Edith Maxwell--Breaking a Rule for her Mom

DEBORAH CROMBIE: There's no bigger treat for us here on Jungle Red than to welcome one of our faithful regular readers and commenters! We have the pleasure of Edith's company almost every day on the blog, but perhaps some of our readers don't know that Edith writes not one, but THREE mystery series! The latest in her Local Foods series, FARMED AND DANGEROUS, featuring organic farmer Cameron Flaherty is just out, and it is a treat. Having just finished the book, I was so pleased to gain a little insight on the inspiration for the characters. I have more to say on that, but first, here's Edith:

Edith Maxwell:  

On Breaking a Rule for My Mom

I’m so delighted to be back on my favorite blog again – thanks, Debs!

I wanted to talk about breaking a rule, and why. You know that “rule” about not using real people in your stories, except for real historical characters? I’ve always thought it made sense, because as authors we need to give our fictional characters the freedom to do anything the story requires.

But I did just that, in my new book. I wanted my organic farmer’s Great Uncle Albert to have a girlfriend in the assisted living residence where he now lives. My mother died three years ago before getting a chance to read any of my books, and she spent her last decade in assisted living. So I decided Marilyn Muller was going to be Albert’s new lady friend. And today I’m going to tell you a bit about who the real Marilyn was.

Marilyn Flaherty was a shy girl who grew up near San Francisco. Already a third-generation Californian, she went sailing in the bay and in the Pacific with her father, roller-skated down steep hills, and put on gloves and a hat to go shopping in the city with her mother and younger sister. As an undergraduate at the UC Berkeley, she met Allan Maxwell at a sorority dance, a shy WW II Army recruit. After he returned from the far reaches of India, they were married.

She gave birth to four children, all less than two years apart (I'm #3). Mommy participated in a playgroup cooperative associated with a local college. She was home with us until we were in high school, and was a devoted Girl Scout leader (Leader of the Year in 1963) and Cub Scout den mother for my younger brother.

Our home was filled with books of all kinds. Mommy loved to read mysteries and my first Agatha Christie reads were her books. As a child when I couldn't sleep, I would sometimes make my way back into the living room where she sat reading, and if I was lucky (or if she chose to let me, more likely) I'd get some cherished time reading my own book next to her. She also gave me my first boost as a writer. When I was in third grade, she said, “Edie, you’re a good writer.” I thought, “Oh! I guess I am.” And look where I ended up.

My mother was always creative. She made a puppet theater for us by painting a refrigerator box, sewing and mounting a curtain, and fabricating puppets out of old socks, buttons, paint, and fabric. She sewed intricate ballet costumes for my two older

sisters and me every spring, four per girl, and taught the other mothers the patterns. She took a cake-decorating class and made roses (roses!) out of frosting. She sewed most of our clothes and knit us sweaters.

She also paid attention to our nutrition. Although she never really enjoyed cooking apart from baking – and boy, could she bake - we always had balanced meals. She read Adele Davis and tossed things like dried milk into the Bisquik to give it more protein.

On our annual two-week camping vacations in the Sierras, she taught us about birds and plants. We'd lie on our backs at night in an open area with her and learn about the stars. She let us run loose within certain boundaries, and we were free-range kids at home, too. We kids made our own breakfasts and lunches as soon as we went to school. She wasn't into short-order prep for four picky eaters.

She was outwardly sweet with a layer of iron underneath that served her well. Despite never being without her red lipstick and her face powder, my mom didn’t spend money on getting her hair “done,” other makeup, or manicures. As a teenager, I had the scorn of the young for this. As a adult – well, heck, I’m just the same (minus her ever-present powder compact and mirror).

In their fifties my parents divorced and both of them remarried happily. My stepfather, Fred Muller, and my mother moved north out of the LA smog to Ventura, California, where they spent many sweet years together. Mommy took up quilting, making numerous beautiful quilts for her children nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. She won awards at the County Fair and made  good friends in her quilt group, Stitch and Bitch. She and Fred played games every afternoon: Scrabble, cribbage, cards. I didn't beat her at Scrabble until I was 50.

I’m so grateful I had time to tell her over and over how much I loved her and appreciated her as a mother and grandmother, since she lived to be 86. My sisters and I were all at her side as she died. We sang Girl Scout songs, told funny stories, held her hands as her spirit “slipped the surly bonds of earth and sailed away.”

In Farmed and Dangerous, Marilyn Muller is Mommy – right down to the embroidered sweatshirts and velcro tennies. She beats everyone at Scrabble and at word-finding games, likes her sugary desserts, and is sweet to all with a layer of iron underneath. But like any good character, she’s already changed. Unlike my mom, the Marilyn in the book has an iPhone and takes a little wine now and then.

Thanks for letting me share these memories. Who else has put a version of a real person into a book? And what was your mom like?

DEBS: Edith, I can't even begin to list all the reasons I loved this post. I love your characters, and Marilyn especially seemed so real to me, and that was before I read this essay. My mom died two years ago this August. I thought I would miss her less as time went on, but that hasn't turned out to be the case. Just last week I found a wonderful photo of her taken in 2001, and I've been looking at it every day. My mom read Adele Davis, too, and became a middle-aged hippie foodie!!! My daughter still laughs about her grandmother's healthy bran muffins... They were a bit rock-like, I have to admit, but then Mom lived to be ninety-two so you really can't argue.  But enough from me--I want to hear from everyone else.

Edith will give away one of the Local Foods mysteries to a commenter - book one, A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE, book two, 'TIL DIRT DO US PART, or the new one. Winner's choice.

 
And here's more about Edith, and FARMED AND DANGEROUS.  Marilyn Muller would be very proud.

Organic farmer Cam Flaherty is struggling to provide the promised amount of food to her customers in her first winter in Westbury, Massachusetts, and her new greenhouse might just collapse from the weight of the snow. Supplying fresh ingredients for a dinner at the local assisted living facility seems like the least of her worries—until a cantankerous resident with a lot of enemies dies after eating the meal.

But while the motives in this case may be plentiful, the trail of poisoned produce leads straight back to Cam. Not even her budding romance with police detective Pete Pappas will keep him from investigating her.

As the suspects gather, a blizzard buries the scene of the crime under a blanket of snow, leaving Cam stranded in the dark with a killer who gives new meaning to the phrase “dead of winter.”

Bio: Agatha-nominated and Amazon-bestselling author Edith Maxwell writes four murder mystery series, most with recipes, as well as award-winning short stories.

Farmed and Dangerous is the latest in Maxwell's Local Foods Mysteries series (Kensington Publishing). The latest book in the Lauren Rousseau mysteries, under the pseudonym Tace Baker (Barking Rain Press), is Bluffing is Murder.

Maxwell’s Country Store Mysteries, written as Maddie Day (also from Kensington), will debut with Flipped for Murder in November, 2015. Her Quaker Midwife Mysteries series features Quaker midwife Rose Carroll solving mysteries in 1888 Amesbury with John Greenleaf Whittier’s help, and will debut in March, 2016 with Delivering the Truth.

A fourth-generation Californian, Maxwell lives in an antique house north of Boston with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the other Wicked Cozy Authors (http://wickedcozyauthors.com), and you can find her at www.edithmaxwell.com, @edithmaxwell, on Pinterest and Instagram, and at www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor.

Edith Maxwell and all her aliases!

HALLIE EPHRON: Edith Maxwell, aka Tace Baker (author of the Lauren Rousseau mysteries), projects a cheerful, calm presence to the world. But behind the scenes I imagine she’s a whirling dervish, expert multi-tasker since she’s now writing three mystery series and producing about three books a year! She’s here to talk about her new Lauren Rousseau mystery Bluffing is Murder, which she writes as Tace Baker.

Okay, we know Lauren Rousseau isn’t you, Edith, but your character Lauren is a linguistics professor and you hold a doctorate in linguistics. So how does linguistics figure in your mysteries?

EDITH MAXWELL/TACE BAKER: When I started the series, I thought Lauren would do more forensic linguistics, and she still might in her future. But so far it's more that she has a good ear for the languages she speaks and the ones she has had contact with -- Japanese, Bambara, Farsi, Russian, French, Portuguese -- and sometimes picks up identities of hidden speakers or otherwise solves pieces of the puzzle based on knowing the language. Linguistics is far broader and deeper than merely speaking languages, of course. 

In Bluffing is Murder, she thinks she's going to have her first quiet summer not teaching, since she finally landed tenure, but she's wrong.

HALLIE: Another “coincidence” is that Lauren is a Quaker and so are you. How does that affect her character and the choices she can and can’t make?

EDITH/TACE: Hey, write what you know! I've been a member of the Society of Friends for more than twenty-five years. When I started writing book one, Speaking of Murder, I thought a Quaker protagonist might be a good niche in the mystery field, and I was right.

Lauren takes time for silence in her life and holding a person or situation in the Light, especially when things get tough. She has a strong sense of fairness and justice, but struggles with not finding peace or answers in Friends worship occasionally, as we all do. I've also written a Quaker protagonist into my 1888 historical mystery series, but that's another topic.

HALLIE: And, got to ask, is there any resemblance between the coastal town of Ashford where Lauren lives and the town where Edith/Tace lives?

EDITH/TACE: I wrote these two books when I lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Ashford is only a very thinly disguised version of Ipswich, which is a beautiful town on the salt marshes north of Boston. Ipswich and Ashford both have their share of quirky characters and place names (my favorite walking route was going the length of Labor in Vain Road), but all the people in my books are fully fictional, unlike those apparently in the stories of a more famous previous resident of Ipswich, John Updike.

What inspired you to write Bluffing and can you give us a hint about the significance of the title?
EDITH/TACE: Well, until a couple of years ago, Ipswich had the country's oldest land trust, which was managed by the Feoffees of Little Neck. All rents and proceeds from the properties on Little Neck were to go to educate the children of the town, since 1660. Except the Feoffees were a secretive group not accountable to the public, and they hadn't paid the school district for the last decade or more. Feelings were high in town on both sides.

It was a lot more complicated than that, but I thought the situation could have been fertile ground for murder. So I fictionalized the whole thing - and I was very careful to learn nothing about who the actual Feoffees were or what they looked like. I called the land trust The Bluffs and made the Feoffees into the Trustees of the Bluffs. One of whom, of course, is murdered. But bluffing also involves language, and doesn't every killer try to bluff his or her way out the crime? So the title works in several directions.

HALLIE: And, for all the writers out there like me who struggle to put out a book every year (or two), what’s your secret??

EDITH/TACE: Since I quit my day job a year and a half ago, writing fiction is my new day job. I can't afford to be retired, and I want to get this new career off the ground. So I'm very serious about spending every morning either writing or revising, starting at seven, and the afternoons doing the business aspect: writing blog posts, arranging promotional events, and doing research. I fit lunch and my daily walk into the middle. I watch virtually no television and spend way too much time on Facebook, with reading saved for evenings and vacations.

I have three books due next year, so I have to be serious about my writing. Panic is a great motivator!
HALLIE: What's next for Edith and Tace?

EDITH/TACE: I just turned in Flipped for Murder, the first Country Store mystery (which will appear under the name Maddie Day) two months early and am back in the middle of Compost Mortem, the fourth Local Foods Mystery. The third book in that series, Farmed and Dangerous, releases in May, 2015.

I'm living my dream and, despite all the work, I love it.

HALLIE: You know, I'm living my dream, too. It's a good thing to be reminded of every once in a while.

Today Edith is giving away a copy of Bluffing is Murder to a lucky commenter, so please weigh in: What's your dream, seriously. Are you on your way, are already there?