LUCY BURDETTE: We love having our pal Barbara Ross visit the Reds because it means another book is coming soon! She has a giveaway too--that will be happening over at our Reds and Readers Facebook group. So after reading the post, pop over to the group to leave a comment and be entered in the drawing!
BARBARA ROSS: Hello, Jungle Red community! I am so happy to be back here. I’m especially pleased to be celebrating my most recent release, Easter Basket Murder, a novella collection, containing stories by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and me. My contribution to the collection is the novella, “Hopped Along.”
I’m especially pleased because one of the Reds—Julia Spencer-Fleming—was instrumental in the story’s origin.
In the early fall of 2022, I was invited on a weekend writing retreat. The participants included Maine writers Brenda Buchanan, Julia, and our hostess, Robin Facer. The house where we met was spacious with several writing spaces with wonderful lake views. The plan was to work on individual projects during the day, and then meet in the evening for food, wine, and conversation. After dinner we would read from the day’s work, or talk through a knotty plot problem, or discuss, endlessly, the crazy publishing world in which we found ourselves. And as is always the case when crime writers get together, we would laugh and laugh.
One of the reasons I committed to the retreat—besides, you know, fun—was that I was sitting on a time bomb. I had a contract to write a novella. It was due in seven months. At any moment my editor at Kensington was going to ask for my synopsis.
I’d known of the theme, Easter Basket Murder, for over a year at that point. In all that time, I hadn’t come up with a single useable idea. My first thought was, “severed head in an Easter Basket.” I maintain you can do pretty much anything in a cozy if you write it right. In Boiled Over, the second book in my Maine Clambake Mystery series, a foot comes bouncing out of a clambake fire. No one has ever complained. But think as I might, I couldn’t figure a way to make the head in the Easter basket anything but gruesome. That I was getting nowhere told me I wasn’t inspired by the idea.
My novellas are always third in these collections. That means the obvious murder, in this case a murder caused by some item or substance in an Easter basket, will have been used by the time the reader gets to my story. So, I try to come at the theme a little sideways. Another consideration was that Kensington novellas are contracted for between 25,000 and 35,000 words. At that length, only one of my first five novellas was structured like a classic whodunnit. The others were much more like short stories with more of a whatisgoingonhere or whattheheckhappened sort of thrust, and then—twist!
So that is what I knew when I arrived at the retreat. Come at the theme sideways. Surprise the reader with a twist. But I had none of these things, especially not a twist.
When I sat down that first day to write, I found, as writers almost always do, that I knew more about my story than I thought I did. I knew the opening setting—the newly renovated mansion on the island where my protagonist Julia Snowden and her family run their authentic Maine clambakes. I knew the occasion—Easter lunch. And I knew the attendees—Julia’s family and friends, most of the regulars in my cast.
I had one bright image of the opening scene, which I often do when writing, especially when writing a short story. There was a man, an older man, dressed in a morning suit, lying in a vegetable patch, a top hat, and an Easter basket nearby. Julia’s six-year-old nephew finds him while hunting for eggs. He runs to tell the grownups that the Easter bunny is dead in the garden.
Now there was plenty to explore. Why was the man dead in the garden? Why was he dressed like that? I knew he was an old-fashioned butler, not a participant in a wedding for example. I only have one regular character wealthy enough to have ever had a butler, so now that character was in the mix. Complicating things, I discovered as I learned more about the man in the morning suit, I liked him. I wanted Julia to get to know him when he was alive. But how if he was dead in the vegetable garden in the very first scene? Flashbacks? No, because if Julia had met him before, she would recognize him and that would cause all kinds of complications.
It was in this hopeless muddle I reported in that evening. Everyone jumped into the spirit of the challenge, tossing out ideas. (It’s much easier and more fun to write someone else’s book than your own.) We kept going, and in the nature of brainstorming, a lot of the ideas weren’t ones I was going to use. But if you generate enough ideas…Eureka! There it was. My twist. And the solution to the mystery. And the solution to the problem of Julia meeting the man while he was alive. Or did she?
I don’t remember who came up with what. It was definitely a group effort. A very talented group. I am forever grateful.
Readers: Have you ever had a knotty problem someone with an outside perspective helped you solve? Tell us about it. To be entered in the drawing for a hardcover copy of Easter Basket Murder, leave a comment in the Reds and Readers Facebook group.
Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara’s Maine Clambake novellas are included along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in six holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. Her twelfth Maine Clambake Mystery, Torn Asunder, will be published on April 23. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com
Buy Links for Easter Basket Murder
Easter Basket Murder Book Description
Put on your springtime best and grab a basket, because Easter egg hunting is to dye for in this delightful new collection of Easter-themed capers set in coastal Maine and featuring fan-favorite sleuths from the long-running, bestselling cozy mystery series by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross!
EASTER BASKET MURDER by LESLIE MEIER
Tinker’s Cove businesses are clashing over a new Easter Basket–themed promotion to boost in-store sales, with tensions boiling over the grand prize—a mysterious golden egg crafted by a reclusive Maine artist. When the one-of-a-kind art piece is stolen, it’s up to part-time reporter Lucy Stone to investigate three struggling entrepreneurs who stick out in the local scene. But a huge town scandal comes into focus when a harmless shopping spree turns deadly, leaving Lucy to stop a murderer from springing back into action . . .
DEATH BY EASTER EGG by LEE HOLLIS
As Bar Harbor’s annual egg hunt approaches, Island Food & Spirits columnist and restauranteur Hayley Powell is thrilled to introduce her grandson, Eli, to local springtime traditions. Turns out, keeping up with a rambunctious toddler isn’t always sunshine and rainbows—especially when a decadent peanut butter treat kills the Easter bunny himself during the festivities! Now, with a clear-as-cellophane case of murder on her hands, it’s up to Hayley to crack the clues and scramble deadly plans before it’s too late . . .
HOPPED ALONG by BARBARA ROSS
Julia Snowden’s Easter Sunday at Windsholme, a sprawling mansion tucked away on a remote Maine island, looks like it’s been borrowed from the pages of a lifestyle magazine. But when a dead body is discovered in the garden—then vanishes soon after without any explanation—an innocent hunt for eggs becomes a dangerous hunt for answers. With no clues beyond a copy of The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, Julia must find out if April Fool’s Day came early or if she’s caught in a killer’s twisted game . . .
