SCMOOZING WITH BARBARA FRADKIN

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

The Russians and the deadly dames of the Ladies Killing Circle! As a young adult I was fascinated by the character development, the darkness, and the human drama of the Russian legends like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. My very first writing credit was a short story in the first Ladies Killing Circle anthology in 1995. The friendship and support of that wonderful group introduced me to a whole new world which has kept me in its thrall ever since.

2. What are you working on now?

I have just finished the revisions of the tenth Inspector Green novel, entitled None So Blind, which is due out in October 2014. Green is back in Ottawa for that one, wrestling with an old case gone wrong.

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

Well, he’s a man, which is a little different. He has minimal esthetic appreciation of sunsets, nature, fine food or wine. I have a pricklier relationship with him than some authors have with their protagonists; I would not want to be like him or be married to him, for example. But I enjoy his company because deep down, we share the same values. He is a fundamentally a mensch trying to do the right thing. He acts as a voice for the marginalized and the victimized in society, he distrusts power and authority, he chafes against the rules and restrictions of his job, he dislikes paperwork, committee meetings, and other administrativia, and he loves nothing better than to be down in the trenches. Where I, as a psychologist, loved to be too.

4. Are you character driven or plot driven?

I’ve always seen these as two halves of a circle. A book is not complete without both and each should inform the other. The story often flows from the questions ‘How would this character react?’ and ‘What would they do next?’ If you have to shoehorn a reluctant character into a plot twist that doesn’t suit him, the story will not be believable. But you also have to have sufficiently complex and compelling characters, and throw them enough challenges, to create a dramatic and exciting story. Otherwise no one will keep reading.

5. Are you a pantser or a plotter?

I lean towards pantser. My imagination works best when I am immersed in a story. When I have tried to outline, I come up with better ideas during the actual writing and end up tossing aside the outline. I like the sense of adventure and the discovery of the unexpected. I hope it makes the story less predictable; if I don’t know whodunit until the end, how can the reader guess? However, I do spend a lot of time thinking and speculating before I start writing, so that I have a sense of what I want to say in the story and what it’s about (although I do change my mind!) and I have a feel for the major characters.

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

I’ve asked myself that question often over the years. My stories about the struggles of ordinary people and the blurring of right and wrong, so I think a compassion for others, and a sense of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.

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

Ten years is a long time, and I like surprises, so who knows? Hopefully still writing the kinds of stories I want to tell, at a pace that allows me time for other life pleasures like friendship, family, travelling, and my cottage. I also hope I have time for a few non-crime projects, including a creative non-fiction account of my father’s amazing life.

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

A woman has to have some secrets! Particularly things to do with the 60s, my McGill university days, and student protests. But those early misadventures gave fuel to the passion for social justice and equity that still guides today.

8. What do you like to read for pleasure?

Everything! Okay, I have no patience for wooden writing, or shallow, clichéd, boring stories. I love wonderful, moving, dramatic stories about complex people. That’s why I love crime fiction. And I love the Canadians. The quality and diversity is amazing.

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

When his daughter goes missing in the northern wilderness, Inspector Green battles dangers from man and nature alike to search for her.

Barbara Fradkin is a retired psychologist with a fascination for why we turn bad, and her work with children and families provided ample inspiration for plotting murders. Her dark short stories haunt numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Ladies Killing Circle series, and she also writes an easy-read novella series for Orca Books. However, she is best known for her award-winning detective series, featuring the exasperating, quixotic Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green whose passion for justice and love of the hunt often interferes with family, friends, and police protocol. Two of these novels have won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Canadian Crime novel.

The latest, The Whisper of Legends, was released by Dundurn Press in April 2013 to numerous excellent reviews, and the tenth in the series, entitled None So Blind, is due out in October 2014. Like Inspector Green, Barbara makes her home in Ottawa.
 

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

Armchair Traveller

Is there anything more spectacular than the Nahanni River in Canada’s Northwest Territories? A world Heritage site and a National Park Reserve, it has some of the most incredible natural diversity and scenery in the entire world. Miles and miles of wilderness with canyons, whitewater, waterfalls, hot springs, lazy, meandering flat water, and ragged glacial mountains. It is home to caribou, grizzlies, swans, eagles, mountain goats and sheep. Brilliant pink wild flowers cling to its gravel shores, while alpine meadows and jagged spruce forests rise up the slopes around it.

Why am I going on like this? Because this is the setting for my next Inspector Green novel. Yes, that’s Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, the inner city boy who loves crumbling asphalt and diesel fumes, and who struggles to learn the suburban “dad” skills of mowing the lawn and firing up the barbeque. Inspector Green is going on the Nahanni.

Only one thing could possibly pry him loose from his safe urban world and send him up into one of the last true wildernesses on earth. One of his children has disappeared. His spirited, independent daughter Hannah has gone on a wilderness canoe trip down the Nahanni with a group of friends, and they have failed to show up at their take-out point.

Canoeing the Nahanni has always been a dream of mine, but with the tight timeline of this book and with this summer (not to mention this year’s budget) already spoken for, I will have to content myself with researching from afar. Luckily I have been on a wilderness rafting trip in the Yukon, a very different river and a raft instead of a canoe, but at least I have scanned the distant slopes in search of mountain sheep and watched a grizzly prowl along the gravel shoreline in search of food. I have seen the wild flowers and heard the rush of river current. Along with my research, those memories will have to do.

Does it work? We'll all find out when the new Inspector Green novel, The Whisper of Legends, is released in April, 2013.

Barbara Fradkin is a child psychologist with a fascination for how we turn bad. In addition to her darkly haunting short stories in the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, she writes the gritty, Ottawa-based Inspector Green novels which have won back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. The ninth, The Whisper of Legends is due in April. And, her Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched last year.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

New tricks for an old dog

Writers are creative multi-taskers; we are often promoting one book while doing final edits on the second and brainstorming the first draft of yet a third. The wheels of the publishing world move very slowly and unless we are a couple of spins ahead, there will be long gaps between books.

Thus it is that I find myself writing the initial chapters of the tenth – tenth!! – Inspector Green mystery before the ninth has even hit the bookshelves. The Whisper of Legends is due out in April 2013, and I am thinking about launches, book tours, signings, appearances and all that fun stuff. But lest there be another two-year gap between books, I am also preparing the next book for submission to the acquisitions editor. With my new publisher, this process includes writing a dreaded synopsis. Every writer’s nightmare.

The challenge for me is that I have always written without an outline or any clear idea of where I’m going, what’s going to happen and how it will all be resolved (including whodunit). Difficult to write a synopsis when you don’t know the plot. When I absolutely could not get out of writing a synopsis, I did it after the book was written.

However, an interesting thing happened to me on the way to this new book. I wrote two Rapid Reads easy-read novels for another publisher. Quite a different writing process and style! These books are short, linear and chronological. For the submission process, three opening chapters and a detailed chapter outline were required. Chapter outline? Even worse than a synopsis, where at least you can fudge the middle and maybe even the ending.

I managed to do the outline for the two Rapid Reads books, because they were short and linear, and I also found that, contrary to my fear that the outline would stifle my creativity during the actual writing, I was able to move easily back and forth between the outline and the actual story, allowing each to influence and improve the other.

That was an interesting revelation. But surely it only worked on these simple books, with their uncomplicated story arcs and limited subplots and characters.

So I embarked on my first draft of the newest Inspector Green using my time-tested “fly by the seat of my pants” technique. I wrote the first four chapters in this fashion, enjoying the freedom but being troubled by the niggling question of ‘where was this going?’ Until this book, that question had never bothered me, but now I was fretting about the synopsis I still had to write about the rest of the book. What would I say? What were the plot twists and discoveries?

After finishing the chapters, I sat down to sketch out some plot ideas, and before I knew it I was writing a chapter outline all the way to the end! (Sort of). Aack! I was going to short-circuit the creative process and end up with a paint-by-numbers book!

The chapter outline is now sitting on my computer, waiting for me to play with it, throw it out, use it for the dreaded synopsis and then throw it out, or maybe even use it to help me write the book. But it is there, concrete proof of my first foray into the world of pre-planned writing. Whether it will improve my writing or not, it’s been an interesting experience. It’s the first time I’ve had a vision, however flawed, of the whole book including the end. I know the outline will be a comforting refuge when I confront those moments of terror every writer experiences. That moment when you wonder where on earth you’re going and why are you pretending to be a writer anyway.

So stay tuned for further updates on my first draft efforts of None So Blind, and the success of the outline approach. Does it improve or stultify? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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 Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched last year.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

It’s book launch planning time again! Time to decide what kind of party I want this time, to wonder whether my friends and family will come to yet another party (“Didn’t I just come to one?”), to agonize over the venue, the format, and the cost. Not to mention the new outfit.

In the past fifteen years, I’ve been to dozens of book launches, nine of my own as well as those of friends and colleagues. I’ve seen all kinds. Formal sit-down readings and raucous pub parties, rock band entertainment, ballroom dancers, and funny parlour games. To me, launches are not about making sales or marketing the book, they are about sending it out into the world and celebrating the accomplishment.

Most of my launches have had the trappings of elegance with a dash of devilry. We are very fortunate in Ottawa to have Library and Archives Canada, which has always provided space free of charge for cultural events, and the wonderful Friends of the Library, which provides the donation wine bar as a fundraiser. The sunken lobby of the LAC has soaring ceilings, marble columns and floors, and a smattering of white-clothed tables on which to spread platters of cheeses, chocolates and other fine finger foods. The space holds about two hundred people, and often it has been packed for the Ottawa crime writers’ launches. People mingle, greet old friends, browse the books and line up to have them signed, all to the graceful backdrop of jazz piano played by George Pike, our truly secret ingredient to a successful launch.

Over the years, these book launches have become part of the cultural scene. People look forward to them and never seem to grown tired of them. They do not roll their eyes as if to say “Not another one!” Instead, they stock up on gifts and often come to the signing table with stacks of books and a list of names.

Sometimes, an author launches a book alone, but often two or three of us team up for a double or even triple launch. We usually have the same pool of friends and readers, so this is one way to avoid launch fatigue, but it also splits the work and adds to the fun. A couple of short talks, brief readings, and lots of time to mingle and sign. A perfect evening!

But each time, I wonder whether I should do something different, whether after nine books the novelty will wear off among the attendees. Other authors have had launches in restaurants and pubs, both big and small, or in art galleries and theatre studios. Sometimes they bring in their rock musician friends to play a few sets, as if readings and talks were not entertainment enough on their own. For my last book, The Fall Guy, which is an easy-read novella aimed at a very different audience from my Inspector Green books, I held the party in a pub along with two other writers. We filled the place, and everyone loved the relaxed, informal, no-mic, stand-on –a-chair-and-scream atmosphere. Including me.

This year I have two launches to plan, one for the latest easy-read novella, Evil Behind that Door, which has just been released, and one for the next Inspector Green, The Whisper of Legends, which comes out in the spring.

Two different books, two very different parties. What to do.



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 Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched last year.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

Mystery Maven's note: The fates have conspired to prevent Barbara Fradkin from submitting a blog today so I thought it would be fun to re-visit one from last year. It's very timely since the new Inspector Green novel she's blogging about is in the final stages of becoming a reality and will be published next spring, now titled, The Whisper of Legends! Read on!



Armchair Traveller

Is there anything more spectacular than the Nahanni River in Canada’s Northwest Territories? A world Heritage site and a National Park Reserve, it has some of the most incredible natural diversity and scenery in the entire world. Miles and miles of wilderness with canyons, whitewater, waterfalls, hot springs, lazy, meandering flat water, and ragged glacial mountains. It is home to caribou, grizzlies, swans, eagles, mountain goats and sheep. Brilliant pink wild flowers cling to its gravel shores, while alpine meadows and jagged spruce forests rise up the slopes around it.

Why am I going on like this? Because this is the setting for my next Inspector Green novel. Yes, that’s Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, the inner city boy who loves crumbling asphalt and diesel fumes, and who struggles to learn the suburban “dad” skills of mowing the lawn and firing up the barbeque. Inspector Green is going on the Nahanni.

Only one thing could possibly pry him loose from his safe urban world and send him up into one of the last true wildernesses on earth. One of his children has disappeared. His spirited, independent daughter Hannah has gone on a wilderness canoe trip down the Nahanni with a group of friends, and they have failed to show up at their take-out point.

Canoeing the Nahanni has always been a dream of mine, but with the tight timeline of this book and with this summer (not to mention this year’s budget) already spoken for, I will have to content myself with researching from afar. Luckily I have been on a wilderness rafting trip in the Yukon, a very different river and a raft instead of a canoe, but at least I have scanned the distant slopes in search of mountain sheep and watched a grizzly prowl along the gravel shoreline in search of food. I have seen the wild flowers and heard the rush of river current. Along with my research, those memories will have to do.

At the moment my dining room table is completely taken over by topographical maps as I attempt to trace the route his daughter took and decide where she would have gone astray. I will use these maps when I write the search scenes and when Green tries desperately to figure out where she has gone. It is wonderful fun to try to recreate the real wilderness from these lines and squiggles on the page, with the rapids, moraines and creek beds marked. The topographical maps even show the old mining roads and the trappers’ cabins left decades ago by explorers and prospectors who ventured and died in this stunning land.

I am at the beginning of my journey, so stay tuned as I give periodic updates on my progress. With any luck, by the end Faint Hope, Green’s latest adventure, will be born.



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 Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched last year.

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

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.

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

Armchair Traveller

Is there anything more spectacular than the Nahanni River in Canada’s Northwest Territories? A world Heritage site and a National Park Reserve, it has some of the most incredible natural diversity and scenery in the entire world. Miles and miles of wilderness with canyons, whitewater, waterfalls, hot springs, lazy, meandering flat water, and ragged glacial mountains. It is home to caribou, grizzlies, swans, eagles, mountain goats and sheep. Brilliant pink wild flowers cling to its gravel shores, while alpine meadows and jagged spruce forests rise up the slopes around it.

Why am I going on like this? Because this is the setting for my next Inspector Green novel. Yes, that’s Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, the inner city boy who loves crumbling asphalt and diesel fumes, and who struggles to learn the suburban “dad” skills of mowing the lawn and firing up the barbeque. Inspector Green is going on the Nahanni.

Only one thing could possibly pry him loose from his safe urban world and send him up into one of the last true wildernesses on earth. One of his children has disappeared. His spirited, independent daughter Hannah has gone on a wilderness canoe trip down the Nahanni with a group of friends, and they have failed to show up at their take-out point.

Canoeing the Nahanni has always been a dream of mine, but with the tight timeline of this book and with this summer (not to mention this year’s budget) already spoken for, I will have to content myself with researching from afar. Luckily I have been on a wilderness rafting trip in the Yukon, a very different river and a raft instead of a canoe, but at least I have scanned the distant slopes in search of mountain sheep and watched a grizzly prowl along the gravel shoreline in search of food. I have seen the wild flowers and heard the rush of river current. Along with my research, those memories will have to do.

At the moment my dining room table is completely taken over by topographical maps as I attempt to trace the route his daughter took and decide where she would have gone astray. I will use these maps when I write the search scenes and when Green tries desperately to figure out where she has gone. It is wonderful fun to try to recreate the real wilderness from these lines and squiggles on the page, with the rapids, moraines and creek beds marked. The topographical maps even show the old mining roads and the trappers’ cabins left decades ago by explorers and prospectors who ventured and died in this stunning land.

I am at the beginning of my journey, so stay tuned as I give periodic updates on my progress. With any luck, by the end Faint Hope, Green’s latest adventure, will be born.



Barbara Fradkin is a child psychologist with a fascination for how we turn bad. In addition to her darkly haunting short stories in the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, she writes the gritty, Ottawa-based Inspector Green novels which have
won back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. And, her new Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, is being launched Sun. May 15th.