I was hoping mine would be about a book. Not that book or that revolution.

A few months ago I wrote about a literary revolution, one that would put at least one copy of Last Dance in every library in the country. A few people have let me know they have made requests at their local library, and it is appreciated. Libraries, of course, don't report their purchases to the authors who wrote them, so I can't say how much of an impact yet this mini-revolution has had. That said, if you haven't yet pestered your local library with a request for Last Dance it's not too late - putting the book in the hands of more readers remains the ultimate goal. I'd also be grateful if you'd pass along a request to people you know around the country that could also make the request. Family in Flin-Flon? Uncle in Ucluelet? Cousin in Clarington? Acquaintance in Abord a Plouffe? Our collective reach is much greater than mine.

I've also written about using social media to spread the words. To that end, I created a Facebook page for Last Dance but admittedly, I haven't updated it in a long time. Apparently, in order for social media to be effective, one has to be on top of keeping new information flowing. Yet another thing to add to the checklist.

My publisher is on me to focus on another social media, this one targeted specifically at readers and writers: Goodreads. I admit that I am a member of the site but I'm not what one might call active on the site. I briefly visited the site and set up a profile - I think - but beyond that I can't say it's somewhere that I've spent a whole lot of time.

Apparently, I ought.

Like Facebook and Linked In we can be friends, or co-readers or whatever the connection term is on that site. Or you can just visit a page and talk about the book. Last Dance has a page on the site and it has a few reviews, some more favourable than others. My publisher assures me that Goodreads recommendations can have a hefty impact on sales (assumedly with positive reviews), given that the social media site is inhabited by people with a love of reading.

Thus, if you'd be so willing, I would appreciate if you are a member of Goodreads, if you'd consider writing a review of Last Dance or, for that matter, Deadly Lessons.

Amazon.com and its Canadian counterpart, Amazon.ca, are also places that have an impact on sales; not only do the tenor of the reviews have an impact, the quantity of reviews is apparently a good indicator for readers to buy the book. So again, and I recognize I'm asking a lot, reviews and ratings posted here do apparently push copies out the door. Feel free to write one and place it on both sites. Really, it's about continuing to spread the word, from as many readers as we can.

Of course, I don't have much to offer in return - beyond an invitation to the next book launch, which becomes all the more likely the more this page-turning revolution inches forward, one copy at a time.

'Cuz I can't find my bayonet anywhere.

Next week: to agent or not to agent - that is the question.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

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No one really likes to dwell on our flaws but we do it anyway. I’ve often found the crime novelists I read can be sorted into two broad categories: the perfect hero and the pretty darned flawed one.

To be sure, even the super sleuth protagonists like Elvis Cole or his sidekick-turned-protagonist in his own right Joe Pike have some underlying flaw – occasionally of the fatal variety – to humanize and keep them from being completely cartoonish.

But the in the other camp – recognizing my opposing categories are painted pretty broadly – are the fumbling, bumbling, often amateur crime solver who saves the day almost in spite of him or herself. The Stephanie Plum series come to mind, with a heroine bail bondswoman who stumbles her way through mysteries until the bad guy is good and caught.

For me, I’m trying to get a balance for Winston Patrick that’s somewhere in the middle.

If it's true that we tend to write what we know it probably makes sense that we have a tendency to put a whole lot of us - or at least a whole lot of whom we would like ourselves to be - into our protagonists. So it seems odd we would choose to create characters suffering from particular flaws, unless we're on a cathartic mission to let the world know from what afflictions or character failings we suffer. And however deliberate or not that may be, so much of our real or imagined selves ends up not only in our principal characters but in the supporting roles surrounding them. If you've read Deadly Lessons or Last Dance it would probably come as little surprise to you that sleep is a fairly frequent battle for me over which I am not regularly the victor. In fact, in an early draft of Deadly Lessons I had to shave what amounted to two or three pages of detailed, clinical expository on the stages of sleep and types of disorders. Apparently during the initial writing of that portion of the book I was suffering through a particularly severe bout of sleep deprivation, a detailed examination of which likely would have done little to progress the flow of the story.

But it's also true that it's a character's flaws that often give him or her depth, make them more interesting, more relatable, and perhaps that makes it even more cathartic to create these flawed characters who, despite their failings, are successful anyway.

Finding the balance between their flaws and their successes is a key part of the challenge. Too much heroics and Winston becomes unbelievable. Too many flaws - or too great flaws - and he becomes uninteresting or worse: whiny. Sometimes, and I'm sure it's at least a part a reflection of my mood at the time of writing, when I review what I've written I can occasionally find Winston leaning into the whiny camp and it takes some doing to make sure I've created a better balance. It's a fair bet that if I start to find him less sympathetic as a character my reader will too.

If I were to list Winston's flaws or tribulations, they would include: insomnia, lack of verbal impulse control, a discomfort bordering on fear of his ex-wife, challenges saying no when he knows he ought, a perhaps nosier than is healthy curiosity and a slight propensity towards snobbery. Those are more less off the top of my head and while there are some I share in one way or another, most are fictitious (I don't have an ex-wife, even one I'm not scared of) and I like to think I'm working on them.

I also like to think that Winston's struggles will continue to make him an interesting character to spend time with and that readers will grow at least as interested in Winston the character than the plot to which he's contributing.

A tall order indeed.

Next week: Checking in with the revolution.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

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I admit I have never read...err...listened to an audio book. I have never downloaded an MP3, purchased a cassette, CD, DVD or any other mode by which I can be read a book. And to date, neither of my books, Deadly Lessons and Last Dance, have audio book versions published - if that's the correct term - nor have I heard of any plans to do so, at least in the immediate future.

But in an industry whose stories are often coloured in dark grey tones with reports of diminishing sales, closing publishing houses and independent booksellers collapsing against the commercial heft of the so-called big box stores, audio books apparently an area of growth. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal audio books are enjoying an "explosion" in sales in recent years, particularly in comparison to the print brethren. Booksellers and publishers have seen spikes in sales that while not surpassing print or e-book sales, have seen percentage increases not enjoyed by other segments of the industry.

In fact, many publishers and authors themselves are now considering this such an important aspect of their business they are investing significant resources into the production and even casting of voice actors for thier audio books. With bestselling, big name authors it is not uncommon now to find books being read not by one but by a cast of actors, each taking on voices for dialogue of different characters in addition to the narrator.

And research shows that audio books are reaching audiences our books weren't hitting. These can be the summer car trip families looking for something they can do together in the car beyond the children being buried in their own electronic devices. They can also be reluctant readers, those who, as one man claims in the Wall Street Journal article, hadn't picked up a book since high school but had burned through ten in a summer when listening to the story. Not only that, but some research indicates that those "new" readers, those who were coming to novels via audio rather than print, are coming to print in addition to audio.

Certainly as a former classroom teacher, there were times, particularly in that brief period when I was teaching English, that I read to students and they seemed to enjoy it. I suppose it's possible that while I was reading to them they weren't having to do the work, and for some of them that may have been the genesis of the enjoyment. But there is significant educational research that indicates that people at all ages can not only learn from storytelling in auditory fashion but obtain significant enjoyment as well. It works for our kids - how many parental help books beat to death the importance of reading to our children - why wouldn't older kids or even adults derive satisfaction from it as well?

The author in me is more explicitly interested in the commercial impact of creating audio books than the educational one, though, if I inadvertently have a positive impact on literacy, who am I to argue?

Of course, given that my publisher isn't chomping at the microphone to create these works and my ability to engage and pay for Alan Rickman is, shall we say, limited, I may have to resort to a significantly lower cost option, including, but not limited to, producing the work myself, or at least narrating it. Certainly, some reviewers advise against it (of course that particular review was written by a producer of audio books) but the sentiment is valid: performing spoken word is an entirely different skill from creating the written word and writers are not necessarily skilled at both. I like to think my performance background, both in talk-show broadcast and in improvisation performance (I'm hosting the Amazing Improv Race and performing in TheatreSports this coming Saturday night by the way - shameless plugs are an important part of blog writing) at least give me some experience that could contribute to a decent product. And while I'm not expecting it to become an audio bestseller, per se, it might be one more means by which I can get the stories in front of new readers...err....listeners.

So, if you happen to have a recording studio you're not using.....

Next week: writing your protagonist's flaws.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 22 August 2013 8:38 AM PDT

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I’m Back.

In case you’ve missed me, fear not – I’m home.

I’ll save you from scrolling down a few posts and let you know I left in the middle of July for a European jaunt (non-writers go on ‘trips’). We began in Barcelona, Spain (as opposed to the one in Cornwall, England, which, I imagine, gets appreciably fewer tourists). From there we boarded Norwegian Cruise Lines’ Spirit for twelve nights with stops in Toulon, France (with side trips to St. Tropez and Port Grimaud); Pisa, Florence, Rome, Naples (with tours of Pompeii and Sorrento, Mykanos – quite possibly my favourite; Istanbul, the ancient ruins of the city of Ephesus, Athens, where I broke my toe climbing the Acropolis but I’ve forgiven the Greeks; and disembarking in Venice. Exhausting yes, but a terrific trip nonetheless.

But this week’s column is not intended to be a travel piece.

Apart from the fact that I love Europe generally so I love the opportunity to go there (and will go for any reason if someone else is paying) one of my hopes about the trip is that it would inspire the muse and help break me from my writing slump on W3.doc, as I’ve taken to calling my as yet unnamed third Winston Patrick novel.

And…. It did.

I hesitate to say that I’m cured entirely; it’s been a bit slow since I’ve returned – more about that in a moment. But in the six months or so prior to our European venture I had written almost nothing of the new book and I produced a few thousand words while I was away this time.

It could be argued that travel itself provokes the muse and there may be some truth to that. That said, last summer we ventured on safari to South Africa and I barely scratched at the thing.

I think it’s Europe. Just as American intellectuals, writers, artists and thinkers were drawn to Europe in the early days of the new country and into the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries (see the excellent historian David McCullough’s book The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris) something about Europe shakes loose the writer in me in a way no other location has yet to replicate. It could be argued I’m saying this as an excuse to make frequent journeys back to the Continent – and don’t get me wrong, I’d summer in Europe every year if I could afford it – but I actually believe the muse awakens among the relics and in some cases ruins of cultural and societal history that Europe provides.

The food and the wine don’t hurt either.

What may also have played a part in the increase in output is the mode in which I was operating: I was writing by hand. While it’s true I brought my iPad and Bluetooth keyboard with me, when I got there they more or less stayed packed. Instead, I wrote on a pad of lined paper and while the book is nowhere near finished, I did produce about forty pages by hand, roughly half that by the time I got it into the computer (which I just finished a week after coming home).

There may be something to this.

Researchers have apparently determined there is brain value to writing by hand that isn’t matched by writing directly on a computer. Writing in The Week, Chris Gayomali outlines four key benefits to writing by hand, two of which are germane to the topic at hand (no pun intended): many writers conclude they write better longhand and writing longhand prevents the types of distractions the computer can readily provide (who hasn’t procrastinated from writing – or any other kind of work – by surfing the net for an hour or two or six?).

I can’t say I’m necessarily a better writer when I write by hand, but I do find that ideas tend to grow on themselves more so on actual paper than on the digital variety. Many is the time I have been sitting in meetings of in which my interest was slight, at best, and found that while writing by hand I could generate a fair amount of work, more so than when I’ve had a laptop or iPad in front of me.

During our trip we had a good number of days on which we were on tour buses with an hour or so of driving time to our destinations. Though my handwriting faltered with the bumpiness of the bus, I frequently found myself whipping out the pad of paper pen (Pilot G2 is my new favourite) from my backpack and using the time fruitfully. It may be the relative ease and portability a pad of paper (I prefer a pad over a notebook – it’s probably not worth trying to figure out the psychology there) provides. I also found myself late at night when sleep was evading me (a characteristic I share with my protagonist) finding a table somewhere the ship’s deck or one of the bars and producing more so than I have in awhile.

And truth be told, it’s taken some time to get the handwritten work typed into the computer and I have not produced any new material while that’s been occurring. It may be that I convert to handwriting the book – something I actually did a fair amount of while writing Last Dance) at least as a means of keeping the output going until the muse finds her way just to my fingertips in front of the computer.

Either that or it’s back to Europe. I wonder if the publisher would pay?

Next week: thinking about the audio book.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

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In the olden days - you know, back when people read newspapers, serialized versions of stories were a common feature.

Last week, I hope, I ran the first couple of chapters of a politcal thriller I began on a trip to Italy in 2003. While I shelved it for other things, I'm interested in people's thoughts on the story so far. 

In this week's installment I'm going to jump from Chapter 3, in which we meet one of the books' heroes, to Chapter 7, 'cuz in Chapter 7, bad shit starts to happen and if you're only seeing a little bit of the book, you may as well cut to the good stuff!

Of course, in an ideal world I could just have posted the Word document that you could have popped open but this site doesn't support that kind of document sharing. Updating my site to a new platfrom is still on the to-do list for when I get back.

Enjoy and please share your comments.

*******

3

            From the boat they all had begun to look the same, though he was only five feet from 'shore.'  Five days each week Aaron saw from his canal vantage point the summertime tourists - masses of them - that descended on his town.

            Okay, it wasn't his town.  He really was not at all possessive of it or even particularly attached to it.  Except that once he had arrived he had never left.  Ever.  Not even for visits to other sites and cities.  Something about the close confines of this bustling little hub of commercial activity just fit the life Aaron was looking for.  Four years later and Aaron wasn't sure he would know what to do or where to go 'on the outside.'  But even he had to admit that occasionally the tourists - after this long he no longer considered himself one - could be a pain in the ass.  On the other hand, they pretty much paid the bills that kept the ancient city afloat.

            A dart of green and a splash to the right - the boat was not large enough to refer to its right side as 'starboard' - caught Aaron's peripheral vision and he quickly pushed the tiller hard to the right, sending the bow of the little craft in his command diving sharply to the left.  Water splashed across the bow and into the half sleeping lap of his co-worker, who jolted himself upright and was yelling before fully gaining his balance.  ["Fucking lunatic!"]  Tourists on the blistering hot walkways stopped to watch the spectacle of two locals clashing.  The object of his wrath, a teenaged boy in a sixteen-foot aluminum with an outboard engine much too powerful for the boat or the waterway who had popped unexpectedly out of small side channel, was already beneath the next bridge, flipping Aaron and his lone crewmate the bird as he rounded the bend out of sight.  Aaron only shook his head slowly, a patronizing smile crossing his face.  Teenaged boys and their vehicles.  At home it was cars; here it was boats. 

            "[Boys will be boys]" Aaron said, trying to soothe his youthful partner.

            "He should be a drowning boy!" his partner Lorenzo replied in English.  If Italian men appeared to some to be hot headed, Lorenzo's fiery passions lived up to the image.  The subject matter was largely irrelevant: from soccer to corrupt politicians (they were all corrupt, according to Lorenzo), to housing prices and gelati flavors, getting an argument from Lorenzo was about as difficult as getting smelly feet from worn sandals.  "Look at what he did!" Lorenzo continued.  Aaron looked at the floor of their little boat.  One of the kegs of beer he and Lorenzo daily delivered to three local bars had fallen over, in the process popping its seal cap and spilling the fermented contents.

            "At least it was only one," Aaron replied with a shrug.  Looking at the rest of his cargo, including flats and bottles of soda pop and the product that sold even more than beer here - bottled water - he could see that while disarrayed it remained intact.  Lorenzo turned forward, cursing in Italian to no one in particular about bad piloting skills, workmates who seemed never to get angry and something abut missing out on his aunt's cannelloni, a discussion into which Aaron had no desire to enter.  Instead he steered their cargo vessel to the tiny pier that served as their first landing spot for ship-to-shore deliveries.  Even the heat failed to upset Aaron anymore, and summertime in Venice could be incredibly hot.  He had even taken to wearing long-sleeved work-shirts, a custom he had thought unbearable when he had first arrived in San Marco square, the pulsing tourist destination at the heart of the floating city.  He still wore shorts though: long pants in the hot sun would take a few more years of acclimatization yet.  For now they were reserved for indoor pursuits like dining out, which was rare, to his second job, which would occur later that evening.

            The rest of the day passed without incident; by the end of the shift even Lorenzo's mood seemed to have buoyed by the fact that it was Friday.  It was comparatively rare for Venetians in the delivery business to have two full days off each week.  But Aaron and Lorenzo worked hard, harder than most, often squeezing in an extra run or two to San Lucia* each day, largely eliminating the need for weekend work.  Still, when called upon, they would deliver on weekends.  This was one of those Fridays that did not have continued work ahead, at least for Lorenzo.  "Hey Old Man," Lorenzo called to his crewmate as he tied off his end of their skiff for the final time that day.  "[You gonna come for a couple of beers?]"  Aaron glanced at his watch.  Today's extra run had gone slowly with the terminal filled with arriving weekend Venetians.  He'd also worked up an extra heavy sweat.  Italy was suffering an extraordinarily intense heat wave.  Normally this time of year your spilled gelati would melt within a minute of hitting the burning hot ground; this year it melted before it got there.

            "No time, Sailor," he replied.  "I want to get home in time to shower before work tonight.  I worked up a real lather today."

            "When are you gonna give up that second job of yours?  You work too hard."

            "Have you seen what I pay in rent?"

            "Maybe you need a smaller place," Lorenzo lectured him.  "What do you need two bedrooms for?"

            "I might have guests."

            "You have any yet?"

            "Good point," Aaron tried not to wince.  In the entire time since leaving home Aaron had had no company dropping by - expected or otherwise.

            "Maybe you stopped working every Friday and Saturday night you could start finding the kind of guests who don't need a second bedroom!"  Lorenzo laughed his enormous laugh as he slapped Aaron on the back.

            "Ciao," Aaron told him to end the conversation.

            "Ciao, Old Man," Lorenzo said, still laughing at his own clever observations as he walked away.  Aaron wasted no more time at the dockside.  Heading quickly for one of the ATV ferry pick-ups he calculated the amount of time needed for the trip across the harbour to his dusty apartment on the island of Murano - most Venetian service workers could scarcely afford the cost of actually living in Venice proper - showering, having some dinner and getting to his weekend second job.  Things were looking good; if the ferries were on time he could probably squeeze in a sixty to ninety minute nap in preparation for the night ahead.  It was unlikely he would actually sleep; he seemed to require less and less of that as his years advanced.  My God, in two years he would be fifty.  Still, the down time for an hour or so almost always put him in a better frame of mind.

**************

            Cleaner, fed and ready to go, Aaron stepped off the ferry back at San Zaccaria after chatting amiably with the driver Aaron had gotten to know during his many thirty-minute crossings to and from work.  Like himself, Mario was a man alone, his wife having left him several years ago, taking both his sons with him, during the worst excesses of drinking he could ever have imagined.  Now he sailed the small waterways of Venice day in and out.  Chatting together, for both the middle-aged men, was a highlight of the day.  That thought made both men a little sad.

            Since meeting the owner of a small but fashionable hotel more than a year earlier, Aaron had spent his Friday and Saturday nights from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am manning the front desk - counter really - of the Orion Hotel.  Located a couple of blocks off bustling San Marco Square - about five hundred feet really since 'blocks' in a land without cars are considerably shorter - the hotel was almost always busy owing to its central location, pleasant if small rooms, and not completely exorbitant prices.  The owner liked having Aaron as an employee since it gave him weekend nights off and Aaron spoke both English and French fluently and his Italian had grown to more than passable.  For his part, Aaron enjoyed the second job because it occupied two otherwise unoccupied nights and the job gave him a fair amount of money for not too much work.  It was a perfect match.

            Being a Friday evening, check-ins were brisk.  People still came to Venice just for the weekend, at least local Italian people. But often times they were the best spenders in the upscale shops, one more rivet holding the surprisingly fragile Venetian economy together.  God knows the locals had few bucks to part with; paying their rent and the ghastly upkeep on their residences ate much of everyone's take-home pay.  By 1:00 am, the hotel's complement was nearly full, leaving the rest of the night for the minor bookkeeping that came with the job.  That and escorting the occasional inebriated tourist up the steep stairs to their rooms.  Like nearly all Venetian buildings, the Orion was not equipped with an elevator, quaint, but a bummer if you're a drunk staying on the sixth floor.  It was also time to place an important call.  "Buono Sera," he said to the voice on the other end of what Aaron viewed as an impossibly long line.

            "Buon girono, for you," came the same reply he received each week.  "How's my favourite Dad?"  Aaron smiled at the second part - his favourite part - of the weekly greeting.

            "I am, according to my shipmate, working too hard."

            "Hmm, where have I heard that refrain before?"  Aaron's eldest daughter Victoria was wise beyond her nineteen years, at least so Aaron believed.  She had fairly quickly forgiven him his four-year absence, quickly falling into if not an understanding of the dissolution of their turbulent family, at least an acceptance of it.  It was much tougher with her younger sister Annie.  Just eleven years old when Aaron left home and country, Annie's long distance relationship with her father had been much slower to develop and even now was not what either would characterize as warm.  Still, his daughters remained the largest of the not too many things he missed about home.  "I got the picture you sent," Victoria continued.  "It came yesterday."

            "And?" Aaron asked her.

            "And?" she replied.

            "And what did you think of it?"  There was a pause at the end of his question long enough for him to momentarily think their intercontinental connection had been broken.  Finally she replied.

            "I thought you were gonna lose that big long ponytail."

            "I think it's pretty hip."

            "In the sixties, maybe.  Seventies, tops.  And it's gray."

            "Some might say that makes me look distinguished."

            "Are the senoritas flocking to you?"

            "Not yet."

            "Until you get to the barber, don't hold your breath."  Of course he should be insulted but he knew Victoria's teasing was in jest.  He wouldn't have cared if it wasn't, as long as he could hear her voice.  "I have a surprise for you."

            "And I have one for you."

            "You first," she told him.  "I want to keep you in suspense."

            "Okay.  I finally got email.  Last Saturday night.  Here at work.  I got a 'Hotmail' account.  It took me over an hour to set it up."

            "Dad, it takes less than five minutes to set up a Hotmail account."

            "It took me over an hour."

            "That's great," she said laughing.  "Now we can scan photos and send them to each other over the net.  Did you get MSN?"

            "What's that?"

            "Instant messaging.  So you can type over the computer in real time."

            "It took me over and hour to set up email.  Don't tell me technology has already advanced beyond that.  Am I obsolete already?'

            "No," she told him patiently, as she did whenever she talked with him about computers.  "It's just...never mind.  One step at a time."

            "What's yours?"

            "My what?"

            "You said you had a surprise for me.  What is it?"

            "Are you sitting down?" she coyly asked her distant father.

            "Honey, it's all I have room for here."  It was true.  The area behind the counter was directly under the stairs leading to the hotel's rooms.  Aaron could not stand upright without banging his head, which he did at least three times each weekend.

            "Okay," she said, pausing to heighten the drama.  "We're coming to see you!"  Aaron was stunned enough by her pronouncement he felt the air rush out of him, rendering him if not speechless in content, at least momentarily without the capacity to carry it out.  "Dad?"

            Finally he recovered.  "You're coming?  Here?" The thought of seeing his daughter was completely overwhelming.  It was an event for which he longed more than anything yet had nearly resigned himself to it never happening.  "Who's we?"

            "Both of us," she said matter of factly.  "Me and Annie."

            "Annie's coming too?"  Aaron could scarcely hide his surprise that his youngest - with whom he'd had such limited contact over the past four years - was willing to venture halfway around the world to see her dad.  For the next several minutes Victoria prattled on excitedly while Aaron said little.  "There's more."  She finally paused.

            "What's that?" he asked.

            "Well, Annie can only stay ten days because of school.  But I'm gonna stick around." 

            "What do you mean?"

            "I'm taking a semester off Dad.  I want to stay with you awhile.  A few weeks.  A few months.  Who knows?  Is that okay with you Dad?"

            "Of course it's okay."  It was a better reunion than he could possibly have hoped for.  He didn't even care she would delay her second year of university - not if it was because she was with him.  He could get parental on her later.  "It's fantastic, Tory."  He waited a moment before continuing.  "You guys are sure you're ready for this?"

            "We'll be ready.  It's still a month away." 

            Aaron was as pleased as he had been in he could not remember how long.  He wanted to stay on the phone all night making plans and probably would have had he not heard the hotel's front door opening, ringing the little bell that hung in the doorway.  He glanced down at his key rack: guests were all accounted for.  This would have to be his one remaining reservation turning up.  This late Aaron had already figured him for a no-show.  "Honey, I gotta go," he told his daughter.  "We'll talk more in a couple of days when you've got more details."  They clicked off just as the lone customer reached the counter, loaded down with two large suitcases.  "Ciao," Aaron greeted him.  The man only smiled shyly in response.  Aaron spoke the name left on his reservations and again the man only nodded slightly in affirmation.  "Passporto, per favore?"  The guest handed over his passport to Aaron to complete the hotel registration as is required by Italian law.  He was surprised to see the passport bore the identical coat of arms on its cover as his own.  "Oh.  You're Canadian!  I guess I won't bother with Italian.  It's just as well - I'm told my language skills are still in early development stage."  He chuckled at his small talk and glanced up at the customer who wore a confused look on his face.  Looking down at the home address printed in the passport, Aaron noted Montreal in the 'City' field.  He smiled.  "Je m'excuse, Monsieur.  [I had thought you were English-Canadian.  Force of habit.]"  Again the young man looked at Aaron with a decided lack of comprehension.

            "[Completo?]" he asked in unaccented Italian.

            "Si," Aaron told him.  '[Can I help you with the bags?]" he asked, returning to his own less-than-perfect use of Italian.

            "Non.  Non. Grazzias.  [I will carry them myself.  Arrivaderci.] "

            "Ciao," Aaron responded.  He watched the man begin the steep climb towards his room on the third floor.  Odd, he thought, as he sat down at the little table desk behind the counter.  He opened the computer's Internet connection and went to Hotmail's login page.  He was ready to send his daughter his first ever email.

7

            The unbroken weather pattern continued.  There had been virtually no measurable precipitation in the region for several weeks, and even the springtime had been drier than normal.  Combined with a lower than average snow pack during the winter months, the water reservoir was much lower than it should have been at this time of year.  The beautiful weather also had the downside of making the threat of catastrophic forest fire that much greater.  But it sure brought out the tourists. 

            This was Sean's third summer working in the state park at Mount Shasta.  It was ideal really.  His junior year at the University of Oregon, just a few hours away, was over and he wasn't really looking forward to his senior year.  But working here had alleviated two summertime problems at the same time: making some money for school next year and avoiding going home to stay with his parents for the summer in St. Paul's.  He knew that many students his age were thankful for having rent-free parents with whom to stay during the summer months.  It also afforded one the opportunity to go back to the old neighborhood and play the big successful college student in front of all of the old high school friends who hadn't made it or hadn't bothered to attempt going to university.  For many of his friends, working at the mill was just fine.  Sean had always felt uncomfortable by his scholarship that had permitted his continuing education.  Besides, staying with the parents felt like such a step backward.  He'd lasted two weeks in his first summer of college before this job with California State Parks had come up.  He must have done something right: he had been promoted from assistant park ranger to dam security.

            Sean had committed to memory most of the pertinent information about the monster of the dam that occupied the horizon ahead of his floating security post: second largest dam of its kind in America, enough downstream power generation to supply electricity to thousands of Northern Californian homes, with kilowatts to spare for transmission to the power sucking south.  Not that any of that was important anymore: from his floating security hut his only contact with the public came from the odd boat that strayed too close to the dam's edge, usually after too much alcohol had been consumed on the bridge.  It was a little ridiculous really.  The likelihood that someone would capsize right before the spillway intake seemed remote, though the current was unbelievably powerful when the gates were actually open.  Unless the water skiers ventured too near.  A loan swimmer in the water could easily find himself overpowered by the pull towards the behemoth.  Sean smiled.  He knew the grate at the intake was narrow enough that a body would just be pinned against it until the gates closed.  Then it would pop back up and it would be Sean's job to launch his little state-supplied boat and scoop up the body.  For fifteen bucks an hour that might not be worth it.  On the other hand, it would give him something to talk about during the first week back at school.  It was still only mid-morning and early in the week so the lake was quiet.  Water skiers would hit the lake in droves sometime around 11:00.  Until then, Sean could count on catching some early morning rays.  Tan lines were another fringe benefit of the job. 

            Just to give himself something to do - and in case one of his supervisors was doing some employee binocular checking up - Sean walked the little patio perimeter of his floating security shack, scanning the horizon away from the dam, the shorelines on either side and back towards the dam itself, where he knew he would find no watercraft since the only boat launch was further up the lake, making it necessary for anything on the water to get past him first.  The lake just wasn't that wide at this point; there was no way he could miss someone getting too close to either the main spillways or closer to the farther shore, the intake area for the massive penstock pipes halfway down the dam's superstructure.  But something did catch his attention on the dam.

            Sean raised the standard park-issue binoculars to his eyes and looked toward the center of the dam, directly above the spillway gates.  A truck had stopped on the middle of the roadway that spanned the top of the dam.  Tourists walked across the dam since stopping was prohibited and pictures taken from a moving vehicle usually turned out like shit, even with high-speed film.  Through his binoculars Sean could not see the truck's occupants - damned state parks were too cheap to provide the temps with decent equipment - but neither could he see anyone walking outside the truck.  That seemed odd.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded piece of paper he had stuck there when he had arrived for his shift at 7:00.  On it was a list of scheduled maintenance, repairs or electric company activity that security should expect to see over the course of the week.  There was nothing listed for today. 

            Sean couldn't decide if he was paranoid or just really bored but he thought he had better at least call in to ensure his supervisor knew he was awake at his post on the lake.  At the end of the day briefing he would catch shit if he hadn't noticed dam activity from his post.  He lifted his radio from its holster on the shack's small table and called in to the main security building on the west side of the dam where any vehicle would have had to stop before proceeding onto the dam's roadway.  "Seven to base."  Sean waited a few seconds for a response before trying again.  "Seven to base."  No answer came to his second request.  That was weird.  The radio operator in the security center never left her post, even for coffee, without taking her radio with her.  He tried two more times before deciding the radio system at the security center must have fried.  "Seven to four?" Sean tried, hoping to reach his friend at one of the two security posts hundreds of feet below him on the other side of the dam.  He wasn't too surprised when he was unable to reach them.  Their proximity to the base of the dam often made their radios good for communication with each other, not with floating Base Seven on the lakeside of their watch.  Sean put down his radio, made note of the time and settled down in the uncomfortable chair.  He would try again in a few minutes.  At least if his supervisor tried to give him shit for not calling in he could make note of his attempts.  He raised the binoculars to his eyes one more time to check on the truck that had caught his attention.  He barely had time to focus before his double viewfinder was filled with a yellowish-orange flash.

**************

            From his post in the security hut below the dam, Wes felt more than heard the sound at first.  The little shack wasn't big by any means, but being made of brick it was unusual to feel that kind of vibration.  Wes' brain told him that a delivery truck of some kind had backed into his guard shack, though he hadn't heard anything approaching and wasn't expecting any kind of delivery.  Wes had only a split second to reach that false conclusion before the sound followed the vibration.  It was enormously loud and it rumbled down the valley that formed the pathway of the Shasta River below the power grid.  He leaped up from behind his desk and managed to get outside, though he was sure the ground was still shaking.  An earthquake, maybe, he thought to himself.  But the moment he turned to look up at the mighty object he was supposed to be guarding, he knew he was wrong.  And it was much worse.

            Atop the dam Wes could see the plume of smoke rising into the air, though he could not see what was making it happen.  Before he could even reach for the radio pinned to his shoulder Wes felt another set of vibrations, this one from behind.  Whipping around quickly Wes nearly jumped to the ground as the nose of the helicopter rounded the bend in the canyon and came to a hovering stop not a hundred feet from the dam's face.  The rumbling from above continued and Wes could feel the gigantic downdraft from the helicopters spinning rotors.  Though he had never served, Wes had watched enough episodes of JAG on television to recognize that the helicopter was military.  The helicopter was low enough that he could make out four missiles, he couldn't tell what kind, attached to the underside of the dark black machine, two on each landing skid.  Wes could not believe the military would be doing maneuvers this close to the dam but there was no mistaking the fact that the helicopter was heavily armed.  Who else could it be?

            Even that thought had little time to process before Wes felt himself pushed back towards the doorway of the security hut as the helicopter lowered itself towards the river.  To Wes the helicopter looked to be a living entity of its own, as though not controlled by any pilot inside.  As it came to within about fifty feet of the river's surface, the helicopter tilted its nose slightly upward, as though asking a question of the barricade blocking its progress.  In the seconds that followed Wes caught sight of the flame blasting from the tail of one of the missiles as it left its perch beneath the helicopter and screamed in horror as the missile screeched straight into the wall of the dam itself, sending a shower of concrete fragments cascading down towards the spillway below.  Before he could even begin to question in his own mind what was happening, another missile tore away from the helicopter, connecting with the dam some hundred feet or so to the right of where the first explosive had detonated.  As Wes stared upwards in disbelief, he could see fragments of concrete, railings and debris showering from the very top of the structure where he had seen the first flash. 

            The helicopter paused after unleashing its first two missiles, as though determining where next to target.  Wes finally managed to reach for his shoulder and screamed into the microphone of his radio.  "Mayday!  Mayday!  This is Mount Shasta Park security four!  We are under attack.  Repeat.  We are under attack!"  The cacophony from the helicopters buzzing blades, the debris falling from the dam and the ever increasing rumbling from all around him made it difficult for Wes to hear himself as he called for help.  Before he could repeat his call for help, the helicopter's third missile tore away from the right hand side of the bird, slamming mere seconds later into almost the exact same spot the first missile had found.  "Christ!" Wes yelled, feeling helpless as he watched the havoc before him.  In desperation, Wes remembered his service sidearm, unholstered the weapon and raised it towards the helicopter.  He had never had reason to draw his gun before and had only ever fired it on the test range.  He waited only a second longer before unloading the weapon's entire nine rounds in the general vicinity of the helicopter.  He couldn't tell if he had even gotten near to his target and before he could complete reloading his spare clip into the standard issue nine millimeter weapon, the fourth and final missile was unleashed from the helicopter, finding its purchase again where the first and third had gone in. 

            Wes unloaded a second clip at the helicopter and was certain that despite the growing din around him he heard at least one of his shots strike metal.  As if in response, the helicopter backed away from the dam, turned towards Wes and descended so close to Wes he was certain it would land on top of him.  Wes's hand was raised in front of his head and he knew that whomever was at the controls planned now to kill Wes before he could reload his gun and possibly do damage.  He stood for what seemed a long time as the copter's blades spewed dirt, gravel and debris at him, stinging and ripping at his bare arms and cutting into his face and head.  When a moment passed, Wes slowly lowered his arm to stare into the nose of the hovering aircraft.  It was so close, so menacing yet Wes could not look away.  Tilting his head slightly to the side, Wes could actually made out the face of the pilot, who was staring back at Wes from behind the controls.  It was ridiculous to believe but Wes saw that the pilot was actually smiling and mouthed something to Wes.  The rumbling from the ground and the increasing debris falling from the dam made it impossible for him to make out what was being said.  He could not even read the lips of the pilot.  Before he could worry any more about what was being said, the helicopter turned away from Wes and headed back towards the bend in the canyon from whence it had come.

            His relief lasted only a few seconds as the helicopter turned around at the bend and began a path directly towards the two now large holes in the structure where three of the four missiles had made their target.  The helicopter roared up the canyon way so fast Wes barely had team to scream "No!"  before the helicopter slammed headlong into the crater left by its weapons, exploding in a ball of flame so intense it sent Wes hurtling backwards onto the ground.

            Without the roaring of the helicopter, the surrounding din seemed greatly reduced, despite the continuous rumbling and splashing of water at the dam's base.  He slowly raised himself to his feet and his eyes grew wide in horror as he stared at the gaping, cavernous hole into which the helicopter had disappeared.  It was a nightmare vision he never, ever believed he would see.

            Water.

**************

            The flash inside his binoculars momentarily stunned him, causing him to drop the field glasses to the floor of the floating security hut.  It was brighter than anything he had ever seen.  The rumble from the explosion seemed to reverberate throughout the valley and it took Sean nearly a minute to understand what was happening.  "Jesus!" he proclaimed to no one in particular.  He stared in disbelief at the place where the truck had been only seconds earlier.  There was no sign of life or of the truck.  More disturbingly, the explosion had ripped a sizable chunk on the top of his side of the dam.  It looked to be about fifteen feet wide and ten feet deep, so deep that already Sean could see waves brushing up and onto the dam's deck.  The waves increased in intensity as the lowest parts of the damaged top section continued to crumble under the pressure from the water.  Looking down Sean could see that a current had quickly formed, in the same way he had seen it dozens of times when a major gate opening occurred.  But as the seconds ticked by and more and more water flowed over the top of the dam, there was no denying the increasing volume of water pulling towards the opening.  It was as though the entire lake was taking flight at its newfound freedom. 

            Sean searched the skies as he thought for certain he heard a helicopter nearby, which seemed impossible given how quickly it had arrived.  Who could have gotten word to rescue personnel so quickly that they were already here just seconds after the top of the dam was breached?  Though Sean had no particular training in the operation of the dam itself, he knew the only hope would be to get the main floodgates opened full bore, immediately draining the reservoir below the level of the breach created by the truck.  Whoever they were, Sean thought to himself, at least they had attacked the dam at the top.  Sean reached again for his radio, hoping to summon someone at the communications center who could get a mayday message to the dam's operators.  Before he could even raise the radio to his mouth he heard another explosion, this time coming from below the dam, followed almost immediately by a third loud crash.  Though his post was floating on water not land, Sean was sure he could feel the very earth moving.  It was as though he were viewing the world through a shaking camera lens.  He reached for his radio once more and heard a scratchy voice already on the air sending out a distress call.  It could only be the security bases below the dam and with shocking clarity Sean realized what was happening. 

            A third explosion confirmed for Sean that indeed they were under attack.  Glancing at the increasing speed of the water streaming past his hut, Sean decided just as the fourth explosion sounded he needed to abandon his post and move to higher ground.  He almost couldn't bear to tear himself away from the sight of the water now freely flowing over the top of the super structure, the sight was in itself so ominous it captivated him.  "Fuck!" he yelled to shake himself loose from the paralyzing fear that had started to grip him.  Sean jumped down into the small, aluminum craft, unfastening the rope that held it in place and immediately regretting that decision as the tiny craft began pulling away from the dock.  Scrambling to the stern of the craft, Sean pulled hard on the little outboard's ripcord, taking three tries before the little engine sputtered to life.  Sean could still feel the backwards pull of the water but the engine slowed it.  Gunning the low horse-powered motor to its full throttle, Sean could finally feel himself moving forward, just as yet another explosion echoed up from the valley below. 

            The little boat had made it almost all the way back to the guard shack from which he'd launched when Sean detected an increase in the water's movement.  Again his security shack began to move away from him as a growing rumble edged up the valley from behind.  Turning in a panic Sean could see the entire left hand side of the dam was caving forwards, with water now blasting over the top and a clear view to the other side of the valley was opening up in front of him.  He increased speed, racing headlong towards the ever-increasing gap where the top of the dam had stood so proudly for so many years.  Sean reefed on the throttle of the pathetic little outboard, cursing his employers for the underpowered watercraft that had been part of his working life for the past three summers. 

            Sean suddenly knew how pointless his efforts were though he could not bring himself to release his grip on the engine's throttle control.  The boat spun out of his control, facing him first towards the dam, then away, then towards it again.  In those last agonizing seconds, Sean realized with certainty his life was over.  He had barely time to form the image of his parents, his old friends stuck in that nowhere town he longed desperately to be in.  Sean was only briefly aware of seeing people in the parking lot of the dam's Visitor's center, running towards their vehicles.  He could not even think of a prayer to say as the little craft sailed outward and was briefly airborne.  As Sean noticed smoke and debris below him and just before he fell to his death, he hoped his workmates in the security huts below had had the chance to get away.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 16 July 2013 4:31 PM PDT

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If you're reading this on the day it came out, I should be in Rome today, that is, unless the vessel on which I'm traveling is captained by the same guy that was driving this one. I like to think I've also been writing up a storm and I'll be able to report a great deal of success on my return. In the interim, here is the first couple of chapters, as promised, of the political thriller I began writing during my first trip to Italy ten years ago.

It's set both in Italy and in Canada and involves a terrorist plot against the Canadian prime minister. 

I'm anxious to hear your comments.

********

The sun, as it always was, was nearly unbearable.  To those who visited from the west, the lack of shade and modern air conditioning was a constant complaint.  Having grown up on the outskirts of Karachi, Farraz was accustomed to the heat but had never grown to like it.  His father had hardly seemed to notice, nothing more than the occasional wipe of his brow with that same, formerly white, finally faded brown handkerchief.  And always chastising his two sons for their constant grumblings of discomfort.  "You have a house with your own room," he would frequently remind them.  "That's far more than I ever had as a boy."  Farraz never knew how much to believe his father's descriptions of childhood hardship.  He supposed he would someday tell his own sons of the hardships he endured as a boy.

            If he lived that long.

            Farraz said a silent prayer as he crossed the busy street, seeking forgiveness for his cowardice and asking for courage to replace it.  He did not know this meeting would call for his own death.  Surely the planners would take into account his father's untimely arrest and execution and his only brother already giving his life in a previous operation.  He was the only one left to care for his mother.  There must be some rule about allowing both sons to die, like in that movie about the Second World War a few years ago.  Farraz smiled at the memory, not so much of the movie but of his father. When he had found out Farraz and his brother had long been viewers of bootlegged American movies he moped for days before his lecture to his sons of the evil ways the entertainment of the infidels would rot their minds, and that by watching those movies the boys were supporting the Americans in their quest to rid Palestine, indeed the world, of the Muslim people.  Farraz smiled because in the days leading up to their big lecture both he and his brother had sneaked out of their room to a coffee house in town, where in the back room they had enjoyed two more American movies.  Such hellians they were.  And now both his brother and father were gone.  Farraz knew that if he were asked he would sacrifice his life in the service of Allah and his people.  He knew that if he were asked his mother would be well taken care of, the wife and mother of three martyrs.  Only he hoped still he would not be asked.

            Farraz sighed as he approached the cafe and began to look for his contact.  He was a man now and Farraz knew that meant he no longer had the luxury of childish whimsy.  He had a job to do and he would see it through and make his father and his brother proud.  A man at the very front table of the cafe adjoining what passed for a sidewalk nodded his head once in Farraz's direction.  At first Farraz found it strange his contact would sit so brazenly out in the open.  Then he smiled inwardly.  The two hunkered down in the back corner would raise far more suspicion.  Here they could be two gentlemen, an uncle and nephew perhaps, passing time in the late afternoon.  So much to learn, he thought to himself.  He sat down in the empty chair across from the man who had nodded.  Neither man said anything until the cafe host placed a cup and pot in front of Farraz.  Tea.  Hot tea.  Another custom Farraz would surely never grow to enjoy.  Why could they not have a Coke?  Would Allah really mind us having a cold drink on a hot day?

            "You are early," the man said.  Farraz did not know if that was meant to be criticism, praise or a question so he said nothing.  That seemed to Farraz to be the correct response.  The man had yet to turn and face Farraz so Farraz stared straight ahead until he was given any indication he was meant to do otherwise.  How did one conduct oneself without looking suspicious, he found himself wondering.  The man took a sip of his tea before continuing.  "Do not be afraid," he finally counseled his young protegé.  "You have been selected with good reason."  Farraz could not begin to imagine what that reason could be so again he remained silent.  When Farraz finally glanced in the man's direction, a small envelope lay on the table where none had lay before.  He was about to reach for the envelope when his contact gave one barely susceptible nod.  "Later," he told Farraz.  "When I am gone."

            Farraz could contain himself no longer and finally spoke for the first time.  "What if I have questions?"

            "You will not," was the reply.  "You will be sent detailed information and resources later.  For now, these will be all you will need."

            Farraz nodded somberly and stared back out at the congested street.  He knew enough that he was being trusted to remain calm and temper his uneasiness.  He said another quick, silent prayer before responding.  "Yes," he said, "I will await further instructions."  He turned to meet the eyes of his superior and was stunned to see the man was already gone.  Looking up he saw only the back of the man's long tunic as he walked away from the cafe and blended into the throngs of people as if disappearing altogether. 

            Farraz looked around him as subtly as he could.  When he felt certain he could wait no longer he reached onto the table and delicately slid the envelope into his lap.  It was heavier than he expected, containing more than simply paper.  Farraz slid his finger beneath the seal and as surreptitiously as his still youthful inquisitiveness would permit, tore open the envelope.  To his surprise the envelope contained no message, no instructions, only two small booklets.

            Passports.

2

            Sitting up on the bed Tim ran his hand through his own dark hair.  His head hurt.  "Fuck," he thought, just this side of aloud, "what was her name?"  He glanced over his shoulder at the woman lying in bed - his bed - and the fog induced by - what were they drinking? - would not clear sufficiently to positively identify his companion, even after a deliberate shake of his head.

            He stood up unsteadily yet quietly so as not to wake his conjugal visitor until he could sort out at least some of the minutiae of the previous evening.  Already once before in his relatively brief adult life Tim had had the unpleasant experience of attempting breakfast small talk with a stranger for whom he had little recollection.  Though she hadn't called him on it, neither had she ever called him again, which was a shame: the sex, at least he remembered, had been phenomenal.

            Tim stealthily made his way out to the living room of his ridiculously opulent apartment in search of the pants he was certain he had been wearing at least until he had gotten home.  He spotted his suit pants - trés chic and expensive Armani - tossed haphazardly across the leather recliner, the one true taste of home he insisted on keeping.  At about the same time he saw her dress lying on the floor in front of the sofa and chunks of the evening began to chip away from his memory block.  Thank God, he smiled to himself.  He didn't want to have to risk rifling through her purse for i.d., which so many women nowadays seemed notoriously reticent to carry anyway.  Slipping on his pants - he'd find his underwear later - Tim padded softly into the kitchen to start coffee.  Hopefully that would rouse his temporary roommate now that he remembered the circumstances under which they had come together.  He glanced at the clock on the console of the stainless steel gas stove he almost never used.  If she awoke on her own in the next half hour or so he would have plenty of time for the requisite chit-chat and half genuine assurances of later phone calls before he got on with his day.  It's always better when he doesn't have to wake them, he remembered.  The waking and rushing always seemed way less sincere than if they got up on their own accord and had time for coffee.  Tim selected a large china mug - a gift from someone important was about as much as he could place its origin - and placed it under the still brewing drip of the coffee maker, then clumsily replaced the pot back on the burner to collect the rest.  Spillage was minimal, better than normal, and he shrugged as he returned to the living room.  Cleaning staff would be in if not today then tomorrow, a slight reduction in Tim's domestic operations budget having required a scaling back of the house cleaning to every other day.  No matter.  He lived alone and ate out most days.  How much mess could he make?  Tim sat down on the marble ledge of the deep, tall, stone window-way to sip his coffee and wait.  The window and shutters were still closed but already he could make out the early din of the insanity that was the traffic flow in his adopted city. 

            Rome.

            Considering his Italian family heritage, the city did little to inspire passion in him.  To Tim it was just big, noisy and always busy.  Not that he had some yearning for small town roots; born and raised in the York area of the now amalgamated Toronto metropolis, traffic, crime and pollution were part of Tim's upbringing.  Just here everything seemed magnified.  He sipped his coffee as it approached the lukewarm temperature at which he preferred to drink it.  He should stop feeling sorry for himself, he decided, as he did most mornings.  He lived in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, made a good salary he could keep most of since a great deal of his expenses were paid for by the good people of Canada, his own car and driver.  And sex with a lot of immensely hot women.  He smiled.  Mustn't forget that.

            "Bongiorno," came a soft voice behind him, interrupting his genuflection.

            "Good morning," Tim replied, hoping to thwart further conversation in Italian.  Hell, she was Rumanian anyway.

            Krista, clad in the shirt he had worn last night - how had it ended up in the bedroom when his pants had been out here, he wondered briefly - stepped across the cold living room floor and draped her arms around Tim's bare shoulders.  "E stato stupendo," she spoke softly into his ear.

            "Hmm," he replied, feigning interest.  He just was not a morning romantic.  "Sei la donna picé bella del mondo."  At least he was willing to try.  Krista gave him a little hug and stood up straight.  "Coffee?"

            "Don't get up," she told him, smiling and making her way to the kitchen.  He hadn't been planning to but she need not know that.  Taking yet another symbolically relevant gift mug from his cupboard, Krista poured herself coffee and returned softly to the sofa, smiling wordlessly at her host. 

            Tim couldn't help but smile back, which began to break down the walls of the funk in which he had inexplicably found himself this morning.  Last night had begun as another dull, uninspired dinner hosted by his boss, the Canadian Ambassador to Italy, for the newly appointed Romanian ambassador.  He remembered his own arrival two years earlier with his then newly appointed superior.  Half the countries of the United Nations, or so it seemed, had thrown celebratory or welcoming galas.  Any excuse for a party in diplomatic circles.  Romania's new assistant for diplomatic affairs, after numerous phone calls with Tim to sort our various protocols - mostly what everybody liked to eat and drink - now sat staring playfully at her Canadian counterpart.  If only international relations could be so easy.  Tim brushed that thought aside.  Imagining his Prime Minister engaged in the type of relations that had transpired in his apartment made him queasy.  At least he still had an empty stomach.

            "What were you thinking about?"

            "It wouldn't be decent for me to say," Tim replied.  Letting her know he had just now imagined the aging Prime Minister naked seemed counterproductive.  Krista returned his coy smile.  For a disinterested party Tim felt he was doing a bang-up job of morning after flirting.  The clock on the mantle - a welcoming present from his counterpart from Japan - chimed the hour.

            "I really should be going," Krista told him.

            "I really wish we could blow off our jobs and just stay here today," he lied.  She walked over to him and kissed him gently.  Their coffee breaths merged - hers with sugar, his with cream - as their lips joined.  It wasn't tasty. 

            "Don't tempt me," she teased then turned towards the bedroom.  She stopped long enough to recover her black dress from the floor, which she flung with cavalier grace over her shoulder as Tim watched her depart.  "But be a good boy and maybe we'll do this again."  Tim returned to staring out the window to the still unopened shutters.  If he tilted his head slightly he could just see the street below.  He kept his head straight; he would see it soon enough.

            He took the last gulp of coffee and got up towards the bedroom, leaving the drained gift mug on the windowsill.  He had a long day ahead.  It was always tedious but very involved work whenever the home government came to town.  And this time it wasn't alone: the other members of the G8 would be coming too.  And that meant hours of discussion with the G8's most powerful member.

            The Americans.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 16 July 2013 4:18 PM PDT

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If you’ve been following along, I’ve been documenting the process by which Deadly Lessons made it from draft to bookshelf.

When we left off last week my soon to be publishers at the now, sadly, defunct Napoleon and Company/Rendezvous Press indicated a willingness to publish the book save for reservations they had with some of the subject matter, specifically the hostile Serbian-Croatian relationships in the story. Further, they wanted to be able to have a better understanding of the motivation of one of the principal culprits in the story: how could someone do something so heinous? How could we understand that?

And waited.

And waited some more.

In fact, I waited so long that eventually, several months later, my wife, who generally tries not to intrude on what often could only charitably be referred to as my artistic process, asked me in the car one day how my rewrite was coming. In a gush of writer’s angst, I unloaded the difficulty I was having: how could I explain what’s happened? How can I let the reader know the underlying torture this character has had that could contribute to her actions?

In her matter of fact manner, my wife suggested, “Why don’t you write a prologue?” And there it was – the answer to my months of torment so casually tossed out (these English teachers have a literary answer for everything!). But it made sense for this story and gave me a means to delve deeper into the character. In essence, rather than having to undertake a major rewrite, by front loading the novel I hoped to achieve a better understanding of what would drive the character later on.

Thankfully, the publisher agreed.

It has had a curious impact on the story, particularly when I hear from readers who have not yet completed reading the book. Frequently, at book events, I would give a description of the novel’s plot, followed by a reading. But I never read from the prologue because it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to the description I’ve just given, or to a reading from early on in the novel. Thus, I’ve had people ask me what the hell was going on when they’ve read the prologue and told me that it doesn’t appear to have anything whatsoever to do with the book I had described and read from.

“Read on,” is all I can tell them. “Hopefully it will make sense by the end of the book.” And for the most part, it appears to because I get very little feedback from people who have completed the book still wondering where it fits in.

Or at the very least they’ve forgotten about it by then.

You might be thinking it’s a very quick path from there to the printing press. But in Canada, anyway, a two-year journey from acceptance to publication has been the norm and three years is not uncommon.

In fact, at one point, I misunderstood one of the drafts I was sent, doing nothing with it, thinking it was the final copy they were going with. The publisher eventually contacted me to say my slow reviewing was delaying publication into the following year.

Thus, from acceptance to book launch, Deadly Lessons was nearly four years in the making.

*********

This week we’re off to Europe again, starting in Spain and then sailing the Mediterranean on the vessel you see above. I’m hoping the European venture is going to inspire me to write my ass off, principally on making a sizable dent in W3.doc. While our Barcelona apartment and ship certainly have Internet access, I’m not confident how reliable it will be for posting weekly columns. Thus, while I’m gone, I’m going to post the first few chapters of that political thriller I began ten years ago in Italy.

Some of it is dated (I noticed that one of my main characters is just acquiring the ability to use email) but I think the story might still have some merit and it's one to which I hope to return when W3.doc is completed.

Let me know what you think and I’ll let you know how well the ‘travel-as-motivator’ program works.

Hey, Hemingway wrote in a bar….

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Wednesday, 17 July 2013 9:12 AM PDT

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Last week I shared the story of the first part of the road to publication (one of these days I'll actually write about Last Dance again). Looking back, I reiterate how fortunate I was: from the completion of the first draft to Napoleon and Company offering me a publishing agreement was really just under a year.

Though there had been just a few rejections, including one from Dundurn, the publisher of Last Dance that now actually owns Napoleon and Company (confused yet?), I had steeled myself for further rejection when my wife called me in the car to tell me a letter from a publisher had arrived. “Go ahead and open it,” I said.

“We would like to keep your manuscript on a shortlist for 2004,” the letter dated January 2, 2003 stated. It wasn’t for sure, yet, though: they told me I should continue submitting my book proposal to other publishers as they would not be able to make a firm decision for a couple of months, though they assured me they considered the book “a quality submission.”

Five days later, another letter came, describing their affection for the novel, saying “your protagonist is likeable, your use of humour is excellent, and the distinctive Vancouver setting is right in line with the manifesto of our imprint in presenting distinctly Canadian settings and characters.”

Really? You got that from what I wrote? So much for a cigar being just a cigar – apparently they were interpreting way more in the story than I had ever intended.

They assured me they didn’t want me to remove those elements of the story, only that I would do more to provide not only a more balanced perspective but also a deeper understanding of the motivation for the principal crime. If I were willing to do that, they would be willing to publish the book.

Oh, is that all?

Some writers, I’ve heard it said, are incredibly sensitive about requests for story edits. I was not one of them. I’d had a few freelance pieces published but this was my first and only book and they were willing to publish it. Who was I to argue?

All I had to do was find a way to make the murder of a teenaged girl seem not only plausible but also understandable in the circumstances. And if possible, try to make some sense out the hatred that lingers between Serbians and Croatians to this day, without it being a critical element of a story predicated on an affair between teacher and student.

Piece of cake.

Next week: the long stretch of road to the bookshelves.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 11 July 2013 6:45 AM PDT

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The first ‘the end’ of any prominence for me was the completion of my Masters thesis. I had taken a leave of absence from work to complete the writing and in the final stages of writing the conclusion – written at the beginning of my leave, oddly – I was finding any and all manner of distractions at home, so much so I had taken to writing at the library of Douglas College, just down the mountain from where I live. After typing those final two words – not terribly academic language, certainly but psychologically necessary in the first draft – I jumped to my feet and let out a little yell of victory and could find no one – friend or stranger – whom I could hug.

With Deadly Lessons, my first novel, the moment remains etched in my memory. It was towards the end of a semester and my senior history students were busy writing an in-class exam. Had I been more dedicated – or cared more – I suppose I would have been carefully pacing the front of the room or skulking up and down the rows, peering ominously over the shoulders of students as they pontificated on the long term influence of the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, I was digitally penning the final few words of the manuscript that would become my first published book. I was using my own personal laptop – I’m not that much of an abuser of my employer’s resources.

Again, I let out a small whoop, drawing the annoyed attention of my students, at least those more academically inclined, and again, could find no one in the room I thought it would be appropriate to hug.

And then it sat in the proverbial drawer, albeit the electronic version.

Eventually, several months after the fact, my wife asked me if I actually planned to do anything with the completed draft of my manuscript, like send it to publishers, or something.

Many publishers had websites indicating submission guidelines but just as many did not. At the time, the annual hard copy of The Writer’s Market was the essential and more or less only other tool available for determining what publishers were accepting queries from new writers. Typically, most publishers of the day that were accepting queries wanted anywhere from a two to seven page synopsis of the story that was being pitched, along with two or three sample chapters from the book itself. I maintain 2, 3, 4 and 7 page variations of synopses of both books. Rarely did anyone accept full manuscripts as part of the first query. Oh, and no one accepted anything electronically: if you live where there are lots of writers buying stock in Staples was no doubt a sound investment.

It sounded like a scolding to me but I heeded their advice and went with Napoleon – and I’m very glad I did.

Next week: the long journey from acceptance to print.

Posted by davidrussellbc at 12:01 AM PDT

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