Thoreau: The Land That Was


"It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy silver birches and watery maples, the ground dotted with insipid, small red berries, and strewn with damp and moss-grown rocks a country diversified with innumerable lakes and rapid streams, peopled with trout and various species of leucisci, with salmon, shad and pickerel, and other fishes; the forest resounding at rare intervals with the note of the chicadee, the blue-jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish-hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; and at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves; in summer, swarming with myriads of black flies and mosquitoes, more formidable than wolves to the white man. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, the beaver, and the Indian."

 —Henry David Thoreau

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