NOW AVAILABLE! The B-Team, ebook and paperback, from Orca Books

'They do wrong for all the right reasons...and sometimes it even works.'

If you liked The A-TEAM television show, you'll like
 The B-TEAM! (so says Library Journal)

THE B-TEAM!

'They do wrong for all the right reasons...and sometimes it even works.'
Perhaps you've heard of The A-Team?  Vietnam vets turned vigilantes?  They had a television show a while back.  We're not them.
But if you've been the victim of a scam, give us a call.  We deal in justice, not the law.
We're the B-Team.

Available at Chapters/Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and independent bookstores.

Ebook available at all the usual suspects.

on AMAZON

In a Mob Comedy, How Close is Too Close to Home?

by Bad Girl

It all closed in on me at the launch of THE GODDAUGHTER mob caper in Hamilton. Eighty-five people stood waiting.

The local television station had cameras in my face.  So far, it had been an easy interview focused on my awards and comedy career. The fellow was charming.  I liked him a lot.  Then he dropped the bomb.

“So…have you ever met a member of the mob?”

I didn’t like him so much anymore.

Yikes!  Hesitation.   A lot of feet shuffling.

“Yes.” I said, very precisely. So precisely, that everyone in the room laughed nervously. “In fact, I had to wait until certain members of my family died before getting this book published. ‘Nuf said.”

The ‘nuf said’ was the closure.  He got it.  Being a smart lad, he even let it drop.

But it made me think about how close you want to get in a book to real life.

As writers, we research a hell of a lot.  Of course, I did research for The Goddaughter series.  Some of the study was pretty close to home, as I riffed on memories from my childhood.  But I write comedies, so perhaps the expectations aren’t as great for me to be entirely accurate.  Good thing about that.

In the screwball comedy THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE, I am not very close to real life. Gina must get back fake rings from some of her best clients. So she masterminds a bunch of burglaries that go…well…wrong.  It’s great fun, and rather innocent on the grand scale of criminal activities.

But I do cut pretty close to the wire in describing Hamilton.  The streets are real. The names of the neighbourhoods are real. I even describe the location of the restaurant where the mob (in my books) hangs out. I changed the name, of course, because the last thing I want is readers thinking this hot resto is really a mob hangout.  And besides, it’s fun when fans email me to say, “When they all meet at La Paloma, did you really mean XXX?” Readers feel they’ve been part of an in-joke.

How close is too close?  Here’s what I’ve learned.  You never want to offend anyone by:

1.      Using real names of mobsters past or present.  They have ways of finding you.  Even the dead ones.  We are Sicilian, after all.

or

2.      Using a street number that is real and can be tracked down.  Especially if you are describing a call girl establishment.  Believe me, this is not cool.  Mrs. Harmon hated it.  Mrs. Murphy, on the other hand….but I digress.

So in THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE, I want you to feel Hamilton. To smell the smoke of Steeltown and experience the ambiance of a post-industrial city in decline.  Like parts of New Jersey, The Hammer is rife with delightfully quirky areas that lend themselves perfectly to a mob caper.

I love this city with character.  And I hope that comes through in THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE.

Melodie Campbell achieved a personal best this year when Library Journal compared her to Janet Evanovich.  Her first book, ROWENA THROUGH THE WALL, was an Amazon Top 100 bestseller. Her fifth novel, THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE, has just been released by Orca Books. 

Opening to THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE

     Okay, I admit it. I would rather be the proud possessor of a rare gemstone than a lakefront condo with parking. Yes, I know this makes me weird. Young women today are supposed to crave the security of owning their own home

     But I say this. Real estate, shmeel estate. You can’t hold an address in your hand. It doesn’t flash and sparkle with the intensity of a thousand night stars, or lure you away from the straight and narrow like a siren from some Greek odyssey.
     Let’s face it. Nobody has ever gone to jail for smuggling a one bedroom plus den out of the country.
However, make that a 10-carat cyan blue topaz with a past as long as your arm, and I’d do almost anything to possess it.
    But don’t tell the police.

www.melodiecampbell.com

Library Journal says this about Melodie`s third novel, The Goddaughter (Orca Books):

``Campbell`s crime caper is just right for Janet Evanovich fans.  Wacky family connections and snappy dialogue make it impossible not to laugh.``

THE GODDAUGHTER’S REVENGE on Amazon http://tinyurl.com/kmgjgsf

THE GODDAUGHTER on Amazon http://ow.ly/dnObH

Funny Girl Mel and Me

It is with great pleasure (and trepidation) that I welcome author Catherine Astolfo to these pages.  Pleasure, because she is a great writer, one of the good gals, and I adore her.  Trepidation, because of the title of her post, coming up below.  The books she writes may not be comedies, but she herself is a delightful wit.    

Melodie Campbell and I first met in a downtown Toronto dungeon. You know what dungeons are like. Dank, creaky, dusty, moldy; slanted stairs; iron-gated elevators that screech past each floor with excruciating sluggishness.

Picture emaciated people behind those bars. Dirty bearded faces with no teeth. Enormous spiders crawl up the filthy walls and down my arm…

All right. Most of that I made up. After all, I am a writer.

But it is true that Mel and I met in an old building that housed a boatload of Crime Writers of Canada paraphernalia. Budget cutbacks are everywhere and they even affected our storage unit. So off I went with this stranger to work hip-to-hip relocating all the stuff.

An old building it certainly was. The aforementioned creakiness was real and the elevator truly was antique. There were two elderly gentlemen in the office who might have been the original owners of the place. They looked a little askance that we were moving out, but gave us the key anyway and wished us luck.

Mel and I traversed the dimly lit hallways and slanted floors as only crime writers can do. We laughed all the way. I was overjoyed that this woman had a big laugh, not a teeny ladylike titter but a full guffaw. Just like me. She too had an inner skinny, muscular woman inside her covered up by clothes that were far too big. We were the perfect match for this task.

Here it is nearly four years later. We’ve not only cleaned up dungeons, but we’ve also been through health wars, writing angst, setting ships on course (I suppose it goes without saying that that’s a metaphor), awards, publishing, and traversing the mazes of social media.

Recently Mel was one of my beta readers for my latest novel, Sweet Karoline, and I did the same for her current release, Rowena and the Dark Lord. It’s wonderful when you not only like the person but you also enjoy their writing. Doesn’t happen that often, but it’s magic when it does. I even included a “y” version of Melodie’s name in my novel.

Our books are very different; Mel’s are mostly laugh-out-loud hilarious and mine are mostly serious. In some other life, when we have more time, maybe we’ll write a television script together. I’ve got some great characters who need funny lines. Naturally the series would be a smashing success.

I look forward to more collaboration with the Funny Girl. We can yap about the serious side of life, then make fun of everything around us. It makes for great girl talk. Plus, if only someone would make us queens of the world, we could solve every problem in the universe. I’m sure you and your friends could do the same.

Catherine Astolfo’s newest novel, Sweet Karoline, arrives July 14, 2013. Come visit her and find all the links you need at www.catherineastolfo.com.

Introducing guest author Rosemary McCracken and BLACK WATER - a gripping and compelling read!

I got to know Rosemary a few years ago, when I had the privilege to be her Mentor in the Crime Writers of Canada Mentorship program. Now, I've mentored many fiction writers - probably over 1000 -  through my classes at Sheridan College.  You know that great feeling one gets when you discover a new writer you know is going to be a hit?  I felt that way about Rosemary.

And here it is: her second novel.  Enjoy!

The Best Piece of Writing Advice I’ve Ever Heard

I wrote several stories when I was a child. They were pretty dreadful, and at the age of nine or ten I had no idea how to make them better. So I stopped writing fiction.

If only I’d kept on. My writing and my storytelling abilities would have improved.

Instead, I became an avid reader and went on to study English literature at university. I was told that I had a talent for putting words together. After university, I became a newspaper journalist because it involved writing. And I’ve been writing and editing newspaper and magazine articles for the past thirty years.

But deep down I wanted to write fiction instead of relating facts. I wanted to create my own stories instead of reporting those of other people.

One day I overheard a conversation between a newspaper editor and a fellow reporter. This reporter was a terrific newshound. She could sniff out a good story and track down wonderful sources to interview. But she had trouble building an article out of her wealth of information. She’d get stuck on the first sentence.

“Just jump in and start writing,” the newspaper editor told her. “Don’t worry about the opening. You can come back and fix it. Turn off your internal editor, and write the story down just as if you’re telling it to me.”

Turn off your internal editor. The words resonated. As a journalist, I never had problems writing articles. I had to write to deadlines, and at daily newspapers, those were usually daily deadlines. I had no choice but to submit an article and move on to the next. I had no time to listen to internal editors when I had editors in the newsroom saying they wanted that article ASAP.

But I remembered the internal editor I’d listened to as a child, and I realized that I was vulnerable to that voice when I was writing fiction. And that was because I was working completely on my own, without deadlines and without feedback.

I decided to take another run at fiction writing.

With some difficulty, I managed to tune out my internal editor while I was writing. I focused on getting the story out, sentence by sentence, page by page. Later, the following day or the following week, I revisited these pages with my editor’s voice turned on but firmly in check. I tightened and reworked sentences and paragraphs. I discarded entire pages if necessary.

I joined a writers’ group that meets once a month. This provides deadlines, and I work well to deadlines. I joined networking groups such as Crime Writers of Canada and Sisters in Crime. Several years ago, I left my full-time job at a Toronto newspaper and became a freelance journalist to free up more time for fiction writing. I submitted work to literary contests.

Slowly, I made progress. I had short stories published in anthologies. I made the shortlist on some pretty prestigious writing contests. Then last year, my debut mystery, Safe Harbor, was published as an ebook and a paperback by Imajin Books. Its sequel, Black Water, has just been released.

I’m still vulnerable to my internal editor who likes to compare my writing—usually unfavourably—with the works of other writers. I need to tune out these comments, and with practice, this becomes easier to do. The voice will always be there, and it can be useful when my work needs editing.

But it has to be kept firmly in check.

Rosemary McCracken has worked on newspapers across Canada as a reporter, arts reviewer, editorial writer and editor. She is now a Toronto-based fiction writer and freelance journalist. Her first mystery novel, Safe Harbor, was shortlisted for Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger in 2010 and published by Imajin Books in 2012. You can buy it here.

Black Water, the second book in the Pat Tierney series, has just been released at the special introductory price of .99! You can buy it here.

To win a $50 Amazon gift certificate, enter the contest here. Deadline is June 15.

Don’t Lecture - Entertain Me!

The other day, an American interviewer challenged me about the purpose of fiction; should it always contain a moral message?  Specifically, should crime fiction?

My instant answer:  No No No!  The purpose of crime fiction should be to Entertain, and nothing should come before that.

Why?  We have countless other venues that preach morality. Religions seek to teach us how to behave.  Every day we are bombarded by newspapers, radio and other nonfiction outlets, that expose us to the ‘evil’ of greedy politicians, nasty world despots and out of control celebrities. 

If fiction – and crime fiction in particular – was required to follow a moral code, we would miss so much.  If the good guy always won – if the bad guy always got caught – wouldn’t that make crime fiction lamentably predictable?

Does that mean crime fiction can’t teach us something?  Of course it can!  Put me in the mind of a serial killer for a few hours.  Let me know what it feels like to experience the overwhelming greed of a con artist.  Dress me up as a torch singer, with a black heart and a gun in her stocking.

Let me discover something about how other people think, if only for a little while.  But above all else, entertain me.  Don’t preach at me, even from a distance.  I don’t want it from my fiction.

Just tell me a damn good story, thank you.  Take me out of the real world for a few hours.

That’s the purpose of crime fiction.