On day # 3 of our drive from Ottawa to Calgary, Will and I left Thunder Bay in snowfall.  Traffic was light this Easter Monday morning, but we drove slowly on the slush-covered highway.  The Great Lakes behind us, we were into what I’d call the least scenic section of our trip. Stunted trees interspersed with occasional railway towns. We wondered what we’d encounter at the Manitoba border, having read that the province had set up border patrols on the incoming highways as part of their effort to combat COVID-19. Manitoba has the lowest number of coronavirus cases of any province west of New Brunswick and wants to keep it that way.

The snow stopped by lunch time and rays of sunshine emerged. We bought Subway sandwiches in the town of Dryden and parked beside the Moose statue for our car picnic lunch. Today’s drop in temperature to below freezing, with brisk wind, made the picnic table by the moose not the least bit tempting.

The scenery perked up around Lake of the Woods. We stopped in Kenora for gas and restrooms in the station’s convenience store. When we found the restrooms closed, the store clerk directed us to a local Tim Hortons restaurant. Somehow we missed it and found ourselves on the highway out of town. Fortunately, Will remembered a Tourism Ontario restroom a short distance ahead. It was open, with signs above the sinks telling us not to drink the rust-coloured water.

Refreshed, we approached the Manitoba border with our story prepared.

‘Yes, we know the government told everyone to go home weeks ago, but we had to stay in Ottawa to help our son through his medical treatment. We aren’t travelling for fun, we’re going home; look at our Alberta license plate.’

Entering border control was similar to entering a construction zone. Neon signs, pilons narrowing the road and a woman holding a sign instructed us to slow down. We stopped by a man, who held a long pole out to our car window with a sheet of paper attached to the end.

“This might contain information that applies to you,” he said.

Will grabbed the paper. “No questions?”

“Nope.” The man smiled and waved us on.

I liked the friendly way they handled this. The paper’s one page message advised international and domestic travellers to Manitoba to self-isolate for 14 days, along with the usual COVID-19 instructions for social distancing and handwashing.

Soon we were in flat prairie, and two lane divided highway that would continue all the way to Calgary. Now in the middle of our trip, we passed Lorette, Manitoba, the longitudinal centre of Canada, as determined by a measurement of the distance from Canada’s farthest outlying islands on the east and west coasts.

The rivers in Winnipeg looked high to us, judging by the trees standing in the water rising up the banks. When we checked into our hotel, the reception clerk said that most hotels in the city were closed and we wouldn’t be bothered by people in our hotel because no one was here. An exaggeration, since a half dozen cars were parked in our courtyard that night. But with all of our hotels about 1/4 occupied and no one in the common areas, we were barely aware of others staying in our accommodations.

No answers from the first two restaurants we called to order our takeout dinner. With lucky call # 3 we chose a large grilled salmon meal to share.

Over dinner, Will said that his biggest memory of this trip so far was seeing almost everything closed. But there’s always an upside. Low traffic made the driving comfortable and easy. The empty restaurants and near-empty hotels were grateful for our business. Our hotel rooms were quiet, with no noise from neighbours and the street. It felt like whatever services were open and the whole infrastructure were there just for us and the other isolated travellers unable to #stayhome.

Easter morning, my husband Will and I picked up our breakfast at the motel reception desk. The generous bags included oranges, bagels and muffins, and granola bars that we set aside for later. A package of Easter eggs added a tasty dessert.

We hit the road for day #2 of our drive from Ottawa to Calgary. This is the fourth time we’ve done this trip and we consider this stretch from Sault Ste. Marie to Thunder Bay the most potentially treacherous. The two lane highway winds, rises and falls around Lake Superior. Weather can be harsh and unpredictable. On our eastbound trip in November, we ran into a snowstorm, which made the driving scary for two hours. It didn’t help to see trucks flipped over beside the road. On this return trip, we met fewer trucks than usual and didn’t see any overturned.

Today, the road was clear, the sky a mix of sun and cloud that enhanced the changing views. Lake Superior was still partly frozen. Chunks of snow perched on rocks that jutted from the water. I saw paintings in every direction. Plaques along the road call this section The Group of Seven Highway.

Will and I have two must-stops on the route. The first is the Winnie-the-Pooh park in the railway town of White River. Displays tell how an army captain, en route to Europe in 1914, bought a bear cub from a local hunter and named the cub Winnie after his home city, Winnipeg. He brought the bear with him overseas to England. When he left to fight in France, he donated the cub to the London Zoo. Winnie became popular with zoo visitors, including author A. A. Milne’s son, Christopher Robin, who named his teddy bear after Winnie. This rest is Winnie-the-Pooh history. It’s safe to say that none of this story could happen in today’s more protective age.

Will and I would have eaten our lunch in Winnie’s park, if it wasn’t cold and the picnic tables weren’t snow covered. Instead, we drove into the resort town of Marathon for a car picnic at the beach. We discovered the playground and beach were closed due to COVID-19, but we could still park for a glimpse of the water.

Our second must-stop is the Terry Fox Memorial in Thunder Bay.  The monument is located a few miles past the spot where Terry Fox was forced to give up his run across Canada when his cancer returned and spread. He died less than a year later.  His memorial is set on a hill with a superb view of Lake Superior. The site is free to visit and a short stop on a long drive. I’d only skip it if I were in a rush, or caught in driving rain or snow, or if it was closed for a pandemic.  As Will and I approached the turnoff, we expected to find a barrier at the road entrance, like we’d seen at most of the tourist sites and rest areas we’d passed earlier in the day.

To our surprise, the road curving up the hill was open. The visitor’s centre was closed, of course, but several small groups of people gathered around the monument, respectfully keeping their distance from each other. When Will and I studied the display map of Terry’s Marathon of Hope, we realized that today, April 12, 2020, was the fortieth anniversary of the start of Terry’s run. On April 12, 1980, in St. John’s, NFLD, he dipped his foot in the Atlantic Ocean and began his journey west. It ended Sept 1.

I’m especially glad the monument was open during this pandemic because we need Terry’s message of hope. Let’s hope that by Sept 1, 2020, larger groups will be able to gather at the memorial to celebrate Terry Fox’s courage and inspiration.

On Easter weekend, my husband Will and I set out from Ottawa to drive home to Calgary. We’d spent the winter in Ottawa helping our son Dan through chemotherapy and delayed our trip as long as we comfortably could. Our stay was prolonged by our other son Matt’s return to Ottawa from Mexico. Matt needed us to bring him groceries during his two week isolation. Will and I handled the grocery shopping for three households, Dan’s, Matt’s and our own in a rented apartment.  When Matt was released, he joined us in the apartment for a few days together. Thursday, we all enjoyed a farewell turkey dinner at Dan’s house. On Good Friday, Will, Matt and I walked to the trendy Glebe neighbourhood of Ottawa to buy our favourite bagels. In the afternoon, we packed the car and played Canasta (Matt won). Saturday. Will and I hit the road, leaving Matt behind in the apartment to be with Dan for his last treatment.

Traffic on the highway was light, as it had been in Ottawa since the COVID-19 restrictions began and people started working from home. I realized this was one of my few trips to the countryside since we’d arrived in Ottawa on Nov 5, 2019. Our last country excursion was to a maple sugar shack in the Gatineau. We went in early March, the first week of the sugar season, and were glad we did it while we could.  This was one of our many ‘glad we went before it closed’ conversations during our last weeks in Ottawa.

Activity on the road picked up at our first stop, Petawawa, with people out for their Easter shopping. We passed a lineup outside the local grocery store, stopped at Tim Hortons for our morning break and were thrilled to find they’d kept one washroom open for customers. The other two were barred off for COVID.  At the counter, the clerk said, of course they accepted cash for payment. The stores I’d been to in Ottawa lately had only taken debit or credit cars. I opened my wallet in Tims. My fingers stumbled on the clasp as I momentarily forgot how to pay with cash. When I handed the clerk my toonie, our hands touched, another odd experience these days. While the countryside has geared up for COVID-19, residents might feel less threatened than they do in the bigger cities with their larger illness counts.

After our next stop for gas and a washroom break, we looked for a spot to eat lunch. We’d made turkey sandwiches from our leftover meal and brought snacks to use on the trip.  Sudbury’s ring road winds along an escarpment beside the city. We stopped at a lookout and ate in the car, since it was around zero degrees and windy outside. We both reflected on our first trips to Sudbury, in the 70s, when the devastation from the mining activity had reminded me of the surface of the moon. Now, trees make the city liveable.

From Sudbury, we drove to our first night’s lodging in Sault Ste Marie. Sunshine made the landscape along the way pretty. Waterways, rivers and lakes, still partly covered in ice. We’d reserved a motel near the waterfront. Only a couple of cars were there when we arrived. We planned to stay at the Choice hotel chain at each stop on our trip and learned their current policy is to not touch rooms for several days after guests leave, during the time any COVID germs might linger on surfaces. They also don’t clean rooms each day for multiple stays and, instead of their usual hot buffet breakfast, provide a bag of cold breakfast food.

Since we’d arrived early and it was ten degrees and sunny, albeit windy, we walked along the waterfront park, looking for the bust of Roberta Bondar, Canada’s first female astronaut, which we’d seen on our cross country drive many years ago. After posing with Roberta, we picked up  a takeout dinner of ribs from Montana’s and brought it back to our room to eat, watching ships cruise down the river between Canada and the US, our mutual border now closed.

Another glad – to have day one, with our longest driving time, under our belts.  Four days to go. I’ll report on day two tomorrow.

and was eager to return to its history and culture, but a little anxious about the adventure. Shortly before we were due to leave, the swine flu hit Mexico and the United States. Unlike most flus, including the current Coronavirus (COVID-19), the swine flu (H1N1) didn’t largely kill the elderly and sick. A strain of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus, many healthy, younger people succumbed to H1N1, which quickly spread to Europe. People talked of a worldwide pandemic. And here we were setting out on a plane into this risky situation. I thought of cancelling the trip. But, out of my anxiety came an idea for a short story. A man, grieving the death of his wife, travels through Italy, worried about catching the swine flu. I’d call the story “Pandemic.”

2009 H1N1 (Swine flu) Pandemic – laboratory confirmed cases and deaths

In the Rome airport, I noticed several people wearing surgical masks. This struck me as unusual, but now would be common for travel at any time. When I later wrote the story, I included this detail along with others I wrote in a journal I carried through Rome, Venice, Tuscany and Sorrento. Will and I rented weekly apartments in these locations, as did Tony, my story protagonist. I took photos and made notes about our residences, which were part of the story landscape along with the tourist attractions that Tony, Will and I visited.. “Pandemic’s” first turning point occurs when Tony is impressed by Bernini’s sculptures in the Galleria Borghese Museum in Rome. Tony thinks, as I did, how did Bernini make a pinch of skin on a marble thigh look soft and real?

Aside from occasional sightings of surgical masks, I forgot about the swine flu while absorbing Italy’s museums, eating pizza and drinking wine in cafes, exploring ancient sites and warrens of medieval streets. After our trip, The World Health Organization declared H1N1/09 a Pandemic. It was tragic for the people who died. They were fewer in number than those who die annually from a seasonal flu, which is the case so far with COVID-19.

At home, I returned to my novel-in-progress, but Tony’s story kept churning through mind. Eventually, I sat down and wrote “Pandemic,” my first work of fiction set in another country. Aided by my photos and journal notes, I found setting descriptions easier to write than I had in my stories set in Canada. A scene of Tony getting acquainted with two sisters while climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa felt fresher than my earlier scenes of people meeting in ordinary, North American restaurants. I’ve sometimes thought of  “Pandemic” as part story, part travelogue.

In “Pandemic,” Tony and the sisters take comical photos of each other ‘holding up’ the Leaning Tower of Pisa

“Pandemic” isn’t published yet. At almost 12,000 words, it’s too long for most short story markets and too short for a novella, much less a novel. I’ve broken “Pandemic” down into four standalone stories, set in the different Italian locations. The Venice standalone is titled “Gondolier Groupies;”  Tuscany is “La Brezza.” Still no luck with publication. Now, COVID-19 has prompted me to dust off  “Pandemic” and revise the whole story again.

I’m finding it interesting to work on a story that aligns with the zeitgeist. The prevailing social mood infuses Tony’s actions and the story descriptions. I’d have thought that immersing myself in the fictional world of a pandemic similar to COVID-19 might make me anxious about our present situation. Instead, it’s a release from worries and the constant talk of disaster, and this is one reason writers write.

In Venice, Tony embarks on an ill-fated adventure with two young women and a pair of gondoliers

Earlier this month, I enjoyed Winterlude in Ottawa. Here’s the blog post I wrote for my publisher’s website.

I Embrace Winter – Sort Of

This winter, I’ve had the opportunity to attend Winterlude in Ottawa, Canada, the seventh coldest capital city in the world, according to WorldAtlas. Rather than huddle indoors, Ottawa region residents embrace the season each year with a festival spanning three weekends in early February. The focal point is the world’s largest skating rink, running 7.8 km. along the Rideau Canal from downtown to Dow’s Lake recreational area.

My husband and I stayed near Dow’s Lake. When the Skateway opened, we headed out to the lake, eager to glide along the ice. We hadn’t skated in ten years. I laced up my skates, took a step  – and retreated to the bench. Ice is slippery. Skate blades are too thin the for support. I don’t want to fall and break a bone. My skating career ended, I consoled myself with a Beavertail. These pastries, sold at shacks on the canal, are fried dough in the shape of Canada’s national animal’s tail topped with anything imaginable. I usually get the Killaloe Sunrise, with cinnamon, lemon and sugar that brings out the flavour of the dough. The calories keep you warm in winter.

Hazelnut spread, peanut butter and Reece’s Pieces on a Beavertail. As a true Canadian, I want to try maple someday.

Other highlights of Winterlude include dragon boat races on the frozen lake, snow slides in a park on the Quebec side of the river, and an international ice carving contest. Ottawa’s fickle winter weather played havoc with the sculptures this year. A mild spell a few days after the carving competition ruined the ice statues’ delicate features.

A carver at work on downtown Sparks Street.

Sound travel tunnel on Sparks Street. When I wasn’t outside ‘doing’ winter in Ottawa, I worked on my murder mystery novel-in-progress, set in winter in my home town of Calgary. My victims go for a walk on the coldest night of the year and are struck by a hit and run driver. The wife is killed and the husband is seriously injured. Was it an accident caused by icy roads or intentional? Paula, my sleuth, asks the husband why they were out on such a miserable night. He answers that they love the silence when no one else is around, the exercise in brisk air, and the shimmering street lights on snow and bare-limbed trees. But for him and his wife that night, embracing winter turned deadly.

1. I became a published author. Prior to 2010, I’d published short stories, poems and articles. They all helped me feel like a real writer and led me to teaching writing courses and workshops, but the term ‘published author’ is generally reserved for those who have published a book. This was a milestone I longed to achieve. After years of work, my first novel, was published in spring 2011.

2. I stepped up my social media presence. I was on Facebook before Deadly Fall was published, but only had a small number of Facebook friends, all people I knew in my real life. After my book publication, I started accepting requests from virtual strangers and posted (too many) notices about my literary activities and accomplishments in the interests of promoting the novel. I also joined Twitter and had my son’s friend create my author website, which automatically tweets my website posts. In addition, I’ve dabbled in Link-In, Goodreads, Pinterest and Instagram. It seems that just when I get onto one social media site something else becomes the hot new thing.

Social Media can make me feel pulled in all directions

3. My office moved to a different room in my house. Okay, I’m cheating here because my home office changed when my husband retired in fall 2007. But it took a few years for us to settle into our new routine. When he was working, as soon as he left for the office I’d go to my den upstairs to write. My retirement gift to him was our den, a sunny spot that looks out to a green space. I moved my work to our north-facing guest room with a street view. I figured that if he had an appealing room for his various computer activities, he wouldn’t distract me from my writing, while I don’t need the view while I’m forming stories in my head. The plan worked. After breakfast these days, he goes to his den and I huddle in the corner of our guest room. But lately, I’ve felt an urge for a brighter, more scenic and spacious room of my own for writing.

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Jane Austen wrote pretty good novels at this small writing table with its view of the clock in the family sitting room.

4. I became a regular at a writing festival. Calgary’s When Words Collide Festival For Readers and Writers launched in August, 2011. I went the first year, since it’s held in my home city, and haven’t missed a year since then. This coming August will be the festival’s 10th anniversary. I’m bound to find whatever I’m looking for as a writer there, whether it’s information about the craft or getting published or promoting my books. Toss in a little fun for a winning combination.

Dressed for the festival’s banquet, Roaring Twenties theme

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5  At When Words Collide, I found my publisher. BWL published my second and third novels and there’s a fourth one in progress. In November, BWL released a new edition of my first book, retitled A Deadly Fall. The re-publication brings the 2010s full circle and seems a fitting end to the decade.

For those who missed it on my publisher BWL’s website, here’s my December blog post, A Jane Austen Christmas.

On a recent trip to Ottawa, Ontario, I went to a play. Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, a new work produced by Ottawa Little Theatre. Fans of Jane Austen’s classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, will instantly recognize the cues in the play’s title. Pride and Prejudice is the story of the five Bennet sisters, living in early 19th century England, in search of husbands for fulfillment and financial survival. The novel’s hero, Mr. Darcy, owned Pemberley, a great estate.

‘Pemberley’ in one of the numerous Pride and Prejudice screen adaptations

Christmas at Pemberley takes place two years after Pride and Prejudice. The play opens with Elizabeth Darcy nee Bennet admiring her newfangled holiday decoration, a Christmas tree. Mr. Darcy is appalled by the outdoor tree in his living room. Elizabeth’s challenge to his conventionality is true to her character developed in Pride and Prejudice, but I find this domestic conflict lacks the zing their verbal sparring in the novel. The problem with all Austen novel sequels is that once the lovers resolve their all their problems they become boring. That’s why Jane Austen ended their stories at this point. But fans like me keep wanting more of the Bennets and Darcys.

The Christmas tree tradition came to Britain with King George III’s German-born wife, Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz

The heroine of Christmas at Pemberley is the overlooked middle Bennet sister, Mary. In the novel, Austen portrays Mary as drearily bookish, Mary seeks attention by forcing her mediocre piano playing on hapless attendees at neighbourhood parties. The authors of the new play rightly realized that Mary’s love of reading and music has a positive side. She wants more from life than her sisters. When the family gathers at Pemberley this Christmas, Mary meets her soul mate, Darcy’s equally bookish cousin. It doesn’t hurt that the cousin is handsome and rich.

But romantic complications and misunderstandings ensue. Most of them are initiated by Lydia, the selfish youngest Bennet sister who’d foolishly eloped with the scoundrel Wickham. Their hasty marriage has fallen apart and Lydia wants the rich cousin for herself.

I won’t give away the rest of the plot, except to say that when Jane, the perpetually sunny oldest Bennet sister sympathizes with Lydia and treats her with kindness, Lydia changes. For me, this was the most surprising character development in the play. Who knew Lydia had it in her?

The five Bennet sisters

In the play, I also liked the guy friendship between Darcy and Jane’s sunny husband, Bingley. After the men discuss the problems between Mary and the cousin, they agree they must do something to help. Darcy and Bingley jump to their feet and say, “Let’s go to the sisters,” instantly recognizing that relationship repair isn’t guy territory.

Colin Firth, my favourite screen Darcy, with Bingley

Calgary Playwright Eugene Stickland has said that writing a Christmas play is a practical move for writers because theatre companies across the country look for ones to produce every year. A good play for the season results in repeated royalties for the author.

This has got me thinking about Kitty, Bennet sister # 4 and the most overlooked sister of all. Austen portrays her in the novel as no more than Lydia’s sidekick, lacking the pizazz of her younger sister. Kitty is absent the play’s Christmas shenanigans, merely referred to as spending the holidays in London. This makes Kitty almost a blank slate for a modern writer. If Lydia can change, why not Kitty?

My Austen-inspired play would focus on Kitty emerging from the shadows of her colourful sisters and growing into her own person. Set at Christmastime, somewhere in Austen-land. Kitty will need a suitor who’s right for her, perhaps a man who has also been overlooked. Plenty of complications and misunderstandings along the way will lead them to true romance. A winning Jane Austen Christmas.

For those who missed my November 12th BWL BlogSpot, here’s a repeat.

The Challenges of Updating My Novel for a Second Edition

Click this link for author, book and purchase information

This month BWL published a new edition of my first novel, Deadly Fall. BWL chose to title the book, A Deadly Fall, in part to distinguish the new release from the original. I have long wanted to update Deadly Fall, to bring the time frame in line with the sequel, Ten Days in Summer. Deadly Fall was set in 2004. Due to the years it took me to find BWL, Ten Days in Summer wasn’t published until 2017. I asked BWL publisher Jude Pittman if I should make the sequel’s story contemporary and Paula, my protagonist, thirteen years older? Or set the sequel in 2005, making it almost historical? Jude advised me to set Ten Days in Summer in 2017, but pretend it was taking place ten months after the original Deadly Fall.

“No one will notice,” she said.

Jude was right. Nobody who has read both books has questioned me about Paula and the world’s peculiar aging. I wish I could be lucky enough to age like Paula.

For the original Deadly Fall, I was specific about the story year and referred to events of the day, such as the Iraqi hostage crisis and the jail sentencing of household guru, Martha Stewart. I even kept my local newspapers to make sure the story weather matched that of my real-life story setting, Calgary, Alberta. This was a mistake, I realized later, since Calgary enjoyed an unusual period of mild weather those September weeks in 2004. Calgary’s typical fall swings between warm and freezing, sunshine and snow, would have added interest to the story.

Since I didn’t want to radically change the second edition, I kept the mild weather from the original and found that it fit a story theme. A Deadly Fall ends with a forecast of a radical weather change, which symbolizes the changes to Paula’s life ahead as a result of the murder. I had to update the news references for the 2016 story, but tried to keep them more general. Syrian refuges arrived in Canada that summer, which they did in other years.

As I worked through my revision of 2004 Deadly Fall, I realized how much the world changed in those twelve years. Paula, like me, was a little old-fashioned regarding modern technology. But in 2016, her answering machine with a tape-recorded message had to go or she’d be totally out of date. She did keep her land line phone and daily newspaper delivery, although the Calgary newspaper she receives dropped its Sunday edition sometime between 2004 and 2016. This newspaper also abandoned its ‘Community’ section, but its re branded ‘You’ section works for Felix, a secondary character who writes a weekly column.

In 2016, the television program Cheers didn’t appear in afternoon reruns. I changed this to Modern Family. The Canadian penny disappeared from monetary circulation. Paula no longer has a flip-open cell phone. She watches Blu-rays and Isabelle, a secondary character, works in a music store, not a video store.

I had to change numerous cultural and personal references for Paula, who is now born twelve years later than she was in the original book. Paula used to be a baby boomer, with typical attitudes of a child of the sixties. Now she’s born in 1964, past the boomer wave, with different memories of music and world events that shaped her life.

The new release also allowed me to correct small mistakes that slipped past my first publisher’s proof-reader. Missing words like ‘a’ or ‘the’ and absent punctuation marks; the word pate that should have been plate and reign vs rein.

But my most critical editing task was fixing formatting errors caused by converting the PDF file of the published Deadly Fall to a workable WORD document. The conversion resulted in some odd fonts. Acronyms like TV, DVD, ID, BC and SUV appeared in lower case. Hyphenated words at the end of a line left out the hyphen. The WORD document omitted scene breaks and italics and often broke lines mid-sentence, or didn’t start a line of dialogue on a new line.

I poured through the document with eagle eyes and had my husband do a final proof-read. After he caught my archaic penny reference, I had my character flip a quarter instead. Between us, I hope we caught everything and helped BWL produce a better book for new readers to my Paula Savard mystery series.

For those who missed my Oct 12 post on the BWL website, here it is:

Setting a novel in Canada – or not?

Does setting a novel in Canada limit your readership to Canadians? Over the years, I’ve heard this question at Canadian writing conferences and gatherings of aspiring writers I’ve attended. Invariably, someone comments that he sent a query to an agent or publisher in the USA and was told Canadian stories don’t sell. The implication is that Canada holds little interest for readers outside our country.

Even Canadians might prefer reading about other places. I’ve been guilty of this, especially when I travel and want to learn about the country I’m visiting. A novel set in my destination gives me a flavour for the place and its history better than a guidebook.

I also recall hearing that a common feature of blockbuster novels is a variety of international settings. Author Dan Brown nailed that formula.

But others argue that Canada might be exotic to those who live far from here. They cite writers who have found great success with their stories set in Canadian locations. Louise Penny has a US publisher and an international audience for her mysteries that take place in a Quebec village. L.M. Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables is beloved across the world. Japanese tourists trek to modest Prince Edward Island to visit Anne sites.

Readers of Britain’s Rough Guide travel guidebooks and tours voted Canada the second most beautiful country in the world for 2019. Wouldn’t that mean they’d want to read about people in this beautiful land? If Anne and PEI can charm the world, why not my home province of Alberta?

Japanese movie poster

I went ahead and set my first novel, Deadly Fall, in Calgary, where I live. This made setting research easy.  My mystery sleuth Paula’s drives the route pictured below in the book’s opening chapter. I’ve driven and walked across this bridge numerous times.

Paula works out in a former church converted to a gym in Calgary’s inner city suburb Kensington. In the real world it’s a sporting goods store.

Book #2 of my Paula series, Ten Days in Summer, continued with my Calgary setting. This time Paula investigates a murder against a backdrop of The Calgary Stampede. My research included attending our annual Stampede parade.

I was really sneaking peeks at the police offers present, since Paula’s homicide contact, Mike Vincelli, is on crowd control duty during the parade scene in the book.

My third novel, To Catch a Fox, is a departure from my mystery series and single Canadian setting. Julie Fox, a Calgary engineer, must travel to a new location, to search for her mother who took off when Julie was a child and hasn’t been heard from since. I settled on southern California for the novel’s alternate location because it was far enough from Calgary for Julie’s mother to get lost in, yet convenient as well as enjoyable for me to visit twice to research.

Santa Monica beach – Julie jogs along this boardwalk

In some ways, I find it easier to write about less familiar settings since I’m seeing the place with new eyes and am more likely to come up with fresh descriptions.

At the San Diego zoo, bird of paradise plants are on the lookout, like Julie the pursuing and pursued fox

While I like writing about different places, I’m back to Calgary for my current novel-in-progress, the third book in my Paula series. I love travel but lean toward writing about places I know well and deeply.

And for those curious about the other countries that made the Rough Guide readers’ list of the world’s most beautiful countries for 2019, here they are:

1. Scotland
2. Canada
3. New Zealand
4. Italy
5. South Africa
6. Indonesia
7. England (UK regions were judged as countries)
8. Iceland
9. United States
10. Wales (Do the British love their country’s beauty best, or have not many travelled elsewhere?)

Calgary in winter – beautiful, eh?

In my BWL author blog this month, I asked What is Near History?

When my son was at university, he took a course in Canadian History. His final essay explored the 1968 federal election, which catapulted Pierre Trudeau to prime minister. I thought, this is history? It’s my life. I was a teenager at the time and vividly recall myself and much of country getting swept away by the charming, sexy intellectual who breathed fresh air into the political establishment.

Trudeaumania

Recently, I heard the term Near History, for events that happened during your own, your parents’ or your grandparents’ lifetime, depending on your age. Many loosely define the period to mid-twentieth century, but the time frame seems to be creeping closer to the present day. At a writing event I attended this spring, an author noted that his novels set in the 1970s were borderline historical. He joked this was good for sales, since historical fiction is a popular genre. A few weeks later, I saw a call for submissions for historical stories. The magazine defined this as anything happening before 1996.

Why 1996? I wondered, although this was an important year for me. I moved from Montreal to Calgary that year and my family got dial-up Internet. And the Net is probably why the magazine chose that cut-off year. The Internet changed the world. Even those of us who spent our younger years in pre-cyberspace can hardly imagine life without it.

What are the benefits and challenges for writers working in the relatively recent past? While most of my writing is contemporary, I’ve written a short story set in 1976 and attempted one set in the 1930s.

An obvious benefit of writing history you’ve lived or heard about from older relatives is that it requires less research. Many facts and emotions of the time are part of your consciousness. You’re more likely to get them right. Near history might even be easier to write than contemporary stories, since your heightened memories have had decades to gel and assume meaning. You’ll attract older readers looking for nostalgia and insight into the pivotal time of their youths. Younger readers might be interested to learn more about their parents’ and grandparents’ lives.

The challenge is to make the story fresh and relevant to readers today. There’s also a real risk that a reader who lived through the time will spot a mistake that will ruin their belief in your whole story. True, a historian or other expert might notice your error about Ancient Rome, but no living Roman will catch a detail or way of thinking or feeling that has been lost to time.

Although the benefits seem to outweigh the challenges, I’ll probably stick with writing contemporary fiction, for the most part. One the other hand, I’m writing my current novel-in-progress with chapters alternating between 2020 and 1990. By some people’s reckoning, 1990 is history.

Pierre Trudeau slides down a bannister @1968