On Location with Donna Carrick

"I want to be a part of it

New York, New York"

Being part of it: 
The Indie Book Event, 
July 30, 2011, NYC

Yesterday was an exciting day at chez Carrick. Alex and I were up before the crack of dawn, all in a tizzy over our trip to The Big Apple! But seriously, folks, we were a “well-oiled machine”. We made it to the Harbourfront in time to see the sun cast the Island ferry in morning brilliance.

Conference co-ordinators were thrilled with the success of this first-ever Indie Book Event. Sponsor Foozago Books did a fabulous job with promotion and signage, with the full support of staff at The New Yorker Hotel.

Imagine my delight when we arrived in the Crystal Ballroom of The New Yorker Hotel and discovered the sign with my name on it! Thank goodness, the room was nearly empty at the time, as everyone had left for lunch. I was able to more or less recover my composure before they returned.

We took advantage of the mid-day break to explore the streets of the big town. A quick stop at Macy’s followed by Caribbean music and grilled delights at Tad’s Steak House.

What’s a trip to New York City without without a little sight-seeing? The Empire State Building dominated the skyline, perhaps waiting for me to climb it? (Ha!)

Times Square was a crunch of bodies, vehicles, signs and videos – as colourful as any place I’ve ever been. Yellow Taxis filled the streets, zooming about amidst blaring horns in the summer heat. Eveything moved at a ‘take-your-life-in-your-hands’ pace, and yes, our taxi was rear-ended before the day was done.

It’s easy to see why New Yorkers love their city, and why so many incidental travelers find themselves hooked on the sense of exuberance that pervades the streets. I was personally surprised at how much alike Toronto and New York are in personality. Of course, New York is bigger, louder, hotter and MORE, but at its core, it felt very familiar to me. I could imagine it populated by artists, writers, musicians….

But I digress. After all, the day was really “all about the books”. Alex and I were warmly welcomed and finally had the chance to meet some of our closest on-line book industry friends face-to-face. The co-ordinators even invited me to do a brief reading from The First Excellence.

Donna Carrick is the author of The First Excellence ~ Fa-ling’s Map, Gold And Fishes, The Noon God, all available in both print and e-reader editions, as well as her collection of 5 haunting stories for e-reader only, Sept-Iles and other places. Her novel, The First Excellence, is the recipient of the first-ever Indie Book Event Award sponsored by Foozago Books in New York City.

On Location with Kay Stewart

Writing New Territory

The advice to “write about what you know” leads many novelists to set their books in familiar landscapes. Like Elizabeth George, who chose to write a series set in England rather than her native US, I like to explore unfamiliar settings.

Chris Bullock and I began A Deadly Little List, which takes place in Victoria and on Salt Spring Island, when we were living in Edmonton. I began Sitting Lady Sutra, which is set in and around Victoria, when we were living near Nanaimo. The third book in the series, which we’re working on now, will take our characters into new territory--the Peak District in England. Wherever the novels are set, my aim is to render the landscape as vividly as possible.

Here’s a brief passage from Sitting Lady Sutra, in which Parks Interpreter Joan Goodman makes a gruesome discovery during a routine inspection at Sitting Lady Falls:

The path was steep and rocky here, chewed up by the ground crew and not restored. Clutching at bushes when her hiking boots threatened to slip, Joan worked her way close to where the bridge had been. The ground crew had been out the morning after the Labor Day storm, clearing paths. They’d taken off the top twenty feet or so of the fallen Douglas fir, enough to assess the damage. Once the decision to reroute the trail had been made, the splintered bridge had been removed. Only the footings remained on either side of what in the spring was a marshy area rank with skunk cabbage. Now, though the ground was dry underfoot, there was still a strong odor, perhaps of rotting vegetation stirred up by the workers.

The trunk of the fir had been left as a nurse log for new growth. Gazing up the gully towards the exposed rootball, Joan caught a glimpse of something pink. A surveyor’s ribbon, she surmised, left behind by the workers. It was almost hidden in the undergrowth, but still it nagged at her. She scrambled up to remove it.

Not plastic but faded cloth, she realized when she was closer, a strap of some kind. The smell she’d thought was rotting vegetation was much stronger here, a carrion smell. A cougar must have left his kill nearby. Bending down, she grabbed hold and yanked at the strap. It tore, she heard it, but it didn’t come free. She reached through the ferns and salal and felt around. Her fingers encountered a sticky, pulpy mass and then something bony and her stomach heaved.

It’s only an animal crushed when the tree fell, she told herself. Yet she couldn’t quite square that comforting thought with the pink strap that lay torn and soiled among the fallen branches. 

Kay Stewart was co-chair of Bloody Words 2011 and is a past president of Crime Writers of Canada. Sitting Lady Sutra (TouchWood, March 2011) is the second in the Danutia Dranchuk series of mysteries. The first, A Deadly Little List, was co-written by Kay and her husband Chris Bullock, with whom she is working on the third novel. She lives in Victoria, BC.

On Location with Howard Shrier

Scouting Locations

Location has been critical in all my books, whether in Toronto, Buffalo, Chicago, Boston -- where my upcoming Geller book, Boston Cream, is set -- or Montreal, where book four takes place. And my standalone thriller Lostport, coming this summer as an amazon e-book, is set on the Erie Canal northeast of Buffalo.

All of these took extensive research and visits. In some cases, I conducted searches like a film location scout, pounding the streets or driving around with a camera and voice recorder. And nowhere more so than in Toronto.

Take the climactic scene in Buffalo Jump, when Jonah Geller and a half-blind Dante Ryan flee two gunmen in the Don Valley where the river, Pottery Road and the railroad converge. It couldn't have happened anywhere else. My friend Karl Thompson and I drove for hours near the waterfront to find out where Simon Birk's towers were going to be built, and I walked some fifty miles in five days in Chicago, documenting every construction project in a city where the skyscraper, to find the site of Birk's unfinished tower.

I've been lucky to know people in Boston and upstate New York who've been enormously helpful. We would talk about plot and they would come up with ideas of places for me to visit. Lostport is based on a canal town called Lockport, which I never would have discovered if not for my wife's relatives in Buffalo. And her contacts in Boston led me right to Summit Path, which plays a critical role in Boston Cream, coming January 31 from Random House.

Howard was born and raised in Montreal, where he earned an Honours Degree in Journalism and Creative Writing at Concordia University. He began his writing career in 1979 as a crime reporter for a Montreal daily and has since worked in a wide variety of media, including journalism, theatre, television, sketch comedy and improv. He has also been a senior communications advisor to government agencies. Howard now lives in Toronto with his wife and sons. Please visit his website at howardshrier.com.


(Also check out H2Ontario - an article about Toronto's waterfront by Howard Shrier)

On Location with R.J. Harlick

The Location sets the Colour

As you may have noticed colour plays a key role in the titles of my Meg Harris mystery series. I have always been attracted to the vibrant hues that define our world. I won’t say that I am the first author to use colour in their titles. John D. MacDonald, one of my favourite mystery authors, employed it in his.

When it came time to come up with a colour for my next mystery, the fifth in the series, I immediately honed in on green. Taking place in summer, it seemed fitting that the colour chosen should be what most defines my Quebec wilderness setting at that time of year. There are so many shades, from a light airy lime green, to a rich emboldened emerald green and ultimately flowing into the dark end of the spectrum with a deep shadowy forest green.

In my mind I saw death lying sprawled in the living greens of feathery ferns or on a lush carpet of moss. Perhaps it is caught up in the tangled grasses of a beaver swamp. Or better yet lurking deep within the forest where the greens are so dark they are almost black. And so the title A Green Place for Dying was born.

The covers for my previous books have used a photo that I have taken either of my Quebec wilderness or as in the case of Arctic Blue Death, a photo from Baffin Island, namely the cemetery in Iqaluit. So last summer with camera in hand I wandered around the woods that surround my log cabin, snapping pictures I thought captured the myriad of greens that abound. I wanted to share some of these with you. The one my publisher chose has a sense of mystery to it, a secret destination. You, the reader must walk along its path to find out what lies just over the brow.

 

RJ Harlick is an escapee from the high tech jungle.Originally from Toronto, she, with her husband, Jim, and giant poodle, DeMontigny, now bides her time between her home in Ottawa and a log cabin in West Quebec. A lover of the outdoors, she spends much of her time roaming the forests of the Outaouais. Because of this love for the untamed wilds, she decided that she would bring its seductive allure alive in her writings. This she has done in the Meg Harris mystery series where the wilderness setting plays almost as large a role as her protagonist Meg Harris.

On Location with John Moss

What do Easter Island, Baffin Island and Toronto have in common?

Location plays an important role in my newest Quin and Morgan mystery, Reluctant Dead, released in mid-June.

Location is never simply a background in my novels; it determines action. In Still Waters, both the Rosedale setting in Toronto and the area around Blair in Waterloo County are integral to the developing mystery as well as to the characters’ lives.  

Grave Doubts again features Toronto, which is fitting since David Morgan and Miranda Quin are both Detective Sergeants who work homicide with the Toronto Police Service, but it is the confusion of the historical and contemporary city due to a corpse revealed in the demolition of a colonial house that leads to suspense and horror. The resolution takes place in the Owen Sound area and, for a truly harrowing episode, underwater in a wreck near Tobermoray.

In Reluctant Dead, Quin takes a sabbatical to Easter Island in the South Pacific to write a mystery novel and stumbles into a plot with international implications. Morgan discovers a murder on Toronto Island that leads him to the Canadian Arctic. Ultimately, the two stories connect. Easter Island, with its fabled past, and Baffin Island, with its austere and forbidding conditions, lead Morgan and Miranda through chilling adventures that are only resolved when they get back together in downtown Toronto. 

John Moss has backpacked extensively on Baffin Island and accompanied Beverley Haun on research trips to Easter Island. In Reluctant Dead, the third Quin and Morgan mystery, these interests come together. The next in the series, “The Dead Scholar,” stays closer to home and reaches farther afield. John and Beverley share a stone farmhouse in Peterborough, Ontario.
www.johnmoss.ca