Monhegan Island & New Harbor, inspirations for my novel

My love for Maine islands and harbor towns inspired me to write a contemporary young adult novel about a mainland girl and an island lobster fisherman. With my manuscript shipped out to literary agents, I'm feeling nostalgic. Two years ago, I rented a boat house apartment on Monhegan Island to gather offseason material for my work-in-progress. It's a long journey to publication, and I'm not yet anchored.

When my kids came home from college with a friend, they wanted to show her Monhegan. The ferry leaves from New Harbor, an hour drive up the coast from us. My fictional Port George was modeled on this working harbor with a bit of Port Clyde and Brunswick added to the mix. The floating dock rises and sinks with the tide, making it easier for the lobster fishermen to unload their catch.

The only way to reach Monhegan is by boat. It's ten miles out to sea and too small for a airport. Just 42 people live year round on the island. I increased the population to 200 for my fictional island because I needed more teenage characters. The largest building is a hotel.

Tourist season starts Memorial Weekend and winds down around Columbus Day. Monhegan is a rustic place to vacation, but people like us keep returning for more. In the shoulder season, most visitors are birders tracking migrations (plus one nosy writer researching her novel).

Jamie Wyeth's house was the inspiration for my character's home; it's my dream house too.

Monhegan has 12 miles of trails, scrambling up and down the cliffs and meandering through the woods. This time I was retracing my character's footsteps, remembering lines with a satisfied smile.

It was quite a workout keeping up with my fit kids but worth it for the stunning view.

After several hours of hiking, we rewarded ourselves with homebrewed root beer for the girls, stout for my son, and Quad British style ale for me. Monhegan Brewing Co also brews an excellent ginger beer for those who feel seasick.

The co-owner of the brewery hauls lobsters too; Matt answered many questions for my novel. He was busy stacking traps in the beer garden at the close of the island lobster fishing season.


It was now time for the lobsters and us to migrate back to the mainland. On the ferry ride back, the captain pointed out a bald eagle and I spotted a pod of harbor porpoises. What a perfect day!

You can read more about my novel and Monhegan Island here:

Researching a Novel on Monhegan Island (my one-week retreat)
Sunrise on Monhegan Island (artsy photos)
Port Clyde to Monhegan Island (follow up research)
Factual Accuracy in Fiction: does it matter? (writing about Maine)
Monhegan Island, Maine (a family vacation)

Port Clyde to Monhegan Island, researching a novel

Last week my daughter and I visited Monhegan Island, twelve nautical miles off the Maine coast. I was gathering more material for my young adult novel, and my daughter was gathering botanical samples for her senior project. As we waited for the ferry in Port Clyde, she read a draft of my manuscript. My work in progress is set in a harbor town similar to Port Clyde, and one of the characters is an island lobsterman.

Riding the small mailboat ferry out to sea feels like traveling back in time.

Out the bow windows, Monhegan slowly appears on the horizon, rising out of the sea. The island community just celebrated 400 years of settlement, although Native Americans inhabited it seasonally before the white settlers. Monchiggon was the Algonquin word for out-to-sea island. There are around 40 year round residents currently, depending on how you measure residency. The only access is by ferry, with infrequent service off season. Summer people and birders start arriving Memorial Day weekend.

The largest building is The Island Inn, where we stayed since the beachside apartment I rented last spring was unavailable. The Island Inn offered a good deal on a two room suite in their meadowside cottage (the bi-colored house with the dormer windows) with an excellent breakfast buffet. More rustic options are the Monhegan House and the Trailing Yew, which I've enjoyed other visits. All serve breakfast and dinner since there are no restaurants on island. On season there are two coffee shops, a pizza parlor and an excellent brewery (open until 6pm), where visitors and islanders congregate. There is no nightlife after dinner.

Monhegan is lovely in late May with the forsythia and fruit trees blooming, attracting migrating warblers. Spring lags two to three weeks behind the mainland. It's chillier in the spring and summer, although warmer in winter since the sea moderates temperatures. Many days are cloaked in thick fog.

We were lucky to have sunny 60 degree weather for our hike day. A narrow cliffside trail encircles the island, granting breathtaking views (ie time to stop and catch your breath and take photos!) Hiking the full outer trail would take four to five hours at a leisurely pace.

Hiking boots are a good idea, although there are easy trails leading directly to lookout points, like Whitehead. Below the 160 foot cliffs, lobster pots bob in the surf.

The natural beauty of this remote island never ceases to enchant me. It hasn't changed much in the twenty-four years that I've been visiting it. I've taken countless photos, painted watercolors and now I'm writing a scene set on a fictional island like Monhegan.

I was so pleased that my daughter chose Monhegan Island as one of her eight collection sites for her senior project. She's researching medicinal uses of native Maine plants. I'll share some of her exquisite drawings in a future post.

I can't believe that my daughter is graduating from high school next week. It's been so special having this time to explore the Maine woods together and to share our passion for nature and art. I'll be offline next week, celebrating with my family.

At the end of the day we hiked up to the lighthouse to enjoy the sunset over the ocean, quite a rare treat for those of us on the east coast. The clear golden light was worth the journey on its own.

You can read more about my young adult novel and Monhegan Island here.

Next post: Wednesday, June 17th.

Eider Ducks at Dusk, Monhegan Island, Maine

I'm on blog-vacation. See you in September!

Factual Accuracy in Fiction: does it matter?

Monhegan Island, Maine at night from a fact gathering trip for my work-in-progress

An author needs to create a world that is believable. When I spot factual errors in a book, even if it's fiction, the reality is broken for me. I don't expect perfection, but authors writing outside their personal experiences need to be more careful with the facts. Part of the reason I rarely review Maine novels if they aren't written by locals is that most people from away lack a basic understanding of my home state. If you use summer as a verb, I'm not the right reviewer for your book.

A day out lobstering in Harpswell to research my novel

I once read a "Maine" novel in which the lobstermen were loading their traps onto pickup trucks at the end of a summer day. In the real world, lobster traps are hauled up, the catch removed and then rebaited, but the traps usually remain in the ocean until the end of the season. The same book described a family as being so poor that they couldn't afford to repair their air conditioner. Most Maine residents live without air conditioning. It rarely gets too hot, and we have other priorities like heating our homes through the long winter. Yet another error: using a cell phone to navigate a boat. Once you're offshore, there isn't much reception. More importantly, you need a depth and tide chart to avoid the rocky shoals. Using a phone to navigate the coastal seas is not just inaccurate, it's dangerous misinformation. I didn't review that otherwise well-written book.

Rocky shoals off Monhegan Island

A related problem is not fact-checking. An author may do extensive research but can still get a few facts reversed or jumbled. Here's an example: a protagonist adjusts "aperture speed." In photography you can either change the shutter speed (how long the lens is open) or adjust the aperture (the size of the lens opening). There were other errors in a darkroom scene (eg film being processed in a red lit darkroom instead of in absolute darkness). Most readers wouldn't notice the slip, but I'm a photographer who cut her teeth in a darkroom before switching to digital. It was otherwise a really good book which captured the creativity of the arts. I may review it later.

The flipside of the factual coin is info dumping. Some books, especially historical fiction, are factually accurate to the point where the novel reads like a sixth grade Social Studies textbook. For example: I use my bone-handled knife to skin the seal in the manner that my grandmother once taught me. Nope. The native narrator wouldn't be consciously thinking about something she does everyday. If explanation is necessary for context, have an outsider ask questions. An author needs to be well informed to write believably, but that doesn't mean that the reader needs to be taught everything the author knows. Info dumping breaks the flow of a story and makes me quit reading. Keep your research file separate or consider switching to nonfiction.

Monhegan Harbor in fog

Finding factual errors in published books motivated me to be more careful with my own work-in-progress. Last month I interviewed a police officer for a drunk-driving arrest scene. After I wrote the scene, the officer fact-checked the pages and flagged a handful of errors, which I will correct. For drama, I might allow some flexibility with normal police procedure, but this will be a conscious choice, not a careless accident. My goal is to minimize factual errors to foster reality. (Thank you, Officer Dan Sylvain!)

Monhegan Harbor later the same day

The bottom line: write what you know or ask someone who knows to fact-check.

Where did I go?

Life saving station at Lobster Cove, Monhegan Island, Maine

Hello Again! Even my neighbors have been asking where I've been this summer.

At Burnt Head, Monhegan Island in May. Photo by a fellow hiker.

I've been revising a young adult novel. Although it required a week on a remote island, 

I didn't have to travel far for research.

Most of the time, I have been holed up in my home office, overlooking a riot of clematis.

Sometimes I revised en plein air. Every day was a work day. 

I was rushing to finish so that my teenaged beta testers could read over summer vacation.

Fish Beach, Monhegan Island

My 17-year-old daughter read in June, offering invaluable criticism. She would make a fine editor one day.

Monhegan Harbor at dusk

Now a girl in a harbor town, similar to my fictional one, is reading. I also asked for feedback 

from a Californian girl who knows nothing about Maine. There are a few adult readers too. 

A local police officer will fact check a crime scene. It's fiction, but I want to get it right.

Above and below: the pond on my daily walk at home.

With the manuscript gone for a few weeks, I'm finally free to catch up on life and on artwork. There's neglected housework too so I'm staying close to home. Luckily, no place is nicer than Maine in summer. 

What I'm reading now:
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier

Good Summer Books for Teens and Adults

Monhegan Island, Maine

Summer is time to read in a shady hammock or on the beach. If you can't travel, a good summer book will take you on vacation. I've compiled a list for adults and teens of recently published novels, some with links to full reviews posted earlier. If you want recommendations for younger readers, check out my Good YA Books for Tweens and Younger Teens.

Fiction for Adults

Right now I'm enjoying Euphoria by Maine author Lily King. It's a fictionalization of Margaret Mead's anthropological work and love affairs in New Guinea. I nearly majored in Anthropology at college and spent summers doing field research in remote areas so this subject fascinates me. Lily King is one of the authors whose books automatically go in my to be read stack. I loved her debut novel, The Pleasing Hour, about an American au pair in France. Father of the Rain was a beautifully written account of how alcoholism ruins a family. Euphoria seems just right for summer. Isn't the cover gorgeous? I'll post a full review after I finish reading it.

Summer vacation would be a good time to read the 770 page The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  The 2014 winner of the Pulitzer Prize follows a teenaged boy into an early adulthood muddled by drugs and art crime. This Dickensian novel with noir undertones is set in contemporary NYC, Vegas and Holland. It's bleak, verbose at times and received mixed reviews, but it's still worth reading.

If you crave something lighter, try Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen, a novel about brothers opening a trendy restaurant in Pennsylvania. Tempting Fate by Jane Green would be a good beach book for curious blog readers; the author used me as a physical model for her tempted protagonist! I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Rainbow Rowell's latest novel, Landline, next week.

Young Adult Fiction

If summer means travel and romance to you, you'll fall in love with The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith. During a blackout in NYC, a lonely rich girl gets trapped in an elevator with the building superintendent's son. As the star-crossed teens travel in opposite directions across the USA and Europe, they keep in touch via postcards. The chapters alternate between Lucy's and Owen's POV:

"But now, less than an hour later, he felt suddenly too aware of her, a presence beside him as prickly as the heat."

My only criticism of this charming novel is that there was too much focus on parents instead of peers, although that aspect would cross over well to an adult reader. Geography is similar to Smith's 2012 international hit, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight. Smith writes contemporary but timeless stories in a voice true to teens. She's one of my favorite YA authors.

The YA book that is garnering the most attention right now is We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. This June bestseller has a commercially sensational plot but is written in a literary style with allusions to King Lear and Wuthering Heights. Preppy teenagers and their greedy moms squabble over their inheritance on a private island off Martha's Vineyard with tragic consequences. It's a modern fairy tale with a grouchy old king, spoiled princesses and a politically correct pauper-prince. The protagonist is acutely aware of her privilege:

"I own a well-used library card and not much else, though it is true I live in a grand house full of expensive, useless objects."

We Were Liars reminded me a bit of the adult thriller, Gone Girl. I enjoyed it, but I didn't connect with any of the characters. They felt too contrived, arrogant and self-absorbed. Still, I kept reading eagerly to the surprising twist at the end. We Were Liars has style. E. Lockhart is on my favorite YA authors list; I loved her The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks too.

The Summer of Letting Go by Gae Polisner is also set on the shore, but the characters are more down to earth. Fifteen-year-old Frankie blames herself for her brother's death, who drowned at the beach four years ago. Frankie was only eleven-years-old, but her napping parents left her in charge of her 4-year-old brother. Four years later, Frankie meets a little boy who is so similar to her lost brother that she wonders if reincarnation is possible.

The Summer of Letting Go was really strong on loss, grief and recovery, but I wished Frankie had some cool interests of her own and wasn't completely defined by her loss. Also her best friend had as much character as a Barbie doll, and the love triangle didn't work for me. The little boy, however, was a delightful character, and I loved his relationship with Frankie. The writing was good too.

If you are looking for a literary historical romance, I'd strongly recommend Going Over by Beth Kephart, set in Berlin during the Cold War. Beth Kephart is another favorite YA author. Teenaged boys and Stephen King fans would enjoy Brutal Youth by Anthony Breznican, about hazing and bullying at a Catholic school in Pennsylvania. Roomies by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando would be a good pick for older teen girls thinking ahead to college. As would be Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, which is set at a college in the midwest. Fangirl was one of my favorite books from last year; it would crossover well to adults. Actually, most of these books would appeal to both adults and teens. Young adult is only a marketing category.

Next up on my to be read list is Born Confused (2002) by Tanuja Desai Hidier before the sequel, Bombay Blues, is published this fall. The cover caught my attention and the blurb hooked me: Dimple Lala doesn't know what to think. Her parents are from India, and she's spent her whole life resisting their traditions. Then suddenly she gets to high school and everything Indian is trendy. To make matters worse, her parents arrange for her to meet a "suitable boy." Of course it doesn't go well -- until Dimple goes to a club and finds him spinning a magical web. Suddenly the suitable boy is suitable because of his sheer unsuitability. Complications ensue. This is a funny, thoughtful story about finding your heart, finding your culture, and finding your place in America.

Reviewer's Disclosure: Lily King's daughter is on my daughter's track team. I also know the author from Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Jane Green is an art client and a friend. Beth Kephart is a blog buddy and a friend. I received free review copies of Bread & Butter, Tempting Fate, Roomies, Brutal Youth and Born Confused. The other books I purchased myself, most at indie bookstores.

Happy reading! I'm taking a week or two off from blogging to revise my work-in-progress before beta testing it on teen readers. Time for reflection...

Sunrise on Monhegan Island

Finally, I can share my Monhegan Island photos! I bought a new DSLR camera, a Canon EOS 70D, after giving my old Nikon D80 to my daughter for a photography course. In May I took my new camera on a writing retreat on Monhegan Island. When I tried to share my RAW photos, they were unreadable. Eek! The solution was updating my photo processing software. Lightroom 5 has cool new features. Have you ever taken a lighthouse photo that resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa (original photo at left)? Lightroom 5 can correct the wide-angle lens distortion (see top photo.)

My new Canon handles tricky lighting much better than my 2008 camera, but it's heavier, especially with an 18-135mm zoom lens. Even with an image stabilizer, it was hard to hold steady for a long exposure. Luckily my rental apartment had a deck with a flat railing overlooking the harbor. I held my breath and braced my elbows. Next time, I'll pack a tripod. Still, I'm impressed by how well the Canon captured twilight over the dimly illuminated dock, circling gulls and all.

The harbor was peaceful but not especially quiet. Before dawn, I was woken by a barking dog. I opened my eyes to rosy light and reached for my camera. Pulling a jacket over my pjs, I stepped out onto the deck. It was too early for lobstermen or birders so I had the beach to myself.

East of the harbor, the colors were shifting through the spectrum.

It was as if the lighthouse were illuminating the entire sky.

When I glanced back down at the harbor, I thought I was dreaming. After days of fog and rain...

I found gold!

The rainbow doubled, arching over the harbor. A wide-angle lens couldn't capture all of it. 

Even the seagulls seemed to watch in wonder. 

I'm not usually a morning person, but nothing is more lovely than the first light.

I will revisit these photos as I revise my novel, inspired by this special place. 

Disclosure: I received no free products nor any help from Adobe. Photoshop Lightroom 5 is a great product, but Adobe customer service is terrible. Luckily B&H Photo, where I bought my camera, has really good technical support both on the phone and in the NYC store. After trying several options, I liked the Canon EOS 70D best of all. I still need to figure out how to link the touch screen via wifi to an iPad. This post is dedicated to Barrie Summy and other island lighthouse fans.