Jenn McKinlay: Having just returned from Ireland myself, I can not tell you how happy I am to welcome -- Fàilte -- two of the Jungle Reds fave mystery writers with their Irish-centric mysteries! Yay!
Hello to all. Maddie Day (then known as Edith Maxwell) and Barb (aka
Barbara Ross) have traveled a lot of the same roads on this publishing journey.
Our first books were published by small presses. Our first series with
Kensington debuted in the same year. We’ve been blogging together over at Wicked
Authors for nine years.
We already knew each other from Sisters in Crime New England and the New
England Crime Bake. And both of us have been mentored and supported by several
Reds.
And this month we have books with the same theme coming out on the same
day. We’re giving away two each!
In Four Leaf Cleaver, by Maddie Day, a cooking competition on
Saint Patrick’s Day at Robbie Jordan’s Pans ‘n’ Pancakes goes seriously awry.
In Irish Coffee Murder, a collection of novellas by Leslie Meier,
Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross, the holiday is Saint Patrick’s and the signature
drink of the day is murder.
To celebrate, Maddie (L) and Barb (R) sat down at the (virtual) kitchen table to
talk writing, research, mysteries, and series.
Maddie: Barb, your
novella solves a cold case, a crime from the past. Have you written other cold
cases in your Maine Clambake series? Is it easier or harder than having your
protagonist evade a criminal lurking in the present?
Barb: In mystery novels, it’s not unusual to have a crime in the distant
past informing a crime in the present. What’s different about this novella is
there is no crime in the present. (Is that a spoiler?) Therefore I had to
really work at maintaining suspense and keeping the reader interested in a very
cold case. The novella length is part of what made that feasible.
Barb: Maddie, why did you choose to write about
St. Patrick's Day?
Maddie: I usually come up with my own book idea, unless I’m asked to write a
Christmas novella, for example. For this book, my (and Barb’s editor) at
Kensington suggested I could do a cooking competition. Or, he said, “What about
a St. Patrick’s Day theme?” I found the combination irresistible, so I did
both! Batter Off Dead, the previous book in the series, takes place in
July, but after that was “Scarfed Down,” a Christmas novella. A mid-March story
slotted into book time perfectly.
Maddie: This is your fifth novella, and you've
said before you like writing that length. Would you consider writing only
novellas in the future? Why, why not?
Barb: I do love writing these 25,000 to 30,000 word stories. I’m writing one
now to be published in the spring of 2024. (Red Julia Spencer-Fleming was part
of a brainstorming session for this one.) I’m very lucky my publisher,
Kensington, has offered me the opportunity to be a part of these collections of
stories. However, I wouldn’t write only novellas for two reasons. 1) I would miss
the opportunity to tell longer stories, And 2) getting novellas published
outside the confines of these anthologies is very difficult.
Barb: This is the 11th book in the Country
Store Mysteries. What do you find more challenging and what is easier when
writing this far into a series?
Maddie: I’m writing book 12 now and have a contract through book 13,
which is kind of astonishing. What’s easier is that I know the world. I’m pals
with my chef’s staff, hugely fond of her Aunt Adele, and adore Robbie Jordan’s
husband Abe almost as much as she does. I know how hilly Brown County is and
what fictional South Lick looks like. I love when it comes time on my rotation
to write a new Country Store book so I can plunge back into that world and hang
out with my imaginary friends.
As with any long-running series (looking at
more than half the Jungle Reds right now), the challenges come in keeping the
stories fresh. Making sure protag Robbie Jordan keeps changing and growing in
her personal life and in her sleuthing. Finding plausible new people to murder
and that Very Good Reason for Robbie to have to investigate.
Maddie: Do you have Irish heritage? Or doesn't
it matter for writing about an American holiday with little resemblance to
actual Ireland?
Barb: “Perked Up” takes place entirely in Maine, though Julia and friends do
go on a roadtrip to the middle of the state while investigating the mystery. I
knew next to nothing about the Irish in Maine and found a marvelous book, They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine, a collection of scholarly essays edited
by Michael C. Connolly. When we think of Irish emigration to the United States
we tend to think of famine-driven immigration to big cities like New York,
Boston, and Chicago. But that is only a part of the story. Did you know the
oldest surviving Catholic church building in the US is in Newcastle, Maine?
(Next town on the coast from where the Clambake mysteries take place.) Still in
use, Saint Patrick’s was built in 1807 by Irish immigrants who became
wealthy shipbuilders.
As for me, last summer in Dublin, I had a
really fun visit with a genealogist at EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum. I have Irish ancestry, somewhat distantly, on
both sides. My father’s great-grandmother, Eleanor Armstrong, was born in 1843
County, Armagh, now in Northern Ireland and my mother’s great-great-great grandfather
was born in 1812 in Dublin.
Barb: How about your Irish heritage? What kind of research did you do to
write this book?
Maddie: My maternal grandfather, Richard Flaherty, was a classic bullheaded
Irish-American in San Francisco who didn’t speak to my mother from shortly
before I was born until he died, as stubborn as ever and with a full head of
dark hair, at ninety-four. He had twin brothers who didn’t speak to each other.
On the other hand, one of those twin’s sons, my mom’s cousin Bill, is a sweet
and devoted family man I’ve gotten to know a bit. I look forward to finally
getting to Ireland sometime soon and digging more deeply into the Flahertys of
my great-grandparents’ generation.
Unlike you, Barb, I didn’t dig too far into the
Irish in Indiana, and my Maxwell family roots there are Scottish. For research,
I adapted and tested lots of Irish-flavored recipes, and otherwise went full-on
American interpretation of the holiday (except green beer).
Maddie and Barb: Thank you to Jenn for hosting us! We hope
you’ll all join us at the Wicked Authors blog every weekday, and find us at our web sites
and on social media. We wish you happy Irish-styled reading.
Readers: What’s your favorite holiday to read about? Do you celebrate any
obscure holidays nobody writes about? Do you have a St. Patrick’s Day
tradition? We’ll each give away a copy of our new book to two commenters (that
is two commenters, two books each).
In Four Leaf Cleaver, there’s no mistaking
Saint Patrick’s Day at Pans ’N Pancakes, where the shelves of vintage
cookware in her southern Indiana store are draped with Kelly-green garlands and
her restaurant is serving shepherd’s pie and Guinness Beer brownies. The big
event, however, is a televised Irish cooking competition to be filmed on site.
Unfortunately, someone’s luck has run out. Before the cameras start rolling,
tough-as-nails producer Tara O’Hara Moore is found upstairs in her B&B
room, a heavy cleaver left by her side. Now, not only does Robbie have a store
full of festive decorations, she’s got a restaurant full of suspects . . .
In “Perked Up,” Barb’s
novella in Irish Coffee Murder, It’s a snowy St.
Patrick’s night in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. When the power goes out, what better
way for Julia Snowden to spend the evening than sharing local ghost stories—and
Irish coffees—with friends and family? By the time the lights come back, they
might even have solved the coldest case in town . . .
Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries,
and the new Cece Barton Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith
Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and award-nominated short
crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and cat Martin north of Boston,
where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, Wicked Authors, Mystery Lovers’
Kitchen, and on social
media: BookBub,Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
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 holiday
anthologies from Kensington Publishing. Barbara and her husband live in
Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com, on her blog at Wicked Authors and on BookBub, Goodreads, Facebook, and Instagram.
