Inside Police Headquarters

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My current novel-in-progress got into police work more than I'd planned when I made two homicide detectives viewpoint narrators. I wrote scenes of them in their workplace from information I recalled from a years ago visit to Calgary Police Service Headquarters - Westwinds, but mostly from my imagination. During revisions of the novel, I made a list of questions I'd ask someone familiar with the place, if I ever had the chance. 

Then a writer-friend mentioned that Calgary homicide detective Dave Sweet had generously answered her questions about her crime novel. I'd enjoyed Dave's presentations on homicide cases at local crime writing events and read his memoir, Skeletons in My Closet. My friend gave me his email address and I wrote to him and asked if he'd mind answering my questions. He replied right away, saying he'd be happy to help. 

I emailed my list to Dave. Again he quickly replied. My first question was my greatest worry: are the homicide and robbery units located in Westwinds?  If they weren't, I'd either have to do a major novel revision or ignore this fact. To my relief, Dave answered yes, both were in the Investigative Services Building on the west side of Westwinds campus. I didn't remember this second building from my visit.  

Evidently, from my questions, Dave got the hint that I was interested in the workplace environment because he offered me a tour of Westwinds, if I was interested. Yes, I was really interested, and the earlier the better. David said the next day would work for him, unless he got a call out before then. I knew once he was hot on a case, I'd lose the opportunity. We arranged to meet the following afternoon at the entrance to the Investigative Services Building. 

In my novel, I'd described a large lobby. Instead, I entered a cozy space, with a few padded chairs and a side room with toys and a computer screen for children who come in with their parents. Dave waved me past the reception desk and into a huge, oval atrium. He explained that CPS bought the building from Nortel in 2009 when the telecommunications company filed for bankruptcy; the rooms along the sides of the atrium had been Nortel's executive offices. CPS converted the building to police use, but this space didn't look like any police stations I've seen on TV. He said they use the atrium for large gatherings and the side rooms for special meetings.   

  

From the atrium, we went to the homicide unit offices. In my novel, I'd given my Detective Mike Vincelli an office with a door. Instead, Calgary detectives work in cubicles. Dave didn't take us in, to protect his colleagues' privacy, but he pointed out a glass enclosed room in the far corner, where the unit's four cold case detectives work. Their windows face west and would have a view of the city skyline and mountain backdrop. My novel had my cold case Detective Novak working in a windowless storage room, which reflected his depressed mood. Now I thought this glass fishbowl office might offer intriguing possibilities.      

Next Dave took me down a corridor to a service elevator, located in Nortel's former delivery dock. This brought us to the holding cells, which I found creepy. The cells were behind solid doors; no looking out through bars. Voices carried between the cells and into the central corridor. Two detainees talked rapidly and loudly. 

"Getting their stories straight," Dave said.  

I looked through a peephole into an empty cell, directly at a toilet. Two narrow benches lined the walls on either side. Dave said they rarely kept people more than thirteen hours, with twenty-fours the maximum before they sent them home or to longer-term facilities. This would be a problem for my book. I'd had the police keep two of my suspects close to forty-eight hours, which I'd thought was the maximum allowable time before laying charges. Could I change this without radically altering my story? 

Sometimes it's better not to know too much. Few readers would notice if I brushed aside this policing fact, but I started contemplating solutions for my novel.    

In the holding area, we went into an interview room, which was smaller and drearier than I'd expected. Cameras in the corners, but no window for outsider viewing. Peeling paint on the greenish walls. The room had an acrid smell. Dave said they let interviewees smoke to not put them on edge. For the same reason, the police don't bring their guns into the room. Interviews are typically one-on-one, although a second detective might sit in or stand outside the door if they anticipate a dangerous situation. 

We left the Investigative Services Building and went outside to the main headquarters building. On the way, we passed a grassy area with benches and a picnic table. In my novel, Novak meets someone connected to the cold case in an outdoor area. I'd need to make some minor changes to the setting. The main headquarters building contains classrooms, training rooms for new recruits, and Westwinds' largest gym, where a recruit class jogged back and forth at an easy pace. Dave said they'd gradually speed up and some would drop out of the pack.   

"They'll never be more fit than they are now," he said. After recruits become full-fledged officers, CPS no longer requires them pass fitness tests. Now that I knew Westwinds had gyms, I could include my line that Novak had never entered one, to illustrate his disinterest in exercise.     

I came home with lots of material to work my novel-in-progress. Many were easy fixes. I'd asked Dave, Do police generally refer to the building as headquarters or Westwinds or something else?  Westwinds usually, he said. In my manuscript, I changed this with a simple word find/replace. For my largest problem, I came up with a (hopefully) good reason for the police to keep one of my suspects for two days, but had them release the other one on time. This involved deleting, shuffling, and changing much material, but I think it improved the overall storyline. 

While my tour gave me extra writing work, it wasn't onerous. I think the new details give my story pizazz. Maybe readers sense when something rings true. And, if nothing else, I found my look inside police headquarters interesting.  

Like Catching Up With Old Friends by Eileen O'Finlan

 

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When I wrote Erin's Children, the sequel to Kelegeen, I really enjoyed revisiting the characters I'd spent so much time with. It felt like catching up with old friends. I met new friends, as well, as I introduced new characters in a new setting. As authors, we spend so much time with our characters both when we are and when we aren't actually writing that they become part of our lives. They live in our heads, tell us their secrets, dreams, ambitions, faults, and desires. We know the most personal things about each of them. When a novel is finished and sent off for publication it can be like saying goodbye to people to whom we've grown very close. So writing a sequel or continuing on in a series is a kind of reunion.

My current work in progress (The Folklorist - expected release date: October 1, 2023) is a stand alone. However, once that is finished, I plan to dive right into writing the second book in the Cat Tales series. I'm looking forward to reconnecting with Smokey, Autumn Amelia, and all the other animals in Wild Whisker Ridge and Faunaburg. There will be some surprises as Smokey and Autumn find out that there is more to their family than they knew. There will also be a wedding, but I'm not saying who's it is yet. I just know it will be loads of fun to write the next set of adventures for a group of characters who can't help but make me grin from ear to ear while I'm doing it.

At the same time, I will start the research for the book that will follow Erin's Children. I plan to focus on the next generation. Meg, Rory, Kathleen, and Nuala will still be there, and it will be wonderful to reconnect with them, but I'm also excited about finding out what their kids are doing with their lives. I'm also looking forward to learning more about the history of Worcester, Massachusetts (the city where I work and closest to where I live and where Erin's Children is set) and incorporating some of it into the story. 

I also have an idea for a fantasy that I plan to work on in between these two projects (could someone create a few more hours in the days, please?!) so I'll be meeting and getting to know all new characters and a whole new world. This is also very exciting. New friends are great, too! 

I hope my readers will enjoy catching up with the old friends and meeting new ones as much as I enjoy writing them.

                                                                           

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Artificial Intelligence – Can You Program Creativity? By BC Deeks, Paranormal Mystery Fiction Author

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Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a trending topic these days, with applications like ChatGPT and Jasper being touted as replacements for human writers. These applications are models trained on a large codex of text data that can generate responses to questions, summarize long texts, write stories and much more. It is often used in conversational AI applications to simulate a human-like conversation with users—You’ve probably already been chatting with AI if you’ve contacted online Customer Service.

The jury is still out on whether the latest AI language model, ChatGPT, is actually intelligent, as defined by a machine's ability to behave like a human. They are still basically just a computer program designed to respond to text inputs and generate outputs based on patterns in the data they’ve been trained on.

So far, many uses for AI are controversial if not outright negative, including creating malware, Phishing and scamming, and cheating in school by letting students submit papers written by their computers.  A consultancy firm reportedly found that applications written by ChatGPT beat out 80 percent of humans.

In theory, AI can even be used to write a book. But would that book be a good story or just be a distillation of characters and plot from previously published works? If AI does not have intelligence, could it take the data and CREATE a unique and imaginative piece of work the way a human author does.

From my research, I gather AI software can generate a list of book plot ideas, suggest opening paragraphs, and output a batch of character sketches. If an author provided the program with a detailed outline of a story, it might produce a workable first draft of a novel. AI language models seem best suited to generating non-fiction web content or product copy and even then should be proofed and fact checked by the writer. I read an article generated by the Jasper AI application and it contained 7 typos and grammatical errors. The author had clearly not bothered to check the work before publishing.

Getting back to fiction, I don’t think authors will be out of work any time soon. If an AI language model was asked to generate a bestselling novel with a dragon and a wizard in a magical dimension, I believe the key components of a saleable novel would be missing — imagination and creativity. AI models can only pull from what has already been done; not imagine the things that are new and exciting. AI language models are, IMHO, another tool in a writers’ toolbox that might speed up the process of generating the words on the page. I'll admit to using a copy editing software program to help with my revision process for practical reasons. It helps me spot awkward sentence structures, grammatical errors and typos in my manuscript. But at the end of the day, human intervention is required to bring the magic to the story.

For the time being, I’ll be writing REBEL SPELL, book 3 in my Beyond the Magic trilogy, with minimal aid from artificial intelligence. Besides I love writing, so why would I want to give it up?

A Bit of Blarney for St. Patrick's Day

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I kissed the Blarney Stone! Well, almost. 

Last June my travel companions and I arrived at Ireland's Blarney Castle in a downpour. Since rain isn't unusual for the Emerald Isle, we were prepared and dressed in our full rain gear.  

 

The weather prompted us to duck into the castle, rather than stroll through the extensive gardens. We joined the line for the climb up a narrow, winding staircase to the top of the tower. Along the way, we enjoyed occasional views of the grounds and noticed the rain was letting up.   

Our goal was the legendary blarney stone, which was built into the castle battlements. Kissing the stone is said to grant someone the gift of the gab. Eloquent Irish politician John O'Connor Power defined gab as "flattery sweetened by humour and flavoured by wit." Myths abound about the blarney stone's origins. Some say that Irish chieftain Cormac MacCarthy asked a goddess for help with a lawsuit when he was on his way to court. She told him to kiss the next stone he saw. He followed her advice, won his case, and incorporated the lucky stone into his castle. A variation of this myth is that MacCarthy was en route to plead his right to keep his lands and title to Queen Elizabeth I. He met an elderly woman advisor, kissed the stone, and, thanks to his brilliant 'gab' convinced the queen to grant his wish. Other stories claim the blarney stone is a magical rock brought to Ireland from Stonehenge, Scotland, or the Holy Land during the Crusades. Scientific studies have determined the stone is local Ireland rock, but who can argue with legend?

Judging from the crowds on that rainy day, the stone's blarney works for drawing tourists. The long lineup snaked slowly towards the top of the castle. We paused at this warning. 

As we drew closer, we wondered if we'd have the nerve to lie down in front of all the tourists and kiss the stone. We saw an attendant give the stone a quick wipe between people, but was kissing it sanitary in this day of COVID-19?  

I decided I couldn't come this far without trying. Here I go - awkwardly. In addition to virus concerns, in order to touch the stone with your lips you have to lean your head way back through the gap along the castle edge. A man holds your body and bars prevent falls to the ground. At worst, you'd bang your head. But arching backward over a high drop-off is a creepy feeling of letting go. Did I really need any more gab to write my novels? Hundreds of lips had touched the stone already that day. I blew the blarney stone a kiss and was content with getting close. 

The view from the top was worth it. In the past, Blarney stone kissers didn't have bars for a safety net. Here's how far they could fall. 

By the time we returned to the ground, the rain had stopped and the sun came out. A fellow tourist snapped a picture of our group, with the castle in the background. It's the only picture of all five of us we have from our two-week tour of Ireland. 

The Irish are known for their sayings, blessings, and proverbs. I'll leave you with a few.  

May your home always be too small to hold all your friends. 

May you get all your wishes but one so that you will always have something to strive for. 

Every man is sociable until a cow invades his garden. 

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far.

A kind word never broke anyone's mouth. 

May your thoughts be as glad as shamrocks

May your heart be as light as a song. 

May each day bring you bright, happy hours that stay with you all year long.    

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

 

The Emerald Isle 

 

Weaving a Little Love into Every Story By BC Deeks, Paranormal Mystery Fiction Author

 

Visit B.C. Deeks' BWL Author Page for Book and Purchase Information

 

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I write heartwarming stories of mystery and magic. But I learned most of what I know about writing craft when I joined a romance writing group. Do you know the most important lesson my mentors taught me? LOVE is part of every story. I’m not talking romance necessarily; but the development of an intense feeling of deep connection and caring. Your story won’t come alive for your reader unless your characters resonate with each other.

At its foundation, my Beyond the Magic series is a story of family ties - three siblings who have a strong bond with each other because their mother died in childbirth and their father is a harsh disciplinarian. The Otherland is a society that is desperate to preserve its hereditary magic and so is relying on genetic matching for their mating practices. The realm’s leaders don’t account for love matches and when one occurs, it could destroy their world. In the series, each of the three siblings set out on an adventure and, in turn, form a bond with another ally who they need to fight off dark forces. Ultimately, they all — mythics and mortals - must fight together to defeat an ancient prophecy. Each plot evolves around the emotional development or arc of the primary characters as they grow to trust their skills and inner emotional strength so that they can do what they must to meet their goal.

Isn’t that what life is all about? Perhaps modern advertising around Valentine’s Day focuses too much on romantic love. We can choose to expand it to recognize our own emotional attachment to our family and friends. Who do you care about? Let’s come up with a way to show them.

·         Help your child make a handmade Valentine's card for their favorite teacher.

·         Pick up a book as a gift for a friend who’s always there for you.

·         Wrap up cookies and drop them over to a neighbor who always waves and makes you feel part of the neighborhood.

·         Mail cards to family who live far away just to say you care.

·         Tell a friend how important they are to you.

Life is full of relationships and our books must accurately reflect the depth of those connections. It doesn’t matter whether the book is a mystery, a romance, science fiction or any other genre; to be successful, a story has to weave all the emotional complexity of life through our characters.

Whisk(e)y -- with an 'e' or not?

                                     

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When I heard that BWL Publishing planned to publish a series of Canadian historical mystery novels, I was eager to get involved. In 2021, I wrote a mystery short story set in my home city, Calgary, Alberta, during the second and deadliest wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic. I showed the story to a writer-in-residence, who suggested I turn it into a novel. This intrigued me, but I polished the short story and submitted it to the Crime Writers of Canada 40th anniversary anthology. My story, A Deadly Flu, was accepted and published last spring in Cold Canadian Crime. 

But BWL's plan prompted me to consider how I could expand my 4,500 word story into a 75,000 word novel. I mulled ideas and decided I'd add three new characters to the story: two suspects and female protagonist, Catherine. I'd still keep my original detective protagonist as a secondary narrator. He and Catherine would both have personal story arcs, including a romantic subplot. WWI would also feature more prominently in the novel, as the story built to the November 11th Armistice. 

Confident these additions would give the story sufficient fodder for a novel, I asked BWL if I could write one of the books. The concept for the BWL Canadian Historical Mystery Series is that twelve different authors or author-pairs would write novels set in our ten Canadian provinces and two of our territories. Authors would have free rein over what to write, as long as the novel features a crime, takes place during a real historical time period, and is 70,000-80,000 words to keep the book sizes uniform. BWL assigned me the story set in my home province of Alberta.

The series will be published over a period of almost two years. Since I won't have time to start writing my novel before this summer, I asked for the last publication date, December 2024.  The first  Canadian Historical Mystery comes out this month. Rum Bullets and Cod Fish by H. Paul Doucette, set in Nova Scotia, sounds like roaring fun. "The year is 1924 and Prohibition is spawning a new breed of criminal." An undercover investigator tracks the ringleaders illegally transporting liquor to the US mob. 

Since BWL is promoting the whole series right away, they asked each author to provide a title, story blurb, and suggestions for cover images. Luckily, I have a framework for my novel -- my short story and my ideas for expansion. From this, I came up with a blurb. I also needed a new title. My short story title, A Deadly Flu, was a wink at my first novel,  A Deadly Fall. For a novel I'd want something to distinguish the two books. Words like dead, murder, kill, secrets, and their variations are popular for mystery titles. I also find concrete nouns in titles conjure strong images. The weapon in my story is whisky laced with a lethal drug. I settled on a title, A Killer Whisky.

During this process, I discovered a potential problem with the word 'whisky.' Ireland and the USA spell whiskey with an 'e,' unlike Canada and the rest of the world. My research suggests this might have  been due to Ireland's desire to distinguish its whiskey from Scottish whisky. Did Canada adopt the Scottish spelling because many of our early explorers and fur trade merchants came from Scotland, while whiskey became popular in the US with waves of Irish immigration? That's my best guess. 

I debated changing my title to one that wouldn't confuse American readers, or using US spelling, or making the poisoned drink a non-spelling-controversial liquor, like rum. But whisky is so concrete that I can almost smell it when I hear the word. It's also infamous in western Canadian history. Our fur trade is often called the whisky trade, which caused alcoholism problems for indigenous people. In the end, I decided to stay with whisky and Canadian spelling. Early in the novel, I'll have a character point out the difference between the countries, so US readers won't think I can't spell. 

For images, I suggested  a bottle or glass of whisky, as well as a piano. I plan to start the novel with my protagonist playing the instrument and music will feature through the story. Michelle Lee, BWL's cover designer, worked with my suggestions and created a stunning cover. I love the golden whisky colour against the black background. I can hear the clashing chord as the glass hits the piano keys. The glass of whisky stops the music, like murder.  

 

    

       

                      

 

Literary vs Popular Fiction: How big is the difference really? By BC Deeks, Paranormal Mystery Fiction Author

 

Visit B.C. Deeks' BWL Author Page for Book and Purchase Information

 

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The prestigious ScotiaBank Giller Prize was announced in November, thus prompting my usual frustration with the bias that exists between literary fiction and what is most often referred to as popular or commercial fiction. What’s the difference you may ask? Well, the biggest difference in my humble opinion is in recognition, and maybe even respect.

The differences were never clear cut and are becoming less so with the emerging publishing landscape. Literary stories with crossover appeal have publishers, agents and even some readers referring to ‘upmarket fiction’ to further classify such novels although you won’t find that category on a bookshelf or on Amazon.

At first blush, one could say that popular fiction is written more to please the audience while literary fiction aims to reflect on the human condition. Genre fiction, it is argued, is more formulaic, but this is a response to its need to meet reader expectations. A ‘romance’ story must have a ‘happily ever after’ or it simply is not a romance. Yet within that expectation is an endless variety of paths with an even greater number of deviations. Our readers love to be surprised and delighted before they reach the anticipated ending. And didn’t Jane Austen’s, Pride and Prejudice end with a Happily Ever After?

Within the ongoing debate between popular versus literary fiction, most people argue four key points: theme/ scope, plot driven versus character driven, time/reputation, standard of writing. I would argue there’s also a fifth factor: money! Modern Literary Fiction holds only 16% of the market, whereas the top five most profitable categories on Amazon.com are:

• Romance/Erotica ($1.44 billion).
• Crime/Mystery ($728.2 million).
• Religious/Inspirational ($720 million).
• Science Fiction/Fantasy ($590.2 million).
• Horror ($79.6 million).

I think we can all agree that popular fiction leans towards more adventurous or sensational subject matter and they traditionally fall into convenient categories such as crime fiction, romance, science fiction, fantasy. In the new digital publishing age, those well-defined and predictable lines are breaking down and the blending of genres is commonplace. I write paranormal mysteries with romantic elements. Paranormal romance is one of the most popular subgenres. A renowned Canadian astronaut wrote an outstanding science fiction murder mystery! 

What about the question of literary books having a deep theme that popular fiction lacks? In my current series, Beyond the Magic, three supernatural siblings lost their mother in childbirth and have a father who is too ambitious and career driven to focus on raising them. Together they must face life altering threats to their world and unravel an ancient prophecy. I would argue that is an overarching theme of the power of family ties that bind. Perhaps in literary fiction the emphasis on the theme is more overt than in popular fiction, but that depends on the author.

Some people say that literary fiction is more character driven while genre fiction is focused on plot, yet I, like most of the authors I know, spend considerable upfront time creating character profiles with associated emotional arcs that I carefully weave through my plot outline. Some author friends say it is a character who appeared to them first, anxious to tell their story.

Historically speaking, there are works of popular fiction that, solely through the passage time, have become elevated by those in authority to the status of literary classics, such as the works of Lucy Maude Montgomery or Daphne DuMaurier. And, alternatively, literary works have gained popular or commercial attention decades after publication, like Margaret Attwood’s, A Handmaid’s Tale.

The final and often snide criticism about popular fiction refers to its standard of writing. While my back instantly goes up at such comments, my objective self will admit there is a sliver of truth in this one factor. Not about standard from a quality perspective, but in level of writing. This again points back to the audience. Popular fiction authors want to reach as many readers as we can, so we write to the reading level of the majority of the population. We choose the best possible words to communicate the emotion, setting, and action required to move our story forward, draw our reader into our imaginary world and let them leave it feeling entertained. Most typically, literary fiction is profoundly philosophical about human nature and the meaning of life. Its audience does not expect it to conform to any scope and genre conventions, or language accessibility.

As the publishing world evolves, the boundaries between literary and popular fiction will continue to blur, although I don’t believe the two will ever completely merge. That fundamental difference in audience expectation will remain wedged between them for a long time to come.

My books may not be a good fit for the Giller Prize, but I am proud to write heartwarming stories of mystery and magic that readers from their teens to their nineties can enjoy. My neighbor recently sat beside her aging mother’s sick bed and swept her away by reading my latest book, Witch Unbound, to her. I hear she thoroughly enjoyed it! I am honored that I could do that for her as a writer.

Sleep Over at the Library, Anyone? by Eileen O'Finlan

 

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Has anyone ever told you to picture your "happy place?" They want you to imagine a spot where you feel perfectly comfortable, tranquil, and at home. When I picture my happy place, one image that often comes to mind is my town library. Only in my imagining, I'm the only one there. I'm sitting in one of the comfy chairs in the section they have set up to look like a living room. I've got a mug of hot cocoa topped with mounds of whipped cream on the table next to me, my cat lounging nearby, and the whole library all to myself. In this fantasy, it's winter. The untrodden snow is piled up outside while a toasty fire crackles in the fireplace. I can read as much and for as long as I want completely undisturbed. Paradise!

As is probably obvious, I have a deep love for books and libraries. I'm especially fond of the old libraries often found in small towns. I recently had the thought that it would be fabulous if someone would turn an old library into a B&B, one where you can kind of camp out in the library. The thought was so delicious, I decided to Google it because, you know, if a thing exists, you'll find it on Google.

Sure enough, there are such places! Be still my heart! 

Here are a few I found especially inviting:

Carnegie Hall Boutique Library

Gladstone's Library

The Library Suite

And this one in my beloved Vermont!

If you're reading this blog, you probably love books and libraries, too, so why not consider a library get away! Happy reading!

My Novel is an Audiobook

 

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I view audiobooks as a wave of the present. Many of my friends like them for multi-tasking. They listen to books while driving, exercising, or cleaning the house. Book-lovers who develop eye problems with age find audiobooks a godsend. So I was thrilled when BWL was awarded funding to produce a group of Accessible Audiobooks and chose my novel, Ten Days in Summer, to be part of the group. 

BWL's next step was to find a suitable narrator for Ten Days in Summer. They selected Janice McNally, an Ontario narrator and producer. Janice has visited Calgary and attended the Stampede, which forms the backdrop for my novel. She produced a fifteen minute sample for us to approve. BWL and I agreed she sounded great and spoke clearly. Then Janice got down to work. 

Partway through the process, she contacted BWL with a question about how to pronounce the surname of one of my characters, Cynthia Hawryluk. Janice had looked this up on the internet and found several examples, each with a slightly different pronunciation. I'd taken the name from a doctor I had in Montreal and pronounced it like this: Haw (rhymes with cat’s paw, accent on this syllable) ry (short i sound) luk (luck).

Now I did an internet search and discovered that most websites pronounce Hawryluk similar to this. I don't know if my doctor anglicized his name or if I pronounced it wrong all these years. I gave Cynthia this surname because Alberta, the novel setting, has many Ukrainian residents and I assumed the name was Ukrainian. The internet advised me that Hawryluk is equally or more often Polish. 

The bottom line for me was Cynthia Hawryluk is a secondary character in the novel and her surname is only mentioned a few times. Since I'm not invested in the pronunciation, I advised Janice to go with the common one for readers familiar with the name. 

I was impressed with Janice's and BWL's attention to this detail. When Janice finished her work, BWL asked me to listen to the whole audiobook to check for errors. I've never read any of my novels after they were published and relate to actors who never watch their movies. Ten Days in Summer was released in 2017. Since then, I've moved on to three more novels. I cringed at the prospect at looking back at my writing.              

At first it felt strange and uncomfortable listening to someone else's voice telling my story. But less than a chapter in, I got used to it and felt Janice's voice nailed my Paula narrator. I enjoyed revisiting the story, chuckled at my old jokes, and found minimal errors. Three were different pronunciations for friends' names in the acknowledgments. 

Janice posted her view of the experience from her end.

Listening to my novel five years after its publications gave me a broader perspective on the story. Themes popped out. I'd say Ten Days in Summer might appeal to readers interested in the following:

Whodunnit stories

Psychology and effects of hoarding

The Calgary Stampede - Yahoo!

Ordinary people who murder

Social class 

Family relationships

Mothers and daughters

Trust

How human connection eases the pain

Baby boomers

Grown children and aging parents

Finding love and romance in middle age

I'm currently working on the fourth novel in my Paula Savard Mystery series and was thinking it would be the last. But, to my surprise, listening to Ten Days in Summer, book # 2 in the series, gave me an idea for a new direction for Paula, should she and I choose to take it. 

If you're looking for a Christmas present, here's a bonus offer from audible. 

Happy Holidays and my best wishes for a happy and healthy 2023. 

 

                                                                      I enjoyed a pre-Christmas holiday in Mexico

Hold the Advice or Live by it? By BC Deeks, Paranormal Mystery Fiction Author

 

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It’s taken me 64 years to learn not to teach others what it took me 64 years to learn myself. People must discover things themselves or it just doesn’t stick. That’s not to say I haven’t heard some really good advice that I wish I had known, or even listened to, over the years. For example. I wish I had known, Skip all the heartbreak and drama of teenage dating and just read a book until you’re 25 – Wish I'd had that nugget of wisdom at 15.

Ironically, now I collect advice sayings like tree ornaments and I even try to follow the sage wisdom to lead a more mindful life. Another one that I wish I had known way back is, Find your passion-Then figure out how to make money at it. I’ve known since I was twelve that I wanted to be an author, but my career took a very different direction.

I was a young woman in the ‘yuppy’ generation. We energetically threw ourselves at that glass ceiling determined to be the first to shatter it. I’ll admit I experienced some exciting adventures. In the early 1980s, I sat at a table with the CIA on one side and the KGB on the other! They didn’t speak to each other, but I spoke to both of them separately. Fascinating times. I also got lost in the warehouse district of Paris at midnight on another occasion and was rescued by a mysterious French businessman. He drove me back to my hotel and wished me fond memories of the city before disappearing again into the night. I’m not making this stuff up, but it sure does find its way into my writing.

It wasn’t easy being a single woman working in male dominated industries and traveling internationally. Computer security was an emerging field, and I was dealing with hackers, terrorists, and an emerging Dark Web. I was also rising into management, and sometimes encountered men who didn’t like a woman directing their work. Fortunately, there were also men along my journey who gave me a solid hand up. I’ll share another piece of advice I live by: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

And I did eventually get back to my dream of writing and pour all those experiences into my writing.

Maybe I should have listened to some of the advice I was given when I was younger. I wish I had believed then that I would survive the tough times and grow from my experiences. My mother’s favorite advice to me was, And this too shall pass. She was a wise woman.

Do you have advice you live by? Or wish you had listened to when you were younger?

The Novel I Wish I'd Written

 

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My book club chose the classic novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier for our October meeting. This was the third time I'd read the book. I've loved it each time for slightly different reasons. 

I was in my twenties when I first read this story of a young woman who marries a wealthy older man she meets on a holiday in Monte Carlo. His late wife, Rebecca, looms larger-than-life and haunts the tale from beginning to end. Gradually the story builds to a series of plot twists. I didn't see any of them coming, yet I instantly recalled clues the author had planted along the way to make the surprises completely believable. The only author I've read who did this almost as well was Agatha Christie. Literary writers often dismiss such twists as mere plot. In Rebecca, every twist is embedded in character. If the story narrator, her husband Maxim, Rebecca, and all of the secondary characters had been different people, the story and twists wouldn't have happened exactly as they did.  

 

About twenty years later, I started writing mystery novels. Whenever the subject of favourite books came up, I'd say that I couldn't choose my favourite as a reader, but Rebecca was the novel I wished I'd written, mainly for the author's handling of surprise. Perhaps this prompted me to read Rebecca a second time. By then, I'd seen several movie versions and remembered all the twists, but I still found myself gripped by the suspense of what was to come. Fans will recall a scene where the narrator breaks a valuable figurine. As the narrator struggles to cover her action up, I was on the edge of my seat, worried for this sympathetic character.   

This third time reading Rebecca, I was mainly drawn in by du Maurier's writing. The novel struck me as a cross between two other classics written by women, Jayne Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, with mystery and suspense thrown into the mix. Rebecca features the grand passion and gothic qualities of Bronte's story, with subtle Austen-like touches of social observation and humour. All three books are about women who fall in love with men who are far superior to them in wealth and social status. I interpret each of the stories as showing how the woman becomes the man's equal. Perhaps this partly explains why these novels resonate with modern readers. 

In addition, on third reading, I realized that Rebecca contains a number of life lessons, about such things as not making assumptions about other people, assuming you know what they are thinking, and speaking out for yourself. In middle age, I read a popular book on cognitive therapy, which is commonly viewed as the most effective psychotherapy method. Everything in the book was already there in Rebecca. I wonder if this is why I easily grasped the therapy concepts and if, subconsciously, I applied them to my life after reading Rebecca when I was young. 

Our book club discussion leader also brought up some modern interpretations of Rebecca that I hadn't heard before. Maybe I'll grasp them if I read the novel a fourth time. You can dive into Rebecca forever it seems and surface with something new.   

When I reached the end of the novel last month, for the third time, I decided to go out on a limb say, Rebecca isn't only the book I wish I'd written, it's my favourite novel ever. Admittedly, I'm the only member of my book club who rated it this high. A couple of people didn't like it. Others had mixed feelings. A surprising number hadn't read the book before. Nobody predicted the twists on their first time. Rebecca is worth reading for that reason alone, and for so many more.                    

Rhododendrons symbolize Rebecca in the story