Pushing the envelope....

As a writer of a series, it is easy to get trapped in the same old, same old and find yourself writing the same kind of story over and over again, because it is comfortable. With Meg Harris mysteries I've strived to avoid this trap. It is one of the reasons behind Meg's travels to other Canadian wildernesses in every other book. Not only does the change in location and people add an extra dimension, but it challenges me as a writer and thereby keeps me excited about the story being written.

With A Cold White Fear, I have pushed the envelope, so to speak, even further. All the action takes place during less than a twenty-four hour period. As a writer, I knew I couldn't rely solely on the action to move the story. I had to rely on the characters and so I delved deep into the major characters and let them move the story along. And so A Cold White Fear became a character driven thriller.

But the characters took me places that were very difficult to write particularly as they related to Meg. There is one scene that took me three revisions to advance it to where it needed to go. I so didn't want this to happen to a person that has almost become part of me.