Paul Doiron's Blog

I’m pleased to announce the dates of my official tour for Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Stories. I’ll be adding library appearances and other special events through the spring, summer, and fall so keep checking my events page: https://www.pauldoiron.com/events

I get that many authors are introverts. I am too. But writing can be lonely work! That is why I always look forward to my annual summer book tour. Meeting my readers is what keeps me going and inspires me to create new Mike Bowditch adventures. If I happen to be visiting a bookstore in your neck of the woods while I'm promoting Pitch Dark, I would very much enjoy meeting you. Please introduce yourself!

You can find a constantly updated list of my events at my website. And note: I will be adding additional stops and dates for the late summer in the coming weeks.

“Would you ever come to [X] on one of your book tours?” I’m often asked by readers. The answer is yes. I love to travel. But there is a method to getting your city on my official itinerary. My publisher has a marketing budget and only adds stops where I’ve been enthusiastically invited by bookstores with histories of successful events. As a reader and customer, you can help by speaking directly with the manager or program coordinator of your local bookseller and being politely insistent that they need to reach out to the publicity department of St. Martin’s Press and request that they schedule an author event with me. I can’t promise anything, but it’s our best bet.

Every year, when I have a new book out, I receive an invitation from the good people at Maine's NBC affiliate WCSH6 to appear on their popular "207" show. Here I am talking with Rob Caldwell about the just released DEAD MAN'S WAKE.

Paul Doiron talks with Rob Caldwell of WCSH TV’s “207” show about his new novel, DEAD MAN’S WAKE.

In less than two weeks I'll be starting my national book tour for DEAD MAN'S WAKE. I'd enjoy meeting you if I'm in your neck of the woods. I'll be adding places and dates through the summer so keep checking my events page.

Now THIS is a giveaway. Want to win all 14 Mike Bowditch books, including an advance reader's copy of DEAD MAN'S WAKE (coming June 27)? Minotaur Books is making it happen. The contest runs through May 6. Enter here: https://read.macmillan.com/promo/mikebowditchseriessweeps/

My publisher Minotaur Books (an imprint of St. Martin's Press) is giving away 25 advance copies of my forthcoming novel, DEAD MAN'S WAKE (in stores 6/27). These are uncorrected galleys, not the final hardcovers—but close enough. You'll need to sign up for Goodreads to enter, but it's pretty painless in my experience. You might even enjoy Goodreads if you haven't tried the site before! Jut click the link to enter. May the odds be ever in your favor. https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/359929-dead-man-s-wake

I don’t often write about the reasons behind the choices I make in my novels. But I thought readers might find it interesting to learn why I chose to set my forthcoming Mike Bowditch novel, Dead Man’s Wake, on Great Pond in Belgrade. In general I prefer to set the stories in real Maine place, but sometimes that isn’t possible, given the violent content. (I don’t want people freaking out about real seabird islands!)

With Dead Man’s Wake, I needed a real lake with an affluent summer population. Having never written about that corner of Kennebec County, I decided that the time had come for me to visit the historic Belgrade Lakes region. The area is home to some crazy episodes many of which didn’t get into the novel. Elizabeth Arden once ran a destination spa there. Judge Crater famously disappeared on his way back to his cottage in Belgrade.

Some things that did make the novel: The lakes are home to some of Maine’s most storied summer camps. My favorite Maine author (E.B. White) wrote my favorite Maine essay (“Once More to the Lake") about Great Pond. A mailboat still delivers mail to docks along the water in an age when the Postal Service is slashing services to the bone everywhere else. And a very famous play and movie rebranded the lake forever as “Golden Pond” (although the film with the Fondas was made in New Hampshire). Indeed, a friend who is a year-round Belgrade resident introduced me to the concept of “Golden Pond Syndrome” which still entices starry-eyed cottage buyers to purchase property along a pond that bears little resemblance to its fictional ideal.

Writing murder mysteries is an inherently subversive, macabre, and often perverse activity, and I must confess that I couldn’t think of a better place to set my wickedly violent tale than a lake enveloped in such an enduring pink cloud. The Mike Bowditch books are about showing the Maine you find scurrying and wriggling when you lift the log labeled Vacationland and expose the underside to the light. What better place to expose the dirty underside than “Golden Pond”?

I am beyond humbled to announce that DEAD BY DAWN has won the New England Society’s 2022 Book Award for Fiction.

Founded in New York City in 1805, with a membership that has included Daniel Webster, J.P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, and JFK, among many others, the organization devotes itself to charitable projects in addition to sponsoring these annual awards, honoring "books of merit that celebrate New England culture."

Recent recipients include my fellow Mainers Lily King, Author, Christina Baker Kline, and Monica Wood. It's very much a "one of these things is not like the others" moment for me, but I am sincerely grateful to the judges for finding my thriller worthy of this esteemed company.

One of my favorite parts about going on a book tour is visiting WSCH 6 television and talking about the new novel with Rob Caldwell on 207. Rob always asks such great questions. With a setting as offbeat as the one in HATCHET ISLAND, it made for an especially freewheeling conversation.