Gardening and Dreams

Lea Wait, here. When I think of my grandparents, especially my grandmother, I think of her gardens. In her home in

My Grandmother, when she was 22

Roslindale, Massachusetts, where I spent some of my earliest years, she had a wonderful large rectangular rose garden, with a circular brick path in the middle that I loved to run around. I also loved to fill jars with the Japanese beetles that ravaged those roses – and pull off their legs.

So — her garden wasn’t entirely a romantic experience. At least for the Japanese beetles. 

After my grandfather retired, my grandparents shared a home with my parents in New Jersey in the winter months, but, in the summer, they all shared the home in Maine where I live now. My grandparents would head for Edgecomb as soon as they deemed it warm enough — usually in early April — so they could start gardening. They installed a kidney-shaped iris garden near the porch, and a large garden near the barn which included raspberry bushes, vegetables, and flowers. The raspberries were especially important to them since during the hard days of the Depression when they’d lived in New York City they’d dreamed of being able to grow and eat raspberries.

My grandmother would get up early to “beat the birds to the berries,” and lay the damp, ripe red raspberries she’d picked on cookie sheets to dry on card tables at one end of our kitchen. Later in the day they’d be turned into raspberry pies or shortcakes — or, if not perfect, jams, jellies, or syrups for the winter months. Tomatoes were canned. Mint became mint jelly for winter lamb. And, of course, we had fresh flowers all summer, and fresh salads, and vegetables for the table. I helped to some extent by weeding and picking berries and vegetables and stirring sauces and straining jellies, but my mother and grandmother did most of the work. By the time I was old enough to make a major contribution I was assigned to lawn mowing, and by fourteen I had a summer job as well.  But the garden, and its products, were all part of our summers in Maine.

When I had my first home in New Jersey I, too, had a garden. I planted daffodil bulbs in the fall because I loved spring flowers, and I grew vegetables and a few annuals in the summer. I was a single parent, and the vegetables helped with my budget as well as being fun to grow.  The snow peas seldom made it to my stir fries: my daughters ate them off the vines.  I loved that.  Somehow, despite working full-time and studying for my doctoral comps, I remember canning tomatoes until the wee hours of the night (or morning,) and being proud of the line of canned tomatoes and tomato sauce on the shelves lining the steps to our basement.

One year a lot of tomatoes ripened just as we were to leave for our Maine vacation. Not wanting to lose that fruit, I packed two grocery bags full of ripe or near-ripe tomatoes, put them on the passenger seat next to me, the children in the back seat, and headed north. I figured I’d make tomato sauce in Maine. 

It was a hot July day. As we drove through New Jersey and New York traffic, the tomatoes kept ripening. And, as I took a sharp right exit  turn onto the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut … both bags of tomatoes fell.  Sideways.  Onto me. 

To shrieks of delight from my daughters, I found myself driving the remaining six hours to Maine covered with smashed, ripe tomatoes. In our family, that turn will forever be known as “the tomato turn.”

It turned out that was my last garden. I moved again, to a larger house, when my family grew, but although I started a garden there, nothing grew. We were on a hill, and there was little topsoil. 

Daffodils in Lea’s Yard Today

 The lawn was mostly moss, and even my daffodils didn’t grow, although every year I persistently planted more bulbs. 

So when I finally was able to move to Maine full-time, I knew one thing I wanted to do was bring back the gardens. They had long since disappeared; there’d been no one to take care of them since my grandparents died so, gradually, they’d been taken over by lawn. I hired someone with a tractor and started again. I planted vegetables, and flowers. That first year I was busy, writing, and taking care of my mother, and didn’t give the garden the care it needed. The flowers survived to some extent. The vegetables provided fodder for various types of insects and the local woodchuck. But I discovered, to my delight, that the violets and johnny jump-ups that my grandmother had loved appeared, as though by magic, in the places she had planted them, so many years before.  

And in the fall I planted daffodils.

And they bloomed in the spring.

Violets Along the Path

I soon realized my writing and my family were more important to me than my garden so it, too, is now gone; all that is left now is the slate path I laid that first year. The daffodils delight me every spring, and I add to them regularly. 

But every year, near that slate path in the grass, the violets come back, reminding me that my grandmother lived her dream here, in this house; in this yard. She wanted a garden, with raspberries. And she made that happen.

I, too, had a dream. I wanted to write. And I’m making that happen. Her violets are here as witnesses. I don’t think she’d be disappointed that I haven’t continued her garden. I think she’d like that this house is still a place where dreams come true.

Stealing Words

My name is Lea Wait, and I am a thief.

I steal words.

I’m stealthy. I don’t steal more than one, or possibly two, at a time, so tracing their origins would be impossible, even for me.  I steal them from friends and relatives and CNN commentators. I reach out and boldly snatch them from overheard conversations at grocery stores or farmers’ markets or coffee shops. But, worse of all, most of the words I’ve stolen have come from those in my own profession. I steal them from other writers.

I steal them for the same reason a jeweler might steal a jewel: they are so beautiful I can’t resist taking them and making them my own.

I carry a notebook, as most writers do, and it is in that notebook that I capture those precious, fleeting, words. Often they are sensory words. Images. Words I recognize, I admire, but that I don’t always use myself. Or that I suddenly see, or hear, in a different way. That remind me of smells or sights or tastes that fit in scenes in the book I’m writing. They are treasures. I hoard them.

I copy them onto lists and I read them over, cherishing the way they feel, before writing or rewriting a certain scene, or before  starting my work for the day. They evoke feelings. Memories. They are almost a meditation. Sometimes they form themselves into short phrases.

What are some of the words and phrases on my list now, as I start a new book?

Sea lavender, wishing stones, frayed, wafted, cobalt blue, gray skeletal pilings, the scent of lavender in an old pine bureau, the front of a house painted white while the back is wind-grayed, socked in, glowing, fingers grazing, skittered, slog, fragile, mud and mould and rotting fish, screams of fishers in the dark, creak of hardwood boards, shabby, clamoring.

And many more. Some of them will no doubt end up finding homes in my book. Or the one after that. Some will not. But reading them over will remind me why I love writing. Words are my tools.

Go ahead. I dare you. Steal some of mine. Words are magic. Used by different authors, they tell different stories. And yet, standing alone, or in limited company, they contain their own messages. They sing their own songs.

Fannie Farmer Ruled Our Kitchen

I’m Lea Wait, and although I now live in Maine, and many of my books are set there, I’ll admit that, technically, I am not a Mainer. I was born in Boston. Boston, indeed, has been the hub of the maternal side of my family since 1889, the year my great-grandmother and grandfather arrived there from Edinburgh to begin their life together, and my grandmother joined them, the requisite nine months later, in 1890. 

Those first few years were busy – starting an import business, traveling back and forth to Ireland and Scotland, and managing to make my grandmother the oldest of seven in fairly regular fashion. I don’t know when Fannie Farmer’s cookbooks joined the growing family, but my grandmother once told me her mother often referred to it for “American recipes.” By the time she told me that, of course, that original cookbook was long worn out and my grandmother and mother had their own copies of later editions, one of which is now mine.                                                                                                                                                                       

I grew up knowing that if Fannie Farmer or Betty Crocker didn’t know the answer about cooking, it wasn’t worth knowing. But it wasn’t until recently that I learned more about Fannie herself. 

Born in 1857, she’d suffered a stroke in her teens, and become seriously disabled. Finally, in her mid-twenties, she was able to walk again, although with a limp, and decided she wanted to attend the well-known Boston Cooking School. She graduated when she was 32, and was asked to remain there as an administer, and, eventually, as the director of the school. It was then that she wrote the book she’s remembered for: The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, known almost universally as “Fannie Farmer.”  Her publisher, Little Brown, initially turned the book down, so in 1896 Farmer suggested she herself would pay for the first printing of 3,000 copies. They sold, and Little Brown didn’t hesitate again. They made the right decision. Since then the cookbook has gone through many editions, and has sold nearly 4 million copies. (Farmer and her heirs still retain the copyright.)  

My editiong  of the Cook Book (from 1942,) includes thirty-seven chapters devoted to subjects from menues and beverages to cheeses, garnishes, sauces,poultry and game (including pigeons), confections, pickles, and frozen desserts. At the beginning is a list of “Fifty Basic Recipes for Students and Beginners” which starts with “white bread,” and goes on to include ”brown stock,” “mayonnaise,” “soft custard,” “french souffle,” “puff pastry”, “petits fours, ” and “jelly.”  Clearly Fannie had high expectations for her cooks.

Many of my family’s Christmas cookies and puddings come straight from Fannie Farmer, and if I have any doubt about a recipe I remember my mother or grandmother making, I go straight to the book I know may be the source.  She seldom fails me.

Thank you, Fannie Farmer, for being a part of my family’s life for more than three generations.

The Blizzard of 2013

First of all — despite the media hype — unless you were one of the unfortunates still somehow surviving without heat or light as a result of Superstorm Sandy (when did we decide that calling a storm a Hurricane wasn’t bad enough?) the blizzard (or “nor’easter,” which is what it was called in New England for most of its duration) was survivable for most people in its path.

Wind-shaped snow on Lea’s porch the day after the storm

Yes, I know that, unfortunately, fourteen people died as direct or indirect consequences of last weekend’s storm.  No, you shouldn’t have been driving on the Long Island Expressway after the snow started falling. Yes, most people from New Jersey to Maine, especially those living close to the coast, had to do some digging out. And some of them were without power (i.e. light, heat, water) for hours, and some for a day or two or maybe three. Not good when temperatures were below freezing.

Maine woods, day after storm

But for the most part, the storm could have been worse. It fell on Friday and Saturday, so most people missed only a day of school or work. It gave lots of notice, and overtime to weather forecasters, news reporters, municipal employees, utility workers, and, of course, anyone who had a decent snow plow. No one could say they didn’t have time to stock up on food, batteries, water, gasoline, shovels, salt, candles or any other supplies they felt necessary. From the posts on Facebook (and there were many) it appeared a lot of people were hunkered down in front of their computers, comparing notes with friends on the comfort foods they were cooking, their favorite storm-libations, the books they were reading, the movies they were watching .. in short, people were having a snow day. And when the snow stopped falling, they snapped pictures of it and posted them so everyone could see just how high the drifts were in their own back yard. 

I did the same.

Although, since I live in a  house built in 1774 which has survived many storms, quite possibly worse storms, I also thought of those who’d lived through those storms within these same walls. Lived here without running water. Or electricity. Or a furnace. Ever. Not just for a few hours during a storm. Yes, they had fireplaces. (Five.) And a wood stove in the ell kitchen and in what was likely the hired man’s room on the second floor of the ell. And they had the luxury of a privy in the far corner of the barn, so you wouldn’t have to go out “into the weather.” 

I also thought of years when the wide tidal river outside our house  froze solid enough for much of the winter so you could walk across it to the next town. It hasn’t done that since the 1850s. There’s a bridge, now.

I thought about 1888, when there were two major blizzards; one in January in Nebraska, remembered as the Children’s Blizzard. It came on so suddenly, after a January thaw, and in the middle of the day, that over 230 people, about a hundred of them children, died because they lost their ways in the white-out and fierce winds and froze trying to return home from school or town. 

And that other Blizzard of ’88, from March 12-14, that blanketed the East Coast from Chesapeake Bay to Maine with forty to fifty

Snow on Telephone & Telegraph Wires – Blizzard of 1888 – NYC

inches of snow. In those days when telephone and telegraph wires darkened the skies, the heavy snow took many of the wires down, eliminating communication, Two hundred ships were grounded, One hundred mariners were among the over 400 people who died in that storm. Fire station horses couldn’t get through the snow and fires damaged over $25 million in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The Blizzard of ’88 was one of the major justifications for the NY City subway system. 

So, as I’m now looking out my window onto three to five foot high piles of drifted snow, I don’t see any reason to complain. The driveway to the barn, where our car is parked out of the weather, is plowed. The road is clear, only 48 hours after the storm (and after a few more inches of snow fell this morning.) I’m writing on a computer in a room filed with heat and light.  I don’t  have to go and haul in wood for our stove …  although we do have a wood stove in my husband’s studio, which he uses for heat, and we could use it in an emergency.

The former occupants of this house would be amazed. And, I suspect, jealous. And would consider us wimps.

And probably we are. The weather forecasters say they don’t know how much snow fell back in those days. Darn right we don’t. The folks then were too busy keeping warm. They melted snow for water; they moved it out of the way; they put boards on top of it so horses or oxen could push it down; harden it so it could be safely walked on.

They didn’t have time to measure it. What good, I can hear them laughing, what possible good, would measuring it do? There’ll just be more of the stuff tomorrow.

They didn’t even have a Weather Channel to call reports in to; or a Facebook to post pictures on. How ever did they survive?

Shadows of … the Sea Disaster of the (19th) Century

Lea Wait, here.  Maggie Summer, the protagonist in my Shadows Antique Print Mysteries, calls her antique print business “Shadows,” because, as she explains, “old prints are reflections of what our ancestors chose to record of the world they knew. When we look at an antique print today we can almost see through their eyes, at shadows of a distant past.” 

Antique prints to me are like  mysteries. I love discovering “the story behind the story.”  Who was the artist? Why did he or she draw that subject, in that way? Why were those subjects popular … or not? In some cases … what WERE those subjects?

At the head of every chapter in my antique print mysteries I post a catalog entry for a real antique print.  Sometimes the print is a clue to the killer.  Sometimes it’s a clue to what will come next in the plot. Sometimes it’s like a sidebar, just adding a bit to the theme of the book.  It all depends. 

Shadows on a Cape Cod Summer, which will be published April 7, and can be pre-ordered now, opens with Maggie arriving on Cape Cod to help her best friend, Gussie, prepare for her wedding. While waiting for Gussie to return home, Maggie takes a walk on the beach … and finds a body.

The print I chose for the beginning of chapter 1 is an engraving by Winslow Homer printed in Harper’s Weekly, a weekly New York newspaper, on April 26, 1873.  Homer was not then the famous oil painter he was soon to become. He was “our special artist” for Harper’s. In the days

Winslow Homer’s “The Wreck of the ‘Atlantic’ – Cast Up By the Sea”

before cameras, artists provided visuals for newspapers, and Homer’s The Wreck of the Atlantic: Cast Up By The Sea was an illustration of a news story. 

Today, when we think of major sea disasters, we think first of the Titanic. which struck an iceberg and went down in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, taking 1502 people with her. But almost 40 years earlier there had been another North Atlantic disaster, ironically, of a ship also owned, as the Titanic was, by the White Star Line. 

The RMS Atlantic’s route was Liverpool to New York City.  It ran into rocks off the coast of Nova Scotia and sank. Although residents of nearby fishing villages tried to rescue passengers, 535 people drowned, including every woman and child on board. 

Homer’s drawing was a tribute to those who had perished. In later years, when he lived in Prouts Neck, Maine, and often painted the rocks and surf of the North Atlantic, he was said to talk of the horrors of the Atlantic disaster.

Currier & Ives – “The Wreck of the ‘Atlantic’”

The Atlantic went down on April 1, 1873.  Within days Currier & Ives, many of whose “prints for the American people” reflected disasters such as fires, floods, and battles, rushed a lithograph into print to meet the public’s demand for information about the disaster.  It shows the ship on its way down, with people in the sea and in lifeboats, has details of the disaster printed beneath the picture, and was rushed into print so quickly that it reports that “562 lives were lost, of 952 persons on board.”  Actually, not quite that many lives were lost: some men had made it to shore and not been counted until several days after the ship had gone down.

In a world in which we sit in front of our television sets and expect the details of events within minutes of their occurring, complete with pictures, sound, bodies, and blood — it is sometimes good to remember that in the not too distant past, it was days, or even weeks, before details of a tragedy could be verified and shared with the public. Looking at the two prints of that 19th century sea disaster, it is hard to argue that knowing the details a day or two earlier would have made a difference.

We remember the Titanic, because of the hubris of the architect and the engineer; because of the fame of the passengers; and because of the number of people lost. But the two prints on this page have made sure that we will not forget the 562, many of them women and children, who died on the Atlantic. They’ve left their shadow on history.

Everyone Has A Secret …

Lea Wait,  blogging today.

Secrets are the basis of any good story, and, especially, of any good mystery. Secrets from the past, family secrets, passionate secrets, violent secrets, embarrassing secrets, or just … those little things everyone does that they don’t want anyone else to know about. 

In my latest mystery, Shadows of a Down East Summer, a family secret from 1890 changed the way a family saw itself, and its place in the community … until a newly discovered diary threatened to reveal what had really happened back in the nineteenth century. Revealing that secret became a motive for a murder today.

Secrets are powerful. 

Psychologists believe that telling our deepest, darkest, most horrible, secrets is good for the soul. Priests and therapists, and, isometimes, doctors and lawyers, make a business of listening to them.  So does a man from Maryland named Frank Warren.

And you, too, can hear the secrets thousands of people have shared with him. If you’re a writer, maybe they’ll give you an idea for a story. Or a detail for a character. If you’re just a curious person (aren’t we all?) maybe they’ll give you something to think about. 

In January of 2004  Frank Warren had an idea. He printed 3,000 self-addressed postcards and handed them out on the streets of Washington, D.C., with a note inviting people to write down their secrets anonymously and send the postcard back to him. The secret could be anything – as long as they’d never told it to anyone before. 

And people did.

Word got around. He now has over 500,00 postcards. People decorate cards with pictures, and send him their deepest secrets. The secrets range from serious (“My friend’s fiance has already cheated with three people. I know because two of them are my husband and me.”) to the most frequent confession (“I pee in the shower.”)  Many are about loneliness. Some are silly. (“Sometimes I don’t wear underwear at work.”) Some are scary. (“I’m afraid if Obama is re-elected my mother will kill herself.”)  Some are sad. (“My sister hates me because Uncle Joe paid for my college and not hers. She doesn’t know he made me sleep with him.”)

If you’d like to see some of the secrets, Warren has a blog … http://www.postsecret.com  He posts new secrets every Sunday.  

He’s also had 5 books of the postcards published. And now he tours, most often to college campuses, where he shares his thoughts on secrets, and then invites members of his audience to share their secrets.  And, amazingly, they do.  

Mystery writers make a living out of revealing secrets. And so, now, does Frank Warren. Because not only does everyone have secrets … everyone would love to know everyone elses.

My Favorite Books On Writing

Every author has them:  go-to books on writing they turn to when plots won’t thicken, when the right word won’t appear, or when the fog on the river seems to have clouded their entire manuscript. 

Writing is by definition a lonely task. First on my list includes several that have, on days when I felt not even my best writing friend would understand, been the shoulders I’ve gone to for solace, for guidance, and, yes, to hear that for someone else life had been even worse, and writing, and sanity, had survived.  (Told you – these are for the truly bad days!) 

Number one on my “getting through the bad times” list is, appropriate titled, Writing Past Dark, by Bonnie Friedman. This book isn’t about writing techniques or about critique groups. It’s about the emotional side of writing: the need to be perfect. The fear of what will happen if you write about your family or close friends.  The envy of other writers, who seem to have figured it all out.

Number two, for days when you’re sure your problems are worse than anyone else’s, is Stephen King’s On Writing. Not only does he throw in some real writing advice — he convinces you you’re not working hard enough. Plus, you’re (probably) not even on drugs or alcohol. What’s your problem?  And if you’re still hesitating, and need a gentler push, there’s Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. A book no writer should be without.

OK. So, psychologically, you’ve got it together. YOU do.  It’s your plot that has the problems. For plot issues, my go-to book is Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. Once I wrote an entire book based on its outline — but even when I don’t do that, it’s my “go-to ” book if something in my plot is sagging. 

I’ve found other keys to putting me back on track in the books literary agent and novelist Donald Maass has written. He’s known for his Writing the Breakout Novel, and I like it, too, but right now my favorite is his newest book, Writing 21st Century Fiction: High Impact Techniques for Exceptional Storytelling. He lists questions for you to ask yourself, and your characters, about their motivations, and I find the answers to those questions are often exactly what I need to move my story forward. 

And finally, for those perfect words that escape capture at just the wrong moments, my go-to thesaurus is Roget’s Super Thesaurus, which I’ve almost worn out. And I have a new one, untried by time, but it has possibilities:  The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi,  which includes physical, mental and internal reactions to various emotions.  Some of them are trite  … but used sparingly they could be helpful.         

Of course, all of these books are crutches of some sort. But, as I started – writing can be lonely. And sometimes we all need a little help from our friends. 

What are your favorite books on writing?

Lea Wait’s Favorite Jail

1811 Jail & Jailer’s House, Wiscasset, Maine

The first time I went to the 1811 jail in Wiscasset, Maine, I was ten years old, and checking off historic places in Maine I wanted to see in a guidebook my mother had bought.

I remember the dark granite cells; the dank smell which permeated the thick walls even though the filth tubs and pallets of straw and unwashed bodies had long since departed. Most of all, I remember the locked wooden rooms above the granite cells that once had held non-violent women, children, the insane, the contagious, and debtors. Together.  Memories of that jail stayed with me for years.

When I began writing historical novels for young people set in Wiscasset it wasn’t surprising that scenes in that jail began to appear in my books. First, in Wintering Well, where I included the visit of the doctor assigned to visit prisoners in the jail, and then in Finest Kind,  in which my young protagonist gets a job working at the jail.  In both books, all the people at the jail — from the jailer and his family to every prisoner named — are the real people who were there at the time I’m writing about. 

Today, as a docent at the jail, I’m the guide who takes people through the cells, and the attached jailer’s house (it was strongly recommended that jailers be married, and all but one were) where the jailer’s wife prepared three meals a day not only for her (usually large) family but for however many prisoners (between 4 and 30) were in residence.  In 1904 breakfast and supper both consisted of tea, 3 biscuits, and gingerbread. Dinner (the mid-day meal in New England) was soup and two biscuits, except for Sunday, when it was roast meat, potatoes — and — you guessed it — biscuits. 

Door into Cell

The jail was begun in 1809, and built of granite from a quarry in Edgecomb, across the river, and completed in 1811, just in time for the War of 1812. (Yes, for a short time it held some British sailors. British officers were housed as gentlemen — in the homes of Wiscasset’s finest families.) The walls of the jail are 41 inches thick at the base, and 31 inches thick at the roof.

Lock on door to 1st floor of cells

Heat for the prisoners was provided by one woodstove on each floor of the prison (in the hall)which was replaced by a stove heated by coal in the later part of the 19th century. It can’t have been very warm in winter months inside the  granite cells, although granite does hold some heat.  The most dangerous prisoners were kept in cells on the first floor, which has the thickest cells, designed for two prisoners, although, as with jails today, if there was a rowdy night at the tavern, more people might be housed there for a night or two.

In the nineteenth century boys were sent to jail for stealing apples or breaking windows at the school; adultery, theft, assault, counterfeiting and arson were relatively common charges for adult criminals. Until the middle of the 1830s, debtors were imprisoned, but most were given “freedom of the town” during the day to earn money, but had to return to the jail at night.

One cell was the “solitary” cell — it has only a slit for light, and a thick  door. There was no electricity anywhere in the jail, of course, so none of the cells were very light, but some of them had slightly larger iron barred windows. (Which in a few cells show signs of attempts to cut through them.) 

In Finest Kind I based a major scene on something that happened December 3, 1838. A blizzard was blowing up hard. Samuel Holbrook, the jailer at the time, was also the school master, so he and his pregnant wife, parents of three young children, had

Jailer’s Kitchen

fed the prisoners, and Holbrook had left to start the stove at the school, a mile or so away.  His wife was alone with her children when students on their way to school the house was on fire. One of them ran to tell Holbrook and get the Wiscasset fire department; the other got Mrs. Holbrook and her children out of the burning house, and then got the key to the jail and, one by one, got all the prisoners out of their cells and tired them to trees in the jail yard. By the time the fire department arrived the house had burned to the ground and the wooden parts of the jail had collapsed — but no one had been hurt. 

The prisoners were taken to the poor house to be confined there until the jail could be reconstructed.  The new jailer’s house was made of bricks. So if you visit the jail today, the first two floors of cells will be the originals, built in 1811; the third floor and the roof, and the jailer’s house,  in 1839.

Lea, dressed as docent, in jailer’s dining room

The jail was used full-time until 1913. After that it was used on an ad hoc basis:  for example, the cells held liquor seized during Prohibition — and as a result it’s the only jail in Maine that people tried to break INTO. At different times up until the mid 1950s it was also used to temporarily hold prisoners awaiting trial in the nearby Lincoln County Courthouse.  

Today it’s a museum cared for by the Lincoln County Historical Association, open to the public on summer weekends from 12-4, or by appointment.  If you visit the coast of Maine, it’s worth a stop. Stepping inside is a step into our past.

Learning from Readers

Lea Wait, here.  Last week I visited a book group that meets at the library in Meredith, New Hampshire once a month. Every month they read a mystery. They’d read my Shadows on the Coast of Maine, the second in my Shadows Antique Print Mystery series, and, despite the three-hour drive each way, I was delighted to spend the day driving through sections of Maine I don’t travel often, up into New Hampshire, to Lake Winnepausaukee, where their lovely lake-side community is located.

(In the past year Lake Winnepausaukee has been in the news because GOP candidate Mitt Romney has a home there. He lives in Wolfeboro — a town on the other side of the lake from Meredith. No Romneys are members of the Meredith Mystery Book Club.)

To prepare for my visit I reviewed the book they’d read (It wasn’t one of my more recent ones,) and, since I’d used the history of my own home (built in 1774 and moved to the mainland from an island in 1832) as the history of the house in the book, and tearing down a wall to find the original fireplace was a key scene in the book, I took a picture of the fireplace along with me.

1774 Fireplace in Lea’s House

They liked that. But the most fun of meeting with a book group is always the questions they ask, and the comments they make.

“How long did it take you to write the book?” (About five months.)  “Did you know there’s a typo on page … “(Yes. It’s too late to fix it now, but thank you for reading so closely you noticed.  They do escape!)  “Do you think of the characters or the plot first? (The characters.) “Do you know at the beginning of the book who the murderer is?” (Usually, but not always.)

Of course, it’s wonderful when readers praise your books. But this group of readers also had several pieces of advice for writers.  They assure me that my books met their criteria, but many mysteries they read did not.  What troubled them?

They disliked mysteries “crowded with characters.”

“When there are too many characters, especially characters whose names all sound the same, it’s impossible to keep them all straight,” announced one woman. “Sometimes I even make lists. Drives me crazy.  I give up after a while if I have to work too hard. A mystery is supposed to be relaxing – not a memory test.”

“That’s right,” agreed another woman.  “And all those characters with names that sound the same.  Ginny and Jeannie and Jenny and Susie and Sissie.  Jim and John and Joe. Why can’t authors give people names that look and sound different? I’m a fast reader and sometimes I confuse the characters. It’s a pain to have to go back and figure out who’s the brother-in-law and who’s the college friend and who’s the district attorney.”

“You tell your friends who write to be more careful in naming their characters,” directed a third woman. “You tell them if we wanted to read War and Peace we’d be reading it. We just want to be entertained by a good plot. We read all kinds of mysteries. But none of us like to take the time to memorize lists of characters.”

Nods around the table.

So. Assignment given, and taken. Mystery writers, I’m passing on the word. A minor character doesn’t have to have a name. A bartender can just be “the bartender.”  A secretary can just be “the secretary.”

I know some readers who will thank you.

Me and My Encyclopedias

I’m Lea Wait, and, as many of you know, I grew up in a family of antique dealers. As a child my summer Saturday mornings were spent in Round Pond, Maine, attending outdoor country auctions run by Robert Foster, father of the Robert Foster who runs auctions in Newcastle, Maine, today. My grandmother was a doll and toy dealer. My mother was looking for furniture and colonial fireplace equipment for our home. I was fascinated by the people and the antiques and the auctioneer – and how much everything sold for. I longed to be brave enough to raise my hand; to bid, like the grownups surrounding me, sitting on folding chairs in sweltering heat on that uneven lawn overlooking Round Pond Harbor. 

Every week I carefully examined all the items to be sold. While prospective buyers took notes, planning possible purchases, I fantasized about what I would purchase if I could. Two things stood in my eleven-year-old way. Courage. And funds. My allowance was small. I seldom had more than a dollar or two in my pocket. Most items at that auction, even back in those “old days,” went for a good deal more than that.

Until one July day. It was steaming hot. Not many people had shown up, and those that had brought umbrellas or large hats. Mr. Foster’s children were selling cold bottles of Moxie and Coke out of a cooler when one of the runners brought up two large boxes full of old books.  Foster held one volume up, and had the runner tip a box so possible buyers could see them.  “Here we have enough reading for the rest of the year. A really old encyclopedia. Guaranteed to be totally out of date. Who wants it?” No one said anything. Then he said the magic words. “Who’ll give me one dollar for the lot?”

My Encyclopedia Americana

And I raised my hand.

He grinned and pointed at me, not even looking for another bid. “Sold! To the young lady for one dollar!” And the runner brought the boxes over and put them on the ground next to me. 

I was in heaven.

My grandmother looked at me and smiled, shaking her head. “Now, why’d you buy those books?” she asked.

“Because some day I’m going to write historical novels,” I told her, making up an answer on the spot. “They’ll be good for reasearch.”  (I must have sounded very pompous.)

But she just nodded. And she shared my excitement when, in true antique dealer fashion, we examined the books and realized I’d just bought a complete, mint, first edition of the Encyclopedia Americana (1829-1833,) with many uncut pages. It’s stayed with me ever since, and is in my study today.

Top Shelf, 11th Edition Encyclopedia Britannica

Last week that Americana was joined, courtesy of my writing friend Sherie Schmauder who was downsizing and was blessed with two full copies, by the 29 volumes of the eleventh edition (1910-1911) of the Encyclopedia Britannica. That edition is another very special one. As with my Americana, some information in it may not be correct today. But the eleventh edition of  the Britannica includes nineteenth century information and political and social views on a myriad of issues that  is hard to find anywhere else. It was assembled when the Britannica was in transition from its British publisher to its American publisher, so it includes articles by experts from two continents. 

I look forward to exploring it, and using it when I write my next historical novel. Reference books of the period are a wonderful way to put you back in the days of your characters.   

I love my computer; no doubt. But, for me, there are times nothing can replace touching and reading the pages my characters might have looked at, one or two hundred years ago.