The Perils of Pantsing, a guest blog by Maddie Day/Edith Maxwell

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: What can I say about the Agatha-nominated, incredibly prolific Maddie Day, especially since, as Edith Maxwell, she's a long-time and well-loved member of our Jungle Red community. 

I always assumed Maddie/Edith was a disciplined outliner when it came to writing her books, since she routinely has several books out each year and her short stories are regularly featured in anthologies. Other highly productive authors I know are confirmed plotters, and to be frank, this makes me feel better, because it gives me an excuse for taking sooooo long to write my own books. Because I write by the seat of my pants.

Imagine my chagrin in discovering Maddie doesn't have a set plan when she sits down to write! Another rational gone by the wayside. Maddie, how could you do this to me?

 

 

Hi. My name is Maddie, and I’m a pantser. There, I said it.

 

But first, thank you to Julia for hosting me on the front side of the blog. It’s always an honor and a delight to flip onto the main page and be able to celebrate a new book – my twenty-seventh! – with the Reds and all my fellow regular commenters.

 

When I started writing my first book-length mystery back in 1994, I knew nothing. I’d never studied creative writing. Was clueless about point of view. Had no idea about pacing. And nobody ever told me I should plot out my book ahead of time. Anyway, the word “outline” would have conjured nightmares of high school and those nested Roman numerals and letters that were supposed to summarize an essay or article. I still shudder at the thought.

 

So I plunged in and began to write a mystery set on an organic farm, start to finish. Except I got about two-thirds through the story and realized I had no idea which of my suspects was the bad guy. I also didn’t know how to decide. I was reading exclusively mysteries at the time – by Sue Grafton, Katherine Hall Page, Sara Paretsky, Diane Mott Davidson, and others (sorry, Debs, your books weren’t on my radar until you joined this blog) – but I didn’t understand how to finish my own.

 

Life got in the way, and I didn’t return to that story until eighteen years later. I proposed the premise of the unfinished book as the first in my Local Foods Mysteries and landed a three-book contract with Kensington. A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die was my second published mystery in 2013. I guest-posted about the farming life – and writing full time – right here back in 2014.

 

Fast forward again to when I turned in No Grater Crime, the ninth Country Store Mystery, which released last summer (I was a guest here for that release, too). My editor at Kensington read the manuscript. Toward the end, police lieutenant Buck Bird casually mentions that his mother had been murdered when he was a teenager.

 

 

 

My editor said he assumed I added that bit because I would be addressing the old (and unsolved) murder in the following book.

 

“Yes, John, of course,” I wrote back. What? I hadn’t dropped that little bombshell on purpose. But this is what happens when, like me, you follow your characters around and write down what they do, say, and think.

 

And address it, I did. When your editor is the top dog at the publishing house, it’s prudent to heed his suggestion. In fact, it was a quite good one.

 

Also, I’m never going to be an outliner. Just saying.

 

Readers: What suggestion has someone given you that turned out well? Do you have advisors whom you smile at, say thank you, and disregard completely? Writers: Where do you fall on the pantser-plotter continuum?

 

I’d love to send two commenters a signed copy of Batter Off Dead, which came out two days ago.

 

In South Lick, Indiana, fine foods and classic cookware can be found at Robbie Jordan’s Pans ’N Pancakes. Unfortunately, her country store also seems to stock up on murder . . .

 

Robbie and her new husband Abe O’Neill are enjoying a summer evening in the park with fellow townsfolk excited for some Friday night fireworks. In attendance are senior residents from Jupiter Springs Assisted Living including Roy Bird, father to South Lick’s very own Police Lieutenant Buck Bird. Despite his blindness, Roy is a member of his group home’s knitting circle, spending quality time with some lovely ladies.

 

But when the lightshow ends, one of the knitters who sat with Roy is found dead, a puncture wound in her neck. The poor woman’s death echoes that of Buck’s mother and Roy’s wife—an unsolved homicide. To help find the killer, Robbie’s going to have to untangle the knotty relationships deep in the victim’s past . . .

 

Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries and Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, the Local Foods Mysteries, and short crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, wickedauthors.com, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and on social media:

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