Welcome to fellow Crime Writers of Canada author, J.E. Barnard!
JE (Jayne) Barnard has 25 years of award-winning fiction to her name. Her bestselling women’s wilderness suspense series, The Falls Mysteries (Dundurn Press) follows contemporary amateur detectives as they face death both murderous and medically assisted, along with their individual struggles with PTSD and ME/CFS. Her newest book, ‘Why the Rock Falls,’ delves into the dysfunctional family lives of Hollywood directors and Alberta oil dynasties.
Find The Falls on
Buy Links for ‘Why the Rock Falls’ by J.E. Barnard
Indiebound http://ow.ly/ugX850Cbns4
Amazon http://ow.ly/9RxI50Cbnxf
What
genre do you write?
Women’s wilderness suspense. My
work has been described as ‘small town psychological thrillers’ but the small
towns are out in the wilderness and my heroines must deal with wild animals,
rough terrain, and natural phenomenon like floods and blizzards as well as
deadly human predators.
Does your reading choices reflect your writing choices?
As a child I read extensively of
mystery series such as The Three Investigators, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden.
As I grew older I wanted to understand not only what crime occurred and how it
was solved, but why the people involved acted as they did. Interestingly since
I started writing the Falls Mysteries, I don’t enjoy reading crime as much as
before. I keep seeing through the surface to the bones, the author’s structure
and choices, instead of becoming immersed in the story. So now I read more
fantasy fiction for enjoyment.
Which type of characters are your favorite to write?
Dogs. Any scene with a dog in it has a great personality to
play with.
Actually, it’s the main character in whichever scene I’m
working on that day. The Falls Mysteries have two main point-of-view
characters: ex-cop Lacey, who is burnt-out, cynical, and suffering PTSD from
both her job and her marriage to an abusive fellow officer; and Jan, who has a
good marriage but a chronic disabling illness, ME/CFS, which has stolen her art
history career, her plans to travel & have children, and generally robbed
her of the life she expected. These women don’t talk the same or think the
same; they don’t bring the same skills to the investigations. I’m very attached
to both of them, and it’s constantly interesting to me to watch their personal
growth and healing while keeping their investigations moving.
If you could offer once piece of advice to a novice writer, what would it be?
Write from what you know. Yes, you’ll have to do research
along the way. But if you start from a solid base, your writing will reflect
your confidence in that part of the project. If you start from a shaky base,
not only will your characters’ knowledge of that topic seem forced but readers
will be less willing (on a subconscious level) to trust the character, and by
extension your whole story.
An example: a woman I once worked with on a manuscript
wrote a heroine who was writing a cookbook. Yet this heroine was rarely in a
kitchen & never noticed food. She plodded through uninspired writing in
scene after scene, not quite coming alive.
Whenever the character called upon a suspect, however, she
noticed – and could name – every plant in their garden, the health of the
grass, and so on. The writing in these sections was purposeful, flowing, laden
with details that were interesting as well as related to the mystery.
I asked the writer whether the character would be better
off writing a garden book. She admitted she loves gardening and dislikes
cooking, but thought a mystery with a cookbook author would an easier sell. She
was writing about something she didn’t know or care much about, and the writing
revealed it.
Write from something you already know, and spread out from
there.
Do your characters come before or after your plot?
As I’ve been writing series for the past six years, using
the same two sets of characters, it’s hard to recall from those. My new project
is a standalone, though: a teen thriller about a foster child. This one
definitely started with the character. Before I started writing I knew what she
looked like, how she sounded, what she loved, and what she most deeply feared.
The plot worked itself out later.
What are you working on now?
My teen thriller follows a foster child whose best friend gets
her entangled with a sleazy drug dealer and the crooked politicians who protect
him. I’ve just sent the manuscript off to my agent and now I simultaneously
have complete confidence that she’ll adore my vulnerable-yet-fierce young
heroine as much as I do and am about equally terrified that she’ll hate the girl
& the story.
WHY THE ROCK FALLS : The Falls Mysteries
Danger lurks in the wilderness of the Rockies. When a Hollywood director's wife dies during a local movie shoot, filming is suspended. The death also spells the end of ex-Mountie Lacey McCrae's latest temporary job. At loose ends, Lacey volunteers to help in the search for an aging oil baron and his son who have disappeared in the foothills of the Rockies. As drone operators scan the forested valleys from the air and rock-climbers rappel down narrow chasms in search of the pair, Lacey dons her Victim Services' cap to ease tensions among the missing oilman's four adult sons and three ex-wives. As the squabbles over the possible inheritance intensify, Lacey uncovers a surprising link between the missing oilman and the big-shot director. But an unexpected event sends Lacey out on a risky trek across an unstable mountainside on the trail of a murderer who is bent on killing again.
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