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.

'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!

Calling Librarians Everywhere!

Wow. Library Journal wrote a positive review of my book. This is huge. It's where librarians go to decide which new books to buy. I am delighted! If my only sales were to every library in the country, I would be one happy author. Here's what they said: 

"Computer scientist Cameron (Cam) Flaherty turns her back on the corporate world to manage her great-uncle’s small Massachusetts farm. As a self-described geek-turned-farmer with rusty social skills, Cam finds the whole “getting to know you” process of small-town life tedious. Still, she plugs into the locavore community and does her best to make friends. But things go topsy when her recently fired farmhand is killed with a pitchfork in her greenhouse. Cam is now a prime suspect, while she thinks everyone else is acting suspiciously. At the same time, someone is systematically sabotaging Cam’s fields and crops, upping her unease. The killer astutely figures out Cam’s greatest fear and uses that weapon next. VERDICT Another topically relevant cozy debut introduces a fledgling organic farmer keying into the local foods movement and encountering some whack jobs along the way. This would partner well with Chrystle Fiedler’s “Natural Remedies” series."

Readers, feel free to quote or forward this review to your local library when you ask them to acquire my book. It's one of the best presents you can give an author. And thank you!

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.

Another Productive Retreat

I felt called to take myself on retreat again. It's so hard for me to write during the work week, and with the holidays coming up and then a knee replacement looming in January, I wanted to make some real headway with the second book in my Local Foods Mystery series. 

I found a Quaker retreat house in West Falmouth, which is on the near edge of Cape Cod, on  Buzzard's Bay. The house is just across a Friends graveyard from the West Falmouth Friends Meetinghouse that was built in 1842. I reserved a room for $25 per night, but no one else was going to be there, so that was the price of the entire house.

I drove down after work on a Friday with a bad cold and stocked a few simple provisions. I set up my netbook, made some tea, and set to writing. My only distractions were my own: going for a walk, reading, thinking. The house did NOT come equipped with internet. This turned out to be a huge blessing. I crossed the street to the library once a day to check for any messages that needed acting on and otherwise left cyberspace alone.

I wrote and wrote and wrote. I took care of my cold and kept writing. I gazed out the back window at the remnants of the Meeting garden, moseyed out to pluck some bits of parsley for my soup, and kept writing. I went for a walk down to the bay and sat and listened to the calm winter lapping of the bay, then went back and kept writing

I had recently re-read Rachel Aaron's post on how she writes 10,000 words a day (and thanks to Ramona DeFelice Long for reminding me of that post last week). One of her secrets is to leave home for few hours. Check, in spades. Another is to only write the interesting scenes (and really, if you aren't compelled to write it, readers probably won't be compelled to read it, either).  I had plotted a few scenes ahead. So I jumped to the really interesting one and wrote that. Then I went back and wrote the scenes leading up to that one, making them more interesting, too. Check.


I took meal breaks at the kitchen counter and finished Kaye George's latest funny mystery set in Texas, Smoke, and then started Jeri Westerson's latest in her fabulous Crispin Guest series, Blood Lance, but I only let myself read as long as I was eating. Then, guess what, I kept writing. 



I walked through the graveyard to sit in worship with Friends on Sunday morning, then got to know a few of them, handing out bookmarks for Speaking of Murder as I did (well, it does have a Quaker protagonist). Then I went back to write.

My cold was still pretty bad late Sunday night (despite adding a bit of brandy to my tea with honey and lemon) and my cough wasn't fit for human company. I cancelled my plan to drive very early to work on Monday morning and filed for a sick day, instead. I stayed at my writing station until midday on Monday. Final tally for just under 3 full days of retreat? 15,071 words. Wow! 

The work in progress is now just under 100 pages long. It isn't due until July 1 but I feel very comfortable with this headway. Sure, it's a rough first draft. Now, though, I am confident that I will have enough time to schedule in revision and polishing before I have to send it off. 

Quaker House, I will return to thee.

What's your favorite retreat center? Where are you most productive writing when you can grab a stretch of time, whether it's three hours or three days?

Busy, Busy, Busy

I am so busy right now I am not making posting here a priority. I apologize, dear readers.


The bright side is that you're going to have a much better book to read next spring, when A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die comes out. I have a bookstore pub date of May 28, in fact! It will be out in hardcover and eformats at the same time. I'm working hard to polish up the prose, tie up the loose ends, ramp up the tension, ante up the stakes. It's due September 1 to the publisher.


Soon I'll get the edits back for Speaking of Murder, too, and will have a few weeks to incorporate those. You'll be able to buy that book in trade paperback on September 15 (remember, it's under the name Tace Baker) and in eformats a month later. I've hired on a publicist and we're busy scheduling readings, thinking about getting the word out, brainstorming ideas to make these books a success.

On top of all that, I have a full-time demanding job, and oh, did I mention we've sold our lovely antique house in Ipswich and have to move by August 1? Whee! Which also includes finding the next place, whether it's our landing destination in Amesbury or a temporary apartment while we find the perfect downsizer with a sunny yard on a quiet street. 


Life is good, life is full. In the meantime, I do post every couple of weeks over at the Sisters in Crime New England blog, Pen, Ink, and Crimes. I also post regularly on Facebook at  www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor and www.facebook.com/TaceBaker.

Brief Hiatus

Notice to my faithful and occasional readers: if you do not see a fresh post here weekly, please do not despair. I plan to resume posting, on weekends from now on, but only after I settle into my new day job as a technical writer with Charles River Development.

I expect the adjustment to take a bit of time, and my free time on weekends will be occupied with finishing the first draft of A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. I will be back on these pages, perhaps sooner than I expect. I just didn't want to disappoint anyone who checks in here regularly. And I thank those of you who do!

Edith