Lately I've been trying to come to terms with my writerly split personality--nature writer and crime writer--but looking at this month's list (and probably every reading list I've made for the last ten years), I see that it comes directly from having a readerly split personality (nature writing and crime writing)--duh! And no more than I'd give up reading one kind of book should I consider giving up writing one kind of book. So that's settled!

Nonfiction
I've been trying to be better about reading books that other people loan or give to me right away rather than let them gather dust on the shelf for a few years before I get around to it. Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan Slaght is one that a friend passed on to me sometime this winter, and I finally sat myself down to read it this month, and I'm glad I did! It tells the story of the author's several years (5 or 6) doing field work in eastern Russia to find, study, and protect the population of Blakiston's fish owls that make their home in the far eastern part of that country. Slaght depicts many harrowing adventures (snowmobiling over rivers on which the ice is ready to break up, nearly becoming plowed into a logging road, sitting up all night in the freezing cold waiting for owls to set off a trap, trying to keep up with Russians drinking), and his descriptions of the owls and his encounters with them are wonderfully rendered. He also succeeds in his research, developing a realistic conservation plan for these rare and fantastical creatures.

For several months, I've been reading little snippets of Sibley's Birding Basics by David Allen Sibley, in an effort to improve my birding skills. It's an interesting book, but there is nothing basic about it--a better title perhaps would be Sibley's Deep Dive into Esoteric Aspects of Bird Morphology--but it was still a worthwhile read, and though I don't feel any more well-equipped to discern the molt phases of any particular bird species than I was before (nor do I necessarily feel any more compelled to), I at least know that there are different molt strategies among different groups of species.

Fiction
A River Runs through It by Norman Maclean. I list this under fiction, because he calls the collection a novella and short stories, but I wonder how it would be classified if he were writing today. (Something like David Sedaris's "true-ish" stories?) It's a book that I have known about since forever, of course, without ever giving it much thought, except that I attended a seminar once in which the speaker claimed that it's the best horror story ever written, which I found intriguing (since it's obviously not horror). I picked it up recently for a dollar or two at a used bookstore and brought it with on our camping trip last month to read to the boys, if they'd let me. As it turned out, I was at the tail end of a cold, and kept coughing as I tried to read out loud, and they didn't have the patience for Maclean's very drawn out descriptions of fly fishing, so after the first night they declined to hear more and had me read instead from a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales that E had brought along. I, on the other hand, was totally drawn in by Maclean's writing, despite having less than zero interest in fly fishing (and even less in other kinds of fishing), and now I see what that speaker meant--Maclean had an absolute gift of building up suspense, not only in ARRTI but also in the shorter stories in the collection, and I need to go back and reread them see how he did it.

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring. I picked this book up at a reading I attended last summer that a couple of friends of mine were also a part of, and it won the Maine Book Award for last year. The story follows many characters (there must be 5-10 different points of view) through about a year in the early 90s in Aroostook County, Maine, showing their various challenges and prejudices and heartaches.

If She Wakes by Michael Koryta. Koryta was awarded Crime Master at the Maine Crime Wave conference, which I attended a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't familiar with his work before, but picked up this novel, which is one of a few that take place in Maine. This book also has several point of view characters, which isn't my favorite form, but he pulled it off very well. One of the POV characters is in a coma, which was a fascinating thing to attempt--successfully, I might add--and two others were assassins. And, despite the assassins and several not-very-nice individuals in the book, he manages to keep it light with a fair dose of humor, and despite these two killing a lot of people, it didn't come across as grotesque or gratuitously violent, for the most part. I will definitely read more of his books in the future.

The Ebony Swan by Phyllis A. Whitney. I picked this book up at a used bookstore some time ago, because Whitney provided blurbs on pretty much every Barbara Michaels book, and I've been craving more old-school suspense. I have to admit (and I'm sure Ms. Whitney won't mind, being deceased and also extraordinarily successful before she died) that I found it pretty dull. I read the first couple of chapters and set it aside for months before forcing myself to pick it up again. It moves very slowly, the voices used for the two POV characters are indistinguishable and extremely emotionally distanced from the reader, the suspense build up is very subtle, and the crisis/climax is quick and not very thrilling. I did get engaged with the story about 1/2 to 1/3 of the way through, but it was a slog to stick it out that long. But props to PAW for still writing when she was almost 90. I might look for a much earlier book by her, to see if it's any more exciting.

After I retired my old blog at the end of last year, I thought I was done with writing a monthly synopsis of what I've been reading, but I guess I just can't quit! For the last couple of months, I tried squeezing it into my newsletter, but there just wasn't room. So now I'm back to blogging about books! Here's what I read in May:

Fiction
I'm still on my mystery/crime kick, and read a pretty broad range this month:

• Toucan Keep a Secret by Donna Andrews, which is a cozy/whodunit with humor and madcap antics. I like that Andrews' books are lighthearted mysteries and that the heroine is always juggling caring for kids (twins!) plus about four jobs while also solving murders.
• The Five Year Lie by Sarina Bowen, a "domestic thriller" (I haven't quite figured out what this new subgenre means--does domestic refer to the stories being about concerns of the home or the fact that there's no international element to the events?). I really like Sarina on the #AmWriting podcast, but her genre up until now has been romance, which interests me not at all, so I was excited that she branched out, and I enjoyed this book very much.
• The Midcoast by Adam White, which is really more of a book club novel than a mystery, although there is crime involved (it would be called "women's fiction" if the main characters were women and not men), about a lobsterman who gets involved in drug running/organized crime, told from the point of view of a secondary character who lives in the town (a town not far from where I live!). It's a little on the slow side, if you're used to heart-racing thrillers, but the deep dive into place and this one family's rise and massive downfall is compelling to the end.

Multigenre

• Last year I was invited to teach a class through a project called Writing Waterville, which involved four workshops and the publication of a chapbook of writing that arose from those workshops, also called Writing Waterville. At the end of last month, there was a launch event where the books were distributed and contributors read from their pieces. It was really great to see the huge range of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that participants generated and to have the chance to contribute myself. Big shoutout to Catie Joyce-Bulay and Tyler French for pulling it all together. Being a writer in a rural area can be so isolating, and it's wonderful that these two are putting in the work to build a writing community in central Maine.

You may or may not be aware that I have a split writing personality, applying my pen to both nature nonfiction and mystery fiction. Today's news is about the latter: I'm thrilled to announce that my short story, "The Rest of the Story," has been selected for third place in the CrimeFlash Fiction Contest for the 2024 Maine Crime Wave crime writing conference. I, along with the winner and other finalists, will be reading my story during the opening evening of the conference, An Evening of Crime (Writing)! This part of the event, to be held on June 14th, starting at 5 p.m., is free and open to the public.

Have you discovered the Shepherd book recommendation site yet? There you can find curated lists of books recommended by authors in an astonishing range of categories: mystery novels with a strong sense of place; books about women who went on adventures and changed their lives; detective novels that keep you laughing. If there's a very specific kind of book you love to read, there is probably a list on the site to match! I was invited to put together a list of books that shared something in common with my book, Uphill Both Ways, and I came up with the category of "the best books about women in the wild." It was fun and challenging to narrow it down to five books--I ended up choosing four that have been pivotal in my development as a reader, a writer, and a person, plus one that I only read recently but which I think will prove to be equally life-changing. You can check out my list and why I chose each of the books here.

Last fall I taught a workshop called Starting with Place for the Waterville Writes series held through Waterville Creates at the lovely new arts center in downtown. My workshop was about grounding a piece of writing (fiction, nonfiction, or poetry) in the location where it takes place. Because our workshop was held indoors after dark, we used photos I took of the area around Waterville's River Walk and Ticonic Bridge, and, using all of our senses, our previous knowledge, and our imaginations we generated writing about this spot in the heart of downtown.

​Participants of this and the other three workshops were invited to submit writing begun during or inspired by any one of the workshops to be published in a chapbook. My flash fiction story "Two Cent Bridge" is included in the collection.

The chapbook is coming out in May and will be launched at the Writing Waterville Workshops Story Share and Launch Party to be held on Sunday May 5th from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. at the Paul J. Schupf Art Center on Main Street in Waterville. The event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be provided. I'd love to see you there!

Thanks to the efforts of a good friend, Uphill Both Ways is now available in a large print edition, which you can order directly from the publisher, Center Point Large Print. It's really fun to see my words in such big letters!

Like many writers, I love to talk and write about writing as much as I like to actually write, so I was delighted to contribute a post to the Literary Mama blog series about writing my essay "Fledging Season" for Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology. In the post, I share a bit about how and why I turn to nature for inspiration in both parenting and writing. You can read it here.

I had a wonderful time talking to Brianna Avenia-Tapper of the Writing Stories Podcast about the ups and downs of writing Uphill Both Ways and getting it out into the world. You can listen to the episode here or on your favorite pod player app.

Today is pub day for Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology. The collections includes work from Literary Mama editors going back over the journal's first 20 years online. I'm delighted to have been a member of that staff, as both Literary Reflections Editor and Senior Editor, for almost half that time, until I stepped down last March, and I'm honored to have an essay included in this anthology.

It's easy to imagine—or project—a degree of tenderness in the way an adult osprey peels off flakes of fish with its hooked bill and deposits them in the gaping maws of its downy fledglings, the way I once spooned applesauce or mashed sweet potatoes into the toothless mouths of my infants. It's equally easy to detect a note of resignation, if not outright irritation, in the way the osprey drops a fish at the feet of its giant, ungrateful fledglings.

This is an excerpt from my essay "Fledging Season" which appears in Labor of Love. There will be a book launch event held via Facebook Live here on February 1 at 8 p.m. eastern time.
I'll be reading a little bit of my piece, along with many other fantastic contributors.

Hope to see you on February 1 for the reading!

​Other I Did Its!

• Got my older kid graduated from college and the younger two from high school. (Is this really my accomplishment? I don't care--I'm taking credit for it!)
• Got the younger two kids off to college.
• Hosted my parents for a couple of weeks in the spring (around those grads) and my sister for a few days in the fall.
• Created a true space of my own in the vacated bedroom.
• Maintained pretty regular yoga and walking routines (not-quite-daily).
• Kept a daily journal and a fairly regular morning pages routine.

I have some ideas about what I want to accomplish in 2024, writing-wise, and otherwise. But for now I'll just bask in the glow of self-congratulation for having written a novel and traveled to Europe and learned a new craft.
Cross-posted at ​http://remainsofday.blogspot.com/2023/12/i-did-it-2023-edition.html.