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?

Speaking of Murder!

My alter-ego, Tace Baker, has a book coming out! 

The pre-order page for  Speaking of Murder  by Tace Baker on Amazon is now live. You can also sign up for a free preview of the first four chapters on www.TaceBaker.com. 

This is very, very exciting news. I started writing this book in the winter of 2009. I finished the first draft a year later, and then took a year to polish it. I started trying to find an agent in winter of 2011 with no luck. 

Those of you following this blog know that we had a couple of close calls with small presses before Barking Rain Press decided to take a chance with Tace. We've been through a full editing pass and this morning the editor, Betty Dobson, and I received the page proofs (as a PDF) from the publisher, Sheri Gormley. Whee! We have a cover, ISBNs, and more. It's finally real.

 I've set up a book launch party and invited all my 936 Facebook friends both near and far as well as a dozen more local friends. Come on down to the Book Rack in Newburyport on September 27 at 7 pm and help us celebrate. 

The Quaker book catalog has agreed to list Speaking of Murder, and my new local bookstore in Amesbury, Bertram and Oliver's, will stock it, too. I'm even arranging to have an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana stock it, since it features a linguist and I hold a PhD from IU in linguistics. I'll be out there two weeks after the book comes out to help market it.

Now it's back to final polishing on A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die, and then I need to get started on the detailed synopsis for Till Dirt Do Us Part, all mixed in with promotional activities and a full-time job. Who needs sleep?!

Forensic Linguistics - What?

I picked up my New Yorker magazine this week and browsed the table of contents. Whoa! An article from the "Department of Linguistics" titled "Words on Trial." Really? (Note: you might have to be a subscriber to read the whole article.)

How cool is that? Solving crimes with linguistics. But wait, that's what my alter-ego's first mystery revolves around! Tace Baker's Speaking of Murder will be out from Barking Rain Press on September 18. It features a Quaker linguistics professor who...well, let's just quote her web site: 

"The murder of a talented student at a small New England college thrusts linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau into the search for the killer. Lauren is a determined Quaker with an ear for accents. Her investigation exposes small town intrigues, academic blackmail and a clandestine drug cartel that now has its sights set on her."

So I drilled deeper into the article. I knew this from prior research, but it was cool to be reminded of how linguists can solve crimes by analyzing consistent patterns in text messages, voice mail message, or written notes. 

For example, Professor Robert Leonard matched certain elements in the emails of an accused murderer with the text scrawled on the wall at the murder scene. Things like using "U" for "you," which is commonly seen in text messages but not in emails, and misplaced apostrophes in words like "doesnt'" and "cant'." (Oh, be still for a moment, you Pet Peevers, you...) This case had no physical evidence, and the accused was condemned to three life terms in prison based on the forensic linguistic evidence.

I encourage you to read the entire well-researched and well-written article. It's given me more than one idea for Book Three in Tace Baker's Speaking of Mystery series. In Speaking of Murder, Lauren Rousseau uses spoken accents, both domestic and foreign, to identify and eliminate suspects. But she's fully capable of doing text analysis or of determining, as Leonard did, that the suspect used contractions only in negative statement ("I can't") but not in positive ones ("I am"), evidence that resulted in conviction. 

Have you read mysteries solved by a linguist or investigator with linguistic prowess? Or heard of crimes with language-related evidence?

Thoughts of Murder and Mayhem

I'm immersed in a whirlwind of selling a house and renting an apartment while we find the right next house to buy. The gale force slams me with decisions about what to shed, what minimal possessions to bring, and what to store. The relocation storm also forces me to make sure precious items are packed with care. How do I cushion the stone Buddha in the garden so  he isn't chipped by moving from here to there and then to where I want him to land? Will my mother's lovely china really survive the move?

Of course, being a crime writer, the possibilities for murderous mayhem alert me at every turn. What if someone rented one of those temporary storage containers, as we have, and the first item she carried in was a body in a cedar chest? She might then fill the pod with the rest of their boxes of books, her fine china, her garden statuary, her momentarily excess bookshelves, the extra couch. 


The pod gets carted off to the warehouse, which is temperature and humidity controlled. No one notices. 


You get the picture. But how, you might ask, did the victim meet his or her demise?

I recently ordered Dr. D.P. Lyle's amazing resource, Murder and Mayhem: A Doctor Answers Medical and Forensic Questions for Mystery Writers. 


Ooh. Ooh! Dr. Lyle regularly blogs answering these kinds of questions and I don't always make time to read his posts. (He also writes the Dub Walker thrillers and the Samantha Cody series.) But having Murder and Mayhem on my desk makes it hard to concentrate on anything else. A brief sample from the table of contents:

• Does alcohol intake prevent death from freezing?
• What structures must be injured to make a stab wound in the back lethal?
• Can a bee sting kit be altered to result in the death of the user?

You see what I mean. I'd like to take a couple of vacation days just to read this book cover to cover. In lieu of that, what's your favorite nefarious and unusual way to kill off a (fictional) victim? Have you perused Dr. Lyle's books?

Eliminating Unnecessary Words

The topic of eliminating unnecessary words has been covered before. Many times in many places by many, many astute writers. 


Still, when I get to the down-and-dirty revision stage of a book, I'm surprised all over again at how many overused words I, well, overuse.


I'm working my way though A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. I searched first for words Donald Maass enjoined us to replace: "felt, gasp, fear, terror." I looked at each character, mostly farmer Cam Flaherty, and made sure that was what she was feeling, and then made sure I showed it in the cleanest, clearest way possible rather than describing the feeling in words. I eliminated a LOT of "felt"s. I didn't find many "terror" instances, and I think all the "gasp"s are gone now.

Then I looked for "stare" in its various noun and verb permutations. Oh, my. Lots of people were staring, sometimes many times within a scene. Revised that one, just getting rid of the verb in quite a few cases. People can just "look" or can fix their eyes on something. Or you can assume if two folks are standing face to face they are mostly likely making eye contact.


Did you know you can eliminate dozens of occurrences of "that?" Yes, you can. The esteemed and insightful Ramona deFelice Long discussed this recently.


Tonight's exercise involves "just." I, and other speakers of English, legitimately use it as a minimizer: "It was probably just an object left long ago." As an intensifier: "The three of them had just made the noon deadline." As a time indicator: "She had just locked the back door." And so on. 


I've found that I use "just" instead of searching for alternatives, for more precise or more colorful ways of saying what I or my characters say or do.


In the minimizer case, how about rewording or removing it? ""It was probably [only] an object left long ago." 
In the intensifier case, how about rewording? "The three of them had barely made the noon deadline."
Same with the time indicator: "She had locked the back door not a minute earlier."


See? Those three examples occurred on one page of my manuscript. I have some hours of revision left on just that word alone. 


I have more to search for, but these are a good start. 


What's your favorite overused word when you revise? What are the kinds of unnecessary words you notice when you're reading? And if you feel like challenging me on this, I might just have to stare you down (after I gasp in terror...).

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.

Four-Author Retreat Report

Barb Ross put up such a great report about our writing retreat that I'm just going to link to her post over at Maine Crime Writers. Stop by and leave a comment for her!


http://mainecrimewriters.com/barbs-posts/a-writing-retreat-in-old-orchard-beach