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Some recent reviews of Agony Hill!

At some point in the process of writing Agony Hill, I started thinking about a map. In order to create the fictional town of Bethany, I had already filled my notebook with sketches of where everyone's houses were in relation to each other so I could figure out how long it would take to drive or walk between houses and who might be in a position to see something they shouldn't have seen across the green. I also love literary maps, so imagine my excitement when I suggested the idea of a map of the Bethany Green to my publisher and they agreed! The map above, which will be in Agony Hill when it's published on August 6th, is by the talented artist . I sent Maggie some photos of actual Vermont village and town greens, along with my (very poorly drawn) sketches and she came up with this wonderful map of a place that, until now, had existed only in my head. Thank you, Maggie! I love the map!

Here are some photos of the village green in Woodstock, Vermont, one of my sources of inspiration as I was inventing Bethany.

Most writers sit down at their desks intending to be great writers. Otherwise, why would you do it? But the thing I've learned after writing twelve novels and a bunch of other stuff is that sometimes you have to accept that you are not a great writer in that moment, and trust that you will be one at some undefined point in the future. Let me explain.

I often reach points in my work in progress where I don't know what to write next. I know what happens a few miles down the road, but I don't know what happens here, at this exact spot, where my metaphorical car has broken down and I am stuck on the side of the road. Before I finished my first novel this was the place where I would stay, stuck on the side of the road without a ride. But I've learned that there are times when you have to leave that car there (I may be losing control of this metaphor) and hop in someone else's car and just get home however you can. You have to trust that you'll be bale to go back later and fix whatever it is that's not working.

I think this is one of the hardest things for writers to learn, but it's so important. I wrote a scene yesterday that I know will be a really important one. It's not there yet, because there are a few things that I don't yet know about the characters in the scene. Early in my writing career, I would have gotten stuck on the scene until I knew enough to write it. Now, I just move along, trusting that I'll come back to it later and that by then I'll be able to write a scene of which I'll be proud.

I finished my draft in March! It's a rough draft, and short, only about 40,000 words, which is less than half as long as it will be when I'm done. But, it's there! And now, I'm walking away from it for a week or so.

I have learned that sometimes the best thing I can do for my work in progress is to leave it alone for a bit, especially when I've come to the end of a draft. When I've told the story as much as I can for the moment, I can close the document on my computer and let it marinate a bit. I'll work on something else, or focus on the other parts of my life, or just go for lots of long walks. Like magic, my brain will start to turn and I'll realize things about my characters that I couldn't see before. Or, I'll solve a plot problem that was vexing me.

I'm taking notes during this time away from my manuscript and when I open it up again next week, I hope to be able to dive right into the revision and start adding detail and scenes, and further developing the hints of themes and new plot threads that are already there. I'll let you know how it goes!

I leapt into my new book last month, setting myself some ambitious productivity goals and marking off March 1st on my calendar with the word count I hoped to achieve by today.

Spoiler alert, I didn't make it. Not even close. Life intervened in February, in a variety of ways. There was school vacation, and some DIY home improvement stuff that seemed like it would be simple, but of course never is. The home improvement stuff set off a cascade of organizational projects because well, we were taking all that stuff out of there anyway. The pump on our well gave up the ghost and had to be replaced. My laptop was dying and then died and also had to be replaced. I underestimated how much time and emotional energy it would take to get one kid ready for a two-week international exchange program. (Though hearing about his adventures makes it all worth it!)

It was cold. I was tired. I had trouble tuning out the terrible news coming from every part of the planet.

I had moments of despondency, but I also know by now that this happens and the trick is not to let these unproductive periods mean more than they actually do. It's easy to feel shame about not writing and that shame can lead you to not write even more. I've been grabbing time to write when I can and now, finally, I feel like I'm deep enough into the plot that I have some momentum.

But this month got me thinking about how sometimes we need techniques to trick ourselves back into productivity. When I haven't gone running in a while, I fool myself by just going for a walk. No pressure. Often I end up running for a bit, and then a bit more the next day and so forth. It's the same with writing.

Here's what works for me when things don't go to plan:

Switch Things Up

Sitting at my desk, surrounded by To-Do lists, reminders of dentist and doctor appointments that I need to make for various family members, household things to fix, and farm tasks that need to be accomplished, not to mention the ever-available universe of the internet, it's hard to really lose myself in the creative process. I like to get up and move to a completely different spot for a writing session. I've been using a chair in my bedroom and it works pretty well. Sometimes a cafe can serve the same purpose.

Pomodoros

You can find more information about the Pomodoro Technique , but the idea is that you set a timer for initially short, focused blocks of work. This works really well for me when I've been away from my manuscript for a while. Twenty minutes and then I can check my email, I think to myself. I can do that. That's easy! Before I know it, I'm back in the groove and I can do longer and longer blocks of time.

Just Talk

Over the last year, I've been experimenting with using voice dictation in my writing. It started with a shoulder injury; I was trying to stay away from typing for a bit. My results were mixed. I could use dictation to get some very rough, very messy thoughts down, but I found that composing by talking didn't quite work for me and led to some fairly nonsensical stuff that I ended up deleting. But, when I am having trouble even getting to my desk, getting some of that nonsensical stuff down can help me get going again. After all, some words, even very rough ones, are better than no words and seeing a big block of text transfer over to an empty page is sometimes just the lift I need. It feels low stakes and I can dictate some paragraphs anywhere.

Chocolate

Need I say more?

I started a new book yesterday. In the way of publishing, I can't actually announce what it is that I'm writing yet, but I'm excited about it and I thought it would be fun to share my progress periodically. How does a novel get written? I've written twelve now and the truth is that I don't know exactly . . . It's like Geoffrey Rush says in Shakespeare in Love when asked how a troubled theatre production could possibly turn out well in the end: "I don't know. It's a mystery." And the truth is that it's different for each of us. I am very wary of anyone who says they can tell you how to write a novel in ten easy steps because . . . yeah, back to that It's Different for Each of Us thing. But, I love hearing about different approaches and processes and have learned from other writers sharing theirs. So, here goes.

For me, a novel starts in what I like to think of as The Bubble. Generally, I enter The Bubble with a vague idea of the plot of the book, perhaps a rough outline, and a good bit of research under my belt. My job in The Bubble is to block out everything else and just . . . write. I generally try to get 50 pages or about 13,000 words down in this stage of things. My goal is not to write 50 polished pages, or even 50 intelligible pages. My goal is to get things going, to create liftoff so to speak. To present my characters in their setting, to introduce the main conflicts between them, to kill someone off and make the death mysterious enough that my characters and readers will want to solve it, and to make sure that I and my readers understand what's at stake for my characters and why I should keep writing and they � once the book is done � should keep reading. That's pretty much it.

In order to enter The Bubble, I need to quiet down the noise in my head. That means less online time and it means trying to stay away from reading reviews. I have learned through trial and error that it means not talking to anyone too much about the book because talking about an unformed, unrealized thing too much can make it evaporate in front of you like, well, soap bubbles.

Here's a picture of me preparing to enter the bubble, with my most mysterious mug, since there is lots of coffee in The Bubble. Wish me luck and I'll check in soon to describe what it feels like in here and how things are going.

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I've had so much fun looking through my growing collection of 1960s cookbooks from Vermont. Some are fancy, professional affairs, with sleek photographs and scientific recipes. But my favorites are the small, locally-produced church and community organization cookbooks. They are such an interesting reflection of what home cook's (yes, mostly women at that point) lives were like and what kinds of foods they were putting on the table every day. I've found cooking from these cookbooks such a useful way of learning about my characters.

A number of the community cookbooks in my collection have recipes for apple fritters. What's not to love about fritters? They are a simple, less fussy donut. You just mix the batter and drop it into hot fat. No rolling, no rising, no resting. And fritters can make use of any scraps of fruits or vegetables you have lying around the kitchen. Have an apple that's getting a little brown or soft? Make apple fritters. You'll be glad you did.

Apple Fritters (This is a combination of a couple of different recipes. Some include cinnamon, but I like them plain!)

Mix together 1 ½ cups flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1 teaspoon salt. Then mix together 3/4 cup milk, two eggs and a dash of vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix until it forms a thick batter. Peel, core and slice two tart apples and fold into batter. Heat enough vegetable so that it's at about the 2 inch mark in your pot. Wait until a test spoonful of batter sizzles and quickly turns golden. Then cook the fritters in batches, dropping a tablespoon or so of batter into the hot oil and cooking for about 3 minutes or until both sides are golden. Drain on a paper towel and roll in cinnamon sugar or sprinkle with powdered sugar.

In the summer of 1991, after my sophomore year of college, I lived in my family's cabin in rural New Hampshire with a couple of college friends. I had grown up on Long Island, but my family spent every summer in my father's hometown in New Hampshire and it was one of my favorite places on earth. I had a waitressing job at a high-end restaurant that allowed me lots of reading time during the day, while my friends were working, and I fell into a habit of wandering up the road to my grandmother's house and talking books with her. We had always shared a love of reading, but something about my unfettered days and lots of one-on-one time allowed our relationship to deepen and expand. An English major, I had by then read many of her favorite authors � E.M. Forster, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Bowen, A.S. Byatt � and we talked about books and writers and she offered me ice cream from the seemingly inexhaustible store in her chest freezer, replenished every couple of weeks by the Schwann's truck.

My grandmother, whose name was Edith, lived alone in my father and his siblings' childhood home. My grandfather, who'd passed away a decade earlier, had been a farmer and teacher. Edith � we called her Bahma � wasn't overly enthusiastic about the sheep or cattle farming part of their life, but she was a skilled and avid flower and vegetable gardener and preserver of food from her garden and an incredibly talented and prolific writer. Everyone in our family still cherishes the long, newsy letters she wrote to us in her beautiful handwriting, every line crackling with wit and color. She never learned to drive and so after she was widowed she got rides to church and the library and family members' houses, but a lot of her travel was through the books she read. And boy, did she travel. Most weeks, she read at least one book, if not two or three, in addition to reading every single word of the New York Times and the Boston Globe.

When you entered her house, there was usually a stack of books on the table, ready to go back to the library or to be passed on to the next reader. That summer, I read a lot of her books, but at some point, she told me that she'd read an article about a mystery writer named Sue Grafton and wondered if we should "try her out." I went down to the town library (the Philip Read Memorial Library in Plainfield, NH) and borrowed "A is for Alibi" and "B is for Burglar." I think she read them first and pronounced them fun and worth my time. I read them and was instantly taken with the voice of Kinsey Millhone and the fact that she felt like a real woman, someone with a messy car who drank perhaps too much wine and didn't always follow the playbook, a woman who was nevertheless successful in a way that a man working the exact same job could not have been. We kept going that summer, working our way up to "G is for Gumshoe."

Edith appreciated good writing and most of her favorites came from the canon. I don't remember her reading much genre fiction. But she was not a literary snob and she delighted in Kinsey's private eye adventures. We talked about how the books worked and how they were well-executed examples of the form. We talked about Kinsey's vulnerability as a character and why the reader rooted for her. We talked about the books' flaws too. only occurs to me now how important those conversations were for me � my grandmother gave me permission to be a mystery writer, I think. She instilled in me a sense that creating within an established genre of literature and trying to make a book the best example of its form possible was a worthwhile pursuit for someone who cared about good writing.

Only a couple weeks after I went back to college after that summer, I got the call that Edith had been diagnosed with cancer and had decided not to pursue treatment. Later, I would wonder if she'd had any sense of her illness that summer and whether Kinsey, with her tragic orphan past and her obsession with death, had resonated with her in some as-yet-unfathomable way. I was in college only an hour-and-a-half away and so I drove to spend a weekend with her before she moved in with my aunt and uncle, where she would be cared for during her last months. She was scared and also resolute. She wanted to die on her own terms, I think.

I found a copy of "H is for Homicide" at a bookstore and brought it with me that weekend. We talked about the other books she'd been reading but I don't know if she ever read Kinsey's eighth adventure. After she died, I would think of her each spring when Sue Grafton published a new novel. I've thought of her lots of other times too of course, when I read a great novel I knew she would have loved, when I finished writing and then published my first novel, or as I watched my own three children grow up and become readers.

I thought of her today, when I got the exciting news that "A Stolen Child" has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America G. P. Putnam's Sons Sue Grafton Memorial Award. I think Edith would have gotten a kick out of the circularity of it, of our old friend Kinsey being involved somehow in my writing career. I'll think of her when I sit down to write my next book too, and I'll try to make it the best version of itself it can be.

Biscotti are one of my favorite things to make this time of year. These crunchy Italian cookies keep well, are perfect for pulling out to dunk in tea or coffee when you have unexpected guests, and they also make a great gift. Traditional biscotti don't contain butter or oil, but I love them both ways and so I've included recipes for biscotti with and without the fat.

One of the things I like about making biscotti is that they're quite unfussy. The dough/batter comes together simply, in one bowl with a beater or spoon, and they're very forgiving of a few minutes too long in the oven. After all, they're double baked. You can also try almost any flavor combination you can think up. Use espresso instead of vanilla and add chocolate chips, try a gingerbread biscotti recipe, or use dried cranberries or crystalized ginger.

Traditional Biscotti

Beat together 3 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla or other flavoring, 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt. Stir in 1 cup chopped toasted almonds or other fillings. The dough will be very sticky, so flour your hands and form the dough into two or three rounded logs. Bake the logs on a greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, then let them cool before cutting into biscotti. Spread them out on the cookie sheet and bake for fifteen minutes more, until golden.

Orange/Walnut Buttery Biscotti

Beat together 1 stick of butter, 2 eggs, 3/4 � 1 cup sugar (depending on preferred level of sweetness), the zest and juice of one orange, 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. salt. Stir in 1 cup chopped walnuts. The dough will be very sticky, so flour your hands and form the dough into two or three rounded logs. Bake the logs on a greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, then let them cool before cutting into biscotti. Spread them out on the cookie sheet and bake for fifteen minutes more, until golden.

These are one of the best things about Vermont in the fall. At orchards, farmstands, and bake sales, you'll find a lot of different interpretations of the apple cider donut.

When I decided to master this New England classic, I was looking for three main things: crunchy, deep-fried deliciousness; strong apple cider flavor; not too sweet.

If you search for cider donut recipes, you'll find a lot of recipes for baked donuts. I am sorry, but if it's baked, it's not a donut. It's a cake. It may taste pretty good, but it's not a donut. As for the apple cider flavor, there's only one way to get that: boiled cider. Any recipe that doesn't call for boiled cider isn't going to achieve that apple flavor. And finally, a lot of the recipes I tried were much too sweet. I landed on a combination of brown and white sugar in lesser amounts and also, some cloves and cardamom in the spice mixture to complicate the flavor profile a bit. Here is my apple cider donut recipe, which is a combination of many of the more popular recipes I found. Make them as often as you can for the next few weeks or so!

Apple Cider Donuts

Mix together in a large bowl:

3 1/2 cups flour

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup white sugar

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon cardamom

½ teaspoon cloves

Mix together and then add to dry ingredients:

4 cups of fresh apple cider (not juice, cider), boiled down until it's about 1 cup

6 tablespoons melted butter

2 eggs

½ cup of buttermilk

Stir until it forms a wet, sticky dough. You can chill the dough to firm it up a bit or you can start cutting out your donuts. It's best to get them all cut out before you start trying to cook them. Put a lot of flour on your cutting board or silicon mat and form the dough into a rectangle. Put a lot more flour on top and roll it out until it's about 3/4 inch thick. Then use a donut cutter to cut out the donuts. Let them sit while you pour about three inches of vegetable oil into a pot or dutch oven and heat it to about 175 degrees F. Start lowering the donuts and donut holes carefully into the oil with a slotted spoon and allow to cook until golden brown on one side before turning and letting the other side get golden brown too. Then drain on paper towels, roll in cinnamon sugar and serve!