Wednesday 31 July 2019

THEMES IN NOVELS (In which Bad Girl discovers she's not as flaky as she thought...)

by Melodie Campbell

One of the great discussions in the author world is whether your book should have a theme or not. Of course it’s going to have a plot. (Protagonist with a problem or goal and obstacles to that goal – real obstacles that matter - which are resolved by the end.) But does a book always have a theme?

Usually when we’re talking ‘theme’, we’re putting the story into a more serious category. Margaret Atwood (another Canadian – smile) tells a ripping good story in The Handmaid’s Tale. But readers would agree there is a serious theme underlying it, a warning, in effect.

Now, I write comedies. Crime heists and romantic comedies, most recently. They are meant to be fun and entertaining. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered recently that all of my books have rather serious themes behind them.

Last Friday, I was interviewed for a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) mini-documentary featuring female Canadian crime writers. During this, the producer got me talking about the background to my most awarded series, The Goddaughter. This crime caper series is about a mob goddaughter who doesn’t want to be one, but keeps getting dragged back to bail out her inept mob family.

I know what it’s like to be a part of an Italian family that may have had ties to the mob. (In the past. My generation is squeaky clean.) The producer asked me If that informed my writing. Of course it did. But in our discussion, she stopped me when I said: “You are supposed to love and support your family. But what if your family is *this* one?”

Voila. There it was: a theme. All throughout the Goddaughter series, Gina Gallo grapples with this internal struggle.
So then I decided to look at my other books. The B-team is a spin-off from The Goddaughter series. It’s a funny take on The A-team television series. A group of well-meaning vigilantes set out to do good, but as this is comedy, things go awry. In fact, the tag-line is: “They do wrong for all the right reasons…and sometimes it even works.”

Was there a theme behind this premise? Was there a *question asked*? And yes, to me, it was clear.

In The B-Team, I play with the concept: Is it ever all right to do illegal things to right a wrong?

Back up to the beginning. My first series was fantasy. Humorous fantasy, of course. Rowena Through the Wall basically is a spoof of Outlander type books. Rowena falls through a portal into a dark ages world, and has wild and funny adventures. I wrote it strictly to entertain…didn’t I? And yet, the plot revolves around the fact that women are scarce in this time. They’ve been killed off by war. I got the idea from countries where women were scarce due to one-child policies. So what would happen…I mused…if women were scarce? Would they have more power in their communities? Or would the opposite happen. Would they have even less control of their destinies, as I posited?

A very strong, serious theme underlying a noted “hilarious” book. Most readers would never notice it. But some do, and have commented. That gets this old gal very excited.
I’ve come to the conclusion that writers – even comedy writers – strive to say something about our world. Yes, I write to entertain. But the life questions I grapple with find their way into my novels, by way of underlying themes. I’m not into preaching. That’s for non-fiction. But If I work them in well, a reader may not notice there is an author viewpoint behind the work.

Yes, I write to entertain. But I’ve come to the conclusion that behind every novel is an author with something to say. Apparently, I’m not as flaky as I thought.

What about you? Do you look for a theme in novels? Or if a writer, do you find your work conforms to specific themes?



Got teen readers in your family? Here's the latest crime comedy, out this month:

On AMAZON

Monday 22 July 2019

VEGAS, BABY! In which Bad Girl explains how an imaginary Vegas hotel rocks the latest Goddaughter

By Melodie Campbell

Whether to use a real setting or make one up?  That is the question.

Butchering Shakespeare aside (which I do cheerfully, if not cleverly) all authors have to decide whether to set their novel in a real place or not.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each.

In the Goddaughter series, I set the books in a real place – Hamilton Ontario, also known as Steeltown, or The Hammer.  Everyone who has ever been over the Skyway bridge on the way to Toronto (one hour from Buffalo) will experience a taste of Hamilton.

“I live in The Hammer.  Our skyline includes steel plants.  We consider smog a condiment,” says Gina Gallo, the mob goddaughter of the series.

I don’t have to describe much to put you in that setting.  It’s sort of like New York or Paris.  Give a few landmarks we all know, plus in this case assault your mouth and nose with metallic fumes, and the author has put you there without endless description.

The problem with using a real setting is you need to know the place well, because if you make an innocent error, like forgetting that some streets are one way, you will get hundreds of irate emails from readers who know the place better than you do.

Luckily, I know Hamilton well.  I know where to buy the best cannoli (always my test re how well you know a place.)

I use real settings whenever I can.  Readers who live in the place love to see their town highlighted.  You can often get local media interested in your book.  And people new to the location often get a kick out of coming to know it, in a literal way. 

So when I moved book 6 of the Goddaughter series to Vegas, I had a dilemma. Here’s the thing.  So many people have been to Vegas, that you have to be very careful to ‘get it right.’  I was there a few years ago, and am very aware that things change.

It takes about 6 months for me to write a Goddaughter book.  Off it goes to the publisher, who takes about 15-18 months to get it out to stores.  That’s the thing about books.  Anything on the shelves right now was probably written two years ago.

In two years, things in Vegas change.  Hotels redecorate, and maybe change ownership. It became clear to me, that while I wanted this book to be clearly ‘Vegas,’ I needed to be careful.  I’ve stayed at the Mirage.  I could have used that as a base. But when writing the book, I couldn’t predict how things would look there two years from now.

The answer?  Create a new hotel!  Make it the newest and hippest thing, so of course no one has seen it before.  And that’s where I had fun.  What hasn’t been done, I thought?  What theme would present a whole lot of fun, yet be completely whacky, in keeping with the Goddaughter series?

Whoot!  It came to me immediately.  Hotel name:  The Necropolis!  Theme:  Morticia meets The Walking Dead.  We could ramp up the loopiness by throwing a Zombie convention.  And then add a Viking Valhalla casino, a bar called Embalmed, the Crematorium Grill steakhouse…

So The Goddaughter Does Vegas is a hybrid.  The setting is the Vegas you know.  The hotel is a new concoction, but fitting with the fantasy atmosphere that Vegas is famous for. 

I got away with it this time.  I think.

How about you?  Do you use real settings or do you make them up?  When reading, which do you prefer?