Authors on the Delicacy of Foreshadowing

"For me the problem with obvious foreshadowing--the "had I but known" variety--is that it makes the reader aware that this is a story of past events, being retold, AND that the narrator got away safely, or wouldn't now be telling the tale.

I like my readers to feel that a story is unfolding before their eyes, that they are watching from behind a curtain, so to speak. Also that the outcome is not certain."

Rhys Bowen, author of the Evan Evans, Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness mystery novels, winner of the Agatha and Anthony Awards.
www.rhysbowen.blogspot.com


"You lay the groundwork early, well before you need it. For example, show up-front that a supporting character's morals are ambiguous, then plot your protagonist into a position of being forced to trust that supporting character at a crucial moment. By the time your protagonist goes forth to trust the other character, you don't need a blatant "If only I had known" statement because the reader is already squirming with implied foreshadowing."

Suzanne Adair, author of Paper Woman (2007 Patrick D. Smith Award winner), The Blacksmith's Daughter, Camp Follower (2009 nominee for Daphne du Maurier and Sir Walter Raleigh awards)
www.suzanneadair.typepad.com

MWIS June Meeting & AGM

Mystery Writers Ink will meet at the usual time and place
(7 p.m. second Thursday of the month, at Owl's Nest Bookstore in Brittania Plaza, SW Calgary).

On the murderous menu are:

* the Annual General Meeting & induction of new executive

* readings from some Master Class participants

* a mystery readers' scavenger hunt through the bookstore (time permitting)

* refreshments and volunteer appreciations

Postcard Perps 2010: Fatal Family Reunion

Postcard Perps 2010: Fatal Family Reunion

The Challenge:

Old Ebenezer is making his will at last, and he wants one more look at all his descendents before picking his main beneficiary. Eccentric uncles, outrageous aunts, cussing cousins and a few obnoxious in-laws are gathered at a guest ranch for the first family reunion in forty years. Mix a bit of brotherly loathing and some seething sisters-in-law with plenty of plain old greed, and one or more of them will not survive the weekend. Your narrator might be a family member or an outsider, a do-gooding sleuth or a villain in mild-mannered disguise. Surprise us. Who dies, how, and why?

The Solution:

Head for Business
by Sherry Wilson McEwen
All Rights Reserved

A spasm of pain shot through me. I gritted my teeth and looked out the big picture windows at the Cypress Hills. The great room of the Bar None Guest Ranch easily held all my estranged relatives-my older brother Silas, younger brother Harold, their wives and miscellaneous grown children-as well as my lawyer and my personal nurse. Only when I had the stabbing pain under control did I turn back to the assembled group.

Harold waved a dirty and crumpled piece of paper. "What'd you say, Ebeneezer? Winner takes all." Following my careful co-ordinates and map, Harold had managed to pull a metal container out of the roots of a twisted pine. Inside was the first page of my will, which Harold now held up in triumph.

Silas's beefy face turned red. "What kind of contest d'you call that?" He groaned and nursed his arm. "Sending us racing over the prairie horseback ... white-water rafting down a river for gawd's sake ... then wandering around in the back woods with the bears, grubbing for a blasted piece of paper. You trying to kill us?"

The thought had crossed my mind. If my useless brothers and their scruffy offspring hadn't survived the test I'd set them, it was no loss to the world. "You haven't changed a bit, Silas. Still a poor sport."

My sister-in-law Dora's shrill shot through the room like a dentist's drill. "Well somebody cheated." She shot a venomous look at Harold. "Besides, Silas didn't have enough time to learn that fancy GPS gizmo of yours."

I shifted in my wheelchair. "Seems fitting that my beneficiary learn how to use the device that made the family business a success."

Harold's wife Gwen snorted. "You were handed the business on a platter. Why your father chose to leave it all to you with nothing for Harold or Silas . . ."

I swivelled my head in her direction. Hard to believe she'd once been the belle of the Mount Royal debutantes. The only remnant of her beauty was the same musky perfume she'd used back then. "It was an obvious choice, my dear. Father recognized me as the son with enough brains and guts to build a small electronics company into the leading corporation it is today-which I accomplished with my GPS invention."

I motioned to my lawyer, who stepped forward and cleared his throat. "It's highly unusual, but my client has asked me to read out the contents of his will before his, uh, passing. In essence, he has allotted enough funds for his funeral, death duties, and creditors. The remainder is to be disbursed to the residuary beneficiary-the winner of the race. As it stands, I estimate this amount will amount to roughly, ah, one hundred dollars."

Later that night, after my nurse had settled me in bed, I savoured the eruption that had followed the lawyer's reading. Disbelief, outrage, shock and anger. I smiled in the dark. All the elements needed to stir up old resentments that had been simmering for forty years. The group reaction only confirmed my opinion-none of them had a head for business. Otherwise they'd have understood about the economy, high research and development costs, overextended credit, and eventual bankruptcy. Weaklings, all of them. Yet even I had a weakness-my penchant for TV reality shows. The Amazing Race had given me the idea for pitting my brothers and their families against each other in a survival of the fittest, winner take all. The joke was there wasn't much to take.

The house was quiet and dark. When the door to my room opened I could see a shadowy figure in the doorway. I lay still. The shadow slipped across the room, drawing nearer. There was a clunk followed by a muffled oath. The person, en route to the bed, had met up with the wheelchair. I smothered a laugh. Even as murderers my relatives were inept. As the figure bent over me, I caught the faint musky scent-the same perfume she'd used four decades ago during our secret affair. Gwen hadn't been too happy when I ended it. Her hurried marriage to Harold was just in time for the child that came along nine months later. I never believed her claim it was mine.

I wondered if they'd drawn straws and she'd won. Through my lowered lids I could see the pillow in her hands. Even a woman should be able to smother a feeble old man. As death neared I congratulated myself on my scheme. No lingering final months of pain and medication for me. I had brokered the last and best deal of my life.

Contests, conventions, submission calls

CanWrite Victoria June 24-27, 2010

Wicked East Press Anthologies: Open Calls

International Thriller Writers Contest: scripts for radio, screen and stage

Love is Murder Conference (includes short fiction contest) February 4-6, 2011 in Chicago

Arthur Ellis Award Winners

The Arthur Ellis Awards took place on May 27th at Mysterious Yours Dinner Theatre in Toronto.

AND THE WINNERS ARE...

Best Novel - Howard Shrier High Chicago

Best First Novel - Alan Bradley The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Best Non-Fiction - Terry Gould Murder Without Borders

Best Juvenile - Barbara Haworth-Attard Haunted

Best Crime Writing in French - Jean Lemieux Le mort du chemin des Arsene

Best Short Story - Dennis Richard Murphy "Prisoner in Paradise"

Best Unpublished First Crime Novel - Gloria Ferris The Corpse Flower

Congratulations to the winners! For a description of all short-listed books and short stories, visit our website

"On Being an Unhanged Arthur Finalist"

Guest Blogger Pam Gross Barnsley is a finalist for the Unhanged Arthur Award for the second time.

Now that we’re in the last, nail-biting weeks leading up to Crime Writers of Canada’s Best Unpublished Novel Award (the Unhanged Arthur), I’m trying to be all Zen about it. After all, this is my second year making it to the shortlist. Just breathe, Pam, let it go; your chances of winning are nil. Still, the odd fantasy manages to creep in when I’m supposed to be sleeping, flossing my teeth, listening to the CBC news, or earning a living. I can feel that Bony Pete statuette in my hands, count the sales to Kindle and Sony e-readers, action doll figures, movie rights, Oprah, the Giller and Guv General committees coming to their senses as they realize crime writing can be fine literature too; and I just know Bobby Hepditch will finally regret dumping me after the high school prom. Okay; being Zen ain’t easy.

But then writing a novel isn’t easy either. All of you fellow crime writers know this. The only thing harder than writing is getting published.

Contests can improve your chances of publication, and increase your sales once you are published. Just making it to the longlist is enough to get you a closer reading from agents and editors. So enter! And when you get longlisted or shortlisted, put it in the first line of your query letter.

Louise Penny entered the UK’s Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award and her unpublished novel, Still Life was shortlisted. She didn’t win, but making the shortlist garnered her attention from editors and agents and secured her an agent. Louise has gone on to write four more novels and win numerous awards. That first contest set her on her way.

Phyllis Smallman won the first ever CWC Unhanged Arthur and was published by McArthur and Co Publishers, who have just published the third novel in her Sherri Travers series. Phyllis was also shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger.

For unpublished crime writers there is also the St. Martin’s Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition; again, the winner is considered for a publishing contract.

The Killer Nashville/ Claymore Dagger Award comes with a chance at publication with Avalon.

More information for each of these contests can be found on their websites. CWC and the UK’s CWA both offer valuable tips on how to give your manuscript the best chance of impressing the judges. Fees range from $35 to $50.

Last year, after my novel, This Cage of Bones, made the shortlist, I attended the CWC Awards ceremony in Ottawa, followed by the Bloody Words Conference, and I had a blast. It was wonderful to finally meet other writers whom I’d known online for years. I schmoozed like a campaigning politician, made some good connections in the writing biz, and hob-nobbed with sundry ink-stained wretches, Attila-the-Hun agents, media types and fans. I maybe should’ve been cut off after the third glass of wine when I pitched my novel to one of the waiters. But hey, he liked the idea of being an agent and said it would save him having to graduate high school, which apparently was looking kind of dodgy anyway. In the meantime he cut me a bigger percentage of the chocolate mousse.

I did pitch to a real agent at the Conference, and she asked me to send her the manuscript. I decided I’d first eviscerate my novel, so I cut two hundred pages of the most compelling, heart-wrenching, literary prose. Re-wrote the thing for the four hundred and twelfth time, slashed, wept, replenished my lost electrolytes with carrot juice and added three semi-colons.

By then I was also fifty thousand words into the next book in the series and it was time to enter the Unhanged Arthur again. Tempus fuggit, eh? A second agent saw the announcement when I was shortlisted last month and asked to have a look at it. Ultimately it wasn’t for her, but she did compliment me on my writing.

Even if I don’t win (again) this year, making the shortlist provides credibility for my career and a boost to my saggy self-esteem. Being a writer means living on an emotional roller coaster that seems to not just plummet earthward, but actually crash through the earth’s crust and take you down to where that infamous slough of despond is stashed.

If I don’t win I’ll go home and pick up the beast and carry on. I will try to improve it again; I will try to find someone who loves it. I will keep writing because I have no other choice. I will find joy in the words I craft that come alive off the page for me and keep waiting for my time to be ready.

So enter those contests, and keep on writing!

Give depth to your police characters

How police talk during briefings

How the job changes the officers doing it

Get eye-witness information at the Edmonton Public Library - three sessions remaining


and, for writers searching for agents and publishers:

Why it's wise to check Writer Beware before signing with an agent