With a Little Help from my Writer Friends and a Giveaway from Barbara Ross

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 . . . 

Inspiration by Barbara Ross #giveaway

LUCY BURDETTE: Today I'm so pleased to welcome a great friend and one of my favorite cozy mystery writers, all wrapped up in one package! I'm very lucky to have lured her into serving with me on the Friends of the Key West Library board. Mostly, I can't wait for the new book...

BARBARA ROSS: Thank you so much for having me, Lucy and the Jungle Reds!

For writers, inspiration comes from everywhere, and often seemingly out of nowhere. It may come from a snippet of overhead conversation, an image, a place, a person, or event. Inspiration can come from a combination of things, taken out of context, maybe half-remembered or not consciously remembered at all. Things the writer didn’t even know were there.

The eleventh Maine Clambake Mystery, Hidden Beneath, is about a summer enclave on an island in my fictional Busman’s Harbor. The island is ringed by a hundred summer houses that have often been passed down in families for generations. The story begins when a woman disappears and is presumed drowned.

Five years later, after the woman has been declared legally dead, my sleuth Julia Snowden and her mother arrive for her memorial service. The first floor of the woman’s home on the island is strangely empty and sterile, not at all the way Julia’s mother remembers it. But on the second floor, behind mountains of furniture and household furnishings, the dead woman has left a wealth of clues about her disappearance in the form of murals on the walls.

Unusually, I do know where the inspiration for this part of the story came from.

In October of 2021, after Tina Pesce died at the age of seventy-four, her older son, who lived on the other side of the country, had her house in Stockton Springs, Maine cleaned out in preparation for sale. On her way past, her neighbor, Noelle Merrill, noticed the work and decided to peek inside. (As one does. At least if one is a deeply curious, nay nosy person—like a mystery writer for example.)

What Noelle saw stunned her. The house was filled with murals painted on the sheetrock on the walls. Thinking it was a positive story in a fraught time, Noelle posted about the murals on Facebook. Those posts were circulated eventually picked up by the media, including this story in the Boston Globe, where I probably originally saw it. (The following photos are all credited to Noelle Merrill.)

I love this story for two reasons. The first is the surprise of it. Imagine walking in, expecting a little look into a neighborhood house, and finding those murals. I love it when people’s expectations get turned around in an instant.

The other reason is the persistence of the artist. Tina Pesce had always made art. She had a ceramics studio in Massachusetts and then a small gallery when she moved to Maine. When health and circumstances largely confined her to her home—she just kept going. Isn’t that the way human beings are? The drive to create never goes away.

Also, I love the murals. I do love primitives and representational artwork.

Of course, the murals in Hidden Beneath are completely different from the ones that inspired them. For one thing, they contain human figures that tell stories from the artist’s childhood in order to give clues to my sleuth. In my head, fully imagined, the murals also are quite different in style, although they are also primitives. I’ll be interested to hear what kind of pictures readers build in their heads from my descriptions.

An inspiration is a starting point only. The rest we build from our imaginations.

Readers: Do you ever go peeking where you maybe, sort of aren’t invited? Have you ever been surprised by what you found! (Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for a copy of the new book.)

About the book

In Barbara Ross’ award-winning series featuring sleuth Julia Snowden and her family’s coastal Maine clambake business, two mysteries rock the colony of Chipmunk Island after a suspicious memorial service has Julia and her mother shifting into some family sleuthing.

Serving up mouthwatering shellfish, the Snowden Family Clambake has become a beloved institution in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. But when new clues rise to the surface five years after the disappearance of Julia Snowden’ s mother’s friend, the family business shifts to sleuthing. 

Julia and her mother, Jacqueline, have come to the exclusive summer colony of Chipmunk Island to attend a memorial service for Jacqueline’s old friend Ginny, who’s been officially declared dead half a decade after she went out for her daily swim in the harbor and was never seen again. But something seems fishy at the service—especially with the ladies of the Wednesday Club. As Julia and Jacqueline begin looking into Ginny’s cold case, a present-day murder stirs the pot, and mother and daughter must dive into the deep end to get to the bottom of both mysteries . . . 

Buy Links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Audible

Your Independent Bookstore

Chapters/Indigo

About Barbara Ross

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 and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com 

My Grandmother’s Oyster Plates @maineclambakemysteries

LUCY BURDETTE: It's always a happy day for me when Barbara Ross's next Maine mystery comes out. Sadly, I've already read SHUCKED APART. But I highly recommend the series to you, and know you'll enjoy her blog post today too. Welcome Barb!

BARBARA ROSS: Shucked Apart, the ninth Maine Clambake Mystery, is about oyster farming on the Damariscotta River. I loved doing the research, especially the part that started with a Damariscotta River Cruise, which takes you on a tour of the beautiful river, where you can see eagles, seals and lobster pots, and several oyster farms. On the trip they offer oysters from each farm and explain the difference in growing methods and taste. I recommend the tour to anyone who finds themselves in mid-coast Maine in the summer.

The subject of oysters brought me naturally to the subject of my grandmother’s oyster plates. It brought me there naturally because the plates were under my coffee table, which had also been hers, staring me in the face.

I first remember the coffee table, with the plates on its bottom shelf visible through the glass top, at my grandparents' house in Watermill, Long Island. That house was built in 1954 and following a tradition in our family, once the furniture was placed in the house it was never moved again. Sometimes, during my grandparents’ frequent cocktail parties, the crab you see in the corner of the photo above was on top of the coffee table filled with peanuts, which my brother and I found very exciting.

When my grandparents died the coffee table, plates, crab, and lobster-on-a-shell went to my parents’ sunporch in Dallas, Pennsylvania, where my kids and my niece and nephew grew up seeing them. When my parents downsized, the table ended up in their smaller home’s basement, as did the oyster plates, packed in a box. When it came time to empty that house, I grabbed them both. Now they’re at my house in Portland, Maine, where we clear them off that bottom shelf whenever my toddler granddaughters come to visit.

Thinking about the oyster plates I wondered: Do we keep things because they have meaning, or do they have meaning because we keep them?

The only plate I’ve done any research about this this one.

The design was specifically commissioned by Lucy Hayes, the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes and made by Limoges for his inauguration in 1877. And if my plate said that on the back, it would be worth, according to Christies, $8,000 to $12,000. Surprise, surprise, it doesn’t say that on the back. The design was very popular and offered to the public, so my plate is probably worth more like $8.00 to $12.00.

I don’t know if that plate was in the family from 1877 onwards. It is plausible. My grandmother’s family were famous cabinetmakers in New York City. They made the chairs for the US House of Representatives in 1857, and later collaborated with the architects McKim, Mead and White, and with Louis Comfort Tiffany. In the next generation, they were among the founders of interior design as an industry. We have a lots of their stuff around, though I often suspect most of we have was rejected from paying commissions.

Or, it could equally plausibly be that one of my grandmother’s friends spotted the plate at a yard sale in the 1950s and bought it for her. You know how it is when it gets around that you’re collecting something.

Barbara's grandmother

Whichever it is, the value to me is that the plates have been around all my life and remind me of happy times and people I loved. And now I’m imprinting them on a new generation.

Readers: What do you think? Do we keep things because they have meaning, or do they have meaning because we keep them? Is there something you treasure, even if it has value only to you? Tell us about it.

About Shucked Apart

The Snowden Family Clambake Company has a beloved reputation in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. Almost as famous is the sleuthing ability of proprietor Julia Snowden, which is why an oyster farmer seeks her out when she’s in trouble.

 

When Andie Greatorex is robbed of two buckets of oyster seed worth $35,000, she wonders if somebody’s trying to mussel her out of business. Could it be a rival oyster farmer, a steamed former employee, or a snooty summer resident who objects to her unsightly oyster cages floating on the beautiful Damariscotta River? There’s also a lobsterman who’s worried the farm’s expanding lease will encroach on his territory and Andie’s ex-partner, who may come to regret their split. Before Julia can make much headway in the investigation, Andie turns up dead, stabbed by a shucking knife. Now it’s up to Julia to set a trap for a cold and clammy killer . . .

Buy Links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Chapters/Indigo

Your Local Independent Bookstore

About Barb

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries and the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com 

Crazy Eights! by Barbara Ross and Sherry Harris

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm delighted to welcome two good friends with brand new books to Jungle Red! Do you have a gift certificate burning a hole in your pocket? These are two wonderful cozy series...welcome Sherry and Barb!

Sherry Harris and Barbara Ross are happy to be visiting the Jungle Reds today to celebrate the December 31, release of the eighth book in each of our series. The latest book in Sherry’s Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery series is Sell Low, Sweet Harriet. The latest book in Barbara Ross’s Maine Clambake Mystery series is Sealed Off.



We’re celebrating with Jungle Red readers by answering eight crazy questions about things that have happened on our publishing journeys. Leave a comment to be entered to win either Sell Low, Sweet Harriet or Sealed Off to be mailed out as soon as we get our hands on a copy!





1) How did your protagonist get her name?



Sherry: Is my editor going to read this? (Looks around, doesn’t see him.) I originally called Sarah -- Sarah Fiennes. I thought how fun would that be because Sarah finds things at garage sales. Unfortunately, my editor hated the name. It reminded him of those two British acting brothers. So Sarah Winston was born. How about you Barb? Where did Julia’s name come from?

Barb: I think Fiennes would have been a great name for Sarah. But then I like the acting brothers. My protagonist is Julia Morrow Snowden and my niece is Julia Morrow Ross. When I wrote the proposal for the Maine Clambake Mysteries I was trying to avoid my tendency to overthink so I grabbed a name that was at hand. The weird part is, my niece has never said a word about it.

Sherry: Very interesting. Are we going to talk about Sonny and your daughter-in-law Sunny? You can plead the fifth.

Barb: Ha, ha, ha. I didn’t even get that until my daughter-in-law pointed it out!

2) What’s the question readers ask you the most?

Barb: People what to know if the Snowden Family Clambake is real and if they can go there. I send them to the Cabbage Island Clambake, also run by a family and their private island--though there the resemblance stops!

Sherry: You deserve a commission. People ask me if I’ll do a garage sale for them. I’ve done a few and they are a lot of work. I’ll stick to writing about them!

3) What’s the most controversial thing in your series? Readers either love or hate…

Sherry: The love triangle in the first few books!!!! I swear I didn’t mean to do it when I set out writing the series. Seth was supposed to be an unnamed character, a one night stand, but then he called Sarah…

Barb: It’s funny how the romance is the thing that gets to people. The most controversial thing in my series is Julia’s boyfriend Chris. He was her middle school crush, but do they belong together now? People send me e-mails arguing both positions quite vehemently.

Sherry: Gulp. I may have been guilty of trying to influence you about that too. I make no apologies. I have opinions.

4) What did you THINK would be the most controversial thing?

Sherry: See the above question! I thought that someone would write me complaining about Sarah being a slut for having a one night stand. Not one person has ever mentioned it.

Barb: PETA has a big sign in the Portland Jetport about not eating lobster. I keep expecting the hate mail, but so far, crickets.

5) What is the weirdest name you ever gave a character?

Sherry: In The Longest Yard Sale I have an Air Force officer whose call sign (similar to a nickname) is Bubbles. You have to read the book to find out why.

Barb: My favorite character name is the victim in Musseled Out, David Thwing.

6) In mysteries, the mystery is the thing and the romance, if there is one, is there to round out the character. Eight books in, tell us the truth, is your protagonist going to get her HEA?

Sherry: Now this is something I get a lot of opinions about. My answer is: I don’t know. Does a woman have to be in a relationship to be happy? Book nine is set exactly two years after the first book. Sarah went through a traumatic divorce and an almost got back together with her ex in that period of time. She’s not ready to settle down and she’s not Cinderella that needs to be saved by the handsome prince. That said...I love a happy ever after. Love them!

Barb: I don’t know, either. I guess it depends on how many books end up in the series. Chris and Julia’s relationship has many complications and it would take a while to resolve them.

7) What’s your least favorite cover in the series and why?



Barb: I admit it’s the cover for book five, Iced Under. All the other Clambake covers feature very Maine-y scenes and this one always looks to me like a generic suburban street. It’s never hurt the book’s sales, though, and since the book came out I’ve noticed when the weather in a book is stormy, Kensington covers are always from the inside (cozy) looking out,



Sherry: We’ve never talked about this before but mine is also number five, I Know What You Bid Last Summer! I love my covers and there’s nothing wrong with this one. I’d sent my editor some pictures of an antique store I visited with all of these beautiful pink dresses. I just had such a strong picture in my head I expected it to look like that.

8) What is the craziest thing that ever happened to you at a book event?

Sherry: Oh, Barb. You have to know where I’m heading with this one. It was with you. I’m surprised you’ve ever agreed to do another event with me.

Barb: Sherry is referring to a signing we did where a man came up to our table and told us his entire life history including his broken marriage and the last time he had sex. And he didn’t even buy a book! Sherry is a lovely, friendly person. I am not and our different personalities played out in that situation.

Sherry: Barb you are a lovely, friendly person too -- just in a different way than me. I must have a face says tell me anything. You forgot to mention that he also told us he has a top secret clearance which worried us both considering what a blabbermouth he turned out to be.

Jungle Red Readers: Thanks for playing crazy eights with us. Ask us anything below or just leave a comment to be entered to win a new release. (No need to give us any details on your sex life! Thanks.)

Sherry Harris is the Agatha Award nominated author of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mystery series and upcoming Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mystery series. Her website is: https://sherryharrisauthor.com/

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Literary Award-winning Maine Clambake Mystery series and the Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody series. Her website is www.maineclambakemysteries.com

Hazelnut Wreaths for Christmas @barbross

LUCY BURDETTE: Hooray! Barbara Ross has a new book in her Maine clambake series out next week. And she agreed to visit us with tales of Hazelnut Christmas cookies and news of the book...welcome Barb!

BARBARA ROSS: Thanks so much for having me, Lucy. We moved this year. It was a big move and we’re still unpacking. We’re celebrating Christmas with our son’s family, so we’ve barely decorated our new house. No tree, no stockings hung by the chimney with care, no holiday mugs to fill with cocoa or eggnog.

Barb with son Rob

But there was one tradition I couldn’t ignore—cookie baking. I’ve been making six kinds of Christmas cookies for more than forty years. If I’d skipped this activity my family would conclude that something is terribly wrong with Mom.

So rather than face that, I found the baking sheets, the cookie cutters, the tins and other necessities. Five of the six kinds of cookies I make come from a book of recipes made by my maternal grandmother the year before she died. We are into at least the sixth generation making some of these, so I can see why my family has expectations.

daughter and granddaughter

One of the types of traditional cookies I make are the hazelnut wreaths. They are delicate and delicious with the flavor of the nuts, which some people call filberts. They’re cut with a donut cutter to make the round wreaths and decorated, in the absolutely worst job of the entire cookie-making extravaganza, with red and green dyed candied pineapple intended to suggest a bow. This involves sticky fingers and lots of cursing and everyone usually scatters when I am looking for volunteers. My husband Bill was kind enough to do the job this year.

The truth is I’m not much of a baker. Aside from seasonal fruit pies, the Christmas cookies are often the entire output of my baking year. My hazelnut wreaths look more like hazelnut flat tires and my butter cookie animals usually look like they come from a farm where someone is doing monstrous DNA experiments. The cookies aren’t as good as my mother’s, who was convinced hers weren’t as good as her mother’s, and so on through the generations.

Nevertheless, I persist.

Here is the hazelnut wreath recipe. May the more intrepid among you enjoy both the baking and, especially, the eating. They are worth it.

Hazelnut Wreaths

Ingredients

1/2 pound butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour

4 ounces chopped hazelnuts

Directions

Cream butter and sugar and set aside.

Beat the eggs well.

Add flour, nuts, and the creamed butter and sugar to the eggs and mix until blended. (I use a food processor for this.)

Form the dough into flat circles about the size of a saucer. You will get four to six of these.

Wrap well in wax paper and place in refrigerator for four hours or overnight.

Remove one dough circle from the refrigerator and roll it out flat on a floured surface.

Cut into rings, using a cookie or doughnut cutter. Place rings on a parchment-covered cookie sheet.

When you have cut as many rings as you can, reroll the remaining dough and cut again until you have used all the dough. Then remove the next batch from the refrigerator and repeat.

Prior to baking, decorate as you wish. We use candied pineapple to form little bows on the wreathes with a red center and green at either side. However you choose to decorate, do it lightly. The flavor of the cookie is delicate and you don’t want to overwhelm it.

Bake at 350 degrees for ten to twelve minutes. The cookies should be lightly brown.

Readers: Do you have something you do or make every year that you just wouldn’t be you if you didn’t?

Bio

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries: Clammed Up, Boiled Over, Musseled Out, Fogged Inn and Iced Under. Stowed Away, the sixth Maine Clambake Mystery will be released December 26, 2017. Her holiday novella featuring amateur sleuth Julia Snowden is included with novellas by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in Eggnog Murder from Kensington Books.

Barbara’s books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel, and RT Books Reviewer’s Choice Awards, as well as the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She blogs with a wonderful group of Maine mystery authors at Maine Crime Writers and with a group of writers of New England-based cozy mysteries at Wicked Cozy Authors. In the summer, Barbara writes on the big front porch of the former Seafarer Inn at the head of the harbor in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

About Stowed Away

It’s June in Busman’s Harbor, Maine, and Julia Snowden and her family are working hard to get their authentic Maine clambake business ready for summer. Preparations must be put on hold, however, when a mysterious yacht drops anchor in the harbor—and delivers an unexpected dose of murder . . .

The Wonderful Reds!

LUCY BURDETTE: Two of our favorite friends and authors are sharing a book tour this week to celebrate ICED UNDER (Barbara Ross) and CUSTOM BAKED MURDER (Liz Mugavero.) They asked if they could visit the blog and we are delighted to have them. Please note that there were no dollars or other favors exchanged for this post! Welcome Barb and Liz!

Barbara Ross and Liz Mugavero are doing their blog tour together for their fifth books in their respective series: Iced Under, a Maine Clambake Mystery, for Barb and Custom Baked Murder, for Liz. Recently, they got together to have a conversation about a favorite topic—the Jungle Reds.

Liz, Barb, and Lucy in Key West

Barb: Hi Liz. It’s so great to be back with the Jungle Reds. Not just because we love the blog, but also because the Reds have had such profound effects on our writing lives. On our personal lives as well. So many writers talk about the Reds’ generosity, but today we thought we’d get into specifics. Let’s start with Lucy. Liz, you and Lucy share a home state, Connecticut. Tell me about one interaction with Lucy and what it meant.

The marvelous Seascape class of 2009

Liz: I’m so happy to be back here! I have to go back to the first time I met Lucy, at the Seascape Writers Retreat. A wonderful weekend on the water in Madison where I met fabulous people, worked at my craft, and learned a ton (from Hallie as well!). I think that weekend was the first time, after the encouragement I received, that I realized if I just kept working hard at my writing that I’d be published. It happened, and so much credit goes to these ladies. What about you? Who was the first Red you interacted with and what happened?

Liz, Hank, Barb, and Julia

Barb: The first Red I met was Hank, but we didn’t even realize we were meeting. Years ago (like 20) we were in a class for beginning mystery writers at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Neither of us were published or even had a finished a manuscript. In the last class (I think there were four) we each read our opening scene. Cut to years later. I’m embarrassed to admit how many, but more than a decade. Hank is well published and we re-meet through Sisters in Crime New England. I ask her to blurb my first book, The Death of an Ambitious Woman. Hank recognizes my opening scene! She says, “Were you ever in a class at the Boston Center for Adult Education?” So funny. You mentioned Hallie. Can you recall a piece of advice Hallie gave you that was meaningful?

Lucy, Hallie, and Barb

Liz: You know, it wasn’t so much a piece of advice as it was…confidence. She had confidence in me and my writing that I wasn’t sure I had myself yet. I remember her saying to me at Seascape that I’d do it - I’d get published. Because I had the talent but more importantly, the drive. And that always stuck with me. That someone like Hallie Ephron had that much faith in me!

I do remember her also having no patience for weak characters, be it men or women. She would be the first to point out any displays of wussiness. I definitely carried that reminder with me as I created Stan. I wanted her to be able to stand on her own two feet, be financially stable, and most of all, smart. Do you know any other Reds personally?

Barb: Yes! Julia Spencer-Fleming. Since I spend the summer in Maine, and Julia lives in Maine, I get to see her on the Maine writers’ circuit. In fact, we both read at a pub in Portland a few weeks ago. Both Julia and her husband, Ross, have been wonderfully supportive of me as a newcomer. And I am a huge, huge (like buy it in hardcover the first day level) fan. Julia, Hank and I (along with Gin Malliet) all had our books nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary novel in 2014.

I don’t really “know” any of the non-New England Reds, except what I read here. I have long been a huge fan of Deb Crombie’s. I think she and I shared an agent years ago and I called her for a reference. (Or maybe I dreamed it. It was that long ago, back with the book that Hank…) I’ve met Rhys at conferences and am always a little tongue-tied. She’s such an amazing writer. But now that I’ve made the muffin tin-sized mince pies she wrote about on the blog a few weeks ago, I’ll have something to say to her. What about you Liz? Non-New England Reds?

Liz: But I don’t “know” any either, I’m afraid - we’re going to have to do something about that!

Thanks so much to all you ladies for having us. It’s always a blast!

Readers: Do you have a story about an interaction with a Red, either virtual or in the real world that you’d like to share?

(PS, note from Lucy, we love these ladies and their books, so add them to your piles please!)

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries, including the Agatha-nominated Best Contemporary Novel Clammed Up, as well as Boiled Over, Musseled Out, Fogged Inn, and Iced Under. Her story “Nogged Off” appears in the holiday novella collection Eggnog Murder along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis. Barbara blogs with the Wicked Cozy Authors and Maine Crime Writers. In the summer, she writes on her big front porch overlooking the water in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. You can visit her website at http://www.maineclambakemysteries.com

Liz Mugavero is the author of the Agatha Award-nominated Pawsitively Organic Mysteries Kneading to Die, A Biscuit, A Casket, The Icing on the Corpse and Murder Most Finicky. Custom-Baked Murder, the fifth in the series, will be released in December 2016. As you can imagine, her canine and feline rescues demand the best organic food and treats around. She is a member of Sisters in Crime National, Sisters in Crime New England, Mystery Writers of America, and the Cat Writers’ Association. She currently lives in Connecticut.