New Web Site

PLEASE NOTE: My web site has moved! Come on over to edithmaxwell.com.


New Covers, New Books

The third Local Foods mystery, Farmed and Dangerous, made it to Amazon. Don't you love it?

It's available for pre-order, too! And speaking of covers, my second Lauren Rousseau mystery has a cover, too.

You can win a copy in a Goodreads giveaway from now to October first by signing up here: 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Bluffing is Murder

by Tace Baker

Giveaway ends October 01, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Barking Rain Press also has a free preview and a 35% off coupon available. The book will release November 11.

And don't forget book one, Speaking of Murder, is half off from the publisher in September - just use the coupon code BRP3YEAR at checkout.

Author Banner Time

Check out my new banner! 

I go to events sometimes where I'm at a table for a couple of hours and realized my visibility is not what it could be.

So now I have a 24" x 48" banner, complete with grommets, to hang from the front of my table or behind me on a wall. Since I have multiple series and multiple names, I decided to go simple. And all I had to do was drive down the road a couple of miles to my local party story Funny Bones. It wasn't even expensive. Wish I'd done it a year ago!

What do you think?

July 2014 News

A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die is on sale this month. If you've been patiently waiting for the price to go down, all of the digital versions - Kindle, Nook, Apple - are now available for only $1.99 thanks to Kensington Publishing. Get it while supplies last! Oh - that's right, it's digital...

Sales of 'Til Dirt Do Us Part continue to do nicely - if you haven't picked it up yet or asked your local library to stock it - well, it's perfect beach or lake reading and it's never too late.

I finished my historical mystery set in Amesbury in 1888 and it's out for review with several historical and birthing experts. Here's a first pass at a blurb for Breaking the Silence, the first in the Carriagetown Mysteries:

Quaker midwife Rose Carroll hears secrets and keeps confidences as she attends births of the rich and poor alike in 1888 Amesbury. When the town’s carriage industry is threatened by the work of an arsonist and a carriage maker’s adult son is stabbed to death, Rose is drawn into solving the mystery. Things get dicey after the same man’s mistress is also murdered, leaving her one-week old baby without a mother. While struggling with being less than the perfect Friend, Rose draws on her strengths as a problem solver to bring two murderers to justice.

I'm working hard on a new project that I'm not allowed to announce yet, but I'm very excited about it. Stay tuned for an announcement later this summer. 

Lots of events still to come this summer. Please click the Events tab for details. I've also been guest at quite a few awesome blogs - the Guest Blogs tab should be up to date with permanent links to those essays.

And the release date for my alter-ego Tace Baker's second Lauren Rousseau mystery, Bluffing is Murder, is November 11. The cover should be out soon from Barking Rain Press.

Finally, thanks for your support and your appreciation of my mysteries! One of the best ways you can support an author you like, besides reading (and buying, if it's within your budget) her book, is to write a positive review and post it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, your church newsletter, or wherever readers can be found. I'd be nowhere with my reader fans!

It Was a Very Good Year

When I summarized my writing accomplishments for this year, I was pretty amazed. I thought I'd share it with you, dear Reader. Here goes! 

As most of you know, A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die came out to positive reviews. I learned a huge amount about marketing, selling, and the limits of my own energy. I turned in 'Til Dirt Do Us Part, the second book in the series on time and wrote 62,000 words on the third book. 

I self-published two short stories that had previously been in anthologies: "Yatsuhashi for Lance" and "Reduction in Force." 

My short story "The Stonecutter" appeared in the Fish Nets anthology from Wildside Press. My short story "Breaking the Silence" not only made it into the Level Best Books anthology Stone Cold, but also won an honorable mention in the Al Blanchard Short Crime Fiction Contest. 

I finished writing and signed a contract with Barking Rain Press for Bluffing is Murder (written as Tace Baker), the second Lauren Rousseau mystery. 

I wrote 55 blog posts and contributed to a bunch more. Five other New England cozy mystery authors and I joined forces and started the Wicked Cozy Authors group blog, posting every weekday.

My story of revenge on a literary thief, "Just Desserts for Johnny," was accepted for January 2014 publication in Kings River Life Magazine. 

I was a panelist at four mystery conferences and spoke at a couple dozen library or bookstore events. And I quit my day job to become a full-time fiction writer. 

It was a fabulous year in my life. Thank you so much to all my readers and supporters!

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.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, dear readers. It's been an amazing year for me as a writer.

My first mystery novel, Speaking of Murder, was published by Barking Rain Press in September. I did as much promotion as I could--dozens of guest blogs and a half-dozen speaking events--but haven't seen any earthshaking sales or important reviews. 

I signed a deal with an agent, John Talbot, and then a three-book contract with Kensington Publishing. I wrote the first Local Foods mystery and sent it in, and have 30k written on the second one (a few thousand words more by tonight, I hope!). 

I had a short story, "Stonecutter," accepted for publication in an anthology, and two other stories were published in the Burning Bridges anthology where all proceeds went to charity.


I decided to self e-publish two previously published short stories whose rights have reverted to me, because they are actually the backstory to two important characters in Speaking of Murder, and I have formatted them for Smashwords and gotten covers done (by StanzAloneDesign - aren't they cool?). They'll be available for all ereaders sometime in the next month.

I attended a dynamite Donald Maass writing workshop, the Writers' Police Academy, and New England Crime Bake and learned so much from each event. I even plunged into the world of smart phones and Kindles.

All this went on while I was working full time writing software manuals, exercising most days, selling and buying a house and moving, and sitting with my mother while she died in April. Whew!

I'd like to thank all of you who stopped by to see what was up all year long and especially to those who commented and who read my writing. It means so much to me.

May you have a happy, healthy, harmonious new year filled with lots and lots of reading!

New Locations, New Ideas

I wrote a guest post for the fabulous Maine Crime Writers blog recently about a week I spent on an island in Maine thirty years ago. I hold very fond memories of that week on Great Gott's Island.

It got me thinking about other places I have traveled, which are many and international. Which got me thinking about having my protagonist in the Local Foods Mysteries do some traveling later in the series. But it's a cozy series and cozies typically keep the action confined to one town, one setting. There are exceptions to this rule, especially in long-running series. Katherine Hall Page, for example, has set books in Maine, in France, and elsewhere, but usually goes back to her protagonist's Massachusetts town in between other locales.

I could reasonably have farmer Cam Flaherty attend the Common Ground organic farming conference in Unity, Maine, and then head to an island for a week of vacation. But it would be tricky for her to, say, spend time in Mali or Japan or Brazil, places I have lived and know well.

So maybe I need to come up with a new series with a protagonist who has a reason to travel to some of the far-flung places I have experienced as a resident. Sheila Connolly has a new series set in Ireland (and reports that she just got back from two weeks of "research" there, which sounds to me like just an excuse for a cool vacation). I read about someone who created a travel-agent protagonist for just that reason, and Gigi Pandian has a new series featuring an historian who also has just cause to travel (her first book is set in San Francisco and then Scotland).

Come to think of it, I already HAVE a protagonist with a reason to travel. Lauren Rousseau, the linguistics professor in Speaking of Murder, could plausibly head to Japan for an Asian Linguistics conference. Or to Mali to do research on Bamanankan, the first language of a large portion of the population. Or to Brazil, France, Quebec, Puerto Rico, and so on. 


So it looks like what I have to come up with is the TIME to write two series at once. Once I do that, I can also go on tax-deductible "research" trips - I look forward to that. 

What exotic place would you like to see a mystery series set in? What's your favorite travel mystery? Or do you prefer that your cozy protagonist stays settled in one place? 

Box of Books

I came home Friday to the most fabulous sight: a box of books. MY books!


It was an amazing feeling to hold the book in my hands, to leaf through it, to read the wonderful blurbs on the back cover. I started writing this book almost four years ago. This is a dream come true.

Here's one of the blurbs: "Debut author Tace Baker combines convincing, diverse characters, a vividly described setting, and a plot that picks up speed until it reaches a surprisingly intense confrontation. Who knew linguistics professors led such interesting lives?" -Sheila Connolly, New York Times bestselling author of the Orchard Mystery series and the Museum Mystery series.

Thanks, Sheila! 

Both of my parents have passed away, my mother just last April. But I dedicated the book to them. I wrote, 

This book is for my late parents, Allan Maxwell, Jr. and Marilyn Muller. They always told me I could be anything I wanted to be. And now I'm an author, exactly what I want to be.

I have a couple of launch parties scheduled, as well as a dozen guest blog posts, so I'll probably be pretty scarce around here this fall. I hope you'll drop by some of the blogs, though. Watch my facebook pages for news. And if you wanted to pick up the book, Barking Rain Press is selling it for half off during September.

Guest Blog Schedule:
Dru's Book Musings - September 19
Mysteristas - September 20
Jungle Red Writers - September 26
Chris Redding, Author - September 27
Lisa's Book Critiques - September 28-29
Auntie Em Writes - September 30
Schooled in Mystery - October 2
Poe's Deadly Daughters - October 6
Kristi Belcamino - October 10
Novel Adventurers - October 12
Writers Who Kill - October 13
Buried Under Books - October 16
Examiner.com - October 17
Marilyn's Musings - October 18
Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews - October 22
Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers - November 2
Cindy Carroll - November 7
Mystery Lovers' Kitchen - November 24

Two Years of Blogging

I'm a little late with this. I somehow missed the two-year anniversary of this blog, which was August 7. I got a little closer last year with One Year in the Blogosphere. 

My goal when I started was one post per week. I pretty much stuck to it: 106 posts over two years. I let up a bit on frequency this summer. Hmm, think moving and getting two books out had anything to do with it? Plus I've been blogging every few weeks over at the Sisters in Crime New England group blog, Pen, Ink, and Crimes, which sometimes uses up all my available blogging energy.

A post I wrote about doing research on the Crane Estate in Ipswich has gotten a lot of steady traffic. But besides that, the top three posts have to do with finding the space to write: Retreating to Write, my report on Wellspring House, and Gathering to Write, about a four-writer retreat I was part of in June. I guess most of my readers here are writers (or would-be writers longing for retreat). Total comments for the two years is 519. Average of 5 per post? Seems high, but then those count my replies to all you kindly (and MUCH appreciated) readers who leave a comment.

One interesting stat: the first year more readers viewed the blog on Firefox than on Internet Explorer. That flipped this year, with a new fourteen percent on Chrome (what I use exclusively). More people continue to use Windows than Mac, although one percent read it on an iPhone. Other mobile devices are still under one percent. 

At the end of last year's anniversary post, I noted that I would "continue blogging on topics relating to Speaking of Murder (book One), Murder on the Beach (book Two), and, of course, writing and publishing." At the time I didn't have a publisher for Speaking of Murder, and now it's coming out in print (under a pen name) from a reputable small press, Barking Rain, in less than a month. See Tace Baker's web site for details, or preorder it!

And the Local Foods Mysteries series wasn't even a gleam in Kensington Publishing's eye at the time. Now it's a three-book contract signed, sealed, and delivered, and I'm about to send the completed and many-times-revised manuscript of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die off to the editor this Friday! Watch for that release next June

That's a big change in a year's time.  I wonder what will happen in the next year. Despite several articles that foretell "Blogging is dead," I plan to continue for at least one more year. 

I thank each and every one of you for being a faithful or even occasional reader, and I'll randomly pick one commenter from today's post and send him or her a signed copy of Speaking of Murder, so be sure to leave a valid email address if you think I don't know how to find you otherwise.

Finally, do you think blogging is worth it? Do you read blogs regularly? Still write posts alone or with others, or has Facebook taken over that role? What do you think is next on the horizon?

Contract for Speaking of Murder!

I am delighted to announce that yesterday I signed a contract with Barking Rain Press to publish Speaking of Murder, featuring Quaker Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau. I am so very excited. I am using the pen name Tace Baker (my Local Foods Mystery contract with Kensington Publishing stipulated that I couldn't publish a different book or series under my real name during the term of the contract). Tace is an old female Quaker name.

The print book will come out mid-September, with e-formats following in October. Although Barking Rain is a fairly new small press, I am impressed by their professionalism and response time. I'll be jumping into the editing phase shortly.

I started writing this book after I was laid off a job in the late fall of 2008, and finished the first draft in February of 2010. I started trying to sell it in January of 2011, so this has been a path requiring perseverance.

Now I totally have to get busy building my 'brand' of Tace Baker: URL, web site, Facebook author page, twitter (AND finish the first draft of the first book in the Local Foods series. AND work full time. And so on...). Makes my head spin a bit, but first I'm going to have some champagne and chocolate!