T-burg native publishes third mystery novel

Though Mary Maki currently lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a piece of her heart will always belong to Trumansburg, where she grew up, went to school and spent her days taking in the nature around her.

“My personal playground was Taughannock Falls State Park, and in those days, you could allow your young daughter to go down there and ride her bike on those paved roadways for hours,” Maki said.

Maki grew up on Taughannock Boulevard. While her parents and grandparents operated Taughannock Farms Inn from 1946 to 1975, Maki attended Willow Creek, a two-room school, through third grade and continued attending Trumansburg schools until graduating in 1965. After that, she stayed close to home for a while.

“My husband and I lived in Newfield for 24 years before we moved to Newtown, Connecticut,” she said.

Maki has been interested in genealogy for much of her life, but it wasn’t until much later in life that she used that interest to become a family historian.

“I learned through genealogy that writing helps you make sense of things, so I started writing monographs of my ancestors,” Maki said.

Soon after, Maki joined a memoir group at her then-local library in Connecticut. Just a few years ago, the Ulysses Historical Society back home asked her to transcribe its oral histories, first done by Ruth Farrell and then by her former babysitter, Sylvia English Potter.

In 2008, Maki saw the effects of the recession and was saddened by how her friends and neighbors were being impacted.

“I didn’t see people that had caused this financial problem being held responsible, and I said, ‘But what can I do about it?’” Maki said. “I just said, ‘Well, I can write.’”

That year, she finally convinced herself to apply all her experience to writing fiction. She started writing her first mystery novel, but she put it down halfway through when the story stopped flowing.

“I had the wrong story and the wrong time frame,” Maki said.

In 2014, after Maki retired, she decided to pick the story back up, changing the protagonist and the setting. A year later, she finished the novel – a mystery featuring sleuth Caitlyn Jamison set in the fictional town of Riverview.

The first novel’s plot follows Jamison, a graphic designer by trade, as she learns of her cousin’s murder and leaves her comfortable life in Washington, D.C. to travel to the Finger Lakes Region and solve the case.

“If you’re going to have a protagonist that’s going to solve mysteries, they can’t be chained to a desk, so I had to give Caitlyn a job where she could move around,” Maki said.

Riverview, Maki said, is strongly based on her hometown of Trumansburg, with much of the landscape and culture being consistent with where she grew up.

“When I was trying to decide on a setting, there was no question for me,” Maki said. “I spent so much time in the park walking the gorge area, and it just became part of me.”

Maki shared the novel with her friends, who gave her some constructive feedback on how to improve the story. Still, she never planned to publish it. But the overwhelmingly positive response from her friends and family as she went on finally convinced her to publish Caitlyn Jamison’s first story – “An Unexpected Death.”

“To my great surprise, the book was well received by readers in Virginia and in the Finger Lakes Region,” Maki said.

With the momentum from the first book on her side, Maki began working on the next novel in the series, and in 2017, she published “Fatal Dose: A Caitlyn Jamison Mystery.” This book was once again well received, and soon after, she presented in Newfield, Lansing, Ovid and Trumansburg libraries about her writing. Those, too, had a great response.

Now, Maki has published the third novel in her series, “The Death of Cassie White: A Caitlyn Jamison Mystery,” and is currently working on the fourth Jamison mystery and a separate suspense novel.

Maki said that her writing journey was a difficult one, as she was essentially self-taught.

“Writing itself is a challenge because I wasn’t trained as a writer, so I’ve had to learn a lot, and I have learned a lot along the way,” she said. “I do it because I want a challenge, and I want to learn.”

One of the things she learned is that she had to keep a consistent schedule, and now, almost every day, she starts writing around 8 a.m. and keeps writing for a few hours. She adds to her skill set by reading books and blogs about writing and hearing from the members of her writing groups.

Though Maki starts a story with a general plotline and intended ending in mind, she prioritizes effective character development as the real story-driver.

“My favorite is just getting in and getting started and just going and letting the characters develop,” Maki said. “What I learned really early on is that once your characters are developed, they will take over the story.”

And when she has writer’s block, Maki likes to get up and walk around or even swim, one of her favorite pastimes.

“I can hit a real wall and then go for a good swim, and within 10 minutes, I’ve broken through that wall, so that’s the key,” she said. “You just have to get up and get away from it and move around. … It works every time.”

Though she lives in a totally different state, Maki said Trumansburg and her experiences living there continue to inspire her writing. She loves having writing as a hobby while she’s retired, and she likes to share that love with others.

Maki lives in a retirement community with her husband and talks to other folks her age about writing. She urges them to “leave a trace,” whether that’s through journaling, writing a memoir or even going her route and publishing a full-length novel. She hopes to inspire others, whether in her current home of Virginia or in her childhood home of Trumansburg, that anyone can pick up writing with the right amount of drive.

“It doesn’t matter where you are in life; you can start writing right now,” Maki said.