The Bloody Words mystery conference got off to a different start for me. Before I left Calgary for Toronto, I received an e-mail from Patricia Gouthro, a professor at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. Patricia asked if she could interview me as part of a research study exploring the connections between lifelong learning, citizenship and the craft of fiction writing. Her hope was that this research would point out the benefits and examine ways of supporting emerging and established Canadian writers.

Patricia noted I would be attending the conference. I assume she got my name from the list of Bloody Words “usual suspects” attendees posted on the Crime Writers of Canada website.  Since she would also be at the conference, we agreed to meet Friday morning, before events began.  She sent me information about her research as well as questions she would ask. Basically, these related to my writing history, a subject I’ve spoken on a lot this past year.

We met in Patricia’s suite at the Toronto Downtown Hilton, where the Bloody Words conference was held. Patricia taped the interview and said she would send me a transcript later. I gave her permission to quote me by name. However, if I discover I said anything I don’t want attributed to me, I can ask her to quote me anonymously.

The interview took until lunch time. I looked outside the Hilton front doors, saw it was pouring rain and decided to explore Toronto’s underground city. I followed the tunnels to the Eaton Centre and ate at the food court, the site of a shooting the following day. Welcome to life in the big city. And yet, I felt comfortable walking alone through downtown Toronto that night due to all the people out.

After lunch, I attended the conference’s first workshop of the weekend: How to Schmooze Like a Pro. Melodie Campbell gave us tips on using small talk to make others feel comfortable, how to dress for success and table etiquette. One piece of advice I applied right after the session related to business cards recieved: write something distinguishing about the person and the event attended on the back. This avoids the common problem of later looking at a mass of collected cards and thinking, “Who was that?”

The Schmoozing workshop was followed by the Crime Writers of Canada Annual General Meeting. I hadn’t attended their AGM before and found it a good way to put faces to the names of the organization’s movers and shakers. I learned the current membership is 340 people and next year there will be a new Arthur Ellis Awards category, for best crime novella (8,000-12,000 words). I recently drafted a mainstream short story of this length. Is there a way to insert a crime?

Since the rain let up during the AGM, I walked the ten minutes to the apartment I was renting near the Eaton Centre. After some down time, I returned for the Meet and Greet and evening sessions. Through the weekend, there was a choice of three sessions in every hour time slot. My first option was How to Make an E-book. This is virgin territory for me, so I learned a lot. The panelists inspired me to try out the process – some day – by setting up one of my published short stories for sale on Amazon or Smashwords (the two basic systems).  They recommended starting with a short story, as a learning tool. With so few reprint markets for my published stories, what do I have to lose?

My panel, called Finally a Bride, followed. Four of us talked to a full room about our experiences of finding a publisher for our first novels and weathering the rejection process.  To fit the theme, our table was decorated with paper wedding cakes and bouquets, which we tossed to the audience at the end.

I could have stayed for a third session as well as a play reading that went on into the night, but I didn’t want to tire myself for the next day packed with sessions and an evening banquet. I went back to the apartment for a rest and awoke the next morning, raring to continue.

Here I am surfacing after almost a month away in Ontario, New Brunswick and Maine. I took my laptop on this trip and thought I might blog occasionally while away. Not surprisingly, I found no opportunity or inclination to blog – or do any other kind of writing.

The Toronto portion of the trip was part Deadly Fall business. I attended the Bloody Words Mystery Writing Conference and did talks at three branches of the Toronto Public Library and at the public library in Beeton, an hour north of Toronto.

My first talk was at a Scarborough branch, near the home of my sister- and brother-in-law, with whom I spent the first two days.  Bernice, Bill and my husband, Will, came to the talk. Their presence, along with the librarian’s, swelled the attendance to nine. As we waited for people to trickle in, the early-bird attendee asked a question. The next arrival picked up the thread; so did the next and next one. I answered questions for over an hour and never got around to my speech, although the questions more or less touched on my prepared material.

The next day was Beeton. As it happened, a street fair was going on that Saturday afternoon; the library on the main street was located smack in the middle of the fair.  Outside the library entrance, the librarians set up an attractive poster announcing the event.

I hoped for a sudden downpour at 2:00 PM to drive people in; there wasn’t much chance  of that given the clear blue sky. Still, the event drew a dozen people who enjoyed a generous snack of grapes, cookies and tea.

This time I went through my speech, followed by questions. Will thought this worked better than the previous day’s straight Q & A approach.

I spent the night at the home of Catherine Jackson, a high school acquaintance I reconnected with on facebook. Many thanks to Catherine and her husband, David, for their terrific hospitality in their historic home, for inviting other Lachine High alumni over, for setting up the speaking event, putting up posters and getting Deadly Fall into their local library.

After a few days of relaxing with friends Kitchener, I spoke at the TPL Avenue branch.  I began by asking the attendees if they were there as mainly readers or writers. Three said they were writing, so I tailored the presentation toward writing. A couple of them madly took notes.

The last presenation took place two days later at the Pape/Danforth branch. Will and I began the day with a walk from our downtown accommodation to the largely Greek neighbourhood, where we met our sons for lunch at a pizza restaurant. The Pape-Danforth afternoon “Tea and Murder” gathering is a monthly event, although the librarian told me afterwards that my appearance drew a number of outsiders. In contrast to the previous talks, people were lined up to get in. The packed room pumped me up and ended the four sessions on a high note.

The following day, the conference began. I was glad to shift from the role of speaker to simple attendee. More about the conference in the next blog post.

May is National Crime Writing Month. Who knew? CBC Canada Writes is posting daily, short writing tips by Canadian crime writers, including Giles Blunt, Debra Purdy Kong, Joy Fielding and Louise Penny.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a long short story and finished it Monday. Long short story seems a contradictory descriptor – like jumbo shrimp. My story is around 13,000 words – half way to novella length and five or six times longer than the average short story published today.

Not that there is an average. Markets range from postcards-size to, in theory, unlimited until the story is clearly a novella or would take up too many pages in the magazine.

In my first creative writing workshop some twenty years ago, the instructor asked us to hand in stories of around 5,000 words; he said that anything less than that wouldn’t have enough meat. This primed me to write short stories around that size until I discovered how hard they were to get published. I reduced my typical story length to a more marketable 3,000 words, which is still way too high, today, for many appealing markets and contests, such as the CBC Literary Awards

Why this short story shrinkage? I think the reason is practical. Most short stories are published by literary magazines, which recieve tons of worthy submissions. Who can blame them for preferring to allocate x number of pages to 3,4,5,6 writers than xxxx number to a single one?

So, what will I do with my jumbo shrimp? For starters, put it aside. Then, revise and see if anyone wants to publish the whole creature or parts of it that might stand alone. This story’s been rumbling around in my head for the past three years; it feels good to get it out of there and onto the page. And now, with my published short story credits, I have enough material to start thinking of a story collection.

Personal deadlines work for me.  They prompt me to get started on my writing project so I have a chance of reaching my goal and keep me going as I approach the deadline.

In early January, I began the second draft of my novel-in-progress. My deadline was the end of February, when I planned to leave on a one week beach vacation.

I knew that with reasonable effort during that block of seven weeks I could reach the mid-point of the book. Since I like to stop at turning points, should I set the work aside in the middle or move forward? The latter, I decided, as the chapters rolled along. The more I could do before my break, the less to tackle later.

I worked on the novel almost every day. After all, it was winter and, while a mild one for Calgary, not ideal weather for playing outside.  How do people write if they live in a continuously beautiful climate? At a certain point, I realized it might be possible to finish the draft before the trip. I pushed myself harder and made it.

It felt good to be on holiday with draft #2 under my belt and relaxing to come back and not have to plunge right into writing. My tasks until the next deadline – late May – are to get manuscripts of draft #2 to my trusted readers, process their numerous comments, make minor amendments to the draft, do research for the novel, submit some short stories and poems to markets and, I hope, write a short story I’ve been mulling for several years. If there’s time leftover, I’ll start revising another novel-in-progress I set aside a couple of years ago.

These goals are less singular and focussed than completing a novel draft. I can see it will be tempting to slack off during Calgary’s spring, which already feels like it’s here.

Happy daylight savings time.

Last week, I spent a fascinating afternoon and evening at the University of Calgary, speaking to students in the English department. Instructor Margaret Hadley included Deadly Fall in the course syllabus for her two Detective Fiction courses this term.  What a thrill it was to see my novel listed with stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle,  Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammet, Georges Simenon and Raymond Chandler.  Hadley introduced Deadly Fall as an example of what modern authors are doing with the genre. She invited me in to talk with the class about the novel as well as my writing, since her students have the option to write a mystery short story as their major course requirement.

I began each session by describing my writing trajectory and must admit I was nervous facing the first group of 50 students who were mostly under age thirty, not my usual demographic. By the second group of 50, I was more relaxed. The students followed my opening by firing off questions that were interesting, intelligent and somewhat different from ones I’m used to.  Some had an academic slant: “What do you think Deadly Fall contributes to the genre?” Others simply surprised me: “Why do the swear words only start half way through the book?” They do?

I wrapped up the sessions with some writing tips and sympathized with their course assignment, as I’ve never written a successful mystery short story. How do you manage the surprises and twists with so few characters and little space to conceal clues?

I wish all of the students the best luck in the Detective Fiction course and in their academic careers. I’m so glad I had the chance to meet with this younger generation and hear their comments about Deadly Fall. If nothing else, I hope my appearance showed them that writers aren’t all dead white guys from other places. They can be ordinary people living in your own home town – your mom or neighbour or some day, perhaps, you.

On Saturday, I spoke to the Alberta Romance Writers Association about short story writing. To prepare, I took out a couple of books on the subject from the library and learned a few things.

Apparently, as late as the 1950s you could earn a good living as a commercial short story writer. Magazines like Redbook and Good Housekeeping published five or six short stories per issue and paid well. Now, they publish one, if any.  Other short story markets have also dried up during this time frame.  Two magazines that published my work within the past ten years are gone (Storyteller and Green’s). The cause of this demise is probably TV.  Today, people would rather turn on a drama or comedy than spend a relaxing evening reading magazine fiction. In contrast, literary fiction still flourishes thanks to journals produced by universities and literary groups. These magazines tend to pay poorly and are rarely read outside of the literary community.

If there’s little money in them and relatively few readers, why do people still write short stories? I came up with eight reasons. The class added two more.

1. If you take a creative writing course, you’ll be encouraged/required to write one. During the length of a six-to-fourteen week course it’s possible to write a short story, have it critiqued by the class in an evening and revise it for submission. Novels, in contrast, are difficult to critique in a course, since you can’t cover the whole work.
2. You like reading short stories. It’s always best to write what we read. You can have a fine writing career as a literary short fiction writer – and a spectacular career if you reach the top like Alice Munro.
3. Short stories and novels employ the same fiction techniques – character, plot, theme, setting …  By writing short fiction, you learn these elments and how to complete a story without getting bogged down for years working on a novel.
4. You can try out genres, types of characters etc. in a short story that you don’t want to tackle in a larger work. This can stretch you as a writer.
5. Characters, setting, plot, themes you’re comfortable with in a short story might morph into novel material.
6. You can get a story written and published in a much shorter time than it would take you to do the same with a novel. Publication feels good and validates you as a writer.
7. Short story credits create a track record that will help you get into writing programs and, when you submit your novel, will encourage publishers to look at it more seriously.
8. Short stories often translate better into screenplays than novels, where much material must be cut. There’s more money in film than in publishing any kind of fiction.
9. A short story track record can lead to gigs like teaching and speaking to the Alberta Romance Writers Association.
10. When you’ve written enough short stories you can collect them into a book of short stories –  that few people will read.

A comment by a member at Saturday’s session made me wonder if short stories are poised for a revival. Harlequin publishers has a call for short stories (upwards of 7,000 words) that they will sell in digital form with books they release. Likewise, anyone can sell a digital story on sites like Amazon or Smashwords. People who like a particular author or, in the case of Harlequin a particular type of book, might be willing to add 99 cents to their order for a story to read when they’re looking for something … ah … short.