My personal deadline for reaching the midpoint of my novel-in-progress was a trip to Toronto for Thanksgiving weekend followed by a week in Montreal and Kitchener. I made the writing deadline so tightly that I’ve only found time to blog about it now, after returning from the trip.
This first half of this book is a re-write of the “Summer” Paula Savard mystery I started last fall. It involved changes required to turn “Summer” into the second book of the series. The writing followed the original draft fairly closely until the last four chapters, where I had to rearrange, delete and add large chunks of material.
Now, I’ve moved into new, unwritten territory. It helps that I developed an outline for the next quarter, except that knowing what’s coming up makes me feel the chapters have been drafted – until I face the blank page and realize I have more to do than I’d thought.
In the past, I’ve enjoyed writing the second half of novels more than the first. With the stage set, characters developing and events playing out, the work has usually gone faster as the story rollicks to a close. I hope this happens with my current novel-in-progress – Ten Days in Summer – so I can finish the first draft by my next personal deadline – Christmas.
Writing a novel is a daunting task. It becomes more manageable for me if I break the novel into quarters, with each quarter ending at a turning point. I start out with a fuzzy idea of what the first turning point will involve, but know it will be about 80 pages in. Writing toward page 80 feels easier than following that first sentence with a full-blown 320 page plot.
In early August, I started the sequel to Deadly Fall. This wasn’t a totally new start. I had previously drafted the first half of “Summer,” but wanted to make changes that were significant enough to go back to the beginning rather than continue from where I’d left off. So, this first half feels more like a second draft, while what follows will be all new. I’m calling it Draft 1A.
To reach each turning point, I tend to set personal deadlines. The one quarter mark one for “Summer Draft 1A” was a brief trip to Banff at the end of August. I didn’t quite make the deadline. Calgary’s weather this August was too darn good and I wanted to be out there enjoying it. I tried a few tricks to do that while accomplishing my writing goal: getting up early to write and taking my laptop out to the patio. The first I only managed a couple of times; the latter worked okay, but was better one evening when there was no glare on the computer screen. I made it to the first few pages of my turning point chapter and had to finish it after the holiday, helped by Calgary’s dip into a few bad weather days.
Now, I’ve entered the second quarter of “Ten Days in Summer”, the working title for the sequel, and Calgary has entered another warm, sunny spell that’s forecast to last until the end of September. My next deadline is a trip to Toronto on Thanksgiving weekend. Enjoying this last burst of summer and meeting that deadline will be a challenge.
Last weekend, I attended the innaugural When Words Collide conference in Calgary. This festival for readers and writers was organized by a committee of local science fiction and fantasy writers. Previously, this group had organized a Calgary science fiction conference CONnvergence. They felt last year’s CONvergence was too media focused and split to hold a writing conference that would include all writing genres.
Featured author guests at When Words Collide were Robert J. Sawyer, Jack Whyte, Walter Jon Williams and Rachel Caine; Brian Hades was the featured publisher guest. If all or most of these names are unfamiliar to you, it is probably because you don’t read science fiction or fantasy. All come from those genres, aside from Whyte, who writes historical fiction.
Science fiction is far from my specialty, but over the years I’ve been a fan of some sci-fi authors, TV shows and movies, such as Star Trek (original series) and author Robert J. Sawyer. At the conference, I felt like a welcome outsider and enjoyed the experience of not-being-in-the-thick-of-it making contact with a different species of writer. I think the organizers of When Words Collide did a bang-up job of including panels and events for those of us not totally into sci-fi. All day Saturday and Sunday, every hour on the hour, they offered seven choices of panels, readings, kaffee klatsches with the featured guests and other happenings. There were always several events in each time slot I would have liked to attend.
Most of Calgary’s local writing organizations contributed. The Writers Guild of Alberta had Bob Stallworthy as liaison (listed in the program as ‘The Person Who Kept us Aware of the Big Wide World’). Mystery Writers INK hosted Detective Sweet’s presentation on Homicide Investigation. Through my Alexandra Writers’ Centre involvement, I sat on a panel on pitches and queries.
Rather than have a single keynote speaker, the Friday evening address featured all five special guests plus R. Cat Conrad, surrealistic, fantastic and space-oriented artist and husband of Rachel Caine. Each guest was given 20 minutes to speak about whatever he or she wanted.
Caine and Cat, Texans on their first trip to Canada, discussed the differences between Canadians and Americans, although they felt at home when they arrived at the conference motel and saw “Howdy Folks” with a drawing of a cowboy boot painted on the entrance door. Don’t they wash these decorations off after Stampede?
Brian Hades talked about the founding of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. Before the conference, I hadn’t known this publishing house was in Calgary.
Jack Whyte played with the conference title When Words Collide. He said, instead of forcing your words to always work harmoniously, let them collide to create energy and harness the energy to make people think.
Walter Jon Williams presented a meditation on the development of modern science fiction. In the 1970s, he said, science fiction readers were a closed world. Virtually all of them had read the classic 150 sci-fi books, most of which were unknown to the general public. Since then, the number of science fiction books has vastly expanded, but the initial homogeneity led to a difference between sci-fi and other genres. In mystery, he claimed, the writers established the norms of the genre, for instance, the “rule” that you must play fair with the reader. Literary fiction has a paid critic class that determines what is good. For science fiction, the norms were established jointly by the writers and those initial readers so familiar with the genre’s classics.
Robert J. Sawyer picked up on Williams’ comments. Sawyer believes the Canadian literary establishment is more welcoming of genre fiction than the one in the US. Canadian genre writers get invited to festivals like Harbourfront, but are still viewed as second rate. Sawyer was at the 2011 Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw. An audience member asked him, “How does it feel to know you’ll never win the Giller award?” Sawyer replied that he felt less badly about it after signing a television deal for his latest book. He added that about every other year he applies for a Canada Council grant and has never received one, despite being North America’s most award-winning science fiction writer.
Some felt Sawyer was taking potshots at literary writing, but why shouldn’t he express his views and experience? The next day at the kaffee klatsch he told us not to worry about offending readers. No writer pleases everyone; the worst you can be is bland.
Must the genres mingle entirely in harmony? To paraphrase Jack Whyte, let the genres collide and create energy. There was plenty of energy at When Words Collide last weekend. I plan to be there next year. Susan and son Matthew in Vulcan, Alberta
I always find it hard to return to writing after a break. This current break has been one of my longest. It began before Christmas and continued through the holidays, a one-month winter vacation, the release of Deadly Fall, my book promotion blitz, two shorter spring and summer trips and visits by relatives. During this time, all I’ve written are blog posts and a few novel chapters that didn’t work. Now it’s time to ease my way back into the saddle and write the sequel to Deadly Fall.
I had thought the sequel was almost a slam dunk. My publisher was interested in continuing the series. Before Deadly Fall was accepted, I wrote a sequel Secret Spring, revised it and gave it to four friends who had read and enjoyed Deadly Fall. All of them thought Secret Spring was a better book. I polished up the manuscript and sent it to my publisher. To my surprise, she and and my editor had problems with it.
Their arguments convinced me they might be right. I struggled to come up with solutions and took a stab at re-writing Secret Spring. At first, I liked what was happening with the storyand especially enjoyed getting back into writing after the long gap. But in Chapter Four, I ran into plot glitches. The new Spring started to feel a bit flat. I had doubts that my changes would fully address my publisher’s and editor’s issues and worried they would reject the manuscript again, after all that work, and I’d be even further behind.
I decided it was too soon to re-write Secret Spring, but with more brewing the story might work down the road. Meanwhile, my publisher had read my draft of the first half of a third series book and liked it. They suggested I write that story as book two. When I return to writing in early August, this will be my writing project.
The new book two – working title Ten Days in Summer – takes place during the Calgary Stampede. I’ll re-set it a year before the action in the original draft, so that it fits between Deadly Fall and Secret Spring. My protagonist, Paula, will go through the developments in her personal life that happened off-stage between those two books. Among other things, she’s renovating and expanding her bungalow in Ramsay to make space for herself and a man.
Other characters develop and enter the series. Paula’s mother visits from Montreal and faces decisions in her own life. Paula’s daughter considers changes to her love life and work. The suspects come onto the scene and stir up mischief.
I hope, as August rolls around, I’ll get excited about this book and find myself so back into writing that I won’t want to leave it for the next break.
Thursday, June 16th, Will and I set out our mini-book tour of southern Alberta – four stops in twenty-four hours, organized and co-ordinated by my sister, Lynn, who lives in Beaver Mines and works in Calgary.
First stop: Tumbleweed Coffee House in Nanton, a cafe that opened this March. Owner Leslie Elder invited me in for a signing between 3:00 and 5:00 PM. Before the event, I designed and printed 12 posters; Leslie displayed one by the cash at her store and distributed the rest throughout the town.
Tumbleweed is a lovely spot, with an inviting atmosphere. There’s a couch in front of the fireplace, comfy chairs, barrel tables and regular ones. The patio in the back will be great when it stops raining.
Our two hours was a steady stream of talking to customers, most of whom seemed relaxed and approachable. Two people, each with a friend, came specifically to meet me and buy Deadly Fall. I sat at the table and chatted with a pair about writing and their far-flung travels, leaving Will to tackle new arrivals. The take-out crowd tended to brush off his approach with, “I just came in for coffee.”
A man en route to Fernie bought the book. Someone else picked up a copy for her sister and gave me her business card. She’s a sales consultant for a radio station in High River and Okotoks and invited me to contact her for an interview. You bet.
We wrapped up the afternoon chatting with a couple of avid readers who are renovating their historic home. This coffee shop signing felt more engaging than ones I’d previously done at bookstores; there was time to talk longer. At the end, Leslie kept four books to sell on consignment in the store. After I got home, she e-mailed to say some people had expressed regrets over missing the session; a couple were sorry the books weren’t signed. Yesterday, when we happened to be in the area, we stopped by so I could sign the three remaining copies.
We ordered soup and bagels with egg and cheese for dinner and headed down to Pincher Creek, where Lynn had arranged a video-conference at the Pincher Creek Library. Since no other libraries signed on, the conference didn’t materialize. Instead, I read and talked and answered questions by the Pincher residents who showed up – two of them. As we were preparing to leave, a cameraman from the Pincher Creek Echo newspaper arrived and took a picture of me with the attendees. It was to appear in the paper this week.
We spent the night at Lynn’s home in Beaver Mines, west of Pincher Creek. A former mining community, Beaver Mines village is now popular with urban ex-patriates and nature enthusiasts. Fifteen minutes down the road is Castle Mountain, a ski-hill, where Lynn’s husband spends his winter mornings.
Friday, 9:00 AM, we gathered in the Beaver Mines General Store, a very attractive premise. Attendance was similar to that of the previous night. Owner Rebecca Holand set out coffee and snacks for the pleasant hour of conversation and questions.
Late morning we drove to the Crowsnest Pass, stopped at the art museum and left them a few books on consignment. I’ve started a new folder of consignment sheets for the Deadly Falls I’ve scattered over the southern province. This event was a joint reading at Exhilarate!, an eclectic boutique in the former theatre in Bellevue, Crowsnest Pass. The promoter provided lunch for the gathering of about 15 people, many of them members of the local writing community. Two short story writers read, followed by another novelist and me. We ended with questions. A reporter from the Crowsnest newspaper took notes and photographs. I’ll be interested in reading her piece.
Tired and satisfied, we left for home, up highway 22. A detour for a latte at Tumbleweed seemed a fitting conclusion.
For the trip home from Victoria, I organized one book promotion event: a presentation Tuesday evening, June 7th, at Hooked on Books, Main Street, Penticton, BC. As Will and I drove there, I thought how fortunate it was that we hadn’t scheduled this event for Monday or Wednesday, hockey playoff nights. All of British Columbia is wild about the Vancouver Canucks’ bid to win the Stanley Cup. At the Bloody Words banquet, people couldn’t settle down until they heard the game result (a win).
What I didn’t consider on Tuesday was the effect of rain. Will and I had avoided serious drizzle the whole trip. That Tuesday, the southern Okanagan skies grew ominously dark. We managed a walk along a self-interpretative boardwalk, a picnic by Osoyoos Lake and visits to several wineries before rain started battering our windshield. In Penticton, we parked in front of Hooked on Books, lugged in my presentation material during a respite from the rain and set out for the waterfront, carrying our umbrellas.
Within minutes, we had the umbrellas open. Viewed through downpour, the misted lakefront wasn’t particularly inviting. Seeing no restaurants in the vicinity, we returned to Main Street and ducked into a family run restaurant across from the bookstore. For most of our dinner, we were the only patrons. We enjoyed a delightful home-cooked turkey meal and had a chat with the owners’ son who works in computers during the day and helps his parents by waiting on tables in the evenings.
At Hooked on Books, Judy and Marcel, the owners, had set up chairs by the front window. Jerry, a bookstore patron and our first guest, arrived. Jerry has written about 300 pages of a book on meditation, inspired by his experience of living in Korea, and wanted to find out about getting published. I advised him to finish the book and join a writing group to get feedback. Judy gave him information on a Penticton group that Jerry hadn’t been aware existed. A problem with writing groups is that you tend not to hear about them unless you’re plugged into the writing circuit.
I shared my getting-published experience. Unlike many unpublished writers, Jerry appreciated the work involved with writing a book and finding a publisher. He said his former oilpatch job had involved working on presentations that routinely got rejected and he’d learned not to take rejection personally, as you never know where it’s coming from – a useful attitude for writers. So many get squelched by the submission process, which is mostly about rejection.
After an hour of conversation, Theresa arrived. She is writing a memoir and belongs to the Penticton writers’ group, but doesn’t have time to participate much in their meetings or pursue her writing. Theresa’s memoir subject and passion is the rescue of feral horses, a problem endemic to the Okanagan. Many of these beautiful creatures are being rounded up and sold for meat. Theresa worries that nothing will be done until someone is killed in a collision with horse. She belongs to Critteraid, an organization trying to save the wild horses through Project Equus. For more information visit criterraid.org.
Both Jerry and Theresa asked about the pros and cons of traditional publishing and self-publishing. I told them I had viewed self-publishing as a last resort due to the benefits of traditional: validation by people with experience in the field who will handle editing, production, distribution and more.
I wrapped up with a reading from Deadly Fall. Jerry noted that he writes too much description and needs to add dialogue; Theresa said she tends to leave out description.
Judy and Marcel were marvelous hosts. I wish them the best with their year-and-a-half old store. At the session, Jerry felt he got what he needs for the next step in his writing, Theresa talked about the cause that drives her writing and Will and I learned about Okanagan happenings from people who live there – not bad for a rainy evening in Penticton.
The Bloody Words conference ended today. Many thanks to the organizers, especially co-chairs Kay Stewart and Lou Allin, for putting on a terrific event. They even arranged for sunny, warm Victoria weather. From my room in the conference hotel, I had beautiful views of the ocean and snow-capped mountains in the Olympic Peninsula, USA. At night on my balcony, I glimpsed the lights of the Legislature building and cruise ships in the docks.
At the conference, I enjoyed a number of interesting panels and interviews, an old-time radio show – complete with sound effects – and the banquet, seated with friends from Calgary and some new people we met. A highlight of the weekend for me was finally meeting my publisher, Ruth Linka, and my editor, Frances Thorsen, in person, along with a number of Crime Writers’ members I’d only connected with before by e-mail.
This afternoon, Will and I had lunch with a long-time friend we hadn’t seen in years. The three of us drove up the coast to Sooke and walked along French and China beaches. We weren’t the least bit tempted to swim in the cold water, but got our feet wet.
Tomorrow, Will and I catch the ferry to the mainland and begin the trip home.
Sunday, May 29th, Will and I drove through pretty farmland and hills from Vernon to Kamloops. We arrived in time to do 20 minutes of the downtown Kamloops historic district walking tour and have a picnic in Riverside park before crossing the river to Bookland North.
The Bookland staff had set copies of Deadly Fall on a cafe table facing the entrance door. They added a second table for my posters and handouts. Since it was a warm, sunny day, Will left to complete the walking tour rather than stay inside reading.
It seems that Kamloops residents shared Will’s desire to take advantage of a fine weekend day after a week of rain. Customer traffic in Bookland was slight. I started at noon; forty minutes later I’d only handed out a few Deadly Fall postcards. During my two hour stint, quite often there was only one customer in the store; for periods there were none. I removed my addiitonal table when I noticed it was blocking the pathway in, encouraging people to veer in the other direction even more than they were already doing.
I decided to be more outgoing than previously and not wait for people to pass by me. I went over to talk to ones who had stopped to browse the bestseller table. A woman around my age was intrigued. She came to look at Deadly Fall, decided this was fate and purchased a copy.
My other two sales of the day went to Bookland staff. I consider these as having an extra perk. There’s always the chance a staff member will like the book enough to recommend it to customers.
I remarked to Ellen, one of the staff, that a benefit of the signing was getting Deadly Fall into their store. “We would have got it anyway,” she said, “because it’s flagged on our system as a British Columbia bestseller.”
“It is?” I asked.
Ellen pointed out three copies of Deadly Fall on their bestseller table. I hadn’t noticed them there before. She studied her computer screen and recited Deadly Fall sales for March, April and May. “Nine here, four there.” Not high numbers, but I hadn’t been aware of any sales in B.C. prior to my mini book tour.
It later occurred to me that if the sales are recorded on the computer system instantly, the May numbers probably came from my Vernon and Kelowna singings. If other stores in B.C. use this bestseller flagging system, this mini-tour’s sales might be prompting these other stores to order Deadly Fall.
One thing leads to another and you never know where an action will ripple.
