Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 3

Weekend Update: September 15-16, 2018

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will posts by Maureen Milliken (Monday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Tuesday), Joe Souza (Wednesday), Vaughn Hardacker (Thursday), and Brenda Buchanan (Friday).

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

[image error]from Kaitlyn Dunnett: You still have time to enter the contest for the giveaway of advance reading copies of the twelfth Liss MacCrimmon mystery, Overkilt (in stores October 30). If you haven’t already entered, simply send an email to kaitlyndunnett@gmail.com with the subject line Giveaway. The drawing will be held September 20th. In this one, Moosetookalook’s luxury hotel, The Spruces, owned by Liss’s father-in-law, is targeted by protestors because they claim his special Thanksgiving couples promotion violates family values. The boycott quickly spreads to include Moosetookalook Scottish Emporium and other businesses in town, causing hard feelings all around. Liss tries to make a joke of it, calling the reacting “overkilt”. . . until someone takes things a bit too far and her nearest and dearest suddenly become suspects in a murder investigation.

Bruce Robert Coffin and Kate Flora will be at the South Portland Public Library on Thursday, September 20th at 6:30pm. Also appearing will be retired Portland Police Department Assistant Chief Joseph Loughlin, co-author of two novels with Kate. It promises to be an interesting night of crime and mystery author talk.

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

My mother would kill me

My mother would kill me.  Of course she wouldn’t literally, she whose love for my sister and me was the driving force of her life, but the old expression got a workout throughout my youth:  my mother would kill me if I drove too fast, hid a porno magazine under my bed, or joined friends with illegal beer under the stadium at Friday night football games.  Not, of course, that I performed any of those wicked acts.  The expression was for me and I suspect others who used it a means of self-enforcing standards of conduct by projecting them to someone else.[image error]

The expression came to me today as I hung bedding on the line.  Hanging laundry outside to dry in crisp sunshine is one of the three favorite things I (otherwise a total winter person) like about summer and miss when the seasons change.  The others are biking and boating, and they disappear from my routine even earlier than hanging laundry.  I’ve been known to continue the practice until I have to shake the ice out of the sheets.

But back to maternal murder.  My mother would kill me if she saw the utter chaos of my laundry hanging.  She prided herself on lining up the laundry by color and size.  This has not proved to be a heritable trait.  I pin up sheets and pillow cases in no particular order, intent more on fitting too many items on the small line strung between trees near our brook than in creating a perfectly ordered composition. .  If she were alive, my mother would take a look at my messy line, shake her head, and silently re-hang them, imposing maternal order on her son’s sloppy approach, perhaps hoping that someday he’ll get it right the first time.

Why does this simple act, even when carried out with so little regard to my mother’s standards, give me such pleasure?  Of course it’s environmentally wise, saving electricity the dryer uses.  Beyond that it achieves a sensual delight:  the smell of sunshine when I remake the bed.  I think the whole business is actually also related to writing.  Putting words on paper is a lot like putting sheets on the line—sometimes you just throw them together to see what fits.  Then you edit, rearranging the words to create an effect.  I try to edit my writing ruthlessly, but occasionally it’s fun to hold back on cutting and rearranging to take a look at what your first effort brought.  Sometimes you like that—and sometimes not.  Hanging sheets on the line with gay abandon might be a form of therapy for a writer since, except for my late mother, no one really cares what my clothesline looks like.  Messiness and disorder in first drafts can serve a good purpose if it leads to the next step of careful editing.

And then maybe there’s a bit of rebellion implicit here.  Maybe it’s not just drying the items but deliberately hanging them in a way my mother would disapprove.  Freud would have an answer, but I’m not going to wait for it.  It’s only mid September, and I’ve got a few more months to hang the laundry, smell the sunshine—and perhaps assert my independence from my beloved mother.

Can This Book Be Saved?

Kate Flora: As some of you aware, if you follow the blog, recently I’ve been conducting [image error]excavations in my files, looking at old manuscripts and remembering some of the adventures I had writing them. I have plenty of unpublished work. I have the books that I wrote while learning to write, including a mystery set on Sanibel Island, in Florida, where the protagonist is a teacher who flees New England winters and the pain her ex’s constantly canceled visitations is causing their son, and moves to Florida, where she becomes a dog groomer. I’m sure that all that I learned about the City of Sanibel zoning and wetlands protection is so dated my plot will no longer make sense (if it ever did). For now, that one is definitely staying in the drawer.

They say that your early books are often autobiographical, and while that’s not true of my Sanibel dog groomer, that is likely the case with my two law student books, one of which deals with trusts and estates and a family’s attempt to hide a recent will, and the other with banks and lending and discriminatory red lining (the subject of an entire course I took which ended in a dramatic trial). These two are also likely to stay in the drawer, though some day I may reread them out of curiosity or nostalgia for my law school days.

Sitting beside my desk now are three books featuring high school biology teacher Ross McIntyre. I haven’t had the nerve yet to see what I did with drug smuggling (Silent Buddy), antique glass (The Maine Course), and older men who prey on teenage girls (Married Bliss).

[image error]I remember very little about these three books. But as a writer recalling interesting experiences in the writer’s journey, I recall that when I started the third book in this series, I had a very clear plot in mind. I’d even made an outline. But at the end of Chapter One, a young girl, a student who was supposed to be in the book, walked into McIntyre’s classroom and said, “You’ve got to help me, Mr. M. I’m in terrible trouble.” I was the author, and supposedly in charge, but I had no idea what kind of trouble she was in. In an experience I’ve never had before or since, the characters then took over, and they drove my typing fingers propulsively for nineteen chapters, at which point, they stopped speaking to me. It was like being at a party where all the guests suddenly got up and left. When I complained that they had to stay and tell me what happened next, they said, “You’re the author. You figure it out.”

One day soon, I plan to pick up Silent Buddy and see how it reads twenty-five years [image error]later. Not only has technology changed, but so has the field of biology, the type of drugs that might be being smuggled, and how they might be smuggled. Still, I know I’ll like the scene where they used those woodchuck bombs (still available at your local hardware store) to defeat the bad guys.

This week I finally found the draft of the first book in my Vinnie Malcolm architect series, Bones are Bad for Business. I read through it and made a lot of notes on top of a set of notes I made the last time I read it. There’s some good stuff there, but Vinnie needs more backbone and makeover, and there needs to be more tension and detective work. I’m not sure I want to spend the time on this book, but I need a new project, and it might be fun to see if I can make it into something you will want to read.

[image error]Likely, it will get elbowed aside again, as it has before, when I figure out what is happening in Joe Burgess’s life. At the end of A Child Shall Lead Them, Burgess 6, he was so tired he was thinking about retirement. But one weekend this summer, when I happened to have four doctors as weekend guests, they all consulted on his condition and there may be a solution.

So while I putter around, wondering about Vinnie Malcolm, I’m rereading my romantic suspense fairy tale, Runaway, and wondering if readers will understand that it’s a fairy tale?

If you happen to have a good editor in your pocket, will you share?

And don’t forget: leaving a comment on one of our posts makes you eligible to win one of our September giveaways: A signed first edition of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls or the audio book of Louise Penny’s The Long Way Home.

Creating Drama

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People often ask how I go about plotting my novels. How does one write a great thriller? Is there some trick to it? Well, as any mystery/thriller writer will tell you there is no trick. Creating a book that is exciting and page-turning can be a long and arduous process. So many things need to be considered. The pacing, the plotting, the introduction of new conflicts or even twists in conflicts already introduced.

The first thing I do before sitting down to write a new novel is dwell on an idea. I’ll be honest, I get ideas all the time, but the good ones are the ones that stay with me. If an idea captivates me then hopefully it will have the same affect on the reader. Next I must have some idea where I want this story to go. What am I trying to say? How will the story end? Admittedly, I don’t always have the ending rock solid in my brain when I begin the novel. I find endings to be one of those fluid things that often get resolved as the book nears completion. Making tough decisions about how much information to pass on to the reader and how much to hold back or cut altogether are often the hardest part of structuring a suspenseful tale. Where should I cut my scenes? Where do I begin or even end my chapters? A good rule of thumb in thriller writing is: come in late, get out early. Nobody wants to be dragged through a long introduction before getting into the action. So give the reader what they want. Pick ‘em up and drop them right into the fray.

It is my humble opinion that you can never have enough conflict. Conflict by its very nature needs to be resolved. Likewise, the reader will want conflict resolved. The more conflict you introduce into your novel, the longer the reader will have to keep turning pages to find out what happens. Every dilemma you throw at your protagonist will be just one more thing your readers will want to follow through to see how they get out of it.

When I begin writing a novel, I know that there are things that need to happen. There must be a murder, or murders, obviously, the genre demands it. The crime may have already happened, or perhaps is about to happen and the reader will bear witness. Next I need to introduce the characters who will make up the cast of the book. Be sure to include the killer or killers as soon as possible. Following that I begin to think about what things I want to add to the story to give it its flavor. Will there be distractions keeping my protagonist occupied with things other than solving the murder and catching the killer? Will there be antagonists looking to thwart the forward progress of our hero? Or several?

All of this is conflict and the sooner you start weaving it into your story the better. It’s like watching a juggler. If we put a juggler up on stage with only two tennis balls and watch them juggle it would be pretty lame right? Adding a ball only adds slightly to the entertainment factor. Adding another could add a bit more. Yawn. But what if we up the drama by introducing a couple of eggs or something else that’s breakable, like a plate, or a piece of grandma’s antique Waterford crystal. Still haven’t got you on the edge of your seat? Let’s say we add a butcher knife, or a straight razor, or maybe a buzzing chainsaw. How about we bring the juggler to the front of the stage so that the objects she’s juggling are directly above the people in the front row? Now let’s blindfold her and strap on roller skates. That should get the heart rate cranking, especially those tickers in the front row. Can you see how all of this would add to the tension felt by your readers?

When writing my novels I keep this little analogy in mind. If the story is flowing along just a little too easily or predictably I can always add in another chainsaw for John Byron to juggle.

Until next time. Write on!

The Day the Music Died

John Clark remembering what happened seventeen years ago. Each of us has moments we never forget. Sadly, many of them stem from tragic events that were so unexpected they froze us in place while our minds tried to process the unimaginable. Three stand out in my personal history. Fortunately, one was a positive event. I’ll share them in chronological order.

I was in high school when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. For reasons I cannot explain to this day, I was sitting in the small school library at Union High when I decided to turn on the cranky black and white TV sitting on a cart near the back of the room. I spent most study halls in the library, but had never thought about turning on the TV. What appeared on the screen grabbed everyone’s attention and word spread through the school like wildfire. Our president was wounded and panic was afoot. Fifty-five years ago, getting the facts separated from rumor was a much slower process than it is today. For the next several days, the whole country watched and waited to learn that JFK was dead, his assassin had been captured and then killed in turn by a man whose own motives and history were very murky.

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Even today, there are aspects of the killing and those involved, that provide fodder for conspiracy theorists. In all honesty, we may never know everything about who, what and why of this tragedy. It sent a chill through America, leaving many with shattered illusions about how safe we were.

July 20, 1969. I was in the summer of ultimate despair. Nothing seemed to be going right, I felt alone and alienated from everyone and everything. I remember listening to my car radio as I returned to Sennebec Hill Farm from a night class I was taking at University of Maine-Augusta. In addition to driving from the farm to Bath five days a week to paint the old Carleton Bridge, I would grab supper four nights a week, gobble it down and drive to class in Augusta. It was a burnout schedule, done in an effort to save money during the first semester of my senior year at Arizona State. By taking six credit hours, I could qualify for a much lower part time rate in the fall.

There was a full moon that evening and, as it rose in the sky, the news broke that our astronauts were walking on the moon’s surface… On the bright orb hanging above me. That was powerful enough to allow me to get out of my own head for a few hours, something desperately needed right then.

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September 11, 2001. To say that I was blissfully unaware of what was happening while driving to the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library that day would be an understatement. I tended to listen to a couple of my new age music tapes instead of the radio on my way to work, so I was speechless when I got to the library and found my staff and several patrons, looking as pale as ghosts, while they watched the planes slam into the towers over and over in between frenzied updates from national network anchors. Many of us knew people in New York City, so it was personal from the git-go. That worry increased as the day progressed, spurred by concern that one of our patrons who lived on Southport Island and was a United Airlines pilot, had been at the controls of one of the jets. We found out early the next day that he wasn’t, but just the possibility he might be dead had everyone feeling numb. It’s pretty safe to say little or no work got done that day and there was an increasing sense of doom and foreboding as more was revealed about the terrorists passage through Portland, the complete cessation of flights across the country and the unspoken worry that this was just the beginning of dark times.

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Seventeen years later, some of that foreboding still lingers, fed intermittently by terrorist attacks and mass shootings. It’s safe to say, that for me at least, some of the music of life died that day.

Cruisin’

by Barb, back from Bouchercon and working away in her study

Back when our condo in Portland, Maine was built, it had views of the harbor. That’s why, improbably, our living-dining-kitchen space is on the third floor.

Now we have a view of the condo building behind us.

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Even the people who bought into our complex originally in 2007 knew they would eventually lose their views. “If you want water views, buy waterfront,” one of them said to me philosophically. Due to the Great Recession, they probably got to have views a lot longer than they otherwise would have. We were the first people to buy here after the views were gone, and I’m a little divided about it. On the one hand, I would have loved the views, but on the other, I can’t miss something I never had. Plus the construction behind us was long, messy, and loud.

But, despite all this, from my fourth floor study, I have fantastic views of the cruise ships that visit our harbor.

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I’m fascinated by these giant ships that look like skyscrapers floating on their sides. I often look up where they’re coming from and going to. This time of year they’re usually going up the coast to Bar Harbor, Halifax, St. John, or sometimes even Quebec. Later when the leaf-peeping starts, the direction will reverse. When they are on their way to New York City/New Jersey, and send them on with best wishes to my friend Dru Ann Love, who can see them from her windows there.

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In Key West, where we live January through March, we run our lives by the cruise ships. Going downtown? Check the cruise ship schedule in the local paper. Three ships in town? Forget about it. Having drinks and watching the sunset? Check out what time that giant ship will be leaving. Don’t want it to block our view.

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A two-fer day

But much bigger Portland seems to absorb the tourists better and we don’t spend a lot of time at the height of summer in the Old Port, in any case. Through the windows at my nail place, I do like watching the touring trolleys go by. And observing the group tours in Eastern Cemetery out my windows on the side opposite the water.

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The ships are usually gone by dark, though as the fall gets later, and the days shorter, that will decreasing be the case. I’ve never been on a cruise, though I have vivid memories of seeing my grandparents off on the QE2, when I was a small child.

For now, my trips are completely imaginary, but I enjoy them thoroughly, nonetheless.

Weekend Update: September 8-9, 2018

[image error]Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will posts by Barb Ross (Monday), John Clark (Tuesday), Bruce Coffin (Wednesday), Kate Flora (Thursday), and William Andrews (Friday).

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

[image error]from Kaitlyn Dunnett:  I have nine advance reading copies of the next Liss MacCrimmon mystery, Overkilt (publication date October 30), to give away. To enter the drawing for one of these uncorrected ARCs, send an email with the subject line “giveaway” to kaitlyndunnett@gmail.com. Bala the cat will pick the winners on September 20th. This is the twelfth book in the series and, as you can see by the cover, the story has something to do with Thanksgiving. Both the cats, Lumpkin and Glenora, and the Scotties, Dandy and Dondi, have roles to play in this one, along with a few human characters.

If you’re at Bouchercon, the large mystery conference for fans and writers in St. Petersburg, FL this week, a whole bunch of Maine Crime Writers are here, including Brenda Buchanan, Dick Cass, Bruce Coffin and Barb Ross. If you see one of us, we’d love to say hello.

This coming Tuesday at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick:

Mystery Author Event: Kate Flora and Bruce Coffin

Tue Sep 11th 7:00pm – 8:30pm

adults

Morrell Meeting Room 

Join us for a presentation by two Maine mystery writers: Kate Flora and Bruce Coffin.

Kate Clark Flora is the author of the Thea Kozak mysteries, the gritty Joe Burgess police procedurals, and two true crime books, Death Dealer and Finding Amy (co-written with Joseph Loughlin, a Portland Deputy Police Chief). She and Loughlin teamed up again for Shots Fired: The Misunderstandings, Misconceptions, and Myths about Police Shootings. She was co-author with Roger Guay of A Good Man with a Dog: A Game Warden’s 25 Years in the Maine Woods.

Bruce’s bestselling debut novel Among the Shadows and his follow-up, Beneath the Depths, the first two novels in the John Byron Mystery Series from HarperCollins Publishers, have been well-received by fans and critics alike. The third novel in the series, Beyond the Truth, scheduled for release on October 30th, is now available for advance purchase.

Co-sponsored by Sisters in Crime and Maine Crime Writers. Books will be available for sale and signing.

[image error]Wednesday, September 12:  Lea Wait will be speaking at the Wiscasset Library (High Street in Wiscasset, Maine, at 5 p.n. She’ll be focusing on her newest books, CONTRARY WINDS, set in 1777 and partially set in Wiscasset, and FOR FREEDOM ALONE, set in Scotland, but will also speak about her mysteries. Copies of all Lea’s books will be available for purchase and signing.

September giveaways: A signed first edition of Richard Russo’s Empire Falls and the audio book of Louise Penny’s The Long Way Home.

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

The Place I Found Peace … The Coast of Maine

Lea Wait here, thinking about my summers in Maine, past and present. Before I was ten, I spent half my summers in Maine, most of them at my great uncle’s home in West Bath. (The other summers I spent in Massachusetts, either at my grandmother’s home in Roslindale, or, one summer, at Onset, on Cape Cod.)

My memories of those first Maine summer are vivid. The New Meadows River, Thomas Point Beach, swimming in my uncle’s pool or in a family friend’s cove, where she taught me to row. Picking blueberries and raspberries. Exploring tide pools, climbing rocks. Learning the names of birds and mosses and seaweeds. Walks in deep woods. One summer on Southport Island, where my sister Nancy and I crabbed and roamed the (then unposted) woods and rocks. Standing in the words and being doused with spray from a heavy storm.

When I wa[image error][image error]s ten we spent our first summer in the home I live in now. All winter I planned for that summer. So did my mother, whose plans included removing the 13 layers of wallpaper on some rooms, and my  grandmother, who planned a garden with raspberries that soon involved everyone. (So did those layers of wallpaper!)

[image error]As a teenager I spent my evenings at first ushering, and then in the box office, of the Boothbay Playhouse, a repertory company not far from our home. I rowed on the river. I mowed the grass. I stretched out on our lawn overlooking the Sheepscot River and read. I helped make raspberry jam and bread and butter pickles.

Maine was where I wanted to be year round, but I couldn’t convince my grandparents to stay all winter so I could attend a local school. I had my own private rituals for the end of August, when we headed back to New Jersey. At a low tide I’d walk to the eddy near our home, sit on the trunk of a tree that had sunk into the mud, inhale the smell of the mud flats, and bottle it, at least in my mind. Then on a warm sunny day I’d walk barefoot in our large garden, by then empty of some vegetables, and I’d promise myself I’d never forget the feel of warm soil under my feet.

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25 years ago

And I never did. I only missed one summer in Maine. It was my first summer working in New York City, after college, and I didn’t qualify for any vacation days until after I’d worked a year. That summer my mother took a small Victorian shadow box frame, put a sprig of sea lavender in it, and tucked a note in the back:  “Remember the salt wind, tide pools, crying gulls, sea lavender, and know there’s still a quiet place.” That frame and its message stayed on my desk through 30 years of corporate jobs, and is still on my desk today. And I’ve never forgotten.

As years passed I spent a Christmas in Maine, brought my daughters to Maine, hunted for jobs in Maine (unsuccessfully,) and eventually was able to move to Maine full-time, where I cared for my mother for four

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1st daughter sees ocean for first time

years and then married the man I loved. He learned to love Maine, too.

This summer one of my daughters was married here (my second daughter to be married in Maine), and my sisters and daughters have all visited. One of my granddaughters had her first summer job here. My twenty-fourth book written here was published. (A couple of years ago I even wrote a book about what it was like to live in Maine with the man I loved, who was an artist, and what it was really like to be an author.) [image error]

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and what Researching a book ….

October 1 I will have lived [image error][image error]here fulltime for twenty years; without doubt, some of the best years of my life.

In thinking back, I have very few regrets in life. But even in hard times (we all have had them) thoughts of Maine sustained me.

Maybe it’s that smell of mud flats. Or the taste of lobster. Or sea breezes. Or just knowing that people lived here before we did, and survived, and that this world would also be there for those who came after us. And that, as my mother had written, no matter what “there’s still a quiet place.”

Maye we all find the place that brings us that peace and calm Maine has brought me.

A Trivial Pursuit

Made a trip to the other Portland this month, where triple digit temperatures poached my brain and also got me tangled up in a riot between the Patriot Boys and the Love Bugs in Tom McCall Waterfront Park. [image error]I actually toasted the whole thing from the fifth floor of the Marriott, with a drink that was not fruit juice in my hand.

Then the doggy spell we’ve had here pretty much shut down my cerebral cortex for another week or so. Just as I got out from under those hot-weather doldrums this morning, I was just in time to pick up the newspaper and read that PETA wants to erect a roadside memorial [image error]for the 4500 or so lobsters tragically lost when a truck overturned on Route 1 near Cooks Corner in Brunswick and skidded down an embankment, dumping the unfortunate crustaceans out onto the ground. No survivors, apparently, due to a combination of temperature and a fresh water bath from the fire hoses getting them off the pavement.

I don’t usually get too excited about tweets, but this one from our own Sarah Graves sums up the situation for me: “Don’t know how many of those lobsters were on their way to their forever homes.”

While I have to say a five-foot granite obelisk might contribute to the beauty of that long boring stretch of road, I have to wonder if we don’t have a few more pressing matters to worry about. It seems to me this minor hoo-haw is a perfect example of how we’re losing the ability to identify the important and replacing it with the hundreds of little hits of dopamine or outrage that we get from [image error]Facebook, Twitter, Candy Crush, or @realDonaldTrump.

Flint, Michigan still has little potable water, children are still separated from their parents on our southern border because of their color, American citizens are being stripped of their citizenship also because of color, our governor thinks all rights and pleasures should be reserved to white people, preferably men, and we can’t mourn a genuine American hero without turning him into a political grenade.

I know, I know. I’m in the entertainment business. I’m not supposed to think? feel? care? about politics (and someone will surely take me to task for getting above my station). But as much as I’d like to make this lobster thing entertaining, I can’t for the life of me sustain a laugh over it. At least the Patriot Boys and the Love Bugs were rioting about something important. This ridiculous and narrow-minded scheme to memorialize “suffering” crustaceans, for goodness sake, is a trivial stand-in for how we’re spending our days. How much longer, do you suppose, until we regain a sense of proportion?

Loons and Lakes; Laughter and Longing

 

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Young loons gather in the fall after their parents have already left Maine lakes. They will spend several years on the ocean until they mature and seek out a lake and nesting partner.

Sandra Neily here: It’s that time of impending fall when young loons, not yet mated for life, gather in adolescent gangs around Maine’s lakes and ponds.  During the day they practice take-offs with flailing wings and loud inexpert splashing.  Some day, they will surprise themselves and actually lift off the rapidly chilling water, embracing their ancient migratory urges. At night their calls to absent parents and the lake’s night time sky are so loud they wake us even when dawn is a hint of gray.

Many people feel that the cries of loons are the heart of Maine’s lake regions, its “heart’s deep core” so to speak.  We take the loon serenades, the clean, cold smell of a trout in our hands and the feeling of that first shocking swim of the season … our lake experiences … with us, like some spiritual hydration backpack.  We drink from these memories when we are far away or when the lakes are locked into a vast, silent, snow sculpture.

W. B. Yeats understood the enduring power of lakes:

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore,

While I stand on the roadway or on the pavements grey.

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Young loons rest on their parents’ backs or are hidden deep in grass-lined coves … until they are able to dive and fish.

 I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Yeats wasn’t thinking of the more pedestrian side of lakes when he wrote in that same poem (“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”) that he would “build a small cabin there…and live alone in the bee loud glade.” But that’s what thousands and thousands of us hope to do when we seek out lakes.

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You are too close to a loon when it rises up, breast arched and wings beating behind it. Please back off.

So I will take a moment to shout out lakes’ contributions beyond loons and “bee loud glades.” I do this so the next time your legislator or congressperson says something silly about conservation, loons, or clean water regulations you will have this fact at your fingertips. Maine Lakes deliver over $2.5 billion of economic value each year. Lake use supports over 8,000 jobs each year. That’s more yearly jobs than Bath Iron Works has ever delivered—and we all know how politicians turn out to support those jobs.

Back to loons. They are on my mind this week, writing a scene for Deadly Turn, my second Mystery in Maine, where I sent the narrator and her dog out to meet them.

‘From the screened sleeping porch, I watched Pock swim the cove biting bits of water he thought was floating debris. The lake was his pool and playground and often he had company. Wings tucked tight to their bodies, our resident loons torpedoed themselves back and forth under his belly, knowing he’d never catch them. From the far side of the cove, one bird raised a haunted cry. Loons are supposed to be the soul of lakes, but there’s edgy insanity to their loud laugher—high notes that sound strangled as they drop into silence. In coves all over the lake, other loons answered, their territorial cries overlapping echoes until they were wild orchestral music silenced by an unseen conductor who allowed one last lingering note—a performance that sang itself into my blood like a transfusion.” (Excerpt from Deadly Trespass)

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The presence of loons speaks to a healthy ecosystem where small fish and other tasty creatures are abundant.

I think Henry David Thoreau should have the last word on loons and lakes. He thinks even a solitary loon on a lake is really like a “wave.” Well, that makes Thoreau-sense: nature invested with more than just nature. If you read his The Maine Woods (1864) there are hundreds of tight descriptive nuggets that wrap loons and lakes and mountains and trout and moose and spruce into a sense of longing even as he is among them.

I often feel the same way.

“The spruce and cedar on its shores, hung with gray lichens, looked at a distance like the ghosts of trees. Ducks were sailing here and there on its surface, and a solitary loon, like a more living wave, — a vital spot on the lake’s surface, — laughed and frolicked, and showed its straight leg, for our amusement.” (Henry David Thoreau)[image error]

More: Watch a ME Game Warden rescue a loon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f26_1HopHM

Loon calls: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Loon/soundsM

Maine Audubon’s Loon Project: https://www.maineaudubon.org/projects/loons/

Info on lakes’ value: https://www.maine.gov/dep/water/lakes/research.html

Sandy’s novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine,” won a Mystery Writers of America award and was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest. This year, she’s been nominated for a Maine Literary Award. Find her novel at all Shermans Books and on Amazon. Find more info on the video trailer and Sandy’s website.  The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” will be published in 2018. She likes to kayak into small coves, sending out soft hoots that sound like loon parents looking for their chicks.