Nosing around for stories to tell

(The photo shows Cosmo and Hilda from Murder Before Evensong)

I’ve got a few things to mention.

The first is a link to an article from the National Post, that dives deep into what some temporary foreign workers face when they come to Canada.

article

I’m offering this link because it’s an aspect my new mystery The Book of Christmas Joy that some readers have wondered about. I wish I could say I was making it up, but some employers do terrible things.

I also want to emphasize that I am personally acquainted with farm operators who have the same workers return every year, and treat like family.

On a lighter note, I have been having a great time lately promoting and selling the new book. Click the underlined link below to watch a new interview.

Songsters and Scribes

This was my second visit to the studio to speak with Veronique Mandal, the host of Songsters and Scribes. It was also a treat to chat again with the camera-person for this show, who used to own the house we bought in Kingsville, and who is also an author.

When I applied to Library and Archive Canada for ISBN registration for my publishing company, they let me know mine was not the first publisher at my address. (File this under small-town living!)

Small towns are the setting for many cozy mysteries, including mine.

I’ve been watching the Acorn TV adaptation of the Richard Coles mystery Murder Before Evensong, which he set in the fictional English country town of Champton. The opening scene has a corpse bleeding out on the floor in the centre aisle of the village church. The body is found by 2 very cute dachshund pups named Cosmo and Hilda. You can catch a glimpse of them in the trailer.

trailer for Murder Before Evensong

In the first chapter of The Book of Christmas Joy, Zeke the German Shepherd leads Rev. Tom and his daughter Hope to a pool of blood seeping out from under a fallen Christmas tree, in the centre aisle of his church. It’s a good reminder to this fledgling writer that virtually all the elements of stories have been used before.

I am well aware of my “newbie” status in the world of crime-writing, which makes it a treat when I get to work alongside an experienced colleague. Last week I co-led an online class for the Northwestern Ontario Writer’s Workshop with Jayne Barnard, who is a well known author and editor, and active member of Crime Writers of Canada.

We talked through a list of things we wish we’d known when we were starting out, hopefully to the benefit of the enthusiastic group of 8 writers from the Thunder Bay area who zoomed in.

As I write this, it is -8 Celsius in Thunder Bay, and well above zero here in Kingsville. (Canada’s Southernmost Town) There is a lot I miss about living in Northwestern Ontario, but not the cold weather!

Several members of the online class were interested in my volunteer work as a police chaplain. I looked at myself on the Zoom call at one point, and realized that my face was red from wind-burn.

I’d been late one night last week on a ridealong with an OPP officer. He’s on a specialty team that investigates and gathers data at the scene of motor vehicle accidents. We were called to a location of an accident on a lonely country road.

It was snowing, and the wind was so strong it seemed like the flakes were flying horizontally rather than falling from the sky. After the first hour or so I retreated to the warmth of the cruiser while the team examined the vehicle, the path it had travelled, and took photos and measurements. We were there for hours.

I was impressed with their diligence on a dark and cold night, and their dedication to documenting the scene. Their findings inform the reports which provide information, if not all the answers to loved ones, when terrible things happen.