Maine's iconic bootmaker turns 100 this year, and it's planning quite a big party. I've been privileged to be among the planners, as I write this month over at the day job. Down East Books helped produce an anniversary edition of Leon Leonwood Bean's classic guide to the outdoors, Hunting, Fishing and Camping in collaboration with L.L.'s great-grandson, Bill Gorman. The book is really a hoot, containing as it does bits of Bean's wood wisdom like, "If you get lost, come straight back to camp." I've owned an old edition of this guide for years, so working to update it for the twenty-first century was a dream come true. It's one of those classic titles that really does belong on the shelf of every outdoorsperson.
BookMania Begins
Tonight was the first night of BookMania and I had the pleasure of catching up with Andre Dubus after many years. (I also shook Jum Lehrer's hand.) Here Andre is with my wife Kristen plugging TRESPASSER. More updates tomorrow.
Introducing BAD LITTLE FALLS (Coming August 7, 2012)
Maine game warden Mike Bowditch has been sent into exile, transferred by his superiors to a remote outpost on the Canadian border. When a blizzard descends on the coast, Bowditch is called to the rustic cabin of a terrified couple. A raving and halffrozen man has appeared at their door, claiming his friend is lost in the storm. But what starts as a rescue mission in the wilderness soon becomes a baffling murder investigation. The dead man is a notorious drug dealer, and state police detectives suspect it was his own friend who killed him. Bowditch isn’t so sure, but his vow not to interfere in the case is tested when he finds himself powerfully attracted to a beautiful woman with a dark past and a troubled young son. The boy seems to know something about what really happened in the blizzard, but he is keeping his secrets locked in a cryptic notebook, and Mike fears for the safety of the strange child. Meanwhile, an anonymous tormentor has decided to make the new warden’s life a living hell. Alone and outgunned, Bowditch turns for assistance to his old friend, the legendary bush pilot Charley Stevens. But in this snowbound landscape—where smugglers wage blood feuds by night—help seems very far away indeed. If Bowditch is going to catch a killer, he must survive on his own wits and discover strength he never knew he possessed.
Yeah, I'm excited.
Update on 2012-01-10 01:25 by Paul Doiron
What do you think of the cover?
When Life Imitates Your Book
My wife and I were just headed home from dinner with her parents when I experienced the novelist's equivalent of deja vu. We were driving along a dark rural lane when up ahead in our headlights we saw an SUV on its side off the road. It had swerved, slid across the snow-covered asphalt, flipped over, and come to rest against several trees.
We were first on the scene. I took my Maglite out of the back of my car—the same arm-length flashlight Mike Bowditch uses in my books—and scrambled down into the woods. I shined the light through the windshield but saw no one. The keys were still in the ignition, and there were a handful of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans scattered around the interior. The hood of the white Nissan Pathfinder was still warm. The crash couldn't have happened more than a few minutes before we arrived.
My wife borrowed my cell phone and called the police. While we waited, I followed a series of footsteps in the slush down the road until I saw the blue lights of a responding Camden cruiser. Then I wandered back to give a statement.
I would have liked to stick around to see what the cops turned up. In all likelihood it was a drunk who'd hightailed it out of there before the police showed up to administer a sobriety test. The officers ran the plates while we were giving our statements. The owner of the vehicle lives two towns over, we heard. It's a cold night, and I'm not sure how far he'll be able to run.
The situation, of course, strongly resembles the opening to my novel Trespasser. In my book Mike Bowditch punishes himself for not searching for the missing driver at a crash scene very much like the one I discovered. I'm hopeful that I'll read the outcome of this incident in the newspaper in the next few days, but it's not a given.
As a writer, I had the power to create a satisfying resolution to the mystery my game warden stumbled upon. In real life, we don't always know how these things turn out. I'm having a hard time reconciling myself to that idea tonight.
A Lulu of a Title
I have a post over at Maine Crime Writers today about the challenge of picking a good title for a book. It's something I've always struggled with. Help, however, may be at hand. A computer program used by Lulu.com claims it can predict bestsellers based on its title alone. Click here to read how the title of my next book did.