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!

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. 

I was a Bouchercon Virgin

I'm excited to report that my essay, "I was a Bouchercon Virgin," appeared in Crimespree Magazine online. Adeola Saul, our Kensington Publishing publicist, asked me to write it. And they took it. 

Read all about my first time at the biggest mystery fan convention of the year. And what I now have in common with greats Tess Gerritsen and Sue Grafton!

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.

Edith's Feline Friends

Over at our new Wicked Cozy Authors blog, I'm talking about my cats! 

Stop by and let us know your feelings about pets, and what you expect from a cozy mystery. 

Another Giveaway

I've set up another Goodreads giveaway. Five books to five randomly selected winners.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tine to Live, A Tine to Die

by Edith Maxwell

Giveaway ends May 04, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I really enjoyed sending off the five copies from the first giveaway to readers around the country, plus one in Canada, and one reader already posted a glowing review, here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/579824679/

With only six weeks until release date, my excitement is mounting. I'm lining up more and more events, so please check the Events tab. And both my wonderful sons will be back in the state for my Newburyport launch party on June 9! It's happy times in Maxwell-land.

Publishers Weekly Review

So this is exciting. Publishers Weekly has reviewed A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die! Their Facebook page describes them as " the leading international trade magazine of the publishing business." 

Friends and colleagues tell me being reviewed in PW is a big deal, because libraries read it and it governs purchasing all over the place, with a circulation of somewhere around 25,000. My publisher, Kensington Publishing, submitted the book to PW, but a review is not guaranteed by any means. 

When I ventured an opinion to a couple of fellow authors that it isn't really a rave review, I was assured that any positive coverage is great, since at least it isn't negative. 

And the words "absorbing" and "exciting" are actually pretty, well, exciting! 

Here's the actual review:

A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die (Edith Maxwell. Kensington, $24 (304p) ISBN 978-0-7582-8461-7)

Maxwell (Speaking of Murder under the pen name Tace Baker) brings her expertise as a former organic farmer to her absorbing first Local Foods mystery. Cam Flaherty, who has taken over her great-uncle’s organic farm in Millsbury, Mass., feels obliged to fire farmhand Mike Montgomery after he admits he was going to use pesticide on the beetles he was tired of handpicking off asparagus and potato leaves. That evening, Cam finds Mike lying dead, her pitchfork stuck in his throat. Suspected of the farmhand’s murder, Cam must contend with Mike’s angry mother and an unfriendly police detective. Lending support in her hunt for the real killer are her fellow organic farmers and childhood friend Ruth Dodge, who’s now a police officer. Issues involving immigrants and a local militia group add weight to a plot that builds to an exciting climax. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency. (June)

Note: the town in the book is Westbury, not Millsbury.

I'm still looking for smaller-scale reviewers for the book, but this is a lovely start to the release now less than two months distant!

And I'll say it again: if you have a sizable network, be it on Goodreads, your local farm's CSA newsletter, or your own blog where you could circulate a review, let me know if you'd like an advance copy and we'll see what we can work out. I'm always looking for readers.

Finding Reviewers

I'm looking for readers. 

It's a little over two months until A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die releases and I have a couple dozen advance review copies of it to give away (Preston stays here, though!). What I want is reviewers with a wide reach. 

I've contacted several respected reviewers who I met through Facebook and they agreed to read the book. The Natural Farmer, the newsletter of the Northeast Organic Farming Association agreed to review it for their June edition, which goes out to 10,000 subscribers. I even asked Johnny's Selected Seeds to read one and they said they could mention it on their social media.

Another thing I did was start a Goodreads giveaway.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tine to Live, A Tine to Die

by Edith Maxwell

Giveaway ends April 04, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

I don't hang out on Goodreads much but probably should!  

My publisher is handling the big review sites, like Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and major newspapers, as well as publications like Edible Boston. I'm not sure how that works but am leaving it up to the publicist there. 

If you have a venue where you could circulate a review to a lot of readers, please contact me and we can talk about arranging an ARC for you. I want to get the word out!

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!

Farm Blog Posts

I have an idea for this blog for next year (which starts in a week and a half).

Farmer Cam Flaherty's Great-Uncle Albert is going to write some posts on farming. He actually suggests that to Cam in A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. (Today's exciting news is that the book is up for pre-order with its gorgeous cover on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Whee!)

I already have a garlic-planting post planned out, one on battling woodchucks, and another on planting fall greens. Albert can talk about pruning fruit trees in early March, about planting buckwheat as a summer cover crop, and about putting the fields to bed in late fall. Composting is already at least partly covered in TINE, but that's a possibility, too.

The posts will likely show up every other week so as not to over burden the author (me!) who is writing furiously on the second book in the series, so far titled 'Til Dirt Do Us Part.

What farming or gardening topics would you like to read about? If you are a grower of food, what's your most challenging crop, and your most enjoyable? If you don't have that much success with your green thumb, what would you like help with?

Tine for Production!

A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die is in production over at Kensington Publishing. I just got a sneak peek at a draft of the cover and I'm blown away by the gorgeous colors and arty but realistic vegetables. This is so very exciting. Not to mention seeing my name on the front!

And here are the blurbs that will be on the back:

"Cameron Flaherty understands farming and computer language better than she does people. But when a murder threatens to poison her organic farm, she opens her heart to a posse of endearing volunteers and reaps the benefits. With an insider's look at organic farming and a loyal, persistent heroine, Maxwell offers a series that cozy mystery fans will root for."

-Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity-nominated Lucy Burdette, author of Death in Four Courses

"Edith Maxwell’s A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die is a sparkling read. It’s a down on the farm murder mystery with a bumper crop of locally grown suspects and red herrings."

-Reed Farrel Coleman, three-time Shamus Award-winning author of Gun Church

"A fresh new voice on the cozy mystery scene, Edith Maxwell serves up a tasty plot and a bumper crop of colorful characters in her debut novel, A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die. Fans of Sheila Connolly and Dorothy St. James will be happy to discover a smart, new sleuth who isn't afraid to get her hands dirty."

-Rosemary Harris, Anthony and Agatha Award-nominated author of Pushing Up Daisies

Just color me glowing.

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? 

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?

On Pseudonyms

My dear departed father, an excellent writer in his own right, loved to use his pen name, RJ Nalla. His name was Allan Maxwell, Junior. RJ Nalla? Allan Jr backwards.

Once, in the early 1980s, he even made it onto NPR. All Things Considered had solicited "First signs of Spring" from listeners. Living in our house in a suburb of Los Angeles as he did, Daddy sent in his postcard with a comment about the camellias blooming in February (those are camellias behind him in this picture from his 1980 second wedding day). He was notified ahead of time that they were going to read his contribution, so I, in Boston, made sure to have the radio on at the correct time. What did I hear? "Listener RJ Nalla from Southern California reports..." His moment of fame, and he couldn't even use his real name? Well, that quirk was part of my father's loveability.

(Fun side story. My home town of Temple City sponsors the Camellia Parade every year, with floats made completely of camellias and their leaves by Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and royalty drawn from the first grade classes.Think mini-Rose Parade. I was a Princess when I was six! And look here, the parade continues, complete with the floor-length dresses for the girls. Maybe this weekend I'll venture into the attic and find you the picture of ME in that princess dress.)

I myself am now presented with the need for a pseudonym. I always planned to publish all my books under my good solid name, Edith Maxwell. It even sort of sounds like an authorial name, right?

But in reviewing the contract for my three-book Local Foods Mystery series with Kensington Publishing, I noticed a clause. It said I have to deliver all three outlines and manuscripts to the publisher prior to the delivery to any other publisher of a book-length work unless that book is already under contract. They don't want me to come out with two mysteries by two different presses at the same time under the same name. That makes sense.

Well. My first mystery, Speaking of Murder, is currently being considered at several small presses after the contract with Trestle Press fell through, but it is not currently under contract. I want it to be published, though, and have plans to self publish if none of the reputable small presses want it.

I asked my agent, John Talbot, what to do about that clause. The resolution from the press was that I had to agree to publish Speaking of Murder and its sequel only under a pseudonym. While I'd rather use my real name on all my books, I agreed. I figure I can always link to the other name under my Amazon author page or whatever.

So now I get to make up an entirely new name for myself and am having fun playing with family names and combinations. Nicky Henderson? Ruthie Adams? Cat Flaherty?

Speaking of Murder, featuring Quaker Linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau in northeastern Massachusetts, is a traditional murder but a little darker than a cozy. I want to get the right feel and sound to the name. It has to be easy to spell, easy to say, easy to remember. Somehow, Htide Llewxam doesn't roll off the tongue anywhere nearly as well as RJ Nalla did. Any advice out there from those of you who have done it on how to design a new personality? Any feedback on the three possible choices I listed in the previous paragraph?