A Coastal Corpse (Seffi Wardwell Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Maine
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently Published (August 31, 2023)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 298 pages

Just what the doctor ordered: fresh salt air, a garden to tend… and a fresh corpse behind the dahlias?

Retired science teacher Seffi Wardwell has moved to coastal Maine looking for peace, fresh air, and an accepting community. So far, she’s enjoying the sea air.

When a corpse turns up in Seffi’s flower garden, she can’t help asking questions about the victim and his death. Police officer Miah Cox doesn’t want her assistance, but Seffi’s curiosity is what made her a scientist.

The more she learns about the dead man’s background, the more she wants to know. Estranged from his wealthy family, and a village pariah for something that happened years before, the dead man had plenty of enemies. At least one wanted to make him disappear forever, and they’re all eager to see this case wrapped up and forget about him.

The way Seffi sees it, somebody has to care about him, and as a fellow outsider, she’s it. But all of her poking around is stirring up trouble in the village. It’s up to Seffi and Miah to figure out whodunit before they strike again, and before the locals decide the handiest scapegoat is Seffi herself.

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Washed Up With the Tide (Seffi Wardwell Mysteries)
by Rebecca Douglass
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Maine
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently Published (November 18, 2024)
Print length ‏ : ‎ 270 pages

Synopsis

Beautiful weather, bountiful baked goods, and… bodies on the beach?

Seffi’s pleasure in her long walks among the fall colors is more than a little marred when she encounters cantankerous fisherman Bob Hughes washed up on the shore—sodden, entangled in a net, and very definitely dead. Did the man drink too much and fall overboard in an unfortunate accident? Or was his death something more sinister? With an estranged wife, enemies in the fishing fleet, and ticked-off deckhands, there are plenty of people around Smelt Point who aren’t sorry he’s dead. But did any of them actually kill him? The scuttlebutt at the bakery raises more questions than it answers, and to top it off the fishermen gathering there have eaten Seffi’s favorite treats.

Once again Seffi needs all her reasoning and gossip-gathering talents to help village policeman Miah Cox get to the bottom of the mystery. But will Miah’s own secret tear the village apart?

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Guest Post

Worldbuilding

I used to think that worldbuilding was something that writers of SF and fantasy have to do, not people who write contemporary realistic (well, sort of realistic?) fiction. But every book has a setting, and even if you use a real place, which I don’t care to do, you have to build that world for yourself as a writer and for your readers. That turns out to be both a lot of fun and a bit of a headache.

When Seffi Wardwell chose to move from California to the coast of Maine, I had a modest amount of experience visiting around there, and a pretty good idea of the sort of place I wanted her to live. Building the village wasn’t too hard, though I don’t think you’ll find any place quite like Smelt Point if you go looking. One prerogative of writing not-too-realistic fiction is the right to make things up. I could pick and choose aspects of places I’d seen, visited, or just read about, and added a bit of research into Maine history and character to help me make things right.

One thing I never expected was how much time I would spend studying tide charts, schedules for sunrise and sunset, and precipitation records! Maybe because I’m an outdoor person who was married to a meteorologist, those things matter to me. If Seffi is going to walk on a shore that is only walkable at half tide or lower, then I need to be sure that her schedule fits with how the tides work. If she’s outside in January (coming next!), then I need to know just how cold it might be and how deep the snow is apt to get.

I have also walked forests and reserves along the coast with an eye to the trees, plants, types of trails, and anything else Seffi might encounter when she ventures into the woods on Painter Head. And about that—the headland isn’t named for artists, but for panthers (mountain lions)—called “painters” in certain American dialects. Seffi is a botanist by training, as well as a science teacher for 40 years, so she’s paying attention to that stuff.

I, on the other hand, am not a botanist, though again, long association with people like that has rubbed off some. So I am seeing the forest not with an eye to the exact species, but looking for how it feels, what the trails are like to walk.

Seffi’s world grows a little with each book. If you notice a new business or long-time resident from one book to another, that seems to be the way a place reveals itself to a writer, or at least to this writer. I get to have fun with lists and documents trying to keep track of the people and places, and every time I’m in Maine I’m looking for and photographing places that make me think of elements of the village. Sometimes I see something that I think ought to be there, but isn’t yet. I reserve the right to add them, but I’m also a person who likes things to be consistent when I read a series, so I won’t be throwing in any shockers.

My biggest regret when I’m working on building a world, whether it’s Seffi’s Smelt Point or JJ MacGregor’s Pismawallops Island, is that I can’t draw a map to save my life. I’d love to have gorgeous little line maps in the front of my books showing the setting, but I can’t do it. And maybe that’s a good thing, because with the worlds constantly evolving, I might be sorry if I got too concrete with things.

Another aspect of world-building is creating the characters. I’ve discovered a new fun distraction there: looking at the character sketches I wrote before drafting A Coastal Corpse. I’m now working on the 4^th book in the series, so there have been a lot of changes and discoveries since then, and not all the people are quite who I thought they were! It’s one thing to plant the various structures of the village in place and leave them there. The people seem to be a great deal less cooperative, and they will go developing lives of their own.

But in the end, that’s part of why we write: to find out more about the people who insist on living in our heads!

About the Author

Rebecca M. Douglass has lived and worked around the American West for more years than she’ll admit, while raising two children to adulthood and dreaming up interesting ways to bump people off. Thanks to good friends in Maine, she has also spent time on the other side of the country and has fallen in love with that coast. Since retiring from work at the library, the author of the Ninja Librarian series for younger readers and the Pismawallops PTA mystery series now lives in Seattle, where she is writing the Seffi Wardwell mysteries. She has also had short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. When she isn’t writing, Ms. Douglass likes to go hiking and backpacking or to travel to discover new places or revisit old favorites, including the Grand Canyon and of course Maine, where so many of the best cozy mysteries are found.

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