By Kait Carson
The best compliment I ever received came from a friend’s next-door neighbor. She raced from her house one day, book in hand, and called out, “You gotta read this book.”
Long out of print awaiting revision
The book was Zoned for Murder, the first in the Catherine Swope series. She explained she thought it was a first book by ‘this writer’ and then said, “I really liked it, and you’d swear the author set the story in our village.”
I couldn’t help myself. I asked her if she wanted me to autograph her copy. She stepped back and gave me that…hum, do you need me to call the men in the little white coats look. Then she said, “Your name isn’t Kait Carson, do you know her?” I chuckled, pulled a bookmark from the stash in my handbag, autographed the book, and then took her on a sightseeing tour of familiar locations.
Cavalier Hotel from Pixabay
Setting is almost as important as characterization. Characters don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist against a backdrop, and that backdrop becomes a character as well. My stories take place in South Florida. Hurricanes and tropical storms make occasional appearances. Gator gushers flood streets. Heat devils shimmer on roadways. The air always tastes ever so slightly of salt. Homes and stores are tropical colors, and in the Keys, they’re built on stilts. In Miami, you can determine the age of a house by appearance. From elevated wood frame Bahamian Conch to stucco Mediterranean Revival to decorative Art Deco to the Jetson-style Miami Modern (MiMo) early homes were built with the climate in mind.
In spring and into early summer, South Florida streets disappear into a riot of color. Red royal poinciana trees, yellow tabebuia, and lavender orchid trees burst into bloom. The scent of orange blossoms perfumes the air. Jasmine runs riot. Bell shaped angel’s trumpets fill backyards, and all varieties of crepe myrtle turn the landscape into a crazy quilt of color.
Hurricane Wilma’s Revenge – a week before our Maine move
Details bring the reader into the story, set the story and characters apart, and create a shorthand between the reader and the author that serves as an anchor for the characters.
When I’m reading, I expect the writer to develop a sense of place. When I’m writing, I try to do the same for my readers.
What about you? Do you want to know where the stories you read take place? Does the setting make a difference?
a speaker at our conference in Wales,” they say. “We want you to a featured guest at our book club.” “I’m organizing a festival and want you to be on a panel.”
urgency to become a standout in the psychological thriller space. Your premise taps into fears that are painfully real, and that’s exactly what makes readers unable to put it down. With the right visibility strategy, this book can reach the audience that’s actively searching for exactly what you’ve written.
Sigh. Sometimes they’re so tempting. For example, how do I know whether this one is genuine? I’d love to talk about A Good Man with a Dog, but alas…One clue is that the Vermont Book Club (book club not bookclub) has its own website and she would have been writing from that.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), and Kait Carson (Tuesday), with a group post on Thursday, and a post from special guest Dana Green on Friday.
e-book and trade paper. I was waiting to finalize the trade paperback of #4, Lethal Legend, until I could do another careful proofread of the text. So, I did that, made corrections to the e-book text already sent to D2D, and proceeded to go through the regular process for launching the print-on-demand version. I checked. I double checked. I clicked “approve.” The only thing I didn’t remember to look at was the release date. The print copy setup took everything I’d already chosen for the e-book . . . except for the release date. I totally forgot that unless I change it, that date automatically comes up as either the current date (e-book) or a date a week or so after approval (POD). So, dear readers, although it won’t be out in e-book format until December 8, the trade paperback of Lethal Legand can be ordered from all the usual bookstores NOW. Fortunately, book three, No Mortal Reason, will be available on November 10, so those collecting print editions of all four won’t have long to wait, but boy do I feel foolish!
Maureen Milliken will be at the Thompson Free Library Authors and Artisans Night Market, 4-7 p.m. today (Saturday, Oct. 24), at 186 East Main St., Dover-Foxcroft. The event includes local authors, vendors of crafts, baked goods, pottery, soap, fiber art, visual art and more. There is also hot food and hot drinks. Authors will be inside the library selling and signing books, vendors are outdoors and in the basement is the library’s 10 cent book sale. Come on up to beautiful Dover-Foxcroft, enjoy the last great days of fall in Maine, find some cool stuff and books, and help support a fantastic library.
I had a great time exploring the world of 1990 for my debut Raven: technologies that were nascent now ubiquitous, fears of the Cold War now gone but replaced by newer threats. My upcoming series however is set in contemporary America, following technology journalist Olivia Wright as she explores unregulated technologies, political manipulation, and all the ways technology can be turned against its users.
Wrapping up Emily St. John Mandel’s 
Vaughn Hardacker here. Several weeks ago, I received an email from ade@speedymetric.com, the CEO of speedymetric.com, asking if I would consider interviewing for a blog on the third novel in my Michael Houston & Anne Bouchard series: How Character Background Shapes Pressure in Quid Pro Quo: Vaughn C. Hardacker on Writing Tension.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Dick Cass (Monday), Vaughn Hardacker (Tuesday), Rob Kelley (Thursday), and Matt Cost (Friday), with an interview with special guest Henry Wise on Wednesday.
If you’ve ever been to Augusta, you may have seen the huge cemetery at the top of the hill near the airport. It’s actually several cemeteries, at least four or five I think, with some mini-cemeteries thrown in. We grew up down the hill and it was part of our childhood playground. Graves date back a couple of centuries, and there are even a few plots of soldiers who died at the Civil War hospital that was where the airport is now. This photo is from the Forest Grove Cemetery, in between Winthrop Street and Green Street.
I go up to the cemeteries a couple of times a week now, even though I live in an adjacent town, because it’s a good place to walk the dog on the way to the grocery store. Dogs are allowed, and there are even a couple of waste baskets in what’s officially the Mount Hope Cemetery, north of Winthrop Street.
This relatively unexciting photo is the grave of James G. Blaine, who represented Maine in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he was speaker of the house for six years before serving a term as a U.S. senator. The governor’s mansion next to the State House is his former home. The annoying thing about this photo is that one reason he’s planted here at the top of the hill (along with his wife, Harriet Stanwood Blaine) is that it’s supposed to have a view of the State House dome, but it only does in the winter now because of all the trees. Yeah, I guess the trees are nice, too. Little known fact: The three-acre Blaine Memorial, right above Forest Grove Cemetery, was designed by Carl Rust Parker, a landscape architect from the Frederick Law Olmstead firm, and the same guy who tried to design Capitol Park, 
I’ve driven by the Ezra Smith Wildlife Conservation Area in Mount Vernon many times, so one day recently decided to get out and check it out and give Willow some exercise. Ezra was the father of someone that some of you may have known — George Smith, who was head of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine for many years and a newspaper columnist who wrote about the outdoors as well as travel for many more years. The 163-acre conservation area hasn’t been around that long. Most of it was donated to the Kennebec Land Trust by George and his wife, Linda, eight years ago, a little while before George, who had ALS, died. Since it’s small, with just two loop trails, I thought it’d be a nice quick walk for Willow. It actually was kind of a scary one, with very thick woods at some points. A couple of times, she stopped and stared intently into the woods and wouldn’t go fowward without extreme urging from me, which is highly unusual behavior. Still, we came out all right. But there’s definitely something in those woods.
in Bath. Usually I bring the standards: first Burgess, first Thea, most recent books including my three thrillers and the romantic suspense. This time, as I was choosing what to bring along—always a challenge for someone who has published 28 books—I thought it would be fun to bring some different ones. Sorting through the boxes in my garage, I was reminded of some of the diversions I’ve taken along the way.
Next up was another collection of crime stories. One of the requirements for being a LBB editor was that each of us had to write a story approved by the other editors to be included in the collection. I gathered up those stories, plus stories I’d published in other collections, and created my own collection, Careful What You Wish For: Stories of Revenge, Retribution, and the World Made Right. Working with LBB taught me a lot about the choices that go into assembling a collection—long, short, dark, light, and what’s a stunning story to go first and a powerful one to finish. I also had a great time designing the cover. I found a photo that worked with the stories and my wonderful cover designer, Dave Fymbo, tweaked it for the cover.
shopping. It’s A Sampling of Sleuths, which is a compilation of ten stories featuring their series characters by “proven mystery authors each one with strong backlists.” Designed as a great way to introduce new writers to mystery lovers, it’s the perfect gift for a mystery lover if you don’t know what they’ve read or what they like. It was fun to write a short story with Burgess, and I got to make Fideau the “crime scene dog” he adopted a few books ago as the real hero of the piece.
like stories that are a bit different.
Or you can buy twenty-plus-year-old mint, autographed first editions directly from the author.
