Tag Archives: #amwritingfiction

Ageism in Writing

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Some years ago, I read an award-winning novel about intergenerational family relationships. Every character in the story over age fifty was physically or mentally decrepit, and often both. The author was in her thirties. This was a comic novel and I realized she was exaggerating the characters for laughs. As an official senior citizen, I didn’t find it funny.

Physical and mental problems do tend to creep in with age. Aching joints, dementia, type two diabetes, high blood pressure, clogged arteries, and a host of cancers strike seniors in large numbers. I know several seventy-year-olds who have broken bones from a simple fall. In their youths, they’d have escaped with a scratch, which healed quickly. I find recovery from injuries and medical procedures takes longer now and my body parts don’t always return to their former normal. “You’re only as old as you feel” would be nice, but it isn’t quite true. Portraying seniors as no different from fit twenty-somethings only works in science fiction and fantasy — my fantasy, in particular.

But I also have many friends over age seventy-five who regularly spend full days hiking up steep hills, over rocky and rooted terrain. And don’t try to put something over on my ninety-year-old uncle. He’s as sharp as most people decades younger, although he needs a wheelchair.

I think one trick for writing realistic older people is balance. For each character brought down by the trials of advanced age, show another senior in peak form. I wouldn’t have minded that award-winning humour novel as much if one character over fifty, and preferably over seventy or eighty or ninety, climbed a mountain, clobbered a skilled opponent in chess, or published a successful humour book.

It’s not easy to avoid ageism in writing. A friend, who is a few years older than I am, once admonished me for having a character in her mid-fifties struggle to rise from sitting on the floor. I’d thought this was realistic, since most people in my seniors’ gym class hoist themselves up awkwardly from the mats. Kudos to my friend for being able to leap to her feet.      

Look closely at the photo at the top of this post to see a group of seniors hiking. They’re specs on the landscape.



Back to Work

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Yesterday I flew home from a trip to Minneapolis. On November 12th I leave for a three-week holiday in Mexico. This gives me a two-month window to write draft # 3 of my novel-in-progress. I have to complete this work to make the deadline for the novel’s scheduled release in September 2023. 
It’s a challenge for me to think of my writing as work, since I don’t come close to making a living from it. But I have to do this in order to finish a long project like a novel. Otherwise I’ll let other activities completely consume my time. I wrapped up the first draft of this novel in late May and have given the book little thought since then. A break of almost four months should be good for returning to the story with fresh eyes. I don’t regret my travels to Ireland and Ontario and warm summer days spent hiking, biking and hanging out with family and friends, when I could have been writing.        

Lake Erie beach with family and friends


While it’s hard to drag myself back to the computer, I know from numerous past experiences that once I start I’ll soon be into the writing groove again. This helps me avoid procrastination and plunge in, as I would into cold water. Once I’m swimming in the story, I’ll need to avoid distractions and limit them to important matters like family, friends, exercise, and volunteer work. Turning off my instant email notification will be essential. I’ve taken on a commitment to co-chair Calgary’s committee to host the Bouchercon mystery convention in 2026. It will be tempting to get sidetracked into concrete organizing tasks that can feel easier than pulling characters out of the air and resolving plot glitches.  
I did use my summer time for some research relevant to the novel. The first draft unexpectedly veered into areas outside my knowledge zone. One of these was the opioid crisis. Drug dealer killings appear frequently in current mystery novels, but I’d thought the subject wouldn’t interest me. I prefer to write about ordinary people who kill for personal, social, or psychological reasons; people who might be me or a friend driven by a particular situation. But people like this are the drug dealers in my novel-in-progress. They operate a low-key business out of a bicycle store. During the summer, I read two excellent books on Canada’s opioid crisis and now feel capable of handling the topic in a novel. 

Shopping for E-bikes inspired my novel’s storyline


This new book also gets more into police work than the first three novels in my Paula Savard Mystery Series because I made two police officers point of view narrators. This fall I hope to fit in a research visit to Calgary police headquarters and will look for a beta reader or consultant knowledgeable in police work, without letting this research distract me from writing. 
For my last two novels, I discovered a useful trick – those mornings that I wake up early, rather than lie in bed drifting in and out of consciousness, I force myself up, make coffee, turn on my computer, and write while the sun rises outside my window. I’m amazed by how much I can accomplish before the day’s usual activities get started.   
In short, I find the key to writing novels is to treat them like work. Don’t wait for mood and inspiration. Grab your time at your writing desk, sit down, and do it.   

Me not working this summer

New Life for Ten Days in Summer

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My publisher BWL was awarded funding under their CBF Accessible Audiobook application to produce a group of audiobooks. They’ve chosen my novel, Ten Days in Summer, to be one of the books. This is exciting new territory for my Paula Savard Mystery Series. BWL has found a narrator — Janice McNally. She’s from Ontario and has been to the Calgary Stampede, which forms the backdrop for the novel setting. Release is scheduled for early 2023. BWL says Janice’s voice sounds great. I look forward to hearing her 15 minute demo recording.

A Literary Tour of Ireland

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Irish writers were hot in in the 1960s and 70s. My university friends and I read Joyce, Yeats, and Beckett. My Fair Lady, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, was a hit musical movie. Oscar Wilde was and still is remembered as a larger-than-life character even though he died in 1900. I encountered these authors and more during my visit to Ireland in June.   
On our first day in Dublin, my husband Will and I wandered by the colourful statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square. 

Monuments near the rock depict Wilde’s numerous witticisms. “Always forgive your enemies: nothing annoys them so much.” 
A few blocks away, in St. Stephen’s Green, we met James Joyce. 

Jonathan Swift, author of the satire Gulliver’s Travels, was our third Dublin writer that day. Swift served as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was known for his controversial opinions. He’s buried in the cathedral along with a woman, Esther Johnson, with whom he shared a mysterious relationship. 
 Swift in St. Patrick’s Cathedral
The next day, we boarded our tour bus and drove around the island. Our guide mentioned several times that Ireland has four Nobel Prize Winners for Literature, a lot for a small country. They are William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Seamus Heaney, and Samuel Beckett, “who wrote the most boring play ever written,” she said about Waiting for Godot. We met Yeats in his home County Sligo on the northwest coast. 

I find Yeats’ 1919 poem, The Second Coming, written during the aftermath of WWI, sadly relevant today.                                             “The best lack all conviction, while the worst                                            Are full of passionate intensity.”
At the end of our trip, we returned to Dublin. Will and I went to MoLI (Museum of Literature Ireland), housed in the city’s former Catholic College, which James Joyce attended. Inside there’s a photo of Joyce and his fellow students sitting under this tree that still stands in the back garden. 

The museum includes past and present Irish writers, but the focus is James Joyce. A movie and wall panels portray the author’s life. 

A 3-d map of Dublin marks locations in Joyce’s short stories and novels. 

The first draft of Joyce’s most famous novel, Ulysses, is displayed, showing the author’s colour coding method.

And here’s the first copy of the first edition of Ulysses. 

In my youth, I enjoyed Joyce’s first two books, but didn’t tackle Ulysses because everyone said it was inaccessible.  After my trip, I skimmed the first fifty pages and can boast that I sometimes understood what was going on. I see on the MoLI website they offer an online book club this summer called Ulysses – for the rest of us! The fortnightly sessions promise to demystify the novel. I’m not quite up to the challenge this summer, but maybe next year.

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 increase the material. 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 add a new suspect to this longer story; a man who opposes the war. The victim and my heroine’s brother are injured veterans, who received an early discharge. 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. The the 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 https://bookswelove.net/authors/canadian-historical-mysteries-collection/

Bouchercon World Mystery Convention

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This winter Tourism Calgary sent me an email out-of-the-blue. They explained they were considering a  bid for the 2026 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention and wanted my help connecting with the Calgary writing community. The bid needed sufficient volunteer support to host this major convention. Tourism Calgary had done an internet search for local mystery writers and my name popped up in various places. They thought the convention could have numerous spinoff benefits for Calgary.  

I’d first heard about Bouchercon at Mystery Writers’ INK, a Calgary writing group I belonged to for many years. Members considered it the premiere mystery writing convention in North America. A couple of them attended Bouchercon 2007 in Anchorage, Alaska. They described their experience as a fun mix of learning, book promotion, and travel. Many Bouchercon regulars plan annual holidays around the convention. 

I was excited by the email and agreed to meet online with two Tourism Calgary contacts, and later with them and the Bouchercon administrator. I learned that Bouchercon is huge. Typically about 1,800 people attend. The majority are mystery fans, rather than writers. Bouchercon is usually held in the USA, although Toronto, Canada, has hosted three times and the U.K. twice. In London 1990, P.D. James was Guest of Honour. Nottingham England’s Lifetime Achievement Guest of Honour in 1995 was Ruth Rendell (not Robin Hood). Other Guests of Honour through the years have included Sara Paretsky, Ian Rankin, Harlan Coben, Laura Lippman, James Patterson, Michael Connolly, Anne Perry, Karin Slaughter, Anthony Horowitz — enough name dropping. 

In October 2017, I attended Bouchercon Toronto. Louise Penny was Canadian Guest of Honour. (Each Boucherson has about a half dozen Guests of various descriptions). I moderated a panel on Noir Mystery Novels to a large audience (scary, both the moderator role and the subject matter). Each convention produces a short story anthology, with the proceeds going to a charity. A highlight for me was my story’s acceptance in Passport to Murder, Bouchercon Anthology 2017. This earned me a seat at the author signing table.  

The Bouchercon administrator told us their organization provides a wealth of support and experience for host cities, but, in addition, Calgary would require a strong Local Organizing Committee. I provided Tourism Calgary with names of people and local groups to contact, including BWL. Our publisher, Jude Pittman, was instantly on board and will be part of the committee. Tourism Calgary sent a survey to local writers and organizations and the enthusiastic response exceeded everyone’s expectations. Calgary is called the volunteer capital of Canada for good reason. The Calgary Public Library, Calgary Wordfest, and the University of Calgary expressed interest in playing roles.   

Tourism Calgary is now preparing a formal bid to host the convention in 2026. In June the Bouchercon administrator will fly to Calgary to assess the city’s hotel and convention capacity. If it meets the criteria, I’m told Calgary stands a great chance of winning the bid when the Bouchercon board votes this summer. 

Since I’ve been with them from the start, Tourism Calgary asked me to chair the Local Organizing Committee. After some angst, I agreed to co-chair with Calgary author Pamela McDowell, my friend for 25 years. Pam and I will be busy, but it will be fun to work together on this big project. 

Looks like Calgary mystery writers and readers are in for exciting years ahead. Stay tuned.     

Bouchercon 2017 was an opportunity to visit Toronto in the fall