What big name author is enough to get you to a conference?
Honestly? No one. Okay, before you throw tomatoes at me, there are a number of reasons.
#1 Big names at big conferences draw big crowds--what are the odds of getting any "quality" time with them if you don't already know them?
#2 As a professional writer, I'm at conferences to connect with readers of my work, both old and new. So I choose my conferences based on the kind of audience they draw. I'm more interested in which fans will be there than which "big" names.
#3 Conferences cost money (usually more than it would for me to travel abroad for a week! but then I'm a frugal traveler) and time, neither of which I have a whole lot of right now.
So that's the reality. But here's another reality--relax and let good things happen.
That's how I met the wonderful David Morrell at my first Bouchercon in Toronto. I said hello and told him I lived in Scotia, PA where he set several short stories, precursors to his First Blood novel.
We chatted and he personally escorted me to the very first International Thriller Writers meeting--where I then met tons of my other "gods" and "goddesses". It was at that same Bouchercon where I also met two of my all time thriller heroines: Lisa Gardner and Tess Gerritsen.
This led my becoming the Chair of the first ThrillerFest (a job Shane has this year for TFest #5) which led to my meeting Sandra Brown, Clive Cussler, Lee Child, and many, many more life-long heroes of mine.
Most important weren't the "big" names I had the chance to meet, but the many wonderful not-so-big-yet names who have now become my closest and dearest friends--some published, some unpublished, some writers, some readers, and all more valuable than any chance to shake hands with a "big" name in a bigger crowd.
So my advice? If you're a fan, then by all means go to conferences--we writers love, love, love meeting our readers!!!
If you're a writer and looking for networking opportunities, then get involved!
And for both, volunteer! You never know who you'll be teamed up with--you may end up driving Robert Crais from the airport or escorting Nora Roberts to a signing....
So who is your dream-come-true "big" name to meet?
CJ
About CJ:
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a National Bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller."
The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, was released January, 2009 and the third, URGENT CARE, October, 2009. Contact her at http://www.cjlyons.net
If I were to write non-fiction book, what topic would I choose? I’m going with the idea that all the mayhem I have so far committed on paper, are assumed to be mere figments of my imagination. Generous assumption of my innocence aside, I’d love to write non-fiction if for no other reason people would start to believe what I say.
I would really like to be the author of a mandatory textbook used by all first year law students. I’d call it Remember Nobody Dies. The practice of law, while painful, metaphorically bloody and downright invasive isn’t usually fatal. Self-important lawyers tend to forget this fact and leave the profession with nothing but ulcers to show for three years of education and tens of thousands of dollars of student loans. Now my motives aren’t pure the driven snow. (I know it shocks and dismays many of you that I would admit to being less than pristine about anything but just go with me on this.) T extbooks are the biggest selling, best income-producing segment of books sold in this country. Every year there’s an updated version and when you multiply the number of wannabe legal beagles by the number of revisions I’d get to be one of those lucky writers earning a living. At which point, I’d need to hire contract lawyers and intellectual property lawyers and tax lawyers. It’s a circle of life thing.
If I were to go the true crime route, I would love to pen the tale of the Greenhalghs. Have you heard of this them? Talk about your family business. Recently, Shaun Greenhalgh was arrested in Great Britain after almost twenty years spent forging works of art. He, along with his brother, parents, grandfather and great-grandfather are the alleged masterminds behind the production, provenance and sale of works of art ranging from pastels to sculptures to bas-reliefs. Production. As in they made the things themselves. I don’t know about you but I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, have two left feet and draw like a kindergartner with no talent. They made them at home. Then, they sold them to collectors, dealers, museums. Frequently, they were asked to authenticate the very pieces they made. I say put them on that British talent show. I’d bet they’d win. Even if they didn’t, even if they are found guilty, do we really want to put some senior citizen Picassos behind bars? My working title, Garden House Gang, is the headline nickname given to the entrepreneurial family tree.
Or I could go with the self-help section. Anyone who’s ever met me has suggested that I need to spend a little more time in this part of the bookstore although I sense the suggestion is aimed more at me as a reader than as an author. I should go with something deeply psychological and spiritual but I’d probably end up with Bad Hair Days Aren’t for Everyone -- Just You. I’d do a chapter on hat hair, one on becoming an accidental dye goth and another on the unique hornlike directional challenges of going grey. My sage advice -- as an expert worthy of non-fiction publication – is accessorize your coiffure with a matching attitude and no sane person will mess with you. Under my non-fiction tutelage, you will never again be greeted with ‘what the hell happened to your hair?’ We’re talking a life changer here. Talk show circuit, DVDs, maybe even a group exercise workbook.
Maybe telling the truth is in my future. Maybe it’s in my past. Maybe it won’t be that easy to tell the difference. Maybe you’ll have to keep reading to figure it out.
Ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico was murdered by serial killer Brian Dugan in 1983. Last week, a Chicago area jury sentenced him to death by lethal injection.
By Shane Gericke
If I were a tree, what kind of tree would I be . . .
Ah. Right. I should get onto The Topic. Which is, "If I wrote nonfiction, what kind of nonfiction would I write?"
Nonfiction. Right. Um, let's see ...
Well, it's a good question. I was a newspaperman for twenty five years, primarily at the Chicago Sun-Times, before I drank the Kool-Aid that is thriller writing. (What color would that be, wild cherry?) I was good at journalism and I liked it a lot, with its hustle and drama and show-tune-singing crazy people. (And that was just the reporters.) So yes, this is a darn good question, what would I write if not fiction, I’m sure glad we decided to pose it . . .
Hmm. Have I tap-danced long enough to figure out an answer? No? All righty then: I wish the Apple MacBook I'm writing this on came with a real delete key, not just a backspace button labeled "delete." It's a pain in the ass not having a real delete that kills letters in front of the cursor, not just behind it . . .
Sigh. Even I'm getting annoyed with myself for not getting to the point. Which is, what would I write if I were limited to nonfiction?
Easy: I'd write about serial killers.
Precisely like the one I'm going to write about today, in fact. His name is Brian Dugan. He killed the young lady in the photo at the top of this blog, strangled her after kidnapping her from her house, raping her, and beating her. She was found a few days later, by herself, on a lonely walking trail just a few miles from her two-story home in unincorporated Naperville, Illinois—the city I’ve lived in most of my adult life. The young lady’s name is Jeanine Nicarico. She was 10 when she died in 1983, with brown hair, break-your-heart eyes, and a love of horses and reading . . .
But I can’t tell you about it now, because I promised to write about nonfiction. I’ll get back to Dugan, I promise. Now, what would I write if it wasn’t serial killer and limited to nonfiction …
I’d blind you with science.
No, not that that icky high-school stuff with equations and titrations and endless filmstrips about Our Natural World Around Us. I want to write about
Science!!!
Capitalized with exclamation marks, please. The swashbuckling derring-do that hunts terrorists, smashes infectious disease, unearths water on the moon and life on other planets, even if those planets aren't Pluto, which was recently downgraded to, uh, other than a planet, the bastards. I'd write about explorers and poison hemlock, the Science!!! That fires imagination every bit as much as thriller novels.
Like the kind James Rollins writes.
Jim writes adventure fiction based in science. (Think: Indiana Jones, archeologist, scholar and treasure hunter.) He took us to the dark heart of the Amazon forest in AMAZONIA. He dug out an arctic ice station full of macabre WWII secrets in ICE HUNT. He tackled bioengineering and the Oracle of the Delphi in THE LAST ORACLE, and introduced us to a real Russian lake, Lake Karachay, which is so saturated with Cold War radiation it’s considered the single deadliest place on the planet.
Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about, Bucky: Science!!! Life with a felt hat and bullwhip. But me, I'd write the real stories behind them. In high school I entertained serious notion of becoming a virus hunter, chasing those tiny microbes that made people bleed from all their openings—ebola, anthrax, plague. But I stunk in math, and you had to be a mathematician to be a scientist, even a Lantern-Jawed Germ Warrior. Fortunately for me, writing was a compelling second choice, so I became a newspaper reporter and editor, then a Writer of Crime Fiction, Available In Fine Bookstores Everywhere.
But still, now and again, I itch to dive into the natural artesian well at Pilcher Park in Joliet, Illinois. I heard some magical stories about the well growing up, like if you jumped inside you'd plunge into a rushing underground river that dumped out in China, or at least Detroit. It fascinated me so much I told my father we should jump in together, swim the river and map and photograph so we’d know exactly where it came from and how it worked.
But Dad just smiled and said:
“Some things should remain mysteries, I think. If you know it works, it doesn’t enchant you any more."
Well said, and true. Still, I'd rather take apart a freezer then wonder if gerbils really did run on treadmills to provide the electricity. (They don't, and I can prove it. I took apart the family freezer one lazy afternoon, with a screwdriver and Crescent wrench. I was still at it when Dad got home from work. He didn't yell as I'd expected, seeing those flanges and screws and metal panels strewn across the floor. He liked that I was curious about innards. We did put it back together right away, though. Spoil the Easter ham and all.)
Another time I took apart a vacuum cleaner. I had the whole thing in pieces, nozzle to exhaust, but couldn’t get into the housing protecting the motor. No screws, access panel or seam. A hammer took care of that, though, bang crash. The noise brought Mom running, and when she spied my mess, she asked, Where’d you get that vacuum? It’s from school, I said. A teacher knew I love taking things apart, and said I could have her broken-down old canister vac, cause she was throwing it out anyway. Mom said all right, went back to her ironing.
How were we to know what I’d just whammo’d my grade school’s brand spanking new commercial upright vacuum? And did I mention, brand-new and expensive? (Our district was rural and poor, so this was a Really Big Deal purchase by the school board.
Well, that’s when the principal drove up. He saw the mess I was pounding out and shrieked. Maybe it was a whimper. Either way, he put his head in both hands and rocked.
I’d taken home the wrong vacuum, he told Mom. The janitor had put the expensive new upright in one corner of the building. Meantime, the teacher had put her shot-to-hell canister in another corner … one the same exact day. What are the odds, right? She said to grab the vacuum and haul it home, do what I wanted with it. So, I did …
They didn't make my parents pay, which is good. Dad was a small-town police and Mom a homemaker, and together they made so little money every dime went into mortgage and food. But they wanted to do the right thing, and offered the principal five dollars a week till the thing got paid off in, oh, 2037.
But the school board said, aw, hell, shit happens, we'll charge it off to insurance. (These days, they’d file suit, call SWAT, and send me to an alternative school. But that’s a different story.) It probably didn’t hurt that the principal saw the humor in the whole thing.
So now it’s time for the second part of today’s story …
PORTRAIT OF A (real) SERIAL KILLING
Brian Dugan didn't say kee-an-tee. But he should have--he killed so many people you'd think he was the embodiment of Hannibal Lecter, the Frankenstein of American serial killdom.
Mostly, he looked like a librarian.
That's not a slam against librarians. As the saying goes, some of my best friends are librarians. But librarians just look so ... regular.
As did Brian Dugan, killer of children.
I sat in a courtroom the other day to hear the defense argue that Dugan should live out his life in prison, as opposed to being injected with heart, lung and nerve poison in the close quarters of Death Row. I took notes as the day wore on, and here’s my report:
Dugan was quiet and bookish, and extraordinary in his ordinariness: gray shirt, dark slacks, glasses, and brown hair with a graying wing over each ear. The hair was carefully slicked back, a la Mike Ditka in his glory years with the Bears. The glasses were not round but round-ish, and reflected the overhead lights of DuPage County Courtroom 4000, where the death penalty hearings were being held. His lawyers wore expensive suits and nicely polished shoes. So did the prosecutors. The reporters looked scruffy, as reporters do. The jury wore denim, fuzzy pink sweaters, and Dockers with pleats.
The spacious courtroom contained four guards: two in front with Dugan, one in the gallery with us, and one outside the door, looking over visitors as they arrived. They were sheriff's deputies, armed to the hilt, and forearms the size of Popeye's. Circuit Court Judge George Bakalis presided, leaning Larry King-like over his elevated judge's desk. Pat Nicarico, Jeanine's mom, wore a dark turtleneck under a jacket, muted checked slacks, short heels without backs, and expertly applied makeup. Tom Nicarico, Jeanine's dad, had on brown pants and a green checked sportcoat. He had no makeup. Tom and Pat attended every single trial and hearing in the twenty-five-year-old case, and today's was no exception--if it involved their daughter, they were there. When the verdict was announced, they cried. They said it was tears of joy.
The only one-one-one moment I had with Dugan was when I entered the room. He'd noticed the movement, and we locked eyes. Predators try to stare you down to establish they’re the king of that particular jungle. I stared back. Eventually he made an expression of slight amusement, and turned away, diving into the paperwork his defense lawyers had in abundance. The judge came in, we all rose and sat, the lawyers did The Legal Dance without shouting, objections or hurling objects. ("Thrilling courtroom drama” is found only in novels.) Then the bailiff turned down the lights, and Dugan watched himself explain himself on the DVD his psychiatrist played for the jury, to explain what it was like Growing Up Brian.
I sat in the gallery with Tom and Pat, whom I know, if not well, than more than in passing. I raise funds for the Jeanine Nicarico Memorial Literacy Foundation, and they went out of their way to say thanks when they found out. It's a lovely thing, that foundation: When Jeanine died they and the Naperville school district thought it would be nice to have a foundation in her name, to remember her for the reading she adored, not for the Brian Dugan Freak Show. I raised money for it when I published my debut thriller, BLOWN AWAY, in 2006, and will do so again when my next book, TORN APART, comes out next July.
Brian James Dugan, killer of children.
Dugan sat in a hardback chair in the front of the courtroom, conferring with his lawyers and forensic psychiatrist while watched by the Popeyes. I studied him as the DVD got under way, and saw he had a roundish face, lightly tanned, as if he saw the sun a lot, which he didn't, being in maximum security,. His hair was thin in front, showing lots of forehead. The hair was squared off in the back, the length a shade longer than Regular Guy. His lips were thin, and he smiled subtly, as if laughing at some private joke.
Perhaps he was. The psychiatrist with the DVD was arguing that Dugan is a stone-cold psychopath with the brain scans to prove it, and that's why the jury should vote prison instead of death: his brain was damaged from childhood abuse by Mummy and Daddy, and he therefore is missing brain cells for Empathy, Sympathy and Caring. Lenience is deserved, the psychiatrist argued, it's not Brian's fault that he raped and beat and strangled Jeanine Nicarico, 10, brown hair, doe eyes, on a deserted hiking trail after kidnapping her from the family home; raped and drowned Melissa Ackerman, 7, after snatching her off her bicycle and trying and failing to grab up her equally young playmate; kidnapped, raped and drowned Donna Schnorr, 27, in a quarry after running her car off the road; kidnapped and raped another woman, 21; tried for force yet another a woman, 19, into his car, though she escaped; forced a girl, 16, into his car after threatening her with a tire iron, wrapped a belt around her neck, raped her, then inexplicably took her home; attacked and snapped the arm of a woman, 20; and is suspected of four other unsolved murders. The psychiatrist made his lenience argument with a straight face.
Hell, I'd laugh too, I was Brian.
Fortunately, the jury wasn’t buying it, and voted unanimously for The Needle. I'm glad. I shouldn’t be, as I believe capital punishment should be stricken from The American Experience. Not because it's immoral; some people simply need to die, nothing immoral about that. It should be stricken because politicians put election spins on everything they touch, particularly death penalty law, which leads to such aonishments as blacks composing 17% of the American population and 90% of Death Row; the State of Illinois exonerating more than half its Death Row prisoners on grounds of actual innocence; and the Republic of Texas almost certainly having executed an innocent man. But I freely admit I’m happy Dugan’s going to die, and yes it’s hypocritical; sue me.
This isn't a death penalty debate, though, it's about Brian Dugan and his doomed victims. So, I wouldn't have minded if the jury had voted life without parole, because then maybe Dugan would get what he really deserves: general population. In maximum-security prisons, even the hardest convicts despise those who do children. Dugan would be raped until he died, then have sharpened toothbrushes jammed into all his orifices. Surely that would represent justice for a man who raped and killed so many innocents.
Which makes me think about the lethal injection system Dugan will experience when his appeals run out, the chemicals and pumps and gurneys and straps, and how Dugan's body will slowly turn to Malt-O-Meal in the grave, which reminds me of the microbes I wanted to hunt as a kid, and of the freezer and the vacuum cleaner I took apart, and that if I didn't love writing crime fiction so much, I'd latch onto science like a starving man craves a hamburger.
But I dig my fictional cops and killers and psychos and feebs. I love the magic that happens when I spin them rich lives out of whole cloth, infuse them with the flesh and blood and brains and hearts and motivations of real people.
Maybe I should combine them, my serial killers and my science. After all, Dugan is a Certified Serial Killer with a Brain Without Pity, and he's going to die from chemistry. Maybe we could sit in a room, he and I, discuss death and physics till we're so exhausted we can't say another word . . .
Nah. The "sit in a room" part is the deal-breaker. I'd be throwing up so much I'd never take the notes I'd need to write the book. So, Brian Dugan will have to remain a mystery to me.
Meaning my father was right, after all.
Some mysteries don't need to be explored.
BN TAKES ONE FOR THE TEAM!
Shane's take: The world's largest bookseller has adopted a “poison pill” self-defense plan after an investment firm upped its stake to 16.8 percent. Swallowing poison was a common tactic in the mergers-and-acquisitions craze of the Reagan years, in order to stop corporate raiders like Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens from taking control through stock purchases, then breaking the company into itty-bitty pieces ready for fire sale. Thus, adopting this “shareholder rights plan," as BN euphemistically calls it, practically guarantees the bookseller will remain in current, friendly, hands. I was a business editor at the Chicago Sun-Times in the 1980s, and watched all sorts of rape and plunderage of well-regarded but vastly unprotected corporations by these raiders. Here's the details from Publishers Weekly reporter Jim Milliot:
A few days after it was revealed that investor Ron Burkle’s investment firm, Yucaipa Companies, had upped its stake in Barnes & Noble to 16.8%, the nation’s largest bookseller adopted a shareholder rights plan that will make it extremely difficult for any outsider to get control of the retailer. Under the plan, which B&N said was approved “in response to the recent rapid accumulation of a significant portion” of B&N stock, shareholders will receive rights to purchase shares of a new series of preferred stock in certain circumstances.
The rights plan will kick in if “a person or group,” without board approval, acquires 20 % or more of B&N’s stock or announces a tender offer that would give that party at least a 20% stake. The plan will also go into effect if a person or group already owning 20% or more of B&N stock acquires additional shares without board approval. The rights plan gives existing shareholders--except the person triggering the rights--to acquire B&N common stock at a 50% discount. The rights plan, B&N said, “is intended to protect the Company and its stockholders from efforts to obtain control of the Company that are inconsistent with the best interests of the Company and its stockholders.” It added that “consistent with Barnes & Noble's commitment to good corporate governance, the rights will expire in three years and the Company intends to submit the Rights Plan for stockholder ratification within 12 months.”
When Burkle made his SEC filing disclosing his new B&N holdings, he said he was “concerned with the adequacy and enforcement of the company’s corporate governance policies,” particularly as it pertained to the company’s purchase of B&N College Booksellers. In the filing, Burkle said his group intended to monitor B&N and communicate its views to the board as well as to potential strategic or financial partners. In approving the rights plan, Burkle received a clear message from the company whose largest shareholder remains founder Len Riggio.
National bestselling thrillerist--Like that? I made it up!--Shane Gericke writes the Emily Thompson/Marty Benedetti crime series, which brings serial killers to Shane's hometown of Naperville, Illinois, to cross swords with Emily, a Naperville Police detective. His debut, BLOWN AWAY, was RT Book Review's Debut Mystery of the Year back in '06, and has been translated into Slavic, Turkish, Chinese, and German. CUT TO THE BONE, his followup, won no awards but has picked up a German translation deal, which is very cool. The third in the series, TORN APART, will hit the shelves July 6, 2010, just in time for ThrillerFest V, the New York-based literary festival of which Shane is the proud chairman. http://www.shanegericke.com/
If you were to write a non-fiction book, what would your topic be?
Like Sophie, CJ and Becky, I've done some hard time. You know, on the Rock. Not Alcatraz ... sorry, I may wear a fedora, but I'm not that old. No, The Rock is also known as the Island of Misfit Writers (with apologies to Rankin/Bass and Rudolph).
Y'see, we've got these monsters--er, creative energies--that live inside of us, and they just gotta come out. So we find ways ... from Sophie's fabric chickens and Oliver Wendell Holmes (hey--was he ever attacked by a fabric chicken? Did he ever defend a fabric chicken?) to Becky's tech writing, to CJ's medical reports. We spin out a word there, trot out a turn of phrase there, put a flourish on a song or tinker on the piano. 'Cause it's damn hard to squeeze in creativity when you're trying to squeeze out a living ... so you takes what you can get.
Me, I started out as a Drama major, and fully planned to do something creative with my life. Life left that career behind, and at one time about the only creative thing I was doing was writing sonnets and playing the harmonica. Not at the same time, though.
Eventually I wound up in solitary confinement on The Rock. A place called The Academy, where creativity can be a very dangerous occupation. Fortunately, I had some understanding people around me, and I got a chance to tinker with translations of ancient poetry ... won a couple of awards, and that helped give me enough confidence to think maybe I could write a novel. Did that in graduate school, and that's how NOX DORMIENDA was hatched. In between I studied a lot of history and what's called historiography, which is basically the history of history. I don't know what the history of historiography is called, but I'm sure there's a word for it ... there always is.
Anyway, I was published in a scholarly way before NOX. Not just my MA thesis, though that's part of the record, and if anyone is curious about the Orphic symbolism behind the character of Pentheus in Euripides' Bacchae, I'm sure it's not checked out. No, I was published in journals, too ... my most noteworthy article was about Wonder Woman and classical mythology. I turned down two other opportunities for such-type publication, 'cause I was working on this crazy idea for a novel.
Y' see, I discovered--after seven long years in solitary at the Rock's Academy--that history IS about fiction. History is opinion, history is a story, history is narrative, and no historian I have ever read--even the best, and I've been privileged to know a few personally--is entirely without bias. The old saw that history is written by the winners? Very true. One reason so little literature remains of female poets from ancient Greece ... but I digress.
So even when I was still on The Rock--still finishing up my degree--I didn't want to write history. History is Kurosawa's Rashomon -- a splintering of subjectivity that takes more ego and less sensitivity than any poor wannabe thriller writer could muster.
I wanted to write stories IN history ... to make history a part of our every day life, to make it personal and meaningful and human. As a scholar, I was also interested in cultural analysis, in interpreting why we do the crazy things we do. One of the publishing opportunities I turned away was based on a conference presentation I gave at the University of Melbourne that was founded on a simple (and geeky) question: Why was pop culture in the 70s so obsessed with the occult? Why couldn't superheroes escape the "Night Gallery" treatment?
[Slight explanation due: you'll notice comic books and superheroes are a common theme here. I've always been a comic book fan, used to own a shop, and am a pop culture fanatic ... in fact, I think popular culture is the surest way to understand any culture (including classical ones).]
So. To make a long and rambling story a little shorter: IF I were to write a non-fiction book, it would be a cultural analysis type thing. Probably about comic books and odd little cultural trends that puzzle me (my presentation ultimately covered American society's swing between science and occult from the 30s to the present).
That, and a guide to urban living I call Always Wait for the Second Bus.
But really ... all I wanna do is tell stories, and now that I've managed to swim off the Rock, I'm clutching my life preserver, and don't plan to ever let go.
If you were to write a non-fiction book, what would your topic be?
Well here's the thing - I already wrote a non-fiction book. Actually, come to think of it, I wrote two! Only one was published, though, because right around the time the second one was wrapped up and ready to submit, I went a little nuts and wrote A BAD DAY FOR SORRY and I haven't looked back.
Remember I was telling y'all about my Dad a while back? Well, back in the bad old dot-com era, things were kind of grim around here. We went from being paper millionaires to paupers overnight, like so many folks. I was a merry housewife at the time, but as I cast about for ways to make a little extra scratch (I have promised Dan that I will tell him the worst job I ever had over a beer at Bouchercon next year; it happened during this little interlude in our lives and I swear you will never, ever guess what it was), my Dad had a great idea - that we could collaborate on a book. And so, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr: The Supreme Court and American Legal Thought was born. I think I made $1500 and, for a matter of a few months, knew all there was to know about that Supreme Court bad boy.
Then I promptly forgot every bit of it.
The other book I wrote was on quilting. I created all my own patterns and sewed in the evenings. You would be astonished to know the depth of my quilt knowledge; I bet there's not a single technique I haven't tried or written about or researched - no notion I haven't owned - no fabric I haven't put into service, no fiber or embellishment or batting I haven't experimented with. I made wedding gowns and drapes and baby clothes too, but my quilt madness reached such heights that I started filling notebooks with my designs and notes.
But...the other day I went to fix a hole in Junior's jeans, and I'd forgotten how to thread my machine.
The point here is that I'm a fiction writer now, in the blood, and nothing else will ever hold my interest the same way. I think the stories in my head have shoved all the actual fact-type knowledge into a far corner, where it's piled up carelessly and I can't reach it. There will be no further non-fiction books from me. I tell people I'll turn back to quilting one of these days when I get a spare moment, but the truth is that I probably won't - I'll just keep writing stories. In fact, I finished a book the other day and since then I've written nothing but emails and blog posts and workshop proposals, and if I don't get to start lyin' and carrying on soon I believe I'll just about lose my sanity.
Speaking of a loss of sanity...yes, I really did once sew these fabric chickens
If you were to write a nonfiction book, what would your topic be?
By Rebecca Cantrell
As a technical writer I wrote literally thousands of nonfiction pages. I mean, I thought they were nonfiction while I was writing them, or that they would one day be nonfiction. Because I wrote about products long before the products were completely finished, this wasn’t always true, but I tried very, very hard.
But they weren’t about topics I would have picked on my own. Who exactly would spend their spare time writing the Hyperion Essbase Database Administrator’s Guide? The Sun Java Studio Creator online help? The Sybase APT/GUI Installation Guide for all seven Unix platforms? No, for those I was paid real cash money and my employer got to pick the topics (Data load? Dimension build? Attributes that look like dimensions? You betcha).
If I had an infinite amount of time (that is, enough to be a happy wife and mother and write and promote all the fiction books I want to, plus extra time left over) I would write a biography of Ernst Röhm. I almost didn’t want to say it because it sounds so nerdy, but I figured if you slogged through the Essbase references, you are toughened up.
Ernst Röhm was Hitler’s best friend. His right hand man. Hitler once said “When they write the history of the Nazi party, he will be second in importance only to me.” Röhm built up the storm troopers. He was in charge of the secret cache of German weapons after the first World War, and he gave some to the Nazis for the failed Beer Hall Putsch. He was the only who actually accomplished his objective, take the barracks and wait for Hitler. Decorated war hero that he was, the judge let him off easy.
Röhm shows up in my first book, A TRACE OF SMOKE, because he came back to Germany to save Hitler’s butt after the storm troopers rebelled. He’s an interesting guy, for a variety of reasons, one of which is that he was gay and out. And everybody knew it.
But there is no published biography of him that I could unearth. To find out about him, I had to read the bits where he's mentioned in huge history books (like RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH), plus a few passages in Sefton Delmer's autobiography, THE COUNTERFEIT SPY, but mostly I read Röhm's autobiography, published in 1928, then mostly destroyed later by the Nazis, but snagged from some school in Dresden and dragged back to UC Berkeley where it was bound in a bright orange cover. And it's all written using the old fashioned Fraktur font.
He's not a good guy or anything, but all the other Nazi figures have been profiled, from the important ones all the way down to the secretary who typed Hitler’s personal letters. But not Röhm. Why not? I think because he’s so gay that Nazi scholars are afraid to claim him, and he’s so Nazi that gay scholars don’t want him either. But somebody should. He was a fascinating guy, albeit a dangerous and scary brute.
How did he die? Hitler ordered his best friend shot in 1934 (yes, that’s in the second book, A NIGHT OF LONG KNIVES). It seems to have been one murder he actually felt guilty about too.
So, would some poor history PhD student somewhere write that book, so I don’t have to?
If you were to write a non-fiction book, what would your topic be?
I've actually written and contributed to academic nonfiction books and articles. (Anyone with burning questions about intussusception, give me a holler)
Non-fiction is a very different beast than fiction. For starts, you can't...well...lie. Which is what we do in fiction--tell lies, convince our audience that they're real, make up stuff.
Kinda a no-no in non-fiction land. And people expect their truth, in addition to being based on facts, to be logical....not my forte.
Except for one kind of non-fiction. There you can do just about anything and people not only will believe you, they'll pay for the privilege of reading your whimsical, illogical, non-factual, too-good-to-be-true drivel.
I'm talking, of course, of the world of self-help books. The UFO Diet! The Secrets to Instant Wealth via Telepathy. Eat Radishes and Look Like Angelina Jolie in Three Weeks!
Talk about a great gig! Better even than fiction--in my fiction, my editor expects me to get most of the facts right--and so does my audience.
But in the world of instant quick-fixes, anything goes. In fact, the bigger, the bolder, the crazier....the better.
So, who's interested in the No Exercise, Instant Pudding, Get Rich NOW! Plan of the Super Rich, Super Popular, Super Gorgeous Mega Stars? You TOO! can live the life of the rich and famous Hollywood wannabees....Today only, $29.99!!!
Talk about getting paid for lies....
Thanks for reading!
CJ
About CJ: About CJ:
As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge suspense novels. Her debut, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), became a National Bestseller and Publishers Weekly proclaimed it a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller."
The second in the series, WARNING SIGNS, was released January, 2009 and the third, URGENT CARE, October, 2009. Contact her at http://www.cjlyons.net
I'm from a small town (population 596). I can't imagine a major crime being committed much less the criminal remaining unknown for very long since everyone is in everyone's business full-time even with the Internet at their fingertips. How have you tailored your police procedures and your cops themselves to convey that small town sensibility while keeping your police force professional and your crimes believable?
Gabi, your town really is small. I live just outside a town with a population of 4,000. The population of my fictional Trafalgar is around 10,000. That can be a problem in many ways as you point out. With these books I’m trying hard not to get into the Cabot Cove syndrome, where every time Jessica Fletcher says hello to someone they end up murdered. It helps in that the area I am writing about is a popular tourist destination as well as a place where lots of transients drift in and then out. The plot of Winter of Secrets circles around a bunch of rich college students who come to Trafalgar from Toronto on a ski vacation and run into trouble with the locals, flashing their money around, taking up with local girls. Negative Image, next year’s book, is about a photographer for a travel magazine who brings trouble with him.
Rather than the small town where everyone knows everyone’s business being limiting I find it give me a lot of scope to keep the characters all involved without stretching the limits of coincidence. Molly Smith’s mother, Lucky, is an important character in the series. She knows everyone in town and is of the opinion that people need her help. If they don’t want her help, then something is wrong and she needs to help them. I have hinted that the Chief of Police is in love with Lucky, and will be exploring the complications of that further on down the line.
Similarly John Winters’ wife, Eliza, has a role to play in the books. In Valley of the Lost she is conflicted about accepting a job offer from the Grizzly resort, a development in the wilderness that has torn the town apart. She wants the job, but worries how it will affect her position in the community. Passions in small communities can flare red hot and I’ve tried to take advantage of that.
As for the police, like the real police in Nelson, most of them (if not all, excepting Molly Smith) are not long-time residents. They have transferred in from jobs in big cities all across Canada, and bring a totally professional demeanor to the job. Canadian police chiefs are never elected or even appointed; they don't need local contacts. They are hired, more often than not from other police forces.
Is crime rare in small towns? Remember the immortal words of Sherlock Holmes in the Adventure of the Copper Beeches: ’The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’
That’s it for my stint at Criminal Minds. I’ve had an absolutely fabulous time, and really enjoyed answering these fantastic questions. You are all welcome any time at Type M for Murder to be a guest blogger. We’d love to have you.
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
Do you feel a particular accountability writing about a small town in such a specific region, where residents are going to check your facts, keep you honest, or perhaps even take offense?
Tim, that’s why I created a fictional town: so I could make stuff up. But everyone who lives in Nelson knows I’m writing about Nelson. And generally, they love it.
I decided to fictionalize the town for three reasons. First, So no one can correct me if I put the craft shop on Main Street at the corner of Elm rather than Birch, because sometimes I don’t want to bother looking it up.
Second, because sometimes you just need to move places around and put them where it suits the story to be. For example in next year’s book, Negative Image, some of the action takes place at a luxury hotel. It is important for the plot that the room service waiter arrives at the room of the deceased, bringing a bottle of Moët et Chandon. But there isn’t a hotel in Nelson grand enough to have room service. Being not Nelson, but Trafalgar, I put one in.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, in a small town people know the police chief, they know the mayor, as people not as a job description. In my books the Chief Constable (i.e., the chief of police) is secretly in love with the mother of one of his officers. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking I know something about him that I don’t.
I killed off the mayor and was giving a talk to the Nelson Rotary Club when I mentioned that the mayor was, ahem, dead, but it was in a fictional town. A woman sitting close to the podium said, “Thank God for that.” I looked at her nametag – mayor’s wife.
As for taking offence, I went out to the Slocan Valley, a remote place known for its population of Vietnam-era draft dodgers and grow ops, to drop in on a small bookstore. I put on a big smile and handed the owner my material. She looked at it, sniffed and said, “Oh, yes, I’ve heard of this. I don’t know that it would be suitable for our store.” I pondered what on earth that might mean, until someone suggested that perhaps they don’t like books where the cops are the good guys.
The Nelson police, on the other hand, are rather fond of my books.
Even though the town is fictional, it is placed in a real location. The Kootenay area of B.C. Real towns are mentioned; the characters go to the hospital in Trail, to the airport in Castlegar, even to the Wal Mart in Nelson. My son-in-law plays in a very popular tribute band called BC/DC, and I have had Molly go to a concert. I work hard at keeping the landscape real, the climate, the type of people who live and visit there, their attitudes. After all, I set the books there because I love it, so there isn’t much I would change.
Although I did take the liberty of improving one little fact. In reality the Nelson waterfront is bordered by the town dump, some abandoned warehouses, the aforementioned Wal Mart. In Trafalgar I moved the main street to the riverside so people sitting out on restaurant patios could look over the water.
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
“Do your local police forces carry guns like their U.S. counterparts, or are they more like England, where Bobbies aren't armed? Thanks!"
In the typical Canadian way, we are in the middle. Unlike police in the U.K., all Canadian police officers are armed with handguns. Unlike police in the U.S., Canadian police are forbidden from carrying their guns when they are out of uniform or off duty (with rare exceptions). Even plain-clothes officers must leave their weapon at the office, or take it off and lock it in a gun-safe as soon as they get home.
My brother is in the military and is the officer in charge of his mess. He once refused a police officer admittance to the bar of the mess (as a guest) because he was armed. A policewoman I know always changes in and out of her uniform at the station because she does not want the weapon in her house where she has kids. This ties in with the general Canadian attitude towards guns – owning a handgun is (except for extremely rare cases) absolutely illegal.
At the climax to In the Shadow of the Glacier, the first Molly Smith book, she is not working, and thus unarmed, when she has the final confrontation with the bad guy. All she has to defend herself with are her cell phone and her stiletto heels. And her considerable wits, of course.
To be absolutely honest – I think it adds a lot more scope for psychology and intelligence when your protagonist can’t just pull out a gun and shoot someone. Perhaps this ties in to my comments to Sophie’s question above about why Americans are writing British police procedurals.
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
You’ve written books about the Klondike Gold Rush … can you tell us more about that era, the unique setting, and the research you did to capture it?
As well as the Cst. Molly Smith series, I also write a historical series set in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. The first book is Gold Digger, and Gold Fever will be released in Spring 2010. Both are from the Canadian publisher Rendezvous Crime.
These books are different from my other work in that they are intended to be quite lighthearted. A mad-cap romp through the muddy streets of Dawson in 1898. They are a lot of fun to write and I doubt if I'll ever run out of material.
You may have heard the phrase by the late Sir Peter Ustinov that Toronto is “New York run by the Swiss.” I like to say that Dawson, Yukon, in 1898, was Dodge City run by the North West Mounted Police.
Imagine a place in the wilderness, close to the Arctic Circle, hundreds of miles from the nearest habitation. A place with no roads, no cars, no trains, no telegraph, no telephone. Accessible only by water, for just a few weeks a year, or over mountains so steep horses couldn’t make it. Then imagine tens of thousands of people arriving in this place within a matter of months.
What you would get in almost any other place and any other time would be bedlam. Chaos and anarchy and lawlessness.
But in the Yukon there was the North West Mounted Police (precursors of the RCMP). The border between Canada and the U.S. was at that time in dispute. The Canadian government established a police presence in order to strengthen their claim. What all those miners and dance hall owners, prostitutes and pimps, bartenders and adventurers, and businessmen (respectable and shady) found when they finally arrived in the promised land, was the long arm of the law waiting for them.
At that time prostitution and gambling were illegal in all parts of Canada. The NWMP recognized that some things were going to happen whether they were legal or not, and the police would be better off having some control. Thus prostitution was practiced openly and dance halls all had a gambling room. Police oversight was strict and they could, and did, close down any business stepping over the line. At the same there were things the Mounties didn’t bend on – the use of ‘vile language’ was an offence, and Sunday closing was strictly observed. People were jailed for chopping wood for their own homes on a Sunday. Guns were strictly banned. Every person coming into the Territory was required to have a year’s supply of goods with them: A lesson learned during the previous winter when the town nearly starved. Not only did all those adventure-and-gold seekers have to climb the Chilkoot Pass, they had to do it about 30 or 40 times to get all their gear up. Tougher people than me I can tell you.
In 1898, the year of the height of the Gold Rush, when the town of Dawson had a population of 40,000, there was not one murder in town. Not one. Reports I have read say that people were comfortable leaving their doors unlocked and their possessions out in the open.
In a town where a one minute dance with a dance hall girl cost a dollar, a bottle of champagne would set you back 40 bucks, and successful miners were known to drop a thousand, ten thousand dollars (all in 1898 funds!) in a night in the casino, a Constable in the NWMP earned $1.25 a day (which was roughly the rate for a labourer in the Outside). Yet the police were largely incorruptible. A large part of the fondness Canadians have for the RCMP, as I mentioned above, derives from this time.
Because Gold Digger is, after all, a mystery novel, I have had to ignore the no-murder record of the NWMP. And in Gold Fever there are two murders.
Sometimes, you just can’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
As for research, Kelli, it was easy. There is a lot of information about the era. I went to Dawson and visited the fabulous collection at the library there; there are quite a good number of books, of which Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush,by Pierre Berton, is probably the best.
One of the reasons the Klondike Rush is so well known is that it was the ‘last great gold rush’ and the only one to leave a rich photographic record. The age of photography was just beginning, and the camera was becoming portable enough to be transported out of a confided studio and stiffly posed portraits to come into the street (and to the gold fields) and capture scenes and people unaware.
The pictures are all so amazing – I’m sure you could write an accurate novel just by looking at the photographs and not reading a word of research. A wonderful resource for photographs is The Klondike Quest: A Photographic Essay also by Pierre Berton.
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
How have reader expectations of a police procedural series changed in the last decade? What elements are most prized now, especially for someone considering launching a new series?
It’s difficult to speak generally about what readers are looking for, but for me, speaking as a reader as well as a writer, I am looking for a police procedural series that is as much about the lives of the characters as it is about their jobs. I want the police to be complex characters with normal human flaws and normal human relationships that take up a lot of their time and energy. I want the character to move through time as the series progresses while his or her children grow, their parents die, they get married or divorced (sometimes both) and experience all that human stuff we all go through.
As a reader I want the bad guys to also be multifaceted people with motivations for being ‘bad’. I look for a book that needs character and background to explain why the crime has happened and why this person has decided that the answer to his problems is killing someone. A villain who is just ‘bad’ or just in it for the money or just because, doesn’t make for a very appealing story.
I love the sort of police procedurals that are coming out of Britain. Susan Hill is probably my favourite writing today, also Stuart Pawson, Aline Templeton and many, many others. Interestingly, some of the best (in my opinion) North American writers such as Peter Robinson, Deborah Crombie, Elizabeth George have created British police characters. I wonder why that is? Perhaps because American cop novels are (sometimes) more about firepower than about psychology.
I suspect that the remarkable, sudden success of Louise Penny shows that this is the sort of police novel mystery readers are hungry for.
I think readers in general, and mystery readers in particular, are very fussy about accuracy and believability. In movies and on TV the plots can get absolutely ridiculous, but not in books. People want to believe that what they are reading, even though it is fiction, is plausible. Most police procedural writers go to great length to ensure that their policing details are as accurate as they can make it. I’ve had to fudge a couple of things for the sake of the story, but I try as hard as I can to make it accurate.
I have no law enforcement experience whatsoever, but I’ve found that police in general are more than happy to help you out and answer questions. I’ve been on foot patrol in Nelson and on ride-alongs in Ontario.
My advice to anyone contemplating writing a police series – if you don’t know, ask the police department closest to you (or where your book is set) how they do things. You can’t make this stuff up out of nothing.
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
I've always been curious about the Mounties. All my experience comes from Dudley Do-Right, so it might be skewed. What is the jurisdiction of the Mounties? What exactly do they do? Do they really wear those cool red uniforms all the time? Are there any mystery novels with Mountie protagonists? They're cooler than the mounted policemen in New York City!
Indeed, Rebecca they are pretty cool, although Dudley Do-Right is no longer with us, and the only riding they do these days is part of the Musical Ride or on the logo on their patrol cars. You’d be more likely to see a cop on horseback in downtown Toronto than galloping across the open plains, I’m afraid.
The red jacket and riding boots you are thinking of is their dress uniform; the regular uniform is blue with a yellow stripe running down the pant leg. In the picture I have posted above of the visit of President Obama to Ottawa you see the Mounties in their red dress uniform. {The woman with him is Michaelle Jean, the Governor General)
The RCMP (nickname the Mounties, less flattering nickname The Yellow Stripes) are the National Police Force, but in a way that is very different than the FBI. They do regular community policing in areas that do not have their own police force, as well as act in areas of federal interest such as organized crime, terrorism, money-laundering, cross-jurisdiction and border issues like human smuggling and trafficking, and business crime on the international level.
The Nelson police rely on the RCMP for additional officers they might need in cases of emergency and routine policing that requires extra forces, as well as most forensics.
In the first Molly Smith book, In the Shadow of the Glacier, the RCMP arrive to help the city police quell a riot in town. Incidentally, it is at that incident where Molly meets a handsome young Mountie who we will be seeing a lot more of as the books progress. The RCMP also work with local police forces in combined policing for major crimes such as murder with the Integrated Homicide Investigative Unit (IHIT). In the first three Molly Smith books I am juggling eggs to keep IHIT out of the investigation because I want my characters to be doing all the work. In the fourth book (Negative Image, November, 2010) IHIT is finally called in.
A Mountie can do jobs as different as breaking up a bar fight on a Friday night in small town B.C. or Nunavut, guarding the Prime Minister, being part of the Governor General’s honour guard, going undercover into a suspected terrorist training camp, or investigating mob money-laundering.
In real life, these days the reputation of the Mounties amongst the Canadian populace is pretty low. There have been some major incidents in which the RCMP hasn’t acted very well. Example, the Robert Dziekanski case in which a Polish Immigrant, lost and confused at Vancouver airport, was tasered five times by an officer and then four of them jumped on him and he died. This was all captured on video and became a national scandal. Dziekanski was armed with a stapler, that he wasn’t even trying to attack anyone with, and it became a joke that the RCMP needs to be issued with staple-proof vests. It is now the subject, in true Canadian fashion, of a major inquiry that is still ongoing. The affair has reached the top ranks of the RCMP as it would appear they attempted a cover-up, not realizing the video would soon be released to the media. The RCMP has been strongly criticized for knowingly providing false information to the Americans in the Mahar Arar affair in which Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested at a U.S. airport and flown to Syria where he spent a year in jail, tortured and made to confess to terrorist activities which had absolutely no basis in reality. Arar was eventually freed, returned to Canada and given $10 million in compensation.
But Canadians are still rather fond of our Mounties, and a lot of that derives from the early days of the NWMP when they imposed “peace, order and good government” on the wild west.
You ask about novels where a Mountie is the protagonist. I had to do some thinking about that, because there aren’t many. Lou Allin has started a new series, the first book of which is titled And On the Surface Die (Rendezvous Crime), Don Easton (Angel in the Full Moon, Dundurn) writes about an undercover Mountie in Vancouver, and the late, much-missed, L.R. Wright had a Mountie series. Rick’s Mofina’s Six Seconds has a Mountie character.
In both of my series the romantic interest is a Mountie: I wonder if that says something about me!
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
Parts of Canada are relatively remote (i.e. the Northern Territories) from advanced laboratory/forensic facilities as well as large, well-equipped police forces. How have you made use of this paradox of wide-open spaces/claustrophobic small towns in your novels?
C.J. You’re right to note that none of my books take place in cities or suburbs. I have more of a fascination with the dynamics of small towns and rural or wilderness areas. The real-life inspiration for the town of Trafalgar, British Columbia in the Constable Molly Smith books (Winter of Secrets, Nov. 2009 from Poisoned Pen Press) is Nelson, B.C. Nelson (and thus Trafalgar) is eight hours drive east of Vancouver and eight hours west of Calgary. The nearest city is actually Spokane, Washington. You need a passport to go to the mall.
There are, in fact, no wide-open spaces as the town is completely hemmed in by mountains, but it is in the middle of the wilderness. This physical isolation from the rest of the country, and the crowded or claustrophobic feeling some people get surrounded by mountains, is part of the reason I decided to set my series in Nelson, uh, Trafalgar.
People know each other, sometimes too well; there isn’t a lot of outlet for frustrations or high-spirits; everyone knows who are the police and where they go for lunch. There is an interesting mix of neo-hippies and the comfortably retired all fleeing the big city rat race but with different values and different approaches to living in a small town in the middle of nowhere. It’s generally a safe town and the police have a more relaxed attitude towards policing than they might do in the cities. Most of the officers live in town, and again, it’s a pretty small place.
In the second book in the series, Valley of the Lost, Sergeant Winters, who has recently transferred to Trafalgar from Vancouver, is in the supermarket with his wife when, “Winters spotted a man he’d arrested for masturbating in an alley behind Front Street in the middle of the afternoon heading towards them. Winters edged away from Eliza and prepared for a confrontation. Instead the man greeted him heartily, and even introduced his own wife, a tall buxom redhead who laughed like a horse. With a cheery ‘see you next month’ – presumably in court – the man continued on his way, pushing a cart piled high with meat and frozen foods.” I got the idea for thisscene from one of the officers in Nelson who told me that things like that do happen to them.
Makes it pretty hard to go undercover, as you can probably imagine.
The Molly Smith series is essentially about people and relationships and circumstances that can go wrong and lead to bad things happening. The police solve crimes by observing people, rather than by forensic investigation, so it doesn’t interfere with the story that they don’t have all the resources big city police might have, although they are connected by computer to the major policing databases.
I also write the Klondike Gold Rush series, set in 1898 in the Yukon, and they certainly didn’t have access to any forensics, via computer or otherwise. They were totally on their own, and didn’t even have a railroad or a telegraph. Nothing moved faster than a person could travel on foot or by boat. The NWMP (precursors to the RCMP) pretty much made the laws up as they went along. Which makes that series a lot of fun to write.
Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Winter of Secrets, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which said, “she uses…artistry as sturdy and restrained as a Shaker chair.” Vicki writes everything from standalone novels of suspense (Burden of Memory) to the Constable Molly Smith series, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the B.C. Interior (In the Shadow of the Glacier, Winter of Secrets), to a light-hearted historical series (Gold Digger) set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush. Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com
Welcome to Criminal Minds ... a virtual crime fiction conference! Each week, seven crime fiction authors respond to a question about writing, reading, murder and mayhem.
Week of November 16, 2009
If you were to write a non-fiction book, what would your topic be? Jen Forbus has won our October contest! Comment in November and you could win signed books plus a $25 Barnes & Noble gift certificate!
Comment throughout the month for your chance to win ...
Q&A with Criminal Minds!
Each week, we respond to provocative questions about crime fiction, writing, publishing and life.
CJ Lyons is a former pediatric ER doctor turned national bestselling medical suspense author. Her first two novels are LIFELINES and WARNING SIGNS. The third, URGENT CARE, will be out October 27, 2009.
Tuesday
Rebecca Cantrell writes the critically-acclaimed Hannah Vogel mystery series set in Berlin in the 1930s, including A TRACE OF SMOKE and A NIGHT OF LONG KNIVES. She lives in Hawaii with her husband, son, and too many geckoes to count.
Wednesday
Sophie Littlefield's first novel, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, was released by Thomas Dunne/St. Martins in August, 2009. Her paranormal YA novel BANISHED will be released by Delacorte in 2010. Sophie lives in Northern California.
Thursday
Kelli Stanley's next novel is CITY OF DRAGONS, releasing February 2, 2010 from Thomas Dunne/Minotaur. Her debut novel, NOX DORMIENDA, won the Bruce Alexander Award and a Macavity nomination.
Friday
National bestselling thriller writer Shane Gericke (pronounced YER-key) spent 25 years as an editor and writer, most prominently at the Chicago Sun-Times. His next cop thriller appears in July 2010.
Saturday
Award-winning author Tim Maleeny writes edgy thrillers with a strong dash of humor, and is the author of STEALING THE DRAGON, BEATING THE BABUSHKA, GREASING THE PINATA, and JUMP.
Sunday
Gabrella Herkert is the award-winning, often-suspected but never convicted evil doing author of the Animal Instinct Mysteries including CATNAPPED, DOGGONE and the upcoming HORSEWHIPPED.
About CJ:
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