bathroom. Oh, yes: it did have a toilet, in what had at one time been a closet, and it had a “step-up” metal shower in the kitchen, next to the set-tubs that were the only sinks. No air conditioning, of course, so I remember showering in July and stepping out into my kitchen and immediately dripping from more than the shower. And stepping out into an unheated apartment in winter when there were problems with the building’s boiler. About every six months I added more concrete to the base of the shower to keep it from leaking.
Showering was definitely not a luxurious or lengthy experience.
Somehow I didn’t mind. Yes, the shower was quirky. But I was living in Greenwich Village, on my own, and I loved my apartment. In addition to the shower in my kitchen I also had a nineteenth century pump organ I’d bought from a church in Maine that had upgraded to an electric organ. One table doubled as a place to eat and a place to write. My Olympic portable had a permanent place on it.
After my New York years I lived in houses, most equipped with one full bathroom containing both a tub and a shower. My daughters argued over shower times, but I used the tub. My nightly bath was one of the few times I could close a door and block out the world. Time alone was precious.
The house I live in now was built in 1774, but some time in the early twentieth century a bathroom was added, complete with tub. That tub is still there. It’s the same one my parents and grandparents used; the one I used as I child. I step into those warm waters and the world disappears. I get ideas for my books. I think through my day. I come to terms with the world.
When my husband first moved here, a man addicted to showers, he had to come to terms with the tub. At first sometimes he even drove twenty minutes to Boothbay Harbor to shower at the YMCA there. After several years we had a plumber install what he referred to as “an after thought” — a pipe from the tub’s faucet leading to a shower head above, so showers were possible. But the water pressure from our well wasn’t strong. And by then my husband had gotten used to taking baths. He rarely showers now. He’s been converted. (I firmly believe baths are addictive.)
He sometimes makes fun of me because if I have a headache or a stiff muscle or a stuffy nose, my first stop is the bathtub. I’ve explained that all my ills are better when I’m in warm water. That not only am I washing dirt and germs away, but problems, as well.
Maybe the world would be a quieter, more relaxed, place if everyone gave up showers for tubs.
Or maybe not. But, in my life, a bath tub is an essential.
June 26, 2015
Weekend Update: June 27-28, 2015
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Lea Wait (Monday), Barb Ross (Tuesday), Kate Flora (Thursday) and John Clark (Friday), with a special group post on Wednesday.
In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:
It’s a summer full of books and mystery!
An early-planning note that next Saturday, the Fourth of July, some of us (Maureen Milliken, Dorothy Cannell, John Clark, Kathy Lynn Emerson and Lea Wait) will be at a booth at the Belgrade Lakes Fourth Celebration, from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., with books and pens in hand. Stop in, say “Hi!”, and take home a signed book. You know you need a beach (or lake) read.
The group will be set at 78 Main St., right in the middle of the festivities.
While you’re in Belgrade Lakes, stop by Day’s Store, favorite of locals and summer folks
alike and check out, along with the best homemade doughnuts in Maine, their display of Maureen’s book, Cold Hard News.
They asked Maureen if they could sell it after hearing about it from the Fourth of July organizers and other townsfolk. Nothing like marketing and word of mouth to get books in the hands of eager readers! Now let’s hope for a rainy summer in The Lakes so there’ll be lots of good reading time.
On a different early planning note: On July 6th, Kate Flora and Dorothy Cannell will be telling secrets at the Castine Library.
A note to our librarian friends: If you have a summer book sale coming up, let us know. We’d like to share that news here. Also more about your cool summer events.
Rumor has it there’s a mystery weekend being planned for the Jesup Library on the 18th of September . Of course there is the wondrous Books in Boothbay on July 13th, and on July 24th and 25th, there’s the Beyond the Sea Book Festival in Lincolnville, where you will find many of your favorite Maine Crime Writers.
Also on July 25th, at Richard Ford’s home in East Boothbay, from 2-5, the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance will hold its 40th Birthday summer party. This is absolutely a “be there or be square” event with all the Maine writers you’ve ever wanted to meet, along with politicians, publishers, and luminaries of all sorts.
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
June 24, 2015
How to Research A Murder
Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, introducing a fellow mystery writer with an interesting story to tell. I first met Sarah Wisseman several years ago, but we reconnected at Malice Domestic this past spring. Sarah was responsible for bringing an excellent session on forensic anthropology to the program–the mystery of the boy in the iron coffin. It was a fascinating look at the way DNA, facial reconstruction and other forensic methods, together with basic genealogical research, combined to identify remains found during an excavation. In her novels, Sarah calls on her own background as an archaeologist to create fascinating characters and compelling plots. Here is the story of how she came to write her latest novel, Burnt Siena.
How to Research a Murder
by
Sarah Wisseman
Most writers agree it helps to know your setting by visiting in person, not just by googling it or looking at maps and pictures. I did both for my newest mystery, Burnt Siena, recently released from Five Star/ Cengage Learning. I visited the magical city of Siena, Italy, for the first time in 1975, and returned for a conference in 2008. The last time, I took pictures—not just tourist pictures—but snaps of cafés and apartment buildings, flower shops and food displays, where I might want to set my characters.
I walked the streets, stretched out on the paving stones of the Piazza del Campo on a warm Sunday afternoon, ate pasta with cream sauce and mushrooms. But it was the repurposed convent where I stayed, and the unexpected “Ospedale Psichiatrico,” a former insane asylum where our conference was held, that convinced me Siena was perfect for my story.
A key part of my plot was inspired by the controversy over the purchase of a Greek statue for nine million dollars by the J. Paul Getty Museum in California almost thirty years ago. Believing the statue was an unusually well-preserved, ancient but original work of art, the Getty put it on display. Then a similar statue, an obvious forgery, turned up and the fight was on. Despite numerous scientific tests, art historians and curators could not agree whether the Getty statue was truly ancient, or one of the best modern forgeries ever produced. Writing Burnt Siena compelled me to review Greek sculpture styles (can an original statue combine the hair style of one period and the carved feet from another?), marble patinas (can a false patina be complex enough imitate the crust of ages and to fool modern scientists?), and the constant tug-of-war between stealing antiquities from their excavations and forging them. Both illegal practices feed each other because antiquities, both originals and clever forgeries, can fetch such high prices in the art market.
My love of Siena and my fascination with art forgery and antiquities smuggling drove me to invent a young art conservator, Flora Garibaldi, who is fresh out of advanced training and beginning a new job working for Restauro Lorenzetti, a respected firm of art conservators in Siena. But after her colleague and roommate Ernst Mann is found dead in the street below their apartment balcony, Flora’s dream job turns sour. The Italian police, after ruling Flora innocent of murder, persuade her to spy on her employers. Flora is trapped between the competing demands of the Lorenzettis: genial Beppe, sulky Pietro, and hunky and amorous Marco. Flora thinks Marco is being used by his family to divert police attention and generate income by replicating Greek sculpture. Will Marco’s statue be sold as a legitimate, museum-grade copy, or as a Greek “masterpiece?” Flora’s emotional turmoil grows as she works to protect Marco, avenge Ernst, and fight her growing attraction to policeman Vittorio Bernini.
The sequel to Burnt Siena will be set in Rome, where Flora and Bernini work with the Carabinieri’s Art Squad to investigate a rumor about Nazi-looted art stashed somewhere in the catacombs under the city.
Sarah Wisseman, a retired archaeologist at the University of Illinois, is the author of four Lisa Donahue Archaeological Mysteries set in Boston (Bound for Eternity and The Fall of Augustus) and the Middle East (The Dead Sea Codex and The House of the Sphinx) and one stand-alone historical mystery (The Bootlegger’s Nephew) set in Prohibition-era Illinois. Visit her at sarahwisseman.com
May 24, 2015
Update on Publication Dates
May 7, 2015
Post-Malice Ramblings
I can’t say for certain how many Malice Domestics I’ve attended, but I’m thinking it’s upward of twenty. I started with Malice III and this year was Malice 27. In this post, I’m just going to ramble a bit about this year’s experience.
It’s always a shock to head south in the spring. Maine still had brown grass, no leaves on the trees, and precious few flowers when I left on the last day of April. The Washington D.C. area, including Bethesda, is incredibly green. Plus all those flowering trees and bushes. And it’s warmer than here. And it’s humid!! It always takes me a day or so just to adjust to being at sea level. Did you know that our nation’s capitol was built on a swamp? Still feels like one when you’re used cold and dry.
I flew down on the same plane with fellow Maine crime writers Lea Wait and with Steve Steinbock, who does the book reviews for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. We shared a cab to the hotel, about a half hour ride through all that greenery.
It didn’t take long after arriving to start seeing familiar faces. In fact, my room was right next door to Sherry Harris, nominee for best first mystery. We were on the first floor, which is kind of cool. You can take the elevator down, or you can walk through the area used for book signings and down the grand staircase to the lobby. There’s also an excellent view of the lobby bar, since the hotel is designed atrium style (I think that’s the right term)—good for spotting who’s already there.
Now I don’t want you to think I’m a barfly. In fact, I don’t usually drink at all (bad reaction with my blood pressure meds), but the hotel lobby bar is THE place to meet both old friends and new ones. I had a very interesting chat with Cheryl Hollon, who is writing a cozy series based around a stained glass shop. The first entry, Pane and Suffering, will be out in September. I connected with old friend Jan Giles, who comes to Malice every year . . . from her home in Bahrain. That’s an 18 hour flight. I finally met and had the chance to talk with Mo Heedles, from New Hampshire, who won character-naming rights in a future Liss MacCrimmon novel at last year’s Malice Domestic charity auction. Those are the books I write under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett. Mo will be in this fall’s entry, The Scottie Barked at Midnight. And of course I reconnected with long-time conference-going pals and caught up on cats, books, and all the other things traditional mystery readers have in common.
Historical mysteries seem to be alive and well. Jessie Crockett is researching one, which led to a conversation about library and historical society holdings. And speaking of history, the first session I attended was put on by two archaeologists who explained how they discovered the identity of a body found in an iron coffin during an excavation. Thanks to DNA testing, they succeeded in reuniting this young man with his family after nearly two hundred years. Fascinating stuff.
Some of my own favorite authors are old friends as well as Malice regulars—Rhys Bowen, JoAnna Carl, Margaret Maron, and Victoria Thompson (who is next year’s Guest of Honor). If you haven’t read relatively new writer Gigi Pandian, give her Jaya Jones series a try. Then there was what’s becoming a semi-regular tradition, going out to eat on Friday night with Lea Wait, Maddy Hunter, Kathleen Earnst, and Kathleen’s sister Barbara.
I met with my agent, Christina Hogrebe, with unexpected (but good) results. You never know how those conversations will turn out! We’re planning ahead. Way ahead. For the time after I turn in the tenth book in the Liss MacCrimmon series. That manuscript is currently “resting” so I will have a bit of perspective on it when I go back to it to revise. First though, sometime very soon, I will be receiving edits from my new editor for the Rosamond Jaffrey historical mysteries (w/a Kathy Lynn Emerson). I have no idea what to expect there, but my fingers are crossed that not much will need changing. On the other hand, a good editor makes a book better, so I’m always open to suggestions.
My panel, consisting of the nominees for best short story (Kathy Lynn Emerson, Barb Goffman, Edith Maxwell, and Art Taylor), was moderated by Linda Landrigan, editor of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and was a continuation of the blog tour we all went on together during the last couple of months. In person, it was even better. I enjoyed spending time chatting with the other nominees and even ended up getting some valuable feedback from Barb Goffman, who is very good at that sort of thing, during a casual conversation on the lobby bar. Oh, did you want to know about the Agatha award? Nope. Didn't win. It went to Art Taylor. His acceptance speech mentioned our blog tour and the good feelings it engendered among us. Sure, I would have loved to bring home a Malice teapot, but I don't feel bad about returning to Maine without one.
I spent some time in the dealer room with old friend Chris Cowan, who makes and sells jewelry. Not as much as I'd have liked to. My arthritic ankles were giving me fits, making it hard to do a lot of walking around. Chris found an adorable Scottie pin to go with The Scottie Barked at Midnight.
Another new acquaintance was Morgan Elwell, Communications and Marketing Manager for Kensington Books. She brought freebies: little sewing kits with Kensington's name and a URL printed on them. She tells me she brought 400. They disappeared fast. Someone else was giving away pill cases. For the most part, though, the PR material consisted of postcards, flyers, pens, and buttons.
I did warn you I was going to ramble.
Oddly enough, one of the prevalent topics of conversation was other conferences, particularly ones where some of us might meet again in the not-to-distant future. Some of us will be at the Historical Novel Society conference in Denver next month. Others are already registered for Bouchercon in Raleigh, North Carolina in October. Registration is about to open for the next New England Crime Bake in Massachusetts. And it wasn’t too soon to talk about the next Maine Crime Wave, either, even though it doesn’t yet have a set date. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of the Malice people make it to Maine next April.
One thing everyone at Malice has in common is a love of mysteries. This year, three of the remaining long-time mystery booksellers were represented in the Dealer Room: Aunt Agatha’s, Mystery Loves Company, and Scene of the Crime. I made a point of buying books from all three of them, even though, to be honest, these days it is easier for me to read on my iPad and enlarge the font. Why? Because if we don’t support independent booksellers when we can and, yes, pay full price for those books, even though it would be cheaper to buy them on Amazon, then even more bookstores will go out of business. Trust me, no one wants that!
Now, however, I am faced with a dilemma. Which one of the fifteen hardcover and paperback books I schlepped home from Malice do I read first?
NOTE: to see a slightly different version of this blog, with photos, please go to MaineCrimeWriters.com
May 5, 2015
Changes
Kathy Lynn Emerson
