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Margaret Maron is the award-winning author of the Deborah Knott mystery series.
Hard Row, given a starred review by Library Journal, is the thirteenth book in the Deborah Knott series. It was also nominated for an Agatha Award.
Winter's Child, given a starred review by Publisher's Weekly, is the twelfth book in the Deborah Knott series and is now available in paperback.
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Welcome to my Web site! Malice Domestic, the convention that celebrates the traditional Agatha Christie type of fair-play mysteries, will meet the weekend of 23 - 27 April in Arlington, VA. This is the convention’s 20th anniversary and it shows no sign of slowing down. I’ve been to most of them because a) they’re fun, and b) Arlington’s nicely drivable from Raleigh. No need to get on a plane, something that always fills me with fear and loathing. I don’t remember if
it was the 1988 or 1989 that we shared the hotel with a large contingent
of attorneys. Riding up the elevator with Susan Dunlap and Carolyn Hart
one afternoon, one of the attorneys leaned over and squinted at our name
tags. “Malice Domestic?” he said. “Is this about violence
in the home?” It will be fun hanging out with old friends — the writers and the readers, the booksellers and the librarians. Four or five hundred people will attend and if you’re one, I hope you’ll come by my signing table and say "Hey." And drop in here next week for pictures.
P.S.: If you would like to be added to the Margaret Maron E-list, click here. Please put "Add to E-list" in the subject field. You will be notified about book releases, etc. If you provide your city and state, we'll try to notify you if I'm coming to a town near you. Your privacy is important to me, so the information you provide will be jealously guarded and never given to a third party, other than my publisher, who will use it only to send announcements of my new books. Note: For those of you who have already signed up, unless you've told your server that letters from Margaret-Maron@nc.rr.com aren't spam, my letters to you are going to bounce! |
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Letters to Margaret
It
has been pointed out to me that these questions now cover several years
and that someone new to my books (and to the website) might learn more than
they want to know if they read from this point down. Therefore, I am going
to reverse the order. From now on, the newest letters will be at the end
of this section and the oldest here at the beginning of this section. Further
down, I'll indicate which books you should have read before you scroll too
far and inadvertently hit a "spoiler." We've sorted and regrouped the older
letters and merged some that ask similar questions. Do
you have a question for Margaret? Send her an email here. *From Minnesota: A sorry old yellow dog is about
the most worthless kind of dog imaginable, but a "yellow dog Democrat" would
go ahead and vote for one before pulling a Republican lever. My grandfather
was such a man. As
a magistrate and a justice of the peace around the turn of the century,
it was his job to register new voters in his township. In one instance,
he jumped the gun and registered a man who intended to move into the township
but just hadn't done so yet. My grandfather's cousin, who was as ardent
a Republican, swore out a warrant against him for misconduct and abuse of
office. The sheriff was waiting at the county line when Grandpa came home
from selling his watermelons that day and escorted him to the county seat.
Fortunately for Grandpa, the sheriff and all the other elected officials
were Democrats and understood excessive zeal in service to the party. He
was sent home with a mild warning not to register any more voters till they
were actually settled in their new homes. At that point, Grandpa would
have voted for a skunk had it been running against his cousin. *From Vermont: I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed
the Sigrid Harald books. I do miss her, which is why I don't want to say
I'll never give her another adventure. Realistically though, I also enjoy
writing about North Carolina and Deborah Knott. Since I'm such a slow writer,
I'm afraid she has priority right now. But in the future? Who knows? About that German quote: Many
people said nice things about Bootlegger's Daughter
when it first came out. Elizabeth Peters was kind enough to write, 'Margaret
Maron is one of the best writers in the business. Read her. That's an order.'
When the German edition came out, this was the only quote they used. 'Read
her. That's an order!' This sounds so Teutonic that it tickles my funny
bone. * From Wyoming:
Thank you. As you're
not the first person to query the titles, I guess I'd better add this list
to the site. Here, then, is a list of the Sigrid Harald
books in chronological order:
* From various
readers: If you would like me to visit
your library or local store, you need to have your stores or libraries put
in a request to the Warner Books Publicity Department (1271 Avenue of the
Americas, New York, NY 10020.) They are the ones who set my touring schedule
and decide where I'll appear. *From Indiana: It is legit, but it's a long
short story, not a novel. In 1991, Pulphouse Publishing printed Mystery
Scene Short Story Paperback #3, which paired the Treasure
Island story with "My Mother, My Daughter, Me" in a small chapbook
form, in paper and in a limited edition leather bound version. (Both stories
are in my collection Shoveling Smoke.) From Maryland: Corpus Christmas
came back in print in time for Christmas 2001, but the others are currently
in limbo, so why don't you do what Amazon and B&N do when someone orders
an out-of-print book from them? Go to the source. There are several web
sites that sell used books, both paperbacks and hardbacks, at reasonable
prices. I've had success with www.bibliofind.com and also www.abe.com. (Another
reader suggested www.half.com as an inexpensive source for books, too. Be
careful though. They list books that don't exist, i.e., One
Coffee With was never in hardback except, possibly, in large
print.) Good luck! *Another Sigrid
source suggestion: Bonnie Scott So many readers have asked about
locating the out of print Sigrid Harald books that I am passing on a letter
from a Florida bookseller for those who are unable to search the Internet
themselves. This is not an endorsement because I've never dealt with Bonnie,
but I'm trusting enough to hope that one Sigrid Harald fan will always do
right by another. *From a former
book dealer now in NY: *From Washington: Excellent suggestion! *From Charlotte,
NC: Yes, Anne Harald, Sigrid's mother,
was first cousin to Kate Honeycutt Bryant's late husband, Jake Honeycutt.
Sigrid's Grandmother Lattimore and Deborah's mother may have been cousins
(I haven't yet decided), but if not blood kin, Deborah certainly knows Mrs.
Lattimore. *From Illinois:
How sharp-eyed of you to pick
up on the cigarette lighter. I know there's a story about it sometime in
the future, but I haven't gotten around to writing it because I don't exactly
know what the story is yet myself. And yes, you're quite right that there's
at least one mention of the lighter in another book, but again, I can't
quite put my hands on it. Maybe one of my other readers will be able to
tell us both! *From Cleveland,
Ohio: Deborah as Nancy Drew, girl
sleuth? I'll have to think about that. But it might be an interesting approach.
And it would certainly satisfy my own curiosity about that lighter! October 2003
update -- Deborah Pickens of Alabama has reminded me that the cigarette
lighter first appears in the hands of Will Knott in Chapter 6 of Bootlegger's
Daughter and again in Chapter 8 of Up Jumps the
Devil. Leave it to another Deborah to know! *From Canberra,
Australia And, finally, you've
convinced this Australian that one of the things I must do, is take a wander
through the Southern states of America. I feel weird sending such an effusive
email to a stranger, but since compliments tend to be rare and you may sometimes
wonder whether it's worth writing another novel (it is!), I will take the
plunge and send this. It really does cheer a writer
to know that the books aren't being dropped down a rabbit hole. (And I'd
like to say here that no one should ever feel weird writing to me. I especially
enjoy hearing from my readers overseas.) *From a reader
"living in Ontario, but a Southerner at heart": Sometimes I wish I could invite
everyone down for a Knott-style party. Grilling a whole pig outdoors is
a daylong event and the easiest way to entertain (no polishing silver, no
worrying if a drink tips over, no rush for spot lifters if a slice of chocolate
cream pie falls off a plate.) Guests usually range in age from babies to
nonagenarians. Those who can be torn away from the grill play basketball,
badminton, bocce, horseshoes or croquet. There's often singing afterwards
and those who can't sing can at least tap their toes. But hey, Ontario's in the south
of Canada, right? No reason you couldn't throw a pig-picking yourself. All
the instructions are right there in Chapter 28 of Bootlegger's
Daughter and Chapter 15 of Home Fires! *From New York
I prefer SH because
I understand her personality and New York lifestyle better. But I have spent
a lot of time with lawyers and judges in the South and get a real feeling
for southern life in your work. If I were writing fiction,
my work would probably be more like that of the creator of SH and I would
wish it could be more like the creator of DK. Do you write so differently
for each series because the styles grow naturally out of the personalities
and lifestyles of the characters, or did you set out when you began to develop
styles for each? This is an especially interesting
question for me because while I'm interested in the creative process, I
don't like to analyze it too closely for fear of becoming self-conscious
about it. Sigrid Harald came first and I remember thinking of her as someone
whose emotional development had become stunted at an early age, rather like
a butterfly newly emerged from its chrysalis. If one of those lovely creatures
is startled into flying before its wings have fully inflated and dried,
it may manage to fly well enough but it will never soar. So when I put myself
inside her head, I had to cramp my spirit somewhat, too. It's not that she
doesn't yearn to relate, it's just that she's never learned how. Over the
course of the eight books, she finally does achieve connection and companionship.
When I came to create Deborah
Knott, I tried to make her the antithesis of Sigrid: confident, emotional,
surrounded by a loving circle of family and friends, with practical common
sense and less reliance on intellect. I also tried to induce in myself the
slightly-relaxed, governors-off, state of mind one gets after a couple of
stiff drinks so that Deborah would blurt out things the more repressed Sigrid
never would. This probably isn't very helpful
to you, but other than this, all I can say is that it "just feels right"
to set them down on paper as I hear them in my head. One speaks with a New
York accent; the other drawls. What can I say? *From Pennsylvania:
Hmm-mm-mmm. Wonder if I should
tell Triple A to add a subsection to their North Carolina guides? *From Davidson
College, NC: I have a friend who, instead
of saying, "What the hell is he doing?" always says, 'What the
L-M-N's he doing?" --- the M and N taking away the impression that
she's actually said Hell. My aunt had similar euphemisms. She wouldn't said
Damn, nor would she say Darn because that was a substitute for Damn. Instead,
when thoroughly vexed, she'd say, "Oh, sew it!" *From Virginia:
What a lovely compliment! No,
the EB House is strictly mine. It's an amalgam of several similar houses:
the Theodore Roosevelt House in Manhattan, the Horace Williams House in
Chapel Hill, the Gardner in Boston, the Sloane in London, etc. etc. And
that book gave the copy editor fits. I'd included a list of proper names,
stating which were real and which were fictional, but somehow the list got
separated from the manuscript and the poor copy editor spent frustrating
hours trying to verify all the "artists" that the Bruels had collected. *From Pine
Knolls Shore, North Carolina: Indeed they did. Deborah and
I both grew up right here in "Colleton County," going to a rural
school, chopping corn and cotton after school in the spring, working in
tobacco all summer, attending a small country church. Like me, if someone
else will kill the chicken, Deborah can take it from there and put it on
the table in fifteen different ways. As a teenager, the one and only time
I tried to wring a chicken's neck, the poor thing got up, shook her head
and ran off to tell the rest of the flock, "Girls! Girls! You won't
believe what just happened to me!" *From Illinois I can't remember either since
chicken pastry is such a integral part of so many Sunday dinners, but here's
the way Maidie Holt would make it: Start with a big pot of
salted water, a cut up stewing hen or the largest fryer you can find,
a chopped onion, a healthy sprinkle of black pepper, and a handful
of chopped celery. Bring to a boil and simmer gently until the meat
is falling off the bones. Remove chicken from pot,
return the skin, fat and bones to the pot to boil a little longer
for a richer flavor. Reserve the good meat for later. While the stock is bubbling,
mix together 2 cups of plain flour, salt to taste, and enough water
to make a very stiff dough. (Some people beat an egg into the water
for color.) (Sorry not to be precise, but I've never measured nor
known anyone who does. You use more flour if there's a houseful for
dinner, less if it's just you and your mate, and adjust the salt and
water accordingly.) Knead the dough till smooth, then roll out flat
on a floured surface -- about a quarter-inch thick. Cut the flat dough
into long strips about two fingers wide and let sit a half-hour to
slightly dry. Strain the stock, skim
off as much of the grease as you can without getting too picky, discard
the celery, bones, skin, etc., then return the clear stock to the
pot. You should have at least a half-pot of rich broth at this point
-- about what you'd have if you were going to boil lasagna strips.
Add more water if you need to. When the stock's come back to the boil,
lay the pastry strips on the surface one at a time. Reduce heat to
a gentle simmer, and cook until the pastry strips have plumped up
and are cooked through. Return the meat to the pot, cover, and turn
off the heat till time to serve. If you got your water level right,
it should be quite moist, but not soupy. Best served with butter
beans, chopped raw onions and sliced tomatoes fresh from the garden.
(In the Southern part of heaven, this is considered tastier than ambrosia!) *From Virginia Sorry. I felt that I finished
Amy’s story; and with the selling of the farm, the Barbour family
will be scattered. However it is in the realm of possibilities that we might
catch glimpses of Beth again! *From a “Connecticut
Yankee”: Good idea! Thanks! *From Cadiz,
Kentucky: Unfortunately, it isn't that
easy. Or that quick. After I turn in a manuscript, my editor goes over it,
makes suggestions for minor changes, etc. It comes back to me to make those
changes, then back to the editor, who gives it to the copy editor. That
person checks for spelling, punctuation and consistency -- so that a character
with blue eyes doesn't show up with brown eyes elsewhere or so that if Deborah
says she left her robe hanging behind the door, she doesn't take it out
of the trunk of her car ten pages later. After the copy editor has marked
everything in question, it comes back to me again. Sometimes my misspelled
words and bad grammar are deliberate, in which case I write "stet"
beside the item in question, which means "let it stand as written."
When I've agreed or disagreed with every mark the copy editor made on my
manuscript, I send it back to Production, which sends it to the printer,
who produces a plain paperback copy. These are the ARCs -- the Advanced
Reading Copies that go out to reviewers and book stores. They are plainly
marked "Uncorrected Page Proof: Material from this copy should not
be quoted or used without first checking with the publisher, as some of
this material may not appear in the finished book." That's because
one ARC comes to me for a final check and another goes back to a copy editor
who reads for typos, etc. This is our very last chance to catch any dumb
errors. Finally, it goes back to the printer who produces the final hardback
copy. Depending on everyone's schedules, each step can take several weeks,
which is why I usually turn in a manuscript about ten or eleven months before
it arrives in your bookstore. Yes, a timely and sensational book (think
celebrity scandal or national tragedy) can be rushed into print in six weeks,
but most books are on a schedule such as I've just outlined. *From Georgia I never really paid attention,
but your question made me ask Recorded Books about this. High
Country Fall will be out in August of 2004 and Recorded Books
hopes to have an audio version out in January 2005. The four-month lag time
is probably because they have to wait for a finished copy of the book. *From
Alabama
Absolutely nothing! Okay,
maybe that's too flip. When I was about halfway through the book, the
publisher sent me a mockup of the cover. I loved the colors, which said
"Late summer" to me, but that pseudo-Queen Anne armchair and tacky lamp
certainly had nothing to do with the Mission Oak/Arts and Crafts furniture
that was figuring so prominently in the book. I immediately asked them
to change the chair and lamp to the proper style. "Oh, but we
like this. It looks ‘old-ladyish.'" "It has nothing
to do with the main old lady in book." "But we really,
really like it." Rather than get
into a pointless debate, I decided then and there to set one of the climactic
scenes in the farmhouse that belonged to the protagonist's great-aunt, who
was packing up to move. The stripped-down cover perfectly illustrates that
scene. *From
Assorted Readers: Ever since Bootlegger's
Daughter first appeared, I've been getting letters with
comments such as this. My answer to such grammar police was published
in "The Writer Magazine" in May of 1995. Perhaps it's time to reprint
it: "I" Is Not Me (The
Writer Magazine, May 1995) Recently, an irate reader
took me to task for my last book, Shooting at Loons.
Offended when my first-person narrator remarked that someone was "not
much taller than me," the reader acidly inquired if grammar were no longer
important. "It is clear that you don't
know any better than to let your character - a judge with a law degree,
for heaven's sake! - use bad grammar," he fumed, "but why didn't your
editor catch it? Don't editors edit anymore?" Fortunately for me, my editor
is more astute than that particular reader. She knows the stylistic difference
between an author's formal voice and a character's narrative voice and
would never try to smooth away my "I" character's verbal idiosyncrasies.
Nevertheless, that letter did make me stop and reconsider how, as writers,
we often do use a first-person voice as a shorthand method to convey character
and personality without actually having to spell them out. The omniscient author's voice
pays strict attention to the laws of grammar and punctuation; the narrative
voice pays strict attention to the character of the "I" who is telling
the story. As someone who reads Fowler's
Modern English Usage for sheer pleasure, I do know the difference
between subjective and objective pronouns; and yes, I do try to use them
correctly when writing third person or formally. (Actually, Fowler prefers
"Not much taller than me" over "Not much taller than I," which "strikes
the reader as pedantic. ") But that is neither here nor there. The truth
is that when I write first-person fiction, I deliberately mimic language
that will let my readers know this person's social class, present emotional
status, and whether he is likable or mean-minded, brave or timorous, a
whining pessimist or a cheerful optimist. This is especially useful in
the short story form where every word counts. In my short story, "Deadhead
Coming Down," no third-person description of an easily bored trucker can
match the immediacy of his own voice saying, "There's not one damn thing
exotic about driving a eighteen-wheeler. Next to standing on a assembly
line and screwing Bolt A into Hole C like my no'count brother-in-law,
drivin’ a truck's got to be the dullest way under God's red sun to make
a living. 'Specially if it's just up and down the eastern seaboard like
me." The trucker speaks in short
blunt words and his coarse denial of his brother-in-law's worth foreshadows
his truly callous actions in the story. Conversely, when I wrote
"On Windy Ridge," I hoped that the slower, dreamlike pacing and choice
of elegiac language would help convey the image of a middle-aged mountain
woman who possesses both intelligence and a slightly psychic sensitivity:
"Waiting is more tiresome than doing, and I was weary. Bone weary. . .
but my eyes lifted to the distant hills, beyond trees that burned red
and gold, to where the ridges misted into smoky blue. The hills were real
and everlasting and I had borrowed of their strength before." In Shooting at
Loons, the novel that so exercised my overly pedantic reader,
my narrator is Deborah Knott, a district court judge in her mid-thirties.
Even though she knows better, Deborah is a breezily colloquial Southerner
who makes grammatical slips because she is the daughter and sister of
semiliterate dirt farmers who will use dialect, split infinitives, double
negatives, sentence fragments, dangling participles, and a host of other
colorful grammatical errors till the day they die. True, she has a law
degree; true, she is a judge. Neither has turned her into a grammarian.
(I was once sent to the principal's office because I would not agree when
the English teacher insisted that it's was the possessive of it. She,
too, possessed an advanced degree.) With one foot in North Carolina's
agrarian past and the other firmly planted in its high-tech present, Deborah
is never going to "get above her raising. .. Not if I have anything to
say about it. After all, I have a classic
precedent for claiming the right to a narrative voice that is not necessarily
my own. In a preface to one of his
books many years ago, a certain writer used his formal voice to explain
the technical side of creation: "In this book a number of dialects are
used. . . The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by
guesswork, but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support
of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech." Then switching
into his first-person narrative voice, that same author wrote, "You don't
know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. " Had Mark Twain written the
whole book as omniscient and highly literate author, The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn would be a forgotten piece of 19th-century
esoterica. Instead he gave us Huck's distinctly ungrammatical "I" voice
and the book remains a living, breathing masterpiece a hundred years later.
SPOILER
WARNING:
*From Wisconsin:
*From Maryland:
Probably not. Just as I don't
give dates in Deborah's family tree, so I hate to be pinned down too closely
for physical terrain because it would limit my fictional flexibility.
But thanks for the suggestion and maybe I'll do a general one on my web
site some day. *From an
unidentified E-message back in 2002: You are not the first to have
asked me this. Since I'm not sure of the answer, I suppose I've been sending
ambivalent messages in the books. I guess we're all going to have to wait
'til Deborah herself tells us. Sorry. *From an
E-message (no state given):
Thanks so much. It really
pleases me when my African-American friends tell me I got it right. (PS:
I'll record your vote for Dwight Bryant in the appropriate column!) *From Florida: A dog, hmmm? I’ve been
thinking that Deborah could use a dog, whether or not she gets a husband.
The only trouble is that she’s away so much, she’d either
have to leave it with one of her family or board it. (As for whether I’m
"scamming" you about a marriage, you’ll just have to keep
reading!) From Florida: Of course it's not a dumb
question. "Shug" is short for "sugar" and falls in
the category of generic pet names such as "honey," "sweetie,"
etc. I once had a great-uncle who had lost track of the great-nieces and
nephews on my level, so he called each of us "duck," as in "Hey,
duck, what grade you in now?" I found it very endearing. SPOILER
WARNING: *From Baton
Rouge, LA: I agree. She will definitely
keep her own name for her professional life. And don’t worry, there
will be at least four more books about her. *From Vanderbilt
University, Tennessee: If you mean the "corny
sentimental" song they played as Kezzie led her onto the floor, just
think of one of the syrupy songs they always play -- "Daddy's Little
Girl" or "Where Are You Going, My Little One?" etc. I'm
sure different parts of the country have particular favorites for this
ritual. *From California: Here in the south, it's considered
bad manners to automatically call an older person by his or her first
name unless specifically invited to do so. Older friends of the family
(those on a first-name basis with one's parents, for instance) have the
honorific placed in front of the given name to indicate both familiarity
and respect. While Cal would call Emily Bryant "grandma", Deborah
grew up calling her "Miss Emily" because she was a family friend
— for the same reason that Dwight calls Deborah's father "Mr.
Kezzie." As for the "Miss Kate" in Rituals
of the Season, Deborah was just being funny since she was
being called "Miss Deborah." Cal would of course call Kate “Aunt
Kate,” and Jake would call her “Mom,” as does Mary Pat
now even though she and Kate are actually 2nd or 3rd cousins. (And if
Sigrid crashed the wedding, no one told me!)
*From North Carolina: *From Texas: I am bemused by the fact that
I get a lot of mail on this issue. No one ever called me to task for describing
a character as black or Latino or Asian, but whenever I mention in passing
that it’s a white nurse or a white businessman, I get letters like the
first one quoted above. It’s not that I’m trying to be politically correct,
but fair is fair. Why should white automatically get to be the default
race? Deputy Raeford McLamb of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department
first appeared in a short story of mine ("Hangnail") back in 1992, but
it wasn’t until Winter’s Child (2006) that I definitely described him
as black. Several readers were surprised by that. "I always assumed he
was white." Why? Because I didn’t say he wasn’t. Sometimes it’s good to
shake up the mindsets. *From Pennsylvania: When I was first searching
out wintry images in old quirky books, I came across a poem written during
the Victorian era -- about how Spring's child was born of balmy breezes
and cradled in newly green boughs and Summer's child was nurtured on ripe
berries and lullabied by meadowlarks. Autumn's child had something similar,
but the poem ended with a chilling description of ice and snow and the
line "And who will comfort Winter's child?" Unfortunately, I
didn't write it down and when I went looking for the source again, I couldn't
find it. But I liked the image and thought it fit Cal's situation.
*From several
different readers: I'm afraid Kezzie’s
parents were nearly illiterate back-country folks who liked the sound
of the name and thought it was a Biblical male name. Unfortunately, the
doctor was tired and just wrote down on the birth certificate what he
thought he heard and headed back home. Kezzie’s sister says they
told the doctor Hezikiah, planning to call him Hezzie, but not knowing
Keziah was a woman’s name, decided they liked Kezzie better. Who
knows? Do
you have a question for Margaret? Send her an email here. SEND A LETTER TO MARGARET
Sigrid Synopses
|| Letter of the Week || Ordering Signed Books ||
Margaret's Schedule
Write
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Margaret's Schedule .
8 May 2008
- Talk and Read for Literacy Council of Wake County 7 September
2008 - Sam Ragan Lecture Series
ORDER BOOKS .
Ordering Books
Margaret
Maron's books are available in bookstores, or they may be ordered online from
most mystery bookstores, Barnes & Noble.com, or Amazon.com. For signed
and/or personalized books, email Margaret's local bookstore, Quail
Ridge Books, in Raleigh, NC. Give them an email address or daytime phone
number where you may be reached, and they will get back to you with rates.
Audiocassette versions of several of the Deborah Knott books are available
from RecordedBooks.com.
I'm halfway through Bootlegger's
Daughter and loving it -- except we have company coming for Thanksgiving
and I should be cooking and cleaning. But I just have to ask you. What is
a "yellow dog Democrat"? I asked my cousins from Virginia, but they didn't
know either.
Much as I like your Deborah
Knott character, I have to confess that Sigrid Harald is my favorite. You
really nail the NY art scene. There's a rumor going around that you won't
be writing any more. Please say it's not true. (Oh, and by the way, what's
with that quote in German from Elizabeth Peters on your Sigrid Harald page?)
In the Sigrid Harald
section of your web page there are four books listed. In the description
below Fugitive Colors it says "eighth" book in the series.
What are the names of the other four not listed? I have just started reading
the Sigrid Harald series and would like to read them in order. If I enjoy
them half as much as the Knott series I will be one very happy reader.
Will you ever be coming
West/Northeast/to Florida, etc.?
I found a sale listing
for "Lt. Harald and the Treasure Island Treasure," but have never
heard of this novel before. I checked your web page for Sigrid and found
no mention of it there either. Is this legit?
I'm a big fan of both
the Deborah Knott and the Sigrid Harald series, but I'm having trouble finding
some of the SH books. I've read the beginning and end of the series, but
would like to read more in the middle... Past Imperfect, Death
of a Butterfly, Corpus Christmas, and Death in Blue Folders.
Short of paying arms and legs via Amazon or Barnes and Noble, do you have
any suggestions?
NB: 2005 update on One Coffee With:
It has been published hardback by Severn House in England and may be ordered
through Amazon.co.uk.
We miss [Sigrid] so much
and want to know how she is doing. It's been so many years, and we were
only able to share one year of her life. Please tell us how she is and what
her life is like. Death in Blue Folders is one of the finest mysteries
I have ever read and Fugitive Colors runs a close second.
-- Bonnie and mystery fans from Pegasus Books
-- PS: I do book searches and can locate Sigrid Harald books for fans.
Pegasus
By-the-Sea Books, Inc.
www.PegasusBooksOnline.com
books@pegasusbooksonline.com
PO Box 219
Flagler Beach, Florida 32136
(386) 439-1535
Not a question but rather
a suggestion for others trying to locate the out of print Sigrid Harald
books. I suggest that anyone who is as desperate as I was to read and own
them try emailing mysteryhouse@pathwaynet.com.
I can't promise success, but I now own every Margaret Maron book published.
As a new admirer, I have
gathered both series and switch back and forth between the two series. Plus
I have read your non series books too. I wanted to remind your other readers
one of the best sources for out of print books is their local library. That's
where I found the three of yours that are out of print.
Something I read this
past summer made me wonder if Sigrid and Deborah are somehow related. I
know they have a connection through Kate Bryant, and Anne Harald is from
North Carolina, I just couldn't put it all together.
I am rereading the Deborah
Knott series (for about the fifth time!) and came across the reference to
the engraved cigarette lighter that belonged to Deborah's mother. It mentions
that this was the only item her sons fought over, although they did not
know where it came from. I seem to recall reading about the lighter in another
book (was it a short story?) and was wondering if you could point me in
the right direction.
I'm intrigued by the
way Deborah grew up among so many brothers. Did you ever think of writing
a short story about when she was a little girl? Maybe you could use it to
tell us the significance of her mother's cigarette lighter?
Your books are elegant.
They're like Mary Stewart's novels, in the sense that while you read them
to follow the fortunes of the characters and to watch the plot unfold; what
separates them from other novels is the music of the language which stands
on its own, and the atmosphere that it evokes. I read once that when you
lose yourself in reading, it has a similar effect to meditation. It happens
all too rarely, and I wanted to thank you for it.
...just had to tell you
how much I love the Deborah Knott series... . The characters are so real
I feel like I know them. I would especially like to be able to join the
Knotts in one of their gatherings.
I almost feel that the
author (I almost typed "authors") of [your two series] is two
different people. The Deborah Knott series is filled with people, events
and rich detail, all comprising an involved daily life tapestry. The Sigrid
Harald series involves a rather lonely person who only becomes involved
in the lives of those around her when she is drawn in through her work.
The detail is spare and the writing more direct. It's so interesting. Not
only are the protagonists so opposite but the author's voice and writing
style are so different for each series.
Thought you might like
to know that for the past few years, we've been using your books as "tour
guides" when we drive down to visit relatives in South Carolina. We've
toured the furniture museum in High Point (loved the miniature rooms!),
eaten "eastern North Carolina" barbecue in New Bern (didn't see
Kidd Chapin's cabin on the Neuse River though!) and bought T-shirts at East'ard's
on Harker's Island. In a couple of weeks, we're going to do a little Christmas
shopping at some Seagrove potteries, just like Deborah.
On page 31 of Killer
Market, you use the phrase L-M-N (as a substitute for blunter language).
We are baffled . . . can you tell us what those letters stand for?
I just finished Corpus
Christmas, and thoroughly enjoyed it as I have all of your books. My
question is: even though there is a disclaimer in the front of the book
regarding people and places, I felt certain all through the book that the
"Erich Breul House" was a real place. However, when I checked
the Internet I could not find any information on it. Is it a real place
or another example of your outstanding ability to place your readers in
a fictitious environment that seems real?
After reading Shooting
at Loons I was particularly curious to know if your early years had
much in common with Deborah's?
Please........we
need a Knott Family Cookbook!!! I've looked in all my cookbooks (and I have
many!) and can't find a recipe for Chicken Pastry, which was mentioned in
one of the Deborah books, but since I read and re-read them, I can't remember
which one.
Although I was initially
disappointed that Last Lessons of Summer didn’t have Deborah
Knott, I now want to read another book about Amy and Beth. Any chance of
it happening?
Do you
ever suggest to your readers that they ask their library to do a search
for out of print Sigrid Herald mysteries? Most libraries provide a service
called the inter library loan or ILL which permit local libraries to borrow
from out of town and even out of state collections.
If the next Deborah Knott
book is already finished, why do we have to wait almost a year for it? Why
not go ahead and publish it now?
How long after a book is published and on the shelf does it get
turned into an audio book? I have absolutely no time to read anymore but
all the time in the world to listen since my daily commutes hold me hostage
in my car.
Something has been puzzling me [about Last Lessons of Summer] -- I cannot
figure out the cover. It just does not bring the house and furniture you
talk about in the book alive for me. What am I missing here? What does
that red chair and the floor lamp say?
There is more bad grammar
in High Country Fall than you should tolerate from your editor(s)."
"When did 'won't' become the past tense catchall for 'was not' or 'were
not'?" "The article 'a' should always be changed to 'an' when it precedes
a word beginning with a vowel."
Unless you have read Bootlegger’s Daughter,
Southern Discomfort, Shooting at
Loons, Up Jumps the Devil, Killer
Market, Home Fires and Storm
Track, you may not wish to read further in this column because
you may come across comments that will spoil these earlier books for you.
I've just finished
Storm Track and enjoyed it as I have the other Deborah Knott
mysteries I've read. One recommendation for Deborah -- let her get a bike
so she can ride it to get her newspaper or mail. No more half running/half
walking or feeling guilty because she drives. You know there must be a
bike on that farm somewhere.
What a great idea! It would have to be one of those fat-wheeled "dirt"
bikes though because of the sandy ruts.
Is there any chance
of a house plan of the passive solar bungalow with two bedrooms, with
orientation, directions to her father's house, the pond, etc., in the
next book?
When are you going
to let Deborah realize that Dwight Bryant is NOT another of her many brothers
but is actually very much in love with her? (Or have I misinterpreted?)
Your characters all remind me of someone I've known. As a Southerner,
they are as comfortable as an old shoe. But as an African-American, I
must say I've especially enjoyed your last two books. You seem to have
a special insight. (PS: I think Deborah and Dwight should get together,
too!)
Now that Deborah and
Dwight are really going to get married -- they are, aren’t they?
Please say you aren’t just scamming us? -- they’re going to
need a dog. Please let them adopt from the Colleton County Animal Shelter.
In the books, various
characters often refer to Deborah as "shug". Can you tell me
what that means? Is it a nickname? Hope this is not a dumb question.
You should probably stop here if you haven’t yet read Rituals
of the Season.
I'm concerned now that
Deborah has married Dwight -- which I was all in favor of: What happens
to the series with her name change? Please don't say there won't be another
book, but how can it be the Deborah Knott Series, if she's Deborah Bryant
now? Or maybe she'll keep her name? I like the name Deborah Knott and
I vote to keep it!
What song did Deborah's
family play for her and Dwight's first dance as a married couple? Please,
please tell me -- this is making me crazy! I've run through all the bluegrass
and Southern gospel and folk songs I can think of, but I must be missing
this.
Could
you please enlighten us about Southern manners and forms of address? Why
are certain characters referred to as "Miss Emily" instead of
"mom" or "grandma"? How about "Miss Kate"
instead of "Aunt Kate"? ( PS: Did Sigrid attend Deborah and
Dwight's wedding?)
May I ask why you find
it necessary to say that someone is white when you later describe her
blond hair and blue eyes?
I am currently enjoying Rituals of the Season.
I find it very refreshing that you identify the ethnicity of all of your characters and not just black or other non-whites.
Why
was your last Deborah Knott novel titled Winter's Child?
Deborah’s
father’s name. I thought Keziah was a woman’s name. How did
he wind up with it?
6:00 - 9:00 pm -- MacGregor Downs Clubhouse, Cary, NC.
$50.00 per person.
For more information, visit
wakeliteracy.org
or call (919) 787-5559.
3:00 pm - Season-opening lecture. To be followed by a reception and booksigning.
Weymouth Center, 555 E. Connecticut
Ave., Southern Pines, NC.
Books will be provided by The Country
Bookshop. For more details, contact Dr.
Stephen Smith.
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