Serendipity is a Book Club...by Sheila Claydon

Mending Jodie's Heart, Book 1 of my When Paths Meet trilogy, has just been chosen for next month's read by a local book club. It goes without saying that I am beyond excited. I'd like plaudits of course but even if I don't get them, just knowing a group of people are going to read it and discuss it is enough.

How did this happen?

Well Mending Jodie's Heart is a story woven around the countryside and the village where I live. This is unusual for me because the ideas for most of my books are triggered by other places. Maybe getting away from the humdrum of everyday life gives my imagination the freedom it needs to create. This wasn't the case with Jodie however. She didn't need creating. She arrived fully formed in my mind the way the best characters always do, and so did Marcus, the hero, and the other important characters in the book.

Why?

I know it started when I spent an evening listening to a jazz band with a fantastic pianist but how that segued into Jodie's story I have no idea. Maybe it was the closure of a local bridle path and the ensuing campaign to get it re-opened. Maybe it was the demolition of an old farmhouse. Maybe it was the sight of a pretty, dark-haired girl on horseback. I'll never know exactly what started the story, and what made me continue it into Books 2 and 3. What I do know, however, is that to write it I had to 'borrow' the old farmhouse and the new house that replaced it, the same as I had to 'borrow' the bridle path, and the local riding stables.

Once the book was published I moved on, as writers do, except that I always thought of the 'borrowed' house as Jodie's house whenever I walked past it. Then Books We Love decided to make its digital books available as paperbacks and that changed things. As soon as I received a print copy of Mending Jodie's Heart I crossed my fingers and wrote to the owners of the 'borrowed' house explaining what I had done, and offering them a copy.

I posted the note into their mailbox  when I took my dog for a walk, and then turned into the adjoining woodland and set off down a narrow path between the trees...too narrow for dog walkers to pass one another without giving way. And this is where it gets weird but in a good way. I was halfway along the path when  I saw a pretty blonde woman walking towards me with her dog...a dog I recognised as belonging to Jodie's house, even though I had never seen the owner. With no option but to stop I introduced myself and told her about the letter I had posted. After all if she did decide she wanted a copy of my book I was going to meet her anyway.

How was I to know that she was an avid reader who has run a book club for the past ten years? How was I to know that she would be thrilled beyond belief that I had written a story around the building of her home, and how was I to know that she would be unbelievably friendly and interested. She even joked that she was going to see how her husband scored in comparison with the hero.

So there you have it. I, in true writerly fashion, nosey around other people's lives watching their house being built, and my eventual reward is a new friend and a book in her book club. And what of the happy coincidence that took us down the same path on that windy morning when we had spent the previous 5 years never setting eyes on one another. Serendipity is a curious thing that might just be prompting me towards another book...the second of my Mapleby Memories, but that's another story!

And there's still another copy of Mending Jodie's Heart to give out...to the Riding School that let me watch the stable girls take their horses through their paces, so maybe some more friends too.

Writing Historical Novels by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

For more about Joan Donaldson-Yarmey's novels and to purchase visit her Books We Love author page

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

www.joandonaldsonyarmey.com

To celebrate Canada’s 150^th birthday Books We Love Ltd is publishing twelve historical novels, one for each of the ten provinces, one for the Yukon Territory, and one combining the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. We Canadian authors were asked to pick one of the provinces or territories to write about or to do the research on for a non-Canadian author. I chose the Yukon because I have been there twice and love the beauty and history of the territory. The following is a quick summary of how I write my historical novels.

When I was in school I was told that Canada was too young a country to have a history and what it di have was boring, so I learned the history of the United States, England, France, ancient Greece and many other countries. Since then I have read many historical, non-fiction books written about Canada and have found that my country does have a long and exciting history. I decided to write a series of historical novels about Canada. My first two novels in the series are: West to the Bay and West to Grande Portage.

     Some writers have a historical period that they like to set their stories in. I don’t. I never really know what year or time period I am going to write about when I start to research a historical novel. So the first thing I do is begin reading non-fiction books looking for some historical event or person who grabs my attention. If it is an event, then I try to learn all I can about that occurrence: when it happened, what happened, who were the famous people involved, who were the ordinary people involved. Once I know that then I have to figure out who is going to be my main character and how that person is going to take part in that event.

     If it is a legendary person I want to include in my story, I have to decide how much action that person will have and how that person will know or be related to the main character. I don’t write a novel with a well-known person as my main character.

     When I have decided on the event or person, I read about the time period so that I make sure I have the food they ate, the clothes they wore, their transportation, and their home and furnishings correct. It also important to make sure that their speech is right for that time. Words that were first used in the 1850’s cannot be spoken by people in the 1750’s.

     I don’t outline my novel but during my research I write down all the details that I can find about the time period to make sure I have the incidents that happen in order. Then I decide on my characters and weave them through the history. If I include a well-known person, I have to find out about their lives and their families and how I can weave them into a story that does not suggest anything that will ruin their memory.

     As the story progresses it is important to keep track of the details that I am including or a secondary story line that I am setting up. If I have a character thinking about something or starting something or saying something at the beginning of the book that leaves the reader hanging, I write it down on a piece of paper to make sure that I clear it up before the story ends.

     I enjoy researching the history and sometimes spend more time on that then is necessary. But I don’t mind. I want to be sure my account is as correct as I can make it.

How I Start a Mystery Novel

For more information about Susan Calder's books, or to purchase, please visit her Books We Love Author Page http://bookswelove.net/authors/calder-susan/

People often ask, how do you write a mystery novel? The problem is that when I’ve finished a book, I’ve usually forgotten how it all began. Right now I’m at the stage of forming my concept for my next mystery, which makes it a good time to reflect on how this beginning process works in my case.    

Of course, every writer is different. Especially different from me will be those writers who start with an outline. I tried this with my first mystery novel attempt, believing that for a murder mystery you had to know exactly how the plot will evolve to whodunit at the end before your first keyboard tap.  My problem was, that as soon as I’d write anything, the story would want to go in another direction. I felt hemmed in by the outline and dropped the whole idea of writing murder mystery.

Over the next years, writing other types of stories taught me that intricate plots could grow naturally from characters, a premise, setting and problems, and resolve in a satisfying way. I thought, why couldn’t this work for murder mystery? I also discovered that many published mystery authors write by the seats of their pants. One told me she didn’t know who was her killer until after her novel was accepted by a publisher. She learned whodunit by sitting down in a coffee shop with her fictional sleuth and discussing the case. 

I wouldn’t go that far and I doubt publishers today would be as welcoming of unfinished books, but as I set out now to write this next mystery I don’t know who my killer will be. Among the cast of suspects I have in mind, there’s one I would like to be the killer, although I’m missing a motive and am also keeping my options open for one of the others to have done the deed.     

This novel will be the third of my mystery series set in Calgary and featuring insurance adjuster sleuth Paula Savard. This means I have some character, setting and other details in place before starting and I know that Paula needs to stumble upon this mystery through her insurance adjusting job. In book two, she investigated a building fire. For her next outing, I decided on a hit and run collision, mainly because my ten-year insurance career specialized in automobile claims. I’m also making things easier for myself by having the collision occur in my own neighbourhood, unlike the murders in my previous books, which took place in parts of Calgary I had to go out and research. One character might even live in my house.  

       

Books one and two were set, respectively, in fall and summer. I had decided the next two in the series would be winter and spring, although the order didn’t matter. But hit and run struck me as suited to winter’s icy roads and dark evenings. I also wanted this next book to be the darkest of the series. So winter became the season for novel number three. Since the first books, Deadly Fall and Ten Days in Summer, contain the season name in the title, I’d like the word ‘winter’ in the title of book three, which is limiting. I came up with a title Dead of Winter, which I thought was great until my Amazon search turned up seventeen books with this rather obvious mystery title. For now, I’ll go with a working title.

  

Another key aspect of a murder mystery premise is the victim. This time, it will be a woman killed by the hit and run driver. Paula’s investigations fuel a suspicion the driver acted deliberately. But why? It will take Paula the first quarter of the book to figure this out, as she interviews suspects, a witness, the insured who insists his car was stolen and the victim’s husband who was seriously injured in the crash.

Meanwhile, things are happening in Paula’s personal life. Her mother is getting married, her brother visits from Montreal, her daughter launches a restaurant business, her office has hired new staff and Paula’s boyfriend stuns her with news that threatens to destroy their relationship.

The novel’s second quarter will deal with the fallout from these developments and, hopefully, lead to surprises and twists that will keep things hopping through the last half of the story and propel it to a thrilling climax and conclusion. That’s the goal.

Now I’m ready to go. All that’s left is the hard part—writing.