Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 19
March 12, 2018
On Watching My Characters Take The Stage
Last week Barbara Ross posted some wonderful photos from the Portland Stage Company event on March 5th, where actors performed staged readings of work by Lea Wait, Dick Cass, Chris Holm, Barb and me.
As Barb said, it was a joy to have our work read by such skilled actors and to take the stage together for the post-performance audience discussion led by the terrific Bess Welden. Unfortunately, Lea was unable to be there in person. Her scene from Twisted Threads was the final piece of the night, and the audience ate it up.
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Narrator Bess Welden introduces the scene from Cover Story.
This is the second year I’ve had the opportunity to participate in this Portland Stage collaboration, and both times I’ve come away with a deeper understanding of the characters I write. You might wonder how that could be. After all, I birthed Joe Gale and all my other literary babies. How could watching a bunch of actors read the words I put in my characters’ mouths give me greater insight into their hearts and minds? Because seeing other people interpret my work pries it from my strong fingers, and gives my imaginary friends an existence independent of me.
Like a mother watching her six-year-old get on the school bus, it’s a good thing.
The challenge inherent in the exercise is to identify a scene capable of standing alone, a ten-minute excerpt with a coherent beginning, middle and end, a narrative arc and an emotional one, too.
My scene was from Cover Story, the second book in my Joe Gale series, in which Joe goes to Machias in the dead of winter to cover a high-profile murder trial.
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Actor Rob Cameron made a fabulous Joe Gale.
Rob Cameron took on the role of shaggy-haired Joe, who submits himself to a haircut at the barbershop operated by ex-Marine Claude LeClair. Three lines in, I nearly jumped out of my seat.
I’ve long held an image in my mind of my main character, not just his build and face, but his attitude as well. In Rob Cameron’s gestures and tone of voice, Joe Gale came alive—a bulldog reporter with a kind heart, protected by the sarcastic sense of humor that is a journalist’s armor.
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Claude LeClair, the mad barber of Machias, was read by Andrew Harris.
As for mad barber Claude LeClair, actor Andrew Harris hit all the marks in his portrayal of the angry, opinionated father-in-law of the man on trial for murdering a DHHS caseworker.
A side benefit of re-tooling a scene from a book to be read on stage is the chance to add and subtract from the written page in order to make a performance fly. Last year the adapting process was a bit intimidating. This year it felt like freedom.
Starting from the assumption that many in the audience hadn’t read Cover Story, I transformed a low-key character from the book’s barbershop scene —Claude’s brother-in-law Lenny, a man of few words—into his sharp-tongued sister-in-law, Mary Lou.
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Moira Driscoll took a revamped character and ran with the part.
Actor Moira Driscoll got what I was going for when I gave Lenny a literary sex change and attitude adjustment.
In fact, Moira did such a good job reading her part as Claude’s needling antagonist I wish I could go back in time and put Mary Lou in the book.
I hope the partnership between Portland Stage Company and Maine’s crime writers continues for a long time to come.
Huge props go to Director Eileen Phelan, who chooses the scenes, casts the parts and works with the writers and the actors to achieve collaborative success.
[image error]Eileen Phelan, the marvelous director of the staged readings, with yours truly after the show.
Creative and community-minded, she is the engine behind this effort. Thank you, Eileen, for your support and inspiration.
Readers of this blog should take note that every winter season, PSC stages a mystery, and these staged readings featuring the work of Maine crime writers grew out of that annual tradition. This year the crime-themed play is Red Herring, which runs through March 25.
Here’s the storyline: Maggie’s a tough, Boston cop, trying to get her finger on the one man who gave her the slip: a sly crime boss who worked his way into her heart. As she deals with murder, mystery, and intrigue in Boston Harbor, she also has to deal with Frank, an FBI gumshoe with a proposal more dangerous than commie spies, murderous mobs, and McCarthyism combined: marriage.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? There are twelve days left in its run. Here’s the link for tickets: https://portlandstage.secure.force.com/ticket#details_a0Sj00000051DQvEAM
Brenda Buchanan is the author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series, featuring a diehard Maine newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. Three books—QUICK PIVOT, COVER STORY and TRUTH BEAT—are available everywhere e-books are sold.
Take the Next Left—Or Monty Python Hopes to Go to Augusta
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John Clark on a big change in my life. In hindsight it probably began the day Donald Trump was elected. To say a chill came over the Clark household would be a huge understatement. It’s hard to say whether despair or horror was the topmost emotion that morning. Fortunately, my sense of humor rose to the occasion and I spent several days talking like-minded friends off the proverbial ledge.
Beth and I got active very quickly. Having a comfort zone seemed like it was quite irrelevant in comparison to what we saw happening across the country. I suspect having lived in the country of the Half-Baked (LePage) for all of his term, was preparation for what we saw happening in Washington, DC. I hadn’t marched in protest since my college days and my righteous indignation muscles were lax and flabby. That changed quickly.
In addition to marching/protesting in Bangor, Augusta and Portland, I became the king of snarky comments on Facebook. Staying silent when others made racist, sexist or homophobic remarks became a luxury I could no longer afford. I unfriended the few really unlikable folks on Facebook. I began realizing that what used to be unthinkable, both in political reality and in my own look on life was changing whether I liked it or not.
Fast forward to 2018. I’ve often remarked that change is more like steering the Exxon Valdez than a smuggler’s cigarette boat. It’s slow and takes way longer than we like or expect. We’re now seeing the reaction to lying, sexist behavior and endless attacks on morality, minorities and the environment. I told a friend yesterday that Paul LePage has become the Duck Dynasty of Maine politics. That show was wildly popular at one time,. Today you can buy a whole season of it for a penny plus $3.99 shipping and all the show related merchandise is in the deep discount bin at big box stores. Ditto, methinks for Paul Lepage, although it would appear the five or so republicans running for his seat in the Blaine House seem bound and determined to ape his thinking and behavior.
I’m doing what was inconceivable even a couple months ago. I’m the democratic candidate for Maine House District 105 which serves Canaan, Hartland, Palmyra and St. Albans. To my knowledge, the district has never elected a democrat. I plan to change that. This all started with a message on our answering machine from the Somerset County party chair. Craig said nobody was willing to run and would I consider it? Admittedly, my first thought was no way in hell! The thought of knocking on endless doors trying to convince people who never voted blue to do so, made me cringe, but the more I ran the possibility through my head, the more comfortable I got with the idea. It helped big time that Beth was okay with my doing so.
Getting from yes to actuality has been quite the adventure. First one must get a requisite number of valid signatures, 25 for a house seat and it’s strongly suggested to get an extra ten or so. I got half that number at the caucus on Sunday, ran all over Hartland, even screeching to a halt in front of the post office to grab Hadley Buker’s autograph. Everyone I asked signed and the encouragement I got when I told people what I was doing, made the process easier. Next I had to get each of the four nomination papers (one for each town) notarized and have all signatures validated by the town clerk in each town. Plenty of driving involved to accomplish that.
Next up is downloading the forms to qualify as a clean election candidate, opening up a new checking account to use for verifiable expenses and delivering all the paperwork to the elections office at the state capitol. I’ve created a bumper sticker, ordered a hundred and have my friend Clif Graves creating a new WordPress site for my campaign stuff. (https://votejohnclark.me/) In the process of setting that up, I’ve written several documents for the site: Who I am, What I believe and how I got there, Professional life and civic accomplishments. The last one was pretty reassuring. I’m already talking to people of both liberal and conservative persuasions and am encouraged. I know there will be days when I’m bummed because of encountering negative people, but I expect I’ll find ways to roll with that. Stay tuned for more adventures from the campaign trail.
March 9, 2018
Weekend Update: March 10-11, 2018
[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by John Clark (Monday), Brenda Buchanan (Tuesday) , Jessie Crockett (Wednesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Maureen Milliken (Friday).
In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:
from Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I’ve finally put up a new “tour” schedule for upcoming events. You can find it at http://www.kaitlyndunnett.com/tour.htm First up is an event only a month away, the Kensington Cozy Author-Palooza in Portland, ME on April 10. Co-sponsored by my publisher, Kensington, and Print: A Bookstore, it features twelve cozy authors including four of the Maine Crime Writers: Jessie Crockett (as Jessica Ellicott), Barb Ross, Lea Wait, and me.
from Barb Ross: Speaking of Kensington, they’ve partnered with B&N on a Buy 3 Get 1 Free sale, March 6 to April 8. The sale includes titles by Lea Wait, me, and 28 other fabulous authors. Since B&Ns are a little thin on the ground in Maine, I will tell you that though the graphic below says the sale is in store only, barnesandnoble.com begs to differ. Here’s a link to the online sale. https://www2.barnesandnoble.com/b/select-mystery-novels-buy-3-get-the-4th-free/_/N-2q0o
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
March 8, 2018
An Evening at the Portland Stage
by Barb, who made it back to Key West ahead of the latest storm
Last May an email found its way to my mailbox from Brenda Buchanan letting me, and a bunch of other Maine authors know the Portland Stage would once again be hosting an evening of staged readings from mystery, thriller, and suspense novels. It would happen on the first Monday evening in March, during the run of their mystery-themed play offering, Red Herring.
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The crime writers before the show. L-R Dick Cass, Brenda Buchanan, Chris Holm, Barbara Ross. Photo by Diane Kenty.
I’d heard great things about the staged readings the previous winter and was even a little jealous as Maine mystery-writing friends posted photos and descriptions of the great evening they’d had.
I really wanted to submit a scene, but between May and July 15, I had to help my family clean out my mother-in-law’s apartment, help my son and daughter-in-law move from Connecticut to Virginia, and get our house in Somerville ready to put on the market. It felt like both a marathon and a sprint and I didn’t know if we’d make it.
Finally, by the third week in June, the dust had cleared and our house was on the market. I settled in to adapt my scene and submit it. As soon as I did, I realized I had no idea what I was doing.
I got some advice from Brenda who’d had a piece in the program the previous winter. She gave me lots of tips, but as I listened the main message I heard was “adapt, adapt.” I took that to mean I shouldn’t be afraid to take the scene apart and put it together again.
In the end I chose the opening of Fogged Inn. To get the number of characters down, I took some dialog that belonged to my cops and gave it to curmudgeonly restaurateur Gus who was already opening the scene. I wove together bits and pieces of several scenes in the beginning of the book to create what I hoped was a coherent whole.
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Actors read the opening scene from Fogged Inn. L-R, Khalil LeSaldo – Chris, Hannah Daly – Julia, Tony Reilly – Gus. Photo by Kate Donius
I ran the piece by my writers group, which as always had great insights. In particular actor and director Mark Ammons told me not to include any direction to the actors about how they should read a particular line. He said they’d be insulted. It was their job to interpret the words. I had to write my scene well enough that the words and context would tell the actors everything they needed to know. Mark also led the group in our own, unstaged, living room-based reading of the piece, which was helpful and hilarious in equal measure.
In August I heard my piece had been accepted, along with scenes by Brenda, Dick Cass, Chris Holm, and Lea Wait. The prospect of the evening was even sweeter because between submitting the scene and its acceptance, my husband Bill and I had decided to become Portland, Maine residents.
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The writers answer audience questions. L-R, Chris Holm, Dick Cass, Barbara Ross, Brenda Buchanan, Bess Weldon, moderator. Photo by Edith Maxwell
Bill and I would be in Key West in March. In 2017, we’d traveled back to New England for a wedding the first weekend in March, and gotten caught in a snowstorm, delaying our return by a fraught twenty-four hours. I’d promised Bill I wouldn’t make him come north again. Ever.
Obviously, I lied.
This year the problem was on the front end of our trip, delayed by a day by a nor’easter that shut airports across the northeast. But travel the next day was fine and it was great to see our daughter and son-in-law who weren’t able to make it to Key West this year.
The evening at the Portland Stage was wonderful. Hearing my scene read by three talented actors was amazing. The audience reaction was fun to experience. Hearing the other four pieces was entertaining and illuminating. I had chosen to have my scene be 100% dialog, but other authors had chosen to handle the novel-to-stage transformation in different ways, all of them successful.
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Another view of the authors. Photo by Kate Donius
The audience was large and appreciative. It was great to see fellow Maine Crime Writers Maureen Milliken and Bruce Coffin. Also, Cheryl Marceau, representing my writers group, and Edith Maxwell, my fellow Wicked Cozy Author and President of Sisters in Crime New England, as well as friends and family.
After the readings was a lively discussion with four of the authors. (Lea Wait unfortunately could not attend.) Audience members asked excellent questions.
Our flight was at 6:0o am the next morning, but even Bill said it was worth the trip.
March 7, 2018
My Island Lives
Lobsterman statue, Land’s End, Bailey Island
Kate Flora: Hi, all. I am subbing in today for Lea Wait, so I apologize if you think you’ve already heard enough from me recently. As is often the case, when a post is due, I wander around wondering what to write about. Sometimes, the topic is immediately obvious, such as last weeks about the adventure and challenge of editing my mother’s book; other time, it is a challenge to think of something that might interest the readers here at Maine Crime Writers. So today, as I am sitting on a screened lanai, surrounded by palm trees, taking a break from trying to put more action into my ninth Thea Kozak mystery (at the moment, a reporter who breaks into a student’s dorm room,) I thought I’d share a bit of life on “my islands.”
What are “my islands?” First and foremost, of course, Bailey Island, Maine, where from April until October I happily do my writing at the ocean’s edge. Being about sixteen miles from the closest stores, springing, summering, and falling on Bailey is kind of a pack in, pack out experience. When I’m not sitting the third floor office we built two years ago working on a book (absolutely a room with a view), I am putting in my gardens, or in my kitchen (which is also a room with a view) or taking a quick walk out to the Giant’s Stairs or down to Land’s End.
The view from our little cottage is endlessly changing. Lobster boats, The schooner Alert, storms flying in off the ocean, and gorgeous Maine sunsets are all a part of the rhythm of the day.
My other island is Sanibel Island, off the Gulf Coast of Florida, where for many years I have spent the month of March. Many, hearing that I spend a month in Florida, must imagine an endless vacation, with beach walks and swimming while my skin turns a rich brown and my hair goes sun streaked blonde. Mostly, though, while I am barefoot and wearing shorts and my Bangor Police Department Duck of Justice tee-shirt, I am sitting at my keyboard, working many hours a day.
True, at the end of the work day, I can take a swim in the pool or a walk on the beach. There are some gin and tonics involved, and one or two drives through the “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. There is the occasional morning bike ride to Noah’s Ark, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church thrift store. I will come home at the end of the month with a small bag of shells, something new from Noah’s Ark, and hopefully, a lot of work done.
March is also the month where my husband and I go to the gym together every other day, so April is the month of the year when I am thinnest. Right now it is early in the month, and so I ache all over. But it will be worth it. Meanwhile, I sit surrounded by a creaking tree, rustling palms, and–as in Maine–the strange, infantile cry of osprey overhead, staring at the page in the latest Thea, wondering what crimes the intrusive reporter has committed.
March 6, 2018
Like Frozen Ice?
Back when I was investigating graduate schools in pursuit of becoming the World’s Oldest Living Graduate Student 
, I came across an odd description of the University of New Hampshire’s Master’s program in English and Writing in a comment online. Someone who’d analyzed the writers teaching in the program and the several famous student writers who’d graduated from it complained that the fiction the program produced had “too many trees in it.”
This struck me, as Sue Miller once wrote in response to a misguided review of The Good Mother, as “breathtakingly stupid.” Don’t all stories happen somewhere? And doesn’t the set of all possible somewheres include the places with trees?
Those ancient coals were blown up into fire once more by a recent review of a Vermont writer headlined Howard Mosher is a regional writer you need to know. I suspect the reviewer, whose work I respect, was gifted with that headline by someone less thoughtful but regardless my hackles rose and my ears turned red.[image error]
First, to deal with the writer in question: Howard Frank Mosher, until his death last winter, was probably the closest living American writer to Mark Twain we have in breadth, scope, and sympathy for his characters. The fact that he lived and worked in northern Vermont and that his fiction was set there had as little to do with its worth as the fact that he once shotgunned a bad review against the side of his barn. His characters were as rich and deep as any you’ll meet in fiction and his stories as universal as well.
My reaction to the “regional” label stems from a belief that too many people use it thoughtlessly as a way of denigrating fiction that is heavily concerned with place, especially if the place is somehow distinctively different from the (generic) city. It’s as if the headline for the Mosher review said: “Well, it’s pretty good considering it’s only about those crazy people in the Northeast Kingdom.”
The term also suggests that everyone inside the so-designated region should be flattered to be so recognized and that no one outside the region might have an interest in anything going on in it place except as a mildly interesting bit of anthropology.
Good fiction is mainly about characters, of course, but characters have to live somewhere. And great fiction twines those characters inextricably with their place, their geography and weather and seasons and, yes, their trees. [image error]By the logic of the person who complains about too many trees or tags a novelist as regional, Dostoevsky was a regional writer. Virginia Woolf. And on and on.
It’s difficult enough to convince people to read fiction. Tagging a book or a writer with such a diminishing adjective does no one—reader or writer—any service. Looked at from outside? We all live somewhere and write about some place, which makes naming someone a “regional writer” about as tautologous talking about [image error] “frozen ice.”
March 5, 2018
Blogging Hiatus
Hi all. I’ve asked our glorious leader, Kate, to take me off the blogging schedule for now. I hope to carve back some writing time in 2018. I have greatly enjoyed blogging with all of you and will continue to read and enjoy your posts. As always, I am deeply honored to count myself among all of you incredibly talented Maine writers.
Even though I’m not blogging, rest assured that I will remain as snarky as ever. Until we blog together again, May the Snark Be With You.
Brendan
Another Look Back
Bruce Robert Coffin here waxing nostalgic. I was seated at my writing desk this past weekend trying to decide what I wanted to blog about this month on Maine Crime Writers when Facebook shared a memory with me. After reading said memory, which was a blog I posted two years ago, I realized I couldn’t say it any better than I had in 2016. So, without further ado, may I present another look back at how it all started.
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I’m sitting in my attic writing nook reflecting on the past year. What a ride! January 1st, 2015 found me with the usual resolutions, eat better, lose a few pounds, workout more, you know the ones. But last year I added a goal. Get published! It didn’t matter what it was; short story, grocery list, thank you note, fortune cookie advice, I wasn’t particularly choosy. I’d even entertained the thought of contacting Salada to see if they’d allow me to write a bit of tea bag advice. Hey, I was desperate.
Of course, what I really longed for was to see my first novel in print. The loftiest of all writing goals. Truly unattainable stuff. Friend and fellow Maine writer Chris Holm gave me some great advice. He said: “If you’re gonna step up to the plate, you’ve gotta swing for the fence, every single time.” He was right, of course. But that didn’t stop me from checking my in bin to see if Salada had responded. Nope. Damn.
Last April I attended my second Maine Crime Wave, this time as a wannabe published writer (the first had been as a guest panelist). The cool thing about events like this is getting the chance to chat with successful authors, both in formal and informal settings. I’ve found them all to be very gracious and approachable. And they always say encouraging things like: “Remember, we all began as unpublished authors, too.” In my heart of hearts I knew this was true, but it all sounded a bit too far-fetched. The kind of thing an art teacher might say if you turned in a blank canvas because you couldn’t think of a single thing to paint.
“Oh, I love what you’ve done here. So minimalist. So abstract. So bold.”
Please.
Like Jim Hayman, Kate Flora, and Gerry Boyle weren’t born already published!
The evening before the Crime Wave, I attended the Friday night reading dubbed “Two Minutes in the Slammer.” A cool moniker for what was really a chance to stand up in front of a room full of accomplished writers and wannabes (like me), knees knocking, and read something you’d written. The literary equivalent of grabbing the listener by the ear and not letting go. Knock their socks off, I was told. Sure, I said, until I realized we only had two minutes in which to accomplish this. Talk about nerve-racking.
After deciding upon a passage from my one of short stories, titled Bygones, I spent the afternoon practicing my delivery in my kitchen, to a audience of a half dozen empty dining room chairs. Timed by my microwave, trying not to sound like Peter Brady (Remember the episode where his voice kept changing as he hit puberty?), I honed the abridged version of my story until it was precisely two minutes in length. It was okay, I thought. I looked at the dining room chairs. Not a naysayer among them. I took their silence as a sign of agreement.
Hours later I found myself in the lower level of the Portland Public Library. Pacing as I stared at the stage. What the hell? No one had said anything about getting up on a stage. Please, God, I thought. Don’t make me read first. Or even worse, last!
As the seats slowly filled up, I continued to wear out the floor at the back of the room. Until I saw a familiar face, Paul Doiron. You know, author of the acclaimed Mike Bowditch mystery novels, about the coolest outdoorsman since Grizzly Adams. A fan of his books, I approached Paul hoping the pass the time with a little banter about what he was up to, wanting badly to take my mind off that stupid stage. As usual, Paul was very engaging and down to earth. If he noticed my frequent nervous over the shoulder glances at the stage, he never mentioned it. Paul told me about a book he was writing, The Precipice, set in the middle of Maine’s Hundred Mile Wildness along the famed Appalachian Trail. A fan of the AT myself, I mumbled something incoherent about a mystery novel that I’d been working on, titled “Trail Magic”, about a female FBI agent trying to convince others of the existence of a serial killer stalking victims along the entire AT. Always the gentleman, Paul said he thought it sounded “cool.” Somehow, given his stature in the mystery writing community, and me being an unpublished author, it didn’t feel very cool. In all honesty, I felt more like a tool.
Again, I glanced at the stage. Any word from Salada?
Everyone took their seats as the rules were explained. Each of the thirteen readers would be given a moment to either tell the audience a bit about themselves or explain the passage from which they’d be reading. Following the intro the two minutes would begin. The two minute limit would be strictly enforced, they said. They even had a timer! Alarmed, I wondered if the timer on my microwave had ever been calibrated…
The order of the readers was announce. I wasn’t first! Yay. Tucked safely in the middle, I figured if I sucked royally no one would remember. I listened enthusiastically as the others spewed forth great prose. Some was humorous, some action-oriented, and some just plain old good writing. When it was over, each of us congratulated the others on our delivery and our prose while we awaited word from the judges.
A number of people approached me and praised my reading, among them were Jim Hayman and Chris Holm. They seemed genuinely impressed with what I had read. But I remained doubtful. What if Jim and Chris were just really good at improvisational praise? My dining room chairs hadn’t instilled a lot of confidence.
Several minutes later the results were finally tallied. The judges announced two winners, and I was one of them! I was elated. Not only had I survived my Two Minutes in the Slammer, I’d won my freedom!
Winning Two Minutes in the Slammer hadn’t been on my list of New Year resolutions, but the way I was feeling, it shoulda been.
Screw you Salada!
Let’s just say that the remainder of the year exceeded my wildest hopes and expectations. In November my very first short story, “Fool Proof”, was published in the Best New England Crime Stories 2016 anthology, Red Dawn. I obtained an honest-to-god literary agent, Paula Munier of the Talcott Notch Agency. And with Paula’s help I’ve just recently managed to fulfill my lifelong dream of having a novel published. In fact, not just one novel but three! I’m happy to announce that HarperCollins will be publishing my John Byron Mystery Series under their Witness Impulse imprint. The debut novel will be released in early fall.
And finally, as if all of this wasn’t enough, the genie popped out of the lamp one more time in February (Yeah, I know it’s a different year, but this is my blog.), handing me an email from Mr. Mystery himself, world renown publisher, editor and New York bookstore owner Otto Penzler, informing me that “Fool Proof” had been picked as one of the twenty best mystery stories published in North America during the 2015 calendar year! Holy moly! My story will now appear in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American Mystery Stories, 2016.
In retrospect, my diet may not have improved much, my appearances at the gym are somewhat sporadic, I’ve actually gained a few pounds (muscle I imagine), but as far as my writing goals are concerned, I somehow managed to put one over the fence.
Grab that would you, Chris? I’d like to keep it as a momento.
I’m not sure if Clarence was right about there being some correlation between bells and angels getting their wings (trust me, I’m no angel), but I can now say with certainty, if you want something bad enough, and you’re willing to work hard to get it, really hard, dreams really do come true.
March 2, 2018
Weekend Update: March 3-4, 2018
[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Bruce Coffin (Monday), Brenda Buchanan (Tuesday), Dick Cass (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:
Four Maine Crime Writers, Brenda Buchanan, Richard J. Cass, Barbara Ross, and Lea Wait, along with alum Chris Holm, will have a staged reading of their work by actors at the Portland Stage on Monday, March 5. Tickets are $10.00 if purchased before and $15.00 at the door.
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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
March 1, 2018
Arguing with My Mother
Kate Flora: As regular readers of this blog know, my mother, A. Carman Clark, is dead–[image error]gone now for twelve years. But my mother was a writer, an editor, and a keen observer of country living and the natural world, and I often have questions I wish she could answer. When she was in her eighties, she published her first mystery, the tale of Amy Creighton, a sixty-something single book editor and avid gardener, who finds a body in the sawdust shed at the local sawmill when she goes to get sawdust to mulch her strawberries, and has to solve the mystery of the young man’s death. The book was called The Maine Mulch Murder, https://www.amazon.com/Maine-Mulch-Murder-Creighton-mystery-ebook/dp/B00IGZWQX0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519925482&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Maine+Mulch+Murder and it was published when she was eighty-three.
When she died, after suffering a stroke at eighty-five, she left behind the manuscript for her second Amy Creighton mystery, The Corpse in the Compost. Last summer, after hearing from Ann and Paula at Mainely Murder in Kennebunkport that mom’s book is still very popular with their customers, I decided to dig out her manuscript, do whatever editing was needed, and publish it. That’s when I started arguing with my mother.
I was barely off page one when I first stared skyward and said, “Mom, you have to establish some details about your characters. If you’re going to have three children in distress appear during Amy’s morning swim, you have to tell us how old they are, so we can draw a mental picture of them as they tell her what they’ve found.” And so it went. She’d written, I edited and added in essential details, either from the first book or from my knowledge of her, or from knowing about her gardens.
And then came the issue of the tapestry bag. The children have found a mysterious old bag under an abandoned shed. Inside the bag is a tapestry bag, and inside that bag are some jewels. Shortly after that, Amy and the New York editor she works for are at a swank dinner party and she meets a man who is thinking of writing a book about antique tapestry fabric. She invited him to look at the bag the children found. And then? No information about tapestry or the bag. I look heavenward and shake my fist. Mom? Mom? What is the point of this scene if you don’t tell the reader anything?
[image error]Tell me what John Jones looks like, I say. Tell me why you have barely mentioned Dort Adams with respect to his budding romance with Amy, which was central to the last book and Amy’s character. Why are you taking so long to tell us what the Ingraham girls (a pair of seventy-something sisters) know?
All the questions I would ask a writer who consulted me about a manuscript come to mind as I work my way through my mother’s book. Can we talk a bit about pacing? Do you have a plan for whether Amy’s friend Jane is going to become interested or involved with John Jones? Don’t you think you ought to develop Jane more fully if she’s going to be present for so much of the book? Look, Mom, I say to my sadly absent parent, could we sit down and talk about compost, so what has happened is clearer to your reader? You do know you have to explain it to them, don’t you?
Right now, this manuscript looks like an early draft of one of my own. I have scribbled all [image error]over the pages, and on the back of the pages. There are circles and arrows indicating where sentences need to be moved. There are lots of questions in the margins still to be answered. I also have tiny bits of paper on which her best friend, Marilys, has made her comments, red pen marks where her friend Noreen had edited, and many typed pages of my comments from when I read the book perhaps fourteen years ago.
“Mom,” I ask, “how do you want me to handle cell phones?”
“Amy is always feeding people. When do we see her cook? Go to the store? Did you mean to include recipes in the book?
I thought it was going to be a quick edit. Instead, now that I’ve done an initial edit on the book, I have to retype the whole thing because her old files won’t open on my computer. It is slow going. It is also a wonderful way to get to spend time with my mother, even if we are arguing a lot.
