J.C. Paulson's Blog, page 6

You media people rock.

In the lead-up to my book launch, my amazing publicist Britainy Robinson Zapshalla reached out to the local media and they have been incredible. So has she.Indeed, our local media are generally incredible. They work hard to cover what's happening in our fair prairie city, not only from a hard news standpoint but from a community standpoint. It's a long-running tradition here. I am so grateful that they have included me, and my first book, Adam's Witness, in that community news. Thanks to the Saskatoon Express, The StarPhoenix, CTV, CBC and Global. You do keep Saskatoon glued together. Informed. Thriving. Culturally aware. You don't get enough appreciation for it, and because I'm part of the whole thing most of the time, I can't really pat 'us' on the back.Now that I've been on the other side of the mike, I can.

On the mystery shelf

One of the most exciting days on the book journey is to see your own contribution on the bookstore shelf. Adam's Witness is presently sharing a table at McNally Robinson in Saskatoon with some other mystery writers...like John Le Carre, Diana Gabaldon, Ken Follett, Stephen King. Ooooh, what a feeeeling!

Dickens of a read

The Chocolate Labradoodle Caper. A Damien Dickens Mystery by Phyllis Entis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Don't be fooled by the cover. This cozy mystery is a fast-paced, pull-you-through story taking place in Atlantic City and Montreal, Canada. I detect a glimmer of Raymond Chandler, a private detective's office that cries out to be broken into, a web of tough guys and clever PIs. A clear style keeps a complex plot understandable and exciting. Get on Damien and Millie Dickens' third ride.



View all my reviews

Falling away

Saskatoon must be one of the most beautiful cities anywhere in the fall. We may not have the bright red leaves of other climates and forests, but the glory of our yellows, oranges and persistent softer greens make autumn our finest seasonal hour.I've been walking through Buena Vista nearly every day, just as the sunlight begins to slant through the still-heavy canopy, a scattering of fallen leaves blowing across the streets. It stops me every time; I look in amazement at the beauty a city can offer.Alongside the riverbank, the blue water rushes by. A lone cyclist makes his way past the rising sun, warming the chilly dawn, the grass still a carpet of green along his path. There is no one else about; just the photographer. Someone I love; someone who can also see, and capture, the beauty.I think about how lovely this place is. I think about the peace that can still be found. I think of the horrors abounding in other locations. And I think, I'm so grateful that this is home.And I count my blessings this Thanksgiving. 

End of summer brings a beautiful melancholy

The end of summer always feels to me like a small death. Nature will sleep again, very soon.The season we ache for, as northern people, the season that brings us crops and garden produce, flowers and lawns, the season that offers us heat and sun and long days will soon be wrapped in chilly arms and snowy blankets.That’s partly why I try to take some holidays at the end of August, in the attempt, perhaps, to drag out the season, right to its end. It’s denial, absolutely.It’s also blueberries. This year, in the central northwest part of the province, they were not plentiful, and they seem to have come early. There were certainly enough for blueberry pancakes — easily one of my top 10 favourite foods — but the freezer will have just one or two lonely little bags contributed to it.It’s also the quiet. July, on the lake we frequent, is often insane: hundreds of people, dozens of boats dragging screaming children, snapping fireworks in the deep night. As August wears on, the people slowly drift home. Every day is quieter, more peaceful, cooler in the evenings and darker in the mornings.It’s the poetry written by nature, when the boats and voices are silenced, listening to the loons and the lapping water, the scurrying squirrels, the breeze whispering in the aspen leaves. I love it. It’s the most beautiful place on Earth, to me, when it’s quiet.It’s different every day. We’ve had wind and cloud and heat and rain. This morning, there was a clear sky and not a breath of wind. The lake was dead calm, the only boat on the water a canoe piloted by my husband, who came home triumphantly bearing a fish. The fish are delicious, swimming as they do in an icy lake that runs to fifty feet deep.It’s also getting on the Northern Meadows golf course at 10 a.m. with no one ahead of us, and no one behind us. We’re nearly alone out there sometimes (it is often very busy, but try a Monday morning a week before school starts. Golf heaven.)To get there, we drive in the slanting sun by fields of slowly ripening grain, enormous “muffets” of hay that sprawl over miles and miles of land. This part of Saskatchewan, that mixes the farming of the northern grainbelt with the aquamarine lakes and the oxygen-giving boreal forest, never ceases to amaze me, and I’ve been coming here almost since birth. It’s the best of Saskatchewan, all together in a small geography.Later, hot from the exercise, I enter the cold water, waves splashing my shins, then my thighs; gathering courage, I finally walk in, determinedly, up to my neck. And I swim, glorying in the fresh, clear water.I ignore, quite easily, the news. Well, almost. There has been a horrific hurricane in Houston, Texas. Former cabinet minister Bill Boyd is in trouble (and rightly so). A young person has been shot; terrible. Not much else enters my consciousness. There are diamonds sparkling on the lake.We are almost at the end. Soon, we will pack up and say goodbye, and there will actually be tears in my eyes.But when we get home, there will be ripe tomatoes in the garden, limp flowers drooping their blooms in their planters, yellow leaves starting to fall. We will pass swaths of crops in the fields. It’s harvest time. I’m trying not to think about what comes next, as I absorb these last halcyon days of a hot Saskatchewan summer.Yet I do. And I know I would never appreciate the churning life of summer so much, if it were not for the bite of winter.And I think, why would I, how could I ever leave this beautiful place? I would forever dream of bright canola and blue flax flowers, of green pines and blue lakes, of bright sun and changeable skies, of wild berries and fresh fish.If it’s summer, I will always be in Saskatchewan.This article originally appeared in the Saskatoon Express.

Diefenbaker deserves statue, recognition for his human rights work

This column was originally published in the Saskatoon Express.John Diefenbaker, once prime minister of Canada, is much in the news these days.He would absolutely love that.His return to the media spotlight comes courtesy of Garrett Wilson, a Regina lawyer and author. He objects to the statue of Diefenbaker selling a newspaper to then-Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, sitting on the Saskatoon corner of First Avenue and 21st Street.Date of occurrence was ostensibly July 29, 1910. The statue was, appropriately, funded by the StarPhoenix.But Wilson says the newspaper transfer never happened. That’s not to say the StarPhoenix blew it, by any means; Diefenbaker told the story about meeting Laurier many times during the 1963 election campaign. Wilson claims that story was never verified.Well, maybe it happened, and maybe it didn’t. Dief was somewhat known for telling stories; and he certainly told this one, many times. Wilson argues that the statue is journalistically on shaky ground, since Dief himself was the only source on the story, and Wilson doesn’t trust that source.Let us assume that the story is apocryphal. Even so, it fell from Diefenbaker’s lips; and if he is not the most reliable witness, who else would have seen the event, and verified it? It’s pretty hard to prove either way. And it’s a heck of a good statue.I met him once. It was in the lobby of the Sheraton Cavalier hotel; I was very young, and quite amazed that the former prime minister was standing right before me. He walked right up to me and shook my hand, murmuring some sort of pleasantry, his head, sadly, shaking slightly. I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed at the time, but I’ve always liked meeting PMs, particularly when they’re actually in power. Gives you a better feel for who they are, and what’s going on.I met Paul Martin before he became PM; Brian Mulroney (his head is even bigger than it looks on TV) while he was in office; and Stephen Harper. “Met” is maybe a big word for the slim interaction, although I had a great interview with Martin once, when he was still finance minister.Returning to Dief the Chief, though, we need a statue of him in Saskatoon. If this is the right one, and I do really like it, I leave it up to debate. I prefer to remember Dief for the great good he did.When I studied political science at the University of Saskatchewan, I wrote a paper (and got a resounding A, if I may say so) on Dief’s early effects on apartheid. He stood against the South African government and opposed its membership in the Commonwealth. The opprobrium from Canada and other nations led South Africa to retreat from its application for readmission."Apartheid has become the world’s symbol of discrimination,” said Diefenbaker in the House of Commons on March 17, 1961. “I took the position that if we were to accept South Africa’s request [for readmission] unconditionally, our action would be taken as approval or at least condonation of racial policies, which are repugnant to and unequivocally abhorred and condemned by Canadians as a whole."May I say, Amen?Diefenbaker gave First Nations people the franchise in 1960; they voted for the first time in 1962.Also in 1960, Diefenbaker’s government enacted the Canadian Bill of Rights, the first federal expression of human rights law. It was a bill that Diefenbaker started writing in the 1930s, and it’s said that his experience as a lawyer led to a deep frustration with discrimination.I could go on, but you get the picture.To this day, the following quote from Diefenbaker gives me a thrill. Think of all the countries that cannot come close to aspiring to what we have achieved in Canada, in large part because Diefenbaker got the whole thing rolling. This is what it means to be Canadian. “I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”For all these reasons, getting snippy about a potentially apocryphal statue is perhaps not terribly necessary. Dief was far from perfect. But what he accomplished was incredibly, positively Canadian.www.jcpaulsonauthor.com

The first shipment. A wee one.

It's a strange sensation to open a box with your own books in it. It feels like commitment.Two of these will be off to McNally Robinson soon, to see if they will accept Adam's Witness for consignment. The rest I will peddle on street corners.Just kidding.

This is what happens when you start writing romance novels.

 You see romance everywhere. Even where it maybe isn't.This column originally ran in The Saskatoon Express a few weeks ago. Life is turning into fiction.Query to city hall: how do I get home?Life is a detour. I'm gonna drive it, all summer long.-     With apologies to Tom CochraneIt's a hot day. I mean, it is steaming. I'm in the north end - here at the Express, actually. I have an appointment at Vanishing Point, a framery on Lorne Avenue and Taylor Street. I am running late.Quick digression: in my younger years, I was never late. Never. Ever ever ever. Now, I'm always running late. What's up with that? Old brain cells can't keep up with the relentless tick-tock of the clock?Anyway, I hit Millar Avenue, head down Warman, scoot through downtown and over the freeway. I get to Fifth Avenue, and instead of sailing through, urrrrch. A very large piece of machinery is grinding away in the middle of the intersection. It wasn't there the day before. At least, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Old brain cells, you know.I take the detour, make a loop, get to my destination two minutes late. Not bad, yes?I have another date after this one. Dinner, back downtown, with family members who are passing through Saskatoon. On the way home, I don't want to do the detour again. I stamp my foot. I try another route.Right. Using that ill-considered plan, I can't get across Taylor, down Lorne, up Victoria, down Fourth Avenue or Fifth Avenue in Buena Vista, aka BV. In my father's language, I am forced to dipsy-doodle all the way, turning and twisting to avoid closed streets. I get home, utterly confused about where I've been.What is happening, here, is that the city has dug up half of BV, in an effort to replace water and sewer lines and I assume beautifully and smoothly pave the streets over once the digging and replacing is all done.I don't live in BV, but I'm in and out of that very-nearby neighbourhood constantly; and it is my speedy conduit to the freeway and downtown. Well, it was.Now, I greatly appreciate that the city is trying to fix wholesale the water and sewer lines on a street by street, and neighbourhood by neighbourhood, basis.  It absolutely makes a heck of a lot more sense than trying to nip off a house here and a house there, which has been happening for years.Meanwhile, though, getting around is detour hell. I'm always wondering where the heck the good people of Buena Vista are parking, how they get to the other side of the street, and if they ever, indeed, have company. Assuming they can get home at all.I got a partial answer to that on Sunday, when my husband and I took a leisurely stroll through the tree-lined neighbourhood. It was, again, hot; I wanted shade, so BV was a better choice than, say, Avalon or Queen Elizabeth, where there is no significant tree canopy.We make it to Fifth Street, somehow, and halfway down the block we see two people sitting on the boulevard lawn. They are separated by a red construction fence.My fevered imagination - I mean, it's 32 degrees and humid - starts churning. They look like star-crossed lovers; the woman has her fingers curled through the gaps in the fence, as if reaching for the man seated on the other side, half-facing her. I wonder if they will share a kiss through the grille.The street has gaping holes in it. He has traversed the obstacle course (mountains of dirt! valleys so low!) to be with this woman, although they are divided by the impassable barrier. Ohhh. How romantic is that?The woman looks up as we go by, and smiles. We smile back, and say hello. A conversation starts up. She tells us it's hard to get across the street, since it's blocked off for, well, blocks. So the two neighbours meet at the fence, perhaps during a pause in yardwork, and talk through it. They will be doing so, she says, for another month.So much for my Romeo and Juliet scenario. I have to stop reading those guilty pleasure romance novels in the summertime - they are skewing my appreciation for reality - and get back to literature. (Oh, wait. Romeo and Juliet is, in fact, Shakespeare. Never mind. Even the greats wrote about love.) But hey - this is love thy neighbour kind of stuff, right? And if they wanted to get together for dinner, let's say, one or the other would have to walk around three blocks or so to get to the other's house. It's really quite weird.It's hard to blame the city, of course. Doing their best, don't you know. But if this ever happens in my general area, I hope to get several weeks' notice. That should give me time to stock up on romance novels and skip town.

I don’t love a good thunderstorm

This column originally appeared in The Saskatoon Express. I'll be sharing these from time to time on this, my blog site. If you get the Express, great; if you don't, I'd love for you to read these here.Well, now. Wasn’t that a mighty storm?From time to time, I hear people saying “Oooh, I love a good thunderstorm.” Let us, just for a moment, dissect that for those of us who just don’t understand why anyone would actually like high winds, pouring rain, hail, ear-splitting thunder and jagged electrical lines flashing across the sky.The “oooh” part may be an expression of awe. As in “oooh, that was a big one.” Or, “oooh, that mountain sure is high” or “oooh, that man sure is handsome/woman is beautiful.”Then we have the subject/verb phrase, “I love.” I recall a Mad Men episode in which Don Draper (about whom women often say, “oooh, that man sure is handsome”) lecturing the copywriting staff about using the word “love.” We “love” our family, friends, pets and, perhaps, our nation. We do not “love” our washing powder, toothpaste or soft drink. (I suspect some of us do “love” our cars, mind you.)In any case, we do not “love” inanimate things, and if we truly do, we are weird. I’m willing to accept the argument, here, that thunderstorms are not exactly inanimate. Neither, however, do they have souls.Now we arrive to the object of the thing, “a good thunderstorm.” What, pray, is a “good” thunderstorm? Does this refer to an extremely active, exciting, seemingly endless weather event? One that gets the blood raging and produces excellent photo opportunities? Does it come with hail, rain and wind in addition to the thunder?Or, is a good thunderstorm one that behaves well, and causes no damage?Good thunderstorm. Pat, pat. Nice thunderstorm. Please do not dent my car, break my windows or flood my basement.In the wake of last week’s storm (and I do mean wake, since every time a car drove through the two-foot-deep lake at our intersection, it created enough wake to be a boat on a river) I’ve heard several people say, “Oooh, I love a good thunderstorm. But that one was a bit too much. Even I didn’t really love that thunderstorm.”It was a thunderstorm. Do you love them, or do you not? Or only when they’re “good”?I am in a different place on the thunderstorm love-hate debate. I do not love thunderstorms. I suppose I should not hate them, either, to be consistent with my theory about emotions over inanimate things. Let’s say, instead of hate, that they scare the ever-loving bejeepers out of me.This time, I saw that baby coming over the tops of our fir trees. My husband was downtown at the gym, and wouldn’t be ready for a while yet. Then, yes, he planned to walk home, too.Nothing doing, said I. I called him and said, “I’m on my way, if you can be ready early. It’s going to storm.”He agreed.Then all hell broke loose. The wind came up, rain started to pour and the hail hammered down. There is no way I am driving through a hailstorm. The hail finally stopped, and I got ready to leave…and it started again. We had three hailstorms in 45 minutes.When it finally abated, I pulled out in the car, looked right, then left . . .  and realized there was an enormous lake at the end of the block. Big trucks were making it through, but I have a small SUV.I turn around and get to Broadway and Taylor, and it’s underwater, too. So I hit the freeway, and ended up driving through three enormous pools, and past three stalled vehicles. (That’s what you get if you drive through deep pools. Just saying.)We came home and, with our neighbours, spent the next hour clearing debris out of the drains on the corner. That was fun. By 8:30 we were wet, cold, filthy and starving.They say it was a 25-year storm. I recall one eight years ago, in which the lake at the corner crept halfway up our lot. If it hadn’t finally stopped raining that night, our house would have been under water, along with some of our neighbours. Seems to me we get a 25-year storm every eight to ten years.This time, there were popped manhole covers, power outages, hail damage, flooded basements. An acquaintance had the stucco stripped from her home by hail. Oddly, a friend of ours on the far east side of town had nothing. “Storm? What storm?”It was pretty exciting for some of us, though. Was it a good thunderstorm? I leave it to you to decide.

Hitting the publish button

Aieeee. Can you hear me screaming from there?It was scary, but I did it. I hit the publish button on the paperback. It should hit the website, amazon.com, in a couple of days.I regret deeply that it's not perfect; I'm no typesetter, I have learned. But I think it's readable. I've used Calibri in 11 point in black on white, rag right instead of justified, and I think it's easy on the eyes.The proofing process was intense. I can't count the number of revisions, from typos and extra spaces to chapter numbers jumping all over the place. If you've ever tried this, or something like it, you'll know what I mean.So thank you, Caroline Dinter, for all your patience with the cover. Thank you, Ken Paulson, for saying "ship it." Thank you, sister, for being such a huge support and an inspiration. Thank you, brother, for reading and for your name. Thank you, all you amazing beta readers, friends and family members, for putting up with me. Pictured here is the actual book in proof form. It's never really real until you see it in print.Launch to come in the fall.On to book two.