The Travels of Edith Maxwell

This woman has traveled! She's been to places all over the map. Here's Edith--read on:

Thanks so much to Kaye for hosting me here again.

I've been thinking about how traveling is like writing, how living in another country is like writing a novel. In my adult life, I have lived overseas for various periods of time: from half a year to two years in almost a half-dozen countries. Brazil for a year as young seventeen-year-old exchange student.

Just home in 1971 from a year in Brazil

 Japan for almost two years, teaching English and living with an American beau who was in the US Navy.

With friend Tomoko in Japan, 1977

 France for half a year with my husband and infant first-born. Mali for a year with same husband, same first-born, and the second-born, when they were five and two. Burkina Faso for a year when the boys were twelve and nine.

With a diviner and her grandson in Burkina Faso, 1999

Before I packed my bags and headed for a new home, I'd mostly never been to that country before, with brief exceptions for France and Mali. I'd certainly never lived in any of those places and didn't really know what to expect. The language, people, and culture revealed themselves to me as time went on. When I came home, I was done with that life. I haven't returned to live in any of those places, and only to Brazil did I go back for a brief visit. I’ve made plenty of repeat visits to places in the US and Canada, but I haven’t returned to live on other continents.

Writing a book is like that, too. When I start, I might have an idea of where I'm going, but I don't really know the story. I've never written it before. I create a cast of new characters to go along with the core series characters, and these new people gradually reveal themselves to me: the way they talk, their problems, their joys. And after I turn in the book, I'll never write it again. I’ll refer back to it when I write the sequel, talk about it at a library event or on a panel, or write a blog post about it, but basically I'm done with that story and moving on to the next. 

Where Edith writes

Since the books I write are all set in northeastern Massachusetts (so far), my research keeps me at home. I haven't lived overseas since I started writing novels in earnest in 2009, although I have visited Costa Rica and Puerto Rico, and am planning a trip to Italy in a couple of years. I guess I'm doing my traveling in my head and on the pages these days. And I love it.

Readers: do you repeat visits to far-off places? What would be the one place you’d like to go back to again and again? And do you reread books?

Here's Edith's biography and contact information: Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mystery series (Kensington Publishing), the Speaking of Mystery series under the pseudonym Tace Baker, featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau (Barking Rain Press), and the historical Carriagetown Mysteries, as well as award-winning short crime fiction.

A mother, world traveler, and former technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and three cats. She blogs every weekday with the Wicked Cozy Authors. You can find her here:

www.edithmaxwell.com

wickedcozyauthors.com

@edithmaxwell

www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor 

Guest blogger and contest! F.M. Meredith

  I'm pleased to be hosting prolific mystery writer, F.M. Meredith, sometimes known as Marilyn. Please be sure and notice the comment at the bottom about her contest!

Places I’ve Traveled as a Writer

Never would I have gone to Anchorage, Alaska if it hadn’t been for Left Coast Crime first and a few years later, Bouchercon. The first time, I also visited a school in a tiny village called Kwithlik. To get there, I traveled in a Suburban on a frozen river. (Scary!) The second time, I stayed in Wasilla with a Native friend who I met on the first visit.

church in New Orleans

My first and only trip to New York City was to attend Edgar week and the Edgar awards. I was in awe the whole time I was there—it looks just like it does in the movies and TV.  (I know that sounds dumb, but I couldn’t help just staring at everything that seemed so familiar.) From there, my friend and I took the train to Washington DC and then on to Arlington, VA for Malice Domestic. I attended Malice a second time and included a visit to my husband’s hometown in Cambridge MD.

Hawaii

When I was asked to be an instructor at the Maui Writers Retreat, I didn’t hesitate a moment to pack my bags and jump on a plane. Of course I took hubby too, and he had a great time while I was busy working with students all day. Besides being in a beautiful place, I had a great time.

Because of various mystery cons, I’ve visited places I’d never have thought of visiting, sometime with hubby sometimes by myself: Bellevue and Seattle WA, Austin, El Paso, Plano and San Antonio TX, Madison and Milwaukee WI, New Orleans LA, Oklahoma City OK, Orlando and Tampa FL, Nashville TN, Portland OR, and Virginia Beach, VA.

We fell in love with Omaha NE when Mayhem in the Midlands (now sadly no more) met there for ten years.

Though I may have visited Las Vegas and Reno NV with my hubby, I’ve also gone there for writers’ conferences.

Sedona AZ

I’ve been to one end of California (Crescent City and Redding in the North, to Temecula and Dana Point in the South) and from coast to coast, giving talks at writers’ conferences and attending Left Coast Crimes and Bouchercons.

Now I’m back on the road again to promote the latest in my Rocky Bluff P.D. series, Dangerous Impulses. I’m headed to Epicon in Vancouver WA this month. and have various places in California to go. In July it’ll be off to Vegas for the Public Safety Writers Association’s annual conference.

Thank you, Kaye for letting me tell you about places I’ve been. It’s been a wonderful experience with great memories.

Now a bit about Dangerous Impulses:

An attractive new-hire captivates Officer Gordon Butler, Officer Felix Zachary’s wife Wendy is befuddled by her new baby, Ryan and Barbara Strickland receive unsettling news about her pregnancy, while the bloody murder of a mother and her son and an unidentified drug that sickens teenaged partiers jolts the Rocky Bluff P.D.
Buy it here: http://tinyurl.com/byxomtk

Contest:

The person who comments on the most blog posts on this tour may have a character named after him or her in the next Rocky Bluff P.D. crime novel or choose a book from the previous titles in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series in either paper or for Kindle.

Rocky Bluff P.D. Series:

Though each book in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series is written as a stand-alone, I know there are people who like to read a series in order. From the beginning to the end:

Final Respects

Bad Tidings

Fringe Benefits

Smell of Death

No Sanctuary

An Axe to Grind

Angel Lost

No Bells

Dangerous Impulses

F. M. Meredith’s Bio:

F.M. is also known as Marilyn Meredith, the author of the Deputy Tempe Crabtree series. She first became interested in writing about law enforcement when she lived in a neighborhood filled with police officers and their families. The interest was fanned when her daughter married a police officer and the tradition has continued with a grandson and grandson-in-law who are deputies. She’s also serves on the board of the Public Safety Writers Association, and has many friends in different law enforcement fields. For twenty plus years, she and her husband lived in a small beach community located in Southern California much like the fictional Rocky Bluff. She is a member of three chapters of Sisters in Crime, Epic, and Mystery Writers of America.

Webpage: http://fictionforyou.com/

Blog: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/

And I’m on Facebook and Twitter as MarilynMeredith

Tomorrow I’m visiting here: http://deniseweeks.blogspot.com/

Travels of Kaye

We’re on the move again next month. My husband and I used to get what we called “itchy feet” every 2 or 3 years and we’d want to move somewhere. For a time, we did. We were both raised in Illinois and got married there, then went to South Carolina. Our next stop was Montana, on to Ohio, up to Minnesota, down to Texas, back up to Michigan, and back to Texas, where we stayed a good long time.

Sometimes I say we’re touring the United States the hard way, by living each place instead of just visiting.

Now we’re moving on to Tennessee. We’ll miss lots about the place where we’ve been the longest, but we’ll be so happy to get out of the heat and drought. We’re trading burnt orange for what hubby calls traffic-cone orange, state-university-wise.

While in Texas, we’ve done a tour of that state, too, living in Dallas, Holliday (Wichita Falls), Taylor (Austin), and Hubbard (Waco). Our last move was in June of 2012 and, being very busy with writing books, and related things, we haven’t finished unpacking. That will save us money on the next move since it doesn’t cost much for the movers to merely carry boxes out that they haven’t packed.

January will be hectic, but we’re looking forward to getting to know a new part of the country.

Public domain illustration by Homer Dodge Martin, engraved by R. Hinshelwood

Source: http://www.panteek.com/PicturesqueAmerica/index.htm