SCHMOOZING WITH RICK BLECHTA

1. Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?

Boy, that’s a tough one. There are a lot of people who influenced me. Most are not even writers. All the musicians from whom I’ve taken lessons showed me so much that I use every day in my writing: perseverance, how to break down problems to make solving them more easy, how a small amount of progress every day will still get you where you want to be, how to believe in your ability even when things aren’t going well, and above all, patience! Writers who influenced me would have to start with Rex Stout. He had such fine control of his writing and characters. I love the way he packed in telling details so effortlessly and, in most cases, invisibly. For getting me started down this path, it was Dick Francis. It was his revealing writing about the horse racing world that led me to believe that I could do the same sort of thing using music. It’s sort of worked out pretty well.

2. What are you working on now?

My agent has convinced me to do a series. Having spoken to many authors about how they went about this the wrong way, I have taken my time to lay things out thoroughly. I normally fly by the seat of my pants and let characters develop naturally as I work on a book, and then fix things during the revision process. With this project I’ve written pages and pages of character descriptions, situations from the past which will allow me to write further books in the series, some of the most inconsequential-sounding details which will allow me to expand on each of the regularly appearing characters in the series in subsequent books (should I be so lucky), just tons of details I may or may not wind up using. Most of all, I have spent hours simply thinking about these people to the point where I now dream about them. As for writing the actual novel, that’s going slower than I would like, but that’s the fault of having to make a living more than anything. I also will be working on another Rapid Reads book over the winter. And I’m really excited about the story line. You heard it here first, folks: it does not involve music!

3. In what ways is your main protagonist like you? If at all?

The protagonist in the novel that’s about to be released by Dundurn (Roses for a Diva) is nothing like me. First of all, Marta is a female (last time I checked) and she’s also an opera singer. I’m a brass player (French horn and trumpet) and singers are only needed to fill up a stage while we’re in the orchestra pit playing all that lovely music! However, Marta does share my sensibilities in many ways. Most of my protagonists do. Not all though, and I won’t reveal which ones those are! The two protagonists in my new series will be pretty different from the sorts I’ve used in the past. You’ll just have to remain patient to find out in what ways they differ.

4. Are you character driven or plot driven?

I think in the current publishing climate, one has to be a bit of both, don’t you? You can get away with being more plot driven in the thriller genre where I tend to write, but somehow, I could never quite manage that. I find people intensely interesting, so it’s no wonder I want my characters to be interesting, as well. Another thing is that characters who aren’t particularly sympathetic can be as interesting as ones with whom you’d want to be friends, so I occasionally write those kind of people. However, if you don’t have an engrossing and plausible plot, you’re going to compound the problems of writing a publishable novel. I have read examples where the story was crap but you just loved the characters so much, you enjoyed it despite its shortcomings but you’ve got to have damn fine characters to pull that one off. So to when a plot is just so fantastic you have to find out what happens even though the world created by the author is completely populated by cardboard cutouts of real people. That is really difficult, too. So I guess you could say my books are both — or at least I try to make them that way.

5. What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

That no question or issue is ever black or white. Real life exists in the gray space in between. Things might not happen the way you want them to, and you can start down the wrong road and never be able to return. What you do have to accomplish is to make the best out of what you’ve been handed. If you remain honest and forthright, you just might find something that makes you a better person. Boy, does that sound heavy, but it is the way my novels are constructed. There are also some funny bits, though. Honest!

6. What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?

Obviously, music is also very important to my life. I’ve been a musician far longer than I’ve been a writer. But if tomorrow someone said I’d have to make a choice, I would choose writing — as long as I could listen to as much music as I want. Unless you know about my food blog, readers might well be surprised to know that I am a very good cook (I’m going by what others have said.) I know what a “really good cook” is and I fall far short of that, although I do have talent. My current huge interest is in crafting home charcuterie. Lonzino anyone?

7. Give us a summary of your latest book in a Tweet

A stalker is determined to possess Marta Hendriks completely. How can she possibly survive when he seems to be everywhere – and nowhere?


Rick Blechta is a Toronto-based writer and musician. His thrillers have been praised for their originality, finely drawn and convincing characters, and of course, for their realistic descriptions of the world of music and musicians. This October, his tenth novel, Roses for a Diva, the sequel to his very popular The Fallen One will be released by Dundurn Press. Opera diva Marta Hendriks is back and someone is stalking her throughout the great opera houses of the world. He seems to be everywhere – and nowhere. How can she possibly survive when he is determined to possess her, body and soul?

SCHMOOZING WITH RICK BLECHTA

1. Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?

That’s sort of a tough one. If you mean for crime writing, I’d have to say there are three: Dick Francis for how he handled the horse racing backgrounds in his novels. I always felt there were just enough interesting informational tidbits as well as a clever way of working the racing background into the plot of the story. Even though the main character became pretty repetitious after awhile, Francis books are a good, fun read.

For dialogue, hand’s down, it has to be Rex Stout. He was such a deft hand at it, you seldom noticed how much information he was feeding you, not just with the words, but also with the actions and reactions of those speaking. There’s a lot to learn about good writing from reading Nero Wolfe.

Among current writers, I would have to say I really admire the way Michael Connelly and Val McDermid put their books together. They make very few missteps in plotting and can paint a pretty amazing picture with just a few, very spare phrases.

2. What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished a full-length novel for Dundurn which happens to be a sequel to my previous publication with them. This is called Roses for a Diva and even though it was a very difficult and time-consuming job, I really enjoyed it and am quite happy the way it all turned out. Roses will be released sometime late next year – at least, that’s what I’ve been told. Readers will like it (I hope) because this time the story travels to Italy for much of the book.

Also out next spring will be a new Rapid Reads novella titled The Boom Room. This is another Pratt and Ellis story and concerns a murder at a nightclub. I enjoy writing these stripped-down works a great deal. I think it improves my prose-writing in general since you have to say just as much with a greatly reduced palette.

3. In what ways is your main protagonist like you? If at all?

Since I don’t have a main protagonist that travels from book to book (except for this current one), there are only so many generalities about their personalities that they might share with me. My characters don’t give up easily, very much like me, and while they may be occasionally unsure of themselves, they know how to think things through. Some of them also have a rather ironic view of the world, which I definitely do. I do wish I had the amazing musical talents a few of them possess! In which case, I probably wouldn’t be writing novels…

4. Are you character driven or plot driven?

I’d have to say both. I have to really be engaged with the characters in my novels, the good as well as the bad, in order to write each one. They usually have some sort of flaw they have to overcome during the story (or not, if they’re a baddy), but I also feel the plot needs to be strong and compelling in order for the book to be ultimately successful for readers. So let’s put it this way: I like to explore my characters, but I don’t want that to get in the way of telling the basic story. Since not a few of my novels are whydunits rather than whodunits, the plot can be especially important. Above all, everything has to be believable. I’ve occasionally been told (by reviewers as well as readers) that my characters are very much like most people they know, but I take that as a compliment. How many really outré people does the average person know?

5. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

Lately, I’ve been told by both my publishers that they want at least a detailed plot outline, if not a chapter-by-chapter summary. Because they require it, I do it, but I can’t say I like it. It does help sort things out for plot requirements, but once I send it in, I generally never look at it again while I’m writing the story. If I were to follow things off my summary, I would certainly be more apt to miss those interesting and exciting plot twists you come up against along the way. For instance, with The Boom Room, I got to the final chapter and realized the wrong person did it! If I’d followed my chapter outline, the storyline wouldn’t have changed enough to allow that to happen. As a sidebar, when you work this way it’s very interesting to finish a novel, then look at your long-forgotten summary and see how well you did at following it. To sum up, I would much rather work through my plots without the aid of too much forethought.

6. What do you hope readers will most take away from your writing?

A sense of enjoyment, certainly, but since I write about music and try to do it authoritatively, I would hope they might enjoy the insights into how music is made, both internally and externally, since to many, being a musician or involved in the music biz is something mysterious and arcane. Foremost in my mind as I write is in producint “a good story, well-told” to quote one of my publishers.

7. Where do you see yourself as a writer in 10 years?

I would like to not have to rely on a day gig to earn my living. I work best when I can concentrate totally on writing. Currently, that only happens on vacations or if I don’t have any graphic design work on my desk. And I sure hope that happens sooner than in ten years!

8. What is one thing your readers would be most surprised to know about you?

Probably that I can be very unsure of myself at times. I have learned how to think my way out of tight corners, but sometimes I’m very much up against it. They might also be shocked to find out that when I write I always wear a pirate costume – complete with eye patch and a live parrot on my shoulder. Just kidding…

9. What do you like to read for pleasure?

Anything that strikes my fancy. My wife and I both love looking at maps (we have a large number of British Landranger maps for instance), and I often read history. We have amassed over 150 cookbooks. I read one or two biographies every year – usually about musicians. I wish I had more time to read, actually, since it is one of life’s great pleasures. If I have a novel on the go, it’s extremely hard for me to feel anything but guilt that I’m reading instead of working on it.

10. Give us a summary of your latest book in a Tweet (140 characters or fewer).

Operatic soprano Marta Hendriks is being stalked as she travels the globe. Is it just an over-enthusiastic fan – or something more sinister?

Rick Blechta is a musician as well as a writer of crime fiction. He has successfully melded the two in his critically-acclaimed thrillers. His 9th and 10th novels are scheduled to be published in 2014. First, another novella for Orca Book Publisher’s Rapid Reads imprint will be released in spring. Next fall will see Dundurn publishing his full-length novel, Roses for a Diva, the sequel to his very popular The Fallen One.

Rick posts every Tuesday on the long-running Type M for Murder blog (http://typem4murder.blogspot.com) and you can visit his website at http://rickblechta.com.

Catch Rick playing trumpet with The Advocats Big Band on the first Monday of every month at Seven44 Restaurant and Lounge, located just south of Eglinton on Mount Pleasant in Toronto.

MYSTERY REVIEW

THE FALLEN ONE
by Rick Blechta
Dundurn Press

Enter the world of opera, travel, suspense, despair, tragedy, deceit, delight, and terror. All this in one book, Toronto author Rick Blechta's latest mystery, The Fallen One. Blechta's background in music shines through in this tale of Canadian opera star Marta Hendriks, battling to get her career back on track after bowing out for a couple years following the tragic death of her husband, Marc in a house fire.

When Marta travels to Paris to sing the role of Violetta in Traviata for the Paris Opera, she's counting on this being her re-entry into that world. She hasn't bargained on seeing her dead husband on a Paris street, shaking her confidence and threatening to undo the years of therapy. To save her sanity and her career, Marta travels back to her home in Toronto, and then onto the ruins of the house Marc was building for them, just outside Ottawa in the Lanark Highlands. She searches through Marc's pickup truck which has been stored on the property and finds a clue that leads her to a small apartment in Montreal. And Marc's true identity.

She's then drawn into a cat-and-mouse game involving biker gangs, RCMP, two more deaths and finally, an attempt on her own life when she searches for Marc back in Paris. She doesn't know who to trust -- the good guys are indistinguishable from the bad. Along the way, Marta matures as a soprano who is now in demand, dares to care about another man, faces her demons, and emerges with the truth.

It's a suspense-filled journey, often terrifying, but also one of opulent opera halls along with the colourful characters who populate that world. Blechta has skillfully woven it all together into a novel that's hard to put down. Enter the world of opera, of suspense, of a mystery not to be missed!

CRIME ON MY MIND

Times are a'changin...

I remember when the big box stores first hit the scene, particularly Chapters, back in the days when I had Prime Crime Books. The initial panic was offset by cooler heads, one in particular -- a sales rep, who said that the independents needed to try to ride out the wave. That the big box craze would burn itself out and guess what would emerge from the ashes -- independents.

He was right. Although, unfortunately, many of us were unable to stick around until it happened.

We see it in bookstores: Borders gone out of business; Chapters/Indigo diversifying to the point where books often seem the add-ins these days. Even some of the big box retailers in other sectors are opting to open smaller, local stores these days. The store in the community where it's a cosy, friendly shopping experience. The Home Hardware model.

So, while we're still loosing Indies that are important to the soul of the community, others are opening their doors. And in Ottawa, I'm happy to say, the mixed merchandise model is alive and well at Britton's in the Glebe. I'm touting my own horn here, a bit, because it really was Ted Britton's idea. He heard, on a daily basis, from customers who still regretted the closing of Prime Crime. So, what better fit than magazines and mysteries?

He'd already ventured into the book business, stocking mainly non-fiction and local authors. His next step was to clear a healthy space of wall and bring in the mysteries. I'm having all the fun doing the ordering and displaying...and meeting with mystery lovers, usually on Saturday afternoons. But don't hold me to that schedule.

We call it the Prime Crime Bookshelf and former customers are very pleased. New customers, too.

He's also very committed to doing book signings, so most weekends, that's what you'll find at Britton's in the Glebe, at 846 Bank St. In fact, today we're having Toronto author Rick Blechta signing his hot-off-the-press mystery, The Fallen One. He'll be at the store 2-4 p.m. Tomorrow, it's popular local author Barbara Fradkin, 1-3 p.m.

So, if you're an author who's planning to visit Ottawa, let us know if you'd like to do a signing. Send me an email at prime.crime@rogers.com. If you're a reader who loves a good read, I hope you'll stop by and watch the Prime Crime Bookshelf evolve.
The mystery is...just how far can we expand?

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

The “work” side of writing

I’ve always looked at the act of writing words for a living as being two-sided. The first side is the actual creation of something: getting those thoughts down, polishing the prose until it’s right (or as right as you can make it). That’s being a writer.

The second side of the job comes after all this is done. You find and deal with a publisher (with or without an agent), you’re interviewed (hopefully a lot!), and you go out and do book signings and readings. In the past few years blogging, tweeting and maintaining a website have also become part of the your job description. That’s being an author.

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that the first part of the job is enjoyable. The second part is work.

I’m currently smack dab in the middle of the second part, because my eighth novel, The Fallen One, was released this past week. The launch was on Wednesday at Toronto’s fabled Arts and Letters Club in their Great Hall. For me, it was an extremely nerve-wracking evening and I’d be a liar if I told you there weren’t times getting ready for it where I asked myself why the heck I was putting myself through this. Fortunately, my little soirée was a huge success, all the books were sold, and I think everyone who attended had a good time. I even did, too.

To my mind book launches are important. Cynically, it’s a chance to sell a lot of books at one time, to make a splash, maybe even catch a bit of the media spotlight. The Fallen One’s launch managed to do all those things – well, all except the last part: the media obstinately stayed away. (Sigh...)

Considering how much time and effort go into producing a novel, a launch should be a celebration of the birth of your literary baby. Doesn’t that deserve a party, the best party you can manage?

Having a lot of author friends, I’ve attended a lot of book launches. Usually, they’re pretty lame events, truth be told. You ask fellow authors, family and friends to come to a bookstore or a bar or possibly a library. Some cheese is consumed, washed down by a glass or two of wine or beer. A speech from the publisher is made. The writer speaks briefly, possibly reads. Books are sold (sometimes not very many, truth be told) and then signed. Everyone goes home. A few launches I’ve attended have been over in an hour.

That’s sort of pathetic, isn’t it? Here you’ve spent many months creating this work, spent many more waiting for the publisher to spring into action. If you didn’t have a publisher at the start, you might have spent years looking for one. Then you’ve been through the editing process, approval of covers, talking with the promotion department, texting, tweeting, blogging and facebooking, all in an attempt to get the word out about your literary masterpiece. It is exhausting and generally not much fun.

So to all of you, celebrate the birth of a book. If you’re the author, give that thing a huge send off. You deserve a bit party for all you’ve been through. If you’re a publisher, even though you may publish one hundred books a year, make each launch something special. You deserve it – and your author certainly deserves it. And if you’re a reader, attend that launch, support that writer (probably also a friend) and enjoy the event.

After all, even though thousands of books come out every year, the “first evening” of a new book is a special thing.

Rick Blechta is a Toronto writer and musician whose novels have been critically acclaimed because of the depth of their characters and absorbing plots. All feature music of some sort. His current novel, The Fallen One, has opera as its background and features a globe-trotting soprano who has a critical problem: the husband she thought had tragically died in a house fire might not be dead. He might not even be who she thought he was. It is available now in bookstores and online from Chapters/Indigo, and will be available shortly from Amazon and all other electronic outlets on October first. For more information, please visit: www.rickblechta.com

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

Sweating the small stuff

I remember very well speaking with a woman who wanted to be a writer in the worst way. She buttonholed me at a bookstore signing in a large chain store in western Ontario. Because the store wasn’t very busy that Sunday, I was standing there, flyers and bookmarks in hand, waiting to waylay anyone who even glanced in my direction.

I saw her from the corner of my eye, speaking with the assistant manager who pointed in my direction. I thought to myself, This might actually be someone who’s heard of me and came to meet me and buy a book. With so much spare time on my hands, it was certainly a gratifying turn of events.

“You’re an author,” she said after she marched over and stood in front of me. “So am I.”

My heart sank. Anyone who’s ever done a signing knows enough to cringe when this sort of thing happens. These people usually want to talk about themselves and figure you have all day to speak to them – usually right about the time a busload of mystery fans arrive. It’s very difficult to speak with these people since they all seem to want to make some point. It’s also very difficult to extract yourself from a conversation with them. (They also seldom buy books.)

Still, there’s never any reason to be rude to people. “So how many books have you published?” I asked.

“None.”

This was looking worse and worse. If they haven’t published, then one of these “authors” probably wants you to recommend them to your publisher/agent/editor or tell them how they can get started.

“And do you write crime fiction?”

“Of course!” she said with a look that made me completely aware she thought I was an idiot for asking.

Another shopper was looking at my neglected display of books. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment,” I told her, and I turned away to speak with the woman who’d picked up one of my books. I also handed the author one of my flyers, hoping that it would impart the information this woman desired and that would be that.

About five minutes later, the other woman had bought a book (!) and I’d also sold one other to a man who’d also come over. The author was still there, so I turned to her.

She handed back the flyer. “This is very well written. Who did it for you?”

“I did,” and explained that someone at my level of importance has to produce most of my own promotional material.

“But who corrected it for you?”

“No one. Well, that’s not true. My wife looked it over to see if I’d missed anything.”

“I never correct my own writing. That’s what editors are for.”

I’m certain my eyebrows went up. “So you have submitted manuscripts?”

“I have, but they tell me I’m not yet polished enough for them to consider my novel.”

“Well, surely you send them a polished version of it.”

“It’s as polished as I can make it. Certainly there are no misspelled words or poor punctuation. But I also believe that it’s possible to polish something so much that the prose becomes dead.”

I nodded. It is possible to do this, I supposed.

It turned out that this woman’s novel was set in England and it concerned the murder of a man who turns out to be a Soviet spy who’d been living undetected in the UK for years.

Now here’s the kicker: this woman had never been to the town in England where she had set her story. She’d never been to England. From talking to her, it was pretty obvious she knew nothing about spying and didn’t care to learn. Her protagonist was a real estate agent, while the author had been a school teacher. She didn’t know and real estate agents, either.

“Do you call your character a real estate agent or an estate agent?” I asked.

“Is there a difference?”

I explained. “In the UK they’re called estate agents.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

I felt like shaking her. She should be aware of that if she wants to write a book that’s convincing. I tried to explain that, especially in crime fiction, the author needs to gain the trust of the reader. If you set your novel in the UK, it has to have all the correct terms and language. Lose that trust (or never gain it) and you’ve lost you’re reader. That trust is found in the little details.

“But the editor will correct those things, won’t they?” she asked.

I spent a further ten minutes with her, explaining that any writer has to know as much as they can about their subject matter. Publishers, editors, agents and eventually readers want things to be accurate and based on fact, and they won’t be forgiving. If you’ve got those kinds of errors in you manuscript, it won’t be considered seriously.

“So I have to know every little detail?”

I nodded.

“Being an author is much more difficult than I thought it would be.”

I could only nod again.

Rick Blechta is a Toronto author and musician. Oddly enough, his thrillers have musicians as their main characters. Next September will see the publication of his eighth novel, The Fallen One. In June, he will be the Master of Ceremonies for Bloody Words in Toronto. You can catch him playing trumpet in The Advocats big band on the first Monday of every month at People’s Chicken

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

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.