Mystery Maven Canada

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2012-01-31T00:05:00.000-05:00

The authors who launch...

Sue Pike blogged a couple of weeks ago about Peggy Blair's upcoming book launch for her first novel, The Beggar's Opera. It will be held on Thurs., Feb. 16th in Ottawa and promises to be anything but ordinary. Her book is set in Havana and she's bringing the sounds and tastes of Cuba to this event. She's also not doing a reading! What next?

All kidding aside, it sounds like a great affair and I'm looking forward to buzzing it on my way to choir. But Peggy's plans got me to thinking about other launches, my own among them. It will be in April, a joint launch with Vicki Delany and her latest Klondike Gold Rush mystery.

I thought this was going to be relatively easy. I've planned many launches for and with authors over the years. But perhaps it's time to re-visit the old model and try for some creative flair. Thanks a lot, Peggy!

Vicki -- we'll talk!

The other launches I started wondering about are for authors with e-books. If that's your only format...what about the launch? Or will you even have one? Here again, it could be very creative -- no signing of a book cover but something else? Or is it strickly on-line, a blog party perhaps?

I haven't heard of an e-book launch but I'm sure they happen. Maybe you've even taken part in one. In this new age of publishing, what happens to the traditional book launch? Any suggestions?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2012-01-30T09:40:00.000-05:00

Action...roll cameras!

Elmore Leonard has scored another big hit with Justified, thanks to a Canadian writer. The Sunday Book section of the Ottawa Citizen, reports that the adaptation of Leonard's short story, now in its third season and airing in Canada tonight on SuperChannel, is just that, a hit. And Leonard credits Graham Yost with what "might just be the most incisive screen adaptation of any of his works". Good for Yost, and Leonard. It must be great to have one's words make it to any screen, little or big.

That is, when the writer is pleased with the end result. Often that rests on the choice of actors to play the lead roles. And quite often, the authors don't comment on that aspect. But the readers/viewers do.

We were having just that conversation last night and it revolved around what worked best -- reading the book before seeing the movie or vice versa? I have to admit, I was a huge Janet Evanovich fan when the Stephanie Plum books first came out. I knew if I wanted action and downright sexy scenes, laughing all the way through the book, she was my author. So now that the first novel is a movie, will I go and see it? I may wait for the TV version mainly because Katherine Heigl is no way close to the Stephanie Plum in my imagination for 17 books (yes, I've read them all, although have been skimming the later ones).

When I watched Gail Bowen's Joanne Kilbourn transformed on a series of made-for-TV movies, Wendy Crewson wasn't my visualization of the character either. But there were so made changes to the original books -- location, profession, back-story -- that I watched them as something new, and Thoroughly enjoyed them.

I wonder how Maureen Jennings feels about Yannick Bisson playing Murdoch? They got it right with Saul Rubinek as Benny Cooperman. On the foreign screens, they really missed the mark with Henning Mankell's wonderful Wallander books but hey, Kenneth Branagh is so much fun to watch. I haven't yet seen the American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, so no comment there.

With so many Canadian crime novels optioned for the TV screen, either a movies or series, (and there are several although most won't come to fruition if past practices are an indicator)...I'd be curious to know how these authors feel about turning their babies over to a screenwriter and to a producer who will decide on the embodiment of the main character.

But back to last night's discussion -- would you rather read the book first or see the movie first?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

CRIME ON MY MIND

2012-01-27T00:05:00.000-05:00

Those days of yore!

I seem to be in some kind of a reminiscing chain these days. I keep finding in my email those 'remember when' messages, often accompanied by pictures. The problem is, I do remember when. I prefer to think that means I have a good memory rather than I'm aging.

Yesterday I joined two friends for coffee. We've known each other for the 17 years I've been in the book world. One used to be a sales rep, then a store owner and continues working in the trade. The other was a sales rep who has recently retired but can't keep away from it -- she's now working in a local Indie. It's that bad -- it really gets in your system.

We got to 'remembering when' but it was the kind of nostalgia that bordered on the shared belief that those were 'the good old days'. We talked about customers we'd shared -- they would shop the Indies and knew us by name, and we, them. At times I bump into a former customer at a shopping mall or a choir event and they always say, 'I sure miss Prime Crime'. And, 'do you miss it?'. We still know each others' names.

There were the customers who would spend a couple of hours wandering, building a stack of books to buy, talking to other customers and staff, and just enjoying the bookstore experience. I do that whenever I go into a bookstore, especially when I'm traveling. Museums, art gallerys? Sure...but take me to your local bookstore, too.

Often when talking about buying books, people will say, 'I buy them on line these days.' There's nothing wrong with that. But there's none of the pleasure of being surrounded by shelves of books, touching them, looking at jackets, reading a few paragraphs. Imagining them stacked up on that ever-growing TBR pile.

I took great pleasure in introducing customers to a new author, pointing out the latest in a series I knew they were reading, or just sitting around talking books.

I thought, and still think, that bookstores are part of the fabric of a community. Sure, I do miss Prime Crime from time to time, the customers in particular, but I also miss the good old days when there were many Independent bookstores in town and we shared our love of the industry. Maybe I am getting old.

But the book community, every facet of it, is a wonderful one to be part of!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2012-01-26T00:05:00.001-05:00

More about the Morgan Library

As I wrote in a previous blog I found New York City’s Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum a marvelous place and I celebrated Pierpont Morgan’s obsession with books and his purchases of some of the rarest books of all time.

I wrote about the excerpts from Dicken’s novels and Dicken’s comments on writing.

In another display case I viewed a letter Virginia Woolf had written to a young poet. This originally appeared in the June 1932 Yale Review. In it she says she considers Jane Austen’s Emma and Trollope’s The Small House at Allington to be perfect books. She writes: “. . .each does fully and completely what the novel is intended to do. That is the characters in both of those books are wholly in being. They take the whole burden of the book upon themselves. . . Nothing is left over for Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope to explain in his or her person.”

As a lover of Austen I could understand what Woolf meant about Emma but I had never read Trollope’s novel which his publisher said was part of the Barchester Towers series while Trollope said it wasn’t.

Wikepedia provided a synopsis and led me to a web site by Catherine Pope who calls herself a ‘Victorian Geek’. She says The Small House at Allington blends with the others in the Barchester series like “an orange in a coal heap” a comparison I like. She dislikes Lily, the heroine, as a spineless woman but finds her sister, Bell, admirable. Unlike Woolf she doesn’t find the characters ‘fully realized.’

Whatever the contemporary verdict, having the letter there in the library to read did stimulate me to do some investigating of my own.

A second item in the display case, the first draft of John Steinbeck’s 1960 novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, again gave the viewer the chance to examine the yellow legal pad and to note the changes Steinbeck had made. Incidentally, he began with the opening soliloquy which he took from Richard II.

Seeing these first drafts reminded me of an experience I had at the University of New Brunswick. I had the opportunity to examine a large personal library immediately after it was given to the university. I poked through the books which were filled with marginal notes, underlining and yellowed copies of newspaper articles relating to a particular book.

Seen in its entirety the collection revealed the donor’s personality, interests and biases in a way that only an autobiography could do better. Later the books were sorted and shelved topically and the articles removed which was a pity.

It’s nice to relate to other people through hand written book drafts or an annotated library and it’s an opportunity that will happen less and less as those sfd’s are erased. Historians and aspiring writers will miss the work which provides insights into a writer’s way of thinking.

A member of the Ladies Killing Circle, Joan Boswell co-edited four of their short story anthologies: Fit to Die, Bone Dance, Boomers Go Bad and Going Out With a Bang. Her three mysteries, Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and, Cut and Run were published in 2005, 2007 and 2007. In 2000 she won the $10,000 Toronto Star’s short story contest. Joan lives in Toronto with three flat-coated retrievers.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2012-01-25T08:24:00.000-05:00

Aging Brainfully

In the Sunday Ottawa Citizen, I read with great interest about Baroness James, much better known to her legions of fans as P.D. James. She has turned 90 this year, and is mindful of her age and is aware of possible future mental decline, both in her life and more especially in her work. P.D. cited Agatha Christie as a caution, saying that Dame Agatha kept writing and publishing too long, beyond when her writing was up to her earlier standards, and feels this ultimately diminished her mystery writing reputation.

Three years ago, when P.D. published her latest Dalgleish book, which was full of her trademark intricate plots and amazing detail, she mentioned then the possibility that it might very well be her last, and that it was not by accident that Detective Adam Dalgleish seemed to be in valedictory mode.

Most recently, a new and different P.D. James book has been released – Death Comes to Pemberley. This is quite a departure for her, as it is a continuation of the story begun by Jane Austen as Pride and Prejudice. All the old familiar Austen characters are back, aged by several years and married with children, and of course murder comes to pay a social call.

P.D. James is apparently quite a Jane Austen aficionado, and her love and knowledge of all things Austen is one of her many and varied interests, for which she has a great passion.

How wonderful that at the age of ninety someone can reinvent themselves. We are always told that to live a long and interesting life with all of our faculties intact, one of the provisos is to exercise both brain and body, stretching both to keep them fit and useful.

My mum was a great proponent of that very thing. She passed away this autumn in her ninetieth year, still active in her residence’s yoga sessions, sit-and-fit classes and practicing on the putting green. She also kept brainfully fit with daily

crosswords, 2 book club memberships, prayer groups and seminars at her church, and daily pouring over the Montreal Gazette for up-to-date politics, hockey scores, So You Think You Can Dance updates, the TSE index, the golf leader board, who would be going home on American Idol, and theatre and concert reviews. All of these details were discussed at the morning coffee group following fitness class, and a smarter, brighter more plugged-in group of ladies you would never meet. I learned a lot from my mum and her friends.

P.D. James said in an interview that she was monitoring herself, watching for signs of slipping from her high standards of plot details and writing edge. I admire that attitude, and I think that we could all learn by the fine examples of older ladies like my mum and P.D. James. Let us all try to move gracefully through life, with our eyes wide and our ears tuned in, taking in all of the wonderful range of what life has to offer us as brain food. Who knows, perhaps we can all reinvent ourselves when we reach 90 too. But maybe we should have someone else do the monitoring.

Catherine Lee (Cathy) is a college textbook buyer in Ottawa, has been a bookseller and book buyer by trade for most of her life, and is a member of 2 book clubs. She became a book lover on her parents’ knees at story time & by flashlight under the bed sheets. One of her greatest pleasures is sharing great books with friends, of course while sipping wine.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2012-01-24T09:50:00.000-05:00

Another week, another award show. Cheryl Freedman’s January 13th Mystery Maven post raises some good points about book awards. Today, I add my two cents to the pot.

We have turned into a winner-take-all kind of society. This cultural phenomenon may have started with the Academy Awards but it found fertile ground on Survivor Island and American Idol before spiraling downward into gems such as the Bachelor and Tots and Tiaras. We’ve become fascinated by voting people out of competitions and watching their dreams implode in front of millions of people. Some of the shows are just plain silly, but the nastiness behind some can take your breath away.

So far, writing competitions have kept to the higher ground, but one must ask, can a panel of peers really choose the best book for a given year? Is it fair to even try?

There are a lot of positives to book competitions. Even to be shortlisted can help get an author's name out there and can lead to greater sales. Librarians use the lists to order books. Readers use the lists to try new authors. Contests create buzz – it seems that the best form of publicity is to win a major award. In their purest of intentions, book awards are not meant to denigrate those who lose, but to elevate good writing and to give exposure.

However, not all terrific books ever make it to a shortlist – and this to me, is the unfortunate, irrefutable drawback. Not making the list can shift public perception about a book's quality, and perception is a powerful marketing tool, whether deserved or not. The inescapable element of the judges’ subjectivity and personal bias in forming the order of finish can be downplayed but it can never be eliminated. What one considers a great book might be what someone else can't even get through.

And yet, we all love a good contest.

I have a curious fascination with the psychology that drives us to compete – the need to test ourselves against all others and to risk defeat. Reality shows make a spectacle of this innate drive, putting losers' agony on display for public entertainment. On the positive side, this is not the case with book contests. Just like the writing process, the shortlist selection is done out of view, and while the winner is usually announced during a public event, the work of all the finalists is celebrated.

In the final analysis, awards can be a lovely byproduct for the care and toil an author puts into their writing – but these fleeting moments of public recognition should not be the reason to write just as 'not winning' should ever be a reason to stop. It is important not to give excessive credence to an award's intrinsic value. Tiaras and trophies come and go. Award-winners are celebrated and the world moves on. The real reward rests in the solitary writing process before judgment or comparison. The true prize comes when someone picks up an author's creation and settles in for an evening's read, turns an image over in their mind or stays up past their bedtime because they just couldn't put the book down.

Brenda Chapman is the Ottawa author of the Jennifer Bannon mystery series for young adults. Hiding in Hawk’s Creek, the second novel in the series, was shortlisted by the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians for the 2006 Book of the Year for Children Award.

Brenda has also written several short stories that were published in an anthology (When Boomers Go Bad, RendezVous Crime 2004) and various magazines. In Winter’s Grip is Brenda’s first adult murder mystery. When not writing, Brenda works as a senior communications advisor in the federal government.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2012-01-23T08:31:00.000-05:00

Writers who write!

I'll readily admit, this is not an original blog idea...I blatantly re-used it but since this is an entirely different audience, that shouldn't matter. I'm talking about WIPs...or rather, your Work in Progress.

Blogs offer those who write them the opportunity to share their thoughts about writing, the publishing world and everything in between. Blogs are also a method of promoting the author's books and those written by members of the Canadian crime writing community.

But let's back it up a little...that recently published book is out there. So, what are you working on now? Part of a series? A stand-alone? First novel? Short story?
Maybe it's a non-fiction work. A magazine article? A journal?

Today, the comments are the blog. Please tell us about your WIP. Come on now, spill the beans!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MYSTERY REVIEW

2012-01-21T09:31:00.000-05:00

THE OPHELIA TRAP
by Kate Burns
Wordclay

The tragic death of a young woman who fell from the eighth story of a Gatineau apartment building didn't go unnoticed. Julia Henry had her eye to her telescope, watching the snow falling. It took just a few minutes for Julia to make the connection. The victim was her former neighbour, Amanda.

From that innocent act, Julia gets drawn in as the police investigate an apparent suicide. For Julia, it starts out as a search for Amanda's missing cat. But along the way, she becomes consumed with the need to find the truth. Was Amanda murdered? Her dreams are haunted by the dead girl. Her relationship with her husband Matt becomes strained as she juggles her job, her young daughter and sleuthing. There's also an ongoing battle with the management company from the apartment building she and Matt recently vacated. Amanda's building.

She meets a neighbour who's new to the 'hood', she discovers photographs on Amanda's laptop while helping the brother design posters about the missing cat, she tracks down Amanda's former lover. And, there's a serial rapist loose in the community.

Burns deftly ties it all together as Julia discovers the killer's identity and narrowly escapes becoming another victim.

This might not be the Gatineau you know. But you'll certainly recognize Burns' descriptions of the locale and enjoy them. Her writing style draws in the reader and provides a compelling read. For those who crave a healthy dose of suspense with their mystery, you'll want to read The Ophelia Trap. Kate Burns lives in the Gatineau-Ottawa area and is working on her second mystery, this one set in Ottawa's Byward Market. Save a space on your bookshelf for it.

CRIME ON MY MIND

2012-01-20T09:53:00.000-05:00

Open to change...

Not to overstate the obvious, but change is afoot in the publishing world. We've known that for quite some time but it's just been within the past couple of years that the e-book industry has exploded from a somewhat slow start. And let's not forget self-publishing. What used to be a labor-intensive prospect has now been molded into yet another internet DYI.

Such sites as Create Space (owned by Amazon) and Lulu are big names in this business. And there are tons more -- just google 'self-publishing' and the toughest decision you will need to make is which one to choose. That site will walk you through the rest of it.

What brought this to mind is a book I'm reviewing and a question from a new Facebook friend. She asked how to go about promoting her book. My response, the traditional one: introduce yourself to booksellers and offer to do a signing, same with libraries and book clubs. Her response was that the only bookseller willing to do this was a used book store. My response, readers are readers. Take it and enjoy.

But that got me thinking about this whole business of self-promotion. We've seen the traditional methods -- from the signings to the bookmarks, postcards, hitting the conferences, and every imaginable 'loot bag' item that a writer can stick a book title on.

My question is, with these new/not-so-new publishing opportunities, should we also be looking at different promotional tactics? And if so, what are they?

I'm certainly looking for new ideas for my own self-promotion toolkit. Time for another panel on this topic at Bloody Words? Any ideas?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2012-01-19T00:05:00.005-05:00

Not your average book launch

Peggy Blair is my idea of a Renaissance woman. She's a lawyer, a realtor, a visual artist and a mystery writer and her debut novel, The Beggar's Opera, is creating a big buzz in the publishing world.

The early reviews are in and they're darned good. Jim Napier, of Deadly Diversions calls it “a nuanced account of the struggles of two men to comprehend the sudden and unexpected turns in their complex lives. Blair nicely strings the reader along, casting doubt on what’s real and what’s imaginary, while serving up a tale that combines a penetrating commentary on Cuban life with a whodunit full of twists and turns … readers can look forward to following the further exploits of the enigmatic Cuban police detective.”

I've preordered the book and I'm looking forward to reading it but what's really caught my attention is the launch on February 16th at the Orange Art Gallery at the Parkdale Market, Ottawa. This will not be your average book launch. Peggy is known in Ottawa for the terrific parties she loves to throw, so the usual cold canapés and quiet author-reading just isn't in the cards for this shindig. She began planning a month or so ago and she's been sharing her plans on her blog, Getting Published. http://peggyblair.wordpress.com. Have a look. It makes great reading.

She told her publisher, Penguin Canada, that she was planning a Cuban party with authentic food and live Cuban music. Penguin would be able to cover rent for the venue, but where was the money for the food and the music and the cake we'd all been reading about on her blog to come from? Here's where the plot thickens

When Peggy was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger in 2010, she was invited to attend the awards ceremonies in Harrogate, England. She was between jobs at the time and the trip was going to cost more than she could comfortably afford. It was at this point that a community building movement began. She threw a Cuban dinner party for thirty people, asked each guest to contribute $35 and that along with other donations was enough to pay for the overseas flight. It was at this festival that she met Ian Rankin who in turn introduced her to his agent. The rest, as they say, is history.

But back to the launch. When it came time to nail down the details, Peggy's friends came forward again. Because we had stepped up to the Harrogate challenge, we were now stakeholders. We had an investment in the The Beggar's Opera and we needed this launch to be a success. It wasn't just Peggy's party any more it was ours too. Many offered to cook Cuban dishes for the event. Others threw in money to help with other expenses.

Peggy began contacting wine makers and soon had offers for free wine and even a fruit wine tasting. Beau's All Natural Brewing Company will bring the beer and someone else is providing chocolate cigars with the Penguin logo on the band.

Although people are bringing rum cake and opera cake, Peggy had her heart set on a cake in the shape of a 1957 Chevy that she saw on www.cakestudio.ca (seen here) and she found out that Kate Green Cakes from Kempville will duplicate the cake (in red and white) and transport it to the launch for a reasonable fee and a signed copy of the book.

It's amazing what people will do when they catch the spirit of an event. The mayor is coming as is Peggy's city counselor and the MPP for the area. "Will there be speeches?" I asked, when I talked to Peggy yesterday. "No!" said Peggy firmly. "And no author reading either. I just want to take a moment when the musicians are on break to thank everyone for all their help." That's a first in my experience.

Around 120 people have confirmed their attendance which is just about the capacity of the Orange Gallery. I've never heard of people being turned away from the launch of an author's debut book but this may be another first.

Peggy does say in her blog that if you would like to attend, to please contact her. She'll fit you in, I'm sure.

Sue Pike has published a couple of dozen stories and won several awards including an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Crime Story. Her latest, Where the Snow Lay Dinted appeared in the January issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Sue and her husband and an opinionated Australian Shepherd named Cooper spend the winter months in Ottawa and the rest of the time at a mysterious cottage on the Rideau Lakes.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2012-01-18T00:05:00.000-05:00

Mad Max & Canadian Crime Book Awards

Remember the film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (Mel Gibson before he completely weirded out), with the spectators chanting in the arena: “Two men enter; one man leaves”? Canadian literary awards aren’t quite that cutthroat (although one might wonder sometimes), so let’s modify the chant to “Many authors enter; one author leaves.” (Or for the shortlist, “Many authors enter; five authors leave,” which, quite frankly, doesn’t sound nearly as good. But I digress...)

We are now less than six months away from Bloody Words and the big Canadian crime book awards events: the new Bloody Words Light Mystery Award (aka the Bony Blithe), presented at the Bloody Words banquet on June 2; the Arthur Ellis Awards, presented on May 31, the night before BW starts; and the Hammett Award (which I consider a quasi-Canadian award because it’s for Canadian and American authors and is presented at the Bloody Words banquet).

The shortlist announcements are even sooner: around mid-February for the Hammett, March 28 for the Bony Blithe, and April 19 for the AEs.

Why do some authors win awards while others don’t? Legitimate question, that. What’s not so legit are complaints from authors, such as the following (yes, these are for real): The judges hated my writing style. The judges didn’t understand/appreciate what my book was all about. The judges hate cosies, noir, humorous mysteries, historicals, romantic suspense (go ahead – fill in the blank with your subgenre), and the flip side: The judges only like police procedurals (I’ve heard this one a lot for the AEs).

Granted, there may be some truth to these points (judges are only human), but the reality of why A wins while B to Z don’t is much simpler and less of a conspiracy.

Even before we get to what judges are looking for in an award-winning book, there’s something very important to consider: Is your book eligible for the award in the first place? The Bony Blithe is for light mysteries, or as stated in the rules, “books that make us smile.” Your angst-ridden noir novel with a tortured-body count in the dozens may be absolutely brilliant, but it doesn’t stand a chance of winning. The Hammett is for “literary excellence in the field of crime writing,” so I think we can assume that cozies are less than likely to win. The Arthur Ellis is the most open, albeit only apparently; the best novel award leans towards more serious books, although almost anything goes with first novel.

Assuming your novel fits the competition criteria, there are two ways judges look at the submissions to determine the winner (and the shortlist, too): absolute quality and relative quality.

Absolute quality is relatively easy to judge: All the elements of the book – plot, structure, characters, setting, dialogue, point of view, believability, writing technique, etc. – have to come together into a unified whole. Then the book has to have that magical spark – that ephemeral je ne sais quoi that makes it stand out from all the other entries.

Relative quality is much trickier and refers to how your book compares with all the other entries in the category. Judging relative quality has caused many a judge to become follicly challenged because there will almost always be more than five books that pass the absolute quality test. This makes for hours of backing-and-forthing among the judges, to say nothing of a certain amount of horse-trading. And then, of those five submissions that make it to the shortlist, there has to be one that stands high above all the rest. It’s not unknown for no one’s first choice to win.

Judges (being only human) have their likes and dislikes in literature. But all awards try to find judges who represent a wide spectrum of the reading public. Even more important, contests look for judges who understand that they are not looking for a book that they “like,” so much as they’re looking for the book that epitomizes the best of crime-writing in its field.

In the end, literary competitions can be a real crap-shoot. You can have a book or story that is a critical and/or commercial success – a piece of work that you’re proud of. But you may be up against other authors with equally stellar books. If your book had been published in another year, you might have been up against fewer books or books of lesser quality. And one year’s judges will almost certainly have a different view than another year’s judges of what makes for a stellar book.

So don’t go into paroxysms of angst about being a lousy writer if you don’t win or aren’t even shortlisted this year. The fact that you’re published probably indicates that you’re a good writer. The stars – or at least, publishers’ publishing schedules – were against you. Have a stiff drink or a big old chocolate bar...and get back to writing.

Cheryl Freedman was Mothership (secretary-treasurer, then executive director) of Crime Writers of Canada for 10 years; she resigned in 2009 but still keeps her hand in. A permanent director of Bloody Words, she’s been on the Bloody Gang since 1999 and is the chair for this year’s BW XII, June 1 – 3, 2012 in Toronto. www.bloodywords2012.com In “real” life, Cheryl is a freelance editor and desktop publisher.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2012-01-17T00:05:00.000-05:00

The new library model?

In yesterday's Ottawa Citizen newspaper, there was a column by Roger Collier entitled, A few bad ideas for promoting the library. What he meant by 'bad ideas' is the amount of email spam that libraries are sending out as a method to attract more readers.

I've not been spammed by my local library in fact, the only email I receive from the Ottawa Public Library are notices that either a book I have reserved is now in, or that the book(s) I have checked out will be due in a few days time. I find that highly efficient and am pleased they haven't resorted to spam.

He was also lamenting the fact that the printed word has too much competition these days. Nothing new there. What did give me pause, were the numerous methods used by some libraries in other countries, to expand the number of visits to through their doors. If you didn't read it, imagine this: your public library now offers "oil changes, financial planning and MRI scans", all in the name of one-stop shopping for today's busy readers. Just imagine, the library could become the Shopper's Drug Mart or the Canadian Tire of your area!

The fact that "Sweden requires all it librarians to also be certified personal trainers" got me wondering if a gym was attached to each branch.

My favourite is in Oslo, Norway where "deep-tissue massage and an international buffet with more than 200 dishes" are offered. I could spend many happy hours reading in that library.

What about it? Is Canada ready for this revolution in one stop shopping? Would these ideas truly increase the number of people reading? What about hooking the kids? They're hot-wired to their computers and they certainly don't need oil changes. That's where the future of the library lies. But maybe there's a way to hook them, too...computers, anyone? Oh, right...we all ready offer them. So what's next?

Here's the link to the column: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/search/search.html?q=Roger%20collier&sort=date

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2012-01-16T00:05:00.000-05:00

News and schmooze opportunities...

Since the beginning days of Mystery Maven Canada, Mary Jane Maffini has provided the Mayhem on Mondays...she's so good at that! You may be wondering where she's been lately and if she'll be back creating a little or rather, a lot more mayhem.

She will be back at some point but for now, her life has taken a different turn. Her husband suffered unexpected trauma during surgery and has been hospitalized since the beginning of October. While his recovery is amazing the doctors, his family has known all along what a determined guy he is. However, Mary Jane is taking a break from writing to devote her time and energy into Guilio's journey to health. Please include them in your prayers and positive thoughts.

While back at Mystery Maven Canada, we continue to highlight all the terrific Canadian mystery writers from coast to coast to coast, as they say. I'd love to hear from you if you have a new book coming out...send me a copy and I'll try to review it, although my TBR pile is looking ominous these days. Just not enough hours to read and write to my heart's content.

If you're a reader, I'd love to hear what you're reading and what you think about it. Or them, as the case may be. It's great to share these titles as that may mean more an new readings for all authors.

If you're in the Ottawa area, look for several book launches coming up this spring. The excitement's already building. And then there's the announcement of the short lists for the Arthur Ellis Awards from Crime Writers of Canada, slated for April 19th.

Happy reading...happy writing!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

CRIME ON MY MIND

2012-01-13T09:20:00.000-05:00

Putting together the Plan!

Let's start with two definitions in the writer's arsenal of necessary tools.

Publicity -- the deliberate attempt to manage the public's
perception of a subject.
Promotion -- the communication link between sellers and
buyers for the purpose of influencing, informing or persuading
a potential buyer's purchasing decision.

Publicity in turn is part of the Promotional Plan. The objectives of this Plan are:
a. to present information to consumers as well as others
b. to increase demand
c. to differentiate a product

Got it? Of course, you do. We've long known that the writer is not only a writer but a self-promoting marketer of books, as well. And still it comes as a shock at times, when faced with the actual task of getting out there and getting our books known.

That could be because we originally went for the basic job description of a writer. Had I wanted to be in promotion and sales, I would have gotten the education and pursued the job. But this is so much better, you say? I get to be a person of multiple talents? Think how this will jazz up a resume?

In the past two months I have become a web designer (ok, the basic technical design was there but I designed the content!)and a travel agent (I've already booked hotel rooms for two upcoming conferences and am now looking into flights). On my long 'To Do' list is coming up with a bookmark and lining up some gigs. I already am an old hand at the latter, it's the bookmark part that's still up in the air.

I'm extremely lucky to have a Berkley Prime Crime publicist taking care of much of the US promotion. She sends out the review copies and will line up some on-line blog stops for starters. In Canada, there's a Penguin Canada publicist helping with the onslaught. But there's still so much left in the hands of the writer and only so many hours in the day.

I think my Promotional Plan will focus on one key aspect -- connect with the reader.
The strategy involves reviewers, booksellers, conferences, signings along with the website, business cards, and bookmarks for starters.

What's part of your Plan? Any advice you'd like to share?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2012-01-12T09:55:00.000-05:00

Beam me up, Scottie!

Last week, Linda Wiken, or perhaps her evil twin Erika Chase, wrote about trying to convey summer in Alabama while in the grip of a full-blown Canadian winter. Although to be fair, full-blown is hardly the word this year! She was demonstrating the challenge writers face of imagining themselves in a very different place from the physical one where their chair and computer are sitting. As I write this, I am sitting on my living room sofa with my laptop in my lap, a cup of coffee at my elbow, and freezing rain hissing at the window. My dogs are banging at the patio door to be let back in.

Brief pause while I let them in. Now where was I? Oh yes, in my living room. But very soon I have to get myself into the spirit on the Nahanni National Park, which is a spectacular northern wilderness of ragged, snow-capped mountains, rushing creeks, and brooding forests. The weather can change every fifteen minutes from sultry sun to thunderstorms. Drizzle sifts through the trees, morning frost crackles the grass. All in one day. Add to that the sounds, the scents, the flashes of wild animals in the distance. It’s all part of the backdrop against which my latest book is being written.

Every writer has their own tricks for transporting themselves to their setting. The best possible technique is to visit the place and write there. Someday I plan to do that with Tuscany. But on a writer’s income, sometimes we have to make do with cheaper tricks. Some writers take numerous location shots and stick photos all around their work space. Others have piles of books within easy reach. Others keep Google handy on their computer while they write, ready for a quick ‘images’ search. It’s astonishing what can be found on the internet. Type in “Parks Office Fort Simpson” and there it is!

I do all of those things. But the most powerful research tool a writer has is our own memory. Alas, I have never been up in the Nahanni area, but then I’ve never murdered anyone either, and that doesn’t stop me from imagining it. Who hasn’t felt like murder occasionally? You know the feeling. I love to travel and over my lifetime. I have walked in mountain streams in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. I have rafted down a glacial river between snow-capped peaks in the Yukon. I have hiked through the stunted spruce forests of Newfoundland. And no one has to go far to experience the bugs, the morning frost, and the crashing summer storms.

These are the memories I summon up as I sit down to begin a scene. I immerse myself in the images that are already in my mind. It’s a conscious visualization, but not merely visual. I ask myself what a waterfall sounds like, what a forest smells like, what a sudden rush of rain feels like. But that isn’t all. Now all this has to be imagined from the point of view of the character I am writing about. Often Inspector Green’s POV. His view of crashing waterfalls is considerably different from mine. He hates and fears them. I find them thrilling. But I have to see the world as he sees it, and find the words to draw the reader in too. An even greater feat than beaming myself up to another setting.

But that’s a subject for another blog!

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 havewon back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. And, her new Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched in May.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2012-01-10T00:05:00.007-05:00

Don’t Lecture - Entertain Me!

The other day, an American interviewer challenged me about the purpose of fiction; should it always contain a moral message? Specifically, should crime fiction?

My instant answer: No No No! The purpose of crime fiction should be to Entertain, and nothing should come before that.

Why? We have countless other venues that preach morality. Religions seek to teach us how to behave. Every day we are bombarded by newspapers, radio and other nonfiction outlets, that expose us to the ‘evil’ of greedy politicians, nasty world despots and out of control celebrities.

If fiction – and crime fiction in particular – was required to follow a moral code, we would miss so much. If the good guy always won – if the bad guy always got caught – wouldn’t that make crime fiction lamentably predictable?

Does that mean crime fiction can’t teach us something? Of course it can! Put me in the mind of a serial killer for a few hours. Let me know what it feels like to experience the overwhelming greed of a con artist. Dress me up as a torch singer, with a black heart and a gun in her stocking.

Let me discover something about how other people think, if only for a little while. But above all else, entertain me. Don’t preach at me, even from a distance. I don’t want it from my fiction. Just tell me a damn good story, thank you. Take me out of the real world for a few hours.

That’s the purpose of crime fiction.

Melodie is the author of Rowena Through the Wall (Imajin Books) a comic time travel novel, and The Goddaughter, a madcap mob caper (Orca Books) to be released in 2012. She has over 200 publications and has won six awards for fiction.
Follow Melodie’s comic blog at http://funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com/

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2012-01-10T00:05:00.000-05:00

Testing the Hypothesis

My horoscope for 2012 says that I can make anything happen this year as long as I firmly believe in it. On the last day of 2011, I decide to test out the hypothesis on a few simple beliefs: I will get my shopping done in a timely manner despite the fact that there are already hordes of people circling the parking lot. I will find everything I need. I will meet lots of smiley happy-new-year people.

When I get into the plaza, there is a line up of honking cars to my left. But behold, to the right, I see a nice little spot from which I can drive straight out. It appears I am the only one willing to walk more than seven steps. I throw my reusable bags into a cart (for which I have to walk several more steps) and I am ready to surge into the crowd, list and all.

I headed out without prettying up either. The headlines from trashy magazines greet me at the door screaming: Stars Without Make-up! They’ve caught me.

In many of the aisles, people with carts are streaming both ways. A sensation of logs jamming in a river, bumping into one another, creating rapids of ill feeling, seems to have overtaken everyone. In my new-found sense of believing, I smile at each of them, say I’m sorry even though they bumped into me, let them go in front of me, tuck my own cart out of the way when I need to reach the opposite shelf for an item. In other words, I am picture perfectly polite and perky. The fact that I am probably annoying the heck out of all the other logs is just a side benefit.

I do find all the groceries I need. But at first I find no shiny smiley people. They are frowning, rushing, bumping and grabbing instead. Many of them talk on their cell phones to someone at home—I want that brand—but I can’t find that brand—did you say one can or two—I’m sure you said two, but okay…One of my beliefs is starting to slip. I am beginning to doubt my horoscope.

Then suddenly, I discover my happy-new-year people. One lady helps me when my buggy wheels almost topple a stand of fresh bread. Another smiles at me when I allow her to go up the aisle first. Someone else says Happy New Year when we both find the meat we want and touch elbows in the process.

As I head for the checkout, I find a cashier with only one customer ahead of me. I smile and ask the cashier how she is and whether she gets to go home early today (she does). I say Happy New Year as I leave. None of my bags are over-packed and nothing is squished or falling out.

I get to my car, haul the groceries inside, and return the cart to its rightful spot. As I am easing out into the traffic, there is a clearing and I am almost home. To top it all off, the sun comes out.

So maybe it will be a Belieber year after all, just like our Canadian star from Stratford has declared. Perhaps I will find the audience for my books in 2012. People who like hard-hitting topics tucked inside a mystery because they know justice will be served in the end. Maybe I will finish those three books at which, lately, I have only occasionally been lobbing a few words.

Perhaps the Mayans were right: the world as we know it will end. Maybe love and hope will change the world after all.

Catherine Astolfo retired from education to pursue her true passion: writing. She self-published a novel series, The Emily Taylor Mysteries, through her own publishing company, Moe Publications. In 2005, Catherine was awarded a Brampton Arts Award for the first novel in the series, The Bridgeman. Recently, she won a four-book contract from Imajin Books for the e-versions of the series.
Catherine was the 2010-11 President of Crime Writers of Canada and is a member of Sisters in Crime Toronto. She is the co-owner of an ezine for writers and readers, Scribes Digest, and of Sisbro & Co. Inc., a film production company.
Check her out at www.catherineastolfo.com Or www.scribesdigest.com
Buy the books through links at www.imajinbooks.com

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2012-01-09T08:34:00.000-05:00

With a little help from my friends!

I've noticed several bloggers this past week have focused on the help given them by fellow mystery writers. It's true. This is a very supportive community. Perhaps more so than in mainstream fiction. I say 'perhaps' because I'm not part of that group so can't say for certain.

But in the world of mystery writers, there's always someone ready to give helpful advice, offer suggestions based on what's worked for them, share promo ideas, link a writer with an agent, and spread the word be it by Facebook, Twitter, a 'Like' here and there.

That's what we do. Sure, there's competition for the 'Best' award in the various Arthur Ellis categories from Crime Writers of Canada. But there's no lobbying, no negative speeches or ads, no buying of votes. It's all very congenial and the winner is showered with good wishes by one and all.

Think of the many critiquing groups across the country -- writers helping each other. Think of the many associations. I belong to Capital Crime Writers, Crime Writers of Canada and Sisters in Crime. At one time, I joined Mystery Writers of America. And there are more. They all offer that critical item -- support, be it with workshops, newsletters, marketing information. And it's all shared among members.

There are also numerous blogs where mystery authors share their ideas and suggestions. Many of those authors appear here on Mystery Maven Canada at various times. I, or rather Erika, has a blog spot each month on Killer Characters, which is mainly US writers, a lot of us with the same publisher, and all very eager about supporting and sharing.

It's a wonderful community to be a part of...one with so many people who write about betrayal, rejection and death but who are loyal, welcoming and sustaining. Thanks to all of you for all of that!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MYSTERY REVIEW

2012-01-07T00:05:00.001-05:00

DEATH PLAYS POKER
by Robin Spano
ECW Press

Robin Spano's second Clare Vengel Undercover novel takes the intrepid undercover cop from Niagara Falls to Vancouver on a poker tour where the highest stake is murder!

Straight from a successful undercover assignment which netted the police the killer in some political murders at the University of Toronto campus, Vengel has been seconded to the RCMP. She's filling in for an undercover cop whose cover was blown, and he's now dead. Vengel knows poker but it's her cover as the spoiled Tiffany, whose trust fund is her bank role that gets her into the action at the table and on the trail of the Poker Choker.

Her job's on the line though as she pits her smarts up against a quirky array of players. There's Mickey, the long-time pro who takes her under his wing; Joe, consistently in the money and always on the look-out for an easy conquest; Elizabeth is his girlfriend and she hates Tiffany from the get-go; Fiona, the TV commentator who's more involved than she should be; George the crime writer; Noah, the new guy on the tour; Nate, the one who's hiding something...but then again, aren't they all?

The plot works its way through all their stories, following the trail of a cheating scam, as one by one, the players are killed. Vengel is a bit out of her depth. She doesn't know who to trust. Her handler saves her butt on several occasions, keeping her in the game when the RCMP want to pull her out. Because she could lose her job...and, she could lose her life.

Robin Spano obviously is a player. And I'm not. She sits the reader at the table and plays out each hand and even though the terms mean zilch to me, I'm there routing Tiffany/Clare on. Spano has also captured the buzz and excitement that surrounds the poker tour, where money is just a commodity and there's a lot of hard living going on, too. She's got the dialogue down pat and the tension builds throughout the book until it's Tiffany vs killer.

Death Plays Poker will appeal to anyone who's ever sat through a poker game...and those of us who love sitting through a fast-moving crime novel.

CRIME ON MY MIND

2012-01-06T00:05:00.000-05:00

Thoughts from a disordered mind.

I know several people who suffer from SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder. For them, the lack of natural light can lead to a depressing time. I know it's serious and I'm not about to treat it lightly.

But for me, it’s Seasonal Writing Disorder (SWD), loosely described as a difficulty with attaining and retaining the necessary feeling of the season, in order to effectively write a novel. Let me explain. My or rather Erika’s first book, A Killer Read, was set in early fall. That’s fine because I’d been working on it from spring, which isn’t that much different from fall except for heat and colours, through fall and into winter. Plus, it was my first real novel, so what did I know.

The challenge started with the next book, Read and Buried, which isn’t due out until next November. It’s set during December and leads into Christmas, but it was written mainly in spring and summer. You see where I’m going with this?

The third book, which I’m working on now and is due to the publisher on June 1st but won’t be out at the bookstores until next year sometime (thinking autumn here), is set during summer and…well, look out the window! Snow. Windchill. A smattering of freezing rain. Sure, we have sun most days but I’m not about to go out in my shorts!

I suppose one could set the mood with a heat lamp, the smell of suntan lotion, summer-themed songs playing on the CD, maybe even a smattering of sand on the floor. Not going to happen in this house.

I think this is the true test of a writer. If you can conquer Seasonal Writing Disorder and make the reader really feel the time of year you’re writing about, then you’ve done your job. Of course, the writing has to be excellent, the plot believable and even outstanding, memorable characters, dynamite dialogue, and a mystery to die for. No problem…right?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2012-01-05T08:22:00.000-05:00

Elastics

When I helped my mother downsize and move from a house to an apartment I discovered her passion for elastics and bits of string. She had hundreds of elastics, some so old they crumbled to dust when touched. When my husband died he left more than 30 pairs of glasses behind. Now that I’m preparing to move I’ve found at least a dozen pairs of scissors. Why do we do this? Why do we choose to collect particular objects?

Perhaps my mother, a survivor of the depression and of my father’s prolonged absence during WWII, felt elastics and string would hold her life together in the event of another cataclysmic event. My husband liked to be in charge, to know what was going on and to do that he needed glasses. As for me I hesitate to speculate why I have this fixation with scissors. Certainly my first three books, Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and Cut to the Chase as well as my upcoming book, Cut to the Bone, all include cutting in its various forms. It’s clear that cutting is important and I have no idea why although it’s likely that the reason lurks deep in my subconscious.

Our subconscious collects and nurtures prejudices that we don’t always identify or examine. Prejudice of course is a loaded word. No one wants to be accused of harbouring prejudice yet it is impossible not to do so. Reading books written in the twenties or thirties we see that Virginia Woolf and many others exhibited a virulent anti-semitism that would be unacceptable today but is understandable although not admirable given that they were products of their time.

Bias could be seen as the opposite of prejudice, a benign attitude that also colours our writing whether it be a political or social bias.

What we do with prejudice and bias is another question. First, we need to acknowledge their existence and then decide if one of our characters will exhibit prejudice and deal with it?

How do we identify our own prejudice and bias - that is the question?

A member of the Ladies Killing Circle, Joan Boswell co-edited four of their short story anthologies: Fit to Die, Bone Dance, Boomers Go Bad and Going Out With a Bang. Her three mysteries, Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and, Cut and Run were published in 2005, 2007 and 2007. In 2000 she won the $10,000 Toronto Star’s short story contest. Joan lives in Toronto with three flat-coated retrievers.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2012-01-04T00:05:00.006-05:00

On tour with Brad Smith!

Today is day one/stop one on the Brad Smith blog tour...and Mystery Maven Canada has the pleasure of putting him on the hot seat.

If you read the review of Red Means Run posted here on Dec.10, 2011, you'll know that I think Smith is a terrific writer and I've enjoyed all his novels. If you're not yet on the bandwagon, I trust this will get you there! Enjoy the questions and answers.

1)Do plots come to you in a mysterious ways?

I wouldn’t say mysterious…but it’s true that they come out of the blue and are sometimes fully formed, and others not. For instance, I had a very vague idea for Busted Flush (my novel about contemporary Gettysburg, and our obsession with owning things of historical or social significance) but it took me a long time to flesh it out. In fact, I wrote All Hat while thinking about how to write Busted Flush. On the other hand, All Hat came to me pretty much complete.

2) Your protagonist in RED MEANS RUN is from Quebec. Are the references to Canada meant to enhance the story or as a wink/nudge to your homeland, or both?

Both.
Definitely to enhance the story. First of all, it establishes Virgil as a man “out of place” and secondly it introduces the whole concept of him heading for the border after his escape, which he uses as a red herring, one that the dim-witted Joe Brady swallows hook, line and sinker. But the savyy Claire Marchand does not.

3) You’ve been quoted as saying your characters are, “willing to do something wrong to make something right”. Is this at the basis of all your novels?

I would say there’s an element of that in much of my work. My protagonists tend to be middle class rather than wealthy, and usually stubborn to a fault, often to their own detriment. Underdogs, I guess. And yes – they might play fast and loose with the law, when they consider the law to be wrong. Technically, of course, the law is never wrong, but on a moral level, it sometimes is on pretty shaky grounds. And let’s face it - a guy tilting at a windmill is much more entertaining than a guy toeing the line.

4) Your work has been described as being, “countrified detective fiction minus the detective” – how do you react to that?

I’m definitely okay with it. There are certainly a lot of detectives out there nowadays and it seemed to me that the room was getting a little crowded. Virgil Cain is an everyman – former ballplayer, now a farmer – who falls into situations beyond his control. He doesn’t go looking for trouble, but he certainly has a knack for finding it. Or maybe it finds him. It really doesn’t matter which of the two is true. All that matters when you’re in trouble…is getting out.

5)Do you think in grand themes when you start plotting?

Not really. I usually start with a basic through line, and then fill it in with secondary plots as the various characters introduce themselves. Often a character will surprise me, which is one of the great pleasures of writing. For that reason I don’t use a detailed outline. I’m always afraid that it would take away from the spontaneity of the process. For instance, the character of Klaus Gabor in Busted Flush probably would not exist if I had invented him before sitting down to write. I actually stumbled across the idea of him when in Gettysburg, doing research.

Many thanks to Simon & Schuster for this opportunity! For more about Red Means Run, click on this trailer: http://pages.simonandschuster.ca/redmeansrun

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2012-01-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

Writing to be read!

Here’s a thought…in today’s busy world, in order to capture the reader’s attention you need to persuade the reader to spend his or her time with you. I’m reducing Andrew Coyne’s column in today’s Ottawa Citizen to a one-liner when in fact, he goes on for many print inches about this topic. He was talking about journalists and how, when there are so many other distractions out there (and even within the newspaper), each writer needs to do something, write something, in some manner that will be an attention-grabber and keep that reader hooked to the end.

Now, blogs are similar to columns. So I read this with great interest. Besides, I like his writing style. Two points in favour of my reading the column. But more to the point, I was hoping to gain some useful tips.

Another thing he points out is that in order to persuade the reader to spend time with the writer, the least said writer can do is “make himself agreeable company. People choose a writer, that is, rather in the same way they choose a friend.” Hmmm. So, treat them with respect, don’t shout at them, and give them something, “a paradox, a laugh, a fact they didn’t know.” Okay, I get it. What’s good for a column is good for a blog.

But let’s take it a step further. What’s good for a column and a blog is good for a short story and a novel.

We’re all in the same business here. We’re competing for those precious few minutes, hopefully hours, that the reader is able to allocate to reading…the column, the blog, the book. We compete with the myriad of electronics, the crunch of real life, and the crush of time. So it makes sense we give the reader something of value in exchange for that time.

We spend all those hours, days, weeks, months and years creating all those mystery and crime novels that will be read in a mere matter of hours, days and weeks perhaps. But if we do our job well enough, that reader will be back for more. Because we’re now friends and you want to spend time with a friend, and hear/read his or her story. And that writer wants to hear from the reader and hopefully, keep writing the kind of books that will make this a long-time relationship.

Sure, writers write what they want or need to say. But writers also write to be read. Did this blog persuade you? To read Coyne's column go to:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/could+have+moment+your+time+please/5937762/story.html

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2012-01-02T00:05:00.000-05:00

Starting off a New Year!

Are you a maker of resolutions? Do you faithfully resolve a whole list or maybe just an item or two, of changes to make in the coming year? Or new things to try? Whatever?

I would but I know I’d break them after a bout a week or so of sincere trying. I think that’s a fairly common reaction. So instead, this year, I’m making a list of ‘determinations’.

I’m determined to:
· ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY write each day (blogs don’t count)
· Limit excursions into the outside world to one morning per week (appointments don’t count)
· Avoid getting bogged down in housework (am already making headway)
· Teach the cats to stay off my keyboard when I’m typing (never going to happen but it’s worth a try)
· Avoid snacks (unless green or orange – anyone know of chocolate that fits this requirement?)

That should do it.

What about you? Any resolutions….or are they already broken?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011-12-31T11:31:00.003-05:00

Wishing all Mystery Maven Canada followers a Mysteriously wonderful New Year!

Stay healthy, stay safe...and enjoy lots of Canadian mysteries!

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-12-30T09:18:00.001-05:00

It's all good!

With the media spending these last few days of 2011 revisiting the major stories of the year, I think it's fitting to do the same at Mystery Maven Canada. And I think the primary story in the mystery writing world is that it's alive and thriving!

Despite the gloom and doom, the ups and downs in the publishing world, Canadian crime writers continue doing what they do best -- writing outstanding fiction. There have been so many new releases in the past year that I dare not attempt to list them. It's guaranteed I'll leave out one or two, I always do. So instead, I'll refer you to the Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) website: http://www.crimewriterscanada.com.

You'll find all the year's new releases listed in their monthly newletters and even more information on the author's bio pages. Now, not every mystery author in Canada is a member of CWC. Those, you'll have to find on your own. Note to those authors -- see the value of belonging to CWC?

This isn't meant to be a blog flogging CWC membership but it's certainly one of the valuable resources for writers and also one reason that profiles of Canadian crime writers are increasing. It takes a national organization to get the word out to the big names in media. For instance, CWC has partnered with the National Post for the Arthur Ellis Awards. National coverage, people!! The more readers hear about Canadian crime writers, the more they'll start to read their works. But I'm preaching to the converted, aren't I?

The crime writing world is also served by other organizations such as the Canadian arm of Sisters in Crime. The Toronto chapter is the hotbed and they work hard at carrying out the goals of the International association through workshops, meetings and social events. On the local front, in Ottawa we have Capital Crime Writers http://www.capitalcrimewriters.com an extremely active group of about 70 members with monthly meetings featuring writing workshops and speakers from associated professions such as the police, lawyers, pathologists to name a few.

Then there are the conferences! Bloody Words http://www.bloodywords2012.com remains the major gathering for those who like to commit crime on the pages of a book. In June, 2012 it returns to Toronto for another information-filled and fun weekend. That's followed by the smaller sized but just as potent Scene of the Crime http://www.sceneofthecrime.ca held at Wolf Island (just off the shores of Kingston, ON) in August.

No wonder crime continues to run rampant in Canada -- crime writing, that is. With such strong organizations behind every writer, the possibilities are endless. And with that added ingredient, the reader who spreads the word to other readers, 2012 should be a great year!

Wishing you all great reading and good sales!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-12-29T00:05:00.000-05:00

Christmas and Mysteries

Is there anything more satisfying on a blustery winter's eve than curling up with a good mystery? And a Christmas mystery at that?

Each year a new crop of Christmas crime novels and anthologies turns up on the shelves and I'm told they sell like the proverbial hotcakes. What is our fascination with this unlikely combination of joyous celebration and murder?

Vicki Cameron in an article for Mystery. Net a few years ago wrote:
"First, there is the cast of stock characters, well known to all -- Santa, the ghosts of other Christmases, the three Wise Men, the shepherds, and the main players in the Nativity scene. These characters need no introduction. They come equipped with a backstory. They can be tinkered with, shaped into the unexpected, given an evil underbelly. Well, maybe not the Holy Family, but all the rest are fair game.

Especially Santa. Now here's a character begging to be given center stage in a murder story. He's disguised, face and figure. He carries a sack, perfect for concealing stolen goods. He's expected to show up in strange places late at night. He is never turned away."

Ah hah. I happen to love short stories so I usually start the season by re-reading some of my favourites from Blood on the Holly, a splendid anthology edited by Caro Soles as well as a Folio Book called Christmas Crime Stories. This latter is a combination of old and new stories for the season. Then when the January issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine arrives (usually in early November) I devour those and often go back to some favourites from other years.

And each year I try out a new batch of Christmas novels. This year I discovered Alan Bradley's I Am Half Sick of Shadows. I've loved all the Flavia de Luce novels but this one has the added spice of being set in England during a blinding snowstorm. Bradley, a Canadian, places all his books in a post-war English village. His eleven-year-old heroine, Flavia has an encyclopedic knowledge of poisons and the nerve of a canal horse. Bradley admitted in a recent article in the Globe and Mail that he'd never actually been to the British Isles when he wrote the first Flavia novel. He found his inspiration from a unrelentingly British grandmother and plenty of reading and research.

I recommend I Am Half Sick of Shadows to anyone who loves a good Christmas mystery but now I’m running out of books and the season is far from over. Does anyone have a suggestion for me?

Sue Pike has published a couple of dozen stories and won several awards including an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Crime Story. Her latest, Where the Snow Lay Dinted appeared in the January issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Sue and her husband and an opinionated Australian Shepherd named Cooper spend the winter months in Ottawa and the rest of the time at a mysterious cottage on the Rideau Lakes.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-12-28T09:39:00.000-05:00

The year that wasn't!

2011 is slinking out the doors and may be remembered as the 'year that wasn't' in the publishing world.

It got off to a rocky start with the demise of Key Porter, a publishing subsidiary of H.B. Fenn and Company. Key Porter was a long-time and well-respected name in the Canadian publishing world and it signaled the decline of the parent company. A couple of months later, H.B. Fenn filed for bankruptcy sending shock waves through the industry. For authors and readers...this was not good news.

Late in the spring, south of the border, Borders also filed for bankruptcy. That's the one that started this entire big box bookselling fiasco. It left in its wake way too many smaller independents that had closed over the years. However, this was also a blow to publishers as there was one fewer(with thousands of outlets)place to sell books.

However, there was a bright side to year 2011. There were smiles all around when Napoleon/RendezVous Publishing became part of the Dundurn fold. The RendezVous crime imprint has fostered many a successful Canadian crime writer over the years and its legacy continues within its new home.

And, a new venue (2010) for Canadian mystery and crime writers grew into a highly-respected imprint. Orca Books' Rapid Reads, books for the reluctant reader, has published novels by Gail Bowen, Barbara Fradkin, Brenda Chapman, Rick Blechta and Lou Allin, to name just a few.

Okay, so maybe it was more the year that got off to a shaky start. Have things in the publishing world improved? Let's just say, they're changing. E-books have taken their place alongside (so to speak) the printed novel. On-line shopping is becoming as popular as the brick and mortar style. Change is supposed to be good? Right?

Let's see what 2012 brings us!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-12-27T00:05:00.000-05:00

An Incomplete History of Crime as Entertainment

It’s no secret that human beings have always watched deaths for entertainment. The Romans built arenas to maximize public seating for their executions, while the Spanish Inquisition staged elaborate baroque rituals including the symbolic deaths of heretics (who were quietly killed for real afterward). Hangings used to be public events and the French Revolution was noted for turning the village square red from be-headings.

Death also featured in oral fiction and eventually in staged public performances. Possibly the oldest surviving murder mystery play is Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. First performed in Athens around 429 BCE, it followed Oedipus as he sought the murderer of his predecessor, King Laius.

Athenian plays influenced the Romans and everyone who came after. If there were public entertainments during the so-called Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, their records have been lost. ‘Mystery plays’ in the early second millennium AD concerned religious mystery, not crime. During the Italian Renaissance, plays gradually became secular. The first non-religious plays were largely improvisational and humourous – Comedia Del Arte – involving not deaths but lesser crimes such as thieving servants or scheming, often inept conmen.

Carlo Goldoni and Niccolo Machiavelli (he of political-treatise fame) were among the Italian playwrights who fleshed out these lesser-crimes tropes into full length plays. French theatre followed their lead, with one of Moliere’s most famous characters, the sanctimonious Tartuffe, being exposed as a blackmailer and lecher.

The British, then as now, loved their dark family dramas. The Duchess of Malfi though set in Italy, was written by John Webster, an Englishman, for English audiences. [[[Spoiler Alert: the Duchess’s brothers schemed to kill her, both to grab her wealth and to restore the family’s so-called honour after her secret marriage. Honour killing – sadly topical in Canada today.]]] Shakespeare’s Hamlet was another family drama leading to murder. English theatre did have its lighter crimes. Ben Jonson’s conmen in The Alchemist (1610) or his conniving heirs in Volpone (1606) would have been at home on an Italian stage.

Otherwise, opera was the preferred stage venue of Death in the 17th and 18th centuries. Name an opera in which nobody dies at dagger-point…. Anyone?

Again on lesser crimes, Charles Dickens’ farce, Mr. Nightingale’s Diary (1851) has a conman as a central character. Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1895) featured blackmail and political corruption.

Mystery hit the footlights in earnest with Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Bat on Broadway in 1920, the same year the first Hercule Poirot novel was published. Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers opened on stage in 1936. If you think paranormal mystery is a new twist on the genre, you’ve never seen Noel Coward’s play, Blithe Spirit (1941).

Busman’s Honeymoon went cinematic in 1940, Blithe Spirit in 1945, starting a nigh-fatal trend away from live theatrical mystery. Crime script writers increasingly aimed for movies and then television. John Buchan’s wildly popular novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, was made into numerous films in the decades following its publication in 1915 but not until the year 2000 was it staged live.

Yet live theatre is an intimate, communal experience that is simply not found on film.

If I could have one year-end wish, it would be to see modern Canadian mystery novels adapted for stage.
Anybody got titles to suggest?

Jayne Barnard is a Calgary mystery writer with a lifelong interest in live theatre and the scars to prove it. Her short mystery story, Each Canadian Son, won the 2011 Bony Pete, and her unpublished novel, When the Bow Breaks, was short-listed for the Unhanged Arthur. Her dream is to write and produce a full-length modern mystery for the stage. http://laceymccrae.blogspot.com/p/about-author.html

Happy Holidays

2011-12-24T12:59:00.001-05:00

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! May it be filled with family and friends, good music, and good times. And also with wonderful memories of those not able to be with us.

God Jul!

Mystery Maven Canada returns with a new blog on Tues., Dec. 27th!

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-12-23T09:20:00.000-05:00

How time flies!

So, where did it go? This week? This month? This year? I can't believe we're at Christmas already. And yet, it also seems like it's about time it arrived.

When I was working (outside the house) I used to long for the time when I wouldn't be so rushed going into Christmas. I'd longed for a couple of weeks to get in the holiday spirit, without something like a job mucking it up. So, now I'm at that stage and I'm still in need of a couple of extra weeks to get into the spirit.

I'll be the first to admit, writing a series is definitely a job, no matter how enjoyable it can be. As I've chronicled over the past few weeks, the writer can be steadily weaving a story together, only to be interrupted by the 'business' side of publishing. Needing to get a website up and running; being involved in a cover conference for the next book; reading over the proofs of the first one. This all puts time management to a test.

So today I'm taking a mental health day, with no feelings of guilt for avoiding the computer (aside from writing this blog, that is). Instead, I'll do those tasks that bring on the holiday spirit. I'll play my new Christmas CD -- The Colors of Christmas by John Rutter. It's a tradition to buy a new CD every Christmas and I must admit, I'm a Rutter fan and have most of them by now.

Then, I'll bake some Swedish Coffee Bread (yes, I actually do bake this one item) using my Mom's recipe. It takes several hours of kneading the dough, letting it rise, baking, cooling...you know the process. But it's all part of the holiday tradition and evokes wonderful memories from my childhood.

When it's ready, I'll sample it of course, along with a cup of coffee in front of the fireplace and glance through my collection of Christmas books accumulated over the years. There's Babar and Father Christmas (it survived my childhood and my son's), a newer version of The Nutcracker with illustrations by Toller Cranston, The Night Before Christmas illustrated by Tasha Tudor, God Jul by Anders Neumuller (a collection of Swedish greeting cards from the 1800's), Christmas at the New Yorker (a collection of stories, art, humour); and the newest, A Star for Christmas by Trisha Romance.

These are part of my Christmas traditions, along with opening some gifts on Christmas Eve, singing at the midnight service, turkey and all the trimmings for the family at my house. It's a wonderful time of year..a time to share, a time to remember those who aren't able to be with us, a time to pause in our busy lives and be at peace.

And then, there are all those Canadian mysteries in my TBR pile, just waiting to be experienced next week!

May your Christmas be one of laughter, love and peace. And, of course...lots of wonderful mysteries!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-12-22T00:05:00.000-05:00

The Gift of Light and Joy

The sappy season is well upon us. The streets sparkle with brightly coloured lights, the stores ring with song, and gold and glitter are everywhere. So are people, whizzing about the streets, ducking into liquor stores, juggling parcels and enduring long lines. There are only three more days till Christmas, and six more night of Hanukah. For the laggards, time is running short.

So I will keep this blog brief. Very few of us have time to waste these days. In my case, my house needs a miracle. There are floors to vacuum, furniture to dust, beds to make, kitchens to scrub, fridges to fill… It has to be transformed from a writer’s messy lair into a Hanukah holiday celebration before the kids come home on Saturday. The dogs are not helping by coming back into the house after every outing soaking wet and muddy.

I love this time of year. I love the lights, the songs, the excitement, the smiles and warmth of perfect strangers. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, it doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that people wish each other well. But I know that this is a very difficult time for some people. For those who live alone and may get no gifts, those who suffer from ill health or recent loss, and those who struggle to put cereal on the table, let alone a turkey or a platter of golden latkes. This is a dark season for them, made darker by the joy of others all around them.

I’m a believer in giving gifts. A gift thoughtfully chosen and happily received bonds both giver and recipient. For those with little, even the smallest gift can be transformative, for it reminds them that someone cares. At the risk of being sappy, I have two suggestions for all of us as we rush around buying that last gift. First of all, shop in your local independent small stores. They have put personal thought into every item they choose for their stores, and the results are unique and interesting. These are hard times for them, but if we lose them to the big chains, a part of our community will be gone.

Secondly, think about just one person you know who is struggling with this time of year. It might be the elderly neighbour on your street, the widow facing her first holiday alone, or the single parent who can barely pay the rent, let alone buy gifts. Consider what would be the perfect gift for them. It might be dropping by to visit with a box of chocolates and a holiday card. It might be an invitation to join your celebration. It might be a book for the kids. If we all reach out to one person we know, chances are we’d make the season feel even more special for ourselves too.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy Winter Solstice, top of the season to us all!

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 havewon back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. And, her new Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched in May.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-12-21T00:05:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wake up at night, thinking of the myriad of books that I, as a bookseller, have placed in the hands of strangers, with the the assurance that 'you will enjoy this.'

One of bookselling's main skills is recommending books to people who aren't sure what they want. But reading is an intimate recreation, and to suggest a book to a person you don't know from Adam, you need to be part psychologist, part seer, and a bloody good guesser.

The natural starting place is right in front of you - the customer. I do a quick physical scan: a frail, elderly woman likely won't want a lot of sex or violence (but be prepared to gracefully amend that opinion in a flash), and a big, bluff man probably prefers a plot-driven novel without too much description. But assumptions can be deadly, and possibly embarrassing.

Your first question: whom do you like? Their answer will jump-start your mind with its files of potential authors. You know violence is acceptable-after all, a corpse or two will have to appear-but what level is suitable? A tidy Agatha Christie murder? Or are we topping the scale with someone like James Lee Burke. Does your customer require plenty of fast-paced action? Do they love in-depth characters, such as Elizabeth George provides? Or just the facts, ma'am. Would some lightness be relished, or should we keep humour at bay?

You mine everything they say for clues, while scanning the shelves for inspiration. Size them up a bit before raving over that new book you loved - would it appeal to this customer? I'm wary of promoting too heartily - we've all plugged a book to a friend, only to have them turn away and mumble something about how it wasn't quite their cup of tea when asked how they enjoyed it (and you thought you knew them). Yes, bookselling is a subtle art, like alchemy, but the point is, to sell a book!

Then there is the customer who is buying a book as a gift, adding a further obstacle; now you're the third party in the preference assessment - a stranger is asking you to suggest a book for a mother, spouse, or sick friend. You ask questions, and hope for a moment of genius.

Equally tough is recommending within a genre you're not as keen on; you're less familiar with the books. Strict objectivity is necessary here; you want to put the right book in your customer's hands. People are counting on your expertise, and you don't want to let them down.

When I worked at Prime Crime, I kept extensive lists: historical mysteries, hard-boiled detective stories, murder-by-country (all of Scandinavia was hot!), even by state and province, for those moments when an unexpected question muddies your brain: I'm going on holiday, do you have something set in Spain? (or Hawaii, or Timbuktu). Or the customer who loves knitting, and wants a craftsperson as a detective. My lists were invaluable, and I was rarely stumped.

Of course, you have the 'regulars' with whom you have a running dialogue: "I liked this, but I wasn't really taken with that." You build a relationship, and recommending gets easier. Or the lovely person who comes in and says, "I was in months ago, and you gave me the best book - what else can you suggest?" But for the most part, we never know. Did that businessman go on to read everything by Giles Blunt? Did someone's ailing auntie like the Susan Hill? How about the fourteen year-old - is he now deeply into Sherlockania?

It's a real pleasure to see the answering flash of recognition when you mention a favourite author - ah, a kindred spirit. And you have to bite back indignation when you mention a cherished writer only to meet scorn: oh, I hate his books. Fair enough. Stuff the wounded feelings back inside, and see if this one suits. But you feel for the dismissed author: it's not toasters we're selling here.

I picture all those bedside tables with 'my books' on them, either waiting for the eager reader to return, or pushed aside in disappointment. It would be interesting to know your on-base percentage - booksellers rarely get to know how it all turns out. All in a day's work for the true sleuth of the book world - the bookseller.

Sylvia Braithwaite has been in the book world in one way or the other, her entire life: fanatical reader, bookseller, publicist – and occasional writer. This summer, she is spending a lot of time in her garden, which also involves plenty of reading in the shade, and dreaming up plots as well as tending them.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-12-20T09:11:00.000-05:00

Santa, baby...

I've been nice this year! Well, most of the time, I think. So, here's my Christmas wish list and I'm hoping it's doable.

First of all, I need to fuel my creative abilities so lots of espresso beans, please. Or a (massive) gift certificate at my favourite local spot, Francesco's in the Glebe. I promise to keep alert and captive at my computer screen.

Terrific reviews and big sales when A Killer Read hits the shelves in April would be outstanding. Okay, these might be a little out of your control, but I'd be ever so grateful if you could swing it.

Snow! What's Christmas day if it isn't white? There's a rumour, fueled by long range weather forecasts, that the lawns might be green in these parts. Say it isn't so!

Some great new computer program for a dummy like me that allows me to do amazing things with my photos. Easy-to-read directions are a necessity.

The services of a handyman next summer. I'm talking landscaping abilities, of course!

And, here's the biggy, Santa...you know those dynamite reviews? How about spreading them throughout the Canadian crime writing community! Let's make sure we become household names here at home -- like Atwood and Ondaatje, for instance -- and then we'll think about tackling the world next year. Easy, right?

I'll be sure to leave you lots of cookies (I promise not to do the baking of them) & some milk-based liquid to fortify you on your journey Christmas Eve. Thanks, Santa!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-12-19T08:40:00.000-05:00

What's new?

I have an announcement. I have a website. Or rather, Erika Chase has a website. And I'm both pleased and relieved.

It's been on my To Do list for about a year now. Really. When Erika came into being, we both realized that it would take a lot of self-promotion in a market south of the border that's filled with cosy writers who are very serious about BSP (that's blatant self-promotion, a term that became a promotional manual from Sisters in Crime). In order to compete, and blatantly, get the sales in order to continue the series and continue competing, one needs to become a favoured name on readers' bookshelves.

My agent sent out a manual of promotional tips and as we all know, there's a lot of ways to go about it. A lot of gimmicks, too from the bookmarks to erasers to chocolates one finds in loot bags at mystery conferences. But the methods that have the most value, and take the most work also, are websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. The electronic age reigns!

Many are these days re-evaluating the value of the blog. As Vicki Delany pointed out to many of us, The Lipstick Chronicles, a long-standing blog with mainly US writers as contributors, has decided to call it quits. I know there are a couple of others that are re-evaluating the way they go about the blog business. Twitter seems to be the method of getting the word out there. But frankly, I tweet at least once a day, scroll through recent tweets, check on a few people to see what's on their minds (my agent being one of those) and that's about it. There's too much traffic on the Twitter line.

Facebook is becoming a challenge. Some days it's a breeze -- post, read, comment, smile. Other days, there's also too much happening and too little time to spend on it, that's when it's technically working correctly.

So, back to the author's website. I put off doing it because I wanted to have control and be able to change it as needed. Of course, that means I'll have to remember to do that. But, I'm technically challenged, so that seemed a large stumbling block. Not so. Mystery colleague and friend David Cole found this great easy-to-do site that let me build it all. It has a few frustrations (like a box that I cannot get ride of) but aside from that, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

And I was so relieved to be able to inform my editor that yes, I did now have a website up and running. Tick a major stressor off my To Do list. I hope you will visit Erika at http://www.erikachase.com and that you enjoy it. Please send me your comments and suggestions. I'm always looking for ways to make things better.

How about sending me a link to yours?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-12-16T09:28:00.003-05:00

Looking ahead!

Can you believe it? 6 days until winter. 9 days to Christmas. 16 days and we're into a new year. But that also means longer days, shorter nights and spring is on the way. Okay, maybe that's rushing it a small bit.

But there's another reason to be looking forward to the new year. There's a pile of new books coming from Canadian mystery and crime writers! Part of that pile is stacked on my TBR shelf, along with those published this year that I'm struggling to get through (I DON'T mean they're badly written, just that life keeps heaping other stuff on my plate). Among them, and I forgot to mention this title last time I listed my PR's (pending reviews) and that's The Ophelia Trap by Kate Burns. It's now on the bookshelves, including mine, and I'm looking forward to the read.

Just arrived from the publishers' reps, more books published in 2011: The Girl in the Wall by Alison Preston. I've always enjoyed her writing -- she did a signing at Prime Crime one year -- and this one looks to be another page-turner. And, a first novel which was the winner of the First Book Competition from The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University, Nondescript Rambunctious by Jackie Bateman. Plus, Bloodline, a haunted crime story by Stan Rogal.

Coming up for publication this winter and spring: Red Means Run by Brad Smith (read his author interview here on Jan. 4th); The Beggar's Opera by Peggy Blair, her first and it was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Assoc. Debut Dagger Award in 2010; A Green Place for Dying, the fifth Meg Harris mystery by local author R.J. Harlick; and, Last Dance by West Coast writer David Russell. It's the second in his Winston Patrick series.

So, you see I have a lot of good reading ahead of me. And, I know there'll be new books from Gail Bowen, Pamela Ballow, C.B. Forrest, Janet Bolin, Vicki Delany and Erika Chase. Others will be added as we get into the new year selling seasons.

Let's all get out there and support our terrific Canadian crime and mystery writers. You'll be doing yourself a favour, too!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-12-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

In His Own Words

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. A beautiful building with some rooms left as they were when Morgan died it is a testimony to a very wealthy man who chose to amass a collection of rare books and documents and hired a librarian, Belle da Costa Greene to manage and augment his collection, a job she did for forty years.

Despite the treasures, such as the Gutenberg Bible, on display it was a temporary exhibit celebrating Dickens, who was born two hundred years earlier in February 1812, that captured my attention.

A number of original texts were there including the first three pages which comprised the entire first chapter of A Mutual Friend. Written in a tiny script with much crossing out and correcting the pages have an immediacy that is compelling.

The opening lines, “carried along in the corpse-fisher’s boat, we seem to enter the dark side . . .” appealed to the mystery writer in me. On the same page he had changed, “touch of fear and horror”, to “touch of dread or horror”. The changes were numerous and interesting.

Dickens produced a Christmas book every year and these were easily recognized at the booksellers as they had distinctive bindings. However he wrote that it was a challenge to meet his annual deadline. A Christmas Carol was published on the nineteenth of December 1843 and by Christmas the edition of 6000 was sold out.

As we know he used these books to underline the plight of the poor and roundly condemn a society that allowed the poor to suffer. In fact, as he grew wealthy he contributed much to charity including the establishment of Urania cottage designed to train the poorest of poor women and help them make their way in the world. Some of these women immigrated to the colonies and I wonder if any came to Canada.

Dickens also had a playful side. When he was renovating and redecorating Tavistock House he amused himself by thinking up fanciful book titles for his library. One was to be entitled A History of a Short Chancery Suite (20 volumes) and a second was to be called The Scotch Fiddle. Scotch Fiddle was a euphemism for itchiness and reportedly reflected his opinion of Robert Burn’s work.

In response to a letter from a fan asking if he dictated his work he replied:
“I can no sooner imagine a painter dictating his pictures. No. I write every word of my books in my own hand. . . I write with great care and pains (Being passionately fond of my art, and thinking it worth any trouble.)”

Inspirational words matched by the chance to examine the original manuscript but not something tomorrow’s readers will be able to do. Today’s writers may write the first draft by hand but then they transfer the work to a computer where all thoughtful changes are lost forever.

Too bad.

Joan Boswell is a member of the Ladies Killing Circle and co-edited four of their short story anthologies: Fit toDie, Bone Dance, Boomers Go Bad and Going Out With a Bang. Her three mysteries, Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and Cut and Run were published in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2000 she won the $10,000 Toronto Star’s short story contest. Joan lives in Toronto with three flat-coated retrievers.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-12-14T00:05:00.000-05:00

Rick Blechta back on the hot seat!

Yesterday's blog started this conversation about book covers with Rick Blechta, mystery author and designer. There's more...

3. As a designer, what would you advise authors to focus on when having input into a cover design?

First of all, don’t expect to get much of a say in the matter. Even if an author complains loud and long about the horrible design of the book’s cover, most publishers will fall back on the usual bromide: “It’s a marketing decision.”

In designing covers, I’ve discovered two very surprising things along the way. First is that many, many people in the publishing industry (and I’m including writers in this) don’t know the first thing about good cover design. Case in point: they’re not aware on how choice of colour can affect the perception and legibility of a cover. Try this if you have the computer knowledge to do it: find a whole bunch of covers and remove all the colour. Make them black and white. Are they still really legible? It’s amazing how often that wonderful looking colour cover becomes an illegible mess when it’s changed to black and white and shrunk to fit a newspaper review. If you don’t see that as of critical importance, you’re nuts. Do you think the designer of that page is going to sit down and optimize that cover for you? Ain’t gonna happen.

So my suggestion to any author is to print out their proposed cover on a black and white printer. Stand back about five to ten feet? Can you still read it easily? If you can’t, something has to be fixed. Less experienced designers make this simple mistake a lot.

Second, look at the book’s title and your name. Again, stand back a few feet. Can everything be read easily? If not there’s a problem either in font choice(s), setting of the font(s), size, kerning (how close or far apart the letter are), contrast or choice of colour – or both. A lot of times designers will make inappropriate type choices that muddle the message. I’m not saying that every book cover should be designed using just a handful of very legible, standard typefaces that have been designed for display work, but type should be appropriate to the use to which it’s being put. Inappropriate type can also call attention to itself too much. You want people to read the words not have trouble figuring out what the words are or gawking at the pretty typeface or the clever way in which it’s been set. The first rule of good typography is always that it should be “invisible”. In other words, it should just look right.

Another thing: is the image on the cover appropriate? Does it actually communicate something useful? Don’t get married to the idea of having a scene from your book on the cover. First and foremost, you want the image to be evocative. It can sell the sizzle of the book, or it can sell the steak. Either one can be good and effective if handled properly.

The most successful cover I ever designed was for one of my own books, Cemetery of the Nameless. Over and over, booksellers told me how much they loved the cover. It was often faced out on bookshelves for just this reason. Now that’s a powerful sales tool and I got it for nothing. Well, I’m here to tell you that that particular cover design broke just about every rule in the book: the image was ridiculously too busy, the balance between the title and author was deliberately out of balance each to the other, but they were placed that way because they further strengthened the image. The strongest thing in the design was the way the title of the book was set. Why? Because it was a great title. (For the record, I didn’t come up with the book’s title. Two cops in Vienna did when they told me about the real Cemetery of the Nameless.) Incidentally, we came up with forty-eight different versions of that cover (some variations were minor) before we settled on the one that was used (#42). Not many designers can afford to put that much time into one cover – an no publisher would have paid for what that cover actually would have cost.

4. What about photographs vs artwork? What’s more effective?

It depends on how they’re used. The nice thing about an illustration is that you can get exactly what you want. If the illustrator is given a detailed concept from which to work, and they’re competent, you’ll get a good image. If they understand the concepts of effective book cover design that I’ve outlined above, you’ll get a great image.

For photographs, again, find the right photographer, give them a great concept and let them do their thing. You should get a great image.

The shortcoming of both in the modern world of publishing is that commissioned art, whether it be illustration or photograph can be very expensive. Publishers are leery of it for that reason. Ever see a cover where you’ve wondered, “How did that ever get approved? It is just plain ugly!” Well, what could have happened was that the artist or photographer just didn’t do a very good job or they weren’t given a clear idea of what was needed. (Almost no designers, illustrators or photographers have anything more than a cursory knowledge of the book for which they’re designing the cover.) But with commissioned art, the publisher has invested a considerable amount of money and they’re loathe to just toss that away. Quite often the person at the publishing company who commissioned the original art is unwilling to take the fall, so they push the hell out of it to compensate for their error. It’s dumb, but it happens.

Which brings us to the current reality of cover images: stock photos. There are a number of companies that sell them, most do it online now. What happens is the designer and sometimes the editor pour over pages of images based on keywords that are punched in. Hopefully, they come up with something good. Part of the equation is how many hours they’re prepared to look since you can imagine that this situation is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. For the publisher, the monetary saving is big. They might be able to buy that image for as little as $20, instead of several hundred for the most established stock photo resellers or upwards of $1000 for a commissioned image from a great photographer or illustrator. Which route do you think they’ll choose, especially if the author is low in the pecking order?

The big problem is oftentimes the designer never finds that “just right” image so they settle for something less. You’ve seen the results on countless covers over the past several years.

5. Is there anything else you feel needs to be said?

This is already pretty long. Let’s stop now. I could go on and on and on. Time to step off the soapbox.

Thanks, Rick! It's a large topic and that's a tall soapbox packed with lots of valuable information.

Besides his career as a writer of crime fiction, Rick Blechta has been a graphic designer since 1998 who now owns a successful design studio, Castlefield Media. Over the years, during which he was mentored by well-known designers and artists, Kal Honey and Kim Lee Kho, he made himself an avid student of this arcane art. His design output has included commissions for a number of book covers.

As a writer, his short novel, Orchestrated Murder, was recently published by Orca Book Publishing, and fall of 2012 will see the release of his full-length novel, The Fallen One, by Dundurn Press.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-12-13T00:05:00.003-05:00

Rick Blechta's got you covered!

As a bit of a departure, and carrying forward the blog comments from last week about covers, I've sent mystery author Rick Blechta some questions -- not about writing mysteries but rather, about 'covering' them. Rick's 'other life' is as a designer and since he has a lot to say on the topic, the Q&A is split over two blogs.

1. How important are book covers?

To my mind, box covers are the way prospective readers first see your book. They need to catch a shopper’s eye, especially if you’re not a top-tier author. From my viewpoint as a designer, I like to also think of book covers as posters. One very experienced designer talks about “ten-foot covers”, meaning that she felt people should be able to discern something that intrigues them about a book from ten feet away. Accomplishing that can be a tough thing and it often takes everything in a designer’s bag of tricks.

For something as seemingly simple as a cover with its three components (title, author name and image), you have to consider so many small things and know how to juggle them successfully to get the correct balance. Then you have to worry about things like contrast between the colours used, placement of the components on the cover, treatment of the image so that it doesn’t overbalance or underbalance with the two other components, followed by making everything pleasing to look at (even if the viewer doesn’t know why it’s pleasing). A cover designer has a full dance card.

But it all boils down to this: the cover can make a huge difference in getting a person to pick up that book. Accomplish that and you’re halfway home.

Then there’s the cover’s sell copy: either the inside flap for hardcovers, or the back cover for trade and mass market paperbacks to seal the deal.

And that actually brings up another sore point with me: why do people at publishing houses (usually the editor or marketing director) naturally seem to think that they are equipped to write advertising copy? Being able to express oneself with the written word and writing effective sell copy are two completely different things. When corporations are trying to market their wares, they pay a huge amounts of money to ad people to come up with copy that will effectively sell their products, because they know how critical it is to the success of their ultimate goal: selling things. And yet nearly every publisher I’ve ever heard of composes their sell copy almost as an afterthought and it’s never written by a professional copy writer. Why is that? Have they ever investigated how successful ad campaigns for other products have been assembled? Thousands of dollars of production money can go straight down the toilet if the sell copy on a book cover is ineffective.

It’s really sad to see people pick up a particular book over and over and then put it down because the sell copy is so poor. I’ve watched it happen when doing book cover research.

Bottom line: a great cover can get a reader to pick up a book, but then the sell copy has to seal the deal. If these two things aren’t put together very carefully by people who really know their business, then a publisher is blowing one of their best chances to sell their wares – particularly if the author isn’t a household name.

2. What do you say to those who think, especially with the advent of e-books, that they’re not important?

To those who think a cover isn’t important to e-books, let me ask them this: how else is the book going to be presented to potential buyers? Can’t you see the space where the cover is normally displayed on Amazon, for instance, with a couple of lines of type giving the title and author. Boy, that would be really effective to get the person browsing to investigate further. As long as there are books, covers will be important whether you’re holding a bound sheaf of papers in your hands or an ebook reader. Let me also ask you this: if covers weren’t necessary anymore, do you think publishers would bother paying for them? Why do you think they came up with book covers in the first place?

Thanks, Rick! That's a lot to think about. Part two will appear tomorrow on Mystery Maven Canada.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-12-12T09:26:00.000-05:00

Tell me it isn't so!

I fear it is so, though. And even worse, 'still'. I'm referring to Jeffrey Simpson's column in the Globe & Mail on Saturday, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/jeffrey-simpson/so-much-more-than-a-nose-on-our-currency/article2266173/. If you don't have time to read it, the short version is that Canadian writers 'get no respect'.

In Simpson's column he's focusing on Richard Gwynn's historical works about John A. Macdonald in particular. If these were published in the U.S., and about American statesmen, they would be best sellers. Not so, here in Canada. The less we know about our history, the better it seems. So, publish away. The sales will be to those history buffs who probably already know most of the story.

Ottawa crime writer C.B. Forrest wrote one of 177 comments posted to that column. He pointed out that this malady is one suffered by most Canadian authors, except for those household names, Atwood and Ondaatje ...you know the list, I'm sure. And then there's the lowly crime writer. If you're Robinson or Bowen, your name commands instant recognition with the mystery lover reader. But what about with mainstream readers?

That could be because Canadian crime novels seldom appear on the books pages of our newspapers and magazines. What an amazing feat then that Elizabeth Duncan's latest

mystery, A Killer's Christmas in Wales, hit the Postmedia newspapers across the country on Saturday. Well done, Elizabeth. There MAY be hope for us all. But don't hold your breath. Forrest went on to point out that the Globe's 'top 11 crime books of 2011, listed only one Canadian.

Margaret Canon, Don Graves and a few others are still able to give prominence to Canadian crime and mystery books in their columns. Remember the days when there were double that number?

I keep coming back to this every few blogs or so...the message needs to get out there and it's up to the readers and writers to make sure that happens. I urge you to use your blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitters accounts to herald the fact that we have some excellent Canadian mystery and crime writers. Go ahead -- name names! Point the finger! Be a snitch.

And after you've read all those wonderful Canadian books you'll (hopefully) receive for Christmas, go on-line and post reviews. We can make this happen. And maybe next year at this time, I won't be blogging about this topic again!

Any suggestions as to what we can do?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

MYSTERY REVIEW

2011-12-10T00:05:00.005-05:00

Red Means Run
by Brad Smith
Simon & Schuster

I'm in love with Brad Smith. Okay, I've admitted it. So that's why, when I received the advance reading copy of his latest novel, Red Means Run, I couldn't wait to read it.

I usually don't review books until they're available on the shelves for readers. I know it's frustrating to read a great review and not be able to find the book. But this time, I'm making the exception because Red Means Run will be available in January, so that's not long to wait.

And another reason is that if you haven't yet discovered Canadian author Brad Smith, you'll have time to read Brad's earlier books before Red Means Run releases. It's not necessary because he doesn't write a series. But once you get hooked on his writing, I know you'll want to read them all.

So, now I'll edit my opening statement -- I'm really in love with his writing. And, Red Means Run did not disappoint me. It has all the Brad Smith qualities -- the laid back protagonist -- Virgil Cain -- with a prison record and a good heart; several bad guys trying to get the best of him; and that touch of romantic sparks zapping the pages.

Virgil Cain is trying to live the quiet life on a farm in upstate New York, after serving a jail sentence in Quebec (the Canadian connection!). So much for that goal when the body of a very successful, much-loathed criminal lawyer is found on a golf course. It's too bad he had a connection to Cain and that just two weeks prior, Cain had wished him dead. Out loud. In front of witnesses!

Once the cops, or at least the lead detective, thinks he has his murderer and indeed, throws Cain in jail, the search for other suspects is finished. Cain knows his only hope is to escape and prove his innocence.

What he doesn't know is the other cop -- the cute female who has all the brains -- is also keeping an open mind and while she must track down the escaped Cain, she's also trying to find the real killer. But when another body, also tied into the lawyer, is found dead, that noose gets so much tighter around Cain's neck.

Brad Smith has mastered the funny, sexy noir caper and Red Means Run is a prime example! Read it for the dialogue, read it for the chase, read it to have a very enjoyable time.

Want a taste of Red Means Run? Check out the trailer at his Facebook site at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Brad-Smith/256466447720722?sk=app_57675755167

Mystery Maven Canada is pleased to launch Brad Smith's Blog Tour on January 4th. Be sure to stop by as Brad gets the third degree!

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-12-09T00:05:00.000-05:00

Gotta love that book!

So how much do you love that book you’re writing? Do you enjoy going back to it each day? Do you look forward to spending time with the characters? Entangling them in all sorts of sticky situations? Having them solve the crime?

You’d better because you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time with them! I don’t mean writing time. That varies with each writer of course. You may whip through a draft in a couple of months, revise in another two or three and have the finished product off to the publisher within a year. Or, you may have been working on this baby for too many months to count.

It matters not in this context. Because once you do send it off, you’ll be revisiting it again and again. And again when it comes time to doing the promotional gigs.

Here’s the scenario – you finish the manuscript, breath a massive sigh of relief and perhaps, feel a tiny let down because those long months of visiting (insert name of setting) are over. So is the routine of writing daily. What – you have a life again?

Only for a short time. So make the most of it. Because it’s on to the next book.

And after a few months of writing, at a point where you’re brain is so wrapped up in the new plot, then you get the editor’s comments. If you’re an amazing writer, there may not be much to touch up or re-do. Otherwise, dig your head out of the new and get back to reading the entire manuscript and doing those changes.

Off it goes again. Maybe you can actually break the back of the next book. Oops…that email from your editor just came in. Now it’s time for a cover conference, so write the cover blurb please and send suggestions about the cover. What? That next plot has enveloped your mind again so it’s back for a scan of the first book. Do it and send it off and wait. It won’t be long until another email appears.

Only this time, it’s from the copyeditor with his/her suggestions which could mean a lot of red lines and hidden comments. Put the next book on the cold back burner once again. Start reading the manuscript from start to finish, once again. Do what needs to be done. Send it back.

Think you can really immerse yourself into writing at this point? Forget it. Next come the proofs and that requires a very thorough reading for typos, etc. Mmm, the plot seems way too familiar. But it gets done.

Another sigh of relief and back to writing. Until release date of the first book and then you have a launch which requires a reading done by you. Hadn’t thought of that, had you? Better re-read and find the appropriate portion of your work of art that will have them hooked.

All done? Not likely. But enjoy the moment. And by the way, do you still love that book?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
From Berkley Prime Crime
(available for pre-order on Amazon)

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-12-08T08:39:00.001-05:00

My Kindle and Me

Both Linda Wiken and Rick Blechta have been blogging about covers this past week. I take Rick's point that cover artists are getting lazy. He uses the cover art on Ian Rankin's latest book as an example. It's stark and ugly. I'm wondering if the recent explosion of e-books could be at the root of this.

I'm addicted to my Kindle. There, I've said it. I never thought it would happen but I actually prefer to read on this device. Partly it's the joy of being able to access a book the minute I hear good things about it. I've had this device for a while and I still can't get over the fact that I can zap 600 pages into my hand in the time it takes me to swallow my first sip of coffee in the morning. I just love the look and feel of the thing and I don't yearn for paper the way I thought I might.

What I do miss, though, are covers. I used to spend hours browsing in an independent bookstore, checking out covers and blurbs, reading the first page or two and often buying a couple of books on that basis. Now I'm more likely to check the Kindle reviews and perhaps download the free sample before I buy. The cover is simply not an incentive on an e-reader.

My Kindle offers a slightly grey and slightly blurry version of the paper cover. But most of the books I've downloaded open at page one. If I want to see the cover I have to back up through all the copyright and dedications and acknowledgements and by the time I get there it's not worth the trip. Maybe the newer Kindle Fire is crisper but I still can't help but wonder if covers are on the way out for e-readers. Maybe this is what's driving the crappy cover art that Rick suggests is the norm today.

Sue Pike has published a couple of dozen stories and won several awards including an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Crime Story. Her latest, Where the Snow Lay Dinted appeared in the January issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Sue and her husband and an opinionated Australian Shepherd named Cooper spend the winter months in Ottawa and the rest of the time at a mysterious cottage on the Rideau Lakes.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-12-07T00:05:00.000-05:00

Pass the ketchup, please!

Have you noticed how important food is? Not for the obvious reasons, like keeping us alive. But to add some realism into the books we read and write. Have you noticed how many times a sleuth will grab a snack, stop for take-out on the way home, have coffee with a police officer? It's what people do in real life therefore it's what characters do in books.

What's your favourite snack? I love almond butter, by the teaspoonful, right out of the jar. Funny that Lizzie Turner loves the same thing. She's my amateur sleuth in the Ashton Corners Book Club mysteries. And even the name of the book club has

Cheese Straws in it. Which brings up the point that perhaps food plays a larger role in cosies than in police procedurals.

Not so. Ever noticed how Inspector Green loves his deli foods? Ask Barbara Fradkin why we know that fact about him. And how about Benny Cooperman? What's his usual lunch? Howard Engel has been telling us for years that it's an egg sandwich.

A shared meal allows an author to introduce facts through conversation. Right...they could do that over the phone or on a park bench. But the meal provides another layer or texture to the scene. We have comfort food, health food, fast food, junk food...a whole lot of eating going on along with the solving of crimes. We have sleuths who are caterers, food reviewers, cupcake bakers, coffee shop owners and all these books include recipes at the back. Mystery Readers Journal has had four issues devoted to culinary crime.

And then we have authors who produce their own cookbooks. Patricia Cornwell has one filled with recipes that her character, Kay Scarpetta uses. Crime Writers of Canada has put out two volumes of Dishes to Die For. Mystery writers also produce blogs about food. Try out these tasty samples:
http://www.mysteryloverskitchen.com and http://www.fatalfoodies.blogspot.com.

How about that mystery you're reading ... I'll bet there's food mentioned in it. Maybe even a recipe or two. Enjoy!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-12-06T00:05:00.001-05:00

Not another cover!

Isn't it funny how things connect sometimes? Like my blog yesterday about the cover conference process. And later in the afternoon what do I receive but an email about the cover conference for book #2 happening next week.

Now, I have to tell you, it's still a thrill to be involved in all this. But what was the plot of book #2? I'm trying to totally immerse myself in the third one. Trying, being the operative word. Oops, should I have admitted that?

So, number two had to do with Christmas, which is timely because it will be published in November, 2012. It's still the Ashton Corners Book Club (or it wouldn't be a series, would it?) and my main characters are still: alive, participating in the book club, or policing the town.

But I have to admit, I haven't given this cover any thought. Why not, I wonder? I knew this would happen at some point. But not at this point.

I'm still in awe of the speed with which the publishing cycle works at Berkley Prime Crime. It's a nine month deadline for each new book. That's because cosy readers really can't wait any longer for the next installment. I know, as a bookseller, I was always hearing customers 'complain' that writers should write faster. After all, there was this massive appetite to feed. But it wasn't only cosy writers they aimed those comments at. It was anyone who dared to write a mystery series.

This is all good, right?

You bet it is! Writers write to be read. Readers read to keep on reading. It's a win-win all around. So, I just have to get my head in gear and multi-task for a few more days (I'm also working on Erika's website). This IS all good.

What about you? Are you in multi-tasking mode? How much of it is self-imposed? Does this make us better writers?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-12-05T08:52:00.002-05:00

It's covered!

So, one more time for those not paying attention -- I have a cover for my new book!
Or rather, Erika Chase has a cover. I was delighted to receive it last week, along with the gentle nudge from my editor's assistant to make sure Erika's website is up and running fairly soon. Like yesterday.

I'd been putting off doing it, mainly because it seemed so daunting a task. But with a lot of help from my friend David Cole, the website will be launching later this week. That's a blog for another day.

What I thought you might find interesting is the cover process. I know all publishers are not alike in this. For our Ladies' Killing Circle anthologies with RendezVous Crime, we were very lucky to have a lot of input into the cover. We sent suggestions, they were worked on by terrific artists, and then we got a final chance to comment on the covers before they went to press.

I remember attempts at suggesting a cover to a previous publisher -- we even went as far as submitting a dynamite painting done by LKC member Joan Boswell (she's also a terrific artist)-- were for naught and instead, we were stuck with a cover that still makes me cringe.

I've discovered that Berkley Prime Crime has some wonderful cover artists and that they're open to suggestions. The 'cover conference' process started with my editor asking for suggestions, then visuals of some aspects of the book -- the antibellum mansion where the book club meets, the antique weapon used by the murderer, etc. She also wanted my input into the cover blurb. And then, I had to write a bio. The result of this collaborative effort is what you see before you. And I'm delighted. The two Siamese cats even look suspiciously like the two that run this household.

It's been a wonderful process and I'm very grateful to my editor and the staff at Berkley. As I said, I know that the process is different with each publisher. I hear complaints from some authors that they have no input whatsoever into the cover design, which leads to an unhappy writer.

I'm counting down now to the April release and have enjoyed every minute of it. Well, maybe not so much what Barbara Fradkin calls 'the horrible' (see Dec. 1st blog). That happens to us all.

So, what do you think? Is my cover a winner?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-12-02T09:56:00.000-05:00

Bookmas

Hopefully you've noticed under 'Events' that the Twelve Days of Bookmas is here once again. Now, you may be wondering why Mystery Maven is taking part in this pre-Christmas romp through bookland. It's mainly because my agent's literary agency is doing it and they've invited their authors to participate. It's a second return engagement for Bookmas because it was so successful last year. And I think that readers on both sides of the border should have the opportunity to win free books!

Besides, it's great fun.

All the details are found at the BookEnds Literary Agency website. To play, start at http://www.bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/ each day. That's the set-up. Next step is to gather the clues by going to the websites, blogsites, Twitter and/or Facebooks of the participating authors. They're all listed at the bottom of each day's question and it's easy to just click on them. Mystery Maven is listed as Erika Chase. That's me, right?

Hopefully, the clues will combine to give you the answer, whether it's a book title, author ... whatever's on the BookEnd's mysterious minds for that day. They're all widely-read so these aren't strictly mysteries she's touting. Clues will be posted at noon every weekday for 12 days.

One of the website's you'll want to visit is that of Ontario mystery writer Janet Bolin at http://www.threadvillemysteries.com. Her second book in the Threadville mysteries is due in Feb., 2012 from Berkley Prime Crime. If you're a cosy-lover, you'll want to add this series to your list of favourites and there's just enough time to read the first book, Dire Threads before Threaded for Trouble hits the shelves.

That's the great thing about Bookmas -- you'll find quite an array of new authors to try and you'll also get some great reading suggestions from BookEnds. You can start from this page each day after reading the Mystery Maven blog. Just click on the Bookmas link under events (be sure to read my clue also) and follow the trail to the right answer. And, a free book.

Happy Bookmassing!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-12-01T08:40:00.000-05:00

Getting Past the Horrible

Several years ago, I attended a panel discussion in which authors were talking about their writing process. Peter Robinson, who then had twelve successful Inspector Banks novels under his belt, spoke about that point in his first draft when he hated it. What am I doing, pretending to be a writer? he lamented. This is crap, I can’t write, I’m just a hack. To which his wife replied, Oh, you’re on page 170.

It’s a story I resurrect whenever I hit the first draft doldrums. Where I am now. I’m actually at about page 190, but close enough. It’s that point in the book where the plot is at its wildest and I have no idea how to pull it all together. Where the excitement I had at the start of a new adventure has given way to a sense of utter confusion and panic. The book had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but it’s gotten out of hand. I am too close to the story to see the whole and to see if it is any good, but it feels dreadful. A hundred doubts fill my thoughts. Is this plot too convoluted? Are there so many twists and turns that the reader will give up? Or worse, is it even interesting enough? Are the characters dull, superficial, clichéd?

Usually it’s at the two-thirds point of the story, but the dreaded “horrible” can hit an author at any time. When they read a bad review of a previous book. When they get an abysmal royalty statement. When they find their Amazon rankings are in the million-plus range or there are none of their books in any of the stores in their hometown.

Or it can happen when they have no idea where to take the plot next. For me, it’s usually a combination of these factors. The one sure thing is that it will hit at some point in the process, likely more than once. Reminding myself of Peter’s story helps. Reminding myself that I have ten previous books under my belt, all of which went through this stage and emerged as quite decent books. A shopping spree or a bottle of wine helps, as does lunch out with a writer friend to remind me I’m not alone.

The single most important action at that horrible moment, however, is to stare that book down. It’s the last thing you want to do. You want to stick it in the corner, pile newspapers on top of it, maybe tear it into a gazillion little pieces. You want to skirt a wide berth around it so as to avoid even a whiff of the stink. But it won’t improve by being ignored. It won’t write itself out of the tangle you have put it in. You need to pick it up and keep writing in order to get yourself out of the hole. As you write, keep in mind those doubts you had – are the characters boring or clichéd, is the plot too convoluted or flat – because they may help you generate the next steps in the book. But don’t be a slave to them; they can be addressed in rewrites. In first draft, you just need to get the story down.

Easy to say ‘keep writing’, but write what? I throw two characters together in a scene and make them talk. Make them argue. See what comes out of it. Or I put a character into an unexpected situation (like coming home, getting stuck in traffic, running into his boss in the hall, anything) and see what I come up with.

Often when I stare the book down and keep writing through the horribles, I write pages or whole scenes that get tossed in the bin later, but in the writing of them, new inspiration strikes. I see a path forward, however short. I come up with a brilliant new twist or a new insight into a character. I feel that quiver of excitement again, that tells me I’m back in the game.

If I can’t bear to even get near the book, or the page remains blank as I stare at it, and if the shopping spree or wine don’t help, I take the story out on the road. I get out of the house and into a peaceful setting, like walking the dog, where I can think without interruption. I worry away at the knot, ask myself questions about what has to come next, what would such and such a character do next, what thread have I forgotten. I’ve been known to talk aloud to my characters, a technique that’s become a whole lot easier with the advent of hands-free devices. People no long think I’m stark raving mad. They think I’m talking on my cellphone.

Usually by the end of the walk I have some ideas. I feel that quiver of excitement to get on with them. It might not last more than a couple of days, but for those days, I am writing again, and enjoying it. Bit by bit, often in fits and starts, I get through the horribles and reach the end of the book.

Here’s hoping. If anyone has some novel, preferably fun ways to get past the horribles, I’d love to hear them.

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 havewon back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. And, her new Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched in May.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-11-30T00:05:00.001-05:00

It’s All Research!

Life has a way of throwing stuff at you. Some of the stuff is good, like winning the 50/50 draw at a ceilidh, or getting the last parking spot when you have an appointment, or being offered the last piece of double chocolate birthday cake.

Then there is the other stuff, like finding out that you have a strange and crappy hip joint that needs an operation, and that the waiting list is more than a year. Ah, well, such is life. We are supposed to take the good with the bad, and someone somewhere also said that we aren’t thrown more than we can bear in this life. Wonder who that person was?

I have 2 friends who are writers, proper published writers, who like to say, “It’s all research.”

I like that phrase, because it seems to give a purpose to some of that stuff that comes flying my way that I was not looking for, like hip surgery. I have learned that you can expect to have just an epidural at the start of the surgery, no more do they knock you out completely, which I am more a fan of; I know you have to be there when they are carving your hip, but I did not want to be a conscious participant. I learned the different materials that they fashion bionic hips out of these days, strange to think that it is inside making my leg move. I can list off the various physiotherapy exercises that are required for the various stages of re-learning how to walk, climb stairs, and gracefully (and not so) enter a car. I am now intimately familiar with lots of fascinating facts regarding total hip replacement surgery.

I am no expert, you understand, and would not want to be asked to replace the cranky hip of someone else, but I can now blithely hold up my end in excruciating detail on this subject at all the best cocktail parties.

And if ever I would like to write the next great Canadian murder mystery starring a victim of total hip replacement, I will have already done my research personally, and somewhat painfully. So nice to know that this was not all wasted.

I can speak with some authority about some construction materials, such as fiberglass shingles, Vexar fencing and rebar, which I learned from several years of

dining with my husband when he sold those products. And although none of my friends would call me a pastry chef in any form of the phrase, after listening to my sister-in-law talk about all of the breads, croissants, fancy ganache cakes, and more that she learned to create becoming a pastry chef grad, I can certainly fake it on this subject in the living room, although sadly not in the kitchen.

Isn’t life fun the way it sends you such varied experiences that change your life, introduce you to more characters, and educate you in subjects that you would never have gone looking for?

I am ready to write with such authority on such a myriad list of subjects now, almost as well as Frank Abagnale Jr in Catch Me If You Can. It is just the actual sitting down to write that I have not yet managed to master.

Catherine Lee (Cathy) is a college textbook buyer in Ottawa, has been a bookseller and book buyer by trade for most of her life, and is a member of 2 book clubs. She became a book lover on her parents’ knees at story time & by flashlight under the bed sheets. One of her greatest pleasures is sharing great books with friends, of course while sipping wine.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-11-28T11:34:00.000-05:00

Inertia.

We face it every day. How human to avoid work. Should I do the dishes now or just continue watching the sunset? Should I read more of that spectacular new book or watch another rerun of the O.C.?

For writers, inertia has a power all its own. Staring at the laptop screen, moving the mouse from one blank spot to another, typing a word or phrase, erasing . . . wondering maybe instead of writing, considering what’s on TV or how about another delicious knife blade of almond butter. I greatly admire those writers who crank out a book every year; some people write several. Daunting to meet these prolific people, who seem a lot more disciplined than me. However does Mary Jane Maffini keep doing this?

Even writers on deadline have writing inertia. A friend with a due date two months from now hasn’t been able to really get chomping on the mss. he must deliver. A former editor of mine admitted that her company always built an extra 2-3 months into the schedule for writers to deliver their final final product; said delay admitting that writers often don’t meet deadlines well.

Given my publishing history, I’m a successful writer. Ok, so why do I have such awful inertia working at my next book? After five years the inertia has worsened to almost a phobia. Let’s be honest, the opposite of inertia is discipline, and somehow we lose the ooomph of process that when one day slides into another week without hardly a paragraph’s creation.

I even posted on Facebook some months ago: Blocked Writer Needs Help. Got a lot of suggestions, including the most basic which was to start by writing just one word daily until our creative vehicles got up to speed.

That suggestion didn’t work. Nor did any of the others. For a while I turned to my daily horoscope, hmmm, no clues there. I’ve friends who are excellent therapists, I’ve asked them to help with methods to motivate myself; that didn’t work either.

Lately, I’ve come to realize how self-defeating inertia can be. I realized I was the same age as James Lee Burke, one of the finest mystery writers in the English language. Looking at his major accomplishments and awards, I realized the sense of time flowing past and that motivated me like nothing else. Call it a realization that the winds don’t blow forever, nor the seas roll, nor whatever other cliché you name. Far down the scale of accomplishments by people like Burke, I was impelled to go back to writing and finishing this damn book. Although I really have not yet worked up a daily discipline. Maybe reading and re-reading this blog will be the final push I need

To be continued, I think . . .

David Cole is overcoming five years of procrastinations and is finally attacking his eighth novel, Ransom My Soul - a somewhat bleak novel of home invasions, drug cartels and human smuggling in southern Arizona, tempered (hopefully) with a fine romance and love story. David's short story, JaneJohnDoe.com, is featured in Indian Country Noir (Akashic Press); he's also working on several non-fiction books about law enforcement, including The Blue Ceiling, a compilation of personal stories about women in law enforcement.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-11-28T09:53:00.000-05:00

Making that list!

Is it too soon to be blogging about Christmas lists? There's just under a month to go and even though it's still November and there's no snow (what's that about!) on the ground, my street is ablaze at night with decorative lights...so maybe it's not too early to use the 'C' word.

My list is at the ready for whenever I can grab some shopping time. It's been revised several times already, as listees, of the son variety in particular, go through degrees of serious thinking about what they want. The shopping can be part of the fun of this season -- the decorated malls, the crowds, everyone in good spirits, even the canned carols.

However, if you want to avoid all that, here are two suggestions you can pick up on using your computer. How about giving a conference or a festival to that special mystery lover on your list!

I'm talking about Bloody Words 2012 of course. It's happening June 1-3, 2012 in Toronto at the Hilton Toronto Downtown with Guest of Honour: Linwood Barclay;
International Guest: Gayle Lynds; and Master of Ceremonies: Rick Blechta All for the competitive price of $180. This is truly the time for Canadian mystery writers to shine so if you're a writer, come out and meet your friends and colleagues; if you're a reader, come out and meet your friends and writers. For all the details visit http://www.bloodywords2012.com.

The second suggestion is the day-long mystery festival held at Wolfe Island, Kingston, ON called The Scene of the Crime. It's happening August llth and features a day of panels, interviews, readings...and eating! And this year, the honourees will be The Ladies' Killing Circle, who will be awarded the 2012 Grant Allen award for contributions to Canadian crime and mystery writing. It's no mystery why it's such a popular event! For information visit http://www.sceneofthecrime.ca.

Of course, you can and should, include mystery novels on those shopping lists! From paperbacks, to hardcovers to e-books...there's a format for all readers, Christmas trees & stockings.

Happy mysterious shopping!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-11-25T00:05:00.000-05:00

Cool Canadian crime writers!

Despite all the gloom and doom (and that is a reality, unfortunately) the mystery in a printed format is still alive and well. Yay!

After one & a half years out of the bookselling business, I feel out of the loop in many ways. I would always look forward to those quarterly catalogue sessions with the sales reps when they'd parade the upcoming mysteries, complete with covers and blurbs, in front of my eager eyes. I miss that part of the business.

What I rely on these days are the wonderful digests like Cool Canadian Crime from Crime Writers of Canada. Authors are also good about sending out alerts to new books. And publishers -- bless them -- send out advance reading copies, bound manuscripts and sometimes, a final copy of new books from Canadian authors for me to review.

How great is that!

I now am the proud owner of a TBR review pile. It's harder than I thought, I admit, to combine reading with writing. I'm continuously jotting down notes for my own manuscript, then pick up a book to read and review, only to find I'm drifting back to my own. Maybe I shouldn't admit this. But I do so only to explain why it may take me awhile to actually write a review.

So, to keep authors and publishers happy, at least to some small extent, I offer the titles in my TBR pile. Some are already out there on the bookselves, others are forthcoming, but all are by Canadian mystery writers. If they're not yet out, why not try something from the author's backlist to whet the appetite, unless of course, it's a first-time author.

I truly look forward to reading each and every one of these books. And I will. Just bear with me. So, here they are, in alpha order:

A Green Place for Dying by R.J. Harlick
Lake on the Mountain by Jeffrey Round
Last Dance by David Russell
Red Means Run by Brad Smith
Death Plays Poker by Robin Spano

Cool Canadian Crime writers -- right?! We have a lot of them and I'm certain anyone following this blog is a supporter. It's downright criminal if we don't spread the word!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-11-24T00:05:00.000-05:00

A Failed Communicator

It may not be too late but at the moment I have to stand up and confess that my name is Joan and I’m a failed communicator.

It’s not that I don’t want to be a communicator. Well, that’s not absolutely true. I want to have done all the things that a communicator does but I don’t want to take the time to do them. According to the experts what do communicators have to do?

Apparently the first step is to actively engage in facebook activities. I do have a facebook page and I know that if I want people to know who I am and rush online or to the bookstores to buy my books I have to go on line and interact, make friends, comment on other peoples’ messages - do all those things and do them OFTEN. Sigh. I don’t check in for weeks, maybe even months. I mean to do it but somehow I end up walking the dogs, writing, painting, swimming, vegging out - you get the picture.

Another step on the road to good communication is to use twitter. I do have a twitter account. And I’ve read how many people you should be following and asking to follow you. I know how good this would be for my sales, how pleased my publisher would be and I mean to do it, really I do. I like the challenge of the reduced number of words. Well, I like it in the abstract. In reality it’s quite some time since I’ve twittered.

Of course there’s the old standby - the web site. I do have a web site. A professional designed it and updates it when and if I ask him. It’s been a while - enough said.

Then there are blogs. I contribute to and read this blog and have written as a guest on others but generally speaking I don’t read blogs. I used to. I made a list of relevant ones devoted to writing and began reading them religiously. But like a lapsed church attendee the more I failed to read the less often it occurred to me to read. And now I seldom read any but this one and Dorothy L. I should wade in and comment on various controversies but I don’t.

Away from the internet and face to face with possible readers I should be broadcasting the snazzy business cards I ordered a while ago. I should, however I either forget to carry them with me or I fail to give them to people who might be interested.

Reading back over what I’ve written It’s clear that I am a failed communicator and in these days of self-promotion deserve to sink into oblivion. Maybe I should try again? Well, maybe after Christmas, maybe it will be my New Year’s resolution?

Joan Boswell is a member of the Ladies Killing Circle and co-edited four of their short story anthologies: Fit toDie, Bone Dance, Boomers Go Bad and Going Out With a Bang. Her three mysteries, Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and Cut and Run were published in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2000 she won the $10,000 Toronto Star’s short story contest. Joan lives in Toronto with three flat-coated retrievers.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-11-23T09:16:00.000-05:00

Oh, Heather...not again!

Yesterday I re-tweeted this tweet by Elizabeth Duncan: "Five of six #heatherspicks @chaptersindigo for Xmas are American writers. Would be great if #heatherReisman supported Canadian authors.

I did it because I totally agree with what Elizabeth tweeted but I should have sent a follow-up tweet. I had to hurry out the door instead, not wanting to be late for my book club. So, I'll say it here. The reason it would be great, and sensible, is that Canadian mystery writers are top notch. As good as the American writers Heather seems to favour.

That's not to say she shouldn't give credit where it's due and extol the praises of our colleagues to the south. It's saying, pay attention to the Canadians, too. I wonder if she even reads many of the Canadian mystery writers? If she did, I'm positive more of their names would appear on her many lists over the year.

But that brings to mind another thought -- perhaps she doesn't enjoy mysteries. There's nothing that says Ms. Reisman should force herself to read a genre she doesn't enjoy. But where does that leave the lowly mystery writer when one of the most powerful retailers of the printed (and electronic) word doesn't choose a mystery in her top picks?

Avid mystery (and I use this term to encompass all crime writing) readers know about the genre and don't need convincing. But how is the readership supposed to expand? When non-mystery readers aren't exposed to recommendations from those with influence, how can they know what good writing they're missing out on?

Add to that the fact that Canadian mystery writers are already fighting a double battle. That may be a bit dramatic -- how about, up against double the odds? There's that old genre thing -- you know, where mysteries lose out to mainstream titles in many instances because they're, well, mysteries. Not because the writing is any worse. Not because mystery writers can't plot, write dialogue or conjure wonderful settings. They're not even, in many instances, given a chance because they're -- you know, mysteries. They won't even be read.

And then there's the Canadian thing. The list of great Canadian mystery authors would go on for many blogs but I don't dare start mentioning names. I'd hate to miss anyone out. But you know who they are. We read their books every day. Because we know about them. We know what great reads they provide.

So it's up to the readers to spread the word because that's the way it will get around. And maybe, just maybe, it may reach Heather. And maybe, just maybe, she might start promoting Canadian crime writers, too.

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-11-22T09:21:00.000-05:00

Comfort reads for a cold winter's night....

I know, it's not winter. However, the ski hills are making snow after the past weekend's low overnight temps. and our forecast is for snow and freezing rain starting after midnight. Makes me want to curl up in front of the fire with a good book and a cup of something chocolatey.

I think this winter I'll intersperse the new books on my TBR pile with some past favourites, books I know will satisfy and take me to that special reader space. For some reason, I love books that involve food. I'm not a cook -- don't enjoy, can't

do a good job of it as my dinner guests know -- but I'm drawn to it in fiction. Not cookbooks, although I have a colourful collection that to me is eye candy or better still, coffee table quality.

My book club tonight is discussing The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais. What an enjoyable read! It starts with a family owned restaurant in Mumbai and progresses, as the family moves, to a small town in the French Alps, and eventually, Paris. The son is also on a journey of growth about food and his love of French cooking translates into a very successful restaurant. It's food descriptions interwoven with family and setting. My kind of book.

I am also smitten with Italy and Sicily, so combine that setting with food and I'm reading it. That would include the books by Marlena de Blasi which are non-fiction and mouth-watering. Try The Lady in the Palazzo for a taste of her writing style, even though it's not the first in the series.

Getting back to the simmering pot of mystery and crime, The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester is a novel I go back to time and again. It's a journey through France that involves passionate thoughts about food and a chilling intensification of something sinister.

These are a good start to the winter season. I'll add more as the days get darker and colder. What's on your list?

Are there any Canadian mysteries that combine crime and gastronomy? Aside from Howard Engel's Benny Cooperman and his love of egg sandwiches, of course!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkly Prime Crime

MYSTERY REVIEW

2011-11-19T00:05:00.000-05:00

HANG DOWN YOUR HEAD
by Janice MacDonald
Turnstone Press

Reading Hang Down Your Head is like reading the 'essential guide to the Edmonton Folk Festival and all related folk music information'. It's that jam-packed with the in's and out's, the personalities, and the pleasures of that scene.

Janice MacDonald has done an amazing amount of research, however her own basic knowledge and love of the music is very evident. She plays four instruments and has been a singer/songwriter, too! It's this 'insider' touch that lifts a plot off the pages and wraps the reader in it. And, in her acknowledgements, she thanks the many real musicians who allowed her to use their names. Now, if you're a folkie, that's worth the price of admission.

But MacDonald has done more. She's also included a complex mystery with a body count of three and a brutal assault on a co-worker, along with the requisite threat to the protagonist, Randy Craig's life. Craig is a seasonal lecturer at the University of Alberta who scores a job at the Folkways Collection. This allows her access to these hot names in the folk world, as well as working alongside a very attractive specialist from the Smithsonian in Washington.

Tension at the project increases as the bequest that is the core funding, is contested by the two folk music hating children of the deceased donor. When one of them is killed, Craig joins the suspect list since her job could be in jeopardy. When the other murders occur, it's hard for Craig's cop boyfriend to keep her out of the sleuthing. And out of danger.

In Hang Down Your Head, MacDonald does a great job of playing tour guide to the reader, as she takes us through the streets, the parks, and the university in Edmonton. Her writing is witty and descriptive. The mystery is intricate and well-plotted. You can actually feel yourself as being part of the Edmonton Folk Festival, that is, if you're not too busy scouring the crowd for a murderer.

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-11-18T09:46:00.000-05:00

Excited about a title!

You may already know since I plastered the news on Facebook and Twitter yesterday, that my publisher likes my suggested title for book #2. Read And Buried was my first choice out of a list of five I sent in. The reason this pleases me so much is that my #1 title for book #1 was rejected. Instead, the sales department choose A Killer Read, which was buried in my list of suggestions.

Sales definitely steers the publishing ship. When it came to the cover conference, I was asked for my suggestions which were opposite from what sales wanted to see. Since one of the locations in the book is a Southern antibellum style mansion, I was then asked for a photo of what I'd envisioned. I haven't seen the cover yet, so I'm very curious as to what it will be.

Then came the cover blurb. I wrote one. They wrote one. I revised their's. They revised my revision.

When my manuscript came back with the editor's comments, I was thrilled. And happy to incorporate her suggestions. When my manuscript then came back with the copy editor's revisions and suggestions, I agreed with the majority. What pleased me in particular was that with each comment she'd made, she ended with an 'ok?'. It was still my book, after all.

I was actually very delighted with the thoroughness of the copy editor. This manuscript that had gone through readings by at least five people still, at this late stage, contained a 'ghost' of a previous draft. Good on you, whoever you are!

When the book appeared on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca, coverless mind you, but available for pre-order -- that a thrill!

My cheque, payable on acceptance of the manuscript, also arrived this week. Okay, that's crass but it's also another validation of the journey on the road to publication.

This is not news to the published writers out there, it may be of interest to those just entering the process, and hopefully to those still dabbling with the idea. It has truly been a collaborative process and I've been so lucky to have a wonderful editorial team guiding me along.

It's also been a journey of new experiences, all of them good. The journey continues as I finally get working on my Erika Chase website. She's had a Facebook page and Twitter account for a while now but I find this task the most daunting of all. But it's also an important one. The pre-promotion has been happening for awhile but will ramp up as April 3 approaches. And then I'll jump into the flurry of signings and conferences, all in the name of reaching out to readers. That will also be fun.

Book #2 is already in their hands. Book #3 is at the first draft stage. In fact, I've got to get at it. But I'm wondering, has your journey differed in any way or stage? Hopefully, it's been fun, too.

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-11-17T00:05:00.000-05:00

Books to sleep by

I am a rotten sleeper. I can lie awake for hours on end. If you're an insomniac, you know exactly what I mean.

Last year I discovered an amazing device. It's a headband with speakers the size of a dime embedded in very soft fleece. My husband looks askance at this piece of lilac-coloured frippery, but what does he know? He's never had a sleepless night in his life

I love to read at night but even though I almost always fall asleep with the book on my nose, the moment I turn out the light, my eyes snap open and I'm staring at the ceiling again. With my new sleep phones, however, I simply trade the book for my head band and drift off while somebody else does the reading.

I've had to learn what kinds of audio books are relaxing enough to put me to sleep. Mysteries are too alarming. Spy stories and horror tales are even worse. Humour can be risky, as a fit of the giggles at midnight might keep me awake for the rest of the night. I've really got to have my wits about me to listen to Science Fiction or Fantasy or heaven forbid, the Massey Lectures. The best audio books for me are somewhat boring. But it's a fine line. If it's too much of a yawn then I'm likely to get frustrated and that's no sleep inducement.

The best seem to be Dickens, Austen, Thackeray and books of that age and ilk. Recently I've been listening to the PG Wodehouse books featuring Bertie Wooster and his amiable valet, Jeeves. These are ideal and luckily for me, he wrote a ton of them. Nothing startling ever happens to Bertie, or at least nothing Jeeves can't handle. Bertie's aunt Agatha, who "chews broken bottles and kills rats with her teeth", might make another attempt to get him to the alter, or someone might steal the Empress of Blandings, an improbably named pig, but that's about as scary as these stories get. Before I know it, I'm sound asleep and the reader is still droning on in the morning.

I download audio books free from the library. They arrive on my laptop and from there I send them to my Walkman. And because I belong to both the Ottawa Public Library and the Rideau Lakes Library, which is part of the Ontario Library System, I have two sources to draw on. How's that for a deal?

Sue Pike has published a couple of dozen stories and won several awards including an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Crime Story. Her latest, Where the Snow Lay Dinted appeared in the January issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Sue and her husband and an opinionated Australian Shepherd named Cooper spend the winter months in Ottawa and the rest of the time at a mysterious cottage on the Rideau Lakes.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-11-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

The plot thickens...

I wrote my first novel over 20 years ago. For some reason, it was never published. Okay, I do know the reason. It was pretty awful. But it's taken me this long to realize how to fix it. Not that I'll try. It would be too painful to read it and face the fact I had actually sent it to a publisher.

I'm indebted to Berkley Prime Crime, the publisher who is taking a chance on me, for their policy of requiring a synopsis as I begin each new book. Novel idea. I

used to sit myself at the typewriter, and then the computer, and just write. Almost a stream of consciousness. And what could have been a snappy mystery became a long-winded, meandering plot that eventually ended with the bad guy getting caught. I started knowing the beginning and the end but got hopelessly lost in between those points.

This system works for a lot of great writers. Just not for me. Now, I know the start, middle and end of my novel before I get down to seriously writing it. If I get a bit lost along the way, or worse yet, face a blank page and not know what to write on it, I re-read my synopsis. That gets me back on track.

The other positive thing about a synopsis is, it's not written in stone. It's on the computer. Paragraphs can be deleted, new ones added. The novel can still evolve from itself as the writing goes on. In fact, I've added new characters, changed a plot twist, and thrown a dog into the mix. And the plot has stayed on track.

It also gives me confidence each time I open the files and prepare to add my thousand words a day.

What works best for you?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-11-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

Don’t let the web turn you into a lazy researcher

“Literally millions of research man-hours are wasted as a result of errors and inaccurate data contained in reference sources.” - The Internet Accuracy Project

When I worked as a journalist you could still smoke in a little room down the hall from the newsroom (or smoke and drink right in the newsroom if you were pulling the midnight shift). Back then you had to call in and recite your story from a payphone outside the courthouse in order to meet deadline, and there was no such thing as Google to quickly help you round out your story with facts and figures and all sorts of misconceptions, fallacies and denigrations.

Ahhh, the good old days.

We’re not talking the 1920s here with Underwood typewriters, but circa 1993. We had a reference room stocked with phone books for most major cities in North America because there was no such things as 411.com. We worked the phones and we called people, we got wrong numbers, we woke people at all hours, had people yell at us and hang up, and sometimes we got lucky. We left the cocoon of the newsroom and interviewed people in bars, offices, on the street. Being a naturally curious kind of guy (which has gotten me into some interesting situations over the years, but that‘s another blog), I’ve always loved talking to people, asking them questions, piecing together a story by gathering different points of view. The way someone rolls their eyes when they answer a question says more than their words.

I have always enjoyed the research aspect of writing, completely immersing myself inside a new topic, and this has carried over from journalism into my creative writing. And while it goes without saying that the Internet has enriched our lives and allowed us to access a zillion new sources of information that used to require days spent buried in card catalogue drawers trying to decode the Dewey Decimal System, the world wide web has also led to an alarming increase in the writing sins of sloth, plagiarism, and condescension.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. The web has made it so much easier to round out our crime fiction by Googling things like: ‘what happens to a body if you leave it in a field in the sun for sixteen days’, or ‘types of poison and their detect-ability during autopsy’. A father currently on trial for the murder of his daughters apparently typed “how to murder” in an Internet search engine on his laptop. So yes, it’s definitely handy for research. I’ve used the Internet to re-confirm street grids and routes that my mind’s eye has forgotten, and I’ve also used it to confirm historical timelines for events like the outbreak of SARS in Toronto (for Slow Recoil), and the total number of deaths attributed to the biker wars in Quebec (for The Weight of Stones).

But back to the sins of sloth, plagiarism, and condescension. I have set aside books by some well-regarded authors because they contain page after page of what might as well be verbatim historical “back story”. Readers aren’t dumb; they can detect when a writer has taken the cheap way out and copied and pasted all that stuff about (insert topic here). It makes for boring reading, and readers deserve better. And quite frankly, why are you writing if you simply want to regurgitate a bunch of stuff that you just read? Are you a creative writer or a kid cribbing notes for a Grade 8 public speaking assignment? Vicki Delany’s mystery series about the Klondike gold rush (Gold Digger and Gold Fever) paint an authentic portrait of that stinky and romantic era, the muddy streets and the smell of a dance hall, the language and the diction, without coming off as a forced and awkward history lesson.

My research always involves a variety of tools and approaches. There is ‘hard research’ into those aspects that simply must be correct - the Criminal Code, for example, or how the office of the Crown Attorney works, or the ranks and titles and hierarchy of the police. This should require the consultation of entirely factual and credible sources, not some web page belonging to a 14-year-old kid who stays up way past his bedtime. During the story development phase, when the idea for a novel is coming together in my head, I read only non-fiction books pertaining to the story’s main theme. Even if I don’t refer to a specific event or person from these books, I simply feel better prepared, somehow more authentic in my task, when I sit down to write.

So-called ’soft research’ into the subjective aspects of our world can involve Google searches galore, but nothing can replace first-hand experience. No library books or web searches provided me with a better understanding of the legal system and criminals themselves than sitting in court and covering real trials, interviewing a killer behind prison walls, talking to attorneys in the hallway of a courthouse. It was by getting to know a couple of ex-cons that I came to understand criminal jargon and posturing. An old bank robber told me how ‘keeping six’ means to act as lookout on a job, or that ‘a deuce less’ means that a guy has drawn a sentence of two years less a day - as though he were playing cards with his life.

If you want a real quick immersion into the world of petty criminals, those folks who toil in lives of perpetual desperation, just spend a Monday morning sitting in remand court. It is a sad parade indeed of mistakes, misdeeds, and miscalculations. You will leave with new gratitude for your simple and peaceful life as well as an appreciation for the pessimism and predictability of the criminal law system.

This is one writer who hopes the Internet never trumps my desire to talk to real people, get to know their backgrounds and their strange motivations, ask questions and seek to understand something new about our collective predicament with each book that I am blessed to write.

C.B. Forrest's The Weight of Stones and Slow Recoil were both short-listed for the Arthur Ellis Award. The Devil’s Dust, his third and final novel featuring Charlie McKelvey, will be available May 2012 and has been called “a tour de force“ by two-time Governor General Award winner Tim Wynne-Jones. Research into Forrest’s unbelievable life and times can be conducted entirely online.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-11-14T09:35:00.000-05:00

TGIM!

Thank goodness it's Monday!

Others may herald the end of the week, particularly if it's been a tough one at the office, but I like the blank slate that is Monday. Think about it. An entire new week to shape. For my Mom, Monday was laundry day and it's a habit I've gotten into. Clean towels, clean sheets, windows open and a clean breeze blowing through the house. Fortunately, this year I'm able to open those windows so late in November.

But Monday is much more than household chores, says someone who usually avoids said chores. It's time to plot your week as well as a new novel, perhaps. Some appointments are already on your calendar, especially the hard-to-get ones like with a foot specialist. Some of the weekly routines, the meetings or groups that have a regular afternoon or evening to which they are attached, will be there, too.

But there are all those blank spaces in the agenda that open themselves to new opportunities when viewed with Monday eyes. By Thursday, time is running out and the week's almost over. Whenever will you fit everything in?

My advice is to embrace Monday. If you're toying with the thought of starting a new short story -- Monday is the day to do it. If you want to take an extra hour to sit in your pj's with a coffee and newspaper -- it's a good way to break in the new week.

So, what will you do that's new today?

Mary Jane Maffini's regular Monday blog will return. Stay tuned!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-11-11T09:48:00.003-05:00

Remembering with mysteries

On this day of remembering, it’s interesting to note that not that many Canadians have used the wars as settings for mysteries. There may be many reasons for this. That war itself is a mystery. That in itself, war is such an immense reality that it’s difficult to narrow it down to one event, say a murder. That using a war as a setting would require such intense research that many writers give it a pass.

But what better way to begin to understand the impact of war on individuals’ lives than by isolating an incident, a murder and building a story around not only the investigation but how it all affects those touched by the death. To give these participants the added burden of a lifestyle gone off the rails, of imminent tragedy on a broader scale, can only intensify the stakes.

J. Robert Janes did it. In his award-winning St-Cyr/Kohler series set in Paris in 1942, he pitted an agent of the Surete against a Gestapo officer, and more often working together to solve everyday crimes in the greater context of two enemy countries. These were memorable reads and hopefully, still available.

Maureen Jenning’s new series focuses on women in the Land Army, in 1940’s England. Season of Darkness, the first of this trilogy, was released in August this year.

Other Canadian authors have characters who have served in war or plots that have roots in that period, although the novels are set in contemporary times. Barbara Fradkin's Inspector Green faced this theme in two novels -- Once Upon a Time, where he investigates a death tied into the Holocaust, and Honour Among Men, a haunting story involving a diary of a soldier serving on a peace keeping mission and a murder victim in Ottawa. Peter Robinson’s In A Dry Season, has Inspector Alan Banks investigating a murder that took place during the Second World War involving Land Girls and US Airmen from a nearby base.

Vicki Delany’s suspense novel, Burden of Proof, features a former Nursing Sister in the Canadian Army during WW II. And Mary Jane Maffini set

her fifth Camilla McPhee novel, The Dead Don’t Get Out Much, on Remembrance Day in Ottawa. From there, the novel travels to Italy as Camilla searches for her missing friend and uncovers secrets from the war.

There are other Canadian authors who have tied their plots into the wars of the past and present and used the settings to stretch our reading experiences. Who is on your list of authors?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-11-10T08:50:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you have to be there!

The internet is a marvelous thing. I don’t know how we ever did research without it. I have almost blocked out the memory of those endless hours spent pawing through the library card catalogue, trying to guess how your subject would be indexed. Or crouching in the aisles of the musty stacks, flipping through obscure books in search of just the exact fact you needed. Why was the most promising book – the one that seemed to cover precisely the topic you needed – always missing?

Nowadays, almost everything is at our fingertips. Even if the information is not online, the library catalogues are, and the right books can be tracked down without even leaving your living room sofa. The maps of many corners of the world are online and Google Earth can even give you a satellite or street view, almost as if you’re standing on the street corner yourself.

Almost, but not quite. Google Street View can’t give you the sounds of the trucks roaring by, or the bass beat from the restaurant patio across the road, or the smell of stale French fries and baking asphalt on a hot summer day. Street View can’t put you in the place, living it in all its layers and textures, any more than a web article can give you the nuances and personal flair of the personal interview.

So it was that my pursuit of authenticity brought me to Schwartz’ Main Hebrew Deli in Montreal. In my latest Inspector Green book, Beautiful Lie the Dead, Green goes to Montreal to track down a cold case, and of course, Schwartz’ is on his to-do list. While in Montreal, I also visited the Mount Royal Cemetery, Summit Circle in upper Westmount, the police station and old Forum, but Schwartz’ and ‘The Main’ were the settings I needed to experience in all their sensory glory. A picture would not capture the arched brow of the impatient waiter, nor the splatter of grease stains on his apron. It would not capture the laughing chatter of the patrons jostling in a long queue outside, renewing old friendships and making new ones. It would not capture the mingled scents of smoked meat, garlic dills, frying oil and coffee that hit you the instant you stepped in the door. Nor the sweet-salty taste of the meat so soft it falls off your fork.

Not all that detail makes it into the book, of course, lest the reader cast it aside half read and leap on the next bus to Montreal. But it’s the best way to sink into the scene and to truly live it from inside the character’s head. The internet and Google Earth make us mere observers, distant and analytical. They are no substitute for getting out there, talking to people and drinking in the whole scene. And a lot less fun!

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 havewon back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. And, her new Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched in May.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-11-09T08:32:00.000-05:00

Reading while writing

Looking at my TBR pile of books always puts me in a good mood. I see an array of colourful spines with words such as Brad, Mistress, Poker, Janice, Trap and Liver to tempt me. Some will be read before others, of course. Especially those I’m planning to review on Mystery Maven Canada.

Others I’m saving for a chilly early evening read in front of the fireplace. And I know, unfortunately, there will be some that remain on the pile indefinitely, while new titles are added with a frightening frequency. That’s just the way it is. I love keeping that pile topped up. Well, it’s actually several piles located in many rooms of the house.

There’s the bedside stack that sits next to my clock/radio/CD player on the nightside table; the pile of books on the end table next to the sofa in the living room; the books in the TV room on the coffee table; and several towers of TBRs on the floor in my home office. Heartwarming!

I’m sure that many of you can relate to this need to have books at a ready to be read.

The question is, what do you read while you’re ensconced in a writing project? Do you read a mainstream novel while writing a mystery? Poetry, perhaps? Or maybe strictly non-fiction? If you’re writing thrillers, do you read cosies? Or if a cosy series is your bread-and-butter, do you read only police procedurals?

When I started taking writing seriously, meaning with applied deadlines and a goal of publication in this lifetime, I studiously avoided reading the type of mystery I wrote. I’d read that somewhere…authors worried about someone else’s style or maybe even plot points bleeding into their own stories. But I don’t believe that anymore.

For me, writing cosies, I find that a mixture works best. I need the variety of a good caper, a historical thriller, a police procedural or even a non-mystery will bring to my cosy-clogged mind. But I also thrive on reading within my sub-genre. Spending a half hour in some other fictional small Southern town, with a tightly-knit group of amateur sleuths solving the crime helps re-focus my brain and I find the writing flows more easily. I’m certain I don’t transplant those characters, that town, and particularly not that plot to my page. But it does help me “think lighter”, if that makes any sense. And I’m the first to admit that cosies generally are a lighter read. Not, a lesser read, I might add!

Besides, I need to keep on top of what the editors are choosing to publish. Am I moving in the right direction? And what readers will I find once I get there?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-11-08T00:05:00.003-05:00

Fixing leaky or clogged plots

My toilet got clogged up the other day. The water would rise and rise until just at the moment when it looked as if the whole thing would overflow, the water would change direction and slowly, slowly recede. There’s heart stopping suspense for you!

Despite my vigorous work with the plunger, the clog stubbornly refused to shift. So I searched the Internet and found a suggested solution that involved liquid dish detergent and boiling water. And it worked! Not only did the toilet now work like a charm, but it was sparkling clean!

My kitchen sink had the opposite problem. It’s supposed to hold water until I pull the plug. But the plug would let the water out and slowly, slowly the sink would empty, leaving unwashed dishes high and almost dry. Sometimes I would have to fill the sink two or three times to wash the dishes.

Flushed with success (bet you didn’t see that coming) from the toilet experience and definitely in a plumbing appreciation frame of mind, and since I happened to be going to the post office anyway which is right next door to the hardware store, I brought home a shiny new sink stopper. I filled the sink and it stayed full, just as it was meant to. I’d put up with that leaky sink for far too long when a quick fix was cheap and easy.

Plots can be a lot like plumbing.

Some plot problems, like the clogged toilet, are urgent and demand your immediate attention. You have to sort them out before you can continue writing the story. If you don’t, the rest of it just won’t hang together in any way that makes sense and you’ll be wasting a lot of time and words on material that isn’t going anywhere. For example, you probably can’t make a note in the margin that you’ll figure out later how or where your victim died because too much of the rest of story rests on that detail.

Some plot holes are more like the leaky sink. You can make do, still get the job done and go back later and plug them properly. If you find out later that you need a character to be in certain place at a certain time, for example, you can come up with an easy way to get him there. (Jack had heard it was best bakery in town and since he would be passing, anyway, on his way to meet Mindy off the train, he pulled over.)

Some writers find it difficult to set aside small problems and deal with them later, but if pausing to fix minor plot problems is slowing down your writing, that might be the better way to do it.

May your writing have perfect flow and all your plots hold water.

Elizabeth Duncan is the award-winning author of The Cold Light of Mourning and A Brush with Death, published by St. Martin’s Press. Her third novel, A Killer’s Christmas in Wales, A Killer’s Christmas in Wales, released on Oct. 25.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-11-07T00:05:00.000-05:00

Little things make a difference.

Bullets. Traces of poison. DNA. Punctuation. We would do best not to ignore them. I’ve decided to muse about a few little things today. Punctuation appears to be newsworthy this week. Who knew?

The New York Times style section a few months ago had a feature on the exclamation point. That’s right! Apparently email, in which everything is fairly flat and emotionless, is a breeding ground for exclamation points. Like mosquitoes in standing water, exclamation points are exploding in this new environment. People like me who can write a book without a single exclamation point (and rightly so), can’t write a three-sentence email without seven. Otherwise normal people, ahem, are using them to convey support, enthusiasm, distress or an emerging hissy fit, any of which would take more words and more thought than an email message usually gets!!!!

Then there’s the comma, long a thorn in the side of the writer and the editor. Apparently, University of Oxford in a pre-emptive strike, has given the boot to the serial comma. Out in the blogosphere, there was rejoicing in some quarters and gnashing of teeth in others. Supporters claim that the serial comma is important to eliminate ambiguity. The common example is: I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God. Much more clear if you write I’d like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand, and God. Ponder that.

As far as I can tell, wars have been fought over less.

This set me to thinking about other punctuation and its importance. I am hoping that someone will come up with a witty and pointed article on the ironic quotation mark, its uses and abuses. Finger quotes as they are known in conversation, can undermine the literal meaning of a phrase. For example: I just love you. As opposed to: I just ‘love’ you. Or even I ‘just’ love you. Consider: She’s such a good writer. Compare it to: She’s ‘such’ a good writer. Hmm. In our family, finger quotes are used the way some people might use, say, crossbows.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves?

My point, and I do have one, is that even tiny bits of punctuation can contain pitfalls. How else did Lynn Truss manage to craft a bestselling book on punctuation in

As I worked my way through a draft of a new book, I was filled with that writerly panic that often assails me when I think of the whole manuscript. If there are such pitfalls in commas and other punctuation, how can any of us hope to manage the 80,000 words or so that it takes for a contemporary mystery? It’s quite paralyzing when you think about it. Joan Boswell in a past post asked if creating a book shouldn’t be fun and challenging. I’d say yes. And it can also require courage just to get it out there, knowing that there will be pitfalls and errors and reviewers and critics ready to pounce. We writers are nothing if not a gutsy lot.

Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three (soon to be three and a half) mystery series and a couple of dozen short stories. Her thirteenth mystery novel, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, which hit the bookshelves this spring, is brimming with names, no two the same.

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-11-04T08:51:00.000-04:00

Catching up on spooking things...

Had I been writing the Tuesday blog, the day after Halloween, I would have asked how your evening went? Lots of little goblins and faeries at your door? Kids really love the whole concept of dressing up and getting tons of treats.

Who wouldn't? In fact, I know a lot of adults that revert right back to their inner child on this night. There were lots of costumed parents keeping track of their kids on the prowl as well as many who stayed at home, also in full costume, to dish out the treats.

There's also the thrill factor that goes along with Halloween. The spine-tingling moment of coming face-to-face (although what you're facing may not be a face) with some freaked-out creature from your wildest nightmare. Most kids -- and adults -- love being scared out their minds. Note the proliferation of movies -- Halloween III, Fright Night, xxx. Not my idea of a good time but I just might be in the minority.

Have you noticed recent trends in novels, too? Vampires are hot stuff and appear in all types of genres. From the Twilight set to Sookie Stackhouse to Buffy, the

Vampire Slayer...these books are everywhere. In the mystery section you'll find such authors as Charlaine Harris, Kay Hooper, and Kim Harrison. These writers have been among the trend-setters, pumping out tales of vampires and the such for several years now.

These psychic sleuths have even appeared in the traditionally lighter cosy lines with authors such as Victoria Laurie and Juliet Blackwell.

And who's reading them? All age groups it seems. I'm not sure what this means. Are psychological thrillers not thrilling enough? Do we need an infusion of the unnatural to figuratively scare us to death? I also don't get the popularity of reality TV shows, but that's another story.

When I first went into the bookstore business, historical mysteries were hot and continued to be for many, many years. I noticed the inclusion of supernatural titles in catalogues, gradually building in numbers over the seasons. What I didn't realize was just how popular they would become. But, here they are.

So, what's the next trend going to be? Can you foresee it?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-11-03T00:05:00.000-04:00

What to do when you’re not doing anything?

By ‘anything’ I mean writing. Having made a rash and irrational decision to split my time between two cities I’ve been amassing the goods and chattels for the second home. Incidentally, it’s amazing, or at least it was amazing to me as a want to be minimalist, that when I went through my house I found all kinds of things I could do without. Now I have much tidier cupboards and a pile of ‘stuff’ to go to the new place.

But, while I was doing all this searching, making mental lists, scurrying around and even buying some new things I wasn’t doing anything on a new novel that’s been limping along. What to do?

Writing is writing and it was time to produce my contribution to the Mystery Maven blog. That got me sitting in front of my computer and reading the blogs I’d missed while I focussed on domestic regrouping.

Rick Blechta’s generosity in sharing the details of his venture into the world of rapid readers was inspiring. These books provide an interesting challenge and are certainly valuable if they introduce reluctant or newly minted readers to the pleasures of reading.

Besides Rick Blechta other well known mystery writers like Gail Bowen and Barbara Fradkin have written for the series. If I hadn’t previously known about the restrictions I would not have noticed them in the two that I’ve read. Both books moved along at a good clip and had unexpected surprise endings. It would be interesting to know from Orca how this series has been received. In today’s rapidly paced world novellas may have a wider market than Orca first thought.

These books along with many others deserve a wider audience. Mary Jane Maffini, writing about the decline in mystery book reviewers and the shortness of time a book has to make an impact made the case for becoming involved. We must use the media at our disposal to praise the books we enjoy. The internet is going to replace the book store owner or employee who hand sells a book or an author. We are going to have to find the appropriate venues and do the job ourselves.

Venturing further back I enjoyed Sue Pike’s passionate plea for libraries and librarians. Recently the Toronto CBC has focussed on how much young people who do not have computers in their homes need the libraries and how this will continue to be a problem as the gap widens between those who have access to the latest technology and those who don’t. Think too of the children who come to groups to enjoy having librarians read to them. For some children who have no books at home or parents whose first language is not English they are only read to at day care or at the library and as a society we need them to love books.

Now that I’ve enjoyed a trip back through the blog I’m inspired. It’s time to drag the embryonic novel out and see what can be done to it.

Joan Boswell is a member of the Ladies Killing Circle and co-edited four of their short story anthologies: Fit toDie, Bone Dance, Boomers Go Bad and Going Out With a Bang. Her three mysteries, Cut Off His Tale, Cut to the Quick and Cut and Run were published in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2000 she won the $10,000 Toronto Star’s short story contest. Joan lives in Toronto with three flat-coated retrievers.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-11-02T13:47:00.000-04:00

AArghh!

Getting a late start on this today. I've been driven crazy by my keyboard. It's one of those extra features ones and it started making strange noises and deciding it was time for a much slower pace. Of course, the instructions that came with say nothing about this malady. So, I went on-line. Not listed in the usual questions section.

But in order to ask a question -- you got it! You need a keyboard!!!!

So, I went out and bought a new one this a.m. If I ever figure out why my old one is on strike and we get past the mediation part, I'll keep it as a spare. But old pet peeves have surfaced because of this.

It's my deeply-buried resentment of all electrical items. Because they eventually fail. And it's ALWAYS when you need them to be at their prime at that immediate moment. Electric car windows, photocopiers, toasters, and now, keyboards. The list is really endless. How did we get to this state?

I went into withdrawal not being able to write this blog nor answer email this morning. Oh sure, I could have reached out to someone using my Rogers phone but I don't have a long distance plan. I use email instead. Looks like that needs to be re-visited.

Also, I'm on deadline here, keyboard. I have to send the copyedited version of my book back to my editor by tomorrow. THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME to abandon me. Remember

the days of typing out the manuscript at a Remington typewriter? Using the 'cut & paste' method when editing? Okay, it was not fun having to stuff the entire 300 pages in a brown manila envelope, along with a SASE, to mail off to a publisher. Costly, too.

I'll grudgingly admit that electronics do play a valid role in our busy lives. Or, are our lives so busy because of 'time saving' electronics? Who knows? Who cares? I have a new keyboard and I have email that needs to be answered!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-11-01T00:05:00.001-04:00

Something arrived in my mailbox in July of 2010 that knocked me for a loop. A publisher had actually contacted me to inquire if I’d be interested in writing a book for a new series they were planning. To say the least, I was overjoyed – and humbled.

The publisher is Orca and the series is Rapid Reads, a line of books for those with literacy challenges (include ESL in there), reluctant readers (that teenage son of yours, for instance) or for those who need a quick mystery fix when they have some waiting to do like for a doctor’s appointment or a short plane ride.

However, the commission came with some pretty strict marching orders: no more than 20,000 words, a simple plot with little or no use of flashbacks or sub plots, easy vocabulary (Grade 4-5), basic sentence structure and not many characters. Hmmm... I can easily write chapters in excess of 4000 words, just for a starter. A different manner of working was called for.

I spent about two months hatching my plot. My proposal was quickly accepted and I set to work. Since what they called for was a radical departure from my usual novels where musicians and the world they inhabit take centre stage, I decided to write something that was even more of a departure. I still kept music front and centre in the setting, but I decided to write a police procedural with two homicide

detectives as the protagonists. Two months later, the result was Orchestrated Murder – which made its debut on book shelves this October 1st. The story’s basic premise is that someone has murdered a famous conductor, and by time the cops get on the scene, the entire orchestra has confessed. So instead of a few suspects as in most mysteries, Pratt and Ellis have to deal with 76!

To any who might decide to travel down this writing road, I have a few suggestions. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, but I did make some mistakes that maybe I can help you step around. No sense falling into the same holes I did.

First, don’t try to take a plot that you might use for a full-length novel and try to “cut it down to size”. There’s something inherently different in writing a novel, in much the same way that a short story is also different. For these novellas, you need a plot that’s simple in the first place, not as an after thought.

Forget any character development of the sort you can get away with in a novel. You can develop your characters, but it must be development via “hit and run”: do it in dialogue, little sprinkles of description about a character’s body language, things like that. And remember, every time you do this, you’re chewing up that word allowance!

My method of starting my day’s writing is to read (and correct/refine) what I wrote the day before. I find it helps me get into the right headspace quickly and easily. For this novel, I would often go through the previous day’s work, mumbling things like, “Three syllables for that word. What was I thinking?” or “That’s definitely the wrong sentence for this book. It has three clauses!” Often I just muttered to myself. If you work in this fashion, use your warm-up period to chuck the things that snuck in the previous day when you weren’t looking. It happens surprisingly easily.

The most important thing Orca told me about their Rapid Reads is that they only accepted “good stories, well told”, so even if it was simple, I couldn’t just throw anything down on the page and expect it to fly with them. This is where I really struggled. I mean, this is minimalist writing of a kind I’d never attempted. In the end, I was surprised in how much I really enjoyed the whole process. Writing with such tight restrictions was actually quite liberating. I really had to think about every single thing I put down. There were no slam dunks in this game!

Rick Blechta is the author of seven crime novels, including Orchestrated Murder and next fall’s full-length novel, The Fallen One (from Dundurn Press), which is all about an opera singer who might be seeing ghosts. His 2005 novel, Cemetery of the Nameless, was a finalist in the Best Novel category for the Arthur Ellis Awards. He’s also a musician and currently plays in an 18-piece big band called The Advocats (It has a lot of lawyers in it.) and does any other gig that comes his way. Find out about all of this at www.rickblechta.com. Rick also blogs every Tuesday on www.typem4murder.blogspot.com and on the subject of baseball every Saturday at www.lateinnings.blogspot.com.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-10-31T00:05:00.000-04:00

What to do if you love a book

You may ask, why do anything at all? After all, does any book need a boost from you? Ah. Allow me to climb up on my soapbox. You should do something because that book most likely needs your friendly assistance. These days there are fewer and fewer physical bookstores and consequently not nearly enough places where you can walk in and see an array of books in front of you. We are increasingly using online sources to find books. But first we need to know something about that book in order to find it: the title, the author’s name, some category or key word. It’s not quite the same as checking out shelves and tables in a bookstore.

The books that will automatically flash in front of your face are either the ones that have sold the most or those where the publisher has invested in site advertising.

Even in the larger ‘real’; bookstore, the endcaps and special displays are funded as advertising by publishers. That’s a business decision in a free country.
However, so many other books are shy flowers with three months to be purchased or stripped, cover returned to the publisher and the body of the book in the dumpster. If they happen to be on a bottom shelf because of the vagaries of shelving and number, they may be more like weeds to be trampled. Top shelf isn’t much better from my viewpoint, but of course, I am five feet tall. The whole scenario is enough to make a reader or author feel faint.

Then there’s the fact that print review sources are shrinking. That means more attention for the ‘big books’ that you can’t miss anyway, less for the others. Look for full page reviews of the megasellers and no page reviews for most of the midlist. Too bad, so sad.

Even libraries, long the treasured location for creative and serendipitous browsing, are not immune to this. Many of us, including grouchy little me, use the online catalogue to select titles and dash in to pick up my selection without checking to see what else is available. Of course, they are titles or authors that I already know about.

Plus more and more books don’t even have a physical manifestation: they’re e-books or they’re downloadable audio books. How do you find out about them?

So that’s my point: if you love a book that is not an international bestseller or a major frontlist baby for a huge publisher, then tell people about it. It will feel the love! Here are some things you could consider. They’re all free and most only take a minute!

Tell your reading friends.
Tell your local librarians.
Tell a bookstore owner.
Tell your book club.
Tell strangers on a bus.
Be seen with the book! Read it in the doctor’s waiting room, on a plane, in a slow grocery line. Someone’s bound to ask. But feel free to volunteer the information.

Don’t get out much? No problem!
Tell your Facebook buddies.
Tell your Twitter followers.
Link to a nice review.
Comment on the author’s blog or Facebook page.
Every one of these takes almost no time. A minute. Or a quick flap of the tongue. But in this networked world any one can make a difference.

Have a few more minutes? Write a quick review online or rate the book on an online site or online bookseller. You won’t just be dishing out stars. You’ll be one!

Lastly: Tell the author. Most authors have a website with a contact email. It’s a lonely old world out there and it could get lonelier with all these invisible books, bookstores closing and shrinking book review sections. So give an author a boost! Every author writes with the reader in mind. Without the reader, the story doesn’t matter. If you’re a happy reader, let the person know that their book touched you in some way.

Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three (soon to be three and a half) mystery series and a couple of dozen short stories. Her thirteenth mystery novel, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, which hit the bookshelves last week, is brimming with names, no two the same.

MYSTERY REVIEW

2011-10-29T00:05:00.001-04:00

Sitting Lady Sutra
By Kay Stewart
Touchwood Editions

RCMP Constable Danutia Dranchuk makes her second appearance in this new novel by Kay Stewart. The first one, A Deadly Little List, which Stewart co-authored with husband Chris Bullock, saw Const. Dranchuk, recently graduated from the academy. Now she’s stationed in Victoria, B.C. and recently named Special Investigator in trying to find a serial killer before more women are murdered.

The Sitting Lady of the title is the name of a waterfall just outside the city. It’s where the body of a teenaged girl is found after six months of decay. Nobody has reported her missing. Is she just one of many lost souls or a victim of Handy Dan, the nickname of the serial killer Dranchuk is tracking. Until that can be established, she must cooperate with Corporal Farrell from the West Shore division, not a happy situation for either woman.

Dranchuck works closely with Corporal Surinder Sharma, head of forensics, in searching for both the identity of the girl and her killer. His timely words of wisdom and quiet relentless methods help Dranchuk to focus her own skills. She’s invited to his home to celebrate Thanksgiving and the Hindu festival of Dussehra, where she meets his two sons and niece, an art student who has been estranged from the family for many years. The Sharma family stories and traditions weave a colourful texture into this police procedural. And we learn about the tragedy that beset the family decades ago in Toronto. But Dranchuk eventually has questions about Sharma’s handling of the case. She feels he’s dragging his feet but doesn’t know why.

Dranchuk’s own past becomes part of the story as she tries to deal with a secret from her youth.

The setting also plays a major role in the mystery. From Victoria’s bustling city streets to the haunting forests and wild streams of Witty’s Lagoon Regional Park, Stewart is a great travel guide and paints a vivid picture of this soulful place.

Sitting Lady Sutra is a well-written mystery with a solid plot and sub-plots that intertwine and surprise. Stewart knows how to write a compelling novel with dialogue that is sharp and believable, as are the characters. It’s always a pleasure to find a strong female protagonist who is also good at her job. Danutia Dranchuk is definitely one.

CRIME ON MY MIND

2011-10-28T08:28:00.000-04:00

And now for something completely different.

I’ve been known to get hooked on the occasional TV series and with the fall season in full swing, I’m wondering which ones are your favourite crime-related series. It’s a question my writing buddies have been tossing around lately, mainly looking for recommendations.

I’ll put mine out there – Harry’s Law, Castle, Prime Suspect, Body of Proof. They each have their flaws, of course. I much preferred Harry’s Law last year when it was a small law firm doing business in a shoe store. But the actors are strong and I still love Harry in the courtroom.

Castle seemed to have lost its way at the end of last season but may be back on track. It’s the sexy tension between Castle and Beckett that sets this one apart but it can get bogged down in backstory.

Prime Suspect is a great title but in no way relates to the British namesake. Which is too bad. Not that it’s not an Americanized version, like we saw with Cracker, but more because that’s what you expect when you purloin a well-known title. Put all that aside and you have a strong female cop. I like her style. Okay…maybe the tension in the squad room diffused much too soon. That rivalry made the show sizzle. But it still has my attention.

Finally, Body of Proof, partly because I love the shoes. And of course, the female medical examiner and her boss dress more like fashion models. And not since Quincy have we seen a pathologist-cum-police detective at work. She spends as much time physically chasing down suspects as in the lab. So, suspend your disbelief and enjoy. It’s still an entertaining hour.

Of course, there are others that drift onto and off my ‘must watch’ list, depending on availability. Bring on a new season of New Tricks, and I’m there. Same with Republic of Doyle. And then we have those short British series – Inspector Lewis just keeps getting better. And I find Case Histories, based on Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series, well worth watching.

Which brings to mind the question of transition between a book and the screen. I think the best done were the Benny Cooperman movies based on Howard Engel’s lovable PI. Wallander fell short when the main character sported a British rather than a Swedish accent. Sorry – I do demand some realism.

Some, ‘based on characters’ of series written by mystery authors stand the test of a long run, such as the Morse mysteries. Others, like Midsomer Murders, can get boring but did revive last season and were interesting once again.

What’s on your ‘must-watch’ list? And, which book series would you like to see transformed into TV series? What about your own books?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April 3, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

2011-10-27T00:05:00.000-04:00

Dead Horses

I know I've blogged about the importance of libraries before in this space but at the risk of seeming to flog a dead horse, I'm going to say more. Doug Ford, councillor for Etobicoke, may have given up for the moment his quest to close Toronto libraries but in my experience, dead horses have a bad habit of raising their scabrous heads and coming back to life. Governments and corporations have more money than the rest of us and a lot more staying power. They can outwait the best of us so that just when we slough off our boxing gloves and sink into our rocking chairs they joyfully dig the idea up and present it as something brand new to a now younger population.

In Ottawa we thought we'd scotched a bad plan for the rejuvenation of Lansdowne Park, the largest public park in the downtown core. But money and power won in the end and we now have a plan that includes umpteen acres of big box and other stores as well as condos, a football field and a bit of playground and green space nestled into the concrete.

Libraries are simply too tempting a target for politicians looking for spending cuts. They've tried before and they'll try again. When Ottawa City Council threatened to close the Sunnyside Branch of the OPL several years ago, my neighbours and I gathered for the protest not sure what to expect but I have rarely heard such impassioned and moving speeches. Ed Broadbent talked of the huge impact his local library had on him, a kid from an Oshawa auto worker's family for whom books and education held little importance. Jeffrey Simpson, of the Globe and Mail, told how his own youthful attention was caught by the books suggested by his local librarian.

We're just back from a two-week trip around Newfoundland where we visited The Rooms, St. John's spectacular museum, art gallery and archives. An exhibit called Logotopia: The Library in Art, Architecture and the Imagination, inspired me to scribble down these words from the exhibit:

"The need for collective experience and social interaction will never go away. Furthermore, the unique role of the library as the human institutional bridge between analogue and digital cultures provides the library patron with more opportunities and points of access than ever before. This is why new libraries continue to be built and why existing libraries expand to meet the ever growing demand. Besides, the sensorial experience of reading a book holds too great an allure."

Fine words indeed. But watch out for dead horses. They can rise to kick again.

Sue Pike has published a couple of dozen stories and won several awards including an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Crime Story. Her latest, Where the Snow Lay Dinted appeared in the January issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Sue and her husband and an opinionated Australian Shepherd named Cooper spend the winter months in Ottawa and the rest of the time at a mysterious cottage on the Rideau Lakes.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

2011-10-26T00:05:00.003-04:00

Nicola Furlong recently gave several good reasons for the popularity of mysteries. I’d like to add another. While much “mainstream” fiction has narrowed its focus to the personal realm, much crime fiction holds up a lamp to the social world we inhabit, illuminating the dark corners we would sometimes prefer to ignore.

Take, for instance, Lou Allin’s brilliant prologue to She Felt No Pain, with its convincing portrayal of the consciousness of a drug-addicted homeless man. Or Phyllis Smallman’s expose of slave labour among Florida agricultural workers in Champagne for Buzzards. Or Stephen Legault’s spirited defense of wild ecosystems against corporate fish farms in The Darkening Archipelago. Or R. J. Harlick’s sensitive portrayals of Canada’s First Nations in her Meg Harris series.

I could go on. I’m sure at least one Canadian crime novel addresses every conceivable social problem or injustice.

But crime novelists also celebrate what is good about Canadian culture. And since I write police procedurals (my main character, Constable Danutia Dranchuk, is a member of Island Division, RCMP), I’d like to celebrate the amazing dedication of the riders in the Canadian Cancer Society Tour de Rock and their supporters.

Every fall, a team made up of law enforcement officers and media representatives cycles more than 1000 kilometres from Port Alice in northern Vancouver Island, down the east coast, across the mountains to Uclulet and Tofino, back to the string of towns from Nanaimo to Mill Bay, over the Malahat, then to Sooke, back to Sidney, ending two weeks later in Victoria. The purpose of the ride is to raise money for pediatric cancer research and to send children affected by cancer to Camp GoodTimes, where they don’t feel strange or different because they aren’t.

This year, my husband (and sometimes co-author) Chris Bullock and I had the good fortune to experience some of the social side of the Tour de Rock, as part of our research for the still-distant fourth novel in the Danutia Dranchuk series. In tiny Port Alice (population 821), we joined locals at the Legion for a seafood dinner and lively auction with the riders and support crew. The next day we learned that Port Alice had raised $14,500 “and still counting.”

We were on hand in Port Hardy when the team swept into town, heralded by fire engines and escorted by three motorcycles and two patrol cars. There we watched a young Canadian Junior Ranger give up her long curly red hair for the cause. That night in Port McNeill we chatted with a tableful of riders about their reasons for volunteering and their experience so far.

The next morning we tooted as we passed the team labouring up a hill in high winds and heavy rain, bound for Sayward, their longest day’s cycle at 140 km. At the finale in Victoria on October 7, Lou Allin and I handed a cheque for $1000 to team co-captain Constable Alvin Deo of the Victoria Police Department, proceeds from the Bloody Words 2011 silent auction.

As gruelling as it is, the Tour itself is only a small part of the commitment these riders make. For seven months before the tour, they train and fundraise. Many are motivated by their experience with cancer, firsthand or among friends and family. Others are motivated by the Junior Riders who are their partners. Others simply believe that serving the community is part of their duty as police officers.

Whatever their reasons, they light up our world.

For more about the Tour de Rock, see www.tourderock.ca

For more about Kay Stewart’s mystery series, see www.kaystewart.ca

Kay Stewart is the author of two police procedurals featuring RCMP Constable Danutia Dranchuk (A Deadly Little List, co-authored by husband Chris Bullock, and Sitting Lady Sutra). She has also published short stories and personal essays, co-authored two writing textbooks, and co-edited two volumes of personal essays by contemporary Canadian women. She taught at the University of Alberta before moving to Vancouver Island to devote her time to writing.
Kay is active in the crime-writing community, having served as National Vice President and President of Crime Writers of Canada and co-chair of Bloody Words 2011.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

2011-10-25T00:05:00.000-04:00

Late in the nineteenth century, an American cavalry regiment met a lone Canadian Mountie escorting a band of outlaws across the border.

“Where are the rest of you?” asked the regiment’s colonel.

“Oh, he’s back at camp cooking breakfast,” the Mountie replied.

The story—apocryphal possibly, just as likely true—is recounted by David Skene-Melvin in an essay introducing his bibliography, Canadian Crime Fiction.
It set me thinking about some arresting (so to speak) differences between U.S. and Canadian crime writing that go back to the founding roots of our two nations: one born of revolution, the other breast-fed in the lap of Queen Victoria.

Skene-Melvin believes Canadian crime writing is “more subtle, more psychological, more caring” than in the U.S., “where the gun is forged into the collective soul, where the gunslingers of the wild west became the hardboiled private eyes in the cities.” Canada never had a wild west because the Mounties got there first. (We’re about the only country in the world with a policeman as a national symbol. Not a policewoman—we’re not as egalitarian as we claim to be.)

When Canadian villains are brought to justice, “we want the state to do it, not vigilantism,” Skene-Melvin says. In the U.S., on the other hand, the outlaw is an icon. Billy the Kid, a hot-headed (possibly psychopathic) killer, is portrayed as heroic, Don Corleone as noble. If a novel’s hero is a cop, he or she is a rebel. (Though frankly, in my experience from my days as a criminal lawyer, the rebel cop is one of the most unlikely fictions ever invented.)

But in Canada, we have the caring cop hero. Eric Wright, creator of the Inspector Salter series, says he constructed his protagonist “according to what I like about Canadians—he has a gentleness and a fundamental sense of decency.” Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks does not have to shoot his way to a resolution, he thinks his way there. The late L.R. Wright’s Sergeant Karl Alberg was as gentle as his author. Our private eyes are like Benny Cooperman: soft-boiled. (Like a klutzy version of Howard Engels himself, come to think of it.)

Peter Sellers (the living, not the late), another crime writer and anthologist, offers an interesting theory about why the private eye developed only late in Canadian fiction: “Because it’s an American convention that usually delivers a happy ending or at least a resolution. I think Canadians, certainly of an earlier generation, were too aware of the role of chance in life to want that.”
But wait a minute, does this comparison of our two crime-lit cultures still hold as we work our way through the twenty-first century?

The American ideal, the private eye or the loner cop as gladiator—indeed the concept of crime fiction forged from a national instinct to rebel—is getting a second look these days. For example, Harper’s former editor Lewis Lapham: “In place of the reckless and independent-minded individual once thought to embody the national stereotype (child of nature, descendant of Daniel Boone, hard-drinking and unorthodox) we now have a quorum of nervous careerists, psalm-singing and well-behaved, happy to oblige, eager to please…”

The supposedly enduring Canadian images (King of the Royal Mounted with his loyal Husky at his side, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon mushing up the frozen Klondike) were never particularly Canadian, the former conceived by Zane Grey in the pillowed comfort of an estate in Southern California, the latter the creation of Fran Striker, also a Yank. They didn’t need to live in Canada to write about it. It was enough effort imagining it.

Sellers dismisses the notion that Canadians, with our constitution quietly calling for “peace, order and good government” (while the Declaration of Independence triumphantly tolls for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) defer to authority. Or that our authors mainly write cozies featuring introspective cops. In fact there’s a strong noir tradition, he says, and some Canadian offerings can be savagely chilling.

He gives as an example R. Lance Hill, later a Hollywood script writer, who wrote hard-edged thrillers—Nails caused a stir for its violence and edgy style. Needles, my first novel, came out around the same time, shocking staid reviewers with its junkie prosecutor, its villain (a sadistic heroin kingpin known as The Surgeon) and its bribe-taking (horrors) RCMP officer.

The new tradition continues in the works of Andrew Pyper, especially his beautifully written, explicitly violent, The Trade Mission. Giles Blunt, John Farrow, Kathy Reich, Brad Smith can be dark. Or try the black humor of Bill Gaston, his noirish and funny The Cameraman, about the making of a snuff movie.

That’s another element of Canadian crime literature that should not be overlooked: we often like to sprinkle our offerings with the salt of humour, as in this brutal description of a Pyper character: “the guy behind the counter at the corner store with the nose hairs that reached halfway down his lips, fine and searching as butterfly antennae.”

(A source of inspiration for the Canadian wedding of crime and humour may be Ontario broadcaster R. Howard Lindsay, who in the Thirties authored a hilarious stream-of-consciousness mystery, Fowl Murder.)

My own recent novels have tended in that direction: my current Arthur Beauchamp series with its eccentric rural characters. But I’ve also become more comfortable with injecting progressive themes and sub-plots: my last several novels touch on pro-choice issues, reactionary U.S. politics, environmental threats to global survival.

Our homegrown talent is finally being recognized internationally. It has helped that Canada has produced such luminaries as Atwood, Ondaatje, Shields, and Munro—their successes alerted the world to seek out others toiling in the genres of mystery and thriller. The late Carol Shields was herself an Arthur Ellis winner for best Canadian crime novel, and Margaret Atwood has taken the Dashiell Hammett award—for literary excellence in crime writing—with The Blind Assassin. In her acceptance speech, she admitted to an early addiction to detective stories. (She still needs an occasional fix, and generously helped edit one of mine, Slander.)

A little history to explain how we got where we are:
Though Canada’s first home-grown murder mystery saw print in 1876, it was not a proud moment in our history. Surrendering to the hypocrisy of the times, the author, Mary Leslie, used a male pseudonym, then had to withdrew all copies because of an uproar in the Ontario town where her story seemed (too accurately) to be set.
Through much of the 1900s, Canadian crime writers masqueraded as American or British, often hiding behind pseudonyms, as if in shame. Luke Allan, Guy Morton, Sara Woods were among dozens of best-selling Canadians afraid to come out of the closet.

“Until well into the 20th century, Canadian crime writing in particular and Canadian literature in general, suffered from a serious problem: the slighting of Canadian authors,” Skene-Melvin says. “It was too expensive to produce small numbers of domestic editions when the country was swamped with American culture and had to compete with British as well.”

He blames it on a culture of “intellectually snobbish librarians.” Through the 1940s, the public library systems did not purchase popular fiction—“it was considered déclassé by libraries, and crime fiction beyond the pale.” In the 1950s, fiction collections were shelved well away from the “literary” sections so as not to contaminate them.

These self-styled elitists believed we had a culture that was little, provincial, unknown, and they covered up their shame with snobbishness. That attitude went on to infect academic libraries and graduate English courses, where students were made to believe that Hugo and Dostoevsky and Dreiser had not written crime novels.
So it’s no wonder that under that kind of censorious pressure, we are late bloomers. Even today, our self-appointed guardians of culture tend to leave us off the literary tea guest lists. She writes mysteries, my dear, she’ll show up reeking of gin. Or you get: He writes thrillers? How crass. It’s so American.)

That all began to change in the late 70s. When Needles won a $50,000 first-novel award, there was controversy about a literary award going to an unabashed, unalloyed thriller. One reviewer called it “a thoroughly nasty book, adding: “The author of this unwholesome collage of sex, crime, horror, and violence is a Vancouver lawyer with considerable experience in criminal law. He should know that a decade ago, before decency was outmoded, his book would have risked prosecution under Canada’s obscenity laws. Today, in our permissive society, the book wins a literary prize.”

Others applauded me for having the courage to set it in Vancouver, some expressing shock when they learned I wasn’t an American: Canadians weren’t supposed to write thrillers. (Conversely, when Platinum Blues, then Slander, were set in the U.S., I was dumped on by my Canadian fans for “selling out.”)

Andrew Pyper, who was ignored at home until Lost Girls, set in Ontario, was discovered in Britain, says Canadians have long suffered a “constipation about what we call literature, a teetotalling Presbyterian reflex. Someone told a lie about literature in Canada early on, someone who prefers books that are morally obvious, quiet, settled. It’s a lie that became institutionalized.”

In rebellion to this attitude, new voices are rising in strong, well-crafted novels and short stories that don’t fear the darkness. (See, we can rebel, too, we Canadians. And good literature often does come from rebellion: Steinbeck, Lewis, Richard Wright, Hammett, my boyhood heroes)

David Skene-Melvin says, “Canadians today are telling their own stories, no longer feeling obliged to hide their nationality nor pretending to be British or American.” Still, it remains a struggle for many who write Canadian crime in these cool Northern climes. “Too Canadian” is a phrase American acquiring editors still tend to use. I’m proud to be too Canadian.

William Deverell was a journalist for seven years. As a lawyer, he was counsel in more than a thousand criminal cases, including thirty murder trials, either as defender or prosecutor. His first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Prize in l979 and the Book of the Year Award in l981. He has also published numerous magazine articles and short stories. A feature film of Mindfield, for which he wrote the screenplay, was released in l990. Trial of Passion launched his first crime series and won the 1997 Arthur Ellis prize for best Canadian crime novel, and the Dashiell Hammett award for literary excellence in crime writing in North America. He is the creator of the CBC's long-running series Street Legal.
William Deverell can be found hiding out at www.deverell.com

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

2011-10-24T09:05:00.000-04:00

I’m feeling revved up after having spent the last few days with writers and readers and having the prospect of a few more. On Saturday, the excellent Capital Crime Writers 'A Day to Kill' brought together Ottawa and Eastern Ontario authors to share thoughts on writing with writers and readers, to hear celebrity readers and to celebrate the genre and pick up some new books. It was a high energy day with a lot of laughs and some surprising secrets revealed. Ottawa has its share of writers and the numbers are growing. I find that heartening. There will be even more to read next year!

Prior to that, Thursday meant a trip down Highway 7 with Barbara Fradkin and Robin Harlick for a reading in the Tweed Library. You never know what to expect on dark and rainy weekday evenings in small towns. We were pleased to be met with a room full of readers who were happy to have us spill our writerly secrets and also pleased at the groaning table of goodies to be shared afterwards. And of course, it’s always fun to have a road trip with other women who kill for a living. You just have to be very careful.

Sunday was the second annual Carleton Reads. Mark Frutkin, Paulette Bourgeois, Kate Heartfield and Dave Cannon gave spirited presentations on the books they had chosen, all Canadian literature: The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe, Galore by Michael Crummey, Room by Emma Donaghue and Salamander by Thomas Wharton. Salamander was voted the book the audience

would choose to read first and a tough battle. I enjoyed the passion in their well-articulated cases. During the question period, I asked about ‘guilty reading pleasures’ and was gratified to hear that this elegant and thoughtful panel all read, enjoy and respect genre fiction as well as literary fiction. There was no sign of snobbery here and no attempt to look down on so-called commercial fiction. Lots of room in our reading lives for whatever we want to read whenever we want to read it they felt. They all flatly refused to feel guilty about any of their reading pleasures.

I’m darn glad to hear it and also glad to be settling down to read. On my bedside table and ready to start is Louise Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

It will probably be joined by a few more books in the pile when I drop in to hear the Scottish mystery writers who are here in Ottawa as part of the Writers’ Festival. Ian Rankin, Denis Mina and Stuart McBride should put on a great show.

It all served to remind me that it’s a great time to be a reader and a writer in Ottawa!

Mary Jane Maffini rides herd on three (soon to be three and a half) mystery series and a couple of dozen short stories. Her thirteenth mystery novel, The Busy Woman’s Guide to Murder, which hit the bookshelves this spring, is brimming with names, no two the same.