Where do you get your ideas?

 

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"Where do you get your ideas?" This might be the number one question readers ask authors.

My quick answer is that ideas pop into my head all the time and they come from everywhere. My personal experience, conversations with other people, places I've lived in and visited, the news, books I've read, TV, movies, perhaps a painting or line of music. 

This winter, I'm editing a novel-in-progress, book # 3 of my Paula Savard mystery series, while mulling ideas for book # 4. With a series, many of the basic ideas are already there. I start with my sleuth, Paula, a fifty-five year old insurance adjuster, and her cast of supporting characters, who impact her personal life and, in some cases, her sleuthing. Paula and most of her family, colleagues and friends live in my home city, Calgary Alberta. I could send Paula to another location for all or part of the next book, but I see her as grounded in Calgary. Unlike me, Paula isn't drawn to travel, although book # 3 presents her with a future travel opportunity. For now, I think her adventures in book # 4 will continue in Calgary. 

 

    An often deserted pathway behind Calgary's Saddledome arena inspired my idea for the murder in the first Paula Savard novel, A Deadly Fall. 

My current novel-in-progress, Winter's Rage, ends in January 2020, with Paula at a crossroads in her life. Book # 4 will begin with her dealing with that situation. I've decided it will take place in spring, since Paula's first three mysteries happened in fall, summer and winter. But which spring will this be? January 2020 was right before COVID-19 changed the world. Will we next meet Paula in spring 2020, as she grapples with the start of the pandemic both personally and at work? Or will it be spring 2021, when the the pandemic is (we hope) nearing its end? I could jump over the virus and set the novel in spring 2022. This would make the time frame more contemporary to my publication date, although I find it hard to envision the post COVID-19 world. What things will return to the old normal and what will be the long term changes? The year I choose for this fourth novel will affect my ideas for it. Thoughts to mull during the winter.

 

Calgary's annual Stampede parade prompted ideas for a major character and an inciting incident in my second novel, Ten Days in Summer. 

  

While Paula got into solving mysteries as an amateur sleuth, I decided her subsequent ventures would come from her insurance adjusting work. Ten Days in Summer starts with a suspicious death resulting from a building fire. Paula naturally becomes involved in the course of investigating the property fire insurance claim. In Winter's Rage, she adjusts a hit and run collision and gradually suspects the fatality was no accident. 

This quiet, suburban Calgary street plays a large role in Winter's Rage.

For book # 4, I'm thinking that burglary could make a good cover up for murder. Last spring, my husband and I bought e-bikes at a local bicycle shop. I was intrigued by the store's booming business. With most of their usual activities shut down for the pandemic, Calgarians sought outdoor activities and many of us updated our old bicycles. That store and the two guys operating it are giving me ideas for the crime that will launch Paula's next mystery.            

I also want to include a ghost in book # 4, because ghosts both interest and frighten me. At the end of Ten Days in Summer, Paula's office moved to Inglewood, Calgary's oldest neighbourhood. Many ghosts lurk in Inglewood, a location for Calgary's haunted walking tours. The ghost rumoured to haunt her historic office building will challenge rational Paula, who doesn't believe in other worldly happenings. 

A ghost walking tour of Inglewood inspired my choice of  this "haunted" building for Paula's office.

All of these bits and pieces, swirling in my mind, will converge into the start of a story, when I eventually sit down and write the novel. As the story moves along, it will pluck more ideas from my usual sources. That's the plan, anyway, and it's how I get my ideas.    

  

E-biking last spring triggered ideas for my next novel 

 

Clearing Clutter

 

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One of my projects for this winter of COVID-19 is to clear clutter from my house. I'm starting with boxes of writing stuff I've accumulated during the past 30 years. So far, I've filled several recycling bins with papers, although I'm still holding onto more than I should.  

Easy to dump are old query letters to publishers and their form rejection letters. I've never understood writers who talk of papering their den walls with rejection letters for inspiration. My instinct is to shove the depressing messages out of sight, although rejection has prompted me to write better, and still does. I am keeping the occasional rejections that complimented my writing and place them in a binder with other encouragements I received on my journey to publication.  

I'm also throwing out critiques of chapters from novels that I subsequently revised and published, since there's no point in rereading the comments now. In the pre-digital days of writing classes, we had to print copies of our submissions for each of our classmates to scrawl comments on. That's a lot of paper for my recycling bin. Now and then a page of positive remarks by an instructor or writer-in-residence jumps out at me. I add these to my encouragement binder. It turns out this de-cluttering project is partly about jettisoning negative and irrelevant memories, while preserving ones that boost my spirit. 

Stuff I can't bring myself to toss out includes notes and newspaper clippings that might have value for future writing projects. I file these in boxes and folders with labels so I can find them easily when I want. If I ever move to a smaller place, I'll instantly get rid of most of this, including my folder for the mythology workshop I didn't understand at the time, and still find baffling from my perusal of the notes. For now, these folders and boxes don't take up much space on my shelf, where they'll stay until I'm ready to dive into them or downsize.   

 The best finds are bits of clutter that might have an immediate use. I created folders for my current novel-in-progress, my next three story ideas, editing, and book promotion and tuck relevant notes and clippings into the folders. For instance, my germ of an idea for my next mystery novel includes a ghost in ways I haven't figured out yet. This prompted me to hold onto a comment by a creative writing instructor about Shakespeare's Hamlet. 'The ghost is a catalyst, and is the ghost telling the truth?' When I sit down to write the novel, this question about Hamlet's ghost might or might not trigger thoughts about the ghost in my story. If it doesn't, I'll send the instructor's observation to the recycling bin or to another folder, where it might apply.  

Also useful in the near future is advice for presenting my work in public. I'm collecting my scattered notes and handouts on this topic into one labelled box, along with printouts of past readings I've done. One tidbit of advice that I've taken to heart is to not read from the book itself. A printout of the scene enables me to enlarge the font for easier reading, revise the scene for audience interest and engage better with listeners than I can with my nose in the book. The next time I'm called on to do a literary reading I'll leaf through the box for printouts of a scene that suits the occasion and refresh myself on the advice, all of it conveniently located in one place. 

Nowadays, advice for public presentation tends to focus on Zoom and similar platforms. A couple of months ago, I attended an excellent webinar on this subject and made handwritten notes. The 'Readings' box will be the logical place for the notes, if I can find them in my recent piles of writing clutter. 

 Happy Holidays, however you celebrate this year!   

Do Short Stories Sell?

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Some years ago, I participated in a reading event at a local bookstore. The theme was short stories. During the question and answer period, an audience member asked the bookstore owner if people bought short story collections. He answered, "No, not even when the author wins a major award." His example was the recent winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's glitziest literary award for fiction. A Giller win typically results in a huge boost in book sales, but his customers weren't interested in buying the winner's short story collection. 

                                     Giller Prize glitz 

Short stories used to be popular. In the 1950s and 60s, writers could make a living by publishing them in magazines. When I started writing around 1990, big mainstream magazines like Redbook and Seventeen included a short story per issue. Neither magazine now publishes in print. A friend who writes short stories says that today online magazines provide many opportunities for short stories, but they often don't attract readers.

My writing has mainly focused on novels, but I got into short stories in my first creative writing class. Short works suit a class or workshop structure better than novels do. I suspect the proliferation of classes is one reason the short story genre has survived. A student can write a story in a week, the class critiques the whole work in an evening, and then the student revises and submits the story to journals that exist to publish the work of emerging writers.  

I've enjoyed writing short stories for reasons other than the relative speed from start to completion. They've been a chance to experiment with styles, characters and locations I couldn't sustain in a novel. I've written short stories with magic realism, a sociopathic narrator, and settings I've visited but don't know intimately. Other stories have led to novels. My series mystery sleuth, Paula Savard, had her origins in my short story, Adjusting the Ashes, about an adjuster dealing with a wacky insurance claim. 

The best explanation I've heard for the decline in short story readership is that television killed it. People in the mood for a short fictional experience have the option to relax with an evening drama or comedy. I'm guilty of choosing these over reading. I wonder if short story writing has responded to the drop in readership by shifting away from popular fiction toward a poetic style that appeals to fellow writers, but tends to be less satisfying to general readers.  

A short story exception that proves the rule is Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam. Sales of this book took off after it won the 2006 Giller Prize. A literary pundit noted that the collection of linked stories about medical students got the Giller bump because the writing is accessible, the characters relatable and the stories are strong on plot. Another exception is E. Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, a long short story that had enough going on for it to be adapted into a hit movie, although I don't know how many people read this excellent short story.  

My home province of Alberta, Canada, played the role of Wyoming in the movie, Brokeback Mountain

Enterprising authors say the practical value of short stories today is to use them to draw readers to your novels. You can produce and sell a short story e-book online for 99 cents or offer it for free. If readers enjoy the story, hopefully, it will lead them to buy your novels. I'd like to try this one day with a couple of my longer works. Perhaps foolishly, I would also like to gather the stories I've written and published over the years into a short story collection, even if nobody reads the book.     

Canadian-American actor Eric McCormack hosted the online Giller Prize show on                  November 6, 2020. The Will and Grace star explained that he grew his moustache for a movie.    

Souvankham Thammavongsa was surprised in her apartment when she won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize for her short story collection, How To Pronounce Knife 

Can an Online Writers' Conference Work?

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In August I attended the inaugural online When Words Collide Festival for Readers and Writers. Before COVID-19, the in-person WWC had been going strong for nine years in my home city of Calgary. I'd attended each year, but had doubts the online version would provide the same energy, networking, and learning opportunities. As a result, I didn't give the weekend my best effort, but it made me see the potential for such online experiences.  

My first inkling an online festival/conference might work came during the Zoom test for presenters. I had volunteered to sit on two panels. Like most of the festival, they took place on the Zoom platform. At the test, I recognized familiar faces in the screen boxes, many of them people I only see yearly at WWC. One of them sent me a private 'hello' through the chat feature. She added that she was excited about the weekend. I replied with a less enthusiastic, 'It will be different.'   

 Different it was when I checked into my first panel on the festival weekend, 10 minutes ahead of time, as advised in the presenter guidelines. The virtual Zoom meeting room was already full of people discussing brain chemistry as related to writers' block. This wasn't my topic. Had I received the wrong meeting invitation? Then an attendee in one of the squares started rambling incoherently. The Zoom host said the person was a troll and deleted him from the meeting.  

Trolls, I learned, are people who join pubic Zoom meetings solely to be disruptive. Anticipating this, the WWC organizers posted meeting links only one day ahead, but trolls still found them. This year WWC made the festival free and available to everyone, largely because they were new to the online game and didn't know if the whole event would tank. If there's an online festival next year, they'll be more confident of the quality and will charge a fee, to discourage attendees who aren't serious.  

   

My computer isn't able to give me a virtual background on Zoom - this one would be fun! 

It turned out that my panel followed the one on brain chemistry in the same Zoom meeting room. Once my panel began, I found it comfortable to answer questions, which were channeled through a  moderator. Her face filled the screen, making me feel like we were having a conversation, although I missed looking out at an audience of people to get their responses. It's hard to read faces in small boxes, plus most attendees turned off their video, so only their names appeared, and some Zoom hosts preferred to show only the panelists.  

                                                       A Zoom panel might look like this

 A benefit of online festival/conferences is attendees and presenters can come from anywhere in the world. One of WWC's most popular presenters zoomed in from Greece. If you've always longed to attend a conference held far away, you can go without the cost of airfare, hotel and meals, which can add up to far more than the fee for a conference weekend. 

Another benefit of this year's online WWC is that most of the sessions were recorded. The organizers are gradually reviewing them and posting them on Youtube and other formats. 

At the festival, WWC held several Zoom socials and parties, which I stayed away from. This was a mistake. People who went said they were fun and sometimes broke into into smaller groups, so everyone had a chance to get to know a few people well. As with most things, you get back what you put in. If you register for an online conference or festival, I'd advise treating it as though you were there in person. Get involved with as much as possible, including evening parties, which you can now attend dressed in pajamas from the waist down. 

The WWC online festival was a huge effort and accomplishment to pull off. Feedback was positive. Some attendees said it was the best online writers' conference they'd been to since COVID-19 began. Others said they liked it as much as the previous years' in-person festivals. WWC is committed to hosting a festival next August and and are planning to return to an in-person event, but with online components. Based on this year's experience, a hybrid event would combine the best of both festival worlds. But if COVID-19 is still fully with us, WWC will be ready with an improved online version, hopefully without trolls. I'll be there with enthusiasm, because I know now, if I give it my best, an online writers' conference or festival can match the in-person experience.             

 

   

WWC Online Writers Festival - Free This Weekend

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Every August for the past nine years, I've attended Calgary's When Words Collide Festival for Readers and Writers. I've loved the festival's energy, learned about the writing craft and book promotion, and acquired new readers and writing connections. When this year's in-person event was cancelled due to COVID-19, the organizers decided to go online. The festival happens this weekend. It's free and open to everyone.

I wasn't sure I'd get involved with the online version of WWC until I saw the first draft of the 3-day program. The organizers invited past presenters to fill vacant spaces on the proposed panels. Several topics grabbed my interest and I was given spots on these two panels:

Ten Things I Wish I’d Known  

When you started writing, what assumptions blocked your progress, lead you down dead ends, or limited your opportunities and experiences? Panelists share their initial faulty thoughts that slowed their journey into the writing world. 

After almost 30 years of writing, I wish I knew a few more things and hope to learn them from my fellow panelists. I'm familiar with all three from past WWC festivals and they've achieved success in their widely-varied directions. Our panel will take place on Zoom, Friday, August 14, 3:00 pm. All you need to do to attend is go to the WWC website and click on the event link in the program PDF. No registration or payment required. 

Me (right hand side) on a panel at last year's WWC

My second Zoom appearance will be on Saturday, 1:00 pm, Access Denied: A panel for writers on how to handle rejections and critiques, and communicate with editors/agents/publishers,

The agent on this panel will have a lot to share. I've become an expert on this subject during the past 30 years -- but I'm still standing!

When I'm not on a panel, I'll be cruising the WWC program for other panels, presentations and activities to attend. There will be up to five choices every hour from 1:00 pm Friday, August 14th, to 5:00 pm Sunday, August 16th. A number have already caught my eye:

Meet the Mesdames of Mayhem: Fresh from their award-nominated CBC Gem documentary, meet the writers with a century of combined killing time and learn how they freshen up their crime sprees for the 21st century (Sat, 2:00 pm).

Medical Errors and Tropes: A bullet in the shoulder that doesn't hit anything important? Knock-outs without actual damage? Induced comas? What is realistic and what is not? A discussion of common medical mistakes and questions in fiction (Sat, 3:00 pm).

Plus a couple of panels on editing, which I'm in the midst of doing now for my novel-in-progress. In addition, I've requested a one-on-one Zoom meeting about developing my social media strategy.  

Two fellow BWL authors will also be involved this year.  

Nancy M Bell: Blue Pencil Café
                         Pitch Sessions
                         Editors: When Can They Help and How? (Sat 12:00:00 pm)
                         The Dos and Don’ts of Successful Pitching, (Sun 3:00:00 pm)

David Poulsen: Crime Thru Time (Sat 4:00:00 pm)
                          From the Mean Streets to the Deadly Wilderness (Sun 1:00:00 pm) 

At last year's WWC festival, David and I participated in a fun panel with two other Calgary area crime writers.  For a (virtual) taste of what you'll get this weekend, you can listen to the podcast of High Crimes in Your Own Backyard.   

Partying at a previous When Words Collide festival. This year, WWC is hosting a Virtual Pool Party

 
 

 
   

  

The Kansas Flu Pandemic?

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COVID-19 piqued my interest in the Spanish flu, which devastated the world from 1918-1920. This led me to place library holds on several e-books about the subject. The first one available was More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War by Kenneth C. Davis. This short book, aimed at young adult readers, turned out to be an excellent primer on the pandemic. It taught me a lot I didn't know.

The Spanish flu was first noticed in Haskell County, Kansas in January, 1918. Two months later an outbreak appeared in a Kansas army training camp. More outbreaks erupted at other camps in the United States as the country prepared to enter World War I. US troops brought the disease to Europe and passed it on to other allied soldiers and civilians. German soldiers picked it up from allied prisoners they released.

Crowded sleeping area at Naval Training Station, San Francisco, California

Both sides in the war supressed news reports on the disease, to keep up morale and not let the enemy know their troops were weakened. Spain was neutral in WWI, which freed journalists to broadcast reports on the new disease striking their fellow citizens, including the king of Spain. The name Spanish flu stuck. To this day, Spain would like that error fixed. I might suggest calling it the Kansas flu pandemic, but the World Health Organization now recommends that we no longer name diseases after places to avoid the negative effects on nations, people and economies. To add to the controversy, some researchers speculate the Spanish flu originated in France, China or the eastern USA. Recent studies on recovered samples of the virus suggest it was initially transmitted by a bird.

Unlike most viruses, the Spanish flu, H1N1 influenza A virus, attacked a disproportionate number of healthy, young adults. One theory for this is that their strong immune systems overreacted. Another is that an earlier strain of the virus gave many in the older generation immunity. It's now estimated that the Spanish flu's four waves killed close to 100 million people worldwide , about 1/20th of those alive at the time. It is history's second most lethal pandemic, after the Black Death. 

Sprinkled through More Deadly Than War are stories of historical figures who contracted the disease. In addition to the Spanish king, Walt Disney and artist Edvard Munch recovered. US President Donald Trump's grandfather was an early victim. According to the family account, Frederick Trump was walking down a New York City street, when he suddenly took ill. He died the next day. The cruel virus tended to act swiftly. Some called it the three day fever. 

Was Edvard Munch's agonized painting "The Scream" partially inspired by his suffering from the Spanish flu?

The primary advice in 1918 for escaping the Spanish flu sounds familiar to people living through COVID-19 today. 

• Wash your hands. 
• Maintain a social distance. 
• Avoid crowds. 

A friend sent me links to my home city Calgary's history of the Spanish flu. We know the precise day the disease arrived - Oct 2, 2018, when a train from eastern Canada brought patients to Calgary's isolation hospital. Unfortunately, the measure didn't isolate the disease from Calgary residents. An estimated 38,000 people in our province of Alberta contracted the Spanish flu; 4,000 died.

Poster in 1918 Calgary, courtesy Glenbow Museum

Will my interest in the Spanish flu filter to my fiction writing? I'm mulling potential ideas for my next Calgary mystery novel.  

Featured Author Susan Calder

https://bookswelove.net/calder-susan/

I am BWL Publishing Inc. author Susan Calder. I've published three mystery/suspense novels, which you can view and purchase by visiting my BWL Author Page.

I’ve loved mystery novels since I read my first Bobbsey Twins book when I was eight years old. From the kid sleuth twins I progressed to Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and, later, Agatha Christie whodunnits and Daphne Du Maurier dark suspense. I wrote my first mystery novel, A Deadly Fall, as a classic whodunnit combined with a coming-of-middle-age story. My amateur sleuth, Paula Savard, age 52, stumbles into investigating the murder of her childhood friend. The story events shake up Paula’s personal and professional life and lead her in new directions.

On the principle of ‘write what you know,’ I set the novel in my home city, Calgary, and created a protagonist similar to me. Paula was my age at the time I wrote A Deadly Fall. Like me, she grew up in Montreal and moved west to Calgary for opportunity. She’s an insurance adjuster; I worked as an insurance claims examiner. But as our shared traits diverged, Paula became her own person. She's divorced; I’ve now been married for 42 years. She has two grown up daughters; I have two sons. She enjoys sports and risk. I like reading and run from danger. 

Here’s Paula with the novel’s prime suspect, her murdered friend's husband. He’s invited Paula to lunch to learn what her friend had told her about him.  

Paula would reassure him and make it clear her friend had told her nothing. He would be on guard, but, perhaps, less guarded than he’d be with a cop. There was a chance he’d slip.

He was waiting for her reply. His face said, ‘Yes, no, either way, I don’t care’ while his hand opened and closed into a fist, opened and closed against his shaking leg. He was hanging on her answer. Saying ‘no’ would close the door. After talking with the police, she could cancel.

“I can do lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Where? What time?”

“Your choice,” he said.

She thought of a nearby restaurant. “Do you know Lily’s Café?”

“I’ve heard of it.” 

“Noon. I’ll give you directions.”

While writing A Deadly Fall, I realized that an insurance adjuster would make a good series detective. Adjusters are skilled in investigative work. They visit accident and crime scenes, interview witnesses and study forensic evidence to determine what really happened. Insurance claims could also reveal cover-ups for murder. Was the building fire an accident? Did an arsonist set the blaze to collect the building insurance? Or to kill a person sleeping inside?

A suspicious house fire is the subject of my second Paula Savard mystery novel, Ten Days in Summer. Paula investigates the fire from the property insurance angle. In the course of her work, she gets to know the family living in the house and gradually unearths their secrets. I set this novel during Calgary’s annual wild west festival, The Calgary Stampede. For ten days each July, Calgarians cut loose, wear cowboy hats and boots, party, line dance, and cheer on the daily rodeo and chuckwagon races. Paula’s mother from Montreal is visiting her this summer. Paula takes her to the Stampede parade, which kicks off the festival. In the midst of the revelry, business intervenes, when an insurance claimant/suspect returns Paula’s phone message to set up a meeting.  

Stampede Parade

       

Belly dancers, in halters and pantaloons, whisked guns out of their holsters. They twirled the pistols around their fingers and shot imaginary bullets into the air.

“A blend of the old and new Calgary,” Paula said to her mother, who was seated on the lawn chair beside her. Over the past few years, Paula had noticed more and more newcomers’ floats and acts in the Stampede Parade. Today, Asian, Muslim and Caribbean communities would march with descendants of the original pioneers.

Her cell phone rang. Brendan Becker.

“Great of you to call,” he said. “I’ve been bugging my sister Cynthia to contact the insurance company.”

The belly dancers moved on. A bow-legged man wearing riding chaps bounded toward Paula and her mother. He moved his arms in circles.

“Cynthia refused –”

“YAHOO,” the cowboy shouted.

“YAHOO,” the crowd answered.   

“YEE-HAW.”  

“YEE-HAW.” Paula’s mother joined in.

“You sound like you’re at the parade,” Brendan said against a backdrop of trombones.

“You too?” Paula said.

          

While working on his second mystery novel, I got an idea for a different suspense/mystery story. Calgary engineer Julie Fox travels to California to search for her mother who abandoned Julie when she was a child. This novel, To Catch a Fox, would alternate between five viewpoint characters. As the story progressed readers would understand the harm and danger the two 'bad guys' plan for Julie. 

My husband Will and I researched setting descriptions on two holidays in Southern California. Yes, writing can tough sometimes. Julie stayed in the Airbnb apartment Will and I rented in Santa Monica. All of us rented bicycles from a shop on the boardwalk. Julie questioned a clerk in the shop.

  

Julie hesitated, feeling foolish to hope the clerk could provide any information about her mother; yet how wonderful, how easy would it be if he did.

He looked up, his eyes bleary red, and asked what type of bike she wanted.

From her waist pouch, Julie pulled out the three pictures of her mother she’d brought. “I’m looking for this woman, who once worked in a bike shop in Santa Monica.”

“This shop here?”

“I’m not sure. It was in the late 1980s. Was this place operating then?”

The man’s grin revealed a gold front tooth. “Beats me. I only bought the joint two years back.” He picked up the pictures.

“Could you put me in touch with the previous owner?”

“Not likely. He’s dead.”

Bike shop on the Santa Monica boardwalk

After BWL published To Catch a Fox in 2019, I returned to my mystery series. I’m currently working on the third Paula Savard book, Winter’s Rage. Paula investigates a hit and run collision that killed a woman and seriously injured her husband. Was it an accident? Or a pretext for murder? The insured vehicle owner, an eighty-five-year old man recovering from heart surgery, insists he wasn’t driving. 

    “I can’t tell you more than what I told the police,” he said. “Them showing up at my door yesterday was the first I’d heard of anything.”

“Our insurance perspective is different from that of the police.” Paula had explained over the phone that she was the independent adjuster assigned to the claim, but repeating that could insult him, and rightly. So far, he’d impressed her as being mentally on the ball.  

He leaned forward, lines flaring from his nose bridge. “When they talked about my car being in an accident, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I haven’t driven for two months. Doctor’s orders.” He rapped his chest with his gnarled hand. “I was sitting right here, reading, that whole evening until I went to bed.”

“At what time?”

“About 9:30, my usual these days.”

“It was your birthday,” she said. 

“At my age, that’s nothing to celebrate.”  

Every book publication is something to celebrate. BWL has scheduled Winter’s Rage for publication in February 2021. After the celebrations, I'll move on Paula Savard mystery # 4, which will be set in spring, the season of hope.         

             

My front yard this spring

I Can't Write the Future Anymore

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On March 10th, I began the third draft of my novel-in-progress, Winter's Rage. Unlike my two previous mystery novels, this story shifts between three viewpoint narrators and two time periods. For reading ease, I placed a header at the start of each chapter with the narrator's name and the story month and year. For the main storyline, the date was January, 2020. But this March I thought, since the book won't be published until next year, why not reset it in 2021 to make the novel more contemporary? Later, I could insert any minimal changes needed or specifics to highlight that future date. I had done this easily for my earlier books to help bridge the time gap between starting a novel and its publication. In fact, draft #2 of Winter's Rage was written months before January 2020.

So I changed the headers for my first few chapters to January 2021, started revising, and realized I couldn't do this. In March, the effects of COVID-19 hit Canada with full impact. International travel shut down. Empty shelves, lineups and changed protocols appeared in grocery stores. Museums, restaurants and group activities closed. Each day brought a new development that I hadn't considered the day before. I couldn't predict what my world would be like the next week, never mind ten months in the future.

Even now, three months later, I don't know what daily life in January 2021 will be like in Calgary, my home city and the setting for my mystery novels. Will we have a vaccine or cure for COVID-19 by then? Probably not, but if I assume this and a miracle happens I'd have to significantly change any story I'd write now. And if COVID-19 is still with us, what rules, guidelines and customs will Calgarians experience in January 2021? Will schools be open, or will students continue to study online? Will we all be wearing masks? In lockdown or moving about fairly freely, keeping our social distance? What percentage of people will be working from home, or be unemployed? Will our economy have collapsed, flattened or revived with a renewed flourish? Will national and international travel be open? Will Canadian snowbirds travel south, as usual, to warm, sunny destinations or hibernate at home?

We can all make guesses, but no one is sure enough about life in Calgary next winter for me to portray it in the novel I'm in the process of finishing now.

I returned to the first chapters of Winter's Rage and reset the date to January 2020, when I and many others lived in the old normal, oblivious to what lay a month or two ahead. As I revised my manuscript, ordinary behaviours I'd included struck me as strange in our current time. Characters shake hands when they meet for business. Some touch people who don't live in their own households. I'm sure they often stand closer to each other than two metres (6.5 feet or, in Canadian terms, about the length of a hockey stick).

Paula, my insurance adjuster sleuth, visits insurance claimants in their homes. No one thinks twice about inviting her into their living room. In an early scene, Paula helps a claimant prepare hot chocolate in his kitchen.  The man is 85, recovering from heart surgery and at high risk for serious complications from COVID-19. He and Paula pass each other mugs, utensils and the can of chocolate powder without hesitation. In these details, my novel and others set at the start of 2020 will chronicle our society immediately before everything changed.

Too close

Winter's Rage is book three of my murder mystery series. Since the first and second novels were set in fall and summer, the one thing I know about book four is that it will take place in spring, to complete the Calgary seasons. Since it won't be published for a couple of years, I'd expected to set the story next year or later. Then I thought, with no travel on the horizon, I might have time to start the first draft this summer, writing by hand on my back yard patio. The novel could take place this spring, while we're experiencing the height of COVID-19 restrictions. Why not portray this unique time in a fictional murder mystery story? The current social mood even fits what I have in mind for Paula at this point her life. Uncertainty. Fears. Isolation from loved ones.

But how can I have dramatic interactions between Paula and suspect strangers when everyone with something to hide has the perfect excuse to tell her, "Stay away, I won't talk to you in person?" How does an insurance adjuster/detective do her job without meeting people face to face? I'd better start researching this before life returns to a new normal and people forget the details of this peculiar time we're living through.

Social distancing on Hunchback Hills, Alberta. In the past, my hiking club would squeeze together for a group photo. 

 

        

E-Biking Though the Pandemic

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COVID-19 prompted my husband Will and me to buy e-bikes. Our thinking was that with most of our usual activities likely to be gone or restricted this summer, it would be good to expand the ones we'd be able to do. This included cycling. We'd always enjoyed getting out on our twenty-five-year-old bikes and hoped electric bicycles would let us ride longer and farther and handle steeper hills.

I didn't quite know what an e-bike was before I bought one. Since then, I've learned they have motors that provide pedal-assist. You still pedal the same as with a regular bike, but get more for your effort. E-bikes can go up to 32 kilometres per hour (20 mph) to be classified as bicycles, not mopeds. After each use, you plug them in to recharge the battery.

The motor makes e-bikes heavier than regular bicycles. Usually the battery is attached to the frame. We chose models with built-in batteries. They aren't much heavier than our old regular bikes. This will make them easier to load in our car for outings and easier to ride if the battery ever runs out. I'm especially glad we got the lighter bikes after hearing about a friend's holiday in Paris. During her first day of renting a heavy e-bike, it toppled onto her and broke her leg.
 

I chose an upright cruiser style, with a comfortable seat and handy front basket.  

Will and I bought our bikes at a local bicycle store, which has been doing a steady business this spring. Some companies are thriving during the pandemic and I see lineups outside of every bike shop in Calgary, where I live. We walked to the store to pick up our e-bikes, rode them home, and tried them out on our quiet, flat neighbourhood streets. The next day, we went for a longer ride on a city bike path, with a hill I previously couldn't ride all the way up. Half way, I'd have to get off and walk my old bike. On the e-bike, I cruised to the top, passing a group of fit-looking riders in their twenties. What a thrill for a senior citizen! 

Will chose a racier model. We'll enjoy the lunch box on the back for picnics. On a ride to downtown, we had our first look at Calgary's kayak course on the Bow River. 

Calgary enjoyed a couple of weeks of fine weather after we bought our bikes. Will and I took them out every day or two. We conquered numerous hills we'd have struggled with or walked up before. I could still feel the cardio exercise as I pedalled to the crest. We could also do longer rides, to parts of the city we hadn't previously biked to from our home. I returned feeling less tired than I used to from my regular bike rides, although my sore muscles suggested I'd had a workout. 

I'm still cautious about riding a more powerful bike. Wind from the higher speed makes me cooler when I ride. I've had to wear more layers of clothing this spring, but this might make biking on hot summer days more comfortable. My e-bike has nine gears, which are easy to change with the paddles on the handle. The power level button on the frame is trickier to use. I still haven't got the knack of pressing the button 1,2 or 3 times to shift the power up or down while riding. 

Colourful, layered clothing in the cool wind.

E-bikes aren't cheap. Ours were in the lower price range and each one cost more than Will's first car. But with this spring, summer and probably fall of non travel, e-bikes turn staying at home into a vacation. When Calgary's weather warms up again, we plan to load our e-bikes into the van and ride in the rolling countryside, tackling hills with ease. Not much beats coasting to the top, leaving those twenty-somethings in our dust.