with Edith Maxwell
We are delighted to welcome mystery author Edith Maxwell to Omnimystery News today.
Edith's second Local Foods mystery, 'Til Dirt Do Us Part (Kensington Books; May 2014 hardcover and ebook formats), is published later this month and we recently had the chance to chat with her about the series.
— ♦ —
Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your series character. And what is it about a mystery series appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Edith Maxwell
Edith Maxwell: I like reading series, where I get to know the characters and follow them over time, so that's what I write. My protagonist, Cam Flaherty, has challenges both psychological and physical going from being a software engineer to an organic farmer. She changes over the course of each book and over the series arc as she confronts these challenges.
OMN: Into what mystery genre would you place your books?
EM: The Local Foods mysteries are cozies, a subset of traditional mystery. My Quaker Linguistics professor mysteries (under pen name Tace Baker) are traditional mysteries, because the themes are a little darker. Cozies and traditionals have a large and dedicated reading audience. I don't mind those labels at all.
OMN: Tell us something about 'Til Dirt Do Us Part that isn't mentioned the publisher's synopsis.
EM: Farmer Cam gets rescue chickens! They are funny beasts and it helps keeps the tone light.
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
EM: I was an organic farmer twenty years ago for a few years, so I know the language and tensions of that life, but I never found a body on my farm. The young man named DJ has a few similarities with my own farmer son, JD, and other characters take bits and pieces from people I have observed in real life. The inspiration for the rescue chickens came from a similar event at the farm JD was working at in Puerto Rico.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
EM: I'm obliged to send my editor at Kensington a synopsis before I write the book, so I have a rough idea of the story in advance. But it can also change. My preferred method is to invent my characters, and then follow them around and write down what they do. And then fix the plot so it works. I definitely write down biographies of my major characters, and then update the list when I discover, for example, that one drives an old Honda, or another was adopted as a baby.
OMN: And where do you usually find yourself writing?
EM: I write on a large laptop at home in a lovely second-floor office looking out on our quiet street.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?
EM: The Internet and my own experience, for the most part. I try not to make my characters know too much about guns, however, so that I don't have to research those details.
OMN: Tell us about the settings for your books.
EM: My books are set in lightly fictionalized real places in northeastern Massachusetts near the coast, with actual real places near by. That way I can use real features of the town, like Mill Pond and the Food Mart, but I can also create Attic Hill and its surrounds, and locals won't get upset that I made it up.
OMN: If you could go anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to research a setting for a story, where would it be?
EM: Ah, a white-sand warm beach somewhere. Because it's been a long winter and I love the ocean. Or Tuscany, because where is food more local and delicious than there?
OMN: You mentioned that you were once an organic farmer yourself. What other outside interests do you have? And have any of these found their way into your books?
EM: I love gardening, cooking, and reading, and I take a brisk walk outdoors every day. Cooking definitely finds its way into my books, since they are foodie mysteries complete with recipes. I sew a bit, but so far that hasn't entered the books at all.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
EM: Butt in the chair, fingers on the keyboard, writing the best book you can write. I once was told, about a first chapter, "Nothing happens in these pages." It was true, and I fixed it.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a mystery author and thus I am also …"
EM: I am a mystery author, and thus I am also a voyeur and a student of human behavior. If you sit next to me in a restaurant, my eyes and ears are going to be taking notes. It's all material!
OMN: You mentioned that you use a pen name for your other mystery series. How did that come about?
EM: I use a pen name, Tace Baker, for my series published by Barking Rain Press. The big press, Kensington, didn't allow me to publish other mysteries as Edith Maxwell during the term of my contract, but I wanted to get the other series out and Barking Rain wanted to publish it. I link the two names wherever I can, but I would rather be writing only under my real name.
OMN: Were you involved in the cover design?
EM: They ask me for my ideas and then pretty much ignore them. Luckily, I've liked all of them so far, even though Cam's farm does not have a silo.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?
EM: My mother had a living room full of mysteries, and I read them all. Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Arthur Conan Doyle, Poe, you name it. I also read Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames Student Nurse, and so much more.
OMN: And what do you read now for pleasure?
EM: I read mostly cozy mysteries by my friends, and some historical mysteries, too.
OMN: Do you have any favorite series characters?
EM: Faith Fairchild, China Bayles, Kinsey Millhone, V.I. Warshawski, and other strong female protagonists.
OMN: What's next for you?
EM: I'm writing an uncontracted historical series set in the late 1800s in my town of Amesbury, featuring a Quaker midwife solving mysteries, with occasional help from John Greenleaf Whittier himself. She lives in my house, which was built in 1880, and I am totally loving this project.
— ♦ —
Edith Maxwell's Local Foods mystery series lets her relive her days as an organic farmer in Massachusetts, although murder in the greenhouse is new! A mother, world traveler, and former technical writer, she lives in an antique house north of Boston with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the rest of the Wicked Cozy Authors.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at EdithMaxwell.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
— ♦ —
'Til Dirt Do Us Part
Edith Maxwell
A Cam Flaherty, Local Foods Mystery
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 …
