Please welcome our guest Edith Maxwell!

In keeping with the theme of this blog, I thought I'd write about my connection to Edgar  Allan Poe. When I mentioned this to Sheila, she said, “You have connections to POE?” Many thanks to her for inviting me over, and hope I don't disappoint!

Well, I'm not related to Poe. I don't own a first-edition of anything. I haven't even visited  his grave.

As a child, like my parents and my two older sisters, I was a voracious reader. We kids pretty much had free range of the extensive bookcases in the house. My mother loved reading mysteries, so after I finished off Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys,among other, I set to work on her Agatha Christies.

In about fourth grade I discovered a couple of other books that drew me in. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. And, you guessed it, a volume of Poe. I don't remember if it was Tales of Mystery and Imagination or some other edition.

I still shiver when I remember how these stories scared me. I was a child with a way-too-vivid imagination. I had nightmares. My mother didn't let me watch Twilight Zone on television. She became furious with a babysitter who let us watch a scary movie one night. But for some reason, she didn't monitor my reading content. Or maybe she was just too busy with my high-energy younger brother and managing a houseful of four children all less than two years apart to pay attention. So I happily read and read and reread these horrific frightening stories, flipping the pages with heart racing.

For years afterward, when I was alone in a quiet room, I could HEAR that heart beating under the floorboards. Even today when I enter an antique basement that includes bricked walls, I wonder if the Count is behind them. And, while I knew the ceiling over my bed was solid and intact during the day, I would lie in bed wide awake in the dark, knowing the speckled band was about to descend through the grate in the corner of the ceiling. I still can't watch horror movies.

But it's that kind of imagination that makes a mystery writer, right? When you see a black shape by the side of the road at dawn or twilight, don't you wonder if it's a body? (Even when you get closer and see that it's really a black trash bag?) When you hear about a poison, you wonder how you can work it into a story. When I'm walking the fields of a farm nearby, I can imagine the murder in the next Local Foods mystery, whether it's mayhem that contrasts with the lush green of a late spring morning, a killing in nature's autumnal senescence, or murder under cover of ice and snow as the fields rest during winter.

Here's a wonderful passage about imagination from “The Raven,” which I found captured on a glass at Kim Grey's gift shop in Baltimore after Malice Domestic last month:

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

What's your favorite scary story? Did you read Poe and  Holmes as a child? How does your imagination get carried away?

Locavore Edith Maxwell's Local Foods mysteries let her relive her days as an organic farmer in Massachusetts, although murder in the greenhouse is new. A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die releases May 28 from Kensington Publishing. A fourth-generation Californian, she has also published short stories of murderous revenge.

Edith Maxwell's pseudonym Tace Baker authored Speaking of Murder featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau and campus intrigue after her sexy star student is killed. Edith is a long-time Quaker and holds a long-unused doctorate in linguistics.

Edith lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats. She can be found at www.edithmaxwell.com.

Guest Blogger Edith Maxwell

Thank you so much for having me over.

 

I had my first-ever solo book launch party last week for Speaking of Murder and it was a big success. I held it at one of the two independent bookstores in Newburyport, in the northeast corner of Massachusetts. I have lived in the area for 23 years and attend Friends meeting in the next town over. Over 50 people showed up. It was standing room only and they ran out of both books and wine!

 

What I thought was so interesting was the range of questions that people asked after I read my prepared remarks and read a very short scene. I’ll share here some of the questions.

 

Why the pen name? My book is published under the pen name Tace Baker. While it was being considered by Barking Rain Press, I secured a three-book contract for a different series with Kensington Publishing. The contract stipulated that I couldn’t publish any other mysteries under my name during the term of the contract. When Barking Rain offered me a contract for Speaking of Murder, I had to come up with a pseudonym. Tace is not only a unique name in terms of Googling and URL, it’s also an old Quaker women’s name. And Baker is easy to spell and pronounce and shares a vowel with Tace, so it sounds nice.

 

What TV shows do you watch? I don’t watch TV! Between the day job and commute, daily exercise, cooking and eating, reading the newspaper (yes, on paper), and catching up on facebook, when would I possibly watch television? Besides, I really rather read a book.

 

Did you take a mystery-writing course? Nope. I learned what I know from two main sources: my in-person writing group, and Sisters in Crime. Reading scenes aloud to four or five other excellent writers and hearing their critiques has taught me so much. Attending nearly every Sisters in Crime – New England event for the last seven years has been a wonderful education, and reading many of the SINC and Guppies digests for the same time period has taught me everything I know about publishing. I’ve also been a faithful New England Crime Bake attendee for some years and take eager notes in the workshops. I have signed up for a couple of the online courses but somehow never quite manage to participate fully.

 

Is it normal for the protagonist to be so close to the victim? Ooh. I don’t know what’s normal. That’s just how the story came out. It certainly increased Lauren’s motivation to find the killer, though.

 

Other questions included explaining what a “cozy” is, when I possibly find time to write (weekends, retreats, plane rides…), do you set up “scaffolding” (that is, an outline – answer is no, I write into the headlights and somehow it always comes out okay), when I started reading mysteries, and more.

 

I was a bit nervous before the event. Had I remembered my favorite pen for signing? Would they set out enough chairs? Which earrings should I wear? But I found myself very relaxed once it started. It helped that I had written out my remarks and had rehearsed the scene I read aloud. But I think I most enjoyed the question-and-answer period, which surprised me a little.

 

Do you have any questions for me? What question do you ask an author at an event, or which question do you find yourself being asked most often?

 

 

Edith Maxwell is the author of SPEAKING OF MURDER (Barking Rain Press, September 2012, under pseudonym Tace Baker), which features Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau.

Edith also writes the Local Foods Mysteries. A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE introduces organic farmer Cam Flaherty and a colorful Locavore Club (Kensington Publishing, June 2013). Edith once owned and operated the smallest certified organic farm in Essex County, Massachusetts.

A technical writer and fourth-generation Californian, Edith also writes short crime fiction and lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats.