An Interview with Edith Maxwell by Kait Carson

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 . . .

In Batter Off Dead, 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 . . .

 

Thank you for joining us at Writers Who Kill. As a past president of PAWS Animal Welfare Society, Inc. I would also like to thank you for your support of no-kill shelters. You mention in your acknowledgement that Adrienne Linnell benefited the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Fur Ball with a winning bid to name a character in this novel. She opted to name her late mother-in-law, and for an additional donation, her late mother-in-law’s sister. Well done. Do you feature a donation character(s) in each of your books?

 

Thanks so much for inviting me back to this fabulous blog! Many of my recent books do feature names chosen by charity auction high bidders. Donors to the cat rescue society or our local organization that helps families in need with housing, food, and school backpacks love the idea so much. It’s free and easy for me to work a name into my manuscript, and sometimes the donated-name character surprises me! Adrienne’s Joan and Edna turned out to be great characters in Batter Off Dead, with one of them mentioning a possible clue to Robbie.

 

You are so prolific. How many series are you currently writing? What’s your typical writing day?

 

Thank you, Kait. I am currently writing the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Both have been renewed for several books ahead. My Kensington editor has also asked me to write a new cozy series set in California. I’m super delighted to stage stories in my home state, but … sshh. Don’t tell anybody - I haven’t signed the contract yet! In addition, I have a new historical book in the works, which takes place in Boston in 1926. It’s out with an independent editor now. Fingers crossed that it sells.

 

I am always writing by seven in the morning. I naturally wake up early. I need about an hour of catching up with the world before I open the work in progress at seven. I check in with Ramona’s Sprint Club (feel free to ask offline) and start making things up (or polishing that first draft). I work until about eleven. By then my creative brain is all done. I go for my power walk, often plotting as I go, then eat lunch and spend the afternoons doing other authorly things like writing guest blog posts.

 

You excel at short stories as well as novels. Is your writing process different for each? Do you start with plot or character, title or story? Are your short stories all mysteries or do you use the different formats to branch out to other genres?

 

Thanks for those kind words. All my short fiction has been crime stories except the first two stories back in the 1990s (well, and “Viking Girl,” published when I was nine in the Pasadena Star News). 

 

 

I love mixing things up in the short form. Often the narrator is the bad guy - or gal, more accurately. Sometimes she gets away with it, sometimes she doesn’t. Where I start varies with the idea. I might envision a particular character and ask Suppose? And What if? Or maybe I recently heard of a new poison and want to use that. Or I write to a theme, as in the Mystery Writers of America pandemic-year anthology, which had a theme of Home. MWA rejected “Bye-Bye, Jojo” – but Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine took it instead. It came out last week in the March/April issue.

 

My novels also vary as to what sparks the story idea. My brain might conjure up a particular bad guy. I could start with a curious news story I heard of, or an intriguing murder method. I’d say it’s different every time.

 

I’ve read that you’ve been a mechanic, a tech writer, an organic farmer, have your PhD in linguistics, and taught English in Japan. Have you ever worked in or run a restaurant?

 

Ha! No. I talk to people who have. I visit diners and watch their short-order cooks. One of my sons worked for a small breakfast and lunch restaurant. And I imagine stuff. So far, no readers have criticized how Robbie Jordan runs Pans ’N Pancakes, so I guess I’m mostly on track.

 

You bravely tackle the topic of the pandemic with the reference to Samuel and Adele skipping a year of travel and later an elbow bumping reference. Have you decided to tackle the years of living isolated in the Country Store mysteries? Did you get any pushback from your editor about that?

 

I mostly heard from fans who said they weren’t ready to read stories set during the pandemic.  As we are not yet out of danger, I certainly didn’t want to write one and still don’t. But I also didn’t want to completely ignore this awful period we’ve all been going through. My editor didn’t blink as I set this book in a vaguely post pandemic time.

 

Is South Lick, Indiana a real place? As a California girl, how did you come to select Indiana as your setting?

 

Ah, great question. South Lick is not real, but Brown County, Indiana, absolutely is. I hit on the name when I was out visiting and saw South Lick Road and South Lick Creek in the vicinity of Beanblossom. The larger and real town of French Lick is about an hour south, so I knew that kind of name wasn’t unheard of in the area.

 

I spent five years earning a doctorate in Bloomington, a university town in the next county to the west. My great-great-great grandfather founded Indiana University. My grandfather was captain of the basketball team in 1916. My father was an undergrad until he was drafted into WWII. There’s a Maxwell Hall on campus, a Maxwell Street and a Maxwell Lane.

 

 How could I not want to get my graduate degree there? This Californian absolutely fell in love with the region, and when my editor agreed that a Country Store series sounded good, I ran with the idea.

 

South Lick seems like a sleepy small town, but it has attracted a diverse group of people. Is southern Indiana as cosmopolitan as it sounds?

 

I always try to reflect the spectrum of humanity in my books, whether it’s shades of skin colors, various preferences and faiths, or ages. The university in Bloomington certainly has people from everywhere, and I think there is spillover into Brown County. The county has a reputation for being artsy and also fiercely independent. I’ve drawn on my imagination, of course, in creating the characters. But they are all plausible residents of South Lick and surrounds.

 

In Batter Off Dead, the mystery unfolds over decades with the past intruding on the present. Was it difficult to write and keep the murders and clues for each murder straight?

 

Not really. I’m not much of a plotter, as many people know, and I was pleasantly surprised at the connections my characters revealed to me.

 

Lt. Buck Bird’s family has become tantalizingly close in this offering. We meet his dad, his grandmother, learn about his mother’s murder, and his immediate family. Will we get to see more of these delightful (and in some cases mysterious) folks in future works?

 

I’d better bring back his grandmother, Simone, while she’s still alive. Yes, she’s still a pistol at one hundred years old, and I expect she’ll make a showing in book twelve. (I missed the chance in Four Leaf Cleaver, to release next March.) I also really like Roy, and Buck’s sweet nephew, Nathan. We’ve still never met Buck’s wife or his children, and I hope they’ll decide to stroll onto the page, too.

 

Speaking of Buck, how did the very inquisitive Robbie get herself to give Buck a pass when he mentioned his mother’s murder?

 

I honestly have no idea. Sorry!

 

Robbie tells Corinne Beedle that she tempers her gazpacho – are Indianans spice-adverse as a general rule?

 

I wouldn’t want to make a blanket pronouncement about Hoosiers, but I think many Midwestern Americans wouldn’t appreciate the level of hot peppers I and others loved in southern California.

 

Corinne and others use phrases and expressions that one would expect to hear in the deep south, for example, “I’d love me some spicy soup.” Later in the story Robbie remarks on Buck’s aw-shucks grammar. Are southern turns of phrase hallmarks of southern Indiana?

 

They can be. It’s pretty close to Kentucky. My older sister lives in Indiana a little farther north, and she passes along things she hears. An IU linguist has helped a bit, too. I might have stretched the regionalisms a bit, but I don’t think readers mind.

 

The name of the craft club, Stitch and Bitch, made me laugh. Did you receive any pushback on the name? Does it have a history? It sounds like it could easily exist.

 

My mother, who never swore in her lifetime, was in a quilting group called Stitch and Bitch after she retired. (When Mommy said “Damnation” to me once in high school, I knew I was in big, big trouble. And that I deserved it…) My editor didn’t care at all.

 

When Vi Perkell is killed, Robbie decides to get involved and do a little digging. The murder affects her friends, but not Robbie personally. What makes her decide to get involved?

 

Part of Robbie’s involvement is that Buck’s father is so distressed, and Robbie cares a lot for Buck. She’s also naturally curious and likes to solve puzzles. This turns out to be a double one.

 

When Robbie is stumped as to how to move her investigation forward, she constructs crosswords to help her untangle the knots. Do you create crosswords as plotting techniques? Sounds like a fun way to do it.

 

I don’t, but I like that Robbie does. My partner and I do New York Times Sunday crosswords constantly.
He does all he can and passes it to me, on a clipboard. I do all I can without strategic cheats and hand it back. And so forth. The only crossword I’ve ever created – I mean, that Robbie finished creating in a book – was one I made for Grilled for Murder.

 

While Robbie is a young woman, your Country Store mysteries include plenty of people of a “certain age,” including Adele and Samuel and often entire tour groups. In Batter Off Dead, you’ve upped the ante by including Buck’s grandmother and his father. There’s not a cliché in sight. Have you had a lot of seniors in your life?

 

I’m glad I cleared the cliché hurdle. As an adult, I have had close friends who are and were older, particularly in my Society of Friends (Quaker) worship community. Several have passed away, and others remain. I recently ran out to San Francisco to visit my last-remaining uncle, author Richard Reinhardt, whom I adore. He’ll be ninety-five next month and is holding up remarkably well, still living in his own row house. I think including our elders in stories brings so much richness. Pretty soon I’ll be one of them, for better and worse.

 

Robbie drives though the Knobstone Escarpment on her way to visit Buck’s grandmother. Is this a real place? Has Robbie ever biked it?

 

It is a real place. As far as I know, she’s never taken her bike out there. But she might!

 

Robbie and Buck’s grandmother discuss Stone Head? Does it exist and was the head robbed? Sounds like a frat prank!

 

Stone Head is amazing. It does exist, where Bellsville Pike comes into Route 135 at a sharp elbow south of Nashville (Indiana). The first time I went out to do research for the series, a Hoosier friend here (one of those elders) told me I had to look for Stone Head. The Mona Lisa smile and crossed hands with mile markers is really something to behold. The head has been robbed more than once. I’m not sure of the status right now.

 

Abe instructs Robbie in how to cheat at cards. Does he have a checkered past we haven’t discovered?

 

I have no idea! Stay tuned for future books.

 

One of the many things I love about this series is that Robbie and her setting are 100% believable. Yes, she runs a business, yes, she solves crimes, but first and foremost, she’s a woman, a newlywed, and now planning a family. It makes for a great character arc. How far in the future have you plotted the series, and can we expect to see a mini-Robbie or Abe?

 

I so appreciate that you find Robbie a believable person, Kait. I have a contract through book #13 – yay! – although I haven’t yet plotted even #12. And I’m not handing out any spoilers. The couple certainly wants to have children.

 

What’s next?

 

As I mentioned, Four Leaf Cleaver will release a year from now. Yes, it’s set at Saint Patrick’s Day, with a cooking competition in the store. Also in the Country Store series, my novella “Scarfed Down” comes out in late September in Christmas Scarf Murder, a three-novella collection with Carlene O’Connor and Peggy Ehrhart. That book releases the same day as Murder in a Cape Cottage, the fourth book in my Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I won’t give away the ending, but it brought tears to my eyes.

 

I’m so pleased, Kait. Thank you for these wonderful – and challenging – interview questions!

 

Readers: Where is your favorite diner or country store restaurant? Raise your hand if you have Midwestern roots! I’d love to send one lucky commenter a signed copy of the book.

 

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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