CRIME ON MY MIND

Getting ready to say goodbye to 2012!

I know, it's not New Year's Eve yet. But we're getting very close so I thought it would be fitting to look back on the year that's been turbulent in the publishing industry, what with more publishers, distributors, and bookstores closing...but has seen many positives on the output side.

Many Canadian mystery authors have had either another books in a series or a first novel published this year! And from all accounts, the sales are going strong. I won't even begin to mention names as I'd surely leave someone out. But you know who you are...and you, as a reader, know if your favourite author has hit the shelves this year.

So, in a world where changes are keeping folks on their toes, there is the stability of good books to read. And guess what, the coming year looks equally promising! I've seen some catalogues, talked to some authors, and I guarantee that readers will be thrilled with the new mystery lists this coming year.

Also a promising note, the fact that Ottawa's Books on Beechwood was sold and saved from the announced closure in 2013. That's fabulous news for readers and writers alike.

Now, your mission, and I hope you'll agree to it, is to get out there and support stores like Books on Beechwood, the independents that are fewer but stronger and determined to stay alive; support the Canadian mystery authors by buying their books and spreading the word to new readers; and, joining in the dialogue at blogsites like this one, at book events such as readings and signings, and by contacting authors to let them know if you think they've done it right.

We're all in this together...so let's look forward to a New Year that's filled with the promise of marvelous mysteries!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase

READ AND BURIED
Berkley Prime Crime, now available
A KILLER READ, also available at your favourite bookstores and online.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

A special thanks to readers!

Writing is a partnership between writer and reader. Each brings their past along for the ride. I had a touching experience this weekend that reminded me once again that good things happen when we pay due respect and attention to each other.

I received an email from a reader who is a lover of mysteries and had been enjoying one of my books until he reached a graphic, heart-wrenching murder scene involving children. At this point he threw the book in the garbage and in the email chastised me for the gratuitous, sensationalist, and largely irrelevant scene.

Writers love to receive emails from readers, and although most of them are laudatory, even the critical ones can be very helpful in honing our craft. When we write, we know what we are intending to say, but it is readers who tell us what we actually said. When I receive a critical email I generally thank the reader for their observation but don’t attempt to explain “but what I really meant was…” Words have to stand on their own, and if a reader misses the author’s intent, it is the author’s fault for not communicating it effectively. This is a difficult and humbling but crucial lesson for authors to learn.

In this case, however, I decided to try to explain. Perhaps it was the image of that particular book in the garbage, perhaps it was the obvious distress of the reader. Perhaps it was the fact that 20 children had just been massacred two days before. Or perhaps it was that the reader’s accusation cut too close to the bone for me as a child psychologist.

So I wrote back about the difficulty I had in writing the scene, which was actually based on true events that had haunted me as a psychologist for years. I wrote about its purpose in explaining my detective’s character and his relationship to another major character and also its connection to the overall theme of PTSD in the book.

This prompted him to write about his own experiences and to examine why he had reacted as he did to the scene. I do think it was the worst possible weekend to read that scene, but that too is context that an author can’t control. After an exchange of emails, he took the book out of the garbage and plans to finish it. I don’t know whether he will enjoy it (if enjoy is the right word for a gritty, gut-wrenching book) but I felt much better. The gap between our perceptions had been bridged, we both understood a little better what we had both brought to that scene and how it influenced its meaning for us.

Writing mysteries has its risks. We write about strong emotions and events – rage, terror, despair, human brutality – which can touch readers in powerful, unexpected ways as they relate it to their own experience. I don’t want to shy away from this, because it is why I write. Not simply to entertain but to share an emotional journey. But it’s humbling to be reminded that once my words are out there, the journey the reader takes with them is his alone.

Most of the time, we never know how our words are taken. For this opportunity, and for his willingness to share, I would like to thank this reader, and all the readers who take the time to write us authors with their thoughts. You are our mirrors, you tell us what we have said, and without you we are just tossing meaningless words into the wind.

Merry Christmas, Happy Whatever, and may the new year bring peace, joy and all good things.

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.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

Energy boosts!

Just when you're sitting there facing a blank screen with a blank mind as a companion, an email arrives from a reader saying, "I loved your book". Actually, this is the email: I loved your book. As a reader of 150+ books a year i was drawn in by the title. Anyway I have already ordered book 2.


Wow -- just what I needed. The adrenaline started flowing, the brain cells started doing a little dance, and I'm pumped and ready to get to work.

I've also given myself a deadline, which is what I always need to work towards. I should have done that sooner but I'll blame my lethargy on all this heat and humidity. Funny how one email can act like a cooling breeze -- and I mean that in a good way.

Which is a reminder to me that when I finish reading a book -- and I'm putting a serious dent in my TBR pile, finally! -- I need to let that author know when it's one that's blown me away. These comments aren't ego-boosters, they're those nods of approval that inspire the writer to carry on with it. It's all well and good to claim to write for oneself but seriously, when you know a reader or two is hooked, that you've given them some reading pleasure, isn't that what it's all about?

So keep those cards and letters, okay, emails coming in to all the writers you're reading and appreciating. Now...back to my book!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase

A KILLER READ
Berkley Prime Crime, now available
READ & BURIED, coming Dec., 2012
www.erikachase.com

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

There is a condition familiar to all mystery devotees: Mid-series Stress Syndrome, or MSSS (MISS). I’m a fan, and I’ve been there. It is characterized by a tightening of the chest, and a rise in blood pressure, followed by a moment when you snap. The delicate balance of admiration and devotion alters into frustrated expectations, and your fidelity as an aficionado morphs into exasperation. It’s been too long! Where’s the next book in the series? When will the torture end!

As readers, we give our time and our imaginations into the keeping of our favourite authors and their literary creations, and our principles can become a bit skewed from the vexation of waiting. Anticipation becomes thwarted desire. An excellent
recent article in the New Yorker magazine outlined the territorial tendencies of series readers (the piece was mostly about rabid sci-fi junkies, but we mystery readers know that we too are guilty). At some point, fans become consumers, and consumers demand gratification. Hardly a new phenomenon – think of the legion of followers who would not let Sherlock Holmes die, much to Conan Doyle’s chagrin. But we’ve become accustomed to a new sort of consumer speed: when we want something, we want it now and delays are unacceptable.

In my days behind the desk at Prime Crime, it was common to hear, ‘When is so-and-so’s book due? Why the long wait? They should be chained to their computer until they finish it.’ Spoken in jest of course, but there was that edge of irritation and entitlement – they weren’t getting what they craved, no doubt due to the writer’s moral turpitude and sloth. We need our fix, before the plot of the last book fades, and the characters begin to blur. Really, we’re only half fooling about that chaining thing.

We get pretty proprietary about the series we love, and feverish waiting for the next instalment. But books differ from other ‘products’ (and how I loathe that term in relation to works of the imagination.). What writer hasn’t longed for a big hit, only to discover they’ve become a commodity? There’s a delicate contract between authors and their follower; as the New Yorker points out, there is an ever-closer connection with all the blogs, Tweets, web pages, and Facebook updates, but this all takes a lot of time – time spent not writing. Their work has to be produced the old-fashioned way: one person, an empty page, and an inspiration – you can’t get it ‘on demand.’ Writers have lives, and they have to live to write, as well as write to live.

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.

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

Freedom to Grow Up

Last week in Ottawa Sue Pike and I walked our collection of dogs - five in all - to the off leash area of Brewer Park which is beside the Rideau River. All five plunged in the water, rolled in the mud, collected last years’ burrs and socialized with other dogs and their owners. They had a wonderful time as did we for it was one of the few warm and sunny days we’ve had. I think it’s the freedom that intoxicated the dogs - freedom to be dogs.

As we walked beside the river I thought back to my Ottawa childhood when we had the kind of freedom today’s children can only dream about. I was eleven when we moved away so everything I remember happened before that.

On rainy or hot days in the summer we sat on porches and played cards or Monopoly with friends or read books in the coolest place in the house which sometimes was the basement as there was no air conditioning. In nice weather we ranged far and wide on our clunky bikes or on foot.

Carleton University didn’t exist nor did the extension of Bronson Avenue. The railway track was there and I remember accepting a childish dare and standing on the tiny platform clinging to the water barrel while a train thundered past.

We swam at a tiny beach on the Rideau river, we played endless exploration games amid the reeds and islands draped with grape vines. We biked to the library which used to be on Bank Street just north of Cameron Avenue. And during the school year we walked to Hopewell.

No nannies, no hovering parents, no warnings although we were forbidden to go near the water (as if any self respecting child would obey that order). No electronic devices to amuse us or tether us to the adults in our lives. We were expected to amuse ourselves and you wouldn’t risk saying you were bored or your mother would find you a job and usually it wasn’t anything you wanted to do. So you climbed trees or lay on the grass looking at the sky or read a book or joined friends.

Our instructions were to be home before dark. And that was it. We were given the freedom to grow up, to develop our own ideas of the world. To work out our relationships with other kids without an adult hovering over us and intervening.

It wasn’t all good. Bullies existed then as they do now. Friendships waxed and waned. We didn’t learn all the skills we might have. But it was a kid’s world that kids dealt with and childhoods like this probably were the norm for many of today’s writers. I wonder if today’s children, lacking this freedom will develop their imaginations and creativity.

I read that there has been a huge surge in young adult readers and I wonder if this means today’s teens are searching for the escape to an imaginary world that we found. I hope so.




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, 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.

CRIME ON MY MIND

The Power of Readers!

The book industry news continues to haunt us. Right on the heels of the Key Porter closure, the downsizing in the sales department by Random House Canada, and more independent bookstores deciding to give up the good fight, comes an article in Brantford Expositor stating that "the Canadian publishing industry deserves a leg up", especially when it comes to retaining regulations against foreign investment. This is currently under review by Heritage Canada and would be a major blow to the industry if it is changed or worse yet, abandoned.

They're damned right!

Canadians need many voices telling the Canadian story. And this can only be done through Canadian publishers. It's that simple. Or maybe, that complex. There are many issues at play here. But it all boils down to money, doesn't it? Canada is a country of fewer numbers than the U.S., and that of course means fewer readers, fewer book buyers. The Canadian publishing industry faces similar costs in the production of its books and probably higher distribution prices. It's a combination that results in the constant struggle On top of this, to allow the foreign investment balance to change would be a blow to many more small publishers.

We have a Canadian Booksellers Association and a Canadian Publisher's Association working hard to keep the industry vital. Perhaps what we need is a Canadian Reader's Association!

This group would lobby government on behalf of publishers for a more reasonable share of funding; would lobby publishers to broaden the number of Canadian authors on their lists (I'm talking quality writing here, not a numbers game); support booksellers of the brick and mortar variety in their attempts to provide events and author opportunities; and, equally important, lobby other readers as to the value of reading genre fiction. We have tons of book clubs in Ottawa and I'm sure each city can make the same boast. They would be a good base for this new Association.

We have some amazing Canadian mystery and crime writers who might possibly hit the bestseller lists if more readers overcame their ill-founded disdain of genre fiction and of Canadian writing in general.

You all know this -- you're already spreading the word. But perhaps a Canadian Readers Association could take it further. What do you think?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

What about the readers?

Last night at my book club meeting (I am a part of this club, not a guest author), I paid particular attention to what caught their fancy as they were reading this month's selection (not a mystery). Of course, as with all readers, we each had aspects that we liked or disliked but in general, for a change, there was a unanimity in disliking the choices made by the protaganist. It certainly made for an interesting discussion and from there we branched off into several lively topics.

I took that to mean, whatever you're writing, as long as the writing is compelling and solid, people will read and form an opinion, and hopefully, remember mainly that it was well-written.

The eye-opener came when trying to agree on a book for next month. Some of our members around the table remembered snippets of plots but had great difficulty when it came to titles and authors. Thus, several suggestions sounded vaguely familiar, some titles grabbed our attention, while some author's names rang a bell....until a short description was read aloud. At that point, whatever we thought we remembered about the book, whatever expectations we had of that outstanding title, or the type of book we'd attributed to that author....it all went up in flames.

So, I got to wondering if after all these hours, weeks and months of sweating words and phrases, of building character's lives and settings, if the product of all that is so easily forgotten....why do we do it?

OK...I do know the answer to that. We write because we love to write and feel the need to tell the story. And readers read because they want to enter new worlds,to realize that wrongs can be righted, to be entertained.

I'm sure you can add many more reasons to both lists. But, I'm wondering, what book stands out in your mind and why?


Linda Wiken/Erika Chase