When the Clock Strikes Midnight by Margaret Maron

When the Clock Strikes Midnight
by Margaret Maron

We know what happened to Cinderella when she stayed too long at the ball. The clock struck midnight, her golden carriage became a pumpkin, her white horses turned back into white mice and her beautiful ballgown became rags.

Several years ago, when my newly published colleagues and I were members of the "freshman class," we noticed that several of the "senior class"—male and female both—had stayed too long the ball. They had written strong books with sparkling characters, but now they were older and tired, and their books no longer sparkled. They seemed to be phoning it in. As someone who grew up on a farm, it was like watching cows endlessly chewing the same cud. We promised ourselves that we wouldn't be like that. We would quit before we tarnished our reputations. Indeed, three of us made a pact: if that began to happen to one of us, the other two would come and put her out of her misery.

Bootlegger's Daughter, my first Judge Deborah Knott book, was published in 1992. Long Upon the Land, which will publish next week, is the 20th. (The title comes from the Fifth Commandment: "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days shall be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.") In that first book, Deborah was running for a seat on the district court bench. She was single, impulsive and apt to leap before she looked. In the past twenty-odd years, she has matured, married, and become a mother. She has held court from the coast to the mountains and back again and the books have allowed me to examine various aspects of life in North Carolina, both social and political.

I had thought that last year's book, Designated Daughters, would be the last, but then I realized that there was one loose end I had never tied up to my own satisfaction: how did her parents meet and marry and what was the story behind her mother's cigarette lighter that all of her brothers wanted? All along, Deborah's known that her parents were very much in love and that their marriage was strong despite their differences. But Sue Stephenson was the daughter of a respected attorney, a town girl who would have made her debut in long white gloves and a gauzy white gown had the war not intervened. She had graduated from high school and spent a year in college. Kezzie Knott was a semi-illiterate moonshiner who barely finished the eighth grade and was a widower with eight small boys, to boot. 

 Like me, Deborah was curious about how they could defy convention and marry. Long Upon the Land satisfies my curiosity and leaves me content in knowing that this really is the last book I'll write about her.

Besides, not only do I not want to be left standing in rags beside a rotten pumpkin and a handful of mice, my friends take their promises very seriously!

 

* * *

Born and bred in North Carolina where the piedmont meets the sandhills, I grew up on a modest two-mule tobacco farm that has been in the family for over a hundred years. Tobacco is no longer grown on the farm, but the memories linger — the singing, the laughter, the gossip that went on at the bench as those rank green leaves came from the field, the bliss of an icy cold drink bottle pressed to a hot sweaty face, getting up at dawn to help “take out” a barn, the sweet smell of soft golden leaves as they’re being readied for auction. Working in tobacco is one of those life experiences I’m glad to have had. I’m even gladder that it’s something I’ll never have to do again.

After high school came two years of college before a summer job at the Pentagon led to marriage, a tour of duty in Italy, then several years in my husband’s native Brooklyn. I had always loved writing and for the first few years, wrote nothing but short stories and very bad poetry. (The legendary Ruth Cavin of St. Martin’s Press once said of the silly verses I write to celebrate various friends “It's doggerel, Margaret. But inspired doggerel.” I was immensely flattered.)

Eventually, I backed into writing novels about NYPD Lt. Sigrid Harald, mysteries set against the New York City art world. Living there let me see how the city is a collection of villages, each with its own vitality and distinct ambiance, vibrant and ever-changing. But once I had settled back into North Carolina, love of my native state and a desire to write out of current experiences led to the creation of District Court Judge Deborah Knott, the opinionated daughter of a crusty old ex-bootlegger and youngest sibling of eleven older brothers. (I was one of only three, so no, I’m not writing about my own family.)

We’ve been back on a corner of the family land for many years now. My city-born husband discovered he prefers goldfinches, rabbits, and the occasional quiet deer to yellow cabs, concrete, and a city that never sleeps. A son, a daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters are icing on our cake.

Why mysteries? Quite honestly, when I first chose this genre, it was because I thought I had nothing to say and the classic mystery novel had a form that would let me write without any burden of trying to be profound. All I had to do was entertain. But once I began writing about North Carolina, I realized that there was nothing I couldn’t say in this most flexible form.

 

DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS by Margaret Maron

I've been a Margaret Maron fan for a whole lot of years. 

During the many years that I've been a reader (all my life), I've always had some favorite writers.

Many have been on my "auto-buy" list.

Many no longer are.

Margaret Maron, however, is still firmly at the top of that list and I see no signs that she'll be leaving it any time soon.

Her Deborah Knott is a mainstay in my literary world.

My favorite Deborah novels are the ones in which Kezzie makes an appearance, as he does in DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS. 

I have a big ol' soft spot in my heart for Kezzie. The relationship between he and Deborah is sweet and complex, and is always perfectly rendered by Ms. Maron.

It's been a delight watching the development of the characters through this pitch perfect series, and now we're witnessing another relationship grow and bloom - that of Deborah and Cal, which I'm finding to be heartwarming and true. 

I don't believe there's a writer out there with a finger on the pulse of the south in the same sure way of Margaret Maron. 

She manages to finely weave old traditions and new, fairly and honestly allowing her readers to see the good and bad of both. The old south had good and bad just as the new south does - it's a dichotomy some southern writers try to gloss over. Ms. Maron gives them to us straight. 

DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS was a deftly written, firmly plotted story showcasing the strength of family as Deborah's Aunt Rachel spends her last hours in hospice, but is murdered before she can die the peaceful death she deserves. Who on earth murders an old woman on her deathbed?

Some crafty and unexpected twists and turns, purest Maron style, carry us to the end of this latest in the series. But not without some Knott family fun including music, good food and the down home southern charm we've come to expect from this first class author.

And - on a purely personal note, I'd like to thank Margaret for allowing "the good looking Donald Barley" to be a part of this latest installment.  The man hasn't stopped smiling about it yet!  He's honored and I'm tickled pink.


Disclaimer:  I purchased my copy of Designated Daughters No review was promised and the above is my unbiased opinion.

The Past Revisited by Margaret Maron

Born and bred in North Carolina where the piedmont meets the sandhills, I grew up on a modest two-mule tobacco farm that has been in the family for over a hundred years. 

Tobacco is no longer grown on the farm, but the memories linger - the singing, the laughter, the gossip that went on at the bench as those rank green leaves came from the field, the bliss of an icy cold drink bottle pressed to a hot sweaty face, getting up at dawn to help "take out" a barn, the sweet smell of soft golden leaves as they're being readied for auction. Working in tobacco is one of those life experiences I'm glad to have had. I'm even gladder that it's something I'll never have to do again.

After high school came two years of college until a summer job at the Pentagon led to marriage, a tour of duty in Italy, then several years in my husband's native Brooklyn. I had always loved writing and for the first few years, wrote nothing but short stories and very bad poetry. (The legendary Ruth Cavin of St. Martin's Press once characterized my verses as "doggerel. But inspired doggerel.")

Eventually, I backed into writing novels about NYPD Lt. Sigrid Harald, mysteries set against the New York City art world. But love of my native state and a desire to write out of current experiences led to the creation of District Court Judge Deborah Knott, the opinionated daughter of a crusty old ex-bootlegger and youngest sibling of eleven older brothers. (I was one of only three, so no, I'm not writing about my own family.)

We've been back on a corner of the family land for many years now. My city-born husband discovered he prefers goldfinches, rabbits, and the occasional quiet deer to yellow cabs, concrete, and a city that never sleeps. A son, a daughter-in-law, and two granddaughters are icing on our cake. 

More about Margaret here:

http://margaretmaron.com/

The Past Revisited

by Margaret Maron

Once upon a time in the not-too-far past, publishers used to have warehouses where they stored their print overruns and bookstore returns.  It was not unusual to keep unsold books for 25 or 30 years before finally sending them to that great pulp mill in the sky. 

Then, in 1979 Congress passed an inventory tax law.  Its aim was to close a corporate tax dodge and make it more expensive to carry a large inventory from year to year.  As with so many of Congress’s laws, there were unintended consequences.  Congress had not meant to destroy publishers’ warehouses or authors’ backlists, but that’s exactly what happened.  Despite heartbroken pleas to exempt publishers, the tax was applied to them, too, and you know what happens when bottom lines crashes head-on with the public good.  The warehouses emptied out and backlists went into oblivion.

With the advent of electronic readers such as Kindle, Nook, and the iPad and SmartPhones, however, the backlist lives again.  No longer does an early book have to vanish down that bottomless rabbit-hole, never to be seen again.

My first novel, One Coffee With, was published in 1981, an astonishing (to me, anyhow) thirty years ago. It introduced Lt. Sigrid Harald, NYPD, 5’10, mid-thirties, single, skinny, hair worn in a frumpy bun, no clothes sense, uncomfortable in her skin, and totally incompetent when it came to personal relationships. But she had a wry sense of humor few people suspected, cool silvery eyes, and an unerring knack for solving murders. 

The eighth and last in the series, Fugitive Colors, was published fourteen years later—fourteen years for me, but only one short tumultuous year for Sigrid.  She begins in early April and ends the following April.  During that year, she learns to accept herself and the possibility of love, she cuts her hair, she buys a book to learn about makeup (typical Sigrid behavior), she gains a gay housemate who wants to pick her brains so that he can write a mystery, and she learns the true story of her father, who died when she was barely more than a toddler.

Leif Harald was a police detective, too, and was killed in the line of duty.  At least that’s the official story.  The circumstances surrounding his death form a mystery that arches over the entire series, with the reader learning a little more in each book. 

When they were first published, the books got good reviews, but never seemed to find their audience.  The average reader tended to take her at face value, to see only the surface and not what I had hinted was underneath. They went out of print as quickly as they were published.  Now, fifteen years after the last one saw daylight, they are going up online as eBooks and I am delighted with the feedback as my readers have finally begun to “get” her.  (One wrote to me, “I began the series not  liking Sigrid because she was so different from Deborah Knott, your other series character, but I finished the last book in tears because there are no more.”)

In getting the books ready to be digitized, I have had to re-read them and it’s been an odd experience.  A writer is seldom happy with the finished product.  As someone once said, “a creative work is never finished; it’s abandoned.” There were patches of roughness I wanted to correct, motivations I wanted to strengthen, and outdated attitudes that jumped out at me. It was a real temptation to rewrite and bring everything up to date. But you start down that road at a perilous cost and in the end, I contented myself with smoothing a couple of cowlicks and tucking in a shirttail or two.

Over and over, I kept bumping up against things that have changed.  Thirty years ago, a female officer would find it tough to take over a homicide squad, male chauvinism was rampant, and secretaries were still expected to fetch the coffee, and tattoos were definitely not the norm for “nice” people.

When the series begins, Sigrid is typing her reports on a typewriter, by the last book it’s on a computer, yet we never see her taking a computer class during that single year.  Pregnant women smoked and drank alcohol without anyone waving a finger at them, she couldn’t know the sex of her unborn baby unless a doctor stuck a needle in her abdomen and drew out some of the amniotic fluid. Cell phones were nonexistent in that first book.  No Internet. No CDs or DVDs. People could buy airline tickets and board at the last minute without having to go through security or show a photo ID.

The list goes on and on.

Happily, love and greed are timeless and there is always someone ready to kill for one or the other. 

Or for both.

What about you?  Does it bother you to realize that your past is now “historical”? Do the differences between the recent past and current present interfere with your enjoyment of a book?

Serendipity by Margaret Maron

Margaret Maron is the author of twenty-six novels and two collections of short stories. Winner of several major American awards for mysteries (Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, Macavity), her works are on the reading lists of various courses in contemporary Southern literature and have been translated into 16 languages. She has served as president of Sisters in Crime, the American Crime Writers League, and Mystery Writers of America.

A native Tar Heel, she still lives on her family's century old farm a few miles southeast of Raleigh, the setting for Bootlegger's Daughter, which is numbered among the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. In 2004, she received the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for best North Carolina novel of the year. In 2008, she was honored with the North Carolina Award for Literature. (The North Carolina Award is the state’s highest civilian honor.)


SERENDIPITY / Margaret Maron


Ser•en•dip•i•ty \ n \: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.

When people ask why I don’t outline, I always say that I find that my books come out better if I leave them open to serendipity.

So many lovely things have happened in my life and in my work by not planning for them, not expecting them, that I begin to think one really can cultivate the “faculty of finding valuable things not sought for.”

Recently, a reader who had stumbled across Bloody Kin, my first NC book, excitedly asked me, “When you were writing this book seven years before you wrote Bootlegger’s Daughter, did you know that you would be having the main protagonist of that book turn out to be Deborah Knott’s sister-in-law many books later? And that she would be the one to repaint the wedding cake topper for Deborah?"

No. But when I needed someone to repaint that cake topper, there she was. Already in the family.

Serendipity

Years later, when writing the 9th DK novel, Slow Dollar, I needed for one of the new characters to suddenly appear out of nowhere and be closely related to Deborah. I took a look at the family tree that I created for the first book to see where I could put her and was startled to realize that she was already there. She even had a name and a bit of a mystery as to where she was and where she’d been all those years. I certainly didn’t plan it out when I first stuck that twig on the family tree, yet there she was, waiting for me when I needed her.


Serendipity

It works for real life, too. Years ago, I favorably reviewed a first novel, knowing absolutely nothing about the author except that I liked the book and with no expectation that it would come to anything more than any other review. The author sent me a thank-you note, we began corresponding and became friends. A couple of years later, when I needed a new agent, she introduced me to hers which is how I came to meet the agent I will have till one of us dies. (Insert that S word again!)

Early in my Deborah Knott series, someone wrote me that she had read that I planned to take my judge to courtrooms all over the state of North Carolina.“If you ever want to bring her over here to the mountains, I’d be pleased to show you around and act as a resource person.” I wrote back and thanked her and stuck the letter in a folder marked Possible Future Books: Mtns. Eventually, I decided that yes, it might be fun to send Deborah out to the Blue Ridge Mountains. I rooted out the letter and wrote, “You once offered to be a resource. Does the offer still stand?”

Which is how Kaye Barley came into my life and will be in my life forever.



I mentioned Bloody Kin before? It actually triggered the main serendipitous turning point in my career. I had written three books set against the NY art world with a NYPD homicide detective, Sigrid Harald. The books sold well enough to keep my editor happy, but they didn’t seem to catch on and after writing three of them, I sneaked in that stand-alone set right here on our family farm. It sank like a rock, so I went back to writing about NY.

Two or three years later, the Triangle Romance Writers decided to put on a multi-genre conference in Raleigh. I was invited to do a workshop on mysteries. They had snared some associate editors and a couple of agents to come down from New York. I wound up having supper with one of the editors. She was nice. It was a pleasant meal, but others were at the table and we didn’t really connect.

When the conference began, it was early spring, a chilly rain all weekend, too raw to walk outside, but on Sunday morning, spring arrived as only spring can in our part of the state. Forsythia popped out, azaleas and dogwoods spread their blossoms, wisteria dripped from the pines, pansies came back to life—it was beauty everywhere you looked and after a weekend in the hotel, I was ready to go home and enjoy the farm.

As I passed through the lobby on the way to my car, I heard the editor I’d met ask the hotel clerk what there was to do within walking distance for three hours until her plane left. He suggested that she walk across six lanes of traffic to the mall that was across from the motel.

Now my husband is always telling me that I don’t know where my parameters end. That I always feel I must make things nice for others whether they want them made nice or not. That I don’t mind my own business.

But I couldn’t bear to think that this was her first time in NC and all she was going to see of it was a shopping mall no different from the stores in New York?

“Excuse me,” I said, “but if you’ve got a couple of hours to kill, would you like a quick tour of Raleigh?”

I showed her the Capitol Square (dogwoods and azaleas everywhere), our Victorian governor’s mansion and the historic section of town. I took her out to Meredith College and showed her the collection of dolls that each graduating class has dressed in contemporary clothes since shortly after the college was founded in 1891; and we wound up looking at the historic 1912 Dentzel carousel in Pullen Park and just sitting on one of the benches in the warm spring sunshine talking,talking, talking.

By the time I took her back to catch her airport shuttle, we were friends. Back in New York, she immediately hunted out a copy of Bloody Kin and loved it. “You really ought to write another North Carolina book,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Nobody wants to read a mystery set in the rural South” and I continued to write another couple of Sigrid Harald books.

“Seriously,” she said whenever we met at conferences over the next couple of years. “You really should write another North Carolina book.”

So I did and she bought it (Bootlegger’s Daughter). Sara Ann Freed was my dream editor for ten books until her death and I will miss her forever. Every time I stop and think how close I came to missing her friendship when I passed through that hotel lobby, I shiver.




So yes, I will keep on leaving myself open to serendipity. (As does Kaye!)

Margaret Maron's Sand Sharks Launch

Donald and Harley and I had a great little road trip to Raleigh last week.

We left Harley to guard our hotel and had a nice dinner out before going to Quail Ridge Books and Music for Margaret's launch for SAND SHARKS.






















This is the first time we've made it to one of Margaret's launch parties, and I think it's probably something we'll now add to our list of things we'll want to do every August from now until forever. It was easy to see that the people who came were not only exceptionally supportive long time fans of Margaret's Deborah Knott series, but they all just love Margaret to pieces and feel a strong connection to her. Not surprising in the least. She greeted each and every person with ease and graciousness as though they were the only other person in the room besides herself. She's a woman who sets the bar high for other writers, both with her writing and with her genuine friendliness, gentle elegance and candid humor.







I nominate myself #1 Margaret Maron Fan. What can I say - I adore her. And I absolutely, for sure, adore her Deborah Knott series and hope it lasts another 50, 60, or 70 so books cause I'm just sure there's lots more to learn about all those brothers, nieces and nephews. I just love those brothers, but mostly I have the biggest soft spot in my heart for Kezzie Knott, and as Margaret shows us from time to time - Kezzie still has some surprises for us. I also still hold out hope for another Sigrid Harald book. I know the chances of that happening are pretty much in vain, but a gal can hope, can't she?