A Ticket to Romance...by Sheila Claydon

 

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Since the final book of my Mapleby Trilogy, Many a Moon, was published at the beginning of June I have had to answer a number of questions. They have fascinated me.

The first once concerns Mapleby itself. Convinced that it is a real place, a number of readers have put forward their own suggestions as to where it might be. So far they have all been wrong. They are right, however, at assuming it is based on a real village, although I doubt they would recognise it as I have taken a few liberties with the geography and the history. There really is a derelict watermill though and it was discovering that, quite by accident, that prompted me to write the story.

The second question has been about the heroine, Ellie. Is she based on a real person? Is she someone I know who has told me about her work as a Housekeeper? The answer to that is no. Instead it is based on my observations of how holiday sites have worked when I have been on holiday. They are like miniature villages with all mod cons, including small shops and restaurants, and a dedicated staff team that make sure their guests have an enjoyable and trouble free visit.

The same question has been asked about Will, the hero. As I don't play golf, how do I know about greenskeepers and golf clubs? Well all I can say about that is thank goodness for the Internet, and thanks, too, to the people I know who do play golf and have entertained me at their club in the past.

There have been questions, as well, about the castle, and the remains of the friary. Have I visited them? Are they in Mapleby or have I imported them from elsewhere? The answer is both yes and no. I have visited them.They are in my Mapleby. But anyone searching wouldn't find them because the geography has changed a bit in 800 years! 

Many a Moon has garnered more questions than any other book I've written, and I love it that readers have invested so much of themselves into the story. It has also prompted me to revisit all my other books because nearly every one of them is set in a place I've visited. Once, a long time ago, someone told me my books were like a ticket to romance. It was a lovely phrase which I have often adopted when promoting them, but it is only now that I realise it really is true. Because the chaos in airports around the world is making it is so difficult to travel anywhere at the moment, I am staying at home, but a quick look at all the covers of my books has taken me back to many of the places I have visited, places and experiences which have given me so much pleasure as well as real inspiration: New Zealand, Australia, Italy, America, France,  the Canary Islands, Russia, and then all those places in the UK from London to the Home Counties, from the North West coast to the South, to Wales and Scotland, to villages and towns and cities. It really has been a journey and one that I can take again any time I look at one of my books. Readers can as well if they want to buy a ticket to romance. 

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Happy Book Birthday!

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Release days are big evens for authors, editors and publishers...a lovely combination of Birthday (yay, we pushed another one out into the world!), 

Graduation (from a dream, to a seed of an idea, to a storyline with vibrant characters leading the way, and all along, research and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite!)

and Mother's Day, as we, proud mamas. rest and reflect on our accomplishment: this lovely artifact of our storytelling imagination. 

Thank you to all who support the adventures of my Eastern Cherokee Nancy Drew. Oh, the power of a diverse book--you can change everything for one kid and create empathy in 100 more.

Growing a Short Story to a Novel

 

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Last fall I wrote a historical mystery short story and showed the first four pages to a local Writer-in-Residence. The WIR's main advice was to turn the story into a novel. I had no clue how I'd do this and she didn't offer suggestions, but I was intrigued by the idea. 

Then this spring BWL decided to publish a collection of Canadian Historical Mysteries. They assigned thirteen of their authors to write a novel set in a specific Canadian province or territory. The collection will have twelve books -- British Columbia is co-authored and Nunavut/Northwest Territories will be reunited in one of the books. I'm delighted to represent my home province of Alberta. 

BWL asked us to provide a working title and novel blurb, which they'll publish in a free guidebook as advance promotion. This got me mulling ways to expand my short story, which was set in Calgary during the 1918 influenza pandemic and told through the viewpoint of a police detective. The WIR's other suggestion was to change the protagonist to a character who was present at the victim's death, to make that aspect of the story more immediate. One of the suspects appealed to me as a point-of-view narrator, but if I let readers enter his thoughts I'd lose him as a suspect. Also, while I like experimenting with male protagonists in short stories, I prefer to write female protagonists for novel-length works. This led to my idea for a new character and protagonist, the sister of that suspect. She will be motivated to solve the crime to know if her brother or someone close to him is guilty of murder. 

I plan to keep my detective as a secondary narrator. His investigations and personal story will add many pages to the book. In the short story, he had a romantic interest in a co-worker. For the novel I'll shift his interest to my heroine to enhance their relationship. She's married, but her husband has been overseas for four years, fighting in The Great War, and she's changed during that time. Her feelings for the detective will create lots of conflict for them both. 

My other idea is to create a new suspect for this longer story; a man who opposes the war. The victim and my heroine's brother are injured veterans, who received early discharges. WWI officially ended November 11, 1918, in the middle of the second and deadliest wave of the influenza pandemic, but most of the Canadian troops didn't return until the following spring. I'd like to make the war more present in the novel than it was in the short story, from the perspectives of those on the home front. 

I'm satisfied these additions and changes will be enough to expand my 4,500 word short story to a 75,000 word novel, the median length of the books in the collection. More importantly, I'm eager to write the larger story to develop these characters and find out what happens to them in the new version. 

In effect, the short story is my novel outline. I'm sure much will change in the process of writing the book. Even whodunnit and why the person done it and how he or she done it are up for grabs. So if you read the short story, don't worry about spoilers.  After I showed the WIR those first pages, the short story was accepted for publication. It appears in the recently released Cold Canadian Crime Anthology, available on Amazon, Kobo, and other sites.

 

A new title will be one definite change for the novel. My short story title "A Deadly Flu" was a wink at my first novel, A Deadly Fall. Two similar novel titles would create confusion. 

Here's the cover for the Canadian Historical Mysteries guidebook, which you will soon be able to download for free to read the twelve novel descriptions. 

                For updates, check out the BWL Canadian Historical Mysteries Page

   

 

Dashiell Hammett and the Randomness of Life-Changing Events, by Karla Stover

 

Visit Karla Stover's BWL author page to order books

In the Maltese Falcon, detective Sam Spade tells Bridgid O'Shaughnessy about Charles Flitcraft, a Tacoma, WA. real estate man. Flitcraft was married, had two sons, and lived in the suburbs, and enjoyed playing golf. One day in 1922, as he left his office for lunch, he passed a construction site from which abeam fell. It hit the sidewalk and sent a piece of concrete into the air and grazed Flitcraft's cheek. The dazed man felt he had cheated a random, accidental death, and that in "sensibly ordering his life" he was actually out of step with it. That afternoon, he disappeared.

Five years later, when Hammett was working for a detective agency, Mrs. Flitcraft went to the office and told him someone who looked a lot like her husband had been seen in Spokane and was living under the name Charles Pearce. Sure enough, an investigation showed that Pearce and Flitcraft were one and the same. Pearce said he had a new wife and son, owned an automobile dealership, lived in the suburbs and played golf.

What fascinated Hammett was the randomness of live-changing events. Flitcraft had adjusted to a falling beam and when no more fell he adjusted to that, too.

The Flitcraft story is now considered a parable and is the most critically discussed part of any of Hammett's works.

Researchers have found it hard to dig up information about Dashiell Hammett's life because the terminally ill, constantly broke, alcoholic recluse, and lover of  playwright /  author Lillian Hellman never saved any personal papers. Most of their sources come from letters he wrote to others. The closest he came to writing an autobiography was a piece he started but never finished called Tulip. In it, the protagonist is a former writer who admits his personal life was full of random incidents.

It is believed Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Agency in Baltimore. He said he had been involved in a Montana miner's strike. From there, he went into the army, then it was back to the Pinkerton Agency, this time in the Spokane, WA office. However, he was only there for six months, having comedown with tuberculosis. Hammett ended up in the Cushman Hospital adjacent to Tacoma. There, along with other patients, he played poker, drank, took boat trips on Commencement Bay,, ate out, roamed around downtown Tacoma, and flirted with nurses, one of who he married. He lived apart from his family when the TB flared up but supported them when he could. He wrote one Thin Man book, some short stories featuring Sam Spade, some movie scripts, a comic strip called Secret Agent X-9, and some short stories in which he revisited Puget Sound.

In 1921, all of Spokane's real estate men listed in 1919 had moved onto other things, and one man Mr. George L. Darley had disappeared. There was, however, a Mr. Frank Darley living a few blocks away from Dashiell Hammett.

Stories Behind Names – By Barbara Baker

 

Baker, Barbara - BWL Publishing Inc. (bookswelove.net)

Stories Behind Names – By Barbara Baker

Naming characters is like naming children and there are so many ways to select the right one: Google, TV shows, Apps which rank names by popularity - the list is endless.

But in 1958, when I popped out, those options didn’t exist. I was Mom and Dad’s second child, and they were sure I would be Johanne Wilhelm. They didn’t even have a girl name selected. In fact, when the nurse told Dad I was an 8 lb 12 oz healthy girl his response was, “Are you sure? She’s supposed to be a boy.”

The nurse assured him I was a girl.

What a dilemma. Back then, babies couldn’t leave the hospital till they were named so Mom asked the nurse if she had any suggestions.

After thinking about it for a while the nurse said, “How about Barbara, Barbara Ann. Like Barbara Ann Scott, the Olympic figure skater who won the gold medal for Canada.”

            “Barbara,” Mom nodded. “Barbara Ann. Ja, das ist schön.”

Growing up, I never expected to have an actual connection with the Barbara Ann Scott.

            Fast forward to 2010 when I contacted her. I knew she was running a segment of the Winter Olympic Torch Relay in Ottawa and I would be running the flame from that same torch in Drumheller, Alberta. Coincidence? Stars aligned? Luck? Whatever, I felt it was time to tell her how I got to share her name and, of course, share the excitement of our torch relays.

Being who she was, I knew I couldn’t send an email or a typed letter. This had to be handwritten. With my favourite pen, I used my best cursive writing skills; o’s round as bubbles, everything slanted the same direction and equal spaces between each word. It had to be perfect. When I finished, I thanked her for listening, folded it into three equal parts and sealed it away with a stamp stuck square in the corner.

Neat. Proper. Appropriate.

Weeks later the red light was blinking on my answering machine. I tapped the button, and a lively, clear voice filled the room. I recognized her right away. It was Barbara Ann Scott. She said she hoped she had the correct number to leave a message for Barbara Baker.

“Yes, you do!” I danced a jig right in front of the phone while I listened to her message.

 

She thanked me for the letter and told me she too was thrilled to run the Olympic Torch. She closed off with well wishes and said good-bye.

 

I played the message a hundred times. I phoned and emailed all my friends to share the news.  How gracious of her to take the time out of her day and call me. And how lucky am I that Mom’s nurse picked a great name.

How I named Jillian, my main character in SUMMER OF LIES, is a mystery to me. I didn’t know a Jillian. I didn’t use Google. None of my kid’s friends were named Jillian. So how did I pick it? I have no idea. The name jumped on the page and stuck and now I can’t imagine calling her anything else.

How did you get your name? How do you name your characters?

Summer of Lies: Baker, Barbara:9780228615774: Books - Amazon.ca

Summer of Lies - YouTube

Smashwords – About Barbara Baker, author of 'Summer of Lies'

Barbara Wackerle Baker | Facebook

Barbara Wackerle Baker (@bbaker.write)