Maine Lingo: Tooth Carpenter

In The Poacher's Son I have several characters who casually toss about some of my state's more colorful expressions. Retired Warden Service Chief Pilot Charley Stevens especially has a masterful command of the Maine idiom. Since my novel doesn't contain a supplementary glossary of regional expressions, I figured I should occasionally use this blog to clarify and explain what the hell these cussed* people are saying to my out-of-state readers. This term didn't make it into the final draft, I just happen to love it because of its sweet perfection. 

TOOTH CARPENTER: a Maine dentist, especially one working in an upcountry town.

The Towns Below

I'm not giving anything away to admit that one of the themes of The Poacher's Son is loss—loss of relationships, loss of trust, loss of heritage and wilderness. Reflecting on the enormous changes taking place in the Maine North Woods persuaded me that it might add a poignant note to the book to set the second half of the story in two of Maine's ghost towns. As I write in the "Author's Note":

Many of the places in this story don’t exist on the map of Maine (at least not under the names I have given them), but two important exceptions are the townships of Flagstaff and Dead River. In 1950 the Central Maine Power Company built a dam at Long Falls and flooded the Dead River valley northwest of the Bigelow Mountains. Flagstaff and Dead River are gone, but sometimes, when the water is low on Flagstaff Lake, you can take a boat out and peer down at the ruins of what were once two vibrant North Woods villages. To anyone interested in learning more about these lost towns I recommend There Was a Land, published by the helpful people of the Dead River Historical Society. I hope that the survivors of Flagstaff and Dead River will see my decision to set this story in their vanished communities as an effort to keep their fading memories alive. 

It turns out that I got a fact wrong here: There Was a Land was published by the Flagstaff Memorial Chapel Association, but it is distributed by the Dead River Historical Society, and if you are ever in the town of Eustis, Maine, I encourage you to pay their small museum a visit.

Maine musician Slaid Cleaves also wrote a song called "Below" about the flooding of Dead River and Flagstaff for his 2004 album Wishbones. Here's the video:

It's almost inconceivable today that a Maine town (let alone two) could be erased from the landscape by a single powerful corporation, but I suppose you should never say never.

Crime Times

Marilyn Stasio's review of The Poacher's Son in the New York Times is now online. Read it here. Or wait till Sunday and buy the print copy.

I also had the honor today of being included on the May 2010 Indie Next List by Indiebound, the organization of independent bookstores. The Poacher's Son appears as a May '10 Indie Notable with a review by Bill Cusumano of Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor. I had the pleasure of meeting Bill on my presell tour visit to Michigan, and I'm happy as hell he called my novel a "suspenseful, outstanding debut."

Yes, This Is Real

Until I actually received a copy of the printed novel, I think I was always going to wonder whether publishing The Poacher's Son was some sort of multi-year hallucination. I can now safely accept that this is really happening. (That's the audiobook beside the novel, incidentally.) I still expect May 11 to be one of the most surreal days of my life.

My Book/iBooks

For my birthday my wife gave me an iPad, and I've spent the past two weeks trying to decide if I like it. Some things it does phenomenally (Web surfing, email, and watching videos, especially), but the IPad is limited by the current iPhone OS, which prohibits running several apps at a time. Apple has announced that it will be releasing new iPhone software this summer, however (with a version for the iPad in the fall), so I'm hopeful it will soon become the awesome device it can and should be.

Most of the negative reviews I've seen for the iPad have focused around the eyestrain that comes from reading a backlit screen. Personally, I've had no trouble with this; I enjoy being able to read a book on my iPad in a dark room. It's like having an installed book light.

I've used a Kindle and enjoyed it for the most part (the size and light weight are superior to the iPad), and I've been planning to buy both the Kindle version and the Apple iBooks version of The Poacher's Son when the book drops on May 11. The Kindle version has been available for preorder for a while, but I just noticed this evening that The Poacher's Son is now also available in the iBooks store. You can even download the first few chapters as a sample.

I'm curious to compare the experience of reading my novel in print with the experience of reading it digitally. One question I have about eBooks is what will become of the authorial autograph and inscription. I can't very well sign your Kindle—or I doubt you'd want me to in any case.