"What Evil Lurks...?" Murder Takes a Road Trip

Elizabeth Buzzelli, a popular visitor to Northport (she gave a writing workshop at Dog Ears Books two years ago and spoke at the Leelanau Township Library last summer), will be back in town on July 28 as part of this year's Tuesday evening summer series at the library. Buzzelli and two other Up North writers have also put together a summer tour of their own--and here I'm taking the lazy way out and quoting directly from their publicity:

What do three crime-writer friends from northern Michigan do when they each have a new book out?
Take a road trip!

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli (DEAD DANCING WOMEN), Mardi Link (WHEN EVIL CAME TO GOOD HART), and Aaron Stander (SUMMER PEOPLE) are taking a road trip to bookstores and libraries around Northern Michigan to meet readers, sign books, and talk about writing. They've called their excursion "Murder Takes A Road Trip."

All three authors live in Northern Michigan, all three write fact or fiction related to crime and mystery, all three have new books coming out this summer, and all three use the evocative landscape of Northern Michigan as the settings for their books.

To date "Murder Takes A Road Trip" will visit seven libraries and bookstores between July and October, with additional dates still being added. The full schedule is:

July 22, Bellaire Public Library, Bellaire, MI
July 23, Suttons Bay District Library, Suttons Bay, MI
July 25, Horizon Books, Petoskey, MI
July 29, Benzonia Public Library, Benzonia, MI
Aug. 8, Elk Rapids Library, Elk Rapids, MI
Oct. 10, Cadillac Wexford Public Library, Cadillac, MI
Oct. 15, Peninsula Community Library, Traverse City, MI

About the authors:

Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli wrote last fall’s northern Michigan best selling DEAD DANCING WOMEN.
The second in the Emily Kincaid series from Midnight Ink, DEAD FLOATING LOVERS, was just released this month. She teaches writing in the adult education program at Northwestern Michigan College, and at Skidmore College during the summer. Her first foray into mystery was GIFT OF EVIL, from Bantam. She reviews books for the Northern Express and is a member of the Michigan State Library’s Notable Books Committee. You can read more about Elizabeth on her website, www.elizabethbuzzelli.com.

Mardi Link is the author of two true crime books, the Heartland Bestseller, WHEN EVIL CAME TO GOOD HART, and the forthcoming ISADORE'S SECRET, both published by The University of Michigan Press. A former police reporter, Mardi is a freelance journalist and the 2008 Antioch Non-Fiction Scholar, as well as the winner of their Goddess Award. She is a co-founder of ForeWord magazine and her work has appeared in Publishers Weekly, Bellingham Review, Dunes Review, and The Bookseller, among other publications. You can learn more about Mardi on her website, www.mardilink.com.

Aaron Stander spent most of his adult years in the Detroit area, where he taught writing and trained writing teachers. In 2000 he and his wife left college teaching positions and moved permanently to their cottage near Traverse City. Aaron is the author of SUMMER PEOPLE, a mystery set in Northern Michigan; COLOR TOUR, a sequel, was released in July of 2006 and DEER SEASON was just released this month. He is also the author of numerous articles, stories, poems, and reviews, and the host of the radio program, Michigan Writers On, a regular program broadcast on Interlochen Public Radio. You can learn more about Aaron on his website, www.aaronstander.com.

News in Brief, Thursday

Morning broke sunny and clear over town and country. Cherries are coming on, gaining color, looking good.


Up at Northport Nursery, now part of S&J Landscaping, annuals are on sale at 30% discount. One shopper buying a colorful hanging basket said, “They just make me happy.” I splurged on some perennials for the sidewalk garden at home that I’m adding to bit by bit, as funds permit.

Here’s a story from this morning’s “Shelf Awareness” newsletter:

When Twenty-third Avenue Books, Portland, Ore., closed suddenly last January, Stephanie Griffin lost more than her business. Willamette Week reported that the owner "became homeless after the store closed. Startled neighbors discovered this in June . . . Griffin had started panhandling outside her old store, which was still empty at the time."

"Most people would ignore me and then say 'Oh, the bookstore used to be there,'" she said. "I would say, 'I used to own that store,' and they would keep walking."

Do I need to comment on this story?

Finally, at Dog Ears Books: The new Dunes Review is here—new book of poetry by Jim Harrison—and a new, challenging Petoskey stone jigsaw puzzle. We have Aaron Stander’s and Bob Underhill’s new murder mysteries and should have Dead Floating Lovers, the new Emily Kincaid mystery by Elizabeth Buzzelli, next week. (Elizabeth will be a presenter in the Leelanau Township Library summer series on Tuesday, July 28, 7:30 p.m.) There are postcards this year of Northport harbor that say Northport on them (by popular and frequent request). We have Chief Waukazoo: From Roots to Wing, by William Van Appledorn. And, as always, much, much more, so come in and browse and buy and keep your Up North bookseller off the streets. (Ha! Just couldn't resist.)

Roses, Everywhere

In my garden, in town, in the wild jungle along our no-name creek, even in the bank here in Northport, roses are blooming everywhere. Will there be any left for the dog parade on August 8? This year’s theme, always eagerly awaited, has been announced: “The Kentucky Dogby: A Run for the Roses.” Now, put on your thinking caps and think dogs and roses!


Cherry Festival in Traverse City is coming up roses, too. David and I saw the midway in its early morning quiet guise as we passed by along the bay on our way to the WTCM station on East Front Street. We also heard on the car radio about the wine-tasting event coming up this Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Traverse City. But we were in town because I was a guest on Ron Jolly’s Wednesday feature, “Entrepreneur Spotlight,” and by arriving early we had time for a leisurely coffee at Horizon Books before the show, because--where else would a bookseller go for morning coffee? But wait—I know, I know! Entrepreneur? Moi, le philosophe? Well, I do have my own business, and it is 16 years old (or, as I like to say, 112 dog years), and Ron is a book person and loves Northport, so it was a pleasant and enjoyable conversation, over too quickly. David, listening on the car radio outside, was impressed with the number of times he heard the words “Dog Ears Books in Northport” on the radio. Thanks again, Ron and Kimber!


The drive along Grand Traverse Bay was lovely, as always.

Then Jamie at the Northport Bay Dog and Cat Company had a cancellation, so Sarah had her little paws, fur and toenails, trimmed up neatly. No more scruffy feet! She’s beautiful again! Thanks, Jamie!

Life is good Up North.

Always Going Back and Forth--

--In time, that is. The weekend could not have been lovelier—not too hot, not too cold, sunny and clear. Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the holiday weekend, all sunny and glorious, meant long days at work, conversations with interesting people, and quiet, tired evenings at home. One new resident described his first 4th of July fireworks in Northport with the words “as good as anything I’ve seen on the Mall.” He meant the Mall in Washington, D.C. A pretty high compliment.

Sunday afternoon at the Dog Ears Books and Painted Horse Gallery space included a free live concert by the Weatherheads from Grand Rapids--a real treat for bookseller, browsers and customers--and a visit from gallery dogs Dusty and Shane, the latter (5 months old) being one of Sarah’s new favorite playmates.



Between book sales, conversations and puppy lessons I started to think ahead to being on the radio Wednesday morning (a little after 8:30 a.m.), talking with Ron Jolly on WTCM 580 AM.

And yet, somehow, sometime during the weekend I stole a few moments to dip into some fascinating books of the past, too.

Augustine Sirrell’s Obiter Dicta (Second Series, so presumably there was a first) is a set of essays on topics related to books and literature. Besides disquisitions on Milton, Pope, Johnson, Burke, Lamb (Charles, of course, an old favorite of mine) and Emerson, the author muses on the subject of book-buying, leading off with the statement that sensible book purchasers will look to the secondhand shops, as all good new books, if worth anything at all, “one day will be second-hand.” Having captured this bookseller’s attention, Mr. Sirrell goes on to ask whether there is “any substance in the plaint that nobody now buys books, meaning thereby second-hand books?” I was interested to see that this question--I’ve heard the claim “No one reads books any more” since my first summer as a bookseller, back in 1993, always made by people who are readers and book buyers--has been around at least since 1887. Another modern complaint, this one made by bargain-hunting book collectors, is that the Internet has done too good a job educating country booksellers, so I was intrigued by a similar complaint (the author’s own) from the late 19th century:

The enormous increase of booksellers’ catalogues and their wide circulation amongst the trade has already produced a hateful uniformity of prices. Go where you will it is all the same to the odd sixpence. Time was when you could map out the country for yourself with some hopefulness of plunder. …Those days are over.

Oh, boo-hoo! How sad that struggling those provincial booksellers’ shops can no longer be “plundered” by the canny urban visitor!

The library book sale was Saturday morning in Northport, and I picked up a couple of volumes no doubt being de-acquisitioned because the information is now accessible online. (I could look for it online, too, but enjoy turning pages.) One is Early Ohio Settlers, the other Ohio Cemetery Records. My father’s family came from Ohio, so looking up family names was my first move; the second, less self-interested, was to read through tombstone inscriptions. Here is one of my favorites:

Make use of present time
Because you must
Take up your lodging
Shortly in the dust.

There’s good, plain, blunt speaking! Or engraving. Graving? Engraving gravestones? Another:

So fades the lovely, blooming flower,
Frail smiling solace of an hour;
So soon our transient comforts fly,
And pleasure only blooms to die.

The anonymous authors of these two verses looked at identical evidence, it seems, and drew opposite conclusions. Both stress the brevity of life, but the second writer would have us, because life is short, not attach ourselves to it, while the first advises us rather to gather rosebuds while we may. Make the most or the least of it? Does one make a choice to see living in one light or the other, or do our temperaments decide for us? I would argue with the claim that “pleasure only blooms to die.” The “lovely, blooming flower” does not bloom only for the sake of blooming but for the sake of seeds produced, future plants, future flowers—a whole, wonderful continuity of which each stage is, in its turn, fully present.


One of the best ways I know to “make use of present time” in summer is to sit quietly outdoors in the evening, watching insects dance in the last sunlight, listening to the birds’ songs grow sleepy as light seeps away. There is the song sparrow! Not singing “to die” but because it is alive, now!

Wishing All a Happy 4th

We have so much for which to be grateful.

Opening a Book at Random, #3

Young children are highly distractible. When everything is new, “newness” or “novelty” is compelling. Distractibility has a purpose. It alerts the young mind to what is novel and possibly important. The young brain has to code everything important into memory, and until this coding has continued for some time, there is no yardstick to measure what is and is not “important.” One reason that adults seem less distractible than children is because to them, everything is “old” and predictable. If adults were suddenly transported to an alien planet, they would become as distractible as children.

From Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do About it, by Diane McGuinness, Ph.D.

Finding Time to Read

English Journey: Being a Rambling But Truthful Account of What One Man Saw and Heard and Felt and Thought During a Journey Through England During the Autumn of the Year 1933, by J. B. Priestley



A smart-aleck asks, looking around the bookstore, “Have you read every book in here?” Friends sometimes ask how and when I find time to read at all. Most people don’t ask either question but assume, justifiably, that a bookseller would somehow, even in the busiest season, carve out a bit of reading time here and there. One of my strategies is to have a book by the bedside, another on the edge of the tub, a third on the dining room table and, always, a couple in the bag I carry back and forth from home to bookstore. It’s a little disjointed, this hopping around from book to book, but I do finish a few this way, and the ones I’ve read only in part have also entertained and edified me with parts read.

What is more difficult to find during “the season” is time to write about books I’m reading. And how to go about that writing? In bits and pieces, a little every few days, in the same manner as I approach the book, or shall I wait until I’ve read the whole book and try to write a comprehensive essay or review—but in the latter case, what has happened to all those page notes, anyway? The backs of envelopes, miscellaneous Post-It notes, café napkins, event fliers, etc. have all vanished, leaving me—oh, here’s the Leelanau County Recycling Guide, an appropriately green sheet of 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper, and here are some very sketchy notes I tried to reconstruct after having mislaid one or two earlier sets while reading Priestley's English Journey. Let’s see if I can make anything of them.

Global
Electricity
Metaphors 161
City, suburb, country – see pp. 284-85
Mechanization 294
Wall Street 326-27

There's a problem already. Priestley, touring his native land in the 1930s, following the Crash of Wall Street and the closing of much industry in England, never used the term “global economy” but discussed the concept in other terms, and on an earlier sheet of notes I had a page reference, but unfortunately the page number is missing here, as is the page reference for electricity, which in 1930s England was having a revolutionary effect on older technologies much like that of our own digital and virtual revolution. Excuse me for a moment while I desert screen for page and search for these passages….

No, it’s no good. Other passages capture my attention now, slowing me down and demanding their due, such as this one about an old book the author spies in a shop window:

Among the tattered books in another window of this shop was one that I had not seen for many years, but I remembered it well, for it had been published by a man whose professional reader I had been, just after I first came to London, and this was one of the very first manuscripts I had recommended him to publish. Standing there, so many years and miles away, I could see myself writing my report on that book. And now here was a copy of it, dingy and torn, a waif in a back street in Swindon, but alive, still alive, only waiting for somebody to put down sixpense so that it could say all over again what it had said to me, in a neat typescript, long ago. The publisher himself was dead and gone; a bus or bacillus might remove me at any moment; and that book, which had made no stir at all in the world, would outlive the whole condescending crew of us.

This passage was only a brief digression on the author’s part, hardly relevant to his subject of how his countrymen were surviving the economic “slump,” but can anyone fail to understand why the little scene would captivate a bookseller? Then there was another digression, on the subject of typewriters and their manufacture:

There are some things that you can imagine yourself making in a rough-and-ready fashion, but typewriters are not one of those things. And for twenty years, I had more or less taken them for granted. During that time they had developed amazingly. I can see my first typewriter now. It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine itself was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing then was a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with these vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in the wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying about one of those grim iron structures than you would have thought of travelling with a piano. Since then I have owned machines of widely different sizes and shapes and capabilities, and at this very moment possess several neat little portables, the ingenious implements of my trade. Just as some men talk about the motor cars they have driven, so, when I occasionally meet a fellow typewriter-owner of long and rich experience, I talk about the various machines I have hammered at. I had a grand talk of this kind with the general manager that morning, though of course he did most of the talking, out of a very long and rich experience. There is romance, the genuine glinting stuff, in typewriters, and not merely in their development from clumsy giants into agile dwarfs, but in the history of their manufacture, which is filled with raids, battles, lonely pioneers, great gambles, hope, fear, despair, triumph. If some of our novels could be written by the typewriters instead of on them, how much better they would be.

Can any writer resist such a passage? Can I be blamed for throwing off the blinders that would have kept me on the narrow search for the discussion of the 19th-century global economy, allowing myself instead to plunge into an ocean of nostalgia for the old manual typewriter, not even a "portable," that I balanced on my knees in bed to tap out adolescent attempts at poetry? How well I remember! Whenever there was a problem with its operation, I could simply turn the machine upside-down and see where the trouble was and correct it! Those were the days! Well, as I seem to have deserted the thesis for a series of sidebars, there’s no point in leaving out my favorite passage from the book. In his visit to the Wedgwood potteries, Priestley reveals himself in a manner that would be quite in fashion in our own time:

’Can’t I have a shot at this?’ I asked the guide, piteously. He said I could, but he would take me to a special little department where a very experienced and highly-skilled man did the turning and decoration of the more important pieces. This department turned out to be a queer little eighteenth-century cabin, which looked at first like an old curiosity shop. It was crowded with a glorious hotch-potch of plaster moulds, blue prints, vases in various stages of completion, rum little tools, clay shavings, and a hundred-and-one other things. It looked like the mad jumble one sees in pictures of old alchemists’ chambers….

…I guessed of course that it could not possibly be as easy as it looked, that men do not have seven years’ apprenticeship for nothing, but I did not care how big a fool I made of myself before these grinning lads and lasses; I had to try my hand at it. And of course I cherished a vague hope, which was perhaps less vague after lunch than before, that I would prove an exception to this rule of craftsmanship, that I would be miraculously endowed with potter’s thumbs at once (‘Why, you were born with the touch, sir,’ they would cry, startled and admiring), and that I might achieve, within a single hour, that Priestley bowl, that Priestley vase, which would open a new chapter in the history of this famous old firm. (For more than thirty years now I have never tried to do anything new without cherishing this wild hope, that God would let me play tennis or billiards or the violin wonderfully at first sight, allow me to display myself suddenly as a heaven-born orator or singer. No such miracle has ever happened. Nobody yet has been startled by my exhibition of unsuspected skill. Yet I know I shall go on hoping in the same foolish fashion right to the very end, when, the silliest old man in England, I shall be hoping to die in some neat clever new way.)

Haven’t we all had those fantasies? Well, that being my very favorite passage in the entire book, I’m tempted to close right here, but that would leave my page notes completely unused, so I’ll go back just a few pages to where the author is treated to an exhibition of the power of electricity, which he does not even pretend to try to understand, because it is in this sort of discussion that I see very little difference between his world and ours. “The China Syndrome” worry would not astonish Priestley a bit. He foresaw it in what we look back on as a “simpler” time:

I am very vague about these technicalities. It is no use my saying I am like a child where electricity is concerned, because nowadays children seem to be born with the faculty for comprehending high tension and low tension and voltages and amperes and watts. I will say then that I know as much about electricity as the average Asiatic peasant. I do not try to be dense about it, but there is a something inside me that refuses to learn, understand, remember….

While the others were being technical about the transformer, I told myself that those these fellows, here and all over the world, probably knew what they were about, this trick of stirring up the violet-hot god, making him give a performance, and then hurrying him out again, was very sinister. They would do it once too often. Some morning there would be one gigantic blue flash and the whole industrial Midlands would look like a smoking dustbin—or even more like a smoking dustbin than they do now. There is in front of us—we are definite in for—an electrified world. It will be filled with cheerful young men in overalls, looking all alike and smoking the same kind of cigarette; and they will play about with millions and millions of volts. Until one of them, having just had a quarrel with his girl and being a trifle absent-minded, will pull the wrong lever. Astronomers out Serious way—beings perhaps shaped like gigantic crabs—will note a disturbance in the Solar System. I hurried with the others to the firm’s dining room: I thought, let us lunch while we can.

This Too Is Michigan, Up North, Country

My usual take on country living is unabashedly positive. The noise of orchard sprayers and tractors, the odor of fresh manure being spread on fields, the long walk from the house to where the driveway ends at the road, and all the rest of it seems a small price to pay--actually, except for the sprayers, I usually count all these things in the positive column, and even the sprayers I can rationalize as a good, since they are ongoing evidence for agricultural continuity in the neighborhood—in return for privacy, being able to hang laundry out on the line, having room to grow flowers and food and wide open spaces to explore with my dog. And on sunny June days when the first wild roses are blossoming, it’s all heaven on earth in my book.

In line with my romantic pragmatist philosophy, one area in my bookshop (two, actually—one new, one used) is devoted to country living and subsistence farming. I’ve listed several of those books recently and probably will again. The most recent arrival in the subject category is Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, by Brad Kessler. It’s always important to remember, however, that not all bookstore browsers are wannabe farmers, and it’s also important to keep a sense of humor, so I also have on hand a hot new title from southwestern Michigan (Saugatuck area), At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life, by Wade Rouse.

So today, to acknowledge that other side of the Up North country living coin, we admit that skies over Grand Traverse Bay can sometimes be dark and stormy, and, on a darker note, that life can be violently cut short.



Not for the faint of heart, this post with its image of sudden death. Usually one does not stop for the death of an unknown other of a species not one’s own--the deer had not collided with my car, after all-- but there she was, lying in the wet grass along the side of the road between Omena and Northport, still so beautiful, and its eyes still so bright, as if she might suddenly recollect herself and scramble to her dainty feet, sway a little, shake her head to clear her brain, and leap away into the underbrush. That didn’t happen. I got out of the car for a closer look, feeling that I was bearing witness both to beauty and to death. You were here, lovely one. Someone took notice.

Doubtless the deer had been hit by a car, as often happens, though the close-up doesn’t give that impression. It’s one of the hazards of driving in these parts, and insurance companies figure the cost in terms of vehicle damage, human death and injury, not harm to deer. That is, deer on the roads are seen as dangerous to drivers and passengers of motor vehicles. That’s the perspective. For me, the beauty of the deer in our midst more than repays the risk, but I wonder how the animals would assess the danger. If they could calculate, would they conclude that our gardens and orchards and fields of alfalfa and corn outweigh the risk of tons of dangerous metal hurtling through the landscape?

This is life Up North as June comes to a rainy finish. Summer sun should return by week’s end, in time for the Fourth of July.

Bookseller's Country Weekend

Saturday’s book signing came off splendidly! Good crowds, good sales, lots of happy faces. Here’s a picture of Hillary Porter greeting members of her admiring public.



Then that evening it rained, and how lovely to be at home with raindrops pattering on the metal roof of the porch, reflecting with satisfaction that I wouldn’t have to water the garden with a hose that night. This morning, across the hills to the west of St. Wenceslaus (rectory at right), Lake Michigan was startlingly blue, and wildflowers along the roads were blooming their heads off. Coreopsis always reminds me of an old friend, gone now, and his annual “Longest Day” party out at Cherry Home: every year as we drove out north of town to thirty, Porsche-yellow coreopsis would be rioting along the roadside. But the snow-white daisies, stained-glass blue of spiderwort and innocent pale pink roses also deserve attention.



Today’s was a morning of magic and bliss, rain-scoured skies and refreshing breezes.

Dream Days: Clouds and Book Review

There are plenty of events and activities and plenty of work to fill the dream days. Thursday night was a trip to Interlochen for the annual book sale and to pick up a box of Aaron Stander’s new book, Deer Season, fresh from the printer to the author to the bookseller’s hands. Tomorrow, of course, is the long-awaited book signing with Hillary Porter and her young people’s novel, The Colors of Beech Hill. So, we are busy, busy, busy, but there was still time last night to become lost in the clouds.


--And now, at the eleventh hour, here's a late-breaking book review from Columbus, Indiana:

The Colors of Beech Hill by Hillary Porter
Reviewed by Liam Greven, Age 12, Columbus, IN

“The main character of this book is a boy named Nick. He is around my age and lives in Northport, Michigan. He is having problems with a bully, which makes him quit his baseball team. To get away he goes to the top of Beech Hill and discovers his sister’s old tree fort. He finds a new kid named Tony there and they become friends very quickly. Also, Nick’s dog Sport plays a big role (which is fun for those of us who like dogs). Tony comes up with a great idea to end his Nick’s problems, and he tells great stories about the place he used to live, Colorado. Throughout the story, Nick deals with some tough situations and some sad ones. You might say that his life has been a bit tragic so far. There are also some political things in it that make it more complicated. I don’t want to give up too much information, though!

“This is an extremely good book that is a little sad, and also happy. It is not a very hard book to read I didn’t think, but it was fun anyway. I would also call it thoughtful, plus it gives a great way to deal with bullies. I enjoyed it very much. You will too!”

Thanks, Liam! Wish you could be here with us tomorrow!