THE EDINBURGH MURDERS by Catriona

 Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now? 

Today it has! Reviews!

Just kidding. I never read reviews. But what I'm trying to say is that my new book is out today. In the UK only, mind you. But keep reading if you're in the US and you're interested. 

Buy links

Isn't it lovely? I'm very verbal but even I've got enough visual literacy to know that that is a great jacket. Edinburgh purists will wince, because it doesn't depict an actual street in the city; it's three building from different bits of the Fountainbridge ward smooshed together - Smiths from the main road at one end, a tenement from a side street at the other, and in the middle the building that was still an abattoir when Helen Crowther was crossing the cobbles in such a pensive mood. By the time I was living nearby, the abattoir was a nightclub - Fat Sam's - and the joke was that there had been less carnage back when ...

Why am I so sure I'll get letters about these three buildings appearing together? Usually, as long as you do it with confidence, you can make up quite a lot of stuff without anyone minding, maybe without anyone noticing. There are three exceptions to this, mind you: guns, trains and birds. 

I stay away from guns, in every possible sense.

Trains, I try to get right. But once when I had Dandy Gilver get on a train at a real station, at the right time - I checked the timetable for August 1923, and see out of the window what she would have seen out of the window, I got a complaint anyway. I'd made her enter the train, walk along the corridor and choose a carriage. And the trains on that line at that date had carriages you entered directly from the platform. My correspondent wondered why I didn't let her drive if I wasn't going to bother to get the train right.

Bird experts are different from train experts. They want to help, rather than scold, so I've got warm feelings towards them. I hope no serious birders are watching The Residence on Netflix. They'll be curled up in foetal position if Cordelia Cupp keeps looking into the pitch black night and claiming to see Eastern Meadow Larks. Unless that's a clue . . .

So you might be wondering how many architectural historians of Edinburgh are going to read The Edinburgh Murders and be upset enough to get in touch. We all survived Trainspotting, where Renton would disappear round a corner in Edinburgh and emerge on a street in Glasgow. We knew it wasn't a documentary.

But the thing is, you don't need to be an architecture buff to know about Edinburgh's built history. It's the flip side of how come it's so easy to do the research about 1948. Simply, everything's made of stone so it's all still there.

The novel opens at the public baths on Caledonian Crescent, where Helen (a medical social worker) is helping the quite large Mrs Hogg have a good scrub. Here it is:

Helen doesn't think much of the tiles in the baths. They're clean but the colour choice doesn't say "hygiene" to her. Or to me. What do you think?

Anyway, by the time she gets home that night, she's seen the dead body of a boiled man, caught her own parents out in a lie and is all set for another adventure. Even her couthy wee upstairs cottage can't quite soothe her:

But she know that the next morning, when she goes to work at the surgery on Gardener's Crescent, both Doctor Strassers will be able and willing to help:

I've loved sending her all over the city again: to a chop house at Tollcross; to the private room of a sex-worker at the foot of Gorgie Road; to the Saturday night frolics at the Haymarket pub; to an attic bolthole above the King's Theatre; and more than once to the mortuary, by the back door. Only the mortuary is different now from how it would have been in Helen's day and I'm glad. I'm far too chicken to request a research visit, more than happy to make up everything from the ironing-boardy legs on the pull-out body shelves, to the smell of stewed tea, stale buns, milk on the turn and that subtle hint of formaldehyde, in the mortuary assistants' staffroom.

If any of that sounds like your cup of stewed tea and blue milk, with or without sugar from a crusty spoon left in the bag . . . I'm doing a giveaway.

Comment here, on my Facebook page, or on Bluesky - whichever's easiest - to be entered into the draw. I'm offering one signed hardback for the US, and one for the UK. Canada will go in with the UK. I don't think they'll mind that. I'll draw names tomorrow. And this is the pic you're looking for if you find yourself scrolling

Cx

 

How I read by Eric Beetner

 Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

I’d like to think I read the same way as I did before I became a published author. I think reading “like a writer” is something that lives inside those of us who decide to take the plunge, even from a young age. 

It is similar to the way I watched films in my youth. The difference I saw in people like me who chose to attend film school, is that we saw beyond the light and shadow on the screen. I wanted to know the mechanism behind it all. I noticed camera movement, framing choices, editing styles. Most people sit and let themselves be entertained, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some just want to know how the clockwork fits together. 

I always knew the students who wouldn’t make it to graduation without switching majors. We’d watch a film and they’d have an opinion, sure, but it was binary. That was good or that was bad. But when asked to explain WHY something worked or didn’t work for them, they came up blank.

I think that dividing line stands for any art.

Writers who are readers can come across a great plot twist and marvel at how it was done. They can file away the lesson for later. A great sentence or word choice, a brilliant metaphor or smilie can inspire a writer to think differently. It’s not plagiarism, but every writer takes inspiration. As they quote from T.S. Eliot goes: “Good writers borrow, great writers steal.”

It’s a misnomer to think that writers can’t “enjoy” a book the same way if we are analyzing it the whole time. Quite the opposite. When a great story sweeps us away, we get taken as much as anyone else. But we want to know why it works when we get to the end. Conversely, if something isn’t doing it for me, I start to break down what it is I don’t like about it and make a note to avoid that in my own writing. Something that takes too long to get started. A big info dump. A reaction or dialogue that feels unnatural from the characters. I strongly feel we learn more from the stuff that doesn’t work than we do from the brilliant stuff. Sometimes it’s hard to break down the magic of a great story. But if there is an obvious flaw in a plot or a character’s action, they stand out and are great lessons to be learned.

And I know I am always trying to learn. I find as much to learn in books now and I did 30 years ago, long before I ever wrote a book.

Right now I’m reading a vintage novel. Well, vintage from 1960, which still sounds like it wasn’t that long ago but my kids feel differently. It’s called Hit and Run by Richard Deming. It’s my first Deming book and he came recommended to me by another pulp fiction fan as someone who was highly underrated. It’s true, I hadn’t heard of him before, and it’s also true that the book is great. It’s tight, pulpy, has all the hallmarks of a great Noir story. Right in my wheelhouse.

And yes, I’m taking note of every great plot twist. The way Deming withholds information from the reader to build suspense and drop a few shock moments. I’ll probably finish that one today and move on to something contemporary. And hopefully, I’ll learn something new.

Reader, Writer, Writer, Reader

 

Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Familiar with the image of the snake eating its own tail?

 

It’s called the ouroboros, and it’s also a concise metaphor for neurosis and obsession. A Hungarian scientist named August Kekulé saw the mythological creature in a dream, and it inspired his model of benzene. Instead of a linear chain of carbon atoms, Kekulé imagined a circle, and dashes around the hexagon indicated the type of bonds between the atoms. The next breakthrough in organic chemistry would come from George Olah who would prove that those carbon bonds were positively charged, but I digress.

 

Read. Write. Write. Read. 

To eat or not to eat your own tail, that is the question if you’re a writer.

Reader. Writer,. Writer. Reader.

 

I can’t speak for other writers, but I started out as a Reader, and Writer came much later in my life. Some of my peers inhaled M&Ms, and wrote their first novel with a crayon. That wasn’t me.

 

I read for pleasure, for escape, and entertainment. I was an omnivore, and that’s because I was curious and I didn’t know genre and marketing. I was young and free, untainted by the family business we call publishing. I was lucky that school had not turned me off of reading. My teachers taught me a vocabulary, such as Irony, Symbolism, Theme, and critical theory. Creativity I developed,

 

I could have remained linear: become versions of me growing old as a Reader inside my own Matrix.

 

Or I could choose to become ouroboros, and be both: Reader and Writer. I could Read and Enjoy for its own sake, or Read and feed my own creativity. Whatever I decided, I knew that I needed to stabilize the bonds, find a balance between Pleasure and Work.

 

I learned two things.

 

What you enjoy is unique to you, for whatever reason, be it personality, psychology, or heritage.

 

You are influenced by everything you read; it’s subliminal and impossible to avoid. Our eyes see images; our mind makes metaphors. We need to understand the world around us. Awareness is what keeps us safe and engaged, so what I am saying that we read ALL THE TIME whether it’s a book, the billboard, or the sketchy dude across the street. What we do with what feeds our eyes is intellectual, a study of our own thoughts.

 

My unsolicited advice to the Writer is this:

Appreciate the writers you enjoy, analyze what they do well, but transform it.

Turn off Analytical Mode. Don’t read as if you’re a competitor. It’s one thing for the snake to eat its own tail, another to choke on it.

Instead of seeing circularity as repetition and a torment, find that Stability between reading as a Reader, and writing as a Writer. You are both at once.

 

And to the question about change: you are a different person from the person who started reading this page, a different reader than you were as a kid; and you’re a better writer today than yesterday or last year. To quote Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

 

What am I reading now?

Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There.

 

 

I could read for hours...

 

Has being a writer changed the way you read? What are you reading now?

Books are a magic portal. I read that somewhere, I can’t say where. Probably a meme. But it’s true. I learned this as a little girl growing up in the inner city of Cleveland, Ohio where things were so tough outside my window, but everything I ever dared to dream in between the pages of a good book.  I’ve come to rely on their magic my whole life. For escapism, for learning, and sometimes as my only friend (high school was tough).

If I were trapped on desert island and given a choice of one luxury item to bring, it would have to be a book. A big one, like maybe the Stand, Insomnia, or It, by Stephen King. That man knows how to write a big book. Something with at least a thousand pages or more. I feel like if I can fall into a good story, any other thing is manageable.

While being a writer has changed how I read, it has not changed what I read. I still like my reading the way I like my music, boundless, as long as it touches me in some way. Whether it’s just a fun story filled with adventure, car chases, and fight scenes. Or sappy love stories that make me want to fall in love. Or a dark thriller, the kind that keeps you up at night side-eyeing that open closet door. I’m all in.

As a writer, it’s hard not be in editor mode when reading, especially if the book is not the best. I’m rewriting scenes, rearranging paragraphs, wondering if the writer has a writer’s group, and trying not give up on the story.  My writer brain always has questions, or suggestions. Like, why did they do that? Or was it really necessary to describe that tree, again? Or, my favorite, how did they come up with that description? It’s so good, I shouldn’t even bother to write anymore. Just joking, kind of

I’ve never accomplished the art of the do not finish (DNF). I can’t. I don’t know if it’s because I’m afraid I’m going to miss something or optimism that the writer will somehow turn it around, or fear that the anxiety of not knowing how the story ends would simply drive me insane. But once started this train does not stop. Yes, I do know about skimming, or skipping to the end. And, yes, I’ve tried that. But I’ve learned that it’s pointless for me. I still end up backtracking to see how the writer mucked it up so bad anyway. So, I persist to the bitter end.

 Great writing often equals inspiration, but as writers we must be careful not to be too inspired, if you know what I mean. For that reason, I try to stay away from reading books too close to my current work-in-progress.

 

Currently, I’m working on the sequel to my debut novel, Hurt Mountain. So, it’s a great time to read one of my favorite authors, Delia Pitts, mystery, Trouble in Queenstown. A story that I know will inspire me with its greatness, in all the best ways possible.

 

                                                               

 

Do you have an idea? I have twenty. On inspiration and crankiness, by Harini Nagendra

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

One of the professors in the institution where I did my PhD - the Indian Institute of Science - was infamous for his habit of deflating students, puncturing their excitement and generally running them down. 

"XXX!" one of his students was said to have shouted, running towards him down the long stone corridors at top speed, waving his hands. "I have an idea." 

XXX sneered at him. "One idea? I have twenty." 

It's easy to get ideas, he meant. Converting them into reality is hard.

Is that true? Perhaps. But in fiction writing, it's different. At times I find it very hard to get the ideas going, and at other times they come thick and fast. 

Kaveri Murthy, the main character in my Bangalore Detectives Club series, parachuted into my mind fully formed. Where did she come from? Who knows. I didn't really have a clear image of what she looked like, but I knew her mind - how she thought, what she wanted, how she would behave in any given situation. Several of the other characters in my books walked onto the page - like Mala, the beautiful young woman forced into relationships with other men by a notorious local pimp - or gentle but incisively brilliant Inspector Ismail.  

Dialogue is harder than characters, but I take my inspiration from fragments, overheard conversations. One woman was talking to another as I walked past - mimicking her neighbour who spoke non-stop, "going wata wata wata." That grabbed me, and I instantly put it into my book.   

Plots are the most difficult. I comb newspapers and old books - memoirs of travelers, policemen's autobiographies, cases written up in old magazines - and then pick the ones I like. Or I go down research rabbit holes, reading compulsively about fox hunts in Bangalore, foreign magicians who dressed up in blackface as Indian fakirs, and women wrestlers who joined the Bombay circus. The words I read linger in my mind, simmer on long walks, cook slowly during weekends spent doing other things - and suddenly, in the mysterious way plots do, they morph and twist and twine and intersplice - and then I have a plot. 

Or - equally likely - I read about interesting ideas, but they stubbornly refuse to transform into anything. I stare at the wall, fretting in impatience at plot holes - and then plod away stodgily at my writing.

I've now written four non-fiction books and four fiction books. Writing non-fiction is so much easier - making things up is hard. But it's so much fun when it suddenly clicks, and a new plot comes together...

Which reminds me, time to get started on book 5 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series... 

 

How Now from James W. Ziskin

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

Boko, thinking up ideas over tea

Ideas come, ideas go 

But HOW they do it I don’t know

They pop up here, they turn up there 

They seem to spring up everywhere

While we’re at home, at work, in bed

Or idling at a light that’s red

They often take us by surprise

In stealthy mode and in disguise

But HOW they do it none can tell

Which may in fact be just as well

For when we try to understand

The secret of some sleight of hand

The magic’s lost, ideas die

So maybe just don’t wonder why

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Peeking into the Process

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

by Dietrich

There’s no single way — ideas come from images or memories, and sometimes they come from eavesdropping on conversations.

My novel Zero Avenue began with a single scene in mind: a young woman with an electric guitar slung over her shoulder, standing in the dim light of Vancouver’s punk scene in the late ’70s. I put myself back in that time and dusted off the old Ramones albums and got into the spirit. I didn’t know the character’s name yet, Frankie del Rey came later, but I pictured her, and I knew she had a story to tell. From there, it was a matter of asking the right questions: Who is she? What’s she running from? What does she want? The rest just grew around that opening scene.

It’s doesn’t always start with a character. Sometimes it’s a place or a moment. In Call Down the Thunder, I pictured a lone figure splitting firewood in a dusty Kansas yard during the Dirty Thirties. Looming in the background was a sky heavy with an approaching dust storm. I felt that sense of doom and isolation as I started writing, and Sonny and Clara, the couple at the heart of that story, emerged from that single frame. Images like that make great starting blocks —they’re vivid, sensory, and they start me writing.

Imagination is the engine, and sometimes a news article or something online sparks it. The narco sub scene in Triggerfish came that way. I read about these subs built in secret jungle locations, loaded with cocaine and moving underwater and undetected up the coast from Mexico. I pictured a couple on a pleasure boat making out, a nice quiet evening in a West Coast cove with nobody else around. They’re just getting into the wine and making out when up pops the telescope of the narco sub, bringing its load into Canadian waters.

Memories can play a role, although I don’t write about my life in any literal sense, sometimes fragments of it can sneak into the picture. And I’ve known interesting people who I’ve based loosely characters on. A mix of fact and fiction and I come up with imaginary folk who live on the edge, some who bend the rules, and especially the ones who live to break them. 

Certain impressions stick with me too. Back when pot was still illegal in Canada, I read something about the billion-dollar weed industry here in British Columbia. It reminded me of a true story I once heard about a guy who robbed a pot field and got chased off by the farmer blasting a shotgun, the guy getting away with nothing but a backside of rock salt. As well as inspiring a scene for The Deadbeat Club, it gave me insight into the why behind it, the human impulse that makes someone take a dumb risk.

Then there’s eavesdropping — okay, I admit I’m not above leaning a little closer to catch something juicy I can use. There’s raw honesty in the way people speak to each other, especially when they think no one’s listening. Dialogue often starts from fragments like that. It gets polished and handed to characters and they make it their own.

Beyond images, memories, and overheard scraps, there’s something else: the “what if.” It can come from something small like a headline, a random fact or a fleeting thought — just an idea that grows. It’s a game of being curious and twisting facts around into something I can use. “What if” they get away? What if they double down? “What if it all works out?”

So, ideas are a mash-up of images, memories, conversations, and questions that want answers. It’s all fuel for a writer. I collect the bits and pieces and look for ways to click them into place. It starts with a simple idea for a scene. I drop in the characters and let them figure it out, allowing the story to flow scene by scene, letting it build and seeing where it leads.

   

Not Where, but How

 

Terry here with our question of the week: Not “where do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations? 

 I love this topic! 

 For many writers ideas come thick and fast. The trick is to find the ideas that have “legs,” i.e., ideas that you can live with over the course of a few months, ideas that seem like they will strike a chord with readers, and ones that you can successfully mold into a publishable work of fiction. 

But the question is how do those ideas come to the writer? Here are some possibilities: 

 1) Character—a protagonist, antagonist, or victim shows up in your imagination. This is not a fleeting image, but a character that nags at you; that wants to have his or her story told. I still remember the images from an Edgar-winning book from 2021, Please See Us, by Caitlin Mullin. I’ve always been haunted by my mental image of the victims in this stunning book. And I wonder what came first—the victims or one of the two young women who struggle with their intuitive sense that dead girls are begging to be seen. 

Or how about Eric Beetner’s The Last Few Miles of Road?

Hard for me to imagine that anything but Carter McCoy showed up first. He inhabits the novel so thoroughly, that he’s what I think of first when I think of this book. Can't wait to read the next one!

 2) Scene—a place where something happens. A place that grounds the writer and the reader in the action to come. The sights, the smells, the sounds of a place. 

Here is Catriona McPherson setting the scene in The Child Garden: 1985. It was far from silent in the dark wood. There were mice, rats too maybe, scuffling in the undergrowth, and the heavier tread of a hedgehog as it moved along the line of trees…Underneath these living sounds, the river glugged and churned, sucking at stuck logs and nudging at pebbles….So it can’t have been quiet enough to hear all those sounds when the end came.” 

 Most of my readers probably think the character of Samuel Craddock came first, but that isn’t the way it happened. I knew I wanted to write something that came straight from my heart, and my first thought was “where should I set this book? It had to be in a town based on where my grandparents lived when I was a child, because that town—its history; its public and private buildings; its landscape; its inhabitants lived inside me. Only then did I think, “Who will be the protagonist?” 

 3) Action—thrillers often start with action. A bomb goes off. Or there’s a chase. A train wreck. A spy realizes he or she has been outed. Soon the main character shows up—to avenge the dead, to catch the bad guys before the “ticking time bomb” goes off, to uncover the plot intended to bring governments to their knees. I often wonder if most thriller writers envision the action first, and then figure out who, what, and why. When Adam Sikes wrote The Underhanded, did he first see the history professor relaxing at his French country house, or did he picture the bomb that almost killed the professor? Or did he have the idea for his evil cabal? 

 4) Dialogue—does a writer like Wendall Thomas, who writes hilarious dialogue in her Cyd Redondo series, think about a conversation that sparks the idea for her next hilarious travel disaster? Or does she picture her characters in the travel agency where they work? Wherever they are, I'm sure they are talking! Do those conversations come full-blown and lead to the mayhem that ensues? 

 5) A “big” idea. I’m thinking of Ben H. Winters, and his “Last Policeman” trilogy. Maybe he had the idea for the policeman first and decided to put him in the situation that the series explores, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the idea came first—an asteroid will soon destroy the earth. What does a policeman do with regard to crime under that circumstance? It’s an intriguing premise, and Winters does it justice. 

Another book that comes to mind is David Corbett’s The Truth Against the World. The idea at the heart of the book is that the United States has erupted in violence. Dark forces have been unleashed and the country is increasingly dangerous. The characters are rich and interesting, but the “big” idea is what drives the book. 

 In my Samuel Craddock series, I often have in mind a social justice issue. This is not on a par with a “big” idea, but it’s often in the back of my mind when I start a book. I know who my protagonist is, and I know the setting, so in a sense, it’s a bit of a cheat to say that’s what drives a book. But without those issues in my mind, the series would go stale. 

 6) A situation. Capers, meant to be outrageous and funny, usually stem from some outlandish situation. I suspect that most writers of capers start with some combination of character and situation. In Rob Brunet’s hilarious Stinking Rich, a motorcycle club hires a high school dropout to tend a barn full of marijuana.

The situation is a perfect setup for the crazy plot. It hardly matters who the dropout it is, or who hires him. The situation is what the book is built around. 

 7) Memories. Yes, sometimes a memory can open up an idea for a novel. Someone remembers his Aunt Julia fainted when she hears that her old flame has been found murdered. Why did she faint? Did she think she knew who did it? Was she relieved that guy was dead? Did she think he’d died years ago? Memories can spark all kind of ideas. 

 8) Image. This is the “how” that most often happens for me. In my first book, A Killing at Cotton Hill, I started out deciding where the book would be set and who the protagonist would be, but to really get into the book I had to follow my image of my protagonist sitting on a porch in a rocker and someone coming up the steps to tell him something that would change his world. 

 For my latest Samuel Craddock, I didn’t really have a plot, but I had an image of a big truck loaded with junk, headed for a dump site. I kept ignoring it, but the image kept popping up. Eventually, without knowing where the truck was going, or what it was up to, I started writing. And boy did I ever find out what the truck was up to!

These are just a few possible ways that authors can “enter” a book. I’d love to hear from authors if they have other ways that their books beguile them into becoming “real.”

Getting into the How of Creativity

Not "where" do you get your ideas, but HOW? Do they come to you as images? Memories? Overheard conversations?

Brenda at the keyboard.

This question gets to the nuts and bolts of creativity and how it works. I'm not convinced that I can provide any concrete answers because I'm honestly not certain how or where some of my ideas come from. However, I'd say that everything in my life's experiences - where I go, what I read, conversations I've had, things I've witnessed - stay somewhere in my brain and come out on the page. They're changed to suit whatever story I'm writing, but the essence of the idea or character starts with something I've experienced.

Those events that leave the most lasting impression or that bother me are most likely to end up on the page, either as an issue or as part of a character. My books have therefore dealt with some difficult topics, although not as the main focus of the stories, which are murder mysteries at heart. In the Stonechild and Rouleau series, for example, teenage prostitution, racism, and forced marriage have all found their way into the plots.

When writing a scene, the images pop into my head, but the description of a location arises from somewhere I've been, no matter how long ago. Sometimes, the actual place can spark an idea for a story. I recently wrote a short story titled "The Final Hit" that is published in the anthology Cold Canadian Crime that began with a walk through some woods in St. Catharines. In Fatal Harvest, the third Hunter and Tate mystery, a drive home through the back roads past a village called Ashton, gave rise to the idea of a murder in the country.

As for characters and where they come from, some are based on people I've known while others might start with a character trait, but they take on their own personality as I write. Their back stories emerge along with the story.

I've often said that the process of writing has a magical element to it. The beauty of creating worlds and characters is that every author brings something different and original based on their experiences, spirit, and way of looking at the world. It's in the crafting of the stories where the intangible happens, where that je ne sais crois takes over and a new book, poem, or short story is born.

Website: www.brendachapman.ca

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A Love Letter to Sisters-in-Crime by Poppy Gee

Do you belong to any writing organizations, for crime writers or general writing—MWA? SinC, International Thriller Writers? If not, why not? If so, what value have they been for you? 

Like everyone who has posted this week, I am a big fan of Sisters-in-Crime. In 2013 when my debut novel was released, they invited me to be on a fantastic panel in Melbourne called Something Rotten in the Apple Isle. It was held in the upstairs room of a quirky 1867 corner pub. We ate dinner and then me and two authors were interviewed about our crime fiction which was set on the island of Tasmania (colloquially known as the Apple Isle because of its fairly romantic history of apple growing).

The Sisters-in-Crime event was the first time I met other crime fiction authors. It was the first time I had a chance to talk candidly with industry insiders. I met the founder of Sisters in Crime Australia, independent publisher/writer Lindy Cameron, who gave me constructive advice and kind encouragement. I’ve never forgotten how positive that experience was.

Where I live there’s not a lot for crime fiction writers – not many of us even get invited to our city’s writer’s festival. A small group of Sisters-in-Crime members are determined to change that. Initial inspiration included an event like Eric Beetner’s Noir at the Bar but we probably don't have enough crime writers to maintain that. Instead, we decided to start a series of crime fiction literary dinners.

  

Now, we host three crime fiction literary dinners each year, copying the winning format of that Sisters-in-Crime evening. One of the goals is to sell books on the night – local bookseller Books at Stones sets up a book stall at our venue. But for the authors on the panel, and for the many writers who attend, it is much more valuable than that. It’s a chance to network, make friends, swap ideas, and be part of the industry for a fun night of food, wine and conversation. 

In Australia, men are not allowed to be on the Sisters-in-Crime panel, so we alternate the literary dinners between an all-female SIC Literary Dinner and a mixed-gender panel called Wine and Crime with Ben’s Book Club. Ben Hobson is a writer friend of mine and a great conversationalist. Both nights attract about 70 guests and are very relaxed and a lot of fun.

It's been a whirlwind experience getting these evenings going. My big mistake at the first event was not checking if the microphones were working. Instead of worrying about that, I spent my time arranging vases of flowers and putting out cookies for the guests. It looked pretty, but when we began, it was a bit stressful with only one microphone working. We had to wing it. I won’t make that error again - but I'm busy making other ones!

I’m not all sunshine and smiles about writing industry mechanics. I've experienced a dodgy side of the business: the workshops, classes, and mentors that pilfer money from vulnerable, desperate writers. I haven’t been burnt by an organisation, but I’m very careful about what workshops I attend after going to more than a few that don’t do what they promise to do on the tin. And that’s not good enough!

Thanks to my People, by guest Edith Maxwell / Maddie Day

Catriona here: I've got warm feelings for most of this mystery community, and now is not the place to name the very few exceptions, but this woman? Edith Maxwell / Maddie Day? This woman I genuinely love. She's prolific without being intimidating, serious without being sombre, light-hearted without being daft, and devout without a scrap of sanctimony. This blog post is a case in point: read on for the straight gen about the mix of grit and luck in any writing career.

And now, Edith:

Thanks so much to Catriona for inviting me over to celebrate next week’s release of Scone Cold Dead! I’m thrilled that my thirteenth Country Store Mystery will finally be out in the world. 

I hear there’s a topic of the week around here about writing organizations. OMG, can I ever talk about that. It’ll involve a bit of autobiography, but what the heck. 

Bold Assertion #1: I would not be published without having been part of writing organizations, mostly Sisters in Crime. 

My new book would not be my thirteenth in a series and my thirty-seventh traditionally published mystery in twelve years. I would not have written seven traditionally published series, two of which are ongoing. I would not have thirty short stories published. I would not have been nominated seven times for an Agatha Award and won once for Charity’s Burden, my fourth Quaker Midwife Mystery. Most important, I wouldn’t have made the dear friends for life that I have (including Catriona) in the crime fiction world. 

So, can I back up Bold Assertion #1? Sure. For starters, I wrote fiction constantly as a kid but then left it aside for several other kinds of writing for a few decades. When I resumed and decided to write a cozy mystery, I found a writing group led by this year’s President of Sisters in Crime New England, Susan Oleskiw, already a multi-published traditional mystery author in the mid-nineties. That’s the first connection. 

I didn’t finish the book I’d started that year because of increased work commitments (and two growing sons and a difficult husband, now -ex), but I started writing short crime stories. My first was published in the second annual Crime Stories by New England Writers anthology in 2004. In 2006, Susan mentioned the New England Crime Bake conference, held that year in Lowell, MA, 45 minutes from my house north of Boston. 

I went for one day. Lisa Scottoline was the guest of honor. I won a raffle of books from Hallie Ephron. I bought a SINCNE calendar featuring members in all kinds of crime settings (handcuffs, the morgue, and so on). And I said, “Why am I not a member of this fabulous organization?” Readers, I joined SINC on the spot and have missed only two Crime Bakes since. I joined the conference committee and was co-chair in 2018 and 2019.

The next month I attended my first chapter meeting, a packed and welcoming gathering in Kate Flora’s living room. Sheila Connolly announced signing her first two contracts. The following meeting I met Hank Phillippi Ryan walking, gorgeous as always, into another host’s home but looking as nervous as I felt. She announced her first mystery was releasing the following year.

Over the years, Hallie mentored me. Hank mentored me, Sheila became a close friend. I joined the Guppies and studied how to write the perfect query letter. I was laid off my tech writing job and dug out that unfinished novel until I found another job. By 2011, I was shopping a finished mystery, striking out with agents, and settling for a micropress when Sheila, then New England chapter president, sent around an email to the membership saying a New York agent wanted to work with writers, published or not, on cozy mystery proposals. 

See? Connections.

“Aha!” I shouted (or perhaps whispered). “This is an opening and I’m not going to waste it.” I wrote and polished a letter, including a couple of ideas for cozy series, and hit Send. The agent called three days later while I was out walking. He sent me a sample proposal and gave me feedback. After I returned mine and the first couple of chapters of the Local Foods Mysteries, we signed with Kensington within a week. Now all five books in the series have been re-released as authored by Maddie Day, since she’s more popular these days than Edith. 

It sounds lucky, but I was ready for that opening. Besides being determined to be traditionally published, I had already laid the groundwork by learning from my people. (I used to say my tribe, but not being part of an actual indigenous tribe, that seems rude, so I stopped.)

More connections.

One of the most felicitous connections was joining forces with five other SINCNE members to form the Wicked Authors blog. Four of us had responded to that agent’s outreach and all four snagged cozy contracts at around the same time. The other two had series contracts within the next year or so. Our group effort, much like this one, boosted all of us, increased our visibility with fans, and provided a valuable support network for eleven years. (Sadly, two have left the group and the rest of us are still regrouping as to how we want to present the blog going forward.)

I’ve been so grateful for my SINC connections, for what I’ve learned from workshops and conferences and private conversations, that I served as the New England chapter president for two years (we are the second or perhaps third largest chapter, so it’s a big job). I’d be nowhere without my fellow Sisters (and Misters). I’ve been a member of MWA since I was first published, but I’m not very active in the New England chapter, and I’ve never (yet) attended the Edgars events. Still waiting for that nomination!

Of course my modest successes are mostly due to working hard alone in my office and always writing the best book I can. Here’s my latest shelfie (not including the new book).

But a couple of other writers’ groups have also provided wonderful support. In my earlier years as an author, I was part of a great in-person critique group (found, yes, through the SINCNE newsletter). I read every scene of my first five or six books to the members, who provided invaluable feedback. I’m also part of a cross-genre writers’ group in my area. We meet for social potlucks or summer parties, and sometimes have speakers or do member-reads nights. We attend each other’s launch parties and generally are a booster and resource group, but we don’t exchange critiques.

These are important connections, too. Go figure -- I guess I don’t have Bold Assertion #2. But, when asked at an author talk what my most important advice to budding authors is, I always say, “Write the best book you can, and find your people. Find the other writers in your genre. Learn from them, offer to them, form a community.” Right?

Readers: Who are your people, your organization that backs you up and teaches you?

Edith

In Scone Cold Dead, country store and café owner Robbie Jordan is just weeks away from giving birth, and it seems Robbie and her husband, dad-to-be Abe, aren’t the only ones grappling with anxiety. A stranger is causing a stir in town and Robbie’s Aunt Adele appears unusually preoccupied at the baby shower. But when someone finds a body in the ram field on Adele’s sheep farm, it’s Robbie’s turn to be worried. Especially after Chief Buck Bird uncovers a troubling link between Adele and the possible murder victim. Robbie has no choice but to knit the clues together and solve this mystery before anything else gets flocked up . . .

Maddie Day writes the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, the Cece Barton Mysteries, and the historical Dot and Amelia Mysteries. As besotted first-time Grammy Edith Maxwell, she writes the Agatha-Award winning historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at her web site, at WickedAuthors.com, and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen