Tag Archives: Murder on Principle

Writing during the pandemic

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When I think of writing during the recent COVID pandemic, I think of the Charles Dickens quote from A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I read several articles on authors who were struggling because of the stress. Not me. For the first time in my life, probably the only time, I was able to write most of the day. Without interruption. I had complete control of my schedule. The library where I worked, in fact all of the libraries, shut down so no work. Everyone was in quarantine so no picking up the grandkids. The gym was closed. I could really focus on the novel I was writing then – Murder on Principle. It is still one of my favorite Rees and Lydia’s. When I needed a break, I working in the garden or my dog and I went for a walk.

That was the best of times.

The worst came a few months later. The kids went into remote schooling, which I ended up doing with them. Childcare for 40 or more hours a week with three boys who all needed a computer and one on one help. Although my library went to curbside delivery, I did not go back. I couldn’t. I cannot imagine what it was like for mothers, and it was mostly mothers, trying to work from home at the same time they did remote schooling with their kids. I was exhausted by the end of the day and I was doing only that one thing.

Now that the world has opened up, the kids are back in school so no more remote schooling. But everything else has as well and there are so many demands on one’s time. No writers that I know ever has enough time to write. Life keeps interrupting so the struggle to find the time is ongoing.

Slavery in Murder, Sweet Murder

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In Murder, Sweet Murder, I continued looking at slavery in the United States, following Death in the Great Dismal and Murder on Principle. Since the importation of slaves was not forbidden until1808 (but there was plenty of smuggling through Spanish Florida as well as other slave ships that ignored the law. The Clotilda brought 110 children from Africa in 1859.), Rees’s father-in-law was still bringing in enslaved people during the Rees family’s visit to Boston.

Lydia had already fled the family home, joining the Shakers in Maine as a young woman. This is where she met Will Rees. Now her brother James, a sea captain, is estranged from their father. James refuses to engage in ‘that filthy trade’, his words. Conditions on the ships were horrific.

It is commonly assumed that slavery was wholly a Southern institution. Nothing could be further than the truth. During the Colonial period and through the Revolution, slavery was widespread. However, after the War for Independence, states such as New York and New Jersey began passing laws to abolish slavery gradually. By 1804, all the Northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or incrementally.

No Southern states abolished slavery although individual owners freed their slaves.

The demand for slaves increased dramatically with the invention of the cotton gin and cotton became ‘King Cotton’. The rising demand for sugar also increased the amount of land on the plantations in Jamaica and the other islands devoted to sugar. Plantations that once grew indigo and cacao switched to sugar, as I describe in the mystery. 

Both sugar and cotton exhaust the soil, so plantation owners looked west for fresh land. That, of course, amplified the conflict between the free states and the slave states and set the stage for the Missouri Compromise where Missouri entered the union as a slave state and Maine, formerly part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as a free state. 

Mistakes and more

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One of the pitfalls of writing historical fiction is the danger of making mistakes. It could be simple mistakes. In A Devil’s cold dish, I refer to a stack of hay as a bale. Balers were not invented until the early 1800s, a fact I knew. But I was trying to expand my synonyms from stack and pile and all the other words. A reader called on it immediately.

Then there was the mystery where I had Rees rewarding Hannibal with oats a few times. I immediately got pushback from a reader who accused me of giving the poor (fictional) horse colic.

These are somewhat trivial errors. More serious mistakes involve easily confirmed facts that somehow the writer (me) got wrong. In Murder on Principle, I refer to Jefferson’s opponent as John Quincy Adams. He is actually the son of the correct candidate, John Adams. This is a case of temporary forgetfulness. I knew it was John Adams but made the mistake once and it was repeated. No one else caught it, not the agent nor the editor. That was left to a reader who wrote a really harsh review.

This is what makes writing historical fiction so challenging; everything must be triple checked and even then it is all too easy to make a mistake.

Believe me, someone will know.

I must add, however, that sometimes the reader who is so sure of their facts, is wrong. I used the term ‘cracker’ in one of my books and a reader wrote a gotcha review. I, however, had done my research and had a copy of a letter written in 1763 by a British official using that exact term.

The passage of time always creates an undiscovered country.

Reviews for Murder on Principle

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So happy to see some good reviews for the next Will Rees, due out August 3, 2021

From Kirkus: A complex mystery that focuses on the institutional racism still sadly ingrained in the nation’s psyche.

From Publishers Weekly: The intricate plot builds to a satisfying resolution. This sobering look at the cultural divide over slavery in the early days of the Republic deserves a wide audience. 

I really hope other readers enjoy this book too.

Murder, Sweet Murder – Will Rees number 11

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I spent most of my vacation working on edits for the next Will Rees: Murder, Sweet Murder.

It is a little amusing to be working so hard on the next in the series when Murder on Principle will not be published until August 3rd.

In this book, Rees and Lydia journey to Boston to investigate an accusation leveled against Lydia’s father. I wrote this one at the request of readers who wanted to know more about Lydia’s past.

I am so excited to present the cover of Murder, Sweet Murder. No publication date yet.

Goodreads Giveaway

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I have posted a giveaway on Goodreads for Death in the Great Dismal.

Rees and Lydia travel to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia to rescue their friend Ruth, a fugitive who has fled to the swamp and the protection of a village of maroons. As soon as Rees and Lydia arrive, one of the members of the village is found murdered. Rees and Lydia, as well as Ruth’s husband Tobias, are immediately suspect. To clear their names, and to leave the swamp for home, Rees investigates.

The new Will Rees, Murder on Principle

The owner of the people Rees and Lydia have escorted to safety in Maine arrives to recover the fugitives. When he is murdered, his sister and a number of slave takers arrive. Rees faces an ethical dilemma. Does he investigate and identify the murderer – who might have had very good reasons to kill the slave owner? Or does he let the murderer go free?

Murder on Principle will be released on August 3. A giveaway will be posted for the new book in July.

Read Death in the Great Dismal to prepare for Murder on Principle.

Murder on Principle – Cover

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So excited to reveal the cover for my new Will Rees mystery: Murder on Principle. I am not sure when it will be released. Death in the Great Dismal will be available Jan 5, 2021.

I am guessing sometime this summer. Stay tuned for more information!

More about voting -elections 1796-1800

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, a quote ascribed to writer and philosopher George Santayana. Variations have been popularized by different speakers.

Well, whoever created this saying was right.

I thought of this as I did research for my next book (after Death in the Great Dismal) which is tentatively titled Murder on Principle. I happened to come across a number of interesting factoids about the election in 1800; a contest between John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (This was the fourth election but since George Washington basically ran unopposed in the first two, in actual fact it was the second contest.) 

When George Washington had opted not to run again for a third term, both 

Adams and Jefferson ran to replace him. Adams won, narrowly, in this third election. Since there were no parties, the candidate with the next highest number of votes became the vice president. So, while Adams became the President, Thomas Jefferson became his vice-president. (The chasm between the beliefs of these two men was deep; Think Trump as President and Hillary Clinton as his vice-president.) The two men faced off in the following election cycle -1800 – causing a constitutional crisis. To solve it, Adams ran as a Federalist and Jefferson as a Republican.

The Federalists were more akin to our current Republican party while Jefferson was like our modern day Democrats. (Just to illustrate the difference between them, Jefferson worried that without term limits the President could serve for a lifetime. Adams thought that was a fine idea.) 

The Electoral College had been already formed. (I leave the discussion to whether it is still needed now to another day.) Jefferson and Adams won an equal number of votes, a result that threw the election into the hands of the House.

For people who believe our current politics are nasty, here are a few examples of what was happening then.

Alexander Hamilton claimed that if Adams was reelected, Virginians (like Jefferson) would resort to physical force to keep the Federalists out of office. Further, he tried to persuade John Jay to change the rules so that the legislature would not be able to choose the Jefferson electoral delegates, saying that it would ‘prevent an atheist in Religion and a fanatic in politics from getting possession of the helm of state.” Jay refused.

Adams, furthermore, as one of his last acts, chose John Marshall as Chief Justice, thereby giving control of the courts to the Federalists.

Jefferson, meanwhile, believed that Adams and the Federalists would seek to change the laws so that a President could serve for life.

Sound familiar?