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

Here’s my blog post from earlier this month, published this month on the BWL website.

How to Get Rich from Writing

1. Write a book series in a popular genre, with appealing characters and plot.

2. Set the books in a place people love to visit.

3. Sell the series to a TV producer with a budget to film exteriors at your story locations.

When my husband Will and I travelled to Scotland last year, we were amazed by the number of ‘Outlander’ bus tours. These  3, 7 and 10 day bus excursions focused on sights associated with the time travel book series by Diana Gabaldon, set during the Jacobite risings in the 17th and 18 centuries. History, romance, mystery, adventure, science fiction, Outlander has it all. The tours stop at locations mentioned in the books or used for filming. I don’t know if Gabaldon makes money directly from the tours, but they help fuel her fans’ enthusiasm for the novels and the television programs that earn her royalties and gain her new readers. In Scotland we met a man taking an Outlander tour solely for the history. We teased him about being stuck in a bus with obsessive fans, most of them women in love with stories’ elusive hero, Jamie Fraser.

Eilean Donan castle, at the bridge to the Isle of Skye, played a role in the highlanders’ rebellion

Will and I opted for a less expensive tour through the highlands to the island of Skye. Our guide occasionally referred to the Outlander books and commented that they did a good job of portraying the feelings of the Scottish people of the time. This spring Will and I travelled farther south in Europe, to Sicily. While planning the trip, we searched the Calgary library for movies featuring Sicily and stumbled upon the Montalbano mystery series, based on the books by Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri. We started watching the DVDs and enjoyed the stories, their glimpses into Sicilian life, the scenery, and the characters — loyal Fazio, Mimi the womanizer, comical Caterella and chief detective Salvo Montalbano, an intelligent, honest, determined man with commitment issues and a love of good local food.

Will playing Montalbano in Scicli

When we arrived in the Sicilian city of Siracusa in April, we were surprised to find tour companies offering day trips to Montalbano film sites a couple of hours away. Since we were later renting a car and planned to drive through this part of the island we thought, let’s visit them if we have the time. Brochures for Montalbano tours in subsequent cities made us more eager to fit the sites into our schedule.

Our first ‘Montalbano’ stop was Porto Empedocle, birthplace of author Andrea Camilleri and inspiration for Vigata, the fictional town in his detective series. In 2003 the city officially changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigata to attract tourists, but reversed the decision a few years later, perhaps because the ploy didn’t work or residents objected to the commercialism.

Porto Empedocle

Montalbano’s house in Punta Secca

The next day, we drove to the seaside village of Punta Secca, the location of the fictional detective’s home. This was May 1st, a sunny, warm Labour Day holiday in Italy, and it was hard to find parking. We followed the lighthouse landmark that appears in all the TV shows to Montalbano’s house, in real life a bed and breakfast hotel. Crowds gathered in the adjacent square, everyone taking photos of themselves in front of Salvo’s home. We walked along the beach, where he swims each morning, alone, except when he comes across a dead body or a crime being committed.

Montalbano’s beach, with his home and the landmark lighthouse in the distance

The Vigata police station scenes are filmed in nearby Scicli. Will and I arrived at the town’s main square to find a notice for tours of the ‘Vigata’ police station. Since we were the only English speakers interested at the time, we got a private tour. The guide told us this was Scicli’s actual police station until 2013, when the TV producers bought the locale for a permanent set to avoid having to rearrange items each time they filmed. No doubt everyone involved in the Montalbano series gets a share of the money collected from the tours that pass through the fictional station each day.

Me and Will behind Montalbano’s desk in the ‘Vigata’ police station

We spent the night in Ragusa Ibla. This hilly city and region is the location for all the other Montalbano show exteriors. On the main street, we passed a seafood restaurant announcing that ‘Salvo Montalbano’ eats here. That is, they claimed that Luca Zingaretti, the actor who plays the character, enjoys the food. The street’s bookstore was full of items related to series: DVDs, guidebooks to the Montalbano film sites, all of Andrea Camilleri’s novels plus other books written by him, including children’s books (souvenirs for the grandchildren) and cookbooks of Montalbano’s favourite recipes. A tip for writers: when your novel series goes big-time, make sure you write a non-fiction book about your protagonist’s special interest. Camilleri could almost make a living from sales by this Ragusa Ibla store alone.

Poster in Ragusa: Montalbano actor Luca Zingaretti endorses this local restaurant

Andrea Camilleri is far from the only person getting rich from Montalbano. Luca Zingaretti’s career has taken off. Residents of Punta Secca, Scicli and Ragusa Ibla reap the multiple economic benefits of increased tourism. Sicily has always been a place tourists love to visit, for the beaches, the history, the food and more. Montalbano tourism gives the island a little more boost. Riches aside, this must be enormously satisfying for an author.

Ragusa’s stunning hillside landscape is worth a visit even without Montalbano