Let's Launch This Thing!

Okay, so we're really rolling now. The Book Launch for Matinicus (my double mystery set on the Maine island of the same name) has officially been scheduled, so if you're a planner like me and you're going to be anywhere near Portsmouth, NH on Thursday evening, May 17, please join us at RiverRun Bookstore for a short reading and signing followed by a reception just down the street at the Portsmouth Athenæum. If you've never been the Athenæum, this alone will be worth the trip. Portsmouth's oldest cultural institution, its four floors are home to thousands of books, documents, centuries-old maps and all manner of ephemera relating to NH's Seacoast. Hope to see you there!

FYI...The cover for Matinicus is just about finalized, so be sure to check back!

"Matinicus" to be Published March, 2012

Happy to report that a just last week I signed a contract with PublishingWorks, a terrific small publisher here in NH, for the publication of Matinicus--the first of three mysteries set on the coast of Maine. Matinicus is a double murder mystery tracing the development of a stubbornly self-sufficient fishing community through the eyes of a disturbed and unhappily married island woman of the 1820s, a conflicted twenty-first century teenage girl, and a middle aged, womanizing university botanist—Dr. Gil Hodges—who arrives on-island to verify the existence of a purported 22 species of wild orchid only to find himself hounded by the ghost of a child some 200 years dead. Matinicus is the prequel to Reese's Leap, the novel I'm currently writing. PublishingWorks specializes in the fiction of New England and just as importantly from my point of view has signed on for national and international sales distribution with Publishers Group West (PGW), the leading book sales and distribution company in the United States. One thing I've learned over the last few years: distribution is everything. Funny how I found them, too. I was scouring the mystery section of RiverRun, our local indie book palace, for publishers I'd not yet submitted to. PublishingWorks had just come out with a new New England-based mystery entitled Sumner Island which was set prominently on RiverRun's "new releases" table. I jotted the name down, emailed them that afternoon, later sent them some chapters and then the full ms. Four months later, they signed me. How cool is that? Look for Matinicus in March, of 2012. Available everywhere in paperback and all e-formats!

I Killed Someone Today...

Her name was Nancy and she was pretty important at first. As the plot developed, she became extraneous. Hard as it was, she had to go.

Talking about one of my characters, of course, and she was central to the plot of Reese's Leap as it was first conceived. But much time and many chapters later, I realized she was just bogging things down. Sometimes it's like that. But plowing through 300 pages of copy in order to get rid of her was no easy task. Took days and days. A lot like surgery. Some of her lines--those I wanted to keep--and the plot elements she was involved with handed off to someone else. Some of the others now had to do double duty. They're not happy with me, I can tell you that. Now on to yet more tweaking to get the first draft ready for readers!

This shot was taken on one of the island trails that are part of the setting for the book on the fictional Mistake Island--in reality a lovely place off Brunswick, Maine.