#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with Maddie Day/Edith Maxwell
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I’d like to welcome one of my favorite mystery authors to the blog this week for #ThisorThatThursday. Welcome to Maddie Day/Edith Maxell!
Thanks for inviting me over, Heather! I want to preface my answers by saying that, “My adult sons” could have been the answer to quite a few of the questions, but that would have gotten tiring. Still, it’s true, and they both live too far away for frequent visits.
Things you love about writing: When I feel like I’m channeling my characters. I write down what they do and it surprises me – that’s the magical part of writing. It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does, it’s what keeps me going.
Things you hate about writing: The middle of the book. Every time!
Hardest thing about being a writer: Having to promote my own work. It’s hard to keep finding gentle ways to say, “Please buy my book.”
Easiest thing about being a writer: Hearing from readers who say how much they love my stories.
Words that describe you: Persistent, hard-working, a great cook.
Words that describe you, but you wish they didn’t: Cute. The lifelong plight of being short and having a young-looking face.
Favorite beverage: Bourbon
Something that gives you a sour face: Kombucha. Can’t stand the stuff!
Last best thing you ate: My own rhubarb cheesecake
Last thing you regret eating: I was visiting my son in Puerto Rico just before the shutdown, and I wanted to order something local for breakfast. The pulled pork omelet was way too heavy, especially for a beach morning. I should have stuck with mangos and pineapple!
Things you’d walk a mile for: A sun-warmed ripe tomato, locally grown peaches, and dark chocolate ice cream. [And my sons.]
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: Less than perfectly fresh raw squid, and beets.
Things you always put in your books: Characters who care about each other, and descriptions of delicious food.
Things you never put in your books: Graphic violence, explicit sex
Things to say to an author: Your book got me/my mother/my BFF through a really hard time/waiting in the hospital/my father’s illness.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: I have this great idea for a book but I don’t have time to write it. Can we work together?
Favorite places you’ve been: Sequoia National Park. Any beach. The mountains of western Puerto Rico. Pasadena, California, my birthplace.
Places you never want to go to again: The Miami airport. Los Angeles freeways.
People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): Michele Obama, Sara Paretsky, and my 93-year-old uncle Richard Reinhardt, a San Francisco author and brilliant, delightful man. [And my sons.]
People you’d cancel dinner on: Decline to say – I’d have to get political.
Things that make you happy: Sitting on my deck with a good mystery and a gin and tonic. Also watching my tomato plants grow. [And my sons.]
Things that drive you crazy: Right now? People in public in close quarters but not wearing masks.
Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Solo hitchhiked in northern Japan – with no bad consequences.
Something you chickened out from doing: When I was a (very short) kid, I climbed to the top of the high dive at our town pool. It looked way higher from up there than from below, and I was scared to jump. The line of kids waiting on the ladder weren’t happy with me climbing back down.
About Maddie/Edith:
Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and award-winning short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she pens the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. With twenty-one books in print and more in production, Maxwell lives north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, and cooks. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com and on social media:
About Her Latest:
Robbie Jordan temporarily leaves Pans ’N Pancakes, her country store in South Lick, Indiana, to visit Santa Barbara—where wildfire smoke tinges the air, but a more immediate danger may lie in wait.
While looking forward to her high school reunion back in California, Robbie Jordan’s anticipation is complicated by memories of her mother’s untimely death. At first, she has fun hanging out with her old classmates and reuniting with the local flavors—avocados, citrus, fish, and spicy Cali-Mex dishes. But when she gets wind of rumors that her mother, an environmental activist, may not have died of natural causes, Robbie enlists old friends to clear the smoke surrounding the mystery. But what she finds could make it hard to get back to Indiana alive . . .
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