LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

Freedom Road

Spring is coming (I’m assured), the days are getting longer, and the usual frenetic pace of life is about to go into overdrive. This winter, everything seems to have multiplied. I started the winter with one sedate, elderly dog, then acquired a puppy, and have been playing catch-me-if-you-can ever since. Last year at this time, I had one series, and one book to worry about. Now I have three. Three different types of books, three different areas of research, two different publishers. Launches and readings and tours… Oh my.

Over the next three months, I will be flying to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, flying to Halifax and back, then out to Vancouver and Victoria, and in between, making at least two road trips to Toronto. At least on those, I get to take the dogs. And this is all before the planned six-week road trip to the Atlantic provinces and Newfoundland to research Project #3. On this trip too, I get to take the dogs. I will be traveling with my sister, who is co-authoring Project #3 and who has a 95-pound golden retriever that is also coming along. My puppy loves him, a good thing (perhaps) since they will be sharing the backseat together, along with my sedate, elderly dog who would rather be anywhere else.

Being on a tight budget, since no one ever said this writing gig was lucrative, we are taking a tent. We are hoping to find cabins and motels willing to take three dogs which are all well over the preferred 25-lb limit, but these may be thin on the ground. They call Newfoundland “The Rock”. How hard can the ground be? As a Plan C, my sister and I hope the back of our rented van can sleep three dogs and two middle-aged women who may have lost considerable weight by the middle of this trip.

Along the way, while researching Project #3, I hope to find some opportunities to promote my two recently released books, BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD and THE FALL GUY. That should appease the taxman. With any luck, I’ll have time at least to think about the sequels to both those books. One being the next Inspector Green novel, which at the moment is little more than a title and a twinkle in my eye, and the second being the next Cedric O’Toole Rapid Reads novella from Orca. Will I get a spare moment, do you think?

Meanwhile, people from my former, hectic, full-time professional life keep asking me, with a touch of envy, how much I’m enjoying retirement. Uhuh. That would be when I’m sitting in a rocking chair on the porch knitting mittens for my grandchildren?

To quote the non-geezer generation… As if.


Barbara Fradkin is a child psychologist with a fascination for how we turn bad. In addition to her darkly haunting short stories in the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, she writes the gritty, Ottawa-based Inspector Green novels which have
won back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, which explores love in all its complications, is hot off the press.