My Guest Appearance on Maine Crime Writers

This post originally appeared on MaineCrimeWriters.com

From time to time, we share news about new books by Maine crime writers. Today, news  of Claire Ackroyd’s newest, "Body in the Blueberry Barrens."

Claire Ackroyd: I was raised on murder mysteries in England – fed every new Agatha Christie by my grandmother as she read them, and have ever since believed that every good story needs a dead body in it.

I think I always supposed I could write a book, and all I needed was space in my head, and time, which would come one day when life slowed down. It turned out that even as I hit 70, those commodities were as scarce as ever and what I really needed was courage and a good kick in the pants.

Courage came from reading ‘Bird by Bird’ by Anne Lamott, and Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. The message I took away, whether or not that was what they intended, was to stop worrying and get started. Fingers on keyboard. Start typing. The needed kick was delivered by a good friend who demanded that I stop whining and go on a writers retreat – a whole new concept to me. With the fear that if I didn’t get moving I would age out of the ability to string thoughts together, I signed up for a week at The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and when I left I had half a story written and a clear path to its conclusion.

 ‘Murder in the Maple Woods’ was born from an urge to present a picture of life in the distant maple sugar camps that lie along Maine’s northwest boundary with Quebec. I had come to know this remote and interesting world as an organic certification inspector – work that has taken me into these woods in sugaring season, and a murder mystery was my natural go-to context for a story.

The mysteries I loved best combined a good plot with a look into a world I did not know. Dorothy Sayers ‘The Nine Tailors’ has lived in my mind for most of my life. In it, Lord Peter Wimsey’s knowledge of the arcane world of change ringing – the peculiar business of ringing church bells in impossibly complicated mathematical sequences – provides the answer to how a man died. For years I contemplated using the minutiae of the Linnaean binomial nomenclature system to reveal clues to a mysterious death, but the organic certification process for maple syrup presented a better option and as I slogged through cold and exhausting days in the woods a mystery novel began to take shape.

Apart from Stephen King and Anne Lamott, I avoided all other advice. Manuals on style and technique seemed to want to tell me things I had learned decades ago from Strunk and White’s ‘The Elements of Style’, and joining writers groups only confused me. In the peace of my nook at The Writers Colony I focused on finding the story and the style that felt right to me, under the ever-watchful eye of Polonius, who repeated his advice to Laertes; ‘To thine own self be true. Thou canst not then be false to any man.’

I needed a plot and a puzzle to solve but most of all I wanted characters and a setting that were authentic and respectful. Permission to avoid nail-biting suspense and complicated, unrealistic plot twists came from hearing an interview with Taylor Sheridan – creator of the movie ‘Wind River’. He said his goal was to expose the crisis of missing and exploited women on the Wind River Reservation. His plot, he said, was simple and easily deciphered and he would rely on character and setting to tell his story. I figured if he could do it, so could I.

I found I was learning universal truths as I wrote; that first drafts are made to be revised, that ‘writers block’ can be overcome by just writing something, and that long walks are an amazing aid to creative thinking. As characters took shape they took over, and I became their medium, faithfully channeling and recording their thoughts and actions, despite their occasional use of profanities in two languages. I have a dread of getting important facts wrong and I did ‘research’ –  picking the brains of good friends and total strangers for input on essential details. All these, I learned, are standard operating procedures for writers but were revelatory to me. It was part of the process of becoming something I had only imagined – the author of a published book.

This led to an un-anticipated problem. No sooner had ‘Murder in the Maple Woods’ hit the shelves than there were demands for a sequel. My ego and my reluctance to let go of this new part of my life persuaded me that I could do it all again. Wild Maine blueberries – as iconic and interesting as Maine maple syrup – were out there inviting a story, but this time it was different. The first book sprung from the idea of a story. The second one was prompted by the need to come up with a plot in order to make a book, and it was much harder work. I dutifully set my characters down in the blueberry barrens of Washington County but they were as unenthusiastic about the project as I was. I found myself forcing actions onto them that seemed unnatural and demanded endless explanation.

Nonetheless I persisted and generated a bulky manuscript that, to my horror, prompted lukewarm reactions from two trusted readers. I suddenly understood why I had so disliked what I had written. It was clunky and the tedious expository filler buried my characters and weighed down the action. I pulled the thing from its projected publishing date and went back in with pruning tools, deleting over seven thousand words from a seventy-thousand word monster. Freed of their burdens my characters and the story came back to life and six months later ‘The Body in the Blueberry Barrens’ was a book that I no longer hated.

My evolution from story-teller in the bar to published author still feels miraculous. I think of Harold and his Purple Crayon, creating his own world and the solutions to problems he sets for himself. If I wanted to take on issues that annoy me – like the prejudice against pit bulls or the belief that maple syrup making is some quaint cottage industry – all I need is my key board and a beverage. I had no idea how much fun this would be. I have met and made friends with all manner of people I never would have known – from law enforcement officers to fellow authors and tons of appreciative readers. Whatever comes next, this has already been a wonderful late chapter in my life.