​January used to be my best time to write. The snow covering the ground makes it awkward to go out to do anything. Outdoor activities are limited unless you ski, which I don't - at least not downhill, but even with cross country, on these subzero days here in Vermont - it just doesn't appeal.
 
It is beautiful though. Just walking outside is calming.
 
Still, for writing, it should be a good time. And yet, I'm behind. I'm working on my next thriller - only sixty pages in - but I'm finding it hard to progress. And not for lack of a good story or ideas. It's just that there's so much else I have to do.
 
Writing this, for example.
 
There were press releases that I wrote and sent out over the last few days - over the fact that my last novel - Bloody Soil - won an award from the Independent Publishers of New England for best genre. (Did I mention that, by the way? Yay!) Almost two hundred librarians, booksellers, and other publishing professional served as judges for this year's contest, evaluating non-fiction and fiction categories. IPNE judges described Bloody Soil as "fascinating," "gripping," and "explosive."
 
I was thrilled at the win, but it did mean more work - all those press releases. Which meant that I wasn't writing my novel.
 
Then there's the newsletter - which I've put off writing but going to do as soon as I finish this blog, the hundred or so emails I get a day - which I have to at least skim, the comedy routine which I have to write up and practice because I agreed to do an on-line show. 
 
I'm also trying to plan out a You Tube channel with my partner in crime - J.B. Manning, the award-winning author of Richter the Mighty - where we visit interesting places and talk about books - both writing and reading. We're planning to call it A Killing Couple on the Prowl. It takes a lot of planning. When is it launching? TBA.
 
Being an author who does not have a publicity firm or marketing firm, as the big ones do, takes a lot of time and a lot of energy.
 
And then there are all of the personal and family stuff that I'm doing. That's a long story and another blog topic.
 
All of which goes to say that January - my best month for writing in the past - ain't been so great this year. 
 
And yet, all of the above is also something of an excuse. I've always found to write in the past. It just seems harder this January.
 
Writing novels is both an act of love and an act of faith - at least for me. I write because I love to write, but when I write, I also am making the leap of faith that people will read what I wrote and appreciate it.  The latter part of that sentence, though, trips up many writers. Because failure to get that outside affirmation - either through lack of readership or (let's really be amusing) lack of financial reward for our efforts- makes that faith harder to hold on to.
 
 Without that faith, it's harder to write.
 
The bleakness of January here in Vermont doesn't help either.
 
On the other hand...librarians, booksellers, and other professionals thought my novel Bloody Soil was pretty damn good. So here's to renewed faith, and to renewed effort in these, the last few days of January.
 
Spring is coming.   
 

Do you listen to audiobooks? If you don't, you're missing out on a great experience.

I've always loved hearing books. There's something about hearing a book read to you, even if you love reading yourself. One of my fondest early memories is of my mother reading me Heidi, a book I'd already read. Nevertheless, I loved listening to her voice reciting the words. And in my turn when I became a mother, I read books to my children, forming a bond through love for books and stories.

I started listening to audiobooks maybe twenty years, when I realized that audiobooks made it possible for me to do all I needed to do in my busy life while still consuming novels. At that time, I was driving around the state of New Jersey, lobbying legislators to replace the death penalty with life without parole. Hours on the road were made tolerable because I was listening to thrillers and mysteries. I could listen to books while I cooked, washed dishes, while I exercised, and before going to sleep (although listening to a thriller right before bed is not generally a good idea).

But it's not just the fact that audiobooks make it possible to "read" while busily engaged in other activities - multitasking being the all the rage in the 21st  century. Audiobooks are a different kind of experience than reading a print book.

I just finished listened to the audiobook of my own novel, Nerve Attack, read by the talented Pavi Proczko, and I loved hearing it. Yes, I wrote and know the story, although I haven't re-read it for almost two years. And yes, part of the enjoyment of listening to one's own work is certainly the ego boost - the this is a damn good story and OMG - I wrote it kind of moment.

But what I really loved about hearing the book was the bringing to life of characters whom I created and love. When I write a novel, the characters have a reality in my mind - although I'm quite aware that they are fictional. But listening to the book, when read by a gifted actor who creates different voices for each character, takes those characters out of my imagination and gives them a solidity.  Kolya, Alex, Jonathan, Elizabeth, Dmitri are no longer just in my mind. They've become real. (Yes, I know it sounds a little crazy - but I'm a writer, so by definition, I live in imaginary worlds with imaginary friends - so sanity isn't a given.)

And that's what I get from any well read audiobook - experiencing the characters as real people with individual voices. It's a joining between the reader and listener.  It's creating a life for those characters outside of my mind. And while I still treasure the individual and private pleasure of reading a print book, I also treasure that coming to life that I get from an audiobook.

How about you? Do you listen to audiobooks? 

Antisemitism and Holocaust denial have steadily risen in the past few years. The causes are many: the rise of conspiracy theories that always target Jewish people, the normalizing of antisemitism on Twitter and by certain high profile individuals, and the mainstreaming of people with Nazi views who would have in previous days been shunned but now are freely spewing hatred on Twitter and elsewhere. And then there's just plain ignorance - that a shocking number of people in the United States don't know just much about the Jewish people nor do they know the facts of the Holocaust.

In 2020, a survey showed that one in ten people under the age of forty had never heard the term Holocaust. That 63% didn't know that six million Jews were murdered. In New York, California, and Indiana higher than twenty percent thought that the Holocaust was a myth or was exaggerated.

This is happening as the last survivors are quietly disappearing. World War II ended seventy-eight years ago. A person who was twenty at the war's end is ninety-eight now.  A ten year old - who would have old enough to have some memories of what happened - is eighty eight. The American soldiers who fought in that war and who liberated the camps are also disappearing.  Even if the memories are recorded, it's not as strong or as vivid as hearing the personal testimony of someone who either lived through the horror to witnessed its aftermath.

Education - formal and informal - is the way to counter both the prejudice and the ignorance.

While true stories are essential to broadening the knowledge of the consequences of antisemitism, fiction also has a role to play.

With fiction, our empathies are engaged by characters we like and the challenges they face. Sometimes reading a powerful novel is the best way to emotionally pull readers into understanding a social issue. (There is a reason why Abraham Lincoln credited Harriet Beecher Stowe with starting the Civil War, with her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.)

In my novels featuring Kolya Petrov, the Jewish Russian born immigrant to the United States, I have tried to counter antisemitism by portraying a likable, courageous man who risks his life on behalf of this country - a character who a reader can identify with. In Bloody Soil, I do more than that - I sneak the history of the Holocaust into what is an otherwise thrilling adventure. And I make it personal. When we hear statistics about six million people being murdered, the number is so great that it almost doesn't have an emotional impact. But  every one of those six million men, women, and children had a story, had people they loved, had hopes and dreams. To feel the true horror, we have to see some of those stories. So in Bloody Soil, the story of Kolya's great grandmother being shot in the pit known as Babi Yar - a story that Kolya heard when he was a child -  makes it more real. And while she may be a fictional character, she represents the stories of the very real  over thirty thousand people who were killed at Babi Yar.

I do the same with other aspects of the Holocaust - mentioning the Kindertransport - the ten thousand children who were taken by train to the UK and saved - even though most of their parents perished - the use of the term blood and soil and what it meant - the murder by fire of Jewish people - and the mass murders of the Roma and Sinti.  

But recognizing that some people may not know or recognize the factual undermining to those mentions in Bloody Soil, I created a study guide that explains and expands on the narrative. It's now available on my website  here and a printed version is available from me personally at a  
nominal cost for book clubs or otherwise. (I'm also available to talk on zoom.)

It's up to all of us to fight back against ignorance and prejudice. The history of the Holocaust shows the consequences of a failure to do so.
​

Are you or were you a maladaptive daydreamer?
 
I was. Only I didn't know that's what I was.
 
Most of my life as a child, a teenager, and as a college student, I spent daydreaming. Not just the occasional daydream, either. Elaborate detailed daydreams with characters and plots, many of which were spun off from movies or television shows I'd watched. Sometimes I would imagine myself in books, having adventures with my favorite characters.
 
It was a weird way to live. Both incredibly addictive - any difficult situation in life could be dealt with by simply retreating into my daydreams - and incredibly unnerving. I often felt disconnected from real life, as if I had traveled to a distant country where no one but me and my imaginary friends lived.
 
I wondered sometimes if I was schizophrenic but ultimately decided I wasn't. I knew the difference between reality and daydreams. I just preferred the daydreams. Most of the time. 
 
But even if I wasn't psychotic, the daydreaming affected my schoolwork, my friendships, and my hobbies. I was constantly told that I underperformed in school. I was teased at school and had few friends.
 
Whatever it was, I could stop myself occasionally for a few hours. But the daydreaming was so alluring that I couldn't resist for long, even though I felt ashamed and guilty that I spent so much of my life in fantasy.
 
I thought that there was something terribly wrong with me, but I never talked about it. Not with my parents, my friends, my teachers, or the occasional therapist - in college when I struggled with depression.
 
If I'd known that there were other people out there who did the same thing - that there was a name for what I was experiencing - maybe I would have felt a little better about myself. 
 
I'd never heard the term maladaptive daydreaming, but that's because it hadn't been invented. Eli Somer, a clinical psychology professor in Israel, came up with the term in 2006. I discovered it this year. The Cleveland Clinic has a page devoted to maladaptive daydreaming, and the description of maladaptive daydreaming matches almost exactly what my life was like in my younger years.
 
Note - my younger years. More about that in a bit.
 
According to the Cleveland Clinic site - maladaptive daydreaming hasn't been listed as an official condition, but it seems to coexist with other mental disorders such as anxiety (check) and ADHD (also check). Ironically, my ADHD was also only diagnosed in my mature adult years. But back in the dark ages, ADHD was rarely recognized in girls, especially since girls tend to not have the hyperactivity form. But the combination of maladaptive daydreaming and ADD did lead to repeated conversations with teachers, with counselors, even with my parents on why I underperformed so badly in math and science.  You're so smart. You just have to apply yourself. (With ADD, I could hyperfocus on matters that interested me - English, history. When I was bored, math, physics, biology, I went into my daydreams.)
 
I've mentioned this as a problem in my younger years. I'm not sure exactly when I stopped maladaptive daydreaming. Maybe in my late twenties or early thirties. Maybe around the time I met Jim, my husband, or when I went to law school. At some point, things changed, and I was living in the real world. Maybe part of the reason I daydreamed years ago was that I was shy, anxious, and insecure, and while I never completely lost those feelings, I found other ways to manage them.  Maybe at some point, my life became rich enough that I no longer needed to constantly withdraw into fantasy. I'm not sure. But looking backward, I see myself lost in my daydreams as a teen and a young adult - and then I no longer was. 
 
Do I still have periods when I get lost in my thoughts or lose myself in stories and characters? Sure. But now, I would classify my daydreams as adaptive, not maladaptive. I write novels with elaborate plots and complicated characters.  When I'm writing, I immerse myself in the world I'm creating, and I enter into the minds of the characters. Maybe my ability to lose myself so completely in daydreams as young person was a precursor to my ability to enter into fictional worlds as an adult author. But it's not the same. What I do now is an act of creation, not avoidance.  I no longer feel as if I'm retreating from life.  Writing, unlike the maladaptive daydreaming of my younger years, is not something that makes me feel guilty or embarrassed; to the contrary, it makes me feel empowered and proud. 
 
Also importantly, while I love writing my books and love my characters, I'm happy in my life. I may visit with Kolya and Alex, the protagonists of my Kolya Petrov thriller series,  but I leave them behind when I close the computer. I live in the real world with those I adore: my husband, my kids, my friends, and of course my cat. 
 
At least most of the time.
 
How about you? Are you a daydream believer?

​There is a relationship between writers and readers. Readers who love books need writers to produce those books, and writers need readers because writing is an act of communication (quite apart from wanting to make a little money from our efforts). Telling a story by definition means having someone to hear the story.  Like all relationships, it can be wonderful, but it can also be disappointing.
 
Authors spend months to years writing, rewriting, and editing to try to craft the perfect story.  As someone who takes around a year to finish a novel, I can attest to the work and effort it takes. When we finish and the book is published, we hope to find readers who will enjoy and appreciate our stories. While most of us accept the reality that we are not going to get rich from writing, we would at least like to sell enough of our books to justify (to ourselves if to no one else) our continuing to write.  We also hope for good reviews and for good conversations about our books.
 
Since I'm also a reader, I can say that what I want as a reader is a book that will pull me into the world that the writer has created, that shows respect for the reader's intelligence, that is well crafted and edited. My personal preference is for books that have at least one character whom I like, even if that person is on the wrong side of the law, but I do understand my taste is not universal.  I want a book that disrupts my life, that I can't wait to get back to, and where the ending fits the narrative. 
 
Sometimes, both sides get what they want. 
 
And sometimes - they don't.
 
As a reader, I've started many books that were supposed to be good, given it 50 pages maybe a few more - only to toss it aside. That's not a big deal. There are so many good books out there - and I have so many on my bookshelves begging to be read. (Yes, every night, books call - "read me.")
 
One of my biggest disappointments as a reader is when I fall in love with a series and then the author stops writing it. Another disappointment: when a writer becomes so big that her publisher no longer edits her, and her books become overblown or boring. (No names here.) Even worse: after I invest the time to read an entire book, I hate the ending. (Yes, I write thrillers and I know thrillers mean deaths - but if the author kills off my favorite character and/or kills animals, I'm fucking pissed. And it happens.)
 
As a writer, I am so appreciative of the people who've read and liked my books,  especially those who've given me reviews. (Right now, my latest book is cruising at a solid five-star rating on Amazon and Goodreads.) I love talking with readers about my books, my characters, my writing process.
 
My disappointment with readers:  that I haven't had more. That there aren't more thriller readers willing to try a new author, that readers go time and again to the best sellers, to the celebrity names on books (many of whom didn't actually write the novel). 
 
My latest novel, Bloody Soil, released in November, is, in my estimation and that of most of those who've read my series, my best, and yet, it's had the fewest readers. I wonder if some people aren't interested in a thriller with a Russian-Jewish protagonist whose name isn't an "all-American" name - whatever that means in this day and age - whether some of the Jewish themes turn people off, or whether having neo-Nazis doing bad things in Germany just isn't that intriguing. It's especially painful when someone who read and wrote rave reviews of my earlier thrillers tells me he's passing on my latest because he's only reviewing books that "resonate" with him. 
 
Okay, yes, I know I'm whining.
 
I don't write "to the market" - trying to stay grab hold of the latest trend in books. I didn't write vampires when they were hot. I write stories that call to me.  But there is that relationship with the readers, and that sometimes means a reassessment.
 
So, I'm writing something different now, NOT a spy thriller or an international thriller. A home-grown all-American thriller about a woman seeking revenge for the death of her daughter and the investigator with a dark past trying to stop her.
 
Will I write another Kolya Petrov thriller? I certainly hope so. I do love writing him and his world, but reaching a larger readership also matters to me. If I don't write another Kolya novel and the series ends with Bloody Soil, at least it's going out with a bang.
 
Stay tuned.
 
For readers: what do you want from a book and what disappoints you? 
 

​​
​










​It's that time of year again. I generally write a blog at this time of year about my conflicted feelings around the holiday season. But this year, I decided to write on a different topic. Gifts. Or more specifically, what you should give as gifts.
 
Give books. Give fantasy books or science fiction. Give thrillers or mysteries or suspense. (Those would be my favorite. Hint. Hint.) Give books about the supernatural or horror. Give books about true crime or history or science. 
 
We learn about the world through the written word. We expand not just our knowledge but our ability to empathize with people and cultures that differ from our own. From the comfort and safety of our couches, we experience adventure, terror, thrills, chills, love, and loss. 
 
We've become a culture accustomed to quick blurbs and short bursts of information that we get online. It's important for us to slow down and read. Not only do we learn more, we are protecting our brains and our ability to think and reason, to absorb. 
 
Some of the books I read as a child still call to me. Recently, I bought new editions of many of them: Lassie Come Home, Bambi, The Secret Garden, Freddy the Detective. I reread these books, and I'm transported back in time, to my younger self.
 
There are characters that I have met in books who seem more real than many people I meet in my everyday life. Maybe that's because of the skill of the writer who can illuminate the inner life of those characters and disclose their secrets in a way that casual acquaintances aren't likely to do.
 
In Iceland, they give books on Christmas Eve and then spend the night reading, calling it Christmas book flood. That sounds like a wonderful holiday to me.
 
But when you're buying those books for gifts, don't just buy the same old, same old, the well-known authors whose works top the New York Times best seller list. Or the famous actor or politician who decides to write a book (or pays someone to write it for them.) The celebrities, the well-known authors don't need more sales. Look for someone new. There are many little known great authors out there, and they deserve to be read.
 
And, yes, this is personal to me. 
 
I write spy thrillers, published by a great small press, Encircle Publications. I've won awards, had great reviews, and yet like many current authors, I am making little if anything on my books. 
 
I'm not alone, though. A recent article stated that only 17 percent of all authors earn their living through writing. The rest either have a full-time job or have independent funds that allow them to live without earning money from writing.  I've read that the average book sells approximately 200 copies in a year, 1000 over the lifetime of the book. 
 
And the way we are supposed to market our books has made it worse. There are multiple online services where authors offer their books for $.99 or free, with the idea that a reader who likes the free book will then buy the author's other books. Authors are constantly informed that this is the way to become known. But that's not what happens. People who get books for free don't then buy books. They want more books for free.
 
Ironically, these services aren't free, at least not to authors. Authors have to PAY to give away their books, sometimes a lot of money.
 
Libraries also offer books for free; however, libraries purchase books, and they don't charge authors for putting their books on the shelves. Libraries have author forums, and are a wonderful way to introduce people to your series.
 
Authors spend anywhere from a few months to a year or more of intense work to produce a book. Under what other circumstances would anyone expect a professional to put in that kind of time and that kind of effort - and wind up in the red?
 
I will probably continue to write because I love to write. But a lot of good authors will write a book or a few books that sell so poorly they give up. Or their publisher dumps them. Have you ever read a book that you loved and wished for more from the same author - only to realize that person gave up writing because she couldn't justify putting that kind of time into it anymore? Or a series you loved with appealing characters isn't continuing for the same reason? My next novel will not be a Kolya Petrov thriller for this reason. As much as I love writing about Kolya and friends, I need to try to find a larger readership. I hope to come back to him, but we'll see.
 
So give books for gifts this holiday season. Give books from a relatively unknown author, an independently published author or the author from a small publisher. If you love a book, share it with a friend or a family member. And treat yourself to a book written by someone new.  Who knows? Along with helping to keep a good author writing, you will have the experience of reading a great book.  It's a win-win.
 
Happy holidays.



​

​I didn't plan this and neither did my publisher, but my latest novel, Bloody Soil, is launching on November 9, 2022, which also happens to be the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht. There is an eeriness to this, given that Bloody Soil revolves around the danger from a resurgent Nazi group in modern day Germany, and Kristallnacht was the event which marked the movement from discrimination and persecution into violence against the Jewish population in Nazi Germany. It is especially eerie at this time, given the frightening rise of antisemitism throughout the world.
 
I wish I could say that the neo-Nazis described in my novel existed only in my imagination. Unfortunately, I can't. Bloody Soil is based on real incidents. In Germany, a neo-Nazi group embarked on a killing spree over a period of ten years, targeting immigrants and those who supported them. Then there was Day X  - a plot by a neo-Nazi group to kidnap elected officials that they deemed to be traitors, kill them, put their bodies in body bags, and then bury them in quicklime. While the events in my novel aren't an exact duplication of these events, my plot was inspired by that reality.
 
I also wish I could say that the antisemitism described in Bloody Soil is fictional or relegated to the past. It's not. The antisemitic rhetoric is getting louder, and the silence of some who should be pushing back is deafening. That my book is coming out on the anniversary of Kristallnacht isn't the only thing that is unsettling. 
 
Kristallnacht occurred on November 9, 1938, when the SS and the SA were joined by Hitler youth and German civilians in attacking Jewish business, homes, synagogues, and people - 7500 homes or businesses were destroyed, 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps, and almost 300 synagogues were destroyed. The official death toll was ninety-one, although more recent history suggests that hundreds were killed. It was the beginning of the murder of two thirds of Europe's Jewish population.
 
It feels personal to me, as it does to so many Jews, and not only because I know that but for time and space, I and my entire family would have been brutally murdered for nothing more than being born of Jewish heritage. My grandparents who left what is now Ukraine and Lithuania before World War I still had family in that area until Nazis murdered them. Those still in Ukraine were stripped naked, lined up at a pit called Babi Yar, and shot. I believe those in Lithuania were locked in a synagogue and burned alive. (Both massacres are described in Bloody Soil.) My uncle's mother and sister were gassed on arrival at Auschwitz, and he spent his teenage years forced to carry the dead from the gas chambers to the furnaces. 
 
The Holocaust didn't actually begin with Kristallnacht, though. It began with lies, with respectable people allowing hatred of Jews to go unchecked. The Nazis stated that Jews were responsible for World War I, for Germany's defeat, for economic oppression. They proclaimed that there was a world-wide Jewish cabal plotting to take over the world, and Jews were portrayed not just as puppet masters but as sexual deviants and degenerates. The fact that the lies were inconsistent didn't matter - Jews were both the international bankers, profiting off capitalism, and Jews were behind international communism, planning to destroy capitalism.  Notably it wasn't just the Nazis saying these things. Here in the United States, Henry Ford wrote news articles in his own newspaper saying the same kind of things. Those words were echoed by an antisemitic priest, Father Coughlin and by Charles Lindberg. The antisemitism in the US didn't just echo that of the Nazis, it prevented action to rescue some of the Jewish men, women, and children who perished, as illustrated in Ken Burn's recent documentary.
 
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, as I was growing up, Jews in America experienced a golden era of acceptance. The neo-Nazis were a handful of freaks and kooks, living in their mothers' basements typing manifestos. While some people (and private clubs) continued to distain Jews, most doors opened. Jews were able to work, live, and go to schools in places that a few years earlier wouldn't have accepted them. Antisemitism may have been muttered behind closed doors, but it wasn't out in public. It wasn't mainstream.
 
It's out again. The same conspiracy tropes. The same hatred.  It's coming from far-right extremists, from people who embrace the same conspiracy theories about powerful world-wide Jewish cabals, and from the antizionists on the left who, sadly, echo some of the rhetoric about Jewish people but use the term, Zionism while claiming not to be antisemitic. It's in Europe, where Bloody Soil is placed, and it's in America. 
 
Jews are the smallest religious minority in America, less than two percent of the population, and yet attacks on Jews account for more than 60 percent of all religious hate crimes. In 2021, the highest number of hate crimes against American Jews were recorded. As I sit here on a Sunday afternoon, neo-Nazis have been projecting hate messages about Jews onto the sides of buildings and billboards at football games.
 
Jewish people are increasingly uneasy about the rising sounds of hate. We've heard this before, and it doesn't end well.  
 
And, so I'm writing a series with a secular Jewish protagonist working as an American intelligence operative.  When I started this, I liked the idea of creating a protagonist from an unlikely background, since few novels in this genre have a Jewish American (let alone Russian Jewish immigrant) as the hero. It's especially important now to see Jewish people in heroic roles. Maybe the publication of a novel about a neo-Nazi plot foiled by a Russian Jewish immigrant to the United States on the anniversary of Kristallnacht in a time of growing antisemitism isn't eerie after all. Maybe it's appropriate. 

​I'm a little obsessed with Vermont Maple Syrup, as you might guess because I'm giving some away in November and again in January in honor of the release of my next thriller, Bloody Soil. (And another contest will be brewing during the maple tapping season. Watch for it.)  If you want in on the contest, sign up for my newsletter. Information on entering will be sent out by in my October newsletter through email.
 
If you read my books, you would know that I mention Vermont at least once in every book, even if the novel is set elsewhere. In my second book, Nerve Attack, significant parts of the action take place in Vermont, and Ben & Jerry's, Vermont's famous ice cream, is a motivating factor for getting a Russian gangster to cooperate. My protagonist, Kolya Petrov, who spent his childhood in St. Petersburg, retains a love for snow and cold weather, and Vermont is a frequent vacation destination for him and his fiancee, Alex Feinstein.
 
 
Why I'm obsessed
 
I grew up pouring the store-bought high fructose imitation onto my pancakes and waffles and didn't experience real maple syrup until sometime in my late 20s. I was stunned by the richness of the flavor, and never went back to the other stuff. Now, I always have at least a gallon on hand. I love it on pancakes, especially pumpkin pancakes, but also on ice cream, in pastries, and even on salmon. Summer in Vermont means Maple Creemees  - soft vanilla ice cream swirled with maple syrup.
 
And maybe I'm obsessed with maple syrup because I'm obsessed with Vermont. I'm originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and my first visit to Vermont was for a cross country skiing trip during a week off from a grueling job at a large New York law firm. I remember gliding through silent woods with the snow softly drifting to the ground, finding peace and serenity from the beauty and the silence. After skiing, we drank coffee in front of a wood stove while a lop-eared rabbit hopped around the room. Mornings, we would eat pancakes or oatmeal with, yes, real Vermont maple syrup, before returning to the woods. I was in heaven.
 
From that moment forward, I wanted to live in Vermont. Eight years ago, it finally happened. Retired from the practice of law, my husband and I moved into a house in Northern Vermont. The previous owner left us a gift of a jar of maple syrup, tapped from trees on our six acres. We've thought about doing it ourselves, but it's just so easy to go buy some from a neighbor. Besides, I'm lazy - and I have books to write.
 
So whoever came up with the idea of taking sap from trees?
 
Native Americans discovered maple sugar and were tapping trees and boiling the sap down long before Europeans ever reached northern New England and learned the process from them. (It was generous of the tribes to share their information, considering what Europeans would do to them.) 
 
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the new Americans boiled the maple sap down completely to make a rich dark sugar. The sugar kept indefinitely, which syrup would not. 
 
Cane sugar became cheaper in the early 19th century but lost its appeal to many northerners before and during the civil war, because cane sugar growers relied on slavery. Sugar made from maple syrup gained in popularity in the north, and in 1870, Vermont was the leading producer. 
 
By the end of the 19th century, cane sugar became cheaper, and maple sugar became a luxury, and some of it became syrup instead of sugar. In the early 20th century, syrup was the main maple product. In 1920, Vermont produced 3.5 million gallons of maple syrup.
 
How's it made?
 
Maple syrup requires tapping the trees and taking the sap at just the right time. People used to do it with buckets and metal taps. Now, many syrup producers have acres lined with plastic tubes running from tree to tree, which saves labor and allows the collection of more sap.
 
Gathering the sap requires temperatures to be above freezing during the day, but below freezing at night. Once temperatures rise above freezing around the clock, the season is over. Generally, trees are tapped for about 6 weeks in the February to April range, although recently seasons have shortened due to warmer temperatures - and yes, global warming may eventually end maple syrup - as well as life as we know it.
 
The sap is boiled down in the sugar houses that are all over Vermont - and are fun to visit, when you're next in the state. It takes 50 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. 
 
Is it healthy?
 
Well, yeah, okay, it's sugar. High in carbohydrates, no fiber, no protein, and yup, it's going to raise your blood sugar, especially if you have it with pancakes or ice cream. Not good if you're diabetic. Not good to eat in excess.
 
But still, of the sugars out there (and don't even mention artificial sweeteners), maple may be one of the healthiest.  It's filled with minerals, magnesium, potassium, calcium, zinc, and it is rich in antioxidants. WebMD  even claims that maple syrup may protect against Alzheimer’s. The jury is still out, but it gives me an excuse to keep eating it. That and the taste.
 
And finally, a recipe.
 
Everything tastes better with maple syrup. I was going to put up the recipe for maple pecan pie, but I'm writing this while visiting family - and alas - that recipe is not on my computer. Instead, I'm offering a recipe for maple syrup pumpkin pie - in honor of October. I do not have any crust recipes because, as previous mentioned, I'm lazy (and a little inept at crust making). I prefer the store-bought kind.
 
So here it is:

Maple Syrup Pumpkin Pie
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• 2 large eggs
• 1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin puree
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Step 1
Set an oven rack in the lowest position and heat oven to 350º F. Place the pie plate on a foil-lined baking sheet.
Step 2
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, pumpkin, cream, maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, salt, and cloves.
Step 3
Pour the pumpkin mixture into the crust and bake until the center is set, 60 to 70 minutes. Let cool to room temperature before serving.
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Happy October! Enjoy! And may the syrup be ever in your flavor.

Mid-September, and intimations of autumn are all around us. In Vermont, wild apples are falling off trees lining the sides of road, and the leaves are beginning their short lived riot of color. Autumn has always been my favorite season - the beauty, the flavors, the feel of it. I remain a firm devotee of pumpkin (despite the scorn sometimes heaped on it) - pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and of course pumpkin spice lattes  (which have no actual pumpkin but I don't care.) Freshly picked ripe apples are spectacular, as are apple cider, apple pie, apple crisp. It's the season where I break out the camera and go for long drives in my never-ending quest to capture the perfect image of the season.

My favorite holiday, both as a child and when my children were young, was always Halloween. It wasn't the candy - okay, part of it was the candy - but it was so much more than the candy. It was the decorations, the spookiness, the feeling of magic in the air, and the excitement of children dressing up in costumes and venturing out into the scary night to ring the doorbells of strangers.

Even in my younger days, though, I felt the melancholy beneath the delights of the seasons. The glory of autumn is a prelude to the darkness and cold of winter. The brilliant displays of color that disappear so quickly remind me of the shortness of life and the speed at which everything disappears. The flavors of apple and pumpkin - well, there's no downside to the seasonal treats, except for gaining weight. But nevertheless,   autumn brings forth our thoughts on mortality.

One of the most poignant poems of the season, Spring and Fall  by Gerald Manly Hopkins, describes a young girl weeping over the falling of golden leaves without quite knowing why she's crying. The poet, seeing the child's grief and her innocence, realizes that someday she will grieve for more than fallen leaves.
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.

Which pretty much sums it up - now, in autumn, I do weep and know why. Both my parents died in the fall: my father on September 15, 2014, and my mother on October 4, 2008. In Jewish tradition, despite being a hardcore agnostic - if agnostics by definition can be hardcore - I light a candle on the anniversaries of their deaths on the Hebrew calendar and recite Kaddish, the mourner's prayer. For me, the season has become not just a symbol of mortality, it has become the season of grief. Now, with the passage of time since their deaths, the grief has become muted, but still, every autumn, I remember my parents - and remember losing them.

Those feelings are amplified by the High Holy Days in the Jewish religion, which fall sometime between August and the end of October, depending on the year. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are not so much a joyous celebration of the start of a new year in the Jewish calendar as a solemn contemplation of the  fragility of life and the speed at which it goes. We look back on the year and think of what we could have done better. And we remember those who have passed. I remember my parents, not only because they both died in the fall, but because going to services for the High Holy Days was something we did together from my childhood through my teen years. And then on Yom Kippur, there is the Yizkor service - where we chant prayers in memory of our dead. As a child, I would leave the sanctuary before Yizkor began - those who have not lost a close family member are not supposed to take part. My parents would stay to recite the prayers for their parents. Now I stay, non-religious though I may be, to say the prayers for them.   In the rustling of leaves, and in the beauty of autumn, we remember them. 

I still love autumn. It's still my favorite season. Pumpkins, apples, bright leaves, Halloween all retain their appeal. But it is also a season of sadness. Now at my age, I suspect that I continue to love autumn not despite the melancholy that the season evokes, but because of it. 

Topic of the day: what's with all the different courts in the United States? It's confusing and annoying especially if you're a writer, not accustomed to the weirdness of the system. But if you're writing about the law or the legal system in the United States - or if you're just reading about it - you might want to know something of the basics.

We have a multilayered system in this country - which means that we have individual states and individual state laws and state courts; county/municipal laws and courts; and federal laws and federal courts.

​Every state has different laws. The different cities in every state have different laws.  If you're driving across the country, you might not want to pack your edible cannabis- which is legal in some states but can land you in deep trouble in others. Sometimes cities will have different laws  from the state on guns or cannabis, and sometimes the state will  tell the cities that, no, they can't have different laws. And don't forget that there's another layer - federal laws.  

Federal law trumps state law except when it doesn't. Or when the Supreme Court says it doesn't.

Generally, violations of federal law go to federal court, violations of state laws go to state courts, violations of constitutional rights can be brought in either, but the federal courts are the last resort. Unless they don't want to be.

Most people understand that the laws are different. But court rules and court procedures are also widely different, and not just from state to state and from state to federal. Different federal district courts - within the same state or the same circuit - can have very different rules and procedures.

Whaddaya mean court rules and procedures?

Rules govern everything from how you file a case to how you try it - how much time you have to file to case, even how big the print has to be on your briefs.  Violate those rules and it doesn't matter how good your case is -you can be an innocent person on death row - you can be the winner of the Nobel Peace prize - your case can and most probably will be dropped kicked out of court - and if you (or rather your lawyer) are out of time to fix it, you're done. 

People with innocence claims have been executed because their lawyers missed filing deadlines.

Doesn't seem right - because it isn't right - but that's how this game is played.

There are too many cases and too many lawyers. Court clerks are delighted to find these technical mistakes that can cut down on the caseload. If clerks can find violations of a procedural rule, they're happy to drop kick that case, even at the cost of someone's life.

​What does it mean for a lawyer?

As a lawyer, you have to know the rules in the court where you're practicing, and that also means you have to be admitted to practice in that particular court. Generally, you get admitted to a state, and you can practice anywhere in that state. You can try a case in family court or you can argue in the state supreme court. Whether you're competent to do either - whole other question - but as long you're admitted to the state, you're in.

Federal system - meh, not so fast. Every district court that you want to appear in - as in file a lawsuit, appear in court, whatever - you have to be admitted. Then you need to be admitted to the Court of Appeal to argue an appeal. And to argue in the Supreme Court, yup, have to admitted there too.

Keeping track of it all is a pain. It's why we lawyers feel justified charging the big bucks.

What does it mean for the writer?

 If it's a crime story or a legal thriller that goes into the courtroom, the writer has to know not only what the laws are of the particular city/state where the story is set - but what court the case would be brought in. You don't have to go into the details - most people won't be interested in the technical aspects of lawyering. Just don't make a mistake that will have lawyers rolling in the aisles with laughter.

When in doubt, make friends with a lawyer in the right jurisdiction.



 




 

 

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