Edith Maxwell: How in Heck Did We Get to Indiana? #BookGiveaway!

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HALLIE EPHRON: It's my pleasure to welcome back to the FRONT of the blog Edith Maxwell who is launching a new Country Store Mystery Series... yup, another series with a lovely new nom de plume Maddie Day. This time the setting is rural Indiana.  She explains how that happened.

EDITH MAXWELL/MADDIE DAY: I’m so delighted to be back here on the first blog I read every morning (seriously)! Thanks for hosting me, Hallie.

So how in heck did I come to write a mystery series set in hilly southern Indiana, you might ask? It was an easy choice for me when I was thinking about a second (well, third...okay, fourth) series. I was living in Japan after college when I decided to try my hand at a PhD. Not only did Indiana University have a linguistics program that seemed a good fit with my goals: exploring language, how women speak, and attitudes about women – yeah, tiny topic, right?

But IU and Bloomington were also a homecoming in a way, even though I’d never been there. All generations of Maxwells back to my great-great-grandfather have been associated with IU. In fact, Dr. David Hervey Maxwell was the person who successfully petitioned the Indiana state legislature in 1820 for funds to open the State Seminary, the progenitor of the university.

Pictures of my ancestors adorn the Student Union. My great-grandfather was the first dean of the IU medical school. My grandfather was the captain of the IU basketball team in 1916. Daddy was an undergrad there before he was drafted into WWII. The Maxwell Hall on campus is named for my branch of Maxwells. How could I not continue the lineage?

I was accepted to the program, came back from Japan, drove from California to Bloomington in the fall of 1977 (in a 1961 convertible VW bug with a soon-to-be-ex boyfriend), and dove into graduate school. It was a glorious and heady time. Everybody was there because they wanted to be. Edith Bedou from Togo became one of my good friends. Another was Marios from Greece. Jennifer had been in the Peace Corps in Niger. Janet had been in Barcelona. Katherine in Lesotho. We had weekly (often drunken) dance parties and skinny-dipped in the quarries, and our group of friends held monthly gourmet dinners. We also studied hard and finished our doctorates.

IU is in the southern third of the state. You might think of Indiana as part of the flat midwest (like where Hank grew up). But the glacier stopped south of Indianapolis, and the lower part is hilly and pretty, a lot like New England. Bloomington is a small town with a huge university, so it’s pretty, easy to walk and bike around in, and has easy access to neighboring scenic Brown County. And I realized the way people talk is more Kentucky than upper midwest.

One student in the linguistics program dropped out of the program and, with his girlfriend, bought a rundown general store in Brown county. They fixed it up into a breakfast restaurant and gave birth to a baby upstairs from the store. We all trooped out there for the store’s grand opening and toasted to their success  (they didn’t have any murders in the store, thank goodness).

The Story Inn is now under other management, but that was the inspiration for my series. And I love being back, even if only on the page, plus the annual visit to Brown County to refresh my stock of local phrases and scenery.

HALLIE: Thanks, Edith/Maddie - and she offers up these questions: How about a favorite dish Robbie Jordan can add to the breakfast menu with a great Midwestern flavor?

And Edith is giving away a copy of FLIPPED FOR MURDER to one lucky commenter.

Flipped for Murder: The first book in the Country Store Mysteries series features Robbie Jordan and Pans ‘N Pancakes, her country store restaurant in fictional South Lick, Indiana. When she remodels the store full of antique cookware and turns it into a local breakfast and lunch establishment, she doesn’t plan to have murder on the menu.

Edith Maxwell: Agatha-nominated and Amazon-bestselling author Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mysteries series, the Lauren Rousseau mysteries (as Tace Baker), the Country Store Mysteries (as Maddie Day), and the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction. Shel writes mystery fiction north of Boston in antique house where she lives with her beau and three cats. She blogs with the Wicked Cozy Authors.

 

"I didn't know what day it was...."

Alright, it's not Friday, it's Saturday. And Saturday night to boot, but I'm begging my blog sisters indulgence. (I feel a little like Bob Cratchit explaining to Ebenzer Scrooge
why he was late to work the day after Christmas. "I was making rather merry...")
This week has flown...six cities since Sunday..including layovers. My Friday/Saturday surprise is an entry from Joanna Slan who writes a scrapbooking series and blogs regularly on Killer Hobbies.

My Magnificent Obsession

Lately, I’ve been dreaming about marketing my book. Yesterday, I woke up and realized I was in my bed, not folding colorful brochures. I could have sworn I was putting creases in those tri-folds! After I rubbed my eyes I noticed the sheets were bunched in an odd fashion, the edges perfectly lined up in three sections.

When my non-author friends ask, “How’s the book coming?” I tell them Paper, Scissors, Death is in the hands of editors, and my “baby” will be born on September 13, 2008. They smile. “Aren’t you excited?”

Nah.

I’m terrified.

Here’s what it’s like: I’m a horse, and all my fellow authors are horses, too. We’re lined up at the track. The gun will go off. Only a few of us will make it to the finish line. A couple might stumble, break a leg and have to be shot. Those of us who finish “in the money” will win the opportunity to race again another day.

But we live to run. We live for this. Well, I do at least.

I’ve been writing my whole life. I grew up in an itsy-bitsy town in Indiana, a place that looks its best in your rearview mirror. We only got three channels on TV, and that was if I could talk my sister Jane into holding onto the rabbit ears and wearing tin foil. (Sorry, Janie. I know I shouldn’t have asked it of you. But you were the younger one, and that’s the breaks, kiddo.)

Without much to do, I read a lot. The public library was my favorite place. I would stand in front of the stacks and crane my head back. The books went on and on to the ceiling. Had anyone read all these books? Probably not. Did the librarian even know what was in all of them? Doubtful.

When I ran out of stuff to read, I told myself a lot of stories. That’s the beauty of life in the middle of a cornfield where the only constant is the pump, pump, pump of the oil rigs. You gotta lotta nuttin’ to do. Which translates into “thinking time.” Daydreaming. Imagining. Fertile soil for dreaming up characters for a story or a book.

I won my first writing award in high school. Majored in journalism and wrote a column for the Muncie Star while at Ball State University. Worked for newspapers, radio stations, and had a talk show on TV. Did public relations. Wrote speeches. Gave speeches. Freelanced for magazines and newspapers. Taught writing in college, and now online. So I've been working at this career most of my life. You'd think I'd have some grasp of the process and the business.

Here’s the weirdest part: This isn’t my first book. It’s not like I haven’t been through this before. I’m the author of ten books of non-fiction. All of them sold well. A few sold REALLY well.

So why am I worried?

Because this is fiction. This is me. My imagination. My heart, my soul, my special talent, my little stories, my creations come to life on paper pages. And golly, I want other people to like what I’ve done as much as I do.

It’s pathetic.
It’s true.
I guess I’ll just have to wait until September and see.

About Joanna Campbell Slan...

Yeah, she really did grow up in the middle of a cornfield. Today she lives in a suburb of St. Louis, near a soybean field. Catch her blog with other mystery writers at www.killerhobbies.blogspot.com or her ideas on promotion (other than folding sheets) at her blog in her website www.joannaslan.com Paper, Scissors, Death: A Scrapbooking Mystery will debut September 13, 2008 from Midnight Ink.

Fall 2008, Midnight Inkwww.joannacampbellslan.com

Red Sox Redux

"I think that the task of an American writer is not to decribe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball

...John Cheever

HALLIE: Back to the Red Sox for just a sec. I watched the beginning and the end of every game in the series. In between, I watched with my eyes closed--a habit I got into in the bad old days when every good thing would inevitably be followed by something bad, stupid, horrifying, or all of the above in rapid succession. What this "eyes closed watching" usually involves is falling asleep until my husband vaults off the bed in ecstasy or agony.

And that rhythm section in the bullpen--those big guys playing eensie weensie triangles and cymbols and water-bottle maracas? (Shades of the Nairobi Trio--Ernie Kovacs old gag--or am I dating myself?) Now that's comic relief. Shades of the Nairobi Trio.

In the bad old days, the game WAS the comic relief. Anyone besides me looking back fondly at being perennial losers?

HANK: I watched, too. I'm from Indiana, so I grew up with basketball. Football is fun to watch because it's so easy to multi-task. You don't have to look at the screen the whole time. Hockey, forgive me, I don't understand.

But baseball. What gets me is that when it's two outs, bases loaded, and everything on the line, the world is divided exactly into two kinds of people. The ones who want to be up to bat. And the ones who don't.

The Red Sox--want to be up. And I love it. Ortiz with his congenial ease and oozing good karma. Manny, who is the most hilariously droll--I can't believe he doesn't run. Lowell, who always comes through. Pedroia, the new kid.

Perennial losers? Gets old. I 've watched so many segments of Red Sox games between my fingers, hands in front of my face. When you work at it, isn't it supposed to pay off?
And--heading to writing now--that's persistence. And when you persevere, you win. Just do it, right? Just write the book. And I promise it won't take as long as it took the Sox.

JAN: Sorry Hallie, I'm not looking back fondly at the years of perennial losses. Except to say that those years of agony led to complete esctasy when the Sox became World Series Champions in 2004. The present victory is terrific, but not quite as mind-altering.

What I love best about baseball is the ongoing story. Every player is a protagonist with his obstacles and reversals. The at-bats were clearly set up to build a crescendo of suspense. And there's always a climax (world series) and a resolution. (The Red Sox rock!)

RO: I'm a Mets fan; I'm still licking my wounds and trying to figure out what the hell went wrong. But I grew to - if not exactly love the Red Sox - love the fact that they never give up. What's really bugging me now is how good the Celtics are going to be this year. You guys are going to be insufferable.

HALLIE: The Celtics just don't do the same thing. Seems like pro basketball (and football) players are outsized and extraordinary, whereas baseball players are more merely mortals. Just like (yeah, right) the rest of us.