Michael J. McCann's Blog: Open Investigations, page 9

What to do about Brownie?

As regular readers of The Overnight Bestseller know, I've moved my authoring operations to a basement office in the Burritt's Rapids Community Hall. The building was constructed as a general store in the middle of the nineteenth century by John French, and when I tip my head back to gaze heavenward for inspiration I can stare at the original heavy wooden beams and floor planks of this solid neo-classical structure.

It's a very quiet work environment, without distractions, and my productivity has thankfully improved since I moved in about a month ago. No more cats running across my keyboard for attention or yelling for food or searching endlessly for the door into summer. Just Mike, his computer, and........

Image: Public Domain
I've seen him twice now. A plump, healthy-looking brown mouse running along the baseboard under the chalk board. I think he's coming from a storage room just to the right of my workspace and heading for the furnace room down yonder at top speed. So ... I'm not alone after all.

Ever the responsible tenant, I informed my lessor of my uninvited guest and suggested I could bring in one of my cats (am I nuts??) to put the fear of Felix into him and encourage him to move elsewhere, or else get caught and suffer the consequences. (A word on gender: I refer to him in the masculine in the fond hope that he's a lone bachelor and not a female looking to nest and produce more Brownies.) She replied right away, letting me know that her daughters had seen the mouse before while taking art lessons from the previous tenant. Oh yes, by the way: his name's Brownie.

I'm toast. He has a name. What do I do now? I can't just up and kill Brownie, can I?

There's an old box of Warfarin on a shelf in the storage room, but unless he's suffering from blood clots I wouldn't do that to him. I've seen rodents killed by mousetraps before, and it's a horrible sight. So I'm back to the cats. We have mice in our house in winter, since we live in the country, and we've refined a system where they chase and trap a mouse in a corner, I put on gloves and grab it, then I take it off a ways from the house and toss it into a pile of leaves. I guess I'll give that a try, after all, because I have an obligation to my lessor to take care of it.

But here's the thing: he has a name. Brownie. I've started talking to him. I ask him how he's doing. Sometimes I get up to take a break, and I give him an update on how it's going. This chapter's looking good, Brownie. What should I do here, Brownie? How does this sound?

I'm toast. I have a new pal, and his name is Brownie.

Going Inside the New Wordshop

Now that we've finally made it to 2016, there are going to be some changes made. As I mentioned last week, I've relocated my workplace to a basement office in the Burritt's Rapids Community Hall. As you can see on the left, I'm just getting settled in with my 1960s vintage rock posters, computers, pencils, and all the rest. Not shown in the picture are the whiteboard on wheels and great big chalkboard I'm already using extensively to work out the kinks as I make my way through the first draft of my current manuscript.

For those of you who enjoyed SORROW LAKE and are looking for the next novel in the Ellie March and Kevin Walker crime novel series, do not despair. The second installation, BURN COUNTRY, is well in hand. However, it is temporarily on hold as I complete the above-mentioned draft of a new manuscript featuring a new character, Tom Faust. This series will be set in central Ontario and, in a departure for me, will be told in the first person. More on Faust later.

Before I let you go on to much more important stuff, I promised last week I'd include another selfie in this week's post. A better one. Well, anything would be better than that sad-sack selfie from last week, so here you go. This was taken this morning, during a light snowfall, and is part of a new set of publicity photos I'm taking to promote SORROW LAKE. I hope you like it:
All the best for 2016, everyone.

Re-inventing the author

I don't take a lot of selfies, and you'll probably agree after glancing at the one on the left that this is a good thing. Lynn doesn't like this photo because she thinks I look grouchy. Actually, it was taken a few mornings ago just outside Burritt's Rapids, and I'm just very tired.

I'll admit straight out, without sugar coating, that 2015 has not been a good year for us here in Oxford Station. Stuff happens, over and over it seems, and you deal with it and move on. That said, it's time to rise back up out of the static and re-assert myself. As a result, I'm bringing The Overnight Bestseller out of its cryogenic sleep and resuming its Monday posts, starting with this one.

I'm also re-inventing myself as a writer. Thanks to Lynn, as a concerned wife and smart business partner, I've closed down our living room office and opened a new one, offsite. I'm now the new tenant in the basement office of the Burritt's Rapids Community Hall. Located on Grenville Street in the village, this new office will help me restore the writing schedule I used to follow. It will also provide a pick-up point for folks wanting to buy any of our books in the North Grenville area. Just send me an e-mail and we can arrange a time!

Next week I'll show you the interior of my new domain, drop hints about my latest project, and - I promise - try to include a better selfie.

Thanks for checking back in with me here at The Overnight Bestseller. I hope you'll enjoy what follows.

Hiatus

I'll be taking a break from this blog to concentrate on my next novel. I expect to be back in the fall.

Thanks to everyone who supports me by following my blog.

Hiatus

We'll be taking a break from our four weekly blogs, The Overnight Bestseller, Behind the Walls of Nightmare, Open Investigations (Goodreads), and Writing in Retirement (Goodreads). We expect to be back in the fall with lots of news for our readers.

We'll continue to post reviews as part of our commitment to introduce new works to our readers.

Thanks to all of you who support us by following our blogs.

Children's Lit

I found myself sitting in the children's reading room of a library recently and, with time on my hands, I had a look through some of the books. I was impressed by the variety and quantity of books available, as well as--for the most part--the quality of production and illustrations. In an age where it is difficult to engage youngsters and teenagers in anything other than electronics, it was gratifying to see that the printed word is still very much alive. And for those youngsters who do prefer electronics, there are many offerings available via online book clubs and e-book publishers.

Publishers Weekly recently published a preview of fall reading material that you might like to check out if you're an educator, librarian, or parent interested in what is available for your child. Please see http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by....

Crime Fiction, Japanese-Style

Publishers Weekly (PW) recommends Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders as a best summer read for 2015. The novel was first published in 1987 and has now been translated from Japanese into English. As noted in PW, the  novel launched the shinhonkaku ("new orthodox") renaissance to Japanese crime fiction by "restoring Golden Age-style plotting and fair-play clues to the Japanese mystery scene."

Members of a mystery club, who are investigating deaths on a small island off the coast of Japan, must survive in a house where they are being targeted by a killer. Sound familiar? Publishers Weekly describes it as a "sophisticated homage" to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

For the PW review, please see http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/summer-reads-2015/mystery.

A Comparative Study of Crime Fiction

If you're interested in reading about the evolution of crime fiction, you'll want to visit the website of the International Crime Fiction Research Group. The group is based in Queen's University, Belfast, and includes representatives from literary, film history, and cultural history studies. As stated on its website, "[i]ts principal aim is to organise a series of initiatives themed around issues relating to the international genres of crime fiction, in order to establish long-term collaborations with other UK and European scholars and Libraries."

The website has some beautiful reproductions of pulp fiction covers, as well as articles on such well-known crime fiction writers as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Georges Simenon, to name only a few.

To check out the website, please go to at http://internationalcrimefiction.org/....

International Thriller Award Winners

The winners of the 2015 International Thriller Writers (ITW) Awards have recently been announced:

BEST HARDCOVER NOVEL
Megan Abbott – The Fever (Little, Brown and Company)

BEST FIRST NOVEL
Laura McHugh – The Weight of Blood (Spiegel & Grau)

BEST SHORT STORY
Tim L. Williams – “The Last Wrestling Bear in West Kentucky” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine)


BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
Elle Cosimano – Nearly Gone (Kathy Dawson Books)

BEST E-BOOK ORIGINAL NOVEL
C.J. Lyons – Hard Fall (Legacy Books)


As noted on the ITW website, "[t]he International Thriller Writers is an honorary society of authors, both fiction and nonfiction, who write books broadly classified as 'thrillers'. This would include (but isn’t limited to) such subjects as murder mystery, detective, suspense, horror, supernatural, action, espionage, true crime, war, adventure, and myriad similar subject areas."

For the full list of award nominees, please see the announcement in Crimespree Magazine .

Congratulations to all of the winners.

Updates on Sorrow Lake

I'm pleased to announce that I'm participating in a Tribute Books Blog Tour for Sorrow Lake.

This blog tour provides various reviewers with the opportunity to critique a novel, as well as to introduce writers to a larger audience.

For the blog tour schedule, please see http://sorrowlakeblogtour.blogspot.ca/.

Sorrow Lake is also featured on The Indie Spotlight at http://www.theindiespotlight.com/.