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The Fox is Launched
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View from the back 
- Filled rows at “The Nest”
- I talk about my research holiday to Southern California.
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- Judith, the Owl’s Nest Bookstore manager, does the introductions.
Many thanks to the 75-80 family, friends and visitors, who came out to my book launch last night. I really appreciated seeing your faces in the audience.
Never Say Never
For those who missed my monthly author blog post on the BWL website, here it is:
Twenty-five years ago, I finished my first novel manuscript. While I often have trouble coming up with titles, this title, To Catch a Fox, appeared on the first page. It came from a mystery novel, The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie. Toward the end of the book, Detective Hercule Poirot compares the killer’s act of framing someone else for the crime to a fox hunt. “The cruelty that condemned an innocent man to a living death. To catch a fox and put him in a box and never let him go.” My protagonist, Julie Fox, was a woman chased and trapped by a former boyfriend and her own demons.
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| The Fox Hunt by Alexandre-Francois Desportes |
I worked on To Catch a Fox for six years, in the midst of moving from Montreal to Calgary and raising a family. When the manuscript didn’t find a publisher, I tucked it away the drawer. It was my practice-novel, I told myself, my learning-to-write process. I was certain the Fox was put to rest for good and was okay with this, I thought.
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| The red fox is the main quarry in European and American fox hunts – Julie Fox has long, red hair |
I turned my attention to short stories, which require less time to complete than a novel, with the goal of getting something published for my efforts. The plan worked, although the publishing part took longer than I’d expected. About once a year, I’d get a story accepted by a magazine or anthology or, in one case, for a radio broadcast, the news often arriving at a point when I felt discouraged about writing. In addition to the encouragement and growing publishing resume, I found the short stories useful for experimenting with writing styles. My first attempt at suspense was a short story about a woman on the run to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
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| I wrote my suspense story, Zona Romantica, during a holiday in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico |
Another short story, Adjusting the Ashes, inspired my mystery series sleuth, Paula Savard. Like Paula, Ashes heroine, Carol, is an insurance adjuster with two grown up daughters, a broken marriage, and a longing for excitement. In her story, Carol investigates an insurance claim in the Calgary neighbourhood of Ramsay, where Paula lives. Adjusting the Ashes segued into my next writing phase, murder mystery novels. I wrote my first Paula novel, Deadly Fall, revised it, and sent queries to publishers and agents. A few bites, but what do I write while waiting for a publishing contract?
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| Insurance adjusters investigate claims, some of which are suspicious |
Out of the blue, a fresh concept for To Catch a Fox leapt from my subconscious mind. Same title, same protagonist Julie Fox, same quest – to search for her mother. But almost everything else changed. The new story would have a suspense structure, with five viewpoint characters. None of the supporting cast appeared in the original version. Rather than Vancouver and Oregon settings, this story would take place in Calgary and California. Julie no longer travelled alone; she’d have a sidekick, her stepsister with whom she has prickly relationship. The plot and what Julie discovers in the end would be totally different.
Who knew the Fox buried in the drawer still had life? If you’d have told me fifteen years ago that To Catch a Fox would be published this year, I’d have said, “Impossible!” Strangely, I feel the title suits the new version better than original, since darker demons and characters now ruthlessly pursue Julie. You’d almost think it was meant to be.
It shows that you can never say never in writing, as in life.
Three Days to Book Launch
Many thanks to journalist Eric Volmers for this feature on To Catch a Fox in today’s Calgary Herald newspaper.
One Week to Launch Day
One week from today, Tuesday, March 26h, I’ll be launching To Catch a Fox at Owl’s Nest Bookstore. My presentation will feature slides from my two holidays in Southern California to research settings for the novel. Everyone welcome!
Two Weeks to Launch Day
In Conversation with Randy Luckie
In my interview with Randy Luckie, we talk about a wide range of writing subjects including my new novel, my mystery series, short stories, getting published, Stephen King, and murder by bee sting.
As an aside to the interview, I have stalked Stephen King’s home in Bangor, Maine, a couple of times. I grew up in Montreal and every summer my family drove through Maine to my grandparents’ home in New Brunswick, Canada. Our route went through Bangor, where we sometimes spent the night. When I was older, I continued to make the trek with my husband every couple of years.
When we learned that Stephen King lived in Bangor, on one of those drives we stopped at a local bookstore to ask where the author lived. The store owner didn’t hesitate to give us directions to the house. I believe the owner talked about seeing King often at his sons’ baseball games.
During subsequent trips through Maine to New Brunswick, we made at least one more detour to King’s house. I found it suitably ominous-looking for the master of horror.
I was also impressed that one of North America’s most successful authors made his home in down-home Bangor.
My Top Five Reasons to Host a Book Launch
For those who missed my regular post on my publisher’s website last month, here it is:
Last fall a writer friend asked me, “Is it worthwhile having a book launch?”
I immediately answered, “Yes.” I’d hosted launches for my first two novels and planned to have one for my third release, To Catch a Fox. But my friend’s question prompted me to ask myself: what is the value of a bookstore launch in this age of e-books and online sales?
So here are my Top Five reasons for hosting a book launch.
1. It is a gracious way to tell people about my new novel. Instead of sending an email notice and link to a sales site, I am inviting them to a launch party. Some will feel pleased that I included them in my special event. Most won’t come to the launch, but they’ll have enough details to buy the book online or at their favourite book store, without my asking them to do it.
I’d suggest inviting everyone in your circle of acquaintanceship. For my first launch, I asked people in my gym class I’d barely spoken to before.
“You’re a writer?” some said, intrigued.
It started conversations and closer connections because I’d shared something personal about myself.
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| For my last book launch I designed an invitation postcard, but economized by printing invitations at my library |
2. If you invite people, many will come. My first book launch drew close to 100 people, my second about 85. Both times, they packed the bookstore and a fair number bought copies of the book. Admittedly my two novels were long awaited releases. I’d worked on the first book for years before finishing it and finding a publisher; the second wasn’t published until 6 years later. Now with only a two year gap between my second and third launches, I don’t expect friends and relatives to feel as strong a need to come out and support me. But I’m hoping that newer friends and–dare I say it–fans will make up for some attrition.
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| Don’t forget the food and drink for your guests |
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The crowd gathers |
3. Local media is more inclined to focus on an event the public can attend than on a book release. The entertainment editor of my Calgary Herald newspaper profiles an author most weeks. When he chooses a local writer, it’s almost always someone with an upcoming book launch or major reading. He schedules the piece for the week leading up to the event. Other local print media, radio and television might be similarly event-focused. It’s hard to get your books into any media, but a launch gives you a better chance. Independent bookstores also focus on events to draw customers and are likely to display your books and the launch announcement in their store windows during the week leading up to the launch.
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4. You might make your newspaper’s local bestsellers’ list. The Calgary Herald, my daily newspaper, publishes a local bestsellers’ list in its Saturday edition. The tiny print at the bottom states the list is complied by information provided by the Calgary’s 2-3 independent book stores. Sales at these stores are so low that any book that sells decently at a launch is almost guaranteed a spot on the list. Many newspaper readers look at the list for ideas of what to read. I know that other city newspapers have this feature. It’s worth checking out.
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| Calgary Herald Bestserllers’ List 2 weeks after my last launch & profile the weekend before the launch |
5. And lastly, a launch is a celebration. You’ve worked hard on this book and deserve a party with family, friends and your devoted readers. Many venues are free or inexpensive. Food and drink might set you back $50-75, but aren’t you, your book and your supporters worth it!
February is Psychology Month Leaves us With Questions
I wrap up February Psychology Month with a look at evolution and Anxiety/Depression: two sides of the same coin?
In the 1950s and 60s, anxiety was the most commonly diagnosed mood disorder in North America. People talked of the Age of Anxiety; The Rolling Stones sang about Mother’s Little Helper, a reference to a tranquilizer commonly prescribed to housewives.
Starting in the 1970s, anxiety became eclipsed by depression. Today, prescriptions for anxiety are dwarfed by antidepressants, the most prescribed medication of our times.
Why this change? ask Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield, authors of All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry’s Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders.
And, furthermore, where is the line between natural anxiety and a disorder?
Their answers to this last question come from an evolutionary perspective. In the primitive world, where dangers were ever-present, anxious vigilance made sense. Fear of strangers, status fears like making a public fool of oneself, fears of snakes, rodents and heights increased your chances of evading disaster. Better to over-react every time, than to relax once and die. Those anxious genes of survivors were passed on to their modern descendants.
In today’s world, strangers rarely present a threat; if one group of friends hate you, you can find another group; city dwellers are unlikely to encounter snakes and in northern climates snakes usually aren’t poisonous. Yet such fears are bred into us and can seriously impact our lives. Fear of flying is a common anxiety because it combines several archetypal fears – enclosed spaces, heights, loss of control. It wasn’t clear to me at what point the authors felt these fears should be treated by medicine or therapy, but they got across their view that these anxieties are rooted in human nature. It made me feel less odd about freaking at the sight of a mouse.
The authors’ first question reminded me of a movie — I believe it
was Starting Over (1979) — where a person had a panic attack at a large gathering of women and a character asked, “Does anyone have a valium?” Every woman reached for her purse. Valium was that decade’s most prescribed anti-anxiety medication, although by 1979 anxiety was already losing ground to depression.
People didn’t change in the 70s and 80s, Horwitz and Wakefield say, becoming less anxious and more depressed. Anxiety and depression have many overlapping symptoms. Sufferers often shift between symptoms of each that could arguably be treated as a single illness. What changed was the diagnosis. This happened for a convergence of reasons.
The anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 70s heightened the psychiatric profession’s inferiority complex (my words) relative to other medical specialties. Psychiatrists wanted to be viewed as scientific and, well, medical. They accomplished this by changing the focus of the 1979 DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) away from unproven causes to symptoms, which could be clearly specified.
Major depression has always been recognized as a serious illness, one that might require hospitalization like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Around this time, insurance companies were increasingly covering drugs that patients used to pay for on their own. The insurers wanted proof that applicants required treatment for medical reasons. The DSM III defined depression as a mental disorder, with simple qualifications – two weeks duration and general symptoms that might be mild, moderate or severe. The manual eliminated general anxiety as a disorder, requiring the anxiety be specific (ie. Social Phobia, Fear of Flying) and that it continue for long periods of time, sometimes years. Diagnoses for general malaise quickly shifted to depression so patients could receive insurance payments.
In addition, by the late 1970s, anti-anxiety medications were getting a bad rap, due to claims of their addictive qualities. In the 80s, when the giant pharmaceutical companies developed Prozac and other new types of drugs, they marketed them as antidepressants, although they might as accurately have marketed them for anxiety. In fact, some of those medications have since been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for specific anxiety disorders. In 1999 the FDA approved Paxil for Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and Zoloft for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Horwitz and Wakefield predict more approvals will follow, breathing new life — and profits — into the tired antidepressants.
- Huffington Post Poll
They also predict a shift in diagnoses from depression back to anxiety. They note that the same sort of attacks that happened to the anti-anxiety medications in the 1970s are now happening to the antidepressants, “with questions about their effectiveness, side effects, potential addictiveness and safety.” In addition, the patents for the antidepressants will soon start running out, resulting in lower profits for the pharmaceutical companies. This should prompt them to develop newer drugs to treat newly-defined disorders.
The authors add that, “The diagnosis of depression is no longer as useful to psychiatry as it was over the past quarter-century. The profession’s scientific credibility is now far greater than it was in the 1970s, its diagnostic system is generally regarded as reliable, and its biological models are widely accepted.” As a result, they expect psychiatrists to be more willing to diagnose anxiety. It will be treated by the pharmaceuticals’ new type of medication marketed to treat anxiety, now acceptable to insurers as a genuine disorder.
I would add that anxiety is becoming more socially acceptable. It used to seen as a women’s problem; now men are admitting to having it.
One month to lift off!
One month to go until my book launch for To Catch a Fox.
Four weeks exactly until the date — March 26th.
It’s starting to feel real.
Hope to see you there!