Unpublished Award Interview with Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas's manuscript, Part Time Crazy, is a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Best Unpublished Crime Novel 

I’m 62, a retired English and Philosophy teacher. When I’m not writing I’m curling with a bunch of

other old guys (in the winter) or canoeing and fishing on the French River (in the summer). I play the banjo and guitar, and do weird paintings with mis-tinted house paint. (I’ll attach a couple of images if I can figure it out). A long time ago I was a member of Canada’s national rowing team. I coached rowing and wrestling for almost thirty years.

The first pieces of writing I had published were two personal essays in the Globe and mail. I’ve had a bunch of sci fi and horror stories published in cheesy anthologies and magazines but haven’t fooled a major market yet. I like all types of crime and mystery writing, but my absolute favorite style is the mock-noir, like Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon, Paul Tremblay’s The Little Sleep or Kinky Friedman’s Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola.

Unpublished AE Shortlist Interview: Pamela Isfeld

 Canadian Crime Writing Awards of Excellence

 Best Unpublished finalist interview: Pamela Isfeld  

 

My guest today is Pamela Isfeld, two-time UAE shortlister. Is this going to be her year? Read on and decide for yourself if her manuscript would get your vote!

 Tell us something about yourself. What is your life like when you’re not writing?

 PI: I’m a career Foreign Service officer currently serving as President of the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO). I’ve had assignments in Moscow, Nairobi, Sarajevo, Kabul, Kandahar, and Warsaw. When I’m not writing, I’m working to protect the interests of my membership in areas like salaries and working conditions, and to promote the value of Canada’s foreign service to the government, media, and the public. I’ m also the devoted servant of two fourteen-year old pugs, Lenny and Squiggy.

What previous writing experience do you have? What got you started writing crime?

A happy look back at my past, and other crime writers' future

The SHORTLISTS are OUT!!! 

Late April always heralds the finalist announcements for major crime fiction awards: the CWA Dagger Awards in the UK, the Edgars in the USA, the AE in Canada.

The Falls Mysteries got their published start with a win in the Best Unpublished Manuscript for WHEN THE FLOOD FALLS in 2016 (its prequel, WHEN THE BOW BREAKS, was a finalist for the CWA Debut Dagger a few years earlier). And years before that, my first full crime manuscript, a historical set in Prohibition era Moose Jaw, was also a finalist for the AE. 

So I have a special place in my heart for those who make the AE shortlist for their unpublished manuscripts. Over the coming days I'll have interviews with this year's Unpublished shortlisters. 

For now, let's congratulate all the finalists in all the categories.

The Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence
2022 SHORTLISTS

 

Best Crime Novel
sponsored by Rakuten Kobo, with a $1000 prize

Linwood Barclay, Find You First, William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Daniel Kalla, Lost Immunity, Simon & Schuster

Dietrich Kalteis, Under the Outlaw Moon, ECW Press

Shari Lapena, Not a Happy Family, Doubleday Canada

Roz Nay, The Hunted, Simon & Schuster

 

Best Crime First Novel
sponsored by Writers First, with a $500 prize

Ashley Audrain, The Push, Viking Canada

Fiona King Foster, The Captive, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Byron TD Smith, Windfall: A Henry Lysyk Mystery, Shima Kun Press

Katherine Walker, All Is Well, Thistledown Press

David Whitton, Seven Down, Rare Machines an imprint of Dundurn Press

 

The Whodunit Award for Best Traditional Mystery
sponsored by Jane Doe, with a $500 prize

Candas Jane Dorsey, What’s the Matter with Mary Jane?, ECW Press

Alice Bienia, Three Dog Knight, Cairn Press

Jackie Elliott, Hell's Half Acre, Joffe Books

Catherine Macdonald, So Many Windings, At Bay Press

Vicki Delany, Murder in a Teacup, Kensington Publishing Corp

 

The Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada
sponsored by The Engel Family, with a $500 prize

C. S. Porter, Beneath Her Skin, Vagrant Press / Nimbus Publishing Inc.

Cathy Ace, Corpse with an Iron Will, Four Tails Publishing Inc.

Alice Walsh, Death on Darby’s Island, Vagrant Press / Nimbus Publishing Inc.

Sam Wiebe, Hell and Gone, Harbour Publishing Co. Inc.

Kevin Major, Three for Trinity, Breakwater Books

 

Best Crime Novella
sponsored by Mystery Magazine, with a $200 prize

Marcelle Dubé, Identity Withheld, Falcon Ridge Publishing

Brenda Gayle, Murder in Abstract (A Charly Hall Mystery, book 6), Bowstring Books

Wayne Ng, Letters From Johnny, Guernica Editions

Elvie Simons, Not So Fast, Dr. Quick, Dell Magazines

 

Best Crime Short Story
sponsored by Mystery Magazine, with a $300 prize

Pam Barnsley, What can You Do?, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Hilary Davidson, Weed Man, Dell Magazines

Elizabeth Elwood, Number 10 Marlborough Place, Dell Magazines

Charlotte Morganti, All My Darlings, Die Laughing: An Anthology of Humorous Mysteries

Melissa Yi, Dead Man's Hand, Dell Magazines

 

Best French Crime Book (Fiction and Nonfiction)

Roxanne Bouchard, Le murmure des hakapiks, Libre Expression

Marc-André Chabot, Dis-moi qui doit vivre… Libre Expression

Guillaume Morrissette, Conduite dangereuse, Saint-Jean

Patrick Senécal, Flots, Editions Alire

Richard Ste-Marie, Stigmates, Editions Alire

 

Best Juvenile or YA Crime Book (Fiction and Nonfiction)
sponsored by Shaftesbury, with a $500 prize

Karen Bass, Blood Donor, Orca Book Publishers

Rachelle Delaney, Alice Fleck's Recipes for Disaster, Puffin Canada

Cherie Dimaline, Hunting By Stars, Penguin Teen

Kevin Sands, The Traitor's Blade, Aladdin (Simon & Schuster)

Jordyn Taylor, Don't Breathe a Word, HarperTeen (HarperCollins Publishers)

 

The Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book
sponsored by Simpson & Wellenreiter LLP, Hamilton, with a $300 prize

Sarah Berman, Don't Call it a Cult, Viking Canada

Aaron Chapman, Vancouver Vice: Crime and Spectacle in the City's West End, Arsenal Pulp Press

Catherine Fogarty, Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, Biblioasis

Nate Hendley, The Beatle Bandit, Dundurn Press

Lorna Poplak, The Don: The Story of Toronto's Infamous Jail, Dundurn Press

 

The Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript 

sponsored by ECW Press, with a $500 prize

Delee Fromm, The Strength to Rise

Pam Isfeld, Captives

Renee Lehnen, Elmington

Katie Mac, Ken's Corner

Mark Thomas, Part Time Crazy

 

Why the Rock Falls - Available now

When entrenched oil interests confront liberal Hollywood elites, Lacey & Jan must rescue two innocents from unseen enemies.

 Print - Ebook - Audiobook

Indiebound

 

A clash between entrenched oil interests and liberal Hollywood insiders threatens the new friendship between two boys, Michael Matheson and Tyrone Caine. Soon one of their feuding parents is dead and another's missing in the wild Alberta foothills. 

With her ME/CFS at last becoming more manageable, art historian Jan has just taken on her first (temporary, part time) contract in 5 years when grieving Michael lands on her doorstep. At first the extra responsibility is manageable. Young Michael, a budding artist, comes along on her hunt for historic mountain art for a movie set, helping hold her equipment and even pushing her wheelchair.

Then his new best friend goes missing, and soon it's clear someone is after Michael too.

While Search and Rescue teams fan out across the rocky wilderness, Lacey infiltrates the Caine oil dynasty to learn which of Tyrone’s older half-brothers and their scheming mothers most want him gone. Squabbles over the possible inheritance intensify, and so does her flirtation with the environmentalist brother who seems not to care about the money at all. 

When she uncovers a massive hole in the Caine ranch's security network and evidence of previous attacks on Tyrone, even the sexy environmentalist becomes a suspect.

Juggling her illness needs between Michael and her job, Jan uncovers a surprising link between the arrogant Alberta oilman and the equally arrogant California movie director.  But who among all the suspects is so threatened by this secret that they'd try to eliminate two young boys? 

As the stress rises Jan's ME/CFS flares. Can she hold on long enough to keep Michael safe, or will her health crash, leaving him defenseless against a ruthless enemy?

While thunder rolls over the Ghost Wilderness, Lacey undertakes a risky climb up an unstable mountainside, chasing the only person who can answer that most pressing question.

WHY?

 

First podcast interview about this book comes from

JCVArtStudio - Sophisticated Creatives

 

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This week in 'Where the Ice Falls'

WHERE THE ICE FALLS

Available in print, ebook & audibook at your favourite retailer

 To find in an Indie Bookstore

On Amazon    

December 27th:

This week in #IceFalls: Lacey loses her car in a Boxing Day blizzard & finds a lost memory. Zoe takes an emotional beating at Eric's funeral.



December 19th:


This week in #IceFalls:  Lacey takes Dee's Mom to the Cochrane Christmas Market. Zoe takes Eric's mom to a Blue Christmas service & melts down afterward from otherworldly fallout.

December 10th:

This week in #IceFalls: Dee's dying mom arrives for one last Christmas, accompanied by a nurse whose deepest secret threatens the whole house.



December 2nd:

This week in #IceFalls:  Zoe's boss unexpectedly offers her the use of his family's ski chalet while he leaves the country for Christmas. Does he know what terror awaits her in his woodshed?


November 24th: 

 This week in #IceFalls: 

Eric’s been missing for over a week since the blizzard. 

Is it already too late to bring him home for Christmas? 


 
WHERE THE ICE FALLS in print, ebook & now AUDIOBOOK too!


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wilderness #suspense #mystery #haunting #ghost #hypothermia #Rockies #foothills #BraggCreek #Alberta #Cochrane #Christmas #NewYears #skiing #snowboarding #dying #MAID #murder #nursing #MeToo #women #domesticviolence #fraud #accounting #Dundurn #TheRightsFactory

Behind the story: Assisted Dying in 'Where the Ice Falls'

For me, no book is worth devoting a year of my life to writing and editing unless it speaks to issues I hold dear.

Where the Ice Falls is the second in The Falls Mysteries. It takes place 6 months later than the first and – amid the crimes and the Christmas crush in malls and markets – deals with some recurring themes as well as new ones: step-parenting, medical assistance in dying (known as MAID in Canada), and whether the human spirit can communicate from beyond the grave. 

  

When the Flood Falls touched on domestic violence, first-responder PTSD, financial precariousness for women, and chronic illness as well as topics even more closely related to the string of crimes (trying to avoid spoilers).

 

Today I’m going to talk about MAID, but first some orientation to the world of The Falls Mysteries. 

Like Flood, Ice takes for its geography the landscapes of the Rocky Mountain foothills west of Calgary. Familiar locations include the hamlet of Bragg Creek in the south and the town of Cochrane further north. The story moves further west as well, grazing the Stoney-Nakoda First Nation and the hamlet of Waiparous before penetrating the near-trackless forests of the Ghost River Wilderness Area. There's a purely fictional ski resort  carved onto the northeastern shoulder of Blackrock Mountain, should you wish to examine the region on satellite.

The opening of Ice in mid-December finds our three Bragg Creek women not only surrounded by snow but in slightly altered personal circumstances than they were at the start of ‘Flood’:

Lacey – still working part-time for Wayne, still waiting for Dan to sell their house in Langley, BC, still living at Dee’s where she’s doing all the driving and most of the household chores; she’s even learning to cook!

Dee – slowly recovering from her devastating injuries of last summer and trying to re-start a career that barely resembles her old job as a high-powered real estate vice-president so she can keep on paying the two mortgages on her lovely log chalet.

Jan – still has ME/CFS and is trying a life hack she heard about in an online support group: going someplace warmer through the coldest month of the Canadian foothills’ winter. If this works, she'll go into next summer less depleted from trying to make an energy-starved body run both its heater and its immune system at the same time.

There are new women characters too: Dee’s artist mother, Loreena; Zoe, a mom/stepmom/administrative trouble-shooter for oil companies; her spirited daughter Lizi, who tumbles over the first body almost the instant she and her mother appear on the page; Zoe’s current boss’s ex-wife Arliss; and an acerbic accountant/cross-country ski instructor named Marcia. Each of those women has their own challenges to face, but today we’ll stick with Lacey and Dee.

Into Lacey and Dee’s recovery-focused life comes a new complication: Dee’s mother’s cancer is back, and it’s terminal, and she wants to spend one last Christmas with her only daughter. It’s going to be enough of a challenge to add another invalid (and her nurse/friend/travel companion) to the log house but Loreena soon springs another complication: she wants Dee’s blessing on her application for Medical Assistance in Dying.

Truth be told, when I first began planning this book, assisted dying was not even on the Canadian government’s radar. My father, however, had always wanted assisted dying and never been hesitant about talking to me about his determination not to linger in a state of advanced physical or mental decrepitude. Assisted dying was popping up on my radar every family holiday, whether I wanted to talk about it or not, and naturally I paid close attention to the gradually changing attitudes in Canadian society and governance. By the time I was ready to write what was sure to be an emotionally challenging book, Canada’s first Medical Assistance in Dying law was already passed.

What I didn’t know then – what my father didn’t know then – was that he was terminally ill already. Much of my writing life that year was punctuated by phone calls home to see how he was feeling as his physical body gave out bit by bit. His mind was still strong and he was determined to have all his affairs organized before he went. He was enjoying his Facebook time every day, often surfing while asking me how my book was coming. His impending death, and the logistics of applying, were always there in the background but rarely came to the fore because we both knew how he was going. We laughed often, and enjoyed reading the same books in our different provinces.

Here we are holding Tim Hallinan's 'In Fields Where They Lay', a Christmas crime tale that Tim graciously sent us autographed copies of. It was to be our final shared read. Dad always enjoyed a good killing, and he said Tim's novel reminded him of the Dortmunder books by the late Donald Westlake.

Dee’s process with her mother is not my process. There is less laughter and more uncomfortable conversation. Dee didn’t have those years of prior discussion to let her work through her own emotions about losing a parent, much less to face the harsh reality of her parent choosing to die weeks or months earlier than a natural death might occur.

Unbeknownst to me until almost the end of my writing, my earliest crime-writing mentor was working through dying discussions with her family. Another friend was also struggling with a terminal diagnosis; she and her daughters spoke extensively of the option for assisted dying. Their processes are not Dee’s either. Dee’s mother lives three provinces away and the brutal fact of her impending death doesn’t hit home until she arrives in a wheelchair, with a nurse-attendant, and towing an extra suitcase filled not with Christmas presents but with medical supplies and comfort items. You can imagine the shock.

This theme winds from the earliest pages through to the last: how do you face death - a parent’s dying too young or a child dying before its parent, and what are the emotional, psychological, legal, and societal obstacles to one’s ability to access a ‘good death’ in the manner of their choosing?

I’ve tried not to let that one theme take over the book. It is, after all, a crime novel, with a dead body on Page One and several suspects – some of whom are red herrings – all weaving their own tales through a wintery western Alberta landscape. 

But via the characters named above and the secondary characters who come and go through the pages, we see perspectives from dying people, their family members, medical and religious individuals, as well as touching on differing attitudes to MAID across Canada and across age groups.

All of those perspectives flowed freely to me as soon as I showed willing to listen to people – friends and strangers alike – confide their hopes and concerns about end-of-life issues. I was surprised to find that acceptance of assisted dying is far higher than politicians seem to believe. Almost everyone knew of someone who had lingered far longer than they would have wished. Many had walked a friend or relative along that path. Most spoke of wanting the law made more flexible, not less. There was strong support for a change to allow for advance directives; people wanted the option  available to them even – or especially – if they were not mentally competent to consent to the medical procedure when the time came. There is more work ahead for governments and communities and families to integrate this new option into the medical and social frameworks of our nation.

To learn more about Medical Assistance in Dying - the state of the law, and the stories of those who have walked loved ones on that path,see Dying With Dignity Canada

 

My father? He didn’t live to see the book published. In fact, he died a few short weeks after our last Christmas together, only a few months after I’d written Dee’s final Christmas Day with her mother. 

His application went smoothly thanks to support from local Dying With Dignity volunteers and a devoted medical team who helped him with the paperwork, guarded his dignity well, and provided all the comforts possible during his last weeks of life. He went out happy, with a joke on his lips. 

I believe he, who taught me to enjoy books almost as soon as I could wrap my tiny fingers around one, would have been pleased with the way this book turned out. I raise a glass of his favourite ginger wine to his memory each Christmas.

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Every June When the Flood Falls

The anniversary of the 2013 Floods that wiped out parts of Canmore, Bragg Creek, Priddis, High River, and Calgary is almost upon us once more. Tension is rising, tempers too.

Part of my annual ritual is revisiting my Series Settings board to remind myself of the high water and particularly the videos of floodwaters rushing through the heart of Bragg Creek.

The action in WHEN THE FLOOD FALLS takes place during these two weeks of nail-biting and restless sleep, when people along the foothills keep one eye on the clouds and the other on the nearest river. Since Lacey is not only new to the area but deathly afraid of brown water after a near-death experience on an RCMP dive team, she's hardly sleeping even before the non-flood danger to her friend ramps up.

Below are some quotes over this week in 'book time', selected by super-fan Gemma Taylor of Maryland, USA, that she thinks capture the essence of the women at the heart of this tale of suspense, danger, and abiding friendship.

When the Flood Falls

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