Welcome to the #NoContact Book Tour! While we all stay inside and stay safe, books have become even more important. But book events and conferences, alas, are canceled, which is why I am thrilled to welcome my sister New England cozy author Edith Maxwel, aka Maddie Day, here today! She brings with her an escape to a lovely summer spot … full of MURDER!

Thank you for inviting me over, Clea. Yes, many are the cancellations. Alas, but it’s necessary.

Tell us about your book!

Book two in the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, Murder at the Taffy Shop, is set in August, full season on Cape Cod. When bike shop owner Mac Almeida heads out for an early walk with her friend, she finds a horrified Gin staring at an imperious summer person, dead on the sidewalk in front of Salty Taffy’s, Gin’s candy shop. When the police find the murder weapon in Gin’s garage, Mac and the Cozy Capers book group members put their heads together to clear Gin’s name and figure out who killed the woman whom almost everyone disliked. After the killer later invades Mac’s tiny house to finish her off, Belle, Mac’s African gray parrot, comes to the rescue. Murder at the Taffy Shopreleased March 31 in a one-year paperback exclusive from Barnes & Noble.

What would you have been doing now to promote it? Where would you have been speaking? What bookstores would you have visited?

Oh, my. So very many events cancelled. Here’s the April/May short list:

• St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia (a big-deal guest presentation to their writing program)
• Authors in April, Friends of Farmington, New Hampshire
• Falmouth, MA Public Library
• West Barnstable, MA Public Library
• Hyannis, MA Barnes & Noble – where book one in the series sold so fast last year they had to keep reordering. Every author’s dream…
• Titcomb’s Bookshop, Sandwich, MA
• Malice Domestic – yeah, where my fourth historical mystery, CHARITY’S BURDER, is nominated for the series’ fourth Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery. Deep sigh.
• Groveland Public Library
• My local indy, Jabberwocky Books in Newburyport, MA
• Plus the Cape Cod Writers Conference, where I would have taught two courses in early August

I’m so sad about all of these.

Are you working on anything now? Is your process or routine different?

I’m writing NO GRATER CRIME, book nine in the Country Store Mysteries. Yes, graters are involved. My daily work routine isn’t really that different. I still go upstairs to my office and write away the morning. I still spend the afternoons (after walking, eating, and maybe some gardening) writing blog posts and catching up on the business of being an author. And trying to avoid my self-employed partner who is NOT working, instead sitting around reading and not doing any of the chores on that little list I left him.

Do you think your writing will be changed by this crisis?

Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised if some darker themes emerged in my short fiction. But seriously? Everybody needs an escape from grim times. For me, writing is a respite from the scary, messy outside world. I still want to provide that respite for my readers, too.

What’s the first thing you’re going to do when we’re free to be social again?

I plan to go to Medford to squeeze my adorable toddler great-goddaughter and play, then drink wine with my best friend, the toddler’s Gran. I’ll have cocktails with my women friends, help my son and his wife move back to New England, attend Quaker Meeting for Worship in person instead of via Zoom, and shop and eat locally again. Okay, that’s seven-plus things, but I miss all of them.

Agatha and Macavity finalist Edith Maxwell writes the historical 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 books in print and more underway, Maxwell lives north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. She hopes you’ll find her on social media under both names.