Look at Your Fish

Posted on January 26, 2026 by dickcass

Thanks for the good wishes and other support for my current recovery—knee rehab is going well, if slowly, and I have an excellent pile of books to keep me company.

I’m also reading a posthumous collection of short pieces by David McCullough, the historian, called History Matters. One piece in particular delighted me because it reminded me of a story I’d heard back in high school and forgotten.

The 19th century  Harvard naturalist, Louis Agassiz, set a test for every new student of his. He’d procure an old dead fish from a pail of them. Set it in front of the student, and tell him or her: “look at your fish.”

When he came back to ask the students what they saw, the usual answer was “not much.” Agassiz’s usual response was “look at your fish.”

This might go on for weeks, until the student observed something and was able to articulate what it was. McCullough used the anecdote to illustrate his belief that seeing, looking deeply, is as important to a historian as to a writer.

Much writing advice is made of “show don’t tell,” that hoary proverb. But the essence of being able to show you reader something is to be able to imagine a scene, to see it in full detail, through all the sense. Good writing immerses you, makes you see. The telling is only important as connective tissue for the scenes—the seeing.

This kind of imagination—seeing—takes time and mental effort. And patience. Often we don’t like to slow down. We want our story to flow, to carry us forward on the fastest highway we can manage. But it is in the slowing down—in the looking at your fish—that you can see what needs to be told, what detail will make your readers see.

That slowing down is no fun when you’re hot on the trail of your story, but patience is, as John Dewey said, an expenditure of energy. Before you can make your reader believe your story, you have to make them see. And to make them see, you have to look at your fish: observe, categorize, connect. The fish may be dead, but your story will live.

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Weekend Update: January 24-25, 2026

Posted on January 24, 2026 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Dick Cass (Monday) John Clark (Tuesday), and Vaughn Hardacker (Friday)  with a writing tip on Wednesday from Matt Cost and a group post on Thursday.

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

 

AND DON’T FORGET! One lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bundle of books!

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Writing and stopping by the woods on a snowy morning

Posted on January 23, 2026 by Maureen Milliken

I’m sure I’m not the first one to write about this, even on this blog, but it’s worth saying again: Never underestimate the value of a nice walk as part of the writing process.

Now that I have a dog again, I actually get out and go on walks, no matter what the weather is. It’s not that I didn’t want to pre-dog, but there were always other things to do most of the time. My dog, Willow, doesn’t care if I have other things to do. So, we walk.

If you don’t go out for a daily walk, I recommend it. Whether you’re writing or not. It’s a great way to reset your head, and the stream of conscioiusness that naturally comes with a walk is great for generating writing ideas.

One of my favorite walks in town has always been the road carved out of the woods along the lake on land that once belonged to the majestic Belgrade Hotel. It burned down in 1959 (definitely a blog post for another day), and the land was quickly subdivided by its relieved owner, who’d been in financial trouble.

It’s always a joy to me how in my town and so many in Maine, even right in town there can be woods, thck and tangled, strewn with downed trees and giant rocks. Woods play a part in the book I’m writing now, and if I weren’t taking that walk, even though I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods of Maine and know all about the thickness, the tangledness, and all that, I don’t know if I’d be getting it quite right if I didn’t get out there and experience it. The experience includes the subtle parts, like how even on a placid day, a previous night’s snow will drift down from the evergreen bows. Or the variety of types of tree. How winter reveals views that you forget all about when leaves are on the trees.

When Willow and I took a walk down the road the other day, there were a few inches of fresh snow from the night before. The morning was intoxicatingly quiet, at least to me. Willow’s satellite-dish ears, though, rotated to sounds I could only imagine. She hear something, stop, look into the woods, sometimes with a soft “woof.” Sometimes pulling on the leash to go see. I held firm, though. That snow can cover a lot of ankle-breaking hazards.

The new covering, though, revealed to me, with my inferior senses, the animal tracks that Willow always knows are there snow or none: rabbits, deer, that fox who we see walking through the yard many mornings. It’s tracks show it’s marching from the woods around one lake, to those around the other, across the village.

Willow and I take a walk in the woods.

A lack of tracks in the snow are also telling. Even the summer people who are clever enough to have their driveways plowed during the winter can’t don’t have a trick for making it look like someone’s living there this time of year. Willow and I like to assess who only comes for the sun and warmth, and misses this glorious time of year. On this road, it’s about two-thirds of the homes.

Old vestiges of the hotel property remain. For instance, I’d been curious about a small raised rock foundation in the middle of a plot of woods. A friend who’s also president of the town’s historical society told me recently that it’s not a foundation, but part of an evated tee for the hotel’s old golf course. It’s intriguing, how it’s now surrounded by tangled woods, including giant Eastern pine and balsam.

We always stop and look through the trees at the old golf tee, one of the many acre or so plots along the road where there’s no house. I always wonder who owns that land. If they’ll ever build on it, or that old golf tee will sit there for another 100 years.

“Whose woods these are?” I asked Willow on our walk the other day. “I think I know. His house is in the village though. He will not see me stopping here, to watch his woods fill up with snow.”

Willow, as usual, was unimpressed with my recall of poems memorized half a century ago. [Note to the younger folks: Before screens, social media and streaming, we used to entertain ourselves by memorizing poems. They never leave your brain.]

My favorite lines of that poem fit, too. At least the first half: “Between the woods and frozen lake, the darkest evening of the year.”

My second-favorite two lines are also fitting on this day: “The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.”

I always thought the poem ended too soon, always a little disappointed with the ending. All of those promises to keep, miles to go, and everything, instead of just enjoying the quiet woods.

In any case, as we walked along, Willow sniffing the animal tracks, me reciting the poem in time to our steps, a new scene for my book emerged in its entirety. Funny how that can happen with a poem going through your head. Must be the invigorating winter air, the towering trees, the easy wind and downy flake.

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Writing Goals for 2026 by Matt Cost

Posted on January 22, 2026 by matthewcost

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, success is the result of hard work and does not happen overnight. I wrote my first novel in 1991 and twenty-nine short years later, in 2020, it was my first traditionally published book. I am Cuba. Last August, my eighteenth book was published. Three historical fiction novels, thirteen mysteries, and two that combine historical and mystery. That takes sitting in the chair and getting the work done. This dedication also requires organization and goals.

What are my writing goals for 2026?

I plan on publishing three books this year. EveryThing vs Max Creed, Book 2 of the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed is out on May 21st and 1955, Book 1 in the Jazz Jones & January Queen will pub on October 13th. I’m hoping also to have an August release of Mainely Iced, the 7th in the Mainely Mystery series. Although the inspiration, the writing, and the editing is done for these books (except Mainely Iced), there is plenty of work left to be done.

EveryThing vs Max Creed:

EveryThing vs Max Creed is a modern-day Robin Hood thriller where Creed and his band of people try to bring justice to those wronged by the ultra-wealthy in a world where the law overwhelmingly favors those with money and power. He is bound only by the laws of humanity and not those of the legal system. It is the second book in the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed where Max and his band take on a social media mogul who is trying to enact chaos to grab the reins of world power.

 

A breathless thrill ride that will keep your heart pounding long after the last page is turned.

I have begun the marketing phase by emailing libraries offering four different kinds of presentations.

COST TALK

Matt Cost will talk about the process of writing a book with emphasis on his latest, EveryThing vs Max Creed, the second book in the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed. He will talk about where ideas come from, the research process, the writing itself, and of course, editing. Cost will read a short excerpt from the book and field questions.

 Two Authors in Conversation (TAC)

Matt Cost will share the stage with another author, and they will discuss their writing process and latest books. A nod will be given to the IREAD national library summer theme touching on how writing and reading is like how farmers nourish crops, sparks imagination, and grows the culture.

 Writers on Writing (WOW!)

Mat Cost will moderate a panel of authors speaking about the writing process with an emphasis on their latest books. A nod will be given to the IREAD national library summer theme touching on how writing and reading is like how farmers nourish crops, sparks imagination, and grows the culture.

Mystery Making Panel

The final possibility would be a panel of authors doing a Mystery Making event with audience participation where they take suggestions and make a mystery right in front of your eyes.

I am in the process of sending these options out to over a hundred libraries. If you would like for your library or organization to feature one of these events, please reach out to me. Once EveryThing vs Max Creed is available for purchase (with an ISBN), I will start reaching out to bookstores to do signings and talks.

I hope to do more book clubs this year and will actively be pursuing that option as well. Next month, I have my first of the year at Illume in Newburyport, Massachusetts. I only have one other book club set up at this point, at the Richmond Public Library in May.

Last year I did sixty-two various events and hope to do more this year.

Screenshot

My writing goals will be to finish Mainely Iced, write the third Jazz Jones & January Queen Mystery, and write my second Bob Chicago Mystery. That is if I can get a contract for a three-book series with the first one, Bob Chicago Investigates. I also hope to sign a contract for three more of the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed. Maybe a couple of short stories.

Those are my goals for 2026. Library events, podcasts, bookstore signings, sign two contracts, and write and edit three books. Write on!

 

 

AND DON’T FORGET! One lucky Maine Crime Writers’ reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bundle of books!

Screenshot

 

 

Matt Cost Bio:

Cost has written six books in the Mainely Mystery series starting with “Mainely Power”, six books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series starting with “Wolfe Trap”, and two books in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series starting with “Velma Gone Awry”. “EveryThing vs Max Creed” will be his second in the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed. A few historical fiction pieces fill out the shelves. He lives in Brunswick, Maine.

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Writing Tip Wednesday: Creative Humility

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Robert T. Kelley

Rob Kelley here, writing this week about creative humility. I’ll get to writing in a moment, but I’ll start with music.

In summer of 2020, faced with the long pandemic quarantine ahead, I decided to finally fulfill one of my lifelong goals: to learn to play a musical instrument. Music hadn’t been part of my childhood, and I always regretted not learning an instrument. I masked up and made my way to Starbird Piano in Portland. I found a teacher who would do Zoom lessons, and met with him every week for five years. I got better, but those first two years were brutal.

Then in 2025 I took up what was always my dream instrument: cello. Cello makes piano look easy. Hit the middle C on a piano and it always sounds like middle C. On the cello? Not so much. If the left hand doesn’t hit the right spot on the string, if the right hand isn’t placing the bow in the right place or with the wrong level of force, the squeaks and off-key sounds can be (and often are) horrifying.

I had transposed a piece of music I really like for piano down an octave so I could play it on the cello. The first time I played it, I thought I’d made a bunch of transcription errors because I didn’t even recognize the piece. Played it next on the piano, it was fine. The problem was my cello playing. A humbling experience.

But creative humility is necessary. Critical. The only way to improve.

There’s a lovely short recording of This American Life‘s Ira Glass talking about the gap between taste and ability early in a creative practice. It’s good. Give it a listen. You’ll recognize the feeling he’s talking about.

Now to writing. I owe my manuscript for my next novel Critical State to my editors at High Frequency Press in the next couple of days to make the fall 2026 list. As part of final edits I have a very long list of words I chronically over-use: what I call my “Tic List” (as in verbal tic). How chronically? 1134 instances of “that.” 1792 uses of “and.” 134 of “just.” And the list goes on.

Do you need those words sometimes? Yes. Do I overuse all of them? Absolutely. I really hate that edit because certain turns of phrase just flow from my fingertips and it’s hard to imagine saying things differently. But the effect of removing those words or finding synonyms absolutely makes the prose sparkle. Makes it move faster.

It is a humbling edit, not the least of which because it foregrounds the fact that I had 700 instances of “and” I absolutely did not need.

What sorts of edits do you know you have to make every time?

Remember: Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be entered into the January drawing for free books!

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Using the Feelings of a Memory

Posted on January 20, 2026 by Allison Keeton

Last month, when I saw photographer April Morrison’s beautiful photograph of milkweed pods in snow, I was instantly brought back to my childhood. One fall, my mother, along with my sisters and me, collected dozens of dried out pods. She then cleaned them out, decorated the insides, and made each one into a winter scene by gluing small, plastic figurines, felt, rickrack, and glitter into the prepared pods. These dioramas were then carted down to our church and sold at the annual Christmas bazaar fundraiser.

Milkweed Pod with Snow. Photography by April Morrison. Copyright April Morrison

Seeing Morrison’s pod photograph, and remembering my mother’s milkweed Christmas tree ornament, was delightful in itself, but it made me realize the importance of the feeling of a memory, not just the facts of a memory. Lucky for me, one of my sisters still has her milkweed pod ornament, made by our mother decades ago, and I’m able to share it with you below.

Milkweed Ornament made by Emily Keeton, approximately 1972

Tapping into how both photographs and the memory made me feel, and also pondering about how I think I felt about it back when I was seven, was an excellent exercise that I used to capture emotions. It is exactly what a writer needs in order to develop depth to a character, a scene, or an action. “Show, not tell” is ingrained in all of us writers for a reason. Without layers, a novel becomes flat, like a textbook.

The other reason to incorporate feelings is to relate to your reader. There are passages of books that stay with me because of how they made me feel when I read them. Layers draw me in as a reader and allow me to interpret the scene. The writer is acknowledging that the reader is smart and doesn’t need everything spelled out. Besides, words can only go so far. I can’t remember having any emotions from reading a manual.

Emotions enrich fiction in many ways:
—They create character-driven work. While we may admire a plot, it’s the characters that we attach ourselves to as readers.
—They give depth to the plot. For example, a car chase is just a car chase if we don’t know the importance of it, or the tension in it.
—They raise the stakes. We all learn when we study craft that creating tension, and more tension, is what keeps driving the work forward.
—They cause the characters to react. Have you ever had something you’ve written critiqued by a writers’ group, and the reviewers ask, “Why would she have done that?” Or “Why didn’t she respond to that?” Being true to the emotions in the work as a writer allows the reader to put themselves in the characters’ shoes.

I’m grateful to Morrison’s photograph for bringing me back to my childhood and my creative mother. As writers and photographers, being in touch with our emotions are important and conveying them to our audiences allow us to have a universal connection.

What works evoked feelings that you still remember? Can you think of a memory that evokes an emotion you’d like to convey in a piece you’re working on? Use it to drive the work to a new level, one that will grab your reader and make them remember you and how you made them feel. They won’t forget you.

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Thank you to April Morrison for allowing me to use her photograph in this piece. All rights belong to her. To view more of her wonderful work, please visit her photography pages:
Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/photos_by_aprilmorrison?igsh=cHRwMDU5cjdmYTUx

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/share/18oxmdfvDY/?mibextid=wwXIfr

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Don’t forget! Leave a comment on any blog post this month to be entered into a drawing for free books!

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Allison Keeton’s debut novel is Blaze Orange, Book One in the Midcoast Maine Mystery series. Arctic Green, Book Two, hits the streets (and snowmobile trails) in February 2026. She can be reached at http://www.akeetonbooks.com

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Learning to See, Again and Again

Posted on January 19, 2026 by mainecrimewriters

If you aren’t looking, you won’t see the special visitor outside the door

Kate Flora: One January, we rented a funky apartment on Russian Hill that belonged to a writer. Writer’s house meant writer’s books. One that I picked up and promptly got lost in was called  Writers Workshop in a Book. My meanderings through that book tuned up my own sense of the importance of using our senses to see the world, and then rendering that world for our readers. In his essay, A Writer’s Sense of Place, James D. Houston talks about location and the power of landscape. Houston writes:

The idea of a sense of place is nothing new, of course. It has been a constant in human life from day one. You can’t avoid it. You have to park somewhere, have a roof over your head, and wherever this happens has to be a place of one kind or another. But we’re not always aware of it as such. At some point, places move into the conscious life. When that occurs, we begin to have a sense of it, an awareness of it and our relationship to it.

Many of us live and write in Maine because that particular sense of place is important to us. Because being surrounded by a place that forces us to deal with it makes it harder not to notice. Maine weather is a significant factor in our planning. It can be aggressive and demanding. It affects what we wear, what we carry in our cars, how attentive we are to the tread on our tires, what the challenges of a journey from point A to B may be, and whether we might postpone our trip for another day. Whether that chill in the air makes us dream of fish chowder or a cup of our favorite tea. Sometimes one of our more perilous winter drives fetches us up at home longing for something stronger. Sometimes the air is so cold and damp we can literally smell that snow is coming. And the crunch of snow underfoot is different depending on how cold it is.

Our environment, whatever the season, finds its way into our storytelling. We write about

Exposure to other writers’ ways of seeing is also part of writing

how a hot summer brings such an excess of tomatoes we want to stop cooking and canning and have a tomato war. We write about how the summer heat in a city cooks the streets and trash into a pungent, fetid brew. We write about how to survive a fall through the ice because falling through the ice really happens. We write about the smell of the Maine winter air because we’re more likely to be moving through it and notice, rather than going from enclosed home garage to parking garage to offices with canned air.

But sometimes, as James Houston reminds us in his essay, our own environments become commonplace. We stop seeing them. Then we must take steps to get ourselves reconnected.

Going away to someplace different can have the effect of retuning our senses. Noticing the sounds of a city, instead of the country can remind us of what it sounds like at home. Different noises at night can remind us of what the sounds of our own houses are like. What bangs and dings and hums and creaks have become so familiar they are invisible. We notice anew what vehicles go past and what their tires sound like. How far away sirens carried over the Maine water are not like emergency vehicles roaring through the canyons of city streets. What it is like to watch the multiple reflections of a fire engine off nearby windows, as opposed to our neighbor’s strange red bathroom light seen through a filter of trees.

Maybe it’s just a boat in the water or maybe it’s am amazing reflection and contrasts of colors

As we write, drawing on those real world observations, our thoughts are turned inward. We’re hearing the voices of our characters and not the voices of those around us, walking darkened Portland streets instead of the streets in our neighborhoods. We’re in a patrol car with a flashing light bar and not in the real world. But as we create those environments for our characters, we are bringing in our observations of the real world. We are importing the smells and sensations, the rustlings of  oak trees that never shed their leaves, the delicious scents of cooking dinner or the sour rot of trash in an alley. We are using the observations we’ve trained ourselves to make to make our fictional situations feel authentic, and we are taking the additional step of learning to filter those observations through the eyes of the characters we’ve created.

Posted in Kate's Posts | 11 Comments

Weekend Update: January 17-18, 2026

Posted on January 17, 2026 by kaitlynkathy

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Allison Keeton (Tuesday), Matt Cost (Thursday) and Maureen Milliken (Friday) with a writing tip on Wednesday from Rob Kelley on creative humility.

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

AND DON’T FORGET! One lucky Maine Crime Writers’ reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bundle of books!

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Sixteen, But Hold the Candles

Posted on January 16, 2026 by John Clark

Arlo Topp knew that folks called him Muffin behind his back, but couldn’t care less. It fit in with the persona he’d cultivated for more than thirty-five years, twenty-five of them as a special investigative agent for the FBI. His clear Ben Franklin spectacles, the occasional use of a corn cob pipe, and his penchant for wearing cords and a faded flannel shirt, had lulled many a soul into thinking he was dumber than dirt. He was anything but.

After his retirement from federal law enforcement, he’d moved to Maine, having found he liked the people and their tendency to accept him at face value when he’d been assigned temporarily to the Bangor office. His camp, as the locals called it, was a fairly new ranch on ten acres overlooking one of the rivers flowing through western Maine. It gave him privacy, great fishing, and still allowed for high speed internet, something he required for his second career.

After getting settled, Arlo had out a discrete word through Maine law enforcement channels that he was available as a professional consultant. It wasn’t long before that feeler brought an inquiry from a small police department in Washington County. His successful solution of the case soon led to more business than he could comfortably handle. Arlo had to make a decision. Ultimately, he chose to take cases on the following basis; how interesting or challenging they were, and whether their location was somewhere he had yet to visit in the state. His secret goal was to solve at least one crime in every county and then write a book inspired by the actual crimes.

He was finally at that point, having just wrapped up a case in Sagadahoc County. Now he just needed to decide which sixteen were the most interesting.

Arlo decided to select cases in alphabetical order by county. The Androscoggin Arsonist certainly fit the bill. Twenty-three fires were set before desperate law enforcement officials brought him on board. At first, he was as puzzled as they were, until he followed one of his famous hunches. It led him to a right-wing chat group where he found mention of every single building that had been torched. Once he began monitoring the chatter, it wasn’t long before his fellow officers, at his suggestion, nabbed the suspect when he attempted to torch one of the buildings mentioned in the online chatter.

After his solution of the Aroostook bank robbery caper, Arlo made himself a promise, only accept cases north of Lincoln in the months between May and October. A week of staking out banks in twenty below weather made that decision easy. That the poor soul who had been responsible for a dozen bank heists, only to bury the money in his late mother’s grave, had believed she’d need it now that she couldn’t collect Social Security, still had him shaking his head every time temperatures dropped.

Of course there has to be at least one alliterative crime, and it happened in Cumberland County. Even more interesting was the perpetrator, one Arlo couldn’t arrest, even while solving the crime. Everyone in southern Maine law enforcement still refers to it as the Cumberland Crab Caper. It started when local seafood dealers reported small, then larger numbers of Maine crabs vanishing from holding tanks on the wharves in the Old Port, but it soon spread to smaller dealers in other nearby towns. It wasn’t until Arlo caught the thief on infrared video, that the crime was solved and the very skilled harbor seal, recently escaped from an aquarium in Massachusetts, was captured and returned to the custody of the aquarium’s extremely embarrassed staff.

The Franklin Forger was another unusual case. Forgery generally involves counterfeit bills, wills, or doctored deeds. In this instance, the forged documents were ski passes at the big ski area named after the mountain where it operated. At first Arlo thought the authorities were pulling his leg until he saw how expensive ski passes were. It took some serious good guy, bad guy role playing with a local law officer named Sandy, interrogating several of the college students caught using forged passes, before one of them cracked and implicated an elderly woman in Kingfield. When arrested, she was more amused than upset, telling Arlo, that at least being incarcerated wouldn’t exhaust her pitiful social security check, and she’d get regular meals.

The Hancock Hair Heist came during a very slow time, crimewise. Arlo was dancing on the edge of boredom when the chief of police in one of the coastal towns called to ask for help. Someone was stealing hair, not only from beauty shops, but even going as far as sneaking up behind inebriated patrons of local bars and clipping off long hanks of hair before the startled folks could react. It definitely had to go in the book as the culprit’s motive was quite bizarre, their being obsessed with weaving a weeks worth of hair shirts.

Kennebec’s most memorable caper involved kidnapping, but not people. Puzzled police in the two largest towns turned to Arlo for assistance when the number of ferrets, guinea pigs, and hamsters reported stolen hit a hundred. Arlo solved that one quickly, but not without a twinge of sympathy for the criminal who ran an animal refuge, but couldn’t afford to keep his menagerie fed.

Knox County’s most memorable crime required Arlo to go on stake-out with night vision goggles. Someone was sneaking into prime blueberry fields and high grading berries at night. What made that case memorable was the number of mosquitoes and deer ticks he had to deal with. It made going into the woods almost impossible for months afterward.

The Lincoln land feud seemed pretty straightforward at first. That was until Arlo followed up on local gossip and discovered the real reason two families were fighting over an old cemetery. Why not go to court and have a judge decide was his initial thought, but when he started digging, he couldn’t stop. If what he found was accurate, the two families were not only fighting to own the cemetery, but the ghost of a woman whose mythical inheritance was rumored to be secreted in one of the graves.

Oxford County provided one of the more bizarre drug cases Arlo had ever encountered, and during his FBI years, he thought he’d seen it all. What he found after agreeing to investigate, was a group of organic farmers who’d discovered and then cultivated an exotic strain of bacteria that, when added to maple syrup after it had gone through the evaporation process, made users not only susceptible to suggestion, but mildly addicted to the altered syrup. They had a grand, albeit cockeyed plan to convert large numbers of customers to a vegan diet.

Arlo wished he could forget what happened in Penobscot County, but that wasn’t likely to happen. His ample backside twinged every time he thought about all the miles he’d had to travel over extremely rutted dirt roads on that case. All of it nearly in vain until he picked up a fairly intoxicated fellow who was attempting to hitchhike on one of the more remote logging roads. All Arlo had done, once the fellow, who desperately needed a bath, had gotten into his pick-up, was ask where he was headed and the poor soul began talking, literally giving Arlo the piece of the poaching puzzle he’d been missing, proving that luck and good listening skills, were key to solving some crimes.

Piscataquis County’s most memorable crime involved theft, multiple times of the same item. Even stranger was that the victims were linked by a couple physical characteristics they all shared. All were in their teens, had blonde hair, and generous bottoms. The thief’s target in every instance was their underwear. Since most of the thefts took place in more rural areas (although there really wasn’t much in the county that wasn’t rural), where folks hung their wash on clotheslines to dry, such thievery was easy. It wasn’t until Arlo was on stake-out thanks to another of his hunches, that he got to the bottom of the case when the thief, took a muddy corner way too fast, rolling numerous times and spilling plenty of evidence when the trunk popped open.

Sagadahoc’s lone case involved verbal threats. Arlo was ready to bust things wide open until he discovered that the alleged threats involved two very opinionated women in the same quilting group. He was able to convince the district attorney that telling the perps they could be banned from the group if they didn’t restrain themselves would be sufficient punishment. That, coupled with the humiliation heaped upon them by local lobstermen whenever they showed their faces, was sufficient to get things settled.

The absolute stupidity of two sports from away he’d apprehended in Somerset County, was something that Arlo still chuckled about. However, had the two idiots gone through with their ill conceived plan to stun game fish behind Wyman Dam by tossing in half a dozen sticks of dynamite right above the spillway, it might have turned stupid into tragedy. When the federal agents arrived right after Arlo had conned the pair into thinking they’d bought fake explosives, offering to get them real dynamite if they let him take possession of what they were ready to use, things got tense. Guns were drawn and It wasn’t until Arlo was recognized that tensions ebbed. Had the explosives been used, the aging dam could well have breached, flooding countless homes downstream.

Arlo had to give the fellow he arrested in Waldo County credit. It it wasn’t for the number of fender benders caused by the criminal’s suddenly appearing in a colorful striped costume, looking eerily like a famous character in childrens’ literature, Arlo might have cut him some slack, but the man was so convinced he was the character, he ended up involuntarily committed to a state psychiatric facility., and then everyone could find Waldo easily.

Washington County isn’t exactly a hotbed of technology, so Arlo was intrigued when he was called in to help solve the case of the purloined fir tips. Bough tipping was an important source of seasonal income for many in the county. When tips started disappearing in huge quantities with no sign of human involvement, Arlo had to ponder any unusual possibilities. It wasn’t until he stopped at the county airport on a hunch and discussed a theory with the airport manager that he was able to solve the case. When the fellow mentioned the large number of tiny blips on the airport radar, Arlo put two and two together. After requisitioning a powerful drone from Maine Drug Enforcement, and using it to intercept half a dozen smaller ones outfitted to cut and retrieve fir tips, he was able to track them to a warehouse and put the balsam thieves out of business.

York County didn’t seem like a true part of Maine to Arlo, until he was asked to help solve a real case of street crime in a small town near the New Hampshire border. After the fourth instance of an auto falling into a huge crater in one of the town’s dirt roads, all resulting in injured drivers, he put on his ‘offbeat thinking cap’ as he’d come to call it. Over a hearty breakfast, he asked patrons at the local diner if anyone local had come into money recently. Two days later, he caught Finley Buzzell, a recent lottery winner, drunk as a skunk. He was playing with a new excavator he’d bought with his winnings. A search warrant for his property turned up piles of purloined gravel scattered around his back yard so his kids could race go-carts. “More proof that money without brains is a dangerous combination,” he said to the county sheriff as he watched Finley entering a cell.

“Yup,” was the cop’s response, “kinda like Augusta and Washington, DC.”

Now, good readers, This long blog is a way of asking those who are regular members of MCW whether they think we might want to write a collaborative county mystery collection. Wadda ya think?

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The Blog of Last Resort

Posted on January 15, 2026 by kaitlynkathy

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here. I’m having trouble coming up with something I want to write about this time around. The world outside my cave alternates between depressing and horrifying. I’m not actively engaged in any writing project at the moment. And I doubt readers really care what I’m currently binge-watching—The West Wing, if you must know—or reading. For those who do, I’m into my umpteenth reread of the fourth book of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mysteries, The Lion in the Valley, having read the first three again during the last part of 2025. I just finished the latest Jayne Ann Krentz paranormal romantic suspense (The Shop on Hidden Lane) and am about to plunge into the next installment of Patricia Rice’s historical series, this one titled The Madman’s Dangerous Delusion.

Short blog, right?

Since I suspect we could all use a smile right now, I’ve decided to go with something most people enjoy—cat pictures. Here are some of my favorite photos of various cats who have brightened our lives over the years, starting with our current housemate, Shadow. Here’s one of the rare occasions when she actually let me hold her.

These are the cats of 1970, Spot, who stayed with my parents, and Jeremiah, who adopted me and my husband one day at the laundromat in Lewiston.

Here is Jeremiah (a female, by the way), with her adopted kitten, Lancelot (also female), from a friend’s litter. Her brothers were Merlin and Idyll. I was in grad school for a degree in English literature at the time.

Lavinia came from the local animal shelter. Isn’t she a beauty?

You may recognize Calpurnia, adopted at the same time as Lavinia. She appears in my Deadly Edits mysteries.

This is Feral, who came to us from my in-laws. He was always good at helping with cleanup in the kitchen.

Bala and Nefret were barely weaned when we found them under the floor of the stable we used as a garage. They were with us a long time and both appeared in my Liss MacCrimmon mysteries (under assumed names). Here they are “helping” my husband fish a cat toy out from under the refrigerator.

Both had their nutty moments. Bala is trying to break into the closet.

Nefret went crazy over over the cover detached from one ear of a pair of earmuffs.

Say what you will about cats, most of the time they make you smile.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.

 

 

 

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