Dreaming, a guest post by Kate Flora

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Kate Flora is a tiny woman with a giant presence in the world of crime fiction. Kate turned to writing after a career in the Maine Attorney General's office. Her books include seven “strong woman” Thea Kozak mysteries and three gritty police procedurals in her star-reviewed Joe Burgess series. Her true crime, Finding Amy, has been optioned for a movie. She's a Goddess - a retired president of Sisters in Crime. She's one of the moving forces of the New England chapter of the Sisters in Crime. And she's a writer who continues to... dream.

 

When I was growing up on a chicken farm in a small Maine town, money was often tight. Bill collectors really did knock on the door, sometimes the phone got turned off, and there was a large hole in the bathroom floor waiting for the money to get it fixed. We stapled plastic over the windows to keep out the drafts. We grew our own food and budgeted things down to the last cent. Our refuge was books. Books and the Sears and Roebuck catalogue.

When that enormous, thick book would arrive in the spring and the fall, I could let my child’s imagination run. What would my summer wardrobe be like? With my 4-H training, I knew about mixing and matching, and I would design the perfect combination of pants and shorts and tops. My wardrobe squared away, I could turn to furnishing my someday house. What thick, fluffy towels I would want. What color sheets. What my rugs and furniture would be like. Not having too much was likely a blessing. I didn’t get to waste my time shopping, except in my imagination. It is that imagination, tuned up as a mechanism for entertainment and escape, for imagining other worlds and other lives, that has led me, as an adult, to create the worlds of my fiction

I decided to set practicing law aside and try my hand at writing mysteries when my younger son, Max, was born and I decided to be a stay-at-home mom. I bought a computer and began writing a law school mystery, A Matter of the Will. This week, Max got engaged. Next week, he turns thirty. I spent the first ten years of his life, and the first ten of my dedicated writing career, in the unpublished writer’s corner. My early years of delayed gratification, spent imagining and enjoying the possibilities, and to keep forging ahead without reward, served me well during those years.

It’s nearly twenty years since my first Thea Kozak mystery, Chosen for Death, was published, and I am still finding that those early years of learning to enjoy the possibilities serve me well. In 2007, Finding Amy, the true crime book I co-wrote with Portland’s Deputy Chief Joseph K. Loughlin, was nominated for an Edgar. I woke to find my e-mail queue jammed with congratulations. It was a wonderful moment, and I got to have the months between learning of the nomination and the night of the Edgars to bask in the honor and enjoy the recognition of my peers. I never cared whether I won or lost, just like I really never cared whether I would get those clothes or that furniture from Sears. I got to enjoy the moments and feel the pleasure.

A week ago, I got an e-mail from my friend Lea Wait, congratulating me on being a finalist for the Maine Literary Awards. A few minutes later, I got the official notice. Redemption, the third book in my Portland, Maine police procedural series, was one of three finalists. Once again, I am enjoying the moment and appreciating the fact that my book has been recognized. I’m in very good company with fellow nominees Paul Doiron and Katherine Hall Page. Both of them my friends. Both excellent writers. But right now, I’m kind of wishing I could just skip the awards ceremony in Portland on May 30^th, because I am enjoying the here and now. I’m enjoying the possibilities. The maybe a new line in my bio. Maybe a sticker to slap on the book jacket.

I’m also enjoying the certainty—that a shy, bookish chicken farmer’s daughter from a small Maine town, who devoured books from the Vose Library and dreamed of being a writer, has become one.

 You can find out more about Kate and her books at her website. You can follow her on Twitter as @kateflora, and she also blogs at Maine Crime Writers.

KATE FLORA ON LAUNCHING A BOOK

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Today our guest is our friend, SinC goddess, and very talented writer, Kate Flora, with a few thoughts on new book babies--and on her own new arrival, Redemption, the third book in her highly acclaimed Joe Burgess series.

We say, "Congrats, Kate," and a raise a virtual glass of champagne to you!

KATE FLORA: Planning a book launch is fun—and scary.

Fun, because it celebrates the end of a long, sometimes harrowing process. Writing the book. Rewriting the book until I’m sick of it. Selling the book. Rewriting the book to please my editor. And finally, long after that lovely moment when I type: THE END, those stacks and stacks of pages come back to me as a real, honest-to-goodness book with a jacket, and my picture and lovely quotes on the back.

I don’t know how it is for other writers, but for me, the day the book arrives is special. There’s that thump on the porch as the heavy box lands inside the door. The sound of a knife slitting the sealing tape. The rustle of protective paper, and finally, the new baby is revealed, rescued from the box, waved about, and taken upstairs to join the rest of the family. My new baby, Redemption, means that I now have twelve little book children.

So if all of this is so good—why should having an event to celebrate be scary? Because as any writer can tell you, book events are the most uncertain things on the planet. I can have all the advertising in the world, great reviews, and more than a dozen faithful readers who assure me that they’ll be there, and then I drive three hours to the venue and end up talking to the one staff member assigned to babysit the visiting writer. Or it can go the other way. I can drive to a small town I’ve never heard of, find a riveted audience of sixty readers, and sell every book I brought.

After a while, I think I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen good weather drag my audience away by the lure of the great outdoors and bad weather suck my audience away because no one wants to venture out in the cold. I’ve spoken to drunks, the mentally challenged, to high school students there only because they’ll get extra credit. I’ve spoken to writers really eager to pick my brain about your process, and to readers who just love my books. I’m braced for whatever may happen.

But a launch is special. It’s the book’s debut. It’s the moment when I carry on my back the weight of my belief in the power of the story I’ve told. It’s when I feel most heavily my responsibility to prove to the publisher that they made the right decision is choosing my book from the many they could have published, and when I feel the need to prove to my local bookstore that they made the right choice in giving me one of their coveted Sunday afternoon author slots. I can’t just show up and see what happens. A lot is riding on this.

So I send e-mails to the organizations I belong to. I send e-mails to my students, my fellow teachers. To my neighbors and my friends. I become a veritable chatty Cathy on Facebook. And I worry. What if this is one of those snowy days? What if it is a beautiful day? What if no one shows up?

Ten minutes to show time. I’m at the bookstore. There is a small stack of books waiting for me. A small row of chairs set up. A few people are sitting in the chairs. My heart sinks. And then, like a floodgate has opened, my friends, my neighbors, my sister writers, and my long-time readers start to arrive. The store sets up more chairs. And more chairs. And more chairs. Until they run out of chairs, and still people keep coming. At 3:00, I take a deep breath, hope my aging memory won’t fail me, and stand up.

“Thank you,” I say, absolutely overwhelmed, even though I have done hundreds of book talks over the years, wondering if this will be all I can manage. “Thank you for coming out to show your support on this beautiful day.” And I begin to tell them about Joe Burgess, and Reggie the Can Man, about fathers and sons and the threads of family, and friendship, and greed and evil that are woven through my new book.

Redemption is launched.

(PS from Debs: Kate will be giving a copy of Redemption to one of our commenters, so be sure to check in tomorrow for the winner.)