Maine Crime Writers

Weekend Update: February 8-9, 2025

Posted on February 8, 2025 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Jule Selbo (Monday), Joe Souza (Tuesday), Vaughn Hardacker (Thursday) and Gabi Stiteler (Friday).

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

From Kathy Lynn Emerson: Good news! My collection of the complete short stories connected to my Face Down mysteries is now available in trade paperback and e-book formats. Lady Appleton’s World contains sixteen short stories set in the sixteenth century. This is the first time all of them have been published in one volume. It’s print-on-demand, so it won’t show up on brick-and-mortar bookstore shelves, but any bookseller or library can order a copy.

The ISBN for the paperback is 979-8-227-88201-1. It’s priced at $18.99 (the e-book is a bargain at $5.99).

John Clark will be hosting a program on the books of John Green Tuesday Feb. 11th from 5-7 at the Waterville Public Library, 73 Elm Street. The event is open to all.

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, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

Posted in Sunday Updates | Tagged Gabi Stiteler, Joe Souza, Jule Selbo, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Maine Crime Writers news, Vaughn Hardacker | Leave a comment

You Will Know A New Freedom—-If you Ever Stop Coughing

Posted on February 7, 2025 by John Clark

John Clark at 5 on a Monday morning, relishing the first decent breaths in a week. I have a new chicken and egg postulate; which came first, the perils of age, or the increasing ferocity of respiratory ailments?

I’ve been at the mercy of a hellacious cold/flu for more than a week, spending more time horizontal than vertical and imagining myself as Sisyphus, only having substituted endless tissues for the boulder. If there’s a more frustrating sensation than persistent weakness, I do not wish to experience it. Sleep comes in short bursts like commuter trains through a station…Two hours here, three, there.

Creative ideas are as slippery as eels in olive oil, barely perceptible before sliding into another amnesiac coughing jag. Ribs ache, sinuses throb, food tastes like not much of anything.

Even reading is unsatisfying. I must have a dozen books I’ve begun to read since this began, but have only finished one. That alone, tells me how severe this malady is.

One ray of hope in all this is my beginning to write again after two + months where the tank was damn near empty. I decided that in order to have any hope of creativity, I needed to dive into something as dark and foul as our current political mess.

What I came up with is, for lack of a better description, a new adult post-apocalyptic dystopian road trip It has two main characters, both of whom have decided they need to have new names to match their completely different world.

Here’s the premise: A rolling EMP (electromagnetic pulse) hits (likely triggered by a huge solar flare) beginning in the far east, wiping out all electronics as it flows toward the US. The orange-haired fool reacts by pushing the red button, sending hundreds of nuclear missiles aloft where their circuitry is fried by the EMP, leaving them hovering in the outer atmosphere. They begin to fall, some detonating, others simply releasing radioactivity. The two survivors meet when he rescues her from a gang of cannibalistic thugs and have to figure out how to survive.

I’m averaging 1,000 words a day(16,000) as of the time I publish this) and enjoying the freedom of simply writing it for my own enjoyment. I’m channeling the lyrics from a classic Ricky Nelson song as I do so.

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ailments, Dark humor, EMPs, John R. Clark, New Adult Dystopian Fiction, outrage of aging | 8 Comments

When Do You Get Your Ideas?

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Brenda Buchanan

It’s a classic question at author readings – where do you get your ideas?

A better question, I think is when do you get your ideas? Where are you and what are you doing when your characters’ voices whisper in your ear, when a pedestrian passage takes poetic flight, when the plot twist reveals itself?

Sometimes these things happen to me when I’m in the shower. Relaxed under a warm spray, I’m a creative genius. I ought to find a waterproof whiteboard and mount it on the tiles, so I can jot down my thoughts in real time. Instead, I repeat the morning’s inspiration to myself until I’m dry and dressed and have pen in hand. Sometimes I can salvage at least part of it, but all too often, the idea dissipates like steam on the bathroom mirror.

Another regular writing meditation happens when I’m preparing a salad.

Not when I’m cooking generally, but as I wash lettuce, grate carrots, slice cukes and tomatoes. We love salad at our house—it’s on the menu pretty much every night—so my writer brain is poised when I pull the bowl off the top of the fridge and take a sharp knife in hand.

But the place I most often write in my head is at the beach.

That Diane and I regularly meander along the tide line may not come as a surprise to those of you who follow me on Facebook (soon to move over to BlueSky, a topic for another day) where I post photos most every week with the hashtags #Maine #SundayBeachWalks.

Winter and summer, spring and fall, a Maine beach is the perfect environment for me to hatch ideas, smooth plot wrinkles, and dream up fresh conflicts for my characters to navigate.

This winter I’m working on a couple of short stories and ruminating on a new novel, so there’s plenty to think about while we roam the sand on Sunday afternoons no matter the weather, watching sandpipers and scoters, listening to the rhythm of the surf.

My mind is there, yet not there, making room for the magic to happen.

When do you get your ideas?

Brenda Buchanan’s crime fiction reflects her experience as a journalist and lawyer. Her three-book Joe Gale mystery series—Quick Pivot, Cover Story and Truth Beat—feature a Maine newspaper reporter covering the crime and courts beat. Her short story, Means, Motive, and Opportunity, published in Bloodroot: Best New England Crime Stories, made the list of Other Distinguished Stories in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. You can find Brenda on the web at https://brendabuchananwrites.com

Posted in Brenda's Posts, Uncategorized | Tagged beaches, ideas, writing | 5 Comments

Perched on the Fence. Which Way Shall I Fall?

Posted on February 4, 2025 by mainecrimewriters

Kate Flora: Another February. I used to joke that I always went crazy in February. I think we’ve solved that by doing more traveling in January. But the early months of the year are often a time when I find myself rethinking this writing life. Almost as long as I’ve been published, I’ve obsessed about my success or lack of it. Struggled with envy toward writers I know and love who’ve had more of it. Anguished about whether to bother to go on, despite my love of storytelling. Wondered if it is fair to the books to put them out there in the world if I’m not willing to do all the promotion they deserve.

Well…it’s February again and I’m having the debate again. The general consensus among my peers is that we’re writers and so we can’t help ourselves. But among the voices are those who say they gave it up. It was too frustrating to keep doing the “buy my book” dance. Too discouraging to launch a book into the world and then not have it read. Too disheartening to not get publisher support and having to do it all on their own.

Right now, I’m on the fence. I’ve been cooking the story for the next Thea, and as series writers know, our characters are like family and we want to know what’s happening in their lives. I want to know what little Mason is like as he grows up. I want to know how Thea and Andre will find the necessary balance in their lives between work and family. I want to know whether they’ll stay in their dream house after all the bad things that have happened there.

Even as I’m imagining the plot for that book, I’m facing the dilemma of what to do with the four “books in the drawer” that are still unsold. Two dark police procedurals that are meant to be the first books in new series. The Darker the Night, a strong male detective tracking a serial killer, and Scarred, a strong female detective facing a mysterious killer who seems to be replicating the killings of her own siblings. A crazy book called Memorial Acts about two women dealing with losses in their lives that keep them from moving forward that I don’t know what to do with. And of course I’m still puttering around with the matchmaking dog book, Unleashed Love.

Like a lot of the writers I know, I don’t want to die and leave these poor books stuck in the drawer. As I’ve recently moved, according my physician friend, from young old to simply old, these are very real considerations. I expect that my beloved children, if faced with the chaos that is my office, will probably respond with a flame thrower unless I first embrace Swedish Death Cleaning.

So . . . February. The temperature hovers in the single digits. The walk is slippery and I’m mindful of my doctor’s concern about my crumbling old bones. Even a trip out to refill the bird feeder feels slightly dangerous as I perch with snowy feet on a small stool so I can reach it. Of course, I’m a writer, however conflicted I feel, and so I know I can convert those small fears, that feeling of accepting risk, into something my characters can use. So yes. In February I will dither and consider giving it all up so that I can loaf and read and maybe take up a new hobby. But in March, I will very likely sit down at the computer and type: Chapter One.

And a question: Is there someone out there who would like to be a beta reader? Let me know.

Posted in Kate's Posts | 9 Comments

The Great Ice Storm of 1998

Posted on February 3, 2025 by kaitlynkathy

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. Our group post last week had me going through my photos of winter in Maine, and that led, inevitably to pictures of a three-and-a-half-day weather event that was unprecedented here in Maine. It took place a little over twenty-seven years ago.

The Great Ice Storm of 1998 affected eastern Ontario, southern Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and northern New York State. Freezing rain started to fall in some places on January 5 and was still affecting others until January 9.

The population of the entire state in 1998 was 1.248 million. Between 700,000 and 840,000 of us lost power, a third of that number for more than a week. Some homes didn’t have power restored for over a month. The cause was ice building up on branches and power lines. Anything over a half inch can be catastrophic. It averaged 2.3622″ in the affected areas.

our back yard with ice

our back yard with normal snow cover

Since transmission towers had collapsed and thousands of utility poles were down, Governor (now Senator) Angus King declared a state of emergency. Help poured in from all over. Utility crews from North Carolina were flown into the former Naval Air Station in Brunswick in military planes and escorted to the areas most in need of them by members of the Maine National Guard.

Local outreach made a big difference, too. Most towns set up warming shelters. Neighbors helped neighbors, sharing generators and food. There were even people looking out for pets whose owners had to leave their homes for lack of heat.

Shortly after the storm ended, commemorative T-shirts were available. The one I bought had a checklist on the back listing things we went “seven days without.” Power, showers, and coffee were included. I don’t remember the rest, but we were actually much better off than a lot of people in the state.

First came the unsettling crack of ice-laden branches breaking. Then our power went out, at 2:20 AM on the 8th. We lost our landline the next morning. I’m not sure we even owned cell phones back then, but we had a portable radio, a woodstove and plenty of firewood, a supply of water for drinking, washing, and flushing, and our camping gear, plus lots of candles and flashlights. We couldn’t take a shower but we could make coffee.

The TV went out along with the power and streaming wasn’t yet a thing. Neither was WiFi. I passed the time editing by hand (That Special Smile for the Bantam Loveswept line) and reading (Elliot Roosevelt’s Murder in the Blue Room and a friend’s manuscript). We ventured out to the Post Office on the morning of the 10th so I could mail out six ARCs of Face Down Upon an Herbal, which was published that April. We were in the grocery store, where they were using an adding machine to total up purchases and taking cash only payments, when the power in the village came back on. Everyone in the place cheered. At our house we had to wait until 7:40 PM, but we did some cheering then, too.

We pay close attention to weather forecasts here in Maine. Blizzard or ice storm, we’re ready for it, but I definitely prefer the snowy landscape of a normal winter.

fresh snowfall on the morning of February 1, 2025

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

Posted in Kaitlyn's Posts | Tagged Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Maine weather, The Great Ice Storm of 1998, winter in Maine | 3 Comments

Weekend Update: February 1-2, 2025

Posted on February 1, 2025 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Brenda Buchanan (Thursday) and John Clark (Friday).

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

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.

Posted in Sunday Updates | Tagged Brenda Buchanan, John Clark, Kaitlyn Dunnett, Kate Flora, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Maine Crime Writers news | Leave a comment

Winter in Maine…Ayup

Posted on January 31, 2025 by John Clark

Slip Slidin’ Away

John Clark says Welcome to the Winter of our Disco Tent
While cold might shovel easier, the increasingly scant levels of snow have many outdoor enthusiasts scrambling for alternate ways to stay sane. Some are fortunate enough to spot the migrating Beluga whales as they cross country ski on their annual migration to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Others are eagerly awaiting the first annual Hieronymus Bosch ice sculpture contest up at Wyman Lake in Bingham. Then there’s the ‘how many musty newspapers can you read before sneezing to death’ competition over in Mechanic Falls.
The one I’m looking forward to the most is the ‘My paranoia can top yours’ tournament. I’ll have more details if the promoters ever decide they can trust me.

Kait Carson: Well, John, I actually live in the frozen northern reaches of our great state – think Canada My Canada a mere ten miles and a bridge away. When winter is unkind and snow fails to bring the normal compliment of genuine snowbirds, we revert to our roots and read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline – in the original. Let’s hear it for Acadian French. Spring will spring by the time I finish. Seriously, though. I am longing for the glorious landscape of prior winters. Especially that blue, blue sky.

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: In common with John and Kait, I have tons of winter pics. In fact, I’m thinking of continuing this theme in my next post (Feb.3). But for now, here is a typical shot from inside my kitchen, this one from 2022. If you look closely, you can see my husband just starting to plow out the dooryard. Dead center is our snow-covered sidewalk.

Do I love winter in Maine? Mostly. Especially since we’re retired and don’t have to go out.

Matt Cost doesn’t mind the ice-olation brought on by winter so much. It is a break from life, a chance to curl up at home and write. The cold is enjoyable, just as long as you dress for it, and if the snow is not too deep or the ice too slick for my two woods walks a day with the dogs–well, then, everything is just peachy keen. I have begun the process of setting up COST TALKS for when the roads thaw, so soon enough I will be back ramming the roads, but not before a good morning of writing. As in phases of life, the seasons are something that we should live in the present and enjoy what is being offered.

Kate Flora: I used to spend plenty of winter time outside but in recent years, I’ve found I am a happy hibernator. I find, though, that I don’t actually hibernate. Instead, I do a lot of writing, rewriting, and playing around with ideas. But I also force myself to go outside, especially after a big snow or an ice storm. There is little more beautiful than a snow-covered world, or one where every single branch is coated in ice and the sun is shining. Winter is great for noticing the shapes of trees. For black and white photography. For trying to find all the letters of the alphabet in the tree trunks, fallen logs, and twisted vines.

Of course, I confess that one thing that makes it easier to the get through the winter is taking trips in January. This month (I’m actually just back and still jet lagged) it was a trip to South India. By the time we were done with crowds and traffic, I was more than ready to be back at my desk, editing a book.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Crime and Karma

Posted on January 27, 2025 by dickcass

On July 17, 2023, my morning coffee was interrupted with the sound of chainsaws twenty five feet from my bedroom window. Outside the window I saw a squad of five men on the side of the hill above our house, ripping into a grove of 50 or 60 year old oaks that sheltered both the ridge and the hillside below it. The noise, of course, was horrific, and while the sawyers whined away, I felt a certain amount of regret for those trees. I’m a fan of Robin Wall Kimmerer, though I wouldn’t go so far as to ascribe sentience to an oak. But it felt like a crime against those grand old trees as much as an annoyance to me.

The butchery was only the beginning. Once the trees were down, the now-dead logs cleared away, the weeping stumps pulled, the next four weeks were punctuated by warning whistles and ground shaking booms. The blasting company came to videotape our house’s foundation, inside and out, to insure against any later complaints we might make. What a great way to inspire confidence.

Then came the cranes and trucks and front-end loaders, moving the broken rock off the site. A foundation was dug and concrete poured. What was described in neighborhood gossip as a fifteen hundred square foot ranch house, we now refer to as “the hotel.” Skeletal walls of two by fours, paneled in ugly green wallboard, arose, and eventually, another crane came in and set the trusses in place for the roof over the main house.

The next morning, while drinking my coffee (again), and wondering if I could convince my new “neighbor” to ask her workmen to at least give us Sundays off from the noise and shitty rock music of her construction crew, I heard (and felt) a muffled crash. The wind had come up overnight, as the Weather Channel had forecast a couple days before, and was blowing a solid thirty MPH. I stepped out into the half-dark and realized the silhouette of the hotel on the hill had changed radically. The roof trusses, unbuttressed by plywood paneling or cross braces, had fallen in the wind, imploding into the open bay of the main house. I had a (short) moment of schadenfreude on behalf of the three yahoos building this house, though I knew the homeowner was likely to wind up paying for this, not them.

The collapse did make me wonder, though, if those 50 or 60 year old oaks weren’t exacting their own kind of revenge, punishment for being savaged out of their lives. It is a delicious feeling to wonder whether nature doesn’t have ways of rectifying our arrogance, and I can’t say I wouldn’t like to live in a world like that.

Posted in Dick's Posts, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Have you seen my muse?

Posted on January 24, 2025 by kaitcarson

Hutch the Muse

Creativity and productivity have never been a problem. Early in my writing career, I decided that writer’s block was a myth. I had it on good authority from a fellow writer. One who made her daily bread writing romance novels for Harlequin books. This was back in the days when Harlequin writers were essentially piece workers who were assigned pen names and expected to pump out several books a year. There was a formula of sorts, and productivity was key to continued employment.

I acted as my friend’s first reader. She wrote four or five series, all under different pen names, all romances, but as varied as historical to what we’d now call romantasy. I was in awe. I asked her how she could be that productive. Didn’t she ever stare at the blank page and wonder what happened next? She laughed. No, she bellowed. Then she asked me if I was talking about the famous ‘writer’s block’. I admitted that was exactly what I meant. She gave me an owlish look and said, “There is no such thing. It’s all in how you look at it. I love writing. It’s fun. But as for writer’s block. Have you ever heard of a plumber having plumber’s block?”

My protest that plumbing was mechanics and writing was inspiration fell on deaf ears. She agreed that there was only one way to fix a clogged drain, but she also pointed out that writing stories required words on the page, and there was only one way to get them there. That was by doing it. “Look,” she said, “you can fix the words, just get them on the page. It’s mechanics. Your *&%tty first draft will spark the magic in the rewrite.”

Her words served me well. Until this year. Mid-October found me plunking words on the page of the fourth book in the Hayden Kent series. Things were moving along. The story was the perfect escape from all things political. Then the edits to the first book of a projected Maine series came back. I shelved the Kent book and dove into the Maine edits. Someday, I’ll master working on two books at once, but this was not the time. By the time the edits were complete, the election was in full swing and then the holidays arrived. I decided a break was in order. Bad idea.

With the New Year came new plans for productivity. I pulled out the Kent book and stared at the opening for Chapter 15, and stared at it, and stared at it. Nothing happened. I figured I’d left the story too long and had lost momentum. So I printed the pages and dove in. The story was good, it flowed well. I don’t outline, I do bullet point the plot points and structural chapters before I write. The story was where it should be and the upcoming chapter notes worked. All good, right? No. When it came to filling in the blanks, the words to bring the chapters to life, I had nothing. My muse failed me.

Is this writer’s block? If it is, then the act of writing should release the logjam. Except it didn’t. I want to tell this story. The second to the last chapter is written. Has been since the beginning. It’s the bridge that’s under construction. The muse will return, she always does. Right now, though, she’s playing awfully hard to get.