Death in the Great Dismal

After being delayed for several months because of COVID, the new Will Rees will be released in the United States on January 5.

The Great Dismal Swamp, the setting for the ninth Will Rees, is my favorite so far. Will and Lydia are asked by a friend, born free but sold down south and now escaped, to accompany him to the swamp to rescue his wife. Of course they agree, and several murders occur.

Yes, the swamp still exists. It is much smaller, though, than it was when George Washington first explored it (and first saw the potential for development.) But it still feels like a trackless wilderness. Bears and bobcats still live within the swamp as well as many species of birds and aquatic life. And insects, lots and lots of insects.

This is a peat bog and in some places the peat is fourteen feet deep. A man could be swallowed up with no one the wiser.

Many slaves escaped to the swamp. Estimates range from a few thousand to one hundred thousand. Many were caught but quite a few managed to make a life for themselves inside the swamp. These fugitives were called maroons.

When the escaped slaves fled to the swamp, they bedded down first under the pines. They grow only on the drier islands. Daniel Sayers, an archaeologist has been excavating these drier patches and has found evidence of small communities.

Most of the swamp resembles an impassible green curtain.

Now the swamp is passable via boardwalks. This one leads to a memorial honoring the maroons.

Interview with Fran Lewis

I had a great time discussing A Circle of Dead Girls.

For the audio or written versions, here are the links.

Here is the link for Fran’s written summary:  https://tillie49.wordpress.com/2020/10/06/the-circle-of-dead-girls/
And the link to the show.  https://www.blogtalkradio.com/fran-lewis/2020/10/07/circle-of-dead-girls

Maine Dinner

One of my favorite things about Maine is the super fresh seafood. Here my husband and I are enjoying a ‘Shore Dinner’. The lobster and the crab are buried under the clams and the mussels. All the seafood was caught that morning.

Blog Tour

Very excited to announce a blog tour for A Circle of Dead Girls.

Take a look at one of the tour stops.

List of tour stops: 
09/01 Interview @ BooksChatter

09/02 Showcase @ Brooke Blogs

09/03 Guest post @ Quiet Fury Books

09/04 Review @ Bring On Lemons

09/05 Showcase @ Momfluenster

09/05 Showcase @ nanasbookreviews

09/08 Review @ sunny island breezes

09/09 Showcase @ Im Into Books

09/10 Review @ Wall-to-wall Books

09/11 Showcase @ Books to the Ceiling

09/12 Showcase @ Sylv. net

09/14 Showcase @ Tome Tender

09/15 Review/showcase @ Jane Pettit Reviews

09/16 Review @ Buried Under Books

09/17 Interview/Showcase @ CMash Reads

09/18 Review/showcase @ Novels N Latte

09/19 Review @ Book Reviews From an Avid Reader

09/20 Review @ Cheryls Book Nook

09/21 Review @ Thats What Shes Reading

09/22 Guest post @ Reading A Page Turner

09/23 Showcase @ Celticladys Reviews

09/24 Showcase @ Nesies Place

09/28 Review @ A Room Without Books is Empty

09/29 Showcase @ The Pulp and Mystery Shelf

10/07 Review @ Just Reviews10/17 Interview @ Blog talk radio

Sign up at one of the stops for a $20.00 gift card to Amazon.

More about Maine

I thought I would post additional pictures. Both my husband and I are hikers and we have taken quite a few people hiking. We hoped our family and friends would love this state the way we do.

Just FYI: Maine is allowing visitors from the Northeast (States that have reduced the rates of COVID) to come to Maine without quarantining.

Forest in Maine and a shot of the rocky coast of Maine. This is in Acadia National Park, one of my favorite places.Open publish panelAdvanced

Maine

I realized – and I’m not sure why it took me so long – that although I have blogged about many many topics, I have not discussed Maine. My detective, Will Rees, is a Mainer and many of my books are set in this state.

At the time the books are set, Maine is not yet a state of its own. Originally populated by tribes of the Algonquin Nation, whose names remain in names like Androscoggin, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot and more, Maine was considered part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was officially called the District of Maine. Maine was brought into statehood as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820. (Maine came in as a ‘free’ state. The following year, Missouri came in as a slave holding state, thereby keeping the balance between free and slave.)

Maine is called The Pine Tree State for obvious reasons.

Maine has a long, and rocky coastline.

Although part of the temperate climate, and frequently warm and humid in the summers, it also has a long cold and snowy winter. I have seen it snow the last week of April, and not a dusting either but several inches.

But winters in Maine have their own beauty.

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Animal Stars of the Circus

Since the rebirth of the circus in Great Britain was begun as an equestrian show, it is no surprise than many animal species have long been the stars of the animal world. At first, the horse was supreme. Horse acts continued right through to the modern age.

But, along with clowns and acrobats, animals acts were added to entertain the audience between equestrian feats. And, before the exotic animals became a feature of the circus (the elephant was first brought to the United States in 1794), dogs, pigs and bears were pressed into service as acts. Again, similar to the horse, these animals have continued to mainstays of the circus.

Almost from the first, less common animals were featured. In 1779, Philip Astley (a Serjeant-Major who set up the first circus in Great Britain after a century), put a zebra on display. Other exotics, elephants, camels, monkeys, and eventually the big cats were added to the exhibitions.

With the expansion of the European powers into Africa, the types of animals employed expanded. Wild animals, especially the big cats, became a profitable business. It was not a big jump from exhibiting the animals to including them to performances. To the acrobats, jugglers and ropedancers was now added a menagerie of animals, many of them dangerous. Of course, with the animals, came animal trainers.

Some of these animal performers became big stars. In the 1940’s Jumbo, the elephant became so popular that jumbo, meaning colossal, became part of the language.

Blog Tour

Very excited to announce that I am participating in a blog tour for the Mystery Writers of America. A group of us were chosen to participate with a short reading from our latest work. I chose a passage from A Circle of Dead Girls.

Your can see the postings on Facebook, (https://www.facebook.com/mwanewyork), on Twitter  (https://twitter.com/mwanewyork)  or YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQbBSG3fd3UJoPYQU4Kpxg

Circus Wagons

The heyday of the American Circus occurred in the early 1900s. Hundreds of circuses, both small and large, toured the United States, performing for audiences of a few hundred or several thousands. Trains took the circuses all over the country and by then the circus was the circus we think of. Canvas tents had been invented and adopted in the mid-nineteenth century and exotic animal acts became a feature of the performances. The trapeze, invented in France, was added to the line-up.

 

But in 1800, when the circus came to Durham, Maine, it was far different. As discussed in previous blogs, there were no tents; the circus constructed a small roofless amphitheater. Instead of elephant and lion acts, the animals were dogs and pigs. The trapeze, adapted from the tightrope, had not been invented. And trains did not carry the circus across the country,

 

Horse drawn wagons would have been the vehicle used.

 

As my model for the wagons used in A Circle of Dead Girls,

I used the Burton wagon. It is the oldest example of a wagon used as a home in Great Britain.

The history of the wagon, however, is older. By the late 17^th century, most of the roads in Europe were paved. It is thought that the first wagons used as living quarters appeared in France and were designed for the actors of the circus. They were large, horse drawn caravans. By the middle of the 18^th centuries, the carriages became smaller and only needed one or two horses to pull them.

The Burton wagons had small wheels placed under the body of the carriage itself and were undecorated. These wagons evolved into the elaborately embellished wagons, with large wheels necessary for going off-road, used by the Romani. According to Wikipedia and other sources, they began using such wagons about 1850 called a vardo.

 

Since John Asher, the circus owner, is from England and has traveled through Europe, I imagined that he would have seen such living wagons in France and other places and used them for the models of his own horse-drawn circus wagons. These living wagons would be a practical solution to traveling from town to town.

 

The decorated wagons did not disappear when the circus began touring via train. They evolved into parade wagons, the brightly painted and gilded wagons that paraded through town to advertise the circus. The circus museum in Sarasota, Florida has some fine examples of these wagons.

Clowns

The circus comes to town in Circle of Dead Girls.

Although there was no canvas tent (not invented for another twenty+ years), no exotic animals (the first circuses used pigs, horses and dogs) or trapeze artists, there were clowns.

The ancient Greeks used figures of fun, which were rustic fools. The English word for clown also meant rustic fool originally. These characters are plentiful in Shakespeare’s plays.

At the same time, the Italian Commedia del’arte used a number of stock characters that includes clown-like figures: Pierot and Harlequin.

Clowns have certain evolved since then.

The clown in the American circus is a direct outgrowth of Philip Astley, who restarted the circus in England in 1768. His circus was originally an equestrian show and clowns were used as the breaks between the trick riding.