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Updated: Jul 25, 2022

Some writers swear by approaching a novel with a detailed plot in place. They have it all worked out, all the twist and turns, the setbacks, the climax, the denouement, right down to the book’s final sentence.

If that works for you, great, but I need to begin with character: the character of my protagonist and the characters of a few key people around her. I have to get to know these people so well that they become intimate friends. I know the music they listen to, their favorite colors, their favorite foods. I know exactly what they would do in certain circumstances. Then I can start to construct a plot for them.

Brainstorming ideas for Safe Harbor, I asked myself, “What is one of the worst things that could happen to Pat Tierney?” The answer immediately popped into my mind: “Michael, something to do with Michael.” Since Michael, Pat’s late husband, is dead, something could only happen to her memories of him. Maybe Michael wasn’t the icon of the perfect husband she’d made him out to be. Michael…Michael had a child from another relationship during their marriage. Voila! I had the opening of Safe Harbor, the chapter that set the events of the novel into motion.

I could do this because I knew Pat very well. I’d already written another book about her called Last Date. It was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada’s inaugural Best Unpublished First Crime Novel Award (a.k.a. The Unhanged Arthur) back in 2007. Now resting in my bottom desk drawer until I breathe life into it again, Last Date is where I first got to know Pat, her family and some of her friends.

Once I had an opening for Safe Harbor, I knew where the story would go. I didn’t know all the places it would go through or all the characters Pat would meet along the way, but I knew how it would end up.

Some would say I waste a lot of time by not plotting out the novel’s major developments beforehand. And I suppose I do. It takes me about two years to write a book, and some sections have to be thrown out as I meander my way to the climax. But I contend that nothing is wasted. Some of those flights of fancy, now relegated to that bottom drawer, may take on lives of their own one day. The time I spent working on them is time spent getting to know my characters.

I’m nearing the end of the (untitled) sequel to Safe Harbor. In order to get there (I know how it will end), a certain character has to do something and I’m not quite certain what that will be. So I’m coasting for a bit, trying to get to know this character better. I’m writing character sketches of him. During quiet moments, such as when I first wake up in the morning or when I’m taking a walk, I focus on him, then let my mind drift. If something doesn’t come to me…well, I won’t let myself think about that.

Maybe I’ll be able to sit down one day and hammer out the plot, and all the subplots, of a Pat Tierney book before I start the opening chapter. That could very well happen. But if it doesn’t, I’ll continue feeling my way along, frequently retracing my steps, slowly making the plot thicken.

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Updated: Jul 25, 2022

I was talking to an up-and-coming memoir writer a few days ago when it struck me how fortunate I am to have a community of crime writers in Canada. Many of its members are right in Toronto where I live.

I was telling her about the importance writers’ networks. Crime writers like myself have a wonderful national organization, Crime Writers of Canada, that’s been around for almost 30 years promoting and developing crime writing in Canada. The CWC sponsors the annual Arthur Ellis Awards for best crime novel, best crime short story, even best unpublished crime novel, as well as awards in a number of other categories. It has a mentorship program. And its website has a list of  members, which makes it easy to find and contact them.

Since 1999, we also have our annual Bloody Words conference. The three-day event is held in a major Canadian city (Victoria in 2011, Toronto next year) every June, and is an opportunity to meet writers and fans, and learn about everything from publishing trends to the latest in forensics.

Crime writers are a gregarious group of people and they seek one another out whenever they can. They meet at book launches, CWC parties and events at mystery book stores. In Toronto, writers and fans gather every month at Sisters in Crime meetings. They swap stories, they help build the buzz about books that are coming out. They introduce their friends, fans and people from the media.

They also connect via social media, and they can be a huge help to new writers who will eventually use this platform to market their books.

I was telling all this to my memoir-writing friend, when I realized that I’d never heard of a group of memoir writers that she could plug into. And she hadn’t either.

The next day, a Google search brought up an organization called the National Association of Memoir Writers. This U.S.-based group welcomes memoir writers from all over the world, and offers members online classes, teleseminars and teleconferences. It sounds like a place to start building a network of memoir writers.

Networks can be built. It takes time and effort, but it can be done. Courses in memoir writing and in many other genres are taught in continuing education programs, which shows that you are not alone. There are other people out there writing memoirs, writing for children and young adults, writing in just about any genre that you are writing in. Get to know them and build a writers’ community.

Because so often in the world of writing and publishing, it’s not what you know but who you know.

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Updated: Jul 25, 2022

Toronto theatre moguls Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb had their fraud convictions upheld this week but their sentences trimmed – reinforcing Canada’s lax reputation for prosecuting white-collar crime.

In 2009, Ontario Superior Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto found the impresarios guilty of manipulating the income reported by their now-defunct live theatre production company, Livent Inc. In her ruling, she stated that a “culture of cheating” existed at Livent, and “Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb were at the centre of that culture.”

The Livent co-founders insist they are innocent and that it was their employees who doctored the books from 1992 to 1998 to make Livent’s finances appear more attractive to investors.

On Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the 2009 fraud convictions but reduced Drabinsky and Gottlieb’s jail sentences by two years each. Why? Some $500 million of investors’ money was wiped out when Livent went bankrupt in 1998. But the court decided these losses “cannot, in our view, be laid entirely at the feet of Drabinsky and Gottlieb.”

Reducing these fraudsters’ jail time weakens what could have been an important precedent for white-collar convictions in this country and undermines the lipservice currently being given to raising the bar on investor protection. Talk is cheap, and when deterrents to fraud are weakened, it’s the little guy who suffers. Drabinsky is now slated to spend five years behind bars and Gottlieb four. But, under Canadian rules, they won’t serve anywhere near that amount of time.

Drabinsky will be eligible for parole in 14 months and Gottlieb in less than a year. And the people who invested in Livent? The appellate judges feel their pain. “We do not mean to suggest that this was not a large-scale and significant fraud,” they wrote. “It clearly was.”

That and a toonie will buy Livent investors a cup of java at their favourite coffee bar.

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