Support an Author, Win Art

May 27: The book is out! And Barbara Pease won the scarf. Congratulations to Barbara, and thanks to all who preordered. I hope you like the book. And if you do, one of the nicest things you can do for an author is post a positive review on Amazon, Goodreads, your church newsletter, your farm stand bulletin board, or wherever! 


May 14:
My author friend Linda Rodriguez held a giveaway contest for fans who preordered the latest in her fabulous Skeet Bannion mystery series, Every Hidden Fear. I liked the idea so much I decided to do it myself. 

I ask you to help me ensure my Local Foods Mysteries contract is renewed. Publishers love it when lots and lots of people buy the book during its release week, and the best way to do that is to preorder Til Dirt Do Us Part from the brick-and-mortar or online bookstore of your choice (see the link buttons on the right). The release date is May 27, and I'll close the contest at nine PM (eastern time) on May 26.


But I'll sweeten the pot. Not only will you receive the book you ordered on its release day, you can also win a gorgeous prize.

If you send me proof of your preorder,  I'll enter you in a contest to win a piece of art. It's a picture of 

the sun, rain, and sprouting plants hand-painted on a sky-blue crepe-de-chine silk scarf, signed by the artist, Joanna Lynam. Isn't it beautiful? (Unlike Linda R, I didn't make it myself...)

If you don't wear scarves yourself, wouldn't it be a lovely present for the person in your life who does? So go ahead and preorder the book, then forward the order email, scan the receipt, or take a screenshot of your Paid page, and send it to edithmaxwellauthor at gmail dot com. Make sure you put PREORDER CONTEST in the subject line. When I get your email, I'll enter you in the drawing to be held on May 27. Heck, print out your receipt and snail mail it if you want (but you'll have to email me for my address). 

And thank you from the bottom of my author heart. I'm living my dream, and am eager to continue to do so. Merci. Obrigada. Doomo. Danke. Inice. Gracias. Tak. Thanks.

Cam's Gardening Tips

Every Wednesday my fictional farmer, Cam Flaherty, has been posting gardening tips over at the Sisters in Crime New England blog. 

Stop by and check them out!

Recent News

Goodreads Giveway:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

'Til Dirt Do Us Part

by Edith Maxwell

Giveaway ends March 30, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Event News:

I am delighted to have three San Francisco Bay area author events scheduled in a couple of weeks and would love to see you at any of them:

• Friday March 14 at Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, 7 PM.
• Sunday March 16 at Borderlands in San Francisco, 1 PM
• Monday March 17 at Books Inc in Berkeley, 7 PM

I'll be talking about my local foods mystery series and my life as a writer, will read a bit, and will take as many questions as you have. I'm a fourth-generation Californian living north of Boston and am looking forward to being back! Thanks.



'Til Dirt Do Us Part releases May 27. Pre-order it here or here. The very first review is up and it's a five star! 

The produce is local - and so is the crime - when long-simmering tensions lead to murder following a festive dinner on Cam Flaherty's farm. It'll take a sleuth who knows the lay of the land to catch this killer. But no one ever said Cam wasn't willing to get her hands dirty...

Autumn has descended on Westbury, Massachusetts, but the mood at the Farm-to-Table Dinner in Cam's newly built barn is unseasonably chilly. Local entrepreneur Irene Burr made a lot of enemies with her plan to buy Westbury's Old Town Hall and replace it with a textile museum-enough enemies to fill out a list of suspects when the wealthy widow turns up dead on a neighboring farm.

Even an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident locavores went loco - at least temporarily - and settled a score with Irene. But which one? With the Fall harvest upon her, Cam must sift through a bushelful of possible killers that includes Irene's estranged stepson, her disgruntled auto mechanic, and a fellow CSA subscriber who seems suspiciously happy to have the dead woman out of the way.


The closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out of the compost pile, she'll have to wrap this case up quickly.

'Til Dirt Do Us Part!

I've been  haunting Amazon for days, waiting to see the cover for 'Til Dirt Do Us Part, the second Local Foods mystery. And it showed up today!

Isn't that fun? 

The produce is local - and so is the crime - when long-simmering tensions lead to murder following a festive dinner on Cam Flaherty's farm. It'll take a sleuth who knows the lay of the land to catch this killer. But no one ever said Cam wasn't willing to get her hands dirty...

Autumn has descended on Westbury, Massachusetts, but the mood at the Farm-to-Table Dinner in Cam's newly built barn is unseasonably chilly. Local entrepreneur Irene Burr made a lot of enemies with her plan to buy Westbury's Old Town Hall and replace it with a textile museum - enough enemies to fill out a list of suspects when the wealthy widow turns up dead on a neighboring farm.

Even an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident locavores went loco - at least temporarily - and settled a score with Irene. But which one? With the fall harvest upon her, Cam must sift through a bushelful of possible killers that includes Irene's estranged stepson, her disgruntled auto mechanic, and a fellow CSA subscriber who seems suspiciously happy to have the dead woman out of the way.

The closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out of the compost pile, she'll have to wrap this case up quickly.

The book, the second in the Local Foods Mystery series, will release in late May, 2014. 

Three Years on the Blog Highway

I'm coming up on the third anniversary of starting this blog. At each year anniversary I've written about the past year: Two Years of Blogging and One Year in the Blogosphere.

It's been a great three years! Anyone who follows me here will have noticed a change in the frequency of my posts in the last year. That was due to several things:

• Total knee replacement in January  which took the expected recovery and therapy time.
• Books! A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die released at the end of May and I turned in 'Til Dirt Do Us Part at the end of June. Writing and promotion uses the bulk of my time, which is as it should be.
• Our new Wicked Cozy Authors group blog, where I blog every week or two, plus
  
  contribute to the Wicked Wednesday topic every week, plus comment on the other posts and push news of the blog out. I hope you'll stop by and check it out!

I hired Kathleen Valentine to freshen up the look and functionality of this entire web site this spring, which I'm happy with. 

In terms of interesting stats, I find it fascinating that the second and third highest numbers of views come from China and Ukraine. I have to believe this is not from the huge number of mystery readers in those countries, but who knows? Internet Explorer on Windows were the most used browser and operating system, and people got here usually by way of Google searches. No big surprise on those stats.

My post on Finding a Pen Name was viewed the most of all three years of essays. Wow! The one about Quaker fiction also got a lot of views, as did my post about Girl Scouts.

As for the year to come? I'll be right here writing and promoting, and will put up a post now and then. 'Til Dirt Do Us Part will be out next June, with the paperback version of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die next May. I'm finishing up the first draft of the second Lauren Rousseau mystery, Bluffing is Murder, now, and hope to send that off to Barking Rain Press this fall. Farmed and Dangerous (for a June 2015 release) is already underway. And there might be another series in the works. Watch this spot for news!

What do you think, gentle reader? Are blogs alive and well in 2013? Are they replaced by Facebook? Where online do you prefer to have a conversation? I'll send a copy of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die to one lucky commenter (US-only, please - if you're from elsewhere, I'll send you an e-copy of Speaking of Murder), so be sure to leave your email address if you think I don't already have it.

The Next Big Thing

Thanks to author Nancy Adams for inviting me to take part in this fun event. Check out her blog from last week where she answers the same questions about her work in progress, titled CHIMERA, that I do below. 

"The Next Big Thing" was started by blogger She Writes to help female authors promote their current work by answering a set of ten questions and then "tagging" other writers, inviting them to do the same. 

Here's my contribution.

What is your working title of your book?

'Til Dirt Do Us Part

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It's the second book in my Local Foods Mystery series, and I wanted to set it in the fall, so it opens at a Farm-to-Table dinner on farmer Cam Flaherty's organic farm with the food cooked by a local chef. We get to meet a few new characters and touch base with the regulars from the first book, A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. I modeled the dinner on the fabulous one I attended at month ago at Cider Hill Farm in Amesbury (that's a pic of the table). Phat Cats Bistro did the cooking with all local ingredients and it was, excuse the expression, to die for!

What genre does your book fall under?
This is a cozy mystery series -- think Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. The protagonist is Cam Flaherty, an amateur sleuth. The violence is all off screen and the action takes place in a circumscribed area, in this case her farm, the fictional small town it's in, and a nearby small city.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh, my! That's a challenge. Maybe Clare Dane for Cam - she's about the right age and can be both serious and funny, although she's not really tall enough. As for Jake, the chef and romantic interest - I don't know. I'd need a really tall Scandinavian-looking man with some weight on him. Any ideas?

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

During the fall harvest dinner at the end of Cam Flaherty's first season, she has no idea that a toxic threat to her quiet life as an organic farmer festers under society's topsoil.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I'm really fortunate to be represented by John Talbot and the series is published by Kensington Publishing.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
It took me about six months to write the first draft of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die, and that's my goal for 'Til Dirt Do Us Part, too. I have a full-time day job, so it's tricky!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Sheila Connolly's Orchard Mystery series, Paige Shelton's Farmers Market Mystery series, and Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles Herbal Mystery series are all cozies with a farm theme.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I was an organic farmer myself many years ago so I know the language and tensions of growing food for a living. I love diving back into that world and creating stories within it.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The Local Foods movement is getting more and more popular. Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle tracked her family's project of eating only locally produced food for a year and popularized the term locavore. So members of the Westbury Locavore Club belong to Cam's farm-share program, or CSA. Also, Cam is a geek, a former software engineer, which informs her personality and some of her interactions.

Next week be sure to check out "The Next Big Thing" from the following authors who are carrying on this event!

• Marian Lanouette writes mysteries with romantic elements.
• Ramona DeFelice Long writes fiction, non-fiction, and creative non-fiction.
• Liz Mugavero writes the Pawsitively Organic Gourmet Pet Food Mysteries.
• Barb Ross writes the cozy Maine Clambake Mysteries.

What do you think the next big thing will be? Have you heard of locavores? Leave a question or comment (along with your email address) and win a free copy of my first mystery, Speaking of Murder.