Given Apple, Taken Apple: Sketching out a mystery series

Happy Monday! And it's a frigid one here in Waterville, Maine. Three degrees and it feels like it. Just came in from throwing the bright orange rubber ball to my dog Henry. He's now exercised and I'm finally getting the feeling back in my fingers.

Last week I went to the Sagadahoc County Registry of Deeds in Bath to do some research for the new mystery series I'm writing. If you've never been to a registry of deeds, conjure up in your mind Bartleby the Scrivener, the character in the Herman Melville novella of the same name. Bartleby is a scrivener, that is one who copies documents, like deeds, in longhand, or cursive and that's what he does all day long. Until one day,he answers every request with the famous line: "I'd prefer not to."

That's what some people did for a living before the typewriter and photocopy machines. They labored on chest-high, slanted tables, almost like drafting tables, inkwells placed every three or four feet, copying the deeds, mortgages, easements and other documents that were put on record to help people claim their land and show "all the world" that they and no one else owned it. Those hand-copied documents were then bound into books about twelve by eighteen inches and three inches thick. In order to do our work back then, we had to hoist many of those books a day. They weighed at least five pounds or more. Then the original docs were mailed back to the attorneys or banks who handled the transactions.

When I began my training in researching titles back in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982, there were still old tables with holes where the ink bottles would have been. In some registries, I'm sure they still exist. But most of them have been switched out with more modern, less charming furniture. But back to what I was up to.

My career has been varied, but for a twenty-five year chunk of time I did title examinations. If you wanted to sell or buy a house, you would want to have the title to the land searched to make sure there were no encumbrances on it. Like, for instance, you want to make sure that the person who says he owns it really does, so when you buy it, you own it. And you do that by looking at the deed you are going to receive at the closing, finding out where that person got it, and where the person before him/her got it, back forty years. You can go back as far as the records go if you want, and that's what I was doing last week.

I know of a rare heirloom apple that was developed on a farm in Sagadahoc County. No more oak slanted tables, but a jazzy new computer system that showed me a few transactions with my apple cultivator's name. That reference led me to a plan of an easement to a utility company. That plan showed that my apple farmer's land once abutted that easement and showed about where it was.

I only had a couple of hours to spend there, but what I found was a good lead. My friends, Penny and Sally, two veteran title examiners (or "abstractors" as they are called in Maine) helped me place where the farm might have been, now a cul de sac with homes snaked through it.

When I left the "Reg," as we fondly call it, I drove down the road where the farm once was. Along the way, I found two old apple trees right on the side of the road. I got out and took photos of them, and close-ups of the lone apple, browned by the cold, hanging on for dear life.

I kept going, and this is a long, long road. When I got to the utility easement, I got out, parked in the entrance to the cul de sac and looked around. No farmhouse. But then, as if it had shouted to me, there by the side of the road was a huge, gnarled, naked apple tree. I climbed down the short embankment, almost breaking a leg doing so, and practically hugged that tree. Well, I think I did hug it. I'm new at this apple sleuthing, but this looked like a very old tree. I found some "dropsies," stuffed them into my pockets and hoped the passersby didn't call the cops on some crazy lady down in the gully.

I don't have an actual photo of the apple I'm looking for. There is a sketch put out by John Bunker at Fedco Trees, the real apple expert. But it could be "the one." I took photos of them when I got them home, cut up the smallest one and dug out the seeds. I'm going to plant them and see if they grow.

The end of the trek came when I decided to keep going instead of turning back and going home the usual way. The plan showed that this road ended up in a town near the highway ramp. As I'd gotten off the highway in Bowdoinham that day, I passed "Fisher Road." I thought, "Someday I'll take that road and see where it brings me." Lo and behold, the road where I had traveled to find that farm turned into Fisher Road, and it brought me to that very intersection I'd passed by earlier in the day. I laughed. Some random journeys we take are not as random as we think. My entire day had been filled with synchronicity, happy coincidences, and I got home exhilarated.

As a writer, we don't have to search out real people, farms or apples to flesh out our fictional stories. But I love detection, and that's what I miss about my old career...title searching involves looking through books, at maps and plans, some of them quite old, and finding where your "locus" is "on the face of the earth." And I find it fun to incorporate that into my novel research, What's this one about? Think: "An Apple to Die For."

Post Thanksgiving Musings:Writing that Book Proposal

My mother, who we called "Mum," was the original "hot ticket." She had many funny expressions, some lost to memory now, that nailed a feeling or state of being.

And I'd characterize my life right now just as she would: I've been busier than a one-armed paper hanger. First, there is my non-fiction travel guide about New England craft beer. I have one month, well, let me calculate for sure, 34 days to hand it in to the editor. I want to break down laughing, or break down crying .... saying intentions like "I WILL hand it in on time," hoping I have 62 fairy godmothers who drink beer listening in the ether, who have nothing to do but help me.

So I had to make a decision about interrupting the flow of work on that project in order to write a book proposal for an agent whom I'd approached after the Crime Bake conference. He liked the ideas I had for two cozy mystery series, but I'd need to write proposals for each series idea. And that required time away from my work in progress. I hemmed and hawed to myself, but told the agent that of course I'd work on the proposals ASAP.

Then I committed to do it. It took three days of constant researching and asking for help coming up with "comparable" books, book series similar to yours that had been renewed (showing good sales), conjuring up three books in the series, writing a synopsis of each without actually having the books written, writing a bio of my work and experience, presenting evidence of my potential market and editing the first 30 pages of the manuscript to make it enticing to an editor.

I finished it last Tuesday and looked Heaven-ward before I pressed "send." Then I plunged into Thanksgiving preparations. My son was the only one of my three kids to be able to make it home, and we had a great two days. No work on the beer book was done, except making a pumpkin pie with a local stout. That recipe can go in the book, so I guess it was research. And the pie was delicious.

Today is Saturday. We've managed to not participate in any Black Friday insanity, we got our Christmas tree up and some lights on it without killing each other (close, though) and today I get back to work on the beer project.

I will do some deep breathing when I open the master doc, see how many breweries I still have to write up, and keep going. "Bird by bird," writer-goddess Anne Lamott says, bird by bird.

Special thanks go to Wicked Cozy Authors Sherry Harris and Barb Ross and to bookseller Beth Kanell of Vermont's Kingdom Books. Your help with finding comparable series was what encouraged me to finish the proposal and not flop in a heap of tears.

Puns about beer and murder

Last Saturday at this very moment, 5:10 p.m., I was standing in line at Crime Bake waiting for my turn speed-pitching an agent. It was pretty exciting, standing with five or so other writers, all of us wondering if the agent we'd gotten assigned would bite at our book ideas. Mine didn't, as I wrote last week. Fine. Chalk it up to learning experience.

Next morning at breakfast, we decided to gather all the Maine folks around the same table. One writer I had just met gave me her agent's name and some valuable info about the type of cozy mystery she writes. Some publishers will give you a book deal without a finished manuscript.

I was going back and forth wondering if I should take time away from my non-fiction beer book, and decided to go for it. I printed out the submissions guidelines from this agent's website, ticked them off as I wrote them, and said to my husband, "Wish me luck, I'm about to press "send."" And I did it.

Now I am scrambling to think up some pithy, pun-filled book titles and book jacket copy for the mysteries I want to write. One series will feature the subject I'm pretty well-versed in: beer. The other subject is a recent passion of mine.

Wish me luck!

Brewing up mysteries at Crime Bake 2014

Brewing up mysteries at Crime Bake 2014



Fun conference and I'm hooked.

Hang out with other writers: my first Crimebake conference and new mantra

I have been so isolated where I live, I keep in touch with friends via Facebook or email (mostly Facebook) and see other writers hardly ever. If you don't live in Maine or some other rural place, you might think it's me. I live in Waterville, Maine, home of my alma mater Colby College, a second college, two hospitals and 18,000 people. Doesn't seem like an isolated place.

But in the six years I've lived here, with my retired Colby prof husband, I have made exactly zero friends and met zero other writers. And I happen to know there are more than a few afoot.

So when I got my very first chance to sign up for Sisters in Crime New England Chapter annual conference, I pinched pennies and made arrangements. Tomorrow, after waiting for months, I go to Dedham, Massachusetts for a three day crime extravaganza. We'll even get to inspect a "crime scene," set up by forensics experts for our inexpert perusal.

Wheeeeee! Can't contain my glee. There is a feeling I get when I'm around other writers. Some could view the others in attendance as potential or actual competition. I am so excited and stimulated by the talk, how interested people are in meeting each other, and listening to the published mystery writers, I float for days after.

Sisters in Crime was founded to create awareness that women mystery writers weren't being paid as well as their male counterparts. And it's an amazingly organized group. And not only that, they are welcoming as hell.

I've  met several other writers via their website and Yahoo group and look forward to meeting them this weekend.

The special guest is Craig Robinson, creator of the Longmire books on which a TV series has been based. There will be a BBQ banquet and line dancing (okay I'm skipping the dancing), and lots of talk about mysteries and series and characters and technique and all the trappings of what makes the crime writing world go round.

Oh, and I'm getting 5 minutes to pitch my novel in progress to an agent. Hope I've got it right:

"When Griffin Kane finds a body in her new batch of beer, Portland, Maine police rule it an accident. Eamon Collins fell into the mash tun and drowned. The trouble is, it isn't Eamon. And the other trouble is Eamon is gone. Who is the body in the beer vat? And why did Eamon fake his death? Welcome to the Vatican Brewpub, the former St. Dominic's church, and the seamier side of the craft beer world."

Still working on it! If you have suggestions, let me know.

Beer here…and there. Finding new suds is part of the fun

Beer here…and there. Finding new suds is part of the fun

What's taking so long? Finishing that elusive work in progress

Up front I can say I don't have an answer to that question, "What's taking so long?" I have one finished novel in a closet and even discovered recently that it was successfully saved to a floppy disc (yes) then to a flash drive.

My second novel in that same series has been in progress for years. My youngest daughter reads Slate and once sent me an article that so touched me that I have it pinned on a bulletin bar inside the same closet where my manuscript resides. At least I can see it each time I open that door.

Author Susanna Daniel wrote an article in Slate in July, 2010 titled, "What Took You So Long? The quiet hell of 10 years of novel writing."

The article begins:

There is surely a word—in German, most likely—that means the state of active non-accomplishment. Not just the failure to reach a specific goal, but ongoing, daily failure with no end in sight. Stunted ambition. Disappointed potential. Frustrated and sad and lonely and hopeless and sick to death of one's self.

Whatever it's called, this is what leads people to abandon their goals—people do it every day. And I understand that decision, because I lived in this state of active non-accomplishment for many years.

At the time she wrote it, her first novel had been accepted for publication. By now it's been out there for a few years. She cites another writer who took his time and lost hope: Junot Diaz, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, also took 10 years to complete it. Neither Daniel or Diaz worked on that novel all that time. They put them down for long stretches of time, to have a child or enter a graduate program. But they answered that siren's call, which usually for me comes in the middle of the night, the call to come back and finish your story. Your characters are waiting for you.

I visited my daughter Meg the summer she gave me the What Took You so Long? piece. We were watching TV and talking. I said, "I feel like I have so much to say and no one is listening to me." 

She was 20 years old at the time, and I was floored by what she said in response: "Mom, that's what writers do. They write all the things in their heads that no one is listening to."

That was four years ago. I've been helped tremendously by bloggers and other writers I've met when I decided to go for it. Procrastination is a problem. Less a problem than a detour is the non-fiction craft beer book I'm writing. For that project, I am grateful, as it may mean income coming in from my writing. It'll be at least a year til I see it, but it should flow in and help out.

I work on writing every day, and setting up this blog helps. I either write here or in my other, food/beer-related blog or even in the novel.

Daniel ends her piece with this:

After I wrote the last sentence, I printed the whole mess and got out my red pen, and the relief of having a complete draft was overwhelming. I had more writing energy than I'd had in years. At this point, no matter that the sky was falling in publishing-land, I was certain that I would see my book in print.


I'm keeping the faith that this will also happen to me. Finishing even a first draft is the biggest event, and I know I can do it. I even have the last scene written. It's finding the balance between the fiction projects, the beer book and blogging and some freelance articles that have come trickling in. But the most important thing is to push past fear and doubt and start clacking away at the keys.

Read Susanna Daniel's touching piece here:


http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/07/what_took_you_so_long.html