Bad Little Falls Word Cloud

My next novel, the third in the Mike Bowditch series, will be titled Bad Little Falls, and it comes out from Minotaur Books on August 7. That seems like a long time from now, but having been through this process before, I know the date will sneak up faster than I expect. I am in awe of authors like C.J. Box who are capable of turning out two quality novels a year, but that isn't me. To tide you over, I present my annual spoiler-free word cloud. Here is the essence of Bad Little Falls, based on the words you will encounter most in your reading. Consider it a sneak peek:

Best Mystery Lists

In November and December just about every newspaper, magazine, and Web site seems to come out with a best of the year list. It's an amusing annual tradition. Even the writers who create these lists (whether for movies, music, or books) seem to realize that these things are so subjective as to be pretty useless.

Still, I find myself enjoying these late-year round-ups. At the very least, they remind me of what I might have missed. Since I write mysteries, I pay particular attention to the crime novels getting the most buzz (Megan Abbott's End of Everything seems to be showing up almost everywhere). Today, I got a pleasant surprise from Omnimystery News which listed Trespasser as one of its favorites (although with some qualifications that kept it from the top of the list):

Trespasser by Paul Doiron. Minotaur Books (June 2011 Hardcover). Atmospheric with a well-crafted plot and a strong lead character … but not quite as polished as it could have been.

As the author, I can't really take issue with this assessment. Honestly, I'm not sure that any of my books are as polished as I would have liked them to be. At the moment, I am completing the copy edits on Bad Little Falls (which will be published in August) and desperation has set in with the ticking clock: I know that this my last chance to shine and buff the story before it goes to print.

No pressure at all!

Thoreau: A Fabulous Animal

"The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have tail to speak of? For in my examination I overlooked it entirely. Naturalists say it is an inch and a half long. It reminded me at once of the camelopard, high before and low behind,—and no wonder, for, like it, it is fitted to browse on trees. The upper lip projected two inches beyond the lower for this purpose....The moose will perhaps one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns,—a sort of fucus or lichen in bone,—to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!"

—Henry David Thoreau 

Fire at the Topless Donut Shop

Over at Maine Crime Writers today I have a post about a strange fixture in the Maine landscape: topless donut shops. There's currently a lurid trial under way in Augusta that is about as strange court cases get here. It gave me the idea to use one of these rural strip clubs in my new book. In the process of adapting fact to fiction, however, I learned an important lesson from my editor: just because a story happens to be true doesn't mean readers of a novel will necessarily believe it. Check out the post, and you'll see what I mean.