How Ideas Spark, a guest post by Maddie Day/ Edith Maxwell

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Edith Maxwell, who writes as Maddie Day, is such a fixture in our community, it's hard to think of anything new to say when I have the pleasure of hosting her. Except that I know you'll all be thrilled to hear she has a new cozy mystery out - MURDER AT CAPE COSTUMERS - and that the story behind the story is very interesting indeed. (BTW, who else absolutely wants that iconic lobster costume for next Hallowe'en?!?)

How Ideas Spark

Thanks so much, Julia, for inviting me to share my new release with one of my favorite blogging communities.

 My most recent Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery, Murder at Cape Costumers, is out today! It’s the seventh in the series of stories that take place in fictional Westham on upper Cape Cod. Bike shop owner Mac Almeida and her Cozy Capers book group sometimes never get to the cozy mystery of the week because they’re too busy investigating murder.

 

Here on Jungle Reds, I know you’ve had many posts among yourselves and with guests about what sparks the idea for a work of crime fiction. It’s a question authors are asked frequently.

 

A story might come to us from an experience we had, an interaction with a difficult person, learning about a great new murder weapon (poison, anyone?), the way someone saunters or quirks a single eyebrow. Or, perhaps, it might come from a short notice in the news.

 

In fact, a news tidbit is where the inciting incident (in other words, the crazy thing that kicks off the whole murder investigation) in my new book originated.

 Yes, that’s a short squib cut out and saved from a real daily newspaper I subscribe to, the Boston Globe. The notice describes a bad thing that happened in Ohio, not in Boston.

 

Clearly, real-life protagonists Karen Casbohm and Loreen Bea Feralo didn’t quite think through their greed and actions. If you can’t make out the fine print, here’s the gist of it: the two staged a dead eighty year-old man – the boyfriend of one of them - in the front passenger seat of their car, motored up to the drive-through window of his bank, and withdrew money from his account. Only THEN did they deposit (evil snicker) him at the hospital.

 

Can you even imagine doing that? Who would think they could get away with a corpse propped up in the front seat or with the financial withdrawal, followed by leaving the dude at the ER? It boggles the mind – but also tantalizes the mystery writer’s creative brain.

 

I was sucked in even further when my editor asked if I’d like to write a Halloween book. I’ve done Thanksgiving, Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter season holiday stories, plus one involving summer fireworks. I’d never written a mystery set at Halloween. Darkness and costumes and mischief? Readers, I said yes.

 

Given the timing of the publishing industry, I was still writing Murder at Cape Costumers when my editor sent along the finished cover art. I had given him my ideas for it earlier, but when the cover included a big, slightly scary lobster, you can bet that costume went straight into the story.

 

The news event in the clipping took place in beautiful downtown Ashtubula*, Ohio, not in Massachusetts. But hey, I make things up for a living. Why shouldn’t a version of the crime take place in my fictional town of Westham on Cape Cod?

 

Mind you, the IRL story didn’t involve murder. Does the one in my book? You’ll have to read the book to find out. Wait, who am I kidding? Of course it does!

 

I’ve just finished polishing book eight in the Cozy Capers series, Murder at the Toy Soldier. It’s my fortieth novel, so yay, me! And just because I love you all, here’s a first peek at the cover – isn’t it fun?

 

I have no idea what’ll happen in book nine, but I’ll figure it out. I always do.

 

*A note about Ashtabula: it’s a place name I have loved for fifty years, ever since Bob Dylan mentioned it in “You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Blood on the Tracks, 1975): “I’ll look for you in old Honolula, San Francisco, or Ashtabula….” As an impressionistic young-adult Californian, I listened to that song repeatedly in an era when my travels hadn’t yet included Ohio.

 

Readers: What’s the wildest news tidbit you have read? I’ll happily send three commenters a copy of the new book.

 

Just in time for Halloween, a new costume shop has opened on Main Street in Westham, Massachusetts. Cape Costumers is a cut above the usual seasonal pop-up stores with their flimsy mass-produced outfits and cheap plastic masks, mostly due to co-owner Shelly, a former Broadway costume designer. But when Shelly discovers her elderly boyfriend Enzo—a Broadway star who retired to Westham—dead of unnatural causes, Halloween suddenly gets a lot scarier.

 

Sleuthing, Mac has found, is a lot like riding a bicycle: once you learn how, you never forget. Far from being spooked, Mac and the members of the Cozy Capers Book Group put down their weekly book selection and put their heads together to see past a bag of tricks and find a malice-making murderer who’s hiding in plain sight . . .

 

Maddie Day writes the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, the Cece Barton Mysteries, and the historical Dot and Amelia Mysteries. As Edith Maxwell, she writes the Agatha-Award winning historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at her web site and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

 

 

 

Welcoming back Edith Maxwell/Maddie Day and Scone Cold Dead

 HALLIE EPHRON: Once again it's our pleasure to host Edith Maxwell/Maddie Day and celebrate the release of Scone Cold Dead, her thirteenth Country Store Mystery.  

Welcome back, Edith! What a great cover! Seems like only yesterday...

EDITH MAXWELL: Thank you, Hallie. I’ve made appearances here at Jungle Reds from the start. Hallie also hosted me back in 2015 for the release of book #1, Flipped for Murder. In “How the Heck Did we get to Indiana?”, I explained how I arrived at the perfect setting for my first series written as Maddie Day.

I was honored to have Hank endorse the book, and I helped launch it at that year’s Magna Cum Murder conference in Indianapolis, birthplace of many a Maxwell including my father. 

For those readers who haven’t been with me for the whole journey, I thought I might recap the series for you.

• Flipped for Murder #1 October 2015
• Grilled for Murder #2 May 2016
• When the Grits Hit the Fan #3 March 2017
• Biscuits and Slashed Browns #4 January 2018
• Death Over Easy #5 July 2018
• Strangled Eggs and Ham #6 July 2019
• Christmas Cocoa Murder #6.5 Sept 2019
• Nacho Average Murder #7 July 2020
• Candy Slain Murder #8 Oct 2020
• No Grater Crime #9 Sept 2021
• Batter Off Dead #10 March 2022
• Christmas Scarf Murder #10.5 September 2022
• Four Leaf Cleaver #11 January 2023
• Deep Fried Death #12 December 2023
• Scone Cold Dead #13 April 2025

In the first book, Robbie Jordan has finished fixing up the rundown country store she bought in Brown County Indiana, and she’s opening the doors to Pans ’N Pancakes, her breakfast-and-lunch restaurant in the store, for the first time. A couple of days later a murder victim is found with one of Robbie’s cheesy biscuits stuffed in her mouth, and Robbie’s future is suddenly in peril.

Leapfrog to Book #3, When the Grits Hit the Fan, takes place during a snowy winter while Robbie is working on renovations upstairs to make a few bed and breakfast rooms. A man found dead in an ice fishing hole is Robbie’s next case, and later in the book Robbie and her new boyfriend Abe are attacked during an ice storm in a remote cottage in the woods.

For that release, which coincided with the release of one of my Quaker Midwife Mysteries, Julia and Hank did a fun interview with Edith and Maddie, and for my launch party, Maddie and I interviewed each other.

Four Leaf Cleaver features a St. Patrick’s Day competition in Robbie’s store – and murder. When I crowd-sourced a title and Grace Koshida suggested Four Leaf Cleaver, I knew I had a winner. I promptly wrote a cleaver into the story.

Jenn hosted me for the release of Biscuits and Slashed Browns.

Debs hosted me for a joint celebration when No Grater Crime released, along with Alyssa Maxwell and her new book – even though we’re not related! Robbie has the first death from poisoned food in her restaurant and gets to work fast to find out who is trying to sabotage her business. The book ends happily with her marriage to Abe O’Neill.

In Batter Off Dead, the murder of a senior citizen eerily echoes one in the past, and both are linked to police Lieutenant Buck Bird, now a good friend of Robbie’s. Julia was sweet enough to host me but horrified to hear that I write into the headlights without benefit of a plot!

Fast forward: And now #13, Scone Cold Dead. A man’s body is found dead on Aunt Adele’s sheep farm, and it turns out to be someone she knew long ago. But was he murdered? Another mysterious stranger shows up in town. The bank manager has a history with the corpse, as well.

Robbie spies a face looking out from the second floor of an abandoned brick farmhouse. Adele becomes oddly tight-lipped about everything, even when the police want her to talk. In this book, Robbie is weeks away from giving birth. She tries not to put herself and her baby in danger – but she has to clear Adele’s name and get to the bottom of the mystery.

I’m grateful to have shared so many releases here. Thirteen books in ten years is a good long run for a series, and Robbie and Abe now have a newborn. I’ve made the decision to let her go on out top. Yes, I’m ending the Country Store Mysteries. You’re hearing it here first.

My deep apologies to ardent fans of the series (sorry, Jay!), but I’m at the stage of my life when I don’t want to work quite as hard. My publisher wanted to continue the Country Store Mysteries, which made the decision even more difficult.

Still, I have shifting personal priorities (one of whom is named Ida Rose), and they’re important to me. Also, nobody wants a series to go stale for readers or author. I wanted to end it while I still loved creating the stories.

I’ll still be writing the Cozy Capers Book Group series and the Cece Barton Mysteries, plus short stories and possibly a new project or two, and I hope you’ll check out my other series if you haven’t already.

Thank you to all my followers who fell in love with Robbie and the South Lick gang. I often receive messages or comments asking for the next book and saying they miss their favorite characters. I know I’ll miss Adele and Samuel, Buck and Corrine, Danna and Turner, Abe and Sean and Freddie, not to mention Birdy, Maceo, and Cocoa – and Robbie. Who knows, maybe a few of them will pop up in a short story somewhere.

Readers: Do you have a favorite book or character in the Country Store series? Or tell us about a series whose ending made you sad.

BOOK GIVEAWAY! Edith is giving away a signed copy of SCONE COLD DEAD to two luck commenters.

In Scone Cold Dead, country store and café owner Robbie Jordan is just weeks away from giving birth, and it seems Robbie and her husband, dad-to-be Abe, aren’t the only ones grappling with anxiety. A stranger is causing a stir in town and Robbie’s Aunt Adele appears unusually preoccupied at the baby shower. But when someone finds a body in the ram field on Adele’s sheep farm, it’s Robbie’s turn to be worried. Especially after Chief Buck Bird uncovers a troubling link between Adele and the possible murder victim. Robbie has no choice but to knit the clues together and solve this mystery before anything else gets flocked up . . .

My Love Affair with Vintage Cars

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's something of a truism: characters drive cars their authors wish they had. (Lee Child excepted - I don't imagine he yearns to own a Greyhound bus.) I confess, my lead character drove an iconic sports car, the Shelby, because I was stuck in a Goldfish-crackers-encrusted minivan. But in the case of our own Edith Maxwell/ Maddie Day, her heroine, Cece Barton, has the cars Edith had. Prepare to be drop-dead envious...

 

 

Julia, thank you so much for hosting me on the front blog! Thanks for helping me celebrate Deadly Crush, my second Cece Barton mystery, which releases next Tuesday. In the series, Cece manages a wine bar in Colinas, a lovely little (fictional) historic town in the scenic wine-producing Alexander Valley about ninety minutes north of San Francisco. And she drives a 1966 Mustang convertible she calls Blue.

 

It’s a contemporary novel, so why is she driving such an old vehicle? I’m so glad you asked.

 

In general, cars in California last longer because they don’t have the stress of driving over ice heaves and rust-inducing salt on the roads. I have a friend in Berkely who still owns her 1966 red Mustang convertible.

I can’t find the photo of my young sons sitting in Mel’s Mustang after a visit to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, but they loved the experience.

 

As I might have mentioned in comments to a post here before, I wrote a proposal some years ago for a cozy mystery series set in California centered on auto mechanic Josie Jarvin, who owns and runs JJ Automotive. Josie only works on analog cars – vehicles made before about 1980, when computers made their way into the engine compartment. My editor didn’t go for it, but Josie is now Cece’s mechanic for her Mustang, and I’m delighted to have Josie play a starring role in this new book.

 

You might also reasonably ask why I’m so interested in cars of the 1960s and 70s. Don’t we all have a fondness for the cars we first learned to drive and first owned? Well, that’s my era. Growing up in southern California, you couldn’t get anywhere farther than a couple of miles away without an automobile. I got my driver’s license on my sixteenth birthday and never looked back.

 

 

 After the 1954 Dodge station wagon and the 1964 Rambler station wagon, my family had two 1967 VW bugs, one baby blue, one white. My father taught me to drive in the white one, practicing in the parking lot of the Santa Anita race track when it was empty.

 

Perhaps more important, I worked full time at a Mobil gas station on Pacific Coast Highway (aka Route 1) in Newport Beach after I graduated from UC Irvine with a BA in linguistics. I know, it’s not the usual path to becoming a mechanic. 

 

 

Analog cars were all there were. At age 21, I started out pumping gas and changing tires part time at my friend’s father’s station. Customers ranged from movie stars (I pumped Buddy Ebsen’s gas) to nude drivers. By the time I left, I was an official State of California headlight adjuster and smog device certifier, I could tune up American and foreign engines, and I’d tested third out of a hundred applicants (all the rest male) to be an Orange County heavy equipment mechanic.

 

Our shop looked a lot like Emory Automotive, the family-run place in Amesbury I take my car to now, which makes me happier than I can say!

 

 

Alas, love lured me away from the area to live in Japan. I did keep working on my own cars when I got back, including pulling the engine on my VW during graduate school in Indiana, with the help of major tools at the student-run car co-op. Anybody else use the Compleat Idiot’s Guide by John Muir?

 

 

Alas again, cars got too complicated for me to work on, and so did my life. Now we have two hybrid Priuses in the driveway (VERY complicated to work on except for simple oil changes, and I’m past that), and a few weeks ago I traded in my more than a decade-old little Prius C for a 2022 hybrid plug-in model, which I love.

 

 

 But I’m always heartened to see people maintaining and driving their analog vehicles, and I love the Rust and Relics auto shop in my neighboring city of Newburyport, which we drive by on the way to catch the train into Boston.

 I guess the love of old cars runs in the family. Last summer, my younger brother David drove his 1965 Rover out from California, a car our grandfather Richard Flaherty bought new. When I was a baby auto mechanic fifty years ago, I used to teach Davey things automotive. Not anymore!

 

David Maxwell investigates an odd noise...

 

It’s been great fun bringing a bit of those memories into this new story. I hope you love Deadly Crush as much as I loved writing it. As a side note, if you aren’t caught up on the first book in the series, Murder Uncorked came out in paperback last month, and I hear it’s a hot seller at Barnes & Noble. Check out Blue on the cover!

 

 Readers: What pre-1980 car do you know and love? What was your first drive? Anybody still own an analog vehicle? I’d love to give away a copy of the new book to one of you!

 

The beginning of a new year for Cece Barton, widowed single mom and recent L.A. transplant north, means green hillsides, flowing streams from winter rains, pruned vineyards—and a murder to solve. She's shocked when she gets a call from her mechanic, Josie, that she’s found her ex-husband crushed to death beneath the lift in her automotive shop.

 

Cece convinces Josie to call the police, even though Josie is terrified. Electrician Karl was an abusive husband, was threatening her, and she has no alibi. Josie’s future is on the line, and maybe her own, so Cece starts her own investigation. With a bouquet of motives and unanswered questions, Cece is going to need the help of her twin, Allie, who owns a nearby B & B, as she dives into Karl’s past—before the killer catches up with her, and the lights go out for good . . .

 

 

Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and their cat Martin north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, wickedauthors.com, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and on social media:

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