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.

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!

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?