April Is National Poetry Month -- and I'm All In on This One!

Today you can read "Hometown" in RockPaperPoem literary magazine -- I wrote it when translator Tony Hao, a resident artist here with Catamount Arts, suggested ways to write about our home towns, and I realized I didn't have one. Where I grew up is so different from where I live now, and my roots are confused. See what you think: https://rockpaperpoem.com/current-issue/

I'll be at the St. Johnsbury PoemTown reading at the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum on Saturday April 11, at 4 pm -- my two poems displayed downtown for this year's Poem Town are "Voices in the Night" (at Momentum Business Solutions at the intersection of Eastern Avenue and Railroad Street), and "Revolution" at Caledonia Plant Shop (nearby at 18 Eastern Ave). I'll post photos of them soon, but you can stroll the town and read these, along with many other wonderful insights.

I'll be at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier on Sunday April 26, 4:30 pm, along with other Northeast Kingdom writers including Judith Janoo and S.J. (Steve) Cahill, as well as my old friend Garret Keizer and long-ago Kingdom Books ally Chard deNiord, and others. 

Last but not least, on April 27 there will be four of us reading online with the Vermont Jewish Poets -- if that's meaningful to you, do look into it.

Watch for a BIG announcement about my poetry collection THRESHOLDS later this week. 

So ... am I working hard enough? 

After all that, you've earned a bit of a poem, right? This is from "Voices in the Night":

   

                            Here, the language of trauma (reddened, sore)

and the language of regret (tender apology for a path not seen) mingle,

soft balm to burned fingers. We always wanted to hear each other,

didn’t we? But accent and origin, animal nature, our canine, feline,

equine coughs of distress fell like rough echoes. What you say at night

your voice uncovering, discovering, slicing, even scarring: I hear you

with an organ centered just below my beating heart. 

BK 

Cover Design, Teen Sleuth in Vermont - Updated! ("Young Adult Crossover")

When I started writing ALL THAT GLITTERS, my Vermont teen sleuth mystery, I knew a cover design would be critical to how I'd present the ongoing chapters on some online sites. I took the issue to my sister-in-law Cheryl Minden, whose graphic design career extends from gorgeous paper items and tags, to elegant signage (in some of the loveliest Montclair and Caldwell, NJ, structures), to art shows (she's #bravitasart on Instagram).

All I could offer her as a starting place was the classic #NancyDrew silhouette from those blue-board books of the old days:

And of course, a shot of the classic structure of Montpelier, Vermont, where the action takes place:

Cheryl looked at the first chapter and the synopsis -- the protagonist, Felicity "Lucky" Franklin, is adept with texting and related smartphone functions, and that's how she coordinates with her BFFs Michelle and Sandy. And the further tech expertise of these teens slips neatly into surveillance cameras, Google Earth, and more.

With her teenaged daughter as collaborator, Cheryl designed a cover that clearly states "student" (Lucky is a college freshman), as well as smartphone, and "Capitol" crimesolving.

The last touch turned out to be adding the line at the bottom left, because this is book 1 of a series that follows Lucky Franklin through her college and family and crimesolving crises, to the moment she submits her application for -- well, no, we can't tell you that part yet. But it's a wild ride!


Cheryl says she's not looking for more book design work, sorry ... but watch for her projects if you're in New Jersey. And watch where the book cover shows up next, en route to being published in the spring!

"Backstage" at Montpelier's Capitol Building, Looking for Lucky Franklin

A book buddy accompanied me to the State House in Montpelier, to "suss out" the terrain for the suspense scenes in ALL THAT GLITTERS. So she took photos, while I took notes, and Vermont State Curator David Schutz walked us up hidden staircases. We learned the gold on the dome was almost worn away -- that reporters know the back passages -- that the chandeliers can be lowered on powerful mechanical winches, in order to clean their lightbulbs today, or, before electricity powered them, to light the oil lamps in them.

I wish I'd taken David's photo, but if you don't already know him, just click here. He's charming, erudite, possessive of the sensational beauty that he stewards. And he had an idea: "Can you add homing pigeons to the story?"

Why not?

And so "scuzzy Sean," one of the most memorable side characters in ALL THAT GLITTERS, was born in a moment under the golden dome.

The novel is my best guess at what a smart, brave, tech-savvy Nancy Drew would be like today -- dealing with Vermont's crime issue of legal "weed." Check it out: You can read it for free here, and if you like it, please do place a pre-order ... we need to reach 750 of those for the book to be published at last!

"All That Glitters" Leaps to Life on Inkshares Publisher

I'm thrilled to see my teen sleuth novel ALL THAT GLITTERS available on the new publishing platform Inkshares. Click here to start reading for free! 

Whenever I chat with people about mysteries from childhood, Nancy Drew comes into the conversation. Love her or not, she's iconic, the teen sleuth who solves mysteries with her two "chums" Bess and George.

I wanted to see what Nancy Drew would be like if she lived in Vermont -- today!

The story takes place in Montpelier, after Felicity "Lucky" Franklin races home from college to help her mom. Lucky's dad has been shot, and Lucky's mom got arrested on suspicion of murder. Although Lucky quickly helps her mom to "lawyer up" and get released (the evidence is clear!), there's still someone threatening to injure her family and finish off her dad.

Is it the city's added taxes or the effect of marijuana for sale? How can Lucky and her friends solve the case -- and will they have to call in Roger, Lucky's ex-boyfriend? Wow, a special risk in doing that ...

Hope you'll click on this link to Inkshares and read along. It's free and easy to read the whole book on the website (press the READ button). Better yet, pre-order a copy.

Inkshares promises that when we reach 750 pre-orders for the book, it will be released as both a paperback and an e-book. Help it reach this goal and get your own first edition this way!

More stories about the book and Lucky Franklin in the coming days. Thanks for checking in!

 

Sugaring at the Cemetery?

I'm headed into writing the last few chapters of ALL THAT GLITTERS, so as I drove to Waitsfield, Vermont, yesterday, I detoured into the downtown of Montpelier to photograph a couple of locations that are featured in the book. Then I paused outside town at Green Mount Cemetery for some quick photos. When I looked at the big maples that edge the cemetery, I paused and stared. Look closely: Can you see the galvanized-metal sugaring buckets fastened to both sides of the maple tree here?? They were on the entire row of trees along the Route 2 edge of the burying ground.

Talk about not wasting any potential for making maple syrup!

One Book Arrives, One Book Being Written -- Mysteries!

Although today is the Big Release Day for COLD MIDNIGHT, I'm also working on three (gulp) other books. Here's one of them: Late in the evenings, I write chapters of All That Glitters, the first of eight teen sleuth books featuring Felicity "Lucky" Franklin, in Montpelier, Vermont.

You can watch the book being written -- read the chapters as their first drafts are posted! -- at WattPad. Click here to peek!

On November 5, this writing project gets featured on the blog of author and editor Penny Lockwood Ehrenkranz. Watch for a link to Penny's blog that morning!

Setting a New Novel: Getting to Know Montpelier, Vermont (Better)

"The Sleuth of Montpelier, Vermont"

A Writer's Research Adventure

In a little “study” under the stairs, my father labored with ruler and Number 4 pencil on a single sheet of blued paper on which he could make scaled drawings. Nearby, curled in an armchair, the 10-year-old “me” read her Nancy Drew books, and understood that the secret panels and hidden rooms within the mysteries began their lives with someone else’s version of Dad’s blue pages.

There were trap doors, like the one in the floor of the wardrobe in “The Secret of the Wooden Lady,” which also included two cleverly crafted panels that Nancy discovered with her careful fingers; in “The Sign of the Twisted Candles,” the girl sleuth examines a camouflaged back stairway, then with her boyfriend Ned begins a hunt for the dead homeowner’s treasures: “Every panel in the ceilings, walls, and floorboards was carefully examined. … Ned cried out, ‘Nancy! Come here! I think I’ve found something!” She ran to his side in the rear hall. ‘Look! The grasss cloth on this wall is a little different from the rest and a twisted candle has been worked into the design.’” There’s a safe hidden behind the significant design element.

Now that I’m writing a “Vermont Nancy Drew” series set in Montpelier, I’ve tuned in to the wide range of design trends that resulted in the many-aged downtown architecture of Vermont’s capital. If I want my sleuth, Felicity “Lucky” Franklin, to discover a hidden room or secret panel, what structure will she explore? In this case, it has to be (for plot reasons) both the State House and the Blanchard Opera Block, now home to the bookstore that belongs to Lucky’s mom (the real store owner is collaborating) and once host to grand performances in the early 1900s, including the arrival of young elephants with the touring circus!

A behind-the-scenes exploration of the State House with ardent conservation curator David Schütz convinced me that the structure’s major idiosyncrasies lie in its dome, which sits atop the legislative “box” but is a unit unto itself. “My” sleuth will find clues there, among the oddly positioned timbers and scrawled graffiti. In the Blanchard Opera House, though, she’ll discover an actual hiding place.

Could Montpelier architect and sometime mayor George Guernsey, who designed the Blanchard Opera House, actually have ensured a concealed area in the building? Norwich University student Megan Morse and Putney preservation pro Lyssa Papazian tracked Guernsey’s work and life (1839-1900) in detail. The era fits that of Lambert Packard, St. Johnsbury’s major architect (1832-1906), and at least one of Packard’s buildings has a hidden panel next to a fireplace. Guernsey himself favored intricacy and Italianate detail. Although none of his documented structures in Montpelier show false walls, hidden doors, or secret panels, the grace of fiction allows me to insert one with a relative amount of believability.

But that’s not quite enough for the kind of fiction I’m writing, which always hinges on some aspect of Vermont history, as well as a puzzle rooted in the life stages of teenagers. So I have two more components of Guernsey’s real life to weave in: his local nickname of “King George,” and his death of tuberculosis.

In the process of crafting these mysteries (the first of is “All That Glitters”), I hope to also bring attention to George Guernsey himself and to his structures, which probably number in the hundreds, whether churches, houses, commercial blocks, or public buildings like libraries and schools. A little extra knowledge may yet make the difference in a decision to maintain a George Guernsey building at a valued town or city location – whether there is a secret panel in it, or not.

[Photos of details of a George Guernsey building, the Edward Dewey house, courtesy of Don Shall.]