Interview With An Author Featuring M.H. Callway
Today I have the great pleasure of interviewing M. H. Callway, aka Madeleine Harris-Callway. Madeleine is a wonderful friend, an extremely talented author and a great partner-in-crime when it comes to all things writing!
Please check out https://mhcallway.com as well as https://mesdamesofmayhem.com. Last year we all had the great pleasure of being part of a CBC Gem Documentary: Women Who Love Crime which was nominated for a prestigious Yorkton Film Festival award! You can check that out here: https://bit.ly/WomenWhoLoveCrime.
Madeleine’s debut survivalist thriller, Windigo Fire, was a finalist for the 2015 Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Her dark suspense novella, Glow Grass, first published in 13 O’Clock, was runner-up for the 2016 AE Best Novella award. Her collected short fiction in Glow Glass and Other Tales (Carrick Publishing 2016) ranges from comedy to noir.
Apart from being a wonderful writer, Madeleine is a brilliant scientist, able to juggle physics and chemistry which, to my mind, is just amazing!
Thank you, Madeleine, very much, for joining me today! Tell us a bit about you, where were you born? Where did you grow up?
I was born British in Stockholm, Sweden to an English father and Swedish mother. My childhood was unsettled. By the time I was 13, my family had moved eight times and I’d attended a dozen different schools, missing chunks of my education altogether.
I’d make friends, only to leave them behind. A trope, I know, but books became my best forever friends. Their worlds of fantasy and adventure enriched my life immeasurably– and still do!
How did you become a writer?
The Swedish side of my family boasted many painters and musicians; the British side, strong athletes. I didn’t inherit any of these talents! Other than being smart in school, I wasn’t good at much of anything. Then my mother took me on a short driving holiday to Jasper, Alberta.
In those days, the highway between Banff and Jasper was unpaved, narrow and muddy. Bears were everywhere. We spotted a bunch of cars pulled up by the side of the road where several tourists were feeding the bears candy bars. I was only five, but I knew this was a Bad Idea.
My mother stopped to photograph the wannabee Darwin award winners. When she climbed back into the driver’s seat, a bear popped up at her window. Fortunately she reacted quickly and rolled it up, because when she didn’t deliver the sugar, the bear beat on the glass with its muddy paws.
I thought our near-death experience was a grand adventure! In grade school, I wrote it up as a story. Unlike Ralphie in A Christmas Story, I did get an A+. A writer was born!
Later I banged out plays on my parents’ portable typewriter and coaxed my longsuffering playmates into performing them. But the space race was on and more than anything in the world, I wanted to be an astronaut or failing that, an astronomer.
My dueling passions for science and English continued, but in the end I chose science and ended up with a doctorate in chemistry, while remaining an avid reader, especially of crime fiction.
Throughout my working years, I’d take stabs at writing, but it wasn’t until the New Millennium, when I finally had the time to give my writing the time and attention it needed.
What inspired you to write Windigo Fire?
My book is about a bear, too! Seriously, it is. I detest cruelty to animals and believe that all animals should be protected.
I’d read an article about “canned” hunting, where entitled jerks with too much money pay many dollars to shoot a defenceless animal who is chained down and cannot escape. My thoughts were to have a group of canned hunters get their deserved justice on a remote island where they cannot escape.
I chose Northern Ontario as the setting, because I’d spent a lot of time there for work. My first job after university was with a gold mining company operating in Kirkland Lake and I ran many projects up north for the Ministry of Health.
Northern Ontario is wild! People tend to be adventurous and live how they please. If they bend the law a bit, well, who’s going to stop them with only a few police officers stretched over a very large territory? I knew dozens of crazy tales to weave into my story. For instance, Karaoke Strip Night isn’t that much of an exaggeration.
I’d intended my protagonist to be, Dr. Benjamin Amdur, an investigator with the Ministry of Health. Danny Bluestone, a young Native Canadian, was only to be the person who discovered the murder victims. But all my readers engaged with Danny, so I thought, why not make him the hero? And that’s how Windigo Fire happened.
Where do your characters come from?
Most of my characters, like Danny, simply appear, but a few are inspired by real people, places or events.
My villain, Meredith Easter otherwise known as Santa, was inspired by Santa’s Village in Bracebridge. We had visited this theme park with our daughter, who at age four absolutely loved it, but Ed and I merely endured its cute gingerbread houses and cartoon nursery characters. To save my sanity, I thought, what if Santa’s Village was evil? What if they were growing marihuana in those gingerbread huts? Or cooking meth? That’s how Meredith Easter’s nasty roadside attraction, Santa’s Fish Camp came about.
Santa though simply appeared. I find him incredibly fun and easy to write, because he says and does the nasty things we only fantasize about. Also, he invariably messes up, so I can dump a load of justice on his head and punish him as he so richly deserves.
Logan and his trained bear, Pasha, are also drawn from a roadside attraction: Clark’s Landing in New Jersey where we saw a trained bear perform. The owner and his bear obviously shared a deep bond, a friendship which is the driving force of the plot of Windigo Fire.
Corazon, the tough bush pilot and businesswoman, was inspired by the stories a Filipino work friend told me about her country, including the spirit exorcisms and the thriving gay culture. (Corazon’s brother is a legendary drag queen.) Sadly, Corazon’s first experiences as an illegal immigrant are not that uncommon. She does though take charge of her life – and how!
How did you come up with the title Windigo Fire?
My book’s original title was The Land of Sun and Fire, an ironical reference to the doggerel you find in many northern washrooms:
“In the land
Of sun and fun,
We do not flush
For Number One.”
My agent renamed my book, Gunning for Bear, hoping to sell it as a manly survivalist thriller, but George Down, my editor at Seraphim Editions, had a much better take on it.
In Native Canadian mythology, the windigo is a monster, a cannibal, the embodiment of evil. I’d used the windigo as a symbol of evil to tie my book together and to reflect Danny’s indigenous heritage. The windigo is a tall white demon with a heart of ice and simply by encountering one, you may turn into a windigo yourself. The only way to destroy a windigo is by fire.
For most of the book, Danny and his friends are fleeing a forest fire started by the hunters. And in the end, the killer of the hunters walks into the forest fire to end his life. That George came up with the title, Windigo Fire, was absolutely brilliant!
Have you written any books that are not published?
Oh, yes, my very first crime novel, The Fossil Wrecker. It almost got published, but not quite. Still as my author friends assure me, nothing is ever wasted. Rachel, the child character of The Fossil Wrecker, reappears in Windigo Fire and my medical detective, Dr. Benjamin Amdur, became the hero of my comic crime novella, Amdur’s Cat.
What are you working on now?
I’m about halfway through Windigo Ice the sequel to Windigo Fire and I’m finishing a ghost story novella. I’ve also started work on a short story for Carrick Publishing’s upcoming anthology, A Grave Diagnosis. Lots to keep busy while the world is shut down by the corona virus.
Thank you so much, Dear Madeleine, for chatting with me today! I love the title The Fossil Wrecker! I too am working on a short story for A Grave Diagnosis – it’s such fun! And being part of this camaraderie and fabulous collective means the world to me, so thank you and I look forward to all our mutual endeavours and to Windigo Ice.
P.S. Short story writers, look up https://www.carrickpublishing.com for submission deadlines for A Grave Diagnosis. We hope to see you there!
Please check out https://mhcallway.com as well as https://mesdamesofmayhem.com. Last year we all had the great pleasure of being part of a CBC Gem Documentary: Women Who Love Crime which was nominated for a prestigious Yorkton Film Festival award! You can check that out here: https://bit.ly/WomenWhoLoveCrime.
Madeleine’s debut survivalist thriller, Windigo Fire, was a finalist for the 2015 Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Her dark suspense novella, Glow Grass, first published in 13 O’Clock, was runner-up for the 2016 AE Best Novella award. Her collected short fiction in Glow Glass and Other Tales (Carrick Publishing 2016) ranges from comedy to noir.
Apart from being a wonderful writer, Madeleine is a brilliant scientist, able to juggle physics and chemistry which, to my mind, is just amazing!
Thank you, Madeleine, very much, for joining me today! Tell us a bit about you, where were you born? Where did you grow up?
I was born British in Stockholm, Sweden to an English father and Swedish mother. My childhood was unsettled. By the time I was 13, my family had moved eight times and I’d attended a dozen different schools, missing chunks of my education altogether.
I’d make friends, only to leave them behind. A trope, I know, but books became my best forever friends. Their worlds of fantasy and adventure enriched my life immeasurably– and still do!
How did you become a writer?
The Swedish side of my family boasted many painters and musicians; the British side, strong athletes. I didn’t inherit any of these talents! Other than being smart in school, I wasn’t good at much of anything. Then my mother took me on a short driving holiday to Jasper, Alberta.
In those days, the highway between Banff and Jasper was unpaved, narrow and muddy. Bears were everywhere. We spotted a bunch of cars pulled up by the side of the road where several tourists were feeding the bears candy bars. I was only five, but I knew this was a Bad Idea.
My mother stopped to photograph the wannabee Darwin award winners. When she climbed back into the driver’s seat, a bear popped up at her window. Fortunately she reacted quickly and rolled it up, because when she didn’t deliver the sugar, the bear beat on the glass with its muddy paws.
I thought our near-death experience was a grand adventure! In grade school, I wrote it up as a story. Unlike Ralphie in A Christmas Story, I did get an A+. A writer was born!
Later I banged out plays on my parents’ portable typewriter and coaxed my longsuffering playmates into performing them. But the space race was on and more than anything in the world, I wanted to be an astronaut or failing that, an astronomer.
My dueling passions for science and English continued, but in the end I chose science and ended up with a doctorate in chemistry, while remaining an avid reader, especially of crime fiction.
Throughout my working years, I’d take stabs at writing, but it wasn’t until the New Millennium, when I finally had the time to give my writing the time and attention it needed.
What inspired you to write Windigo Fire?
My book is about a bear, too! Seriously, it is. I detest cruelty to animals and believe that all animals should be protected.
I’d read an article about “canned” hunting, where entitled jerks with too much money pay many dollars to shoot a defenceless animal who is chained down and cannot escape. My thoughts were to have a group of canned hunters get their deserved justice on a remote island where they cannot escape.
I chose Northern Ontario as the setting, because I’d spent a lot of time there for work. My first job after university was with a gold mining company operating in Kirkland Lake and I ran many projects up north for the Ministry of Health.
Northern Ontario is wild! People tend to be adventurous and live how they please. If they bend the law a bit, well, who’s going to stop them with only a few police officers stretched over a very large territory? I knew dozens of crazy tales to weave into my story. For instance, Karaoke Strip Night isn’t that much of an exaggeration.
I’d intended my protagonist to be, Dr. Benjamin Amdur, an investigator with the Ministry of Health. Danny Bluestone, a young Native Canadian, was only to be the person who discovered the murder victims. But all my readers engaged with Danny, so I thought, why not make him the hero? And that’s how Windigo Fire happened.
Where do your characters come from?
Most of my characters, like Danny, simply appear, but a few are inspired by real people, places or events.
My villain, Meredith Easter otherwise known as Santa, was inspired by Santa’s Village in Bracebridge. We had visited this theme park with our daughter, who at age four absolutely loved it, but Ed and I merely endured its cute gingerbread houses and cartoon nursery characters. To save my sanity, I thought, what if Santa’s Village was evil? What if they were growing marihuana in those gingerbread huts? Or cooking meth? That’s how Meredith Easter’s nasty roadside attraction, Santa’s Fish Camp came about.
Santa though simply appeared. I find him incredibly fun and easy to write, because he says and does the nasty things we only fantasize about. Also, he invariably messes up, so I can dump a load of justice on his head and punish him as he so richly deserves.
Logan and his trained bear, Pasha, are also drawn from a roadside attraction: Clark’s Landing in New Jersey where we saw a trained bear perform. The owner and his bear obviously shared a deep bond, a friendship which is the driving force of the plot of Windigo Fire.
Corazon, the tough bush pilot and businesswoman, was inspired by the stories a Filipino work friend told me about her country, including the spirit exorcisms and the thriving gay culture. (Corazon’s brother is a legendary drag queen.) Sadly, Corazon’s first experiences as an illegal immigrant are not that uncommon. She does though take charge of her life – and how!
How did you come up with the title Windigo Fire?
My book’s original title was The Land of Sun and Fire, an ironical reference to the doggerel you find in many northern washrooms:
“In the land
Of sun and fun,
We do not flush
For Number One.”
My agent renamed my book, Gunning for Bear, hoping to sell it as a manly survivalist thriller, but George Down, my editor at Seraphim Editions, had a much better take on it.
In Native Canadian mythology, the windigo is a monster, a cannibal, the embodiment of evil. I’d used the windigo as a symbol of evil to tie my book together and to reflect Danny’s indigenous heritage. The windigo is a tall white demon with a heart of ice and simply by encountering one, you may turn into a windigo yourself. The only way to destroy a windigo is by fire.
For most of the book, Danny and his friends are fleeing a forest fire started by the hunters. And in the end, the killer of the hunters walks into the forest fire to end his life. That George came up with the title, Windigo Fire, was absolutely brilliant!
Have you written any books that are not published?
Oh, yes, my very first crime novel, The Fossil Wrecker. It almost got published, but not quite. Still as my author friends assure me, nothing is ever wasted. Rachel, the child character of The Fossil Wrecker, reappears in Windigo Fire and my medical detective, Dr. Benjamin Amdur, became the hero of my comic crime novella, Amdur’s Cat.
What are you working on now?
I’m about halfway through Windigo Ice the sequel to Windigo Fire and I’m finishing a ghost story novella. I’ve also started work on a short story for Carrick Publishing’s upcoming anthology, A Grave Diagnosis. Lots to keep busy while the world is shut down by the corona virus.
Thank you so much, Dear Madeleine, for chatting with me today! I love the title The Fossil Wrecker! I too am working on a short story for A Grave Diagnosis – it’s such fun! And being part of this camaraderie and fabulous collective means the world to me, so thank you and I look forward to all our mutual endeavours and to Windigo Ice.
P.S. Short story writers, look up https://www.carrickpublishing.com for submission deadlines for A Grave Diagnosis. We hope to see you there!
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