Tag Archives: The Book of Answers

Time to Catch Up

after a time out

I have been away from this blog for a while.

Nanowrimo, the National Novel Writing Month claimed much of my creative energies. An annual event that’s been around for almost 25 years, Nanowrimo is essentially a self-directed challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.

This time around, I produced a little more than 33,000 words in 24 days, and ran out of steam in the last week of the month. Most of those words went into chapters for a new mystery I’ve been working on, set in Essex County, Southwestern Ontario. It’s tentatively called either “The Right Cross Murder” or “A Death in Sun Parlour” and it features a different protagonist and supporting cast of characters from my first novel.

I’ve enjoyed the process of plotting out the new story, and creating the new characters. Along the way I decided to include Rev. Tom Book, the reluctant sleuth from my first book.

Tom’s first adventure was set in Oakville, which is where I was living when I started The Book of Answers. During the COVID lockdown I began a new story for Tom, set here in Essex County, which is where I see him settling after leaving the church he served in Oakville. This second story for Tom is actually set during the lockdown, and has him helping out at a retreat centre founded by his former mentor and life-long friend Paul Bennett.

The retreat, called “The Quiet Centre” found its way into the The Right Cross Murder, so it made sense to add Tom to the story.

I was plotting this story, ahead of the writing marathon in November, while I was also actively selling The Book of Answers. I did a fair amount of online and in-person promotion of the book this fall. I was surprised by how many people asked about the further adventures of Tom Book.

I’ve thought from the beginning that Tom would appear again. I set up the first story to be part of an ongoing series, each with a title that would be “The Book of…”. The lockdown story set at the retreat centre is called “The Book of Strong Suggestions”.

I have most of that story plotted, and many chapters written, but took a break from it to work on the newer book, with the new set of characters.

All the questions about Tom’s life beyond The Book of Answers made me wonder if I should have actually had his second story finished, and ready to go, soon after the launch of the first one.

So I’ve taken a break from The Right Cross Murder, or Death in Sun Parlour, while I mull this over.

Another factor in the choice to take a break was my return to full-time work as a pastor. I had the privilege of a month long vacation followed by a 90 day sabbatical from my pastoral responsibilities. I used that time for rest, work-related studies, and planning for the upcoming year.

I found it so much easier to drop into “mystery writer” mode when I did not have the weekly project of producing a (hopefully) meaningful worship service and sermon. This is less a matter of time for the work, as it is about mental bandwidth or energy. When I have a sermon on the back burner, simmering somewhere inside, I find I have less creative heat available to cook up my stories.

The other big reason I have not been writing more fiction lately is I have become active in my new volunteer role as a police chaplain.

Above is a photo of the tunic from my dress uniform. The OPP has strict rules about the use of their insignia, so I’ve deliberately made the picture a little blurry. Here’s one of the shoulder board, which identifies me as a chaplain with the honorary rank of Inspector. (That’s what the crown signifies.) The white shirt next to it is also part of the uniform.

In the OPP, most of the front-line officers are Provincial Constables. Above them in the rank structure are the Sergeants and Staff Sergeants, who are non-commissioned officers, and like the Constables, wear blue shirts. The first “commissioned” rank above Staff Sergeant is Inspector. Inspectors and upward (Superintendents and Deputy Commissioners, and the Commissioner of the OPP) wear white shirts.

There is a bit of a divide between “white shirts” and “blue shirts”. White shirts are management. Think of commanding officers in the military. Respected for their accomplishments and responsibilities, but not always liked or appreciated in their roles as leaders.

When I visit detachments I usually wear my clerical collar, affixed to a blue or black polo shirt. The chaplain, like in the military, is in many ways outside the formal hierarchy. Kind of an observer and advisor with a supportive role, which suits me just fine.

Zoom Book Club meeting

I met online last night with Larry, John, Joyce, Tim, Edna, Sandy, Elaine, and Sandy. (yes, there were two!)

They are all connected to Roseland Trinity United Church in Windsor, Ontario. This was the second time they’d met to discuss The Book of Answers.

If you have not read it, here’s a link to Amazon, where you can read a sample: https://a.co/d/17px2xY

At their first meeting they worked through some of their owned prepared questions, and a few I’d provided.

At this second meeting, with me as an invited guest, (and I loved this), they took time before we got into the book to go around the Hollywood Squares of Zoom gallery view and introduce themselves.

Two things came through for me as I listened to their stories about themselves.

  1. This is not just a book club. It’s a subset of a larger, caring community. These folks like and love each other, and gathering to discuss their latest read is just one aspect of something bigger, that was a joy to see.
  2. They are all intelligent, accomplished people, most of them retired, who crave, seek out, and make use of opportunities to exercise their minds, feed their spirits, and make the world a little better for their efforts.

I’m not just saying that because they invited me, or because they all said nice things about my book. (Which they did!)

They also asked thoughtful questions, that demonstrated they’d actually read the book, and had taken time to look for deeper meaning in the story.

The most encouraging questions they asked me had to do with my writing process. Do I have trouble keeping the details about all the character straight in my mind?

Yes, I have to keep notes about them.

Did I know from the beginning what was going to happen in the middle and at the end of the book?

Not consciously, but looking back, all the clues and pointers for pretty much the whole story were buried in the first two chapters, and I unearthed for myself while writing the rest.

Do I have images in my head of what the characters look like?

Yes. To help with that, I choose pictures of people from TV and movies that look like the characters as I imagine them.

Who does Rev. Tom look like?

In my mind, he looks like Mark Ruffalo, who plays Dr. Bruce Banner/The Hulk in the Avengers movies. Someone in the group had imagined him looking like Tom Hanks. I thought that was good casting.

The most surprising question was, “What’s going to happen to Brad Kazinski?”

Brad is a shadowy, scary crime boss who makes a couple of appearances in The Book of Answers, and who was involved in some dirty deeds with some people connected to St. Mungo’s, the church in the book. He’s the second least likeable character in the story, as far as I’m concerned. He will show up in the sequel, which is tentatively titled “The Book of Strong Suggestions”

Here are their book club questions, and the ones I provided. (Their questions are in italics.)

Overall Impression: Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why (not)?

Plot Line: A mystery novel is often called a “whodunit” story. Who “done it” in this story and exactly what was done?

Characters: The author has created several memorable characters in this book. Who are some of your favourites? Why do they resonate with you?

How would people at your church respond if a body was found in the basement?

In the book, an actual body falls out of a wall but in some churches there are secrets that get buried. If the walls of your church could speak, what might they say?

One theme of the book is “there is almost always a story under the story”. Does that ring true in your own life?

Another theme is “appearance vs. reality”. For some characters in the story, especially Attie, how things look is more important than how things are. Do you know anyone like that?

The book touches on how a fictional United Church congregation lived through tumultuous times in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the aftermath of the decision to affirm the full membership and ministry of gay and lesbian people. Do you have any memories of that time?

Rev. Tom sees what some might call a ghost in the church sanctuary. He is open to other interpretations. What do you think? Is it imagination? Something else?

Rev. Tom and his daughter Hope are grieving the loss of Carrie. How does their experience of grief touch you?

One reader has said Rev. Tom is too forgiving of those who did him wrong. What do you think?

Several readers said they could visualize streets and neighbourhoods in Oakville as they read the book. How important is the sense of “place” in a work of fiction?

Notes for a book talk

a work in progress, let me know what you think

These are my rough, rough notes so far, for a talk I’m doing at a community centre breakfast next weekend. What do you think?

When I was a student minister in rural Manitoba in the mid 1980’s I was friends with an Anglican priest named Paul and his wife Mary, who along with the expectations and duties as a clergy spouse, was a nurse working in the local hospital. (I changed their names for this story!)

I once told Mary I liked to read murder mysteries. She confided that she secretly, and only for herself, wrote stories in which members of her husband’s parish died suddenly, and sometimes violently. 

Mary said she wrote as a form of therapy, that allowed her to keep smiling and nodding her head at people who she knew were sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, very unkind to each other, and to her husband, their priest.

Mary could create and manage a fictional world in which things came out different. She could live out her revenge fantasies without anyone getting hurt, and without anyone worrying about the murderous nurse, who might have put an unexpected something in the fancy silver pot from which she was obliged to pour at the church ladies tea.

The image of Mary secretly writing her stories stayed with me over the years, without me really doing anything with it. 

Every once in a while, while I was lost in a mystery novel, I would wonder if I could write one.

I noticed the books I liked most were not really about the murder, but about an interesting investigator. I like characters that actually have character. They have a moral code, and have developed ideas about how to live their lives, and how to be with other people. 

I also like the hero to have serious flaws, problems, issues in their life. I prefer stories in which the lead character is changed by what happens. 

They learn something, or solve a personal problem, or make a big shift in their lives. If nothing actually happens to the protagonist while they are dealing with something as traumatic and major as the death of another human, it’s probably not a story I am going to keep reading.

I also like stories in which there are heroes, sort of, and villains, sort of. Every major character in my stories is complicated. They may do incredibly dumb or cruel things. They may be brave. They may be brilliant about some things and dense about others.

When I create a character who’s going to be a perpetrator- commit a crime, hurt or even kill someone, I make sure that they have a reason for doing it. The reason has to make sense to them, even if we would look at it and say, nope, I’d never do that. It’s not enough to make all the villains purely evil.  

I actually think purely evil people are pretty rare, and from a fiction writing point of view, they’re boring, because they have no dimension, no nuance, and most of us can’t really connect with them, or relate to them, because we aren’t purely evil. 

I was a minister for over 20 years before I started to cook up a story about a church where murder happens.

What got me going on plotting out a novel, and starting to write it, was a course I took at Sheridan College. It was taught by a woman who’s written 18 crime novels, but who teaches writers of all different genres: westerns, young adult, science fiction, fantasy, romance, historical, erotic, horror, thriller, mysteries, and a lot of combinations of all those categories. It was a 12 week spring and summer class called “The Art of the Novel.”

My kids were away from home for summer jobs, and my wife was on sabbatical from her church, and living in Kingston while she did some further training. I had a lot of free time on my hands. 

I had some ingredients for a story that I’d been stocking in my author’s kitchen.

One ingredient was an idea about a church that had a body buried behind a basement wall, in a room that no one ever wanted to use, because it felt weird, and kind of smelled. That was based on a true story- the room, not the body in the wall, as far as I know.

I had a small portion about a church that was haunted by the ghost of a former caretaker. This was also based on a true story.

I had some spice. I’d heard about a minister who disappeared overnight and was never seen again, and left behind their spouse. This also actually happened, but not in the way I imagined and told it.

I needed a pot in which to mix all these ingredients. I figured I needed to borrow a church to kill people in, because if I wrote about one that was too similiar to the ones I’ve worked in, people would wonder if I wanted to kill them, or if I was writing about them. (I also knew I was going to include fictional versions of some people I’d met over the years, in highly altered and exaggerated forms.)

I visited a colleague at a neighbouring church, and told him what I had in mind. He was enthusiastic, and hospitable. He loaned me a book about the congregation and its building, and during a tour, told me some stories that did not make it into the official history. One of the best ones was about the church ghost- lots of churches have them! 

Another flavour he gave me was a story about the guy who secretly, and without permission,  lived in the church belfry for a while, and used to come out at night and pilfer snacks from the supplies of the daycare that rented space in the building.

I took all this rich, juicy food for thought and imagination, ground it all up, spiced it, turned on the heat. Then I cranked, and cranked and out came the story sausages.