Getting Medieval

I'm Covered

A new cover for the new book. We are going in another direction for our covers. Something a little less literal and more what they call "urban fantasy." The model for Crispin is quite good. Sexy! He can use his skills on me anytime!

Veil of Lies will get the same makeover when the paperback comes out in October so they will all have the same look to them. I'm excited about this direction because not only does it show a bit of confidence on the part of St. Martin's to go the extra mile (and spend the extra money) but it's absolutely fresh for a medieval mystery and was what I was looking for in the first place!

So I'm hoping that my current readers and new readers will like it, too.  

Interview with Author Louise Penny

I have the very great pleasure of presenting an interview with mystery author Louise Penny. If you are a Julia Spencer-Fleming fan, you will also like Penny's novels, set in the small town of Three Pines in Quebec. And like Spencer-Fleming's novels, Penny is a multiple award-winner. In fact, today we just got word that The Cruelest Month was nominated for an Anthony. Way to go, Louise!

Below is the interview, but if you'd like to learn more about Louise Penny head on over to her website.  

THE INTERVIEW

Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, yours truly, to name but a few, started out as journalists in some capacity to feed their writing habit. Tell us about your journalistc work in Toronto.

Love the company you've put me in - thank you! I was with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - the CBC - which is like the BBC only with way fewer listeners, and less prestige, and less money and less influence. So, not much like the BBC, really.

I started out as a National Radio News reporter then started hosting programs when one of the radio execs heard a report I'd done and told my boss I should be taken off the air. Annoyed me so much I decided to show him - and worked my behind off until I was offered a job co-hosting a morning show. Now, the CBC Radio morning shows are alot like the Today show, only not on television, with a far smaller audience, way less money and prestige and almost no make-up. So, not much like the Today show after all.

But I did learn to listen. To pay attention not only to what people said, but how they said it. To all the ways we communicate. And over 20 years I got to travel the country, listening to people's stories. And I got to witness some terrible events and some moments so divine they take my breath away even today. All that I use as a writer - as I'm sure you do too.

Your first book Still Life began your Three Pines series and won the first of your many awards. When I interviewed Julia Spencer-Fleming, we discussed a certain amount of “world-building” that goes into creating a small, closed community. Even though we might be well-acquainted with small towns and it might be inspired by someplace close, there is still a lot of invention that goes into it, not just geography but people. Tell us about Three Pines and its inhabitants.

Three Pines is a tiny, bucolic village in Quebec, close to the border with Vermont. It's part French and part English, as is Quebec. And when I came to create it all my decisions were selfish. I knew it would take about a year, and the chances of getting published were tiny so the writing of the book needed to be fulfilling enough on its own. So I decided to create a community I would choose to live in, with people I would choose as friends. Since I was going to spend so much time there, I wanted to enjoy it. More than that - I wanted to love it. Wanted it to become a sort of 'safe place' - a venerable old village with stone homes and a village green, that had survived disasters, and wars, loss and sorrow, and still turned its face to the sun.

The first thing I created was the new and used bookstore, and its owner Myrna. Then the bistro, with it's open fireplaces and mullioned windows and gay owners. Sarah's bakery and Monsieur Beliveau's General Store. And the B&B. None of the stores, none of the people, were created for dramatic purposes or with the thought they'd have to be able to carry a series. It was just dumb luck. Writing under the influence of gummi bears helps too. Mind altering. Just don't try to snort them. Trust me.

How heroic does a hero need to be? And how do you define “heroic” when it comes to Inspector Gamache?

He's a man with a moral centre. A man who, while flawed, will always try to do the right thing, not the easy thing. As we know, it's easy enough to be good and kind and decent when everything's going your way...the real test is to be a decent person when all hell is breaking lose. Gamache is that decent man. He was created because I never wanted to tire of my main character. He, uniquely, was created with the long view in mind. I need someone I would choose to spend perhaps the rest of my life with. And so I intentionally created a man I would choose to marry. I didn't expect anyone else to feel that way but it's been one of the great joys of the books for me, that others feel like that about Gamache. You know that wonderful line from Yeats - Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Gamache's centre holds.

What went into the creation of Gamache? Is he inspired by any one person or perhaps a conglomeration of people?

Oh, dear, I might have answered that above, but superficially he was inspired by the heroes I had growning up. My grandfather, who taught me poetry, Walt Disney, Ben Cartwright, Walter Cronkite. Middle aged men who have a calm, and a decency. If I was younger I would have without doubt made Gamache in his 20's or 30's...but I'm in my 50's, so he is too. He's also inspired by my husband Michael, who was a pediatric hematologist - a doctor for children with cancer...who had the worst job in the world, and yet is the most joyous man I know. Because he knows the difference between a bad day and a not bad day. Because he knows what a precious gift life is, and what a terrible shame it is not to enjoy it.

Since we’ve just talked about heroes, let’s talk villains. What is your favorite type of villain to write about and why?

Well, with the exception of CC de Poitiers in A Fatal Grace, all my villians are in fact regular people. I was very impressed by Hannah Arendt's book on the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem. She called her book, A Report on the Banality of Evil. My villians are banal - they blend in, they're you and me and people we know. And that's the horror. Not that we're betrayed and attacked by perfect strangers, but that the attack comes from within.

There’s a level of darkness in your books that might leave them off the “cozy” list. How would you describe your mysteries?

Following on from what I just said in the previous question, I've always thought the village mystery was the most noir of any genre. To be killed by a friend. Et tu Brute. And then, for the rest of the community, to know one among them is a snake. And that growing dread as the police close in, as secrets are revealed. No one is safe. And all this happening in a perversely idyllic setting. That's also why I made Three Pines so beautiful - because then the darkness would be all the more stark.

I think it's possible to read my novels as village cozies and leave it at that. But I also know there are layers and levels. Like Bullwinkle. There, the truth is out...I was inspired by a cartoon moose. But I believe Emily Bronte was too.

I have heard that Canada is not an exotic enough locale for U.S. readers to be drawn into, but your books seem to do very well in the U.S. market. Can you comment about locales in novels? What is exotic anyway?

Great question. yes, one publisher said to me (while joining the cavalcade to turn down my first book, 'No one would be interested in a mystery set in Canada'. That, by the way, from a Canadian publisher! I had no idea what to say - except, 'So's yo mudda'. There are all sorts of brilliant Canadian mystery writers, from the great Giles Blunt whose books are set in northern Ontario to Gail Bowen and Mary Jane Maffini.

Having said that, I know I was VERY lucky to be living in Quebec and have that as the location. There is definitely something exotic about this area...the French fact. It's romantic and gracious, the food is different, the culture is different...and yet it's close enough and familiar enough that Americans can relate. I think - also - that a good writer can set their book in a single room and make it riveting. However, a great sense of place helps. I love reading about different places - and clearly other people do too.

Let’s back up a bit. Where did the decision come from to write mysteries, or was it something smoldering for a long time?

I actually had planned to write the best book ever, and win the Nobel Prize. Surprisingly, I then suffered writers block for 5 years and watched Oprah and ate gummi bears instead. Then I looked on my bedside table and saw all those Golden Age mysteries. Books by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey. The books I actually read. And it came to me in that instant. I would simply write a book I would like to read. And that's what I've done ever since. Each book is for me.

You are very involved in literacy in Canada, and serve as the Patron for the Yamaska Literacy Council. Tell us a little about your activities in this organization.

Well, I wish I was more involved. I was also the president of our little local library for a few years but had to give that up when the writing and all that went with it got too absorbing. For Yamaska I mostly do personal appearances, readings, and have narrated a film.

The Brutal Telling, your latest Three Pines novel, will be released this October. What’s next for you?

Well, I'm now writing the sixth Gamache novel called Bury Your Dead - it's set partly in Three Pines but mostly in Quebec City during winter carnival. I've decided now to set every second book in Three Pines, and then let it lie fallow for a year or so...re-populate. Get some more villians moving in.

Jeri, thanks for this - these are among the most intelligent and fun questions I've been asked - and I'm MOST impressed and grateful! And enjoyed it. Thanks you!!!

And thank you, Louise. You are a hoot and I can't wait to meet you at Bouchercon this October! Happy reading, all! 

Medieval Financial Crisis

Don't we have tremendous egos? Don't we always seem to think that the latest disaster is of our own doing, that it is unique to our time? Well, true, the latest financial disaster is our own doing (we allowed deregulation where we needed it the most) but it is certainly not unique to our time.

Carter Dougherty of the New York Times makes his point in today's blog post "Medieval Credit Crunch" when he discusses Edward I's problems with Italian creditors, some of the few who had money to spare. The city states of Italy often ran like a medieval mafia ("That's a nice castle ya got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.") and they had extra cash to dole out for favors.

You can read the article here.  

English Buildings

Here's a really great blog that found a well-deserved home on my blog roll. Author Philip Wilkinson wrote The English Buildings Book and he has shared his extensive research with the rest of us in his wonderful blog, English Buildings. Just look at some of the gems he is offering on his blog:

That's a bus shelter, people. In Overbury, England. Beats the hell out of glass and steel, no?

That's in Malmsbury. It's a Tudor-era cross to designate the marketplace.

The blog is full of wonderful little jewels, including churches, abbeys, suburban cottages, and urban treasures. Take a look.

  

Guest Blogger Vicki Delany

Today, we are presenting our very first guest blogger on Getting Medieval. Though Vicki's book isn't medieval, I do like to give a nod to other historical novels and this one is certainly set in an interesting time period.

In California where I live, we are dotted with ghost towns, of the very delapidated variety as well as those in what preservationists call "Arrested Decay." In other words, they are left in the condition when the townsfolk left and then the preservationists halt any further environmental destruction. Bodie comes to mind, a place where you can peer through the windows of an ordinary house and view the peeling wallpaper and the iron bed and then down the street take a peek at the saloon with its roulette wheel and long, wooden bar. This is California in its Gold Rush years, certainly a "romantic" part of the state's past. 

Vicki Delany's newest book is not set in California but in Canada's Klondike. Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery, is the first in a new series from Rendezvous Crime. Vicki is also the author of the Constable Molly Smith series, most recently Valley of the Lost, from Poisoned Pen Press. Vicki can be found on her website www.vickidelany.com and on her blog Type M 4 Murder.

And now, let's let Vicki have her say:

Jeri writes a lovely description of noir and the ‘dark ages.' I like to think that my new book, Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery (first in a new series from Rendezvous Crime), is sort of an anti-noir.

The setting is 1898, at the height of the Great Klondike Gold Rush. And optimism, warranted or (mostly) not, was the order of the day.

In the late 1890s, the United States was in the midst of a severe depression. When news of a gold strike in the remote Canadian Territory of the Yukon reached the depression-stuck cities of the south, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people abandoned farms and factories and families, sold all their possessions, borrowed what they could, quit jobs, and headed north, into the wilderness. It was perhaps the last time in history when thousands of people could simply leave home, sell everything, and set off – on foot! into the wilderness in the hopes of making a fortune. They were driven by a spirit of optimism that was largely unwarranted.

By the time news got to the Outside of the gold finds, most of the best claims had been taken, and all that was left for those who scrambled up the Chilkoot Trail (with a thousand pounds of supplies in tow) were jobs working someone else’s claim. Other than a few lucky miners, the people who really made the money were those who ‘mined the miners’. The dance hall owners (such as my protagonist, Fiona MacGillivray), businessmen, shop keepers. When you consider that in the summer the sun barely set, that dance halls, bars and gambling rooms were open 24 hours a day (with the exception of Sunday), that the North-West Mounted Police (precursors to the RCMP) had stamped law and order on the town so that crime wasn’t much of a problem, Dawson in 1898 really was the opposite of noir. Is there a word for that? There should be.

But clouds were gathering… The nineteenth century was coming to an end, and the twentieth about to begin. With so much hope and promise. In Gold Digger, the landlady, Mrs. Mann, says to Fiona’s son Angus, when he wishes they had a telephone: Many wonderful changes you’ll see in your lifetime, dear. The tragedy of the twentieth century is that all the changes weren’t exactly wonderful. Angus is 12 in 1898 – in 1914 he’ll be 28, just the right age to enlist in World War I. I attempted to keep a fairly lighthearted tone in Gold Digger, fitting the sense of the time and place that I get, reading about it and looking at all the wonderful old photographs. The horrors of the twentieth century are still to come, so let’s let the cheechakos and sourdoughs and dance hall girls and NWMP officers and gamblers and ladies of the night have their fun while they can in the Last Great Gold Rush.

Thank you for stopping by, Vicki. Good luck on your new book!

Mother's Day Post from Crispin

Happy Mother's Day, all! Crispin has a brief post about his own mother on his blog today.

Macavity Award Nomination

So...wow. I mean...wow. I heard the news yesterday. And just as I had gotten done telling someone I'm just not the award-winning type, that I don't get nominated for awards, I opened up my email and saw all the congratulatory messages. I opened the one from my editor first.

Veil of Lies was nominated for a Macavity for the Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery Award! The Macavity Award is named for the "mystery cat" of T.S. Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats). Each year the members of Mystery Readers International nominate and vote for their favorite mysteries in four categories. Awards will be presented in October at Bouchercon in Indianapolis.

So a big thank you goes out to the readers of Mystery Readers International. The picture above is Rhys Bowen's Macavity and is as close to the award as I will probably get, but it really is nice to be nominated. It really is!

Bookstore Rises from the Ashes

When I lived in Pasadena (and I'm still on my extended three-year plan to move back there) I did a lot of my shopping in nearby La Canada Flintridge, a small, homey community at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains. When I heard that an eighteen-wheeler crashed into and nearly destroyed the Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse, I was terribly saddened. Not only for the deaths and injuries that occurred, but for the loss of yet another independent bookstore. 

But not to worry. Here is an excerpt from an article from Shelf Awareness:

"  Flintridge Rises from the Wreckage

by Bridget Kinsella

"The piano got it first," said Peter Wannier, co-owner of Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse, the La Canada, Calif., independent that was plowed into by an 18-wheeler on April Fool's Day (Shelf Awareness, April 4, 2009). But this was no joke--two people were killed and 11 wounded. Despite the tragedy and damage, Wannier said he thinks the store and its community will emerge even stronger than before the accident.

Wannier, a retired astrophysicist, opened the store two years ago with his wife, Lenora, who has a background in antiquarian books. He said that after the crash, the couple engaged in some soul searching conversations before deciding to remodel the store.

"What drove me forward was the outpouring of customer support," Wannier said. "It revealed to me what it means to be a business in a small community. That was motivating."

Since the accident customers have been flooding the store with well-wishing messages, some of which the staff posted on the front door of the closed shop.

"I am sad that a truck crashed into your store," reads a note written by a six-year-old. "I like your store. I will come back when your store is fixed."

Wannier estimated that it will take about four months for the store to be renovated and reopen. In the meantime, the staff has started to set up its temporary home in a double-wide trailer parked behind the store in the parking lot.

"For a temporary home, this is nice," Lenora Wannier said, as the staff busily puts together the kids and YA sections in their new digs. The Wanniers have tried to keep the staff on their regular schedules.

The accident took about two seconds to happen, Peter Wannier said, giving him time for only one thought: "Wow!" It occurred at 5:45 p.m., luckily, when the store was not crowded. No one in the store was hurt, but half the inventory was destroyed... 

"