Thanks
so much, Melissa, for having me over! I want to share one of my favorite
characters in my new Local Foods mystery (Kensington Publishing, May
2013), A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die.
He’s Preston, organic farmer Cameron
Flaherty’s Norwegian Forest Cat. He loves
living on the farm, after having spent his first few post-rescue years in her
apartment in Cambridge. Now he gets to chase voles and birds and woodchucks to
his heart’s content.
Preston
is a gorgeous beast, as are all Norwegian Forests, called skogkatt in
Norwegian. He looks nordic with his light eyes and white-and-gray coloring. The
kohl-colored rings around his eyes even make it appear that he’s wearing
eyeliner. He keeps his ruff snowy white and grooms his two layers of fur
meticulously, leaving great tufts of the soft stuff everywhere. You can find
him sitting outside in the rain or on the snow, with those two layers helping
him stay warm.
Preston
is very sweet natured. I don’t know if that’s typical of his breed or is just
Preston, but he loves to sit on Cam’s lap in the evenings or at the end of a
long day of weeding, planting, and harvesting when she collapses into a lawn
chair under the big maple in the back yard. When he likes someone, he rears up
and rubs his head on their knee. He doesn’t fight unless provoked and has a
live-and-let-live attitude toward other cats he encounters.
His
voice is the tiniest mew you can imagine, and his face the most expressive. His
favorite habit is to be petted while he eats. He ASKS to be petted while he
eats. First thing in the morning, and pretty much any time Cam walks into the
kitchen, Preston runs to his dry food bowl, and looks up over his shoulder, asking
in his teeny-tiny voice, “Please pet me? Please?” Cam finds it hard to refuse.
I
know Preston so well not only because I invented his human but because he’s our
senior cat at the home I share with my
beau, Hugh, and our two other cats, Christobel and Birdie (who are also rescued
and gorgeous but are not Norwegian Forests). Some years ago Hugh was looking
for a cat and was directed to the home of a woman who fostered cats for a
shelter. She showed him one cat who was very full of itself. Then she said
there was another that had been mauled by a dog. The shelter had been afraid they were going to have to put him
down when a veterinary surgeon visiting that day said, “I can sew him up.” When Hugh saw Preston, his stomach was shaved
and his stitches were healing. Even so, his sweet nature shone forth and Hugh
adopted him. Hugh changed his name from Louie to Preston, and then we added
Parkhurst, the Third to it, as befits his distinguished bearing.
Cam
makes sure Preston is safely inside every night, since coyotes and foxes
inhabit the woods behind the fields. In the second book in the series, ‘Til
Dirt Do Us Part (which I am polishing right now!), Preston disappears one
day and Cam is distraught, as you might imagine. I’ll let you read the story to
find out what happens. I hope you enjoy getting to know Preston and Cam, along
with the eccentrics in the Locavore Club, the handsome and flirtatious chef,
and Girl Scout volunteer Ellie in A
Tine to Live, a Tine to Die.
It's harvest time in Westbury, Massachusetts, and novice farmer Cameron Flaherty hopes to make a killing selling organic produce. But when a killer strikes on her property, her first foray into the world of organic farming yields a bumper crop of locally sourced murder...
Cam's first growing season has gotten off to a slow start, but her CSA is flourishing thanks to a colorful group of subscribers led by Lucinda DaSilva, an enthusiastic Brazilian volunteer who's vowed to eat nothing but locally produced food for one year. When Cam fires her only employee, local handyman Mike Montgomery, because he won't follow organic growing practices, it seems like just another day at the office—until she finds him with a pitchfork sticking out of his neck.
The police suspect Cam of Mike's murder, but when their investigation goes nowhere, Lucinda joins Cam in the hunt for the real killer. In a small New England town full of eccentric locavores, there's no shortage of possibilities—from a neighboring farmer who competes with Cam for customers to a Swedish chef whose romantic designs on her have recently taken a turn for the odd. And then there's the local militia group with its decidedly nonlocal agenda...
To clear her name, Cam will have to dig up secrets buried deep beneath the soil of Produce Plus Plus Farm. And she'll have to catch a murderer whose motto seems to be "Eat local. Kill local."
Edith Maxwell writes the Local Foods Mysteries. A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE introduces geek-turned-organic farmer Cam Flaherty, a colorful Locavore Club, and locally sourced murder. Edith once owned and operated the smallest certified-organic farm in Essex County, Massachusetts.
Tace Baker, Edith Maxwell's pseudonym, is the author of SPEAKING OF MURDER (Barking Rain Press, Sept 2012) featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau. Edith holds a PhD in linguistics and is a long-time member of the Society of Friends.
Edith has also published short crime fiction, most recently in the Fish Nets anthology and in Thin Ice from Level Best Books.
A mother and technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston with her beau, three cats, and a small organic garden.
www.edithmaxwell.com
