Our weekly Wednesday walk took place in the city’s northwest. On the way, Will and I stopped at Chapters Dalhousie. Three copies of Deadly Fall stood on the shelf. We asked the manager about book signings. He looked up Deadly Fall on his computer and said the distributor allowed easy returns, so he’d be happy to host a launch. He expected he’d order 15 copies of the book, hold them for 90 days and do a second signing, if I only sold four or five the first time. 

I guess I was due a reality check regarding sales.

Sales aren’t everything. Signings get the word out about the book; it might be fun to discuss writing and Deadly Fall with customers as well as a store’s Saturday bookseller staff, who might become intrigued enough to read it and, hopefully, later recommend it to customers.  

After the walk, we drove home via Indigo Signal Hill. Walking through the store, I spotted Judy, a bookseller acquaintance. In the mystery section, we found Deadly Fall on a bottom shelf – where, unfortunately,  my “Ca” name falls alphabetically in this store. Judy shuffled a few other books and turned Deadly Fall facing out. Now the large yellow cover page leaf gazes upward at browsers – a decided improvement. 

Judy gave me the manager’s business card to contact about a possible book signing.  From our online checking, Will and I knew that one or two books have sold at this store. Judy said an automatic system places a re-order for each book as it leaves the store. That’s good to know.

That afternoon, I heard back from Chapters/Indigo’s home office and received a two-page Event Request form. It asks questions like, “Please describe in detail how you envision the event unfolding.” Since I’ve never done an author signing, I don’t know.  Chapters/Indigo said they would require 4-6 weeks lead time to arrange an event. With my spring schedule, I won’t be able to do a signing until the last two Saturdays in June.  After that, comes Canada Day weekend and two weekends of Stampede – would the influx of visitors to Calgary drop into bookstores and take an interest in a novel set in this city? I’ll have to think about that.

Monday morning, Will I drove south to Indigo South Trail in Douglasdale. I introduced myself to a bookseller standing near the entrance. She led us to the mystery section. Deadly Fall was on the shelves – four copies.

We asked about arranging an author signing. She said, yes that would be a great thing to do and gave me a card with the manager’s name and contact information.

From there, we drove to Chapters Spectrum in the northeast. Being Monday, a slow sales day, it was once again easy to get a bookseller’s attention. Marie Claire was thrilled when I told her I’d written a mystery set in Calgary and said she’d buy one of their copies – which weren’t on the shelves. Nor could her co-bookseller Rita find them in the back, although the records said they were there.

Marie Claire and Rita gave us the manager’s card and said he’d be in that afternoon. At home, I gave him a phone call. He said, author signings were a great medium for sales. Given delivery times and my spring schedule, we set a tentative signing date – Saturday, June 18th – the day before Father’s Day. I’d thought Deadly Fall would make a more suitable gift for Mom, but he noted this might be a day a lot of women would be out shopping.  Good point.

For the signing, he said he’d order 40 copies of my book. Forty copies! “You should easily sell that,” he said. “Really?” “Sure,” he said. “A man who came in for an impromptu signing on the weekend sold that many. Why not you?”  The manager suggested doing the signing from noon-4:00 or 5:00 PM, the prime customer traffic hours, but I could always stay later – the store closes at 10:00 PM that day. He added, “Sometimes book signings get to be a lot of fun.” “Really? Really?”

I asked if it would be a problem if I did signings in other stores. No problem, he said, and suggested that if I was interested in signings at multiple stores I should contact their home office in BC and they would organize a signing schedule and arrange book orders. After thanking him, I called home office and left a message.

Two days later, I haven’t had a reply. If I don’t hear back soon, I’ll go back to approaching stores individually. I find I’m enjoying the personal contact. Booksellers are are terrific people; they are enthusiastic about local writers and invariably love books.

Sunday’s sunny, mild weather turned post-blizzard Calgary into a winter wonderland. Will and I decided to go for walk in Fish Creek, where the paths, unlike Calgary’s sidewalks, are plowed. On the way, we stopped at Chapters Shawnessy.

Once more, no Deadly Fall was on the shelves. A bookseller looked the book up on her computer and retrieved the four copies from the back. I signed them and she attached the “signed by” sticker, saying that she liked mysteries and would read mine when she found the time. She put two copies of Deadly Fall in the stacks and the other two prominently (against company policy?) on the Hot & New Fiction table.

The bookseller told us her preference runs to dark stuff, so Deadly Fall may not be her ideal taste, but she said she’s interested in a local story. She first read Kathy Reichs’ mysteries set in Montreal, because she (the bookseller) was from there. “So are we,” I said. “And so is my protagonist.” The bookseller said, “I really will read this.”

We asked for the phone number of the manager who organizes author signings. When I got home, I gave the manager a call. She said the signing would have to be a date in the future, to give them time to order the books. A store ordering in extra copies of Deadly Fall? How bad can that turn out to be?

My husband Will and I have been following Deadly Fall’s appearances in Chapters/Indigo stores on the company website. Saturday, four copies were recorded for the store closest to us – Chapters MacLeod Trail. Excited, we drove through Calgary’s freak April blizzard to see how Deadly Fall looked on the Chapters shelf.

As we entered the store, we were greeted by local author, Hugo Bonjean, who was doing a book signing. Since I have lined up some book singings in the Okanagan for late May, we listened to Hugo’s spiel. Will bought the book.

Further into the store, a bookseller, Diane, offered us a sample of herbal tea. We told her we were looking for my novel Deadly Fall. When I said it was a mystery set in Calgary, Diane asked me to bring her a copy when we found it in the store – she wanted to buy it for herself.

Will and I walked up to the mystery section and found nothing on the “Ca” spot on the shelf or on the table display. We went back to Diane, who hurried off to hunt for the book in the back of the store. She returned with the four copies. I signed hers, with an inscription. Another bookseller standing nearby, asked me to sign the other three copies and they would attach a “signed by the author” sticker. Later this week, I’ll visit the store again to see how the books are displayed.

Diane directed us to the person in charge of author signings. Tracey gave me her card and asked me to e-mail her. If the store is willing, I’d like to set up an author signing – something I swore I’d never do. I hate sales and pumping my book goes against my natural shyness. But, now I’m thinking book signings are worth trying to get Deadly Fall known to potential readers.

Insurance … dull? Or a cesspool of murder?

Last week, I launched my first novel Deadly Fall, an amateur sleuth mystery. My protagonist, Paula Savard, investigates the murder of her childhood friend.

As I was conceiving Paula’s character, among her many attributes, I gave her the job of insurance adjuster because I’m familiar with the field. The longest job I held – ten years – was insurance claims examiner, which involved reviewing reports of adjusters out in the field investigating whiplash and liability claims.

Paula’s job became part of her motivation to solve the murder. Here was a chance to apply her training and skills to something she finds more meaningful and exciting than sore necks. Paula, like me, viewed insurance as boring and this was part of her problem at the story start. She’s gone as far as she wants to go in her career and needs more.

While writing the story, I stayed as far away as possible from Paula’s insurance work. I thought this would be dull, compared to the mystery, romance and other personal aspects. I also worried my insurance information was out of date since I hadn’t worked in the field for over twenty years. My former insurance colleagues might have joked, “Don’t worry. There’s nothing new in insurance.” And to be honest, a lunch with two friends in insurance reassured me not a lot had changed.

By the end of Deadly Fall, Paula and I realized insurance offers plenty of scope for crime. Burglaries, fires, hit-and-run accidents might be cover-ups for murder. My editor at TouchWood urged me to include more of Paula-on-the-job, to give readers a better sense of her character and set up future books in the series. So, I wrote scenes of Paula dealing with two suspicious claims and threaded them through the book.

Meanwhile, I wrote a sequel titled Secret Spring. Once again, I set Paula off on an amateur quest, although had her working with a detective she developed a relationship with in Deadly Fall. Secret Spring incorporated more of Paula’s job. I hope my editor will be satisfied. She’s reading the manuscript now.

Last fall, I started Book Three and decided it was time for an insurance-related murder. A man dies in a house fire. Paula investigates the case from the fire insurance angle. On the job, Paula continues investigating two suspicious claims she began working on in Secret Spring. This book will require more than my current insurance knowledge. For research, I’m looking for a contact in the adjusting business.

Mysteries are often classified as professional or amateur sleuth. An insurance adjuster falls in the middle. Unlike a police detective, Paula’s job isn’t solving murders, but she can easily stumble upon them in the course of her work. As the series continues, she will stumble more.

Now that I’ve written stories from both Paula’s amateur and professional perspective, I see the difficulties with each genre. For the amateur sleuth, there’s the problem of motivation – why is she doing all these things and exposing herself to danger? For the professional, the why is simple: it’s her job. But, in Book Three I quickly realized Paula’s investigation would become mechanical for the reader if I didn’t make it personal for her. My conclusion from all this is, amateur or professional, writing a mystery is a challenge.

In his celebrated book On Writing, author Stephen King says that people love to read about someone else’s work. What may be routine to you, fascinates others. Every job is bound to contain possibilities for murder and crime. All it takes is a little what if? In Deadly Fall, Paula and I discovered this about insurance.