Edith Maxwell
Author Interview - Edith Maxwell
Author I draw inspiration from: I really admire my friend Sheila Connolly, who writes four novels in four series every year. I try to channel her creativity and energy when I am churning out only three a year.
Author Interview - Edith Maxwell
Favorite place to read a book: In nice weather I like to sit on my deck with my feet up. During colder times, you can find me reading on the couch, often with a cat in my lap.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: I’d love to be stuck with Sarah Brandt, the midwife sleuth in Victoria Thompson’s long-running Gaslight Mysteries series. Sarah sticks up for herself and the downtrodden in 1900 New York, and doesn’t let her privileged upbringing govern her life.
Author Interview - Edith Maxwell
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: I loved writing fiction as a child. When I won a short story contest at the age of nine and my story, “The Viking Girl,” was published in the Pasadena Star News (with a prize of two dollars!), I felt validated. But I didn’t think of myself as a novelist until decades later. My younger son went off to kindergarten, I hadn’t yet re-entered the full-time workforce away from home, and for the first time since I’d had kids I had every morning to myself. I started writing what ended up some years later as my second mystery, A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die. That was when I got the dream lust to be published and become a “real” author.
Author Interview - Edith Maxwell
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: Yes, please! I love reading on paper, and either format is fine. But you can’t beat a Kindle for traveling and an audiobook for long solo car trips. They’re all books, and I’m an insatiable reader.
The last book I read: Gigi Pandian’s The Alchemist’s Illusion
Author Interview - Edith Maxwell
Pen & paper or computer: I write my books at one of two laptops. But when I need to brainstorm, or if I’m stranded somewhere longer than I expected, I can write a lot with pen and paper.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: I know my Quaker midwife Rose Carroll would be a close friend. And I would love to hang out with Reine-Marie, Gamache’s wife in the Louise Penny mysteries.
Author Interview - Edith Maxwell
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be: A lost person! I have several past careers – teacher, farmer, doula, car mechanic, technical writer – but this one makes me happier than all of them and I can’t imagine ceasing writing.
Favorite decade in fashion history: The 1920s. After the Great War, women tossed their corsets, loosened their gowns, brought up their hems, and generally enjoyed themselves. Who doesn’t love a flapper dress?
Place I’d most like to travel: I’d love to spend a month cooking in and exploring Italy.
My signature drink: I love a fat glass of a smooth, rich-bodied red wine.
Favorite artist: Jackie Knight is a talented Boston-area artist who painted the picture called Edith’s World, which hangs on my office wall. My best friend commissioned it for my last big birthday, and it’s the art I use for my web site banner and on my bookmarks.
Number one on my bucket list: Going back to my Celtic roots by visiting Scotland and Ireland. One day soon!
Anything else you'd like to add: I’m delighted Quaker Midwife Mystery #4 is out, and I am happy to announce the series is moving over to Beyond the Page Publishing. Look for Judge Thee Not to release this fall! There will be at least two more in the series after that.
Bio: Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries, the Local Foods Mysteries, and award-winning short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Maxwell, with seventeen novels in print and four more completed, has been nominated for an Agatha Award six times. She lives north of Boston with her beau and two elderly cats, and gardens and cooks when she isn’t killing people on the page or wasting time on Facebook. Please find her at edithmaxwell.com, on Instagram, and at the Wicked Authors blog.
