Between the Crime Wave and a couple other appearances, including a West Bath book group where I ran into someone I worked with in Chelmsford, MA in 1985, it feels like I’ve been out and about a fair amount this spring, for someone who doesn’t yet have a new book to promote.

(See: September 1, 2026, from Islandport Press, a reissue of The Last Altruist and the second book in the Ardmore Theberge series, Hard as a Headstone.)

As always, talking to readers and writers in these situations can generate the most interesting questions. Readers often ask about the split between writers who plan out their books and writers who start out with no idea where they’re going. Variously, this split is called plotters vs. pantsers or architects vs. gardeners. Normally, I fall to the freewheeling side of the split but weirdly, the book I’m writing right now (fourth in the Theberge series) has turned me into what I’d call a marinator.

Not sure if I’ve stolen the idea from somewhere—I remember vaguely a conversation about something like this with our own Kate Flora—but events of the winter (which I’ll refrain from whinging about all over again) made me want to write something lighter and less overtly violent than is my wont. So I started in on a traditional mystery that I like to talk about as the marriage of Slow Horses and The Thursday Murder Club. But while I was drafting that, I was also being crowded by another story into taking notes and thinking about possibilities of character and story, something I don’t normally do.

The interesting thing about it was that, unlike my usual propensity to dive in and start writing, I found myself holding back, fiddling with lists of potential scenes, character ideas, and generally letting my brain free of the notion I had to write the story yet. Of course, this may have had something to do with the fact I was already writing another book. I don’t know many people who can simultaneously work on multiple books, though I’m sure they are out there. I know I cannot.

I cook a number of dishes that require long marination and slow, low-heat cooking. I’m starting to think that this is how this book is finding its way into being, not as my usual get-the-draft-down-fast-and-revise method but something more measured and, I hope, more thoughtful. Will it make a better book? Quien sabe? But it has been a necessary reminder that the way you have done things before is not necessarily the way you will do things, and even if this new book doesn’t work out, I’m grateful for the reminder.