Do You Know About the New England Crime Bake?

Posted on May 19, 2013 by MCWriTers

Love mysteries? Love mystery authors? Consider attending the New England Crime Bake, our own regional mystery conference sponsored by the local chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. Schmooze in the bar, hang out at lunch, and attend panels where you’ll hear some of your favorite authors talk about their craft, their characters, and their lives.

It’s everything you always wanted to know about


Register NOW for the 12th Annual
New England Crime Bake TM

November 8, 9, 10, 2013 at The Hilton Boston/Dedham

Sign-up at www.crimebake.org

This year’s conference for mystery writers and readers tackles everything you were afraid to ask about researching, writing, publishing, and promoting books across the genre.

Our Guest of Honor, Meg Gardiner, is the Edgar-winning author of two thriller series, the stand-alone novel, Ransom River, and The Shadow Tracer, due out June 27th. Meg has been dubbed “The Next Suspense Superstar” by Stephen King.

Meg won an Edgar Award for China Lake, the debut novel in her series on Evan Delaney and her hottest guy on wheels, Jesse Blackburn, plus an Amazon Top Ten Thriller Award and a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for novels pairing forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett with pararescueman Gabe Quintana.

PLUS: Top New England authors engage in stimulating discussions on today’s hot topics, including creating and sustaining a career, high concept novels, mixing a little death into your recipe for a cozy series, detecting the past, and modern heroes and heroines.

Forensic experts strip bare the facts on police procedure and traumatic injury, and you can get specific answers to your questions from “Ask the Experts” guests willing to reveal the underlying details of law enforcement, the legal process, medical procedures, the writing craft, and social media.

Agents and editors show you how to avoid the erroneous zones in pitching and submitting your manuscript and what you need to do to wrap up a publishing deal.

Master class instructors touch on all areas of the writing process, from the anatomy of a bestseller to maintaining suspense through to the climax of your novel. Published authors in your genre can help you massage your manuscript with a private one-on-one critique.

The night heats up on Saturday with our Trouble in Paradise banquet and costume party! Try to expose the identities of your fellow guests. We’ll dispense prizes for the best! Then join us on the dance floor for some bump and grind to wind up the evening.

We expect another SOLD OUT conference!
Register now here !

Sponsored by the New England chapters of Sisters in Crime
and Mystery Writers of America

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Why Celebrating Children’s Book Week Is Important

Posted on May 18, 2013 by MCWriTers

Now, which of the Maine Crime Writers would be most likely to write about Children’s Book Week? So far as I know, only Kaitlyn Dunnet and I have written for children, and Kaitlyn hasn’t done it for a while, so, yes, this is Lea Wait. Because, much as I love mysteries, I have to admit (sh!!!) that I love GOOD books for children even more. Besides — not only do children love mysteries – they grow up to love mysteries. I’ve even seen that with my own books; young people who at age ten or eleven wrote me fan letters  telling me Wintering Well was their very favorite book, are now, seven or eight years later, writing email notes saying they’re reading my Shadows mystery series.  Now — how cool is that? I’m growing my own readers!

Perhaps strangely, I didn’t read many books for children until I was what today would be termed a “YA” – someone over the age of fourteen – and worked after school shelving books in my local library’s children’s department. I’d been reading adult books since I was in fourth or fifth grade and had moved beyond Betty Cavana and Walter Farley. Finally, in high school, I discovered Dr. Doolittle and Peter Pan and The Wind in the Willows and hid behind the card catalog to read the picture books I’d missed as a child. I loved them all.

As a drama major in college I wrote plays for children’s theatre; my master’s thesis compared the role of the mother in teen literature of the fifties and sixties. By then I’d discovered fantasy and science fiction for young people, and was fascinated by trying to separate them. (You tell me — which did Madeleine L’Engle write?) Every year, even on a tight budget, I bought more children’s books for my growing collection. Of course, I had to have the classics. And I had to have every Newbery as they were awarded. Why? I told people they were for the children I’d have some day. 

And then, when I was thirty, my first daughter arrived home, aged 4 1/2, from Thailand. She didn’t speak English, of course, but every night I read to her. I read to her sisters, too, when they came home. I’ll admit that by the time my fourth daughter joined us I wasn’t reading as much — she was almost ten, her sisters were teenagers, and the household was a bit chaotic. But it was a house full of books.

But no matter what people say, reading out loud doesn’t work miracles. None of my girls became great readers. Oh, yes, they read. One loved Stephen King. One discovered romances in high school and still loses herself in them. One became fascinated by King Arthur’s story. Only one didn’t read at all, because she had a serious learning disability. But none of them poured through shelves the way I had.

When my grandchildren were born, I gifted each of them with a bookcase, and promised to keep it full of books. One of the eight is a reader. Another is just starting, and there is reader potential there. I’m watching closely. 

I choose their books carefully, hoping to ensnare them with words or pictures. I keep hoping they’ll find in books at least a bit of what I’ve found: places to escape to. People to learn from. Adventures to experience without risk. A way to learn about the world, and the people in it. A way to learn about yourself. 

So - this is Children’s Book Week.  A time to be reminded that children, and their books, are important. The books children choose to read, and that are chosen for them, are important. They help frame part of a child’s world. And – I firmly believe – the best children’s books today are among the best books being written today. 

So – celebrate! Read a children’s book! Or a YA. And then share that book with a young person. Discuss it. Find out what THEY think about it. Organize a book group at your local school or library. Maybe a mystery group. Or a group for just girls. Or fathers and sons. Contact the author of the book your group reads and ask him or her to Skype with your group – many will! Be creative. But do something to encourage reading. The way we access the world is changing – but words are still critical ways to understand and interpret it.

Every one of us can do something to get those words – and books – to the youngest generation. In this world of screens and images, it may be one of the most important tasks we have.

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Maine Crime Writer Poisoned; Survives to Tell Tale

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Vicki Doudera

My life is fairly straightforward.

I work. I write. I have fun with friends and family. I bike. I hike. I meet nice people while walking the dog.

Vicki Doudera here, happy to report that, for the most part, my days pass pretty smoothly. The fictional lives I create in my books are full of quirks and wrinkles, but my day-to-day journey, thank goodness, is more vanilla than rocky road.

Until yesterday, when I ingested a toxin for lunch.

The funny thing – make that, one of the funny things – is that I watched a NOVA episode last week called Venom: Nature’s Killer, and I got so excited about box jellyfish and many-banded kraits (timid snakes packing neurotoxins so deadly they’re among the most poisonous land species in the world) that I scribbled out two pages of notes. I went to bed with crime scenarios flitting through my head, and the thought that, other than the rare and very shy brown recluse

(a non-native spider occasionally found in Maine) we have little to fear, toxin-wise, in the Pine Tree State.

The second funny thing is that I have been on an “eat lots of veggies” kick, because a friend told me about a new diet she’s following, and I assume that vegetables virtually line the path to good health.

Irony number three is that when I purchased the toxic item (which by now you should know is something green) I thought, “Hey, this would make a good blog post,” never dreaming what kind of a post I’d end up struggling to write, in between bolting to the bathroom.

Here’s your final clue. Ready? The culprit is a seasonal Maine delicacy, something I’ve enjoyed in restaurants but have never – until yesterday – cooked myself. Within thirty minutes of preparing and eating a portion of this mysterious “treat,”  I fell prey to violent intestinal distress that lasted nine or so very long hours.

My nemeses? Fiddleheads.

That’s the nickname for the tightly curled fronds of the ostrich fern, found by the banks of rivers or

streams and foraged by many an enterprising Mainer. Take a look. They look as innocent as the day they pushed up from the spring ground, right?

I had never heard of them until I moved to Maine twenty-seven years ago, although I suspect they are now on the menus of upscale restaurants throughout New England and beyond.

Locally sourced. Rare. Deadly.

Okay, maybe that’s going too far (unless you know something I don’t by the time this is published) but in my opinion fiddleheads are definitely poisonous – at least to those who eat them sautéed in garlic.

The University of Maine’s Bulletin 4198, Facts on Fiddleheads, explains how to identify the tender shoots and mentions “a number of outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with the consumption of raw or lightly cooked fiddleheads.”

The described symptoms of this foodborne illness were diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps and headaches. These symptoms generally occur within 30 minutes to 12 hours after eating raw or undercooked fiddleheads. This foodborne illness typically lasts less than 24 hours, but it was found that some cases could last up to three days.

Three days?

It could be worse, way worse – I know that from my night with NOVA. And yet, as I write this, still suffering the effects from what some call “fiddlehead fever,” I know it will be a long while before I eat another ostrich fern.

And if I do, I can assure you – it will have been boiled nearly to death.

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Rediscovering Maine Mystery Writer Charlotte MacLeod

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Kaitlyn Dunnett

In the past year a wonderful thing has happened. All four of Charlotte MacLeod’s mystery series have been issued as ebooks. Why do I think that’s such a big deal? Because until the ebooks came out, readers were left squinting at the tiny print in the paperback editions of Charlotte’s novels, courting eyestrain and headaches in order to enjoy the adventures of Max and Sarah, Professor Peter Shandy, Rhys of the Mounties, and the Lobelia Falls Grub and Stakers Gardening and Roving Club. The latter two series have Candian settings and were originally published under the pseudonym Alisa Craig. The electronic editions are under her real name.

Charlotte MacLeod’s mysteries are witty and full of humor, much as the lady herself was. She had a command of the English language that was nothing short of stunning. She wore hats with panache, was fond of cats and, according to the remarks she addressed to the crowd at Malice Domestic III, at which she was the guest of honor, avoided distractions by remaining in her nightwear until she’d finished her writing for the day. This meant she often greeted the postman while wearing a bathrobe. Like many of her characters, she was probably regarded as slightly eccentric. Perhaps that’s why she chose to live in Maine for the last twenty of her eighty-two years. Both writers and eccentrics feel right at home here.

Now that I don’t have to squint, I’m determined to reread all thirty-two series books. I took a great gulp of them the first month or so, devouring Rest You Merry and The Luck Runs Out and Wrack and Rune, the first three novels dealing with mayhem and wackiness at Balaclava Agricultural College, located in a fictional Massachusetts county of the same name. I named the cat in my Liss MacCrimmon series after a family of ne’er-do-wells who appear in that series, the Lumpkins of Lumpkin Corners. Next up is Something the Cat Dragged In. Don’t you love the titles? I’ve also reread The Family Vault, The Withdrawing Room, The Palace Guard, The Bilbao Looking Glass, The Convivial Codfish, and The Plain Old Man from the Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn series. The Kellings are a large, upper class Boston family with lots of secrets, assorted peculiarities and, in Sarah’s case, a desperate need to find a way to make a living.

The Alisa Craig titles are just as entertaining. Charlotte was born in New Brunswick, so she had a proper claim to write about both sides of the border. Madoc Rhys of the RCMP and his wife Janet are the sleuths in a series that begins with A Pint of Murder and subsequent books introduce Madoc’s eccentric family, all musicians except for him. The five mysteries with titles beginning The Grub-and-Stakers (The Grub-and-Stakers Move a Mountain, The Grub-and-Stakers Quilt a Bee, etc) follow the misadventures of a young woman named Dittany Henbit who types manuscripts for a living. Her most important client is novelist Arethusa Monk, but it is Arethusa’s nephew Osbert who helps Dittany solve mysteries. Osbert secretly writes Westerns, using the pseudonym Lex Laramie because, as he rightly points out, who would buy a Western written by someone named Osbert Monk?

program cover for Malice Domestic III

If you’ve never read a Charlotte MacLeod novel, give one a try. And if you’re looking for a recommendation, start with Rest You Merry. The first chapter will have you in hysterics. Murder is never funny, but the bumbling efforts of both the well- and the evil-intentioned to achieve their ends surely are.

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Questions I Get About Getting Published

Posted on May 15, 2013 by MCWriTers

Jayne Hitchcock here – I’ve been doing a lot of publicity and book signings for my latest book, True Crime Online: Shocking Stories of Scamming, Stalking, Murder and Mayhem (truecrime-online.com). The questions afterward are the usual: What is my writing schedule? Do I have an agent? How did I get published? The latter one is the most frequent as I have found on recent author panels that the majority of authors are self-published or started their own publishing houses to publish their works.

So, this is how it went for me: When I lived in Okinawa, Japan for three years, I published six books while there. I was writing articles for an off base newspaper called Japan Update and a local bank representative liked my writing style. He contacted me and asked if I could write the English version of Okinawa Tour Guide. Unlike publishing here in the USA, I didn’t work with an agent or publisher, but with the bank. I still got to work with an editor and view a galley before final printing and even had a chance to see the cover art before it went to press. The same bank then published Folktales of Okinawa. I got such a positive response that a retired Marine who had started his own publishing business, Barclay Press, asked if I had anything else I want published. He footed the bill for The Ghosts of Okinawa and we split the profit from the sales. Then came Torment, a novel I co-wrote with a retired Marine and finally Gil The Gecko, a children’s book I’d envisioned.

When I moved back to the states, I knew I had to find a publisher or agent for any books I wanted to write. Then my life did a 180 – to refresh your memory, read my post about how it changed at http://mainecrimewriters.com/uncategorized/hello-from-a-true-crime-writer.

When I got my idea for a book about online crimes, I put together a proposal with a few sample chapters and sent them off to agents. This was back in 2000, when the Internet was still a “baby.” The majority of agents and publishers rejected my proposal because they felt the Internet wouldn’t stay around (um, hello?) or that as soon as a book was published it would be out of date.

I was freelancing for a computer magazine and complained to my editor about the lack of interest in my book, which she thought was a great idea. She asked me if I’d sent the proposal to the parent company of the magazine. No, I hadn’t. There it was, right under my nose all this time.

I sent the proposal out, the parent company, Information Today, Inc. accepted it and in 2002 Net Crimes & Misdemeanors came out. It took yes, two years to get the book from writing to print. It’s a lot of work. After you write it, it goes to editors who vet it. You get asked questions, to add or delete parts and to verify certain things. Then it goes to the galley stage, where a copy of the soon to be final version is gone over by me and my editor for any last minute changes or to catch any mistakes not caught previously.

I had little say on the cover or the subtitle and soon it was out. My publisher promoted it a lot for me, getting me media interviews and the like. I also promoted it at speaking engagements and sent out my own press releases.

In 2006, the 2nd edition of Net Crimes came out and this time my publisher not only hired a publicist, they sent me to Book Expo America in Washington, DC to sign books at their booth and promote it.

My latest book, True Crime Online, has been promoted heavily with another publicist, me sending out my own press releases, setting up book signings and going back to Book Expo American in NYC the end of this month.

Here’s the reality of book publishing: Unless you’re Stephen King or John Grisham, or you get really, really lucky, you won’t make money from it. After my meager advance is paid off (if it is), I make a whopping $1 per book. That’s it.

But you know what, it’s worth it to me. I am a writer at heart and love to write. I make my money by doing speaking engagements and freelancing for a security company, as well as editing books and writing freelance articles and my newest bit is making jewelry with seaglass (see jahitchcock.com/seacoastcreations).

If you’re thinking about writing to become rich and famous, think again. Do it because it’s what you enjoy, not what you think it should be.

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