An Afternoon with Louise Penny and Eric Friesen

hello everyone i'm barbara bell i'm artistic director of kingston writer's fest and i'm absolutely delighted to welcome you to this special fundraising presentation and afternoon with louise penny thank you so much for joining us i'd like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which uh the festival customarily takes place and on which i stand at the moment is the traditional territory of the anishinaabe and hognoshoni peoples we gratefully acknowledge these indigenous nations for their ongoing guardianship of this land we agree to peaceably share in responsibility for stewardship of this land its waters and all of its biodiversity all those who come to live and work here are responsible for honoring these relationships in the spirit of peace friendship and respect on behalf of the festival i'd like to thank each of you for your generous support of this fundraising event and to express my sincerest thanks to louise penny for agreeing to appear today in support of kingston writer's fest special thanks to jamie broadhurst out to broncos books for offering me this opportunity to present louise in her only canadian stop of the international virtual tour and for facilitating all of the details um we're very grateful also to the isabelle vader center for the performing arts for the use of their green room as a broadcast space for reason thanks also to kingston's independent novel ideabooks store for their support of today's presentation and of course copies of louise pennies all the devils are here are on hand and available to purchase in person and or you can phone or online order or pick up shipment they're easy to find online and on facebook just search novel idea kingston we'd love to know where you're joining us from so please shout out using the q a function all are welcome wherever you are also just fyi your questions for louise should be posted there so no spoilers please of recent or past plot points or we won't be able to use your question and now to the good stuff i'll start with an introduction of eric and then i'm going to turn things over to him eric prison is a broadcaster writer and speaker on music culture and faith in both canada and the united states he was a network host and executive for both cbc radio and minnesota public radio and the founding program director for winnipeg's new classical ingest station classic 107. during this pandemic eric has been hosting a twice weekly zoom cast for the ottawa chamber music festival uh chamber chats at hong shibu some 40 broadcasts so far featuring interviews with musicians whose lives have been completely upended due to cover 19. eric also continues to serve a wide variety of major cultural organizations in canada the us and internationally one of his favorite occupations though is to interview writers musicians and actually anyone who's interested in our cultural life he has a particular interest in the intersection between music and literature he is past chair of kingston writer's fest and the honens international piano competition based in calgary among his many volunteer activities eric co-host the book club in the maximum unit of collins bay prison institution here in kingston ontario he makes his home on amherst island the westernmost of the thousand islands on the border between upstate new york and eastern ontario era was made a member of the order of canada in 2019 please welcome eric friesen thank you so much barbara thank you for that wonderful introduction and uh a great pleasure to welcome louise penny back to the kingston writers fest alas by zoom but online is the way these days and hopefully not forever and to welcome louise back in the presence of her new armangamash novel her 16th in the series all the devils are here here being a new location for these gamache novels uh not in three pines quebec not anywhere in quebec really but in paris paris france the book is just out for a few days but already has had a tidal wave of reviews and is selling like hotcakes everywhere and it's uh talk about the brave reviews i mean wall street journal london daily mail which uh which louise put out on facebook just a few days ago the london daily mail saying vintage penny delicate engrossing and subtle absolutely people's magazine book of the week amazon book of the month and these are just about a few i mean it will be reviewed everywhere by all by the most senior reviewers of every organization in less than 20 years of writing luis penny has become an internationally best-selling author the gamache novels have been translated into at least 29 languages and a bunch of awards the agatha award for best mystery i think at least seven times and the anthony award for best novel of the year her publisher has planned an initial run of 750 000 copies which is in the stratosphere for a new novel but i have a feeling they'll be doing a second run pretty darn quickly and her fans are legion of course and this is because most importantly louise penny is loved by her readers personally loved because they recognize that her ultimate vision in these novels is that goodness exists despite the devils despite the darknesses despite the disappointments despite the failures that lurk everywhere goodness does triumph in her novels it's a hard one triumph but goodness does exist and she reminds us of it in ev with every new book including this one that has just come out all the devils are here louise penny joins us not from paris not from three pines quebec but from london in the uk hi louise hi eric what a lovely introduction thank you that was just beautiful that means a lot you and i are friends we go back a long way we do and it's a great pleasure to engage with you again well it's great to be back at the kingston writers festival i'm trying to remember when i first first did i think my first appearance at the kingston writers festival well was at least 10 years ago and it was with peter robinson you know that's right i think and then i think i interviewed you for that i think i missed one this is your third time i think right at the writers festival right yeah you mean i cheated on you with someone else [Laughter] probably sheila rogers probably not sheila rogers yeah we don't mind cheating between each other that's okay yeah that's okay um so let's let's let's get right into it talk about the new novel uh all the devils are here here being paris paris a new location noodle cal for the gamache mysteries there's a little bit of homesickness for three pines in it but essentially the novel is completely and profoundly based in paris so why paris louise well i knew from probably the third book that paris would eventually be a setting which is odd because i don't know paris all that well i know london much better i'm in uh i have a flat here and that's where i am um but i don't know paris all that well but i said in the third book that garm uh arwan's um son daniel and his wife and and when the grandchildren live in paris and then uh we've had some some um skirmishes with daniel we've gotten to know him a little bit but as i said i've sort of been aiming toward this but i knew that the characters had to be in a certain place for the paris book to work um and i knew i had to be in a certain place as a writer because it's it i knew it was going to be a real challenge that would i would have um some obstacles um to writing in paris that didn't exist when i was writing about a place that i am so familiar with like three pines of course um so that's why really um and the last book without getting into too much detail had a major character moving to paris um so it just seemed like this was the right time and i guess earth is a great city i mean yeah of course well well in fact you say you don't know it very well but in fact i when i finished the book i thought you know among many other things this is a kind of love letter to paris oh thank you thank you you couldn't say anything better than that that means a lot to me because as you know for me location is a character setting is a character uh and it's really important for me to to evoke that but that was one of the challenges because i knew that in leaving three pines a lot of readers would be disappointed because there is a sense of belonging it has become a home there's a sense of ownership um not just of of the village but of the the villagers that come along with it um so i'd be leaving that behind and i would have to or want to try to create that same sense of belonging in paris well in a small village it's you know it has its challenges as well it's not that difficult to describe it and to have a sense of warmth and community massive world city it's a lot more difficult um so i was forced to go to paris a couple of times do lots of research do lots of research eat at a lot of uh sidewalk cafes um and in fact all the restaurants that i mention in the books uh in the book uh exist and the bistros and the cafes all exist um but i uh you know one of the themes we talked you mentioned the themes before about goodness and one of the themes is is our yearning to belong to connect with other people and to connect with uh to put down roots um [Music] so i really wanted to do that with paris but i understood that i could never capture the whole city um so i really had to choose one or two neighborhoods and once i realized the paris really is i mean we all i don't know that i guess the avondees mom but they are very specific neighborhoods and people really identify they say they don't say i live in paris they say i live in the marie i live in saint germain i live in the first i live in wherever um so that's what i decided to do was choose just two of these neighborhoods and really get to know them and so i have ahman his family and his godfather really focus on these two neighborhoods we get to see other other parts of paris but for the most part that became the focus and in fact didn't you you didn't you rent a place in the mra uh oh you know this like what is it oh my god what yes i did um a bunch of us i was a little worried about going back to paris it was going to be the first time since michael died and i had only ever been to paris with michael and i had only been introduced to paris with michael um when i was 36 and and long after i thought it would ever be possible to to be in paris period never mind with the man i love uh and then it happened and so i i bonded with paris at that moment um but i hadn't been i'd been back a few times with michael but not without so i was really quite worried about that that and not really knowing paris and not wanting to bumble around i wanted to find a paris that you wouldn't find in a guidebook i wanted to find the hidden uh gems of little neighborhood restaurants the little little patisseries the fomageries the the gardens in paris not the luxembourg which everybody finds and it's beautiful the toiletry um but the little hidden gems of gardens i wanted to find and write about the ones that armall would know about because he had been to paris every year since he was eight um so i asked a couple of friends to join us one in particular geekote who knows paris really well so yeah we rented a place of really old apparently it was one of the oldest obviously still standing um buildings in uh in the marie which therefore made it one of the oldest in paris and it showed every day of that age it was vertical it was oh my god and tiny i mean these people obviously way back when it was built did not eat a lot of questions you've already mentioned daniel the son because he proceeded he went to paris with his family uh uh in the last book this whole relationship between the father our mo and the son danielle is something that always strikes me i mean i have a son um i'm the son of a father and this whole relationship between fathers and sons i mean this goes back to the greeks right the greek mythology and and it's been written about target and joseph roth and many others and you've made it a kind of it's an important strand of your books this relationship between the father and the son [Music] and what can you say about that as it develops in this novel without really giving away any of the story well that really is um a leap motif that runs through most of the books actually the relationship the books are about many things least of all murder although they are proudly crime novels um but the murder is is really the trojan horse in which all these other themes ride in and one of them is and and has been uh love that love love takes so many forms and who are we to decide what is legitimate and what isn't and one form of love in the books is the love between agma and zhang yi you know this is the father-son relationship he has with his second-in-command um but that has been an irritant with his actual son daniel for a long time but there was also more at play it was clear that there was some history there that that they seem to get up each other's noses that they that they just couldn't get on the same wavelength even though daniel was a thoughtful kind smart individual like his father they just they couldn't mesh um and our mom couldn't figure out why not and but we find out what happened uh in this particular book again in a garden right i'm very i was very glad for that because it's a question i've been asking for a long time and you know i didn't you know the thing is eric that i i didn't know i didn't know until i came close to writing that scene because i knew it had to be resolved in this book but i didn't know what the resolution was and i didn't know what the problem was i just knew that there had been something something happened when when daniel was very young young enough so that it became part of his core belief um but i didn't know what it was and i really you know i went for a lot of what you talked about we talked about music and barbara mentioned music and i listen to a lot of music when i'm right not as as i'm writing but after i stop writing i listen to music when i'm on a plane i listen to music or in the car and it just releases something inside me so i'd go for walks and i would listen to music and i would try to see ahmad and daniel in the garden and what would they be talking about what what could have happened to this young boy and why would he not tell his father about it and how could it last for 30 years or more so what kind of music were you listening to when it finally came to you i have a playlist for every book um and uh in fact i can pull up the playlist right now for that for for this particular one i was listening to bizet okay and concerto in d minor for two violins a particular fave the dubliners was listening to some uh gregorian chants as well from from the beautiful mystery and then i'm because i'm a child of the 70s essentially 60s and 70s mostly 70s i was listening to stairway to heaven classical gas yes i do oh my god i i can't believe i'm admitting this forget forget i said any of that very collecting very effective yeah yeah yeah and flattened scruggs foggy mountain breakdown i mean oh that's that's fun yeah it is but it is it takes i don't know what is going to free it up um and i'm sometimes i'm not sure it's the music so much as the actual music is just the the existence of the music in my head finally gets down deep enough and and then then i can see it and i can hear it i can see the confrontation i can see what their what they're saying to each other there's a an engineering company which is a significant part of the plot the murder plot the mystery plot ghs and when i read those three initials i immediately thought of three other initials snc was that deliberate or or are there parallels i'm trying to think of what my lawyer would say it's sort of obvious i mean you're from quebec you know but and you know and that was happening that the whole snc scandal was happening as i was writing it so i i didn't start off with that as i had already framed in my mind what the plot would be before the snc thing happened um but then it did seem fairly obvious to um to to to allude to that okay no more i think you're i think your lawyer's okay with that no if not i'm pointing him in here you're direct eric me do it i didn't want to uh i have to say i love your acknowledgement essays at the end of your books i really do i find it very hard not to read them at the beginning you know because i know that they can give away some some of the plot but but in this one and this and it's a longer schwann this essay at the end isn't it right it's what it's riveting it is it is riveting um and which is where i'm going you make it very clear that this book like most of your books is about love about belonging about family about friendship and at the very end that goodness exists and so these themes have been throughout the 16 books but but uh and but always been there so i was wondering when you started writing these novels 80 20 years ago did you start writing mysteries or did you start writing books about belonging and family and relationships and goodness that's such an interesting question i started writing mysteries for sure um i did not however read because i read a lot of mysteries i read small c catholics i read a whole lot of things but i read mysteries um so i wanted to set one but i didn't know that there were rules apparently there are rules rules right um so i just wrote a book i would want to read and as it turned out it has all of these other themes i don't i'm not a big fan of this whole genre um label i think you know i think i think hamlet was a crime novel or a play you know it's a murder mystery i think you know obviously alias grace the handmaids i mean all of these there's a huge uh tradition in literature of of crime um and so i just simply wrote a story that that brought in all sorts of themes that interested me um including the struggle of goodness to be good to be good how hard is it to be it's so easy to be cynical it's so easy to be cruel to be cutting to be sarcastic and in fact that's rewarded you're considered clever that if you're kind and you're good if if if logged a softball that you can hit out of the park by being saying the nasty comment but if you just let it pass you're considered weak or slightly stupid um so that the struggle to be kind in a world that doesn't necessarily and we're seeing it now god knows doesn't necessarily reward kindness um i find very interesting and some people early on said well you know you can't you can't maintain it because you can't maintain kindness 16 books later yeah i thought oh that's kind of sad i mean of course you can don't i just find it really interesting i find it so interesting to follow decency than to follow cruelty a child anyone can be cruel anyone can be cruel takes a whole lot more character to to be decent you you live a very open and a very public life uh with whoever seeks you out i mean we know a lot about you your life with your late husband and the love of your life michael and your travels you met michael you know mike i did i did i did very happily at a concert in ottawa i remember it very very well um but for those who haven't met him they've met him through your website through yours through social media through all that you've written your travels you know your earlier struggles with alcohol your fears your joys all the dogs so you made this decision to be very open early on to make yourself even vulnerable it seems very brave to me in this social media drenched world you know it's something that i struggled with the that where the boundaries because um i am happy obviously to to talk about uh my personal life um and i do it thoughtfully you know none of the posts are put up without by mistake or you know when i'm drunk because you know i don't have that excuse anymore um but i try to make the distinction between what is personal what is private and i have a very rich and real private life that nobody knows about except my close friends my confidants um so i think of my life really as it's like a home almost all of my analogies have to do with home for reasons that not surprising perhaps and i think if there's some people who are uh allowed onto the front lawn and there's some people allowed onto the front veranda some people who get into the the the kitchen and some people into the living room so there are stratas where i let people in depending on who they are with social media i think i've sometimes made a mistake um i think part of my mistake is taking some of the more nasty comments personally as though they actually reflect on me rather than on the person making them right um but yeah i think it's i i'm i'm happy to be open i think partly because you know we all struggle and i think it's easy to look at someone who is successful and and think that well the brand always fell better side up um and i you know the other thing eric was when i i was writing blogs at first back in the day um and those were quite long essays and this was when nobody was you know michael would read them maybe or at least pretend to read them um and and i think that was about it and then my american publishers said you know we really there's this thing called facebook maybe you want to move over to it and i didn't want to i was really resistant i thought that it was both invasive and banal and i thought that's not i don't think i want to be part of that uh but they convinced me to do it and i i went along kicking and screaming but as the years went by and as the post went by and as my life evolved um it became more meaningful to me and then finally when michael was diagnosed with dementia and he went through that journey and i talked about it uh on on facebook almost every day i would post but i was also very careful there were you know there were things that were happening that is nobody's business um and i wanted to be respectful of michael's privacy as well um but i also wanted to be fairly open about it and the weirdest the strangest the most wonderful thing happened is that there was then this alchemy it moved from being a marketing tool to being just this immense comfort to me i felt the comfort people would write back and tell me what they were going through and suddenly we created a community a community of thousands of people but we all hurt we're all broken we're all wounded somehow whether it's dementia or cancer or mental illness or alcoholism or just or are fears insecurities and and it really helps to be open and have i think some of the two of the nicest words in the english language are me too yeah well i think it's it has created this incredibly large community for you um i mean there are writers who want nothing to do with publicity right who just they say the work is here and that's it and that's and sometimes that's been very successful for them but for you obviously you've done it very differently and it has created this community and i think it's probably had a lot to do with your success that i'm very clear about and my publishers god bless them haven't queried this or pushed me in any way as i despite the fact that it is a marketing tool obviously i don't think anyone who joins my facebook you know thinks otherwise but way more than that um it is about community building so i don't i almost never tell someone to buy my book or any other book i just talk about my life and if they happen i was given some advice early on um and i followed it in fact it wasn't even given to me i i happened to be eavesdropping on another conversation um and it was the first my book wasn't even out and michael and i went to the atwater library great old private library in in montreal it was holding the crime writers of of canada were holding um um the quebec chapter um an open house so they had invited all sorts of authors there and for some reason i think i got invited because i think they knew that my book was coming out soon i didn't know anyone i was just i was a new kid in school it was terrifying um but we were at the beverage table and someone was pouring coffee and two authors were talking and one said to the other you know my advice to you is almost never talk about your book you know talk about yourself and your process and if they like you they'll probably like the book and i thought that's true i like books written by my friends you know even if they're crap i have completely suspended judgment i simply like them because i like that person um and i thought yeah i feel comfortable doing that maybe it's a canadian thing i've never felt comfortable telling anyone to buy my book or you know now that the book is out we're in that one week two week three week period where reviews are coming out so i'm obviously posting about the reviews and how thrilled i am i would be foolish not to and i am thrilled i mean it would be churlish of me to be given so many blessings and not to not to enjoy them and not to be overjoyed when something great happens and to share it with people um and i've made it fairly clear on facebook i think that if someone doesn't like what i'm posting that's fine you know go away or stay i i don't i don't care i mean i want people to to to be happy and to be healthy but i don't need to twist myself into a pretzel for for approval i always think one of the the measures of a true friend is that they really they they never resent your success your happiness right right right was it bette midler who said uh one of the or was it cher anyway one of them said that one of the great uh challenges of huge success was finding someone who would be happy for you anyway there's a whole bunch of wonderful quotes along along that line but it's true and i've been lucky i mean most of my friends i've known from long before so they saw the struggle um and they knew the dream and i can think of only one who who turned their back and was was kind of nasty and that was that was painful but uh you know what can you do what can you do yeah well you know speaking of your life you're i wonder how it's changed these past couple of years because you are now a bona fide mega star writer so how has it changed that's an interesting question too ah um there's a lot more financial security um at the beginning for the bet the first i mean you know this from about the first six books everyone thought i was a success and i was moving up the best sellers and certainly the books were getting better and better you know in terms of sales but it took at least six years to to start making any sort of money um i remember going to the accountant with michael i think this was when book five had just come out and the account we were doing taxes and the accountant turned to me and said now louise now exactly how long do you think you're going to be a deduction [Laughter] and at that time it seemed like forever i don't know so it's it's one of the sadnesses for me is among the many of losing michael is that just as he was diagnosed with dementia was when things really began to turn around financially where i could the good thing was that then i could afford the care that he needed um so that was just an incredible blessing and that was because i think that's part of the bond i feel with the readers and very aware that without their support and buying the books and spreading the word and and all that the book the emotional support they gave me but also it translated into financial support that translated into caregivers and all that michael needed um but he didn't get he didn't get to see this apartment he would have loved this flat in london he loved london he didn't you didn't get to enjoy all the things and he was the one who who invested so much emotionally and and financially in this series right it's very clear from reading your books that you love food so nice to see from reading the books not been looking at you well i'm saying i was going to say how do you how do you keep your girlish figure louise excellent do you know what i'll tell you i'll tell what is it nice of you to say that and i will take it as the compliment that it is um i will not stand up until you see what's happened to the girlish figure um but what i did in the covet in the in the lockdown i thought i was going to teach myself piano got a keyboard got everything did not happen i think i figured out how to plug it in and now it's just sitting there in the corner but i also knew that if i didn't do something to start moving this was going to be you know this was going to be a problem um so i decided i would learn to run so i i got a private trainer uh in actually who happens to be in london and i'm in quebec and he started training me on on how to run so now i run five kilometers at least five days a week mostly around the apartment which is really hard because all you end up doing is going around and around the kitchen island or the sofa so i'm actually quite sort of run like this most of the time if i ever go outside people are going to want to but that's been such a revelation i never knew i could do that and it's been just wonderful a real eye opener for me at the age of 62 to start running i'm i'm overjoyed about that also i'm overjoyed because most of the time when i'm running around the sofa for the kitchen island i'm thinking jelly beans or croissant or tartar so as you you said this is this is the the first weeks of the launch of the book and we know already that for example in winnipeg the book has been flying off the shelves at mcnally robinson the great bookstore in winnipeg um and elsewhere i know um but do you get nervous when a new book is launched oh yeah there are a couple of really really scary times in in the life of a book after it's it's written i mean the whole process of writing is is terrifying um but one is when you hit send and it goes into someone else's hands it's generally my assistant lee and friend lise and my agent and and the publishers my editors um because of course the moment you hit send you know that it's a pile of merid you just know you just know you were like oh my god what was i thinking i should have put margaret atwood's name on it right kathy reichs [Laughter] um so that's really scary when you send it out because i at that stage i've spent eight months or nine months writing it more than a year thinking about it i produce one thing in a year i don't do short stories i don't do origami i don't do anything i just write this i put everything i have into it so there's a lot riding on it um and i don't i don't know anymore if it's any good or not i know it's the best i could do but you know eventually there's going to be a stumble and i'm sure some people think some of the books are exactly that so that's scary and then the other scary thing is when it gets out of the publishing house which has a vested interest in believing it's good um into the hands of critics and then into the wider world which is really where it counts um so yeah the last sunday monday the book came out on tuesday i don't think i slept at all it's just it doesn't seem to get better you think you'd think this insecurity might might might evaporate but it just doesn't but you know what does change is that there is less writing on it early on a few stumbles would have killed my career the publishers would have stopped publishing it the book sellers would have stopped taking it there would have been no word of mouth and it would have just died um now um you know there's i think i have slightly more confidence um i guess i don't know a couple of days of not sleeping doesn't speak well of my condoms well i i suppose and i think i mean every artist every musician writer i've ever interviewed i think there's always some aspect to that because it must drive you to excellence right to working to doing the best you can yeah and in every book because i write a series with the same group of characters for the most part essentially set in the same place for the most part three finds in quebec um the challenge is not to actually write the same book um to become formulaic it's not to become formulaic not to fall into that and so as a result with every book i try to challenge myself whether it is a structural issue or a thematic issue tonal issue um in this case it was a number of issues including the the location um so yes it's a risk every time it's a risk i have uh in front of me when i write i have the the a poster with the last words of sheamus heaney on it where he said to his wife on his death bed noly to marry which means be not afraid because i am afraid every day i sit down in front of the laptop to write i am afraid i have to look at that and say just you got to keep pushing yourself you have to you have to risk you have to risk you have to risk yeah you know louise i'm saying we have a lot of questions should we start taking audience questions i would love to whatever for you eric okay well i i have other questions but i think since we have so many people with us i think we should uh we should give them a chance so let me take a look i've got two different sources here um judy rabbits uh will your next book take place in london we all need to travel through your book since we can't do to covet oh that's a great i'm actually writing the next book here in london but i don't think that's exactly the question he was asking uh no actually um i think i can be quite clear that the next book is back in three pines um but i may come to london at some point our mall went to cambridge uh right you know there is some there could be some poll i've sort of toyed with the idea of uh of setting it in london or cambridge or somewhere in the a and that would make this apartment tax deductible [Laughter] i mean it's not you yet okay we won't get your accountant involved here if you can no we've already gotten the lawyer and we have already got the lawyer involved so uh bruce matheson says is there a large amount of travel connected to your book research uh that i think we sort of know the answer to that but well not not yet well i mean sometimes not all the time though because that's the beauty of being of having it set pretty much where i am actually sitting is that i don't need to to do a lot of traveling um but yeah for the paris book obviously for the book on um um uh the gregorian chants i mean i didn't have to travel but we went to a nearby monastery and and spent the night and spoke to the monks and spent quite a bit of time with the monks i do quite a bit of research but a lot of it is done online now unfortunately yeah natalie cassidy has a two-part question and this is a question that interests me she says is there any possibility of making your books into a tv series or i would add into a movie um well they were made into one was made into a movie many many years ago that experience taught me that i never want to do it again really um i think the books are very hard to translate um again so you just weren't happy you weren't happy with it well i get i think you know some of that was me some of it was them some of it it wasn't the actors they did a great job i just think you know i i i yeah it's just it's it's a difficult thing so that it doesn't become like murder she wrote in three pines it doesn't become cutesy these aren't these are you know again the books are about many things including duality so they're set in this spirituality intentionally idyllic almost hyper idyllic setting that there is this magical realism that again is intentional it's only ever found by people who are lost it's not on any map this is three pines um and so i think a lot of people uh and a lot of filmmakers mistake that for it being a village cozy um and and it's not they are they are you know psychological thrillers there there's a lot happening there there so i think it's it's a bit of a challenge for film makers to to grasp that and then to translate it we have a question from solving swinamer i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly who wants to know when what is the most likely moment of inspiration for your plots what books do you read for leisure when if you have time um in terms of inspiration i get a lot of my inspiration from um well some from the news um you know just a lot from i sounds ridiculous a lot from poetry i love reading poetry um and because the books again aren't really about murder the murder is the vehicle so i choose the themes i choose the the main emotions the the cardinal issues that are going to be explored and then i devise a crime that would act as the best vehicle for that so um it starts in one of the books uh ruth quotes uh robert frost who who said not in a poem but in a letter to a friend that for him a poem begins as a lump in the throat and for me the books are similar to that they begin as a lump in the throat it's something that happens to me when i'm reading a poem and i just and sometimes i can't even explain why a couplet or a particular poem just grabs me and i'll write it down and then think about it for a while and that will become the starting point the the the seed sometimes then the book goes off in such a different direction you'd never know that that was the starting point right um but but but that often is and sometimes it's just intuitive books to read for leisure now you told us earlier that you do read mysteries you're a fan of mysteries uh do you want can you be specific about any or would you rather not well i don't actually read mysteries anymore sorry oh no i i did for sure i read mysteries voraciously since i was um you know was first handed i didn't read any of the um the bobsy twins or nancy drew i read uh i went straight to agatha christie my mother handed me the first she just finished it and she handed it to me it was the first time um my mother and i shared a book and i was thinking i was about 10 or 11 and it was exciting it was still warm from her hands and i opened it immediately and i think that was part of my affection lifelong affection for agatha christie as i related it back to that moment but i've read crime novels up until i started writing them and then i stopped reading crime novels because i was afraid of being influenced i read um for relaxation and now when i read or try to read crime novels it feels like work because i'm always analyzing why does that work why doesn't that work that's a great character that feels off um so i just i just find it's easier now i have a huge to be read pile i find it easier now i just read a lot of non-fiction i've got to one of the books that i'm uh about to start is called uh the birth of the chest queen which sounds fascinating it's all about the fact that the queen didn't exist in chess for hundreds of millennia then then she was created and she became just about the most powerful figure on the on the board and so it's it's obviously a um you know symbolic so i'm looking forward to reading but that's the sort of thing i read this sort of esoteric strange stuff that may or may not end up in the book right because if i'm going to spend time reading about it i might as well throw in some right we have a question from judith love islam who says i'm an audiobook listener and i'm fascinated with how you found such wonderful narrators oh isn't that kind the first narrator was um ralph caution and ralph read by believe it was book nine uh and then he passed away um [Music] which was very sad he had become a personal friend in fact he had been nominated for an audi award which is the the audiobook equivalent of the oscars it's the biggest the highest award he lived in washington and i was obviously in in quebec and uh but he wrote to me with the news and said would you would you be my date i've asked my wife if it's okay would you be my date so i asked michael he said fine so we met in new york where the awards were being given out and he was in his is so handsome he was in his dinner jacket and i was in my uh my finery and we went to the it was in the new york public library and all these celebrities were there and we were seated close to the front row when it came time for his um his category and he had been pretty cool until then very suave very you know very together and then suddenly he ripped my hand and he turned to me and he said i want to win i thought oh damn whoever's name they call out i'm going up there and i'm grabbing it but he won he did okay he won he won so there's pictures of him up there holding it and me like insane i think i was the only author who jumped on stage with yeah it had nothing to do with me it was his performance um and then he died about a year later um but to be honest with you i have nothing to do with or with whoever asked what was the name of the person who asked ellen uh no judith love islam yeah dude i i have nothing to do with um narratives that's just good luck um they had difficulty replacing ralph of course because he was so associated with gamaash in particular but they found robert bathurst who was a very well-known british actor um and it's taken robert you know by his own and and ralph even said you read listen to still life that's not the same [Music] uh rendition as the later ones because he had to sort of grow into the characters as well as did i and the same with robert the first one not quite you know wasn't quite there the second one closer and now last year he won um audio narrator of the year at the audi's he he beat out i can't remember who let's say lawrence olivier really yes really oh okay [Laughter] wow i can't remember who but he beat out some really big names we have a question from uh ellen dufour who writes comic relief in your book seems to revolve around beauvoir why him well that's an interesting comment um certainly some he's a kind of an everyman um and he's a counterpoint to ahmad certainly earlier on in the books where um because he's very francophone and the anglophones just completely baffled him and so he would make some maybe slightly disparaging but certainly strange funny observations about the strange anglos in three pines um i i'm sort of hoping that they all have their moment of of of humor uh because because we do don't we that even in the middle of something terrible happening someone something funny can can go on um ruth you know has her moment certainly when she she calls him numb nuts for instance and and you know their their other our mom clearly has a sense of humor um but it's gentle it's more gentle than uh than some of the others it's important that there'd not be that these not be caricatures that these are are are people in full and that we recognize there's no super no one who's superhuman there there's no one who is a caricature i'm hoping here's a question that i was going to ask and i'm glad that gail fenderson is asking it can you talk a little bit about scents aromas perfumes especially in this latest novel ah this is someone who's clearly ridden yes well in fact i want to tell you eric i actually put on perfume for you today oh yeah i can't tell so you must be slightly unclear on how zoom works but um yeah i i really want if again if possible something i struggle with but the ideal is and i think for most authors is to drop that fourth wall so that anyone who's reading it just steps into the action and so that you don't feel like you are reading about ahma or ren marie or any of them um but that you are walking beside them and that you can taste the food that they're eating you can feel the cold you can smell the wood smoke um so all the senses are engaged that's what i try to do and of course scent is such a powerful sense isn't it yes directly linked to memory this book has a lot to do with memory not only what we remember but how we remember things um and in this book one of the one of the main clues has to do with a perfume or a scent rather um and that actually came about because actually the scent that i'm wearing now is my mother's scent but i didn't know it for a long time i for years i would every now and then you know a woman would walk by and i would catch just a whiff i would suddenly be with my mother um and i knew it had to do with the scent um but i wasn't you know my then she had you know dissolved into the crowd so i decided about a year ago year and a half ago maybe two to try to track down the scent so i would go to all the big i would go to macy's or i would go to um you know the big stores in ogilvy's in montreal or or here to to fortnums and the others and just and and try a different sense just to try to figure out what it was and i finally tracked it down but it was such a an odyssey that it gave me the idea for doing something similar in this book well it's uh the the one in this book is uh is one that my father used all his life so is that right and so for the very my one of my very earliest olfactory memories is this scent i'm not going to say what it is because it's you only review it but it's true it's it's a kind of light motif in the in the freezer you know with my kids and many others would you use it would you ever put it on us yes yeah do you wear it not regularly um partly because i i get i have allergies so i have to be careful right so between vitivere and this i would try i would yes in fact i still have my father's last bottle so oh i love that i love that anyway uh next question comes from carol dufrene as gamash ages how are you going to handle this seeing as the book started off with him older i know i know it's right up there with let's go to london when the book is published i know i'll start a series with an older detective [Laughter] um the thing is and this is this came from peter robinson is that there is there is there is real aging and then there is book aging right um and then while the books come out one a year the actual crimes you know these aren't don't happen year after year you know one a year in our mom's life they happen three or four in one particular year so he's not aging he hasn't aged 16 years because we're following different crimes uh in his life having said that other people are growing older and he is not growing as old as i am um so yeah i i think i'm i think it's i think i'm just to have to rely on the reader's um suspension of disbelief and acceptance that you know you either accept that he is perpetually close to this age i mean he is aging slightly um you know or or he ages out and we stop writing the books okay uh here's a here's a really good question too from uh ada malette how have you managed to balance the subtle relationships between the anglos and the frank franco francophones in your novels this is a delicate relationship i lived having grown up a few blocks from atwater in montreal at times i've seen acrimony between these groups that have loved both the angles and francophones of montreal i feel you are on the same page yeah that's a really interesting question um i didn't at first for the long for the first few years and then i realized i really did want to to talk about it um because it is a reality in quebec of course that but both the interesting thing in quebec is that everyone in quebec is a minority the francophones are a minority within the vast continent anglo continent of north america and the anglophones in quebec are a minority within you know the majority francophones of uh of quebec um and and when you live with everyone who who is a minority and and acts like a minority then there's a certain sensibility and that sensibility is slightly along the lines that you suspect the other is about to do something unpleasant to you um so there are guards up but at the same time i was a journalist for many years and i covered quebec politics and i lived in montreal and it and but at the same time i came to it from outside so i had that i wasn't born and raised in quebec i didn't lose a lot in the the quiet revolution i didn't gain a lot in the quiet revolution um or in the october crisis or all those things the the party quebecois the sovereignty referendums i didn't have as much skin in the game as others and so i think i had a certain perspective perhaps but it became very clear to me um that quebec works in reality but not necessarily on paper that there is a problem if there is a problem it exists mostly in the big cities um outside of quebec outside of montreal there's very little acrimony um but i try to talk honestly about about the francophones and how how how um diminished they were for for years by the anglo popula the anglo minority absolutely did that to them the church did that to them held them down which is where what happened in 1960 and the quiet revolution when they became metro new the masters of their own household that was the the um the aspiration and rightly so but in order to do that the anglos had to be kicked out of the house or felt they were and so there's that there's that tension i think it's less and less so now although the current government is not as friendly toward the anglophone or any minority for that matter which is um upsetting right can we take two more quick questions yes okay so here's one from jacqueline chamberlain chamberlain which of your characters do you identify no yeah which of your characters do you identify with the most hmm well i started off believing i was and believe i was clara not that i look like clara i mean none of the characters look like the people necessarily that they were inspired by but their essence is that person uh or at least inspired by um so a lot of clara's clara who is a painter um struggling at first um going going her own way exploring um all of her insecurities um which i understood as a writer i mean we all you know all the creative energy comes from the same tap root it just comes out in different ways whether you're a musician or a writer a dancer or an artist it all comes from that same spot so i can write clara even though i'm not a painter but i think i have elements of all of them including ruth i mean i can write an embittered old woman because i am fast becoming that oh come on you never would become i will wait for it i'm constantly writing angry letters i'm not actually writing them i'm composing them in my head but they never get written well speaking of ruth and this will be the last question because we do have to wrap up the time is there michael o'neill was there a particular poet who was the inspiration for ruth yes yes um i don't write ruth's poetry uh if you look at the beginning of every book there is an acknowledgement i have not acknowledged there's a permissions page and that lists where the poems are from and um roots come from two uh two sources one is a woman named marilyn plessner who actually passed away before her book was published wonderful little book of poetry that was essentially self-published by a friend of hers and i was given a copy um ruth's line who hurt you once so far beyond repair that you would greet each overture with curling lip um is from that particular poet and but the probably the majority of them come from margaret atwood used with permission of course wonderful okay i'm going to bring barbara bell who is the executive director of the writer's fest back in as we wind up i just want to say the book is all the devils are here it's out it's fabulous and uh thank you for it louise thank you for this hour it's such a pleasure to engage with you and we love you for your success and we love you for you thank you thank you thank you for being my friend and always being so happy for me and i as i said you know when the kingston writers fest approached me i couldn't say yes fast enough to to support them they're such a fabulous festival and and also to support the novel idea bookstore um but when i heard it would be you interviewing me i was um ecstatic thank you go well and i want to thank you both uh that that was really such a rich and illuminating conversation and um our 500 plus participants i'm sure would be happy to listen and listen and listen um it's been so much fun so thank you so much i do want to shout out to those of you who joined us from all over north america and i'm going to read i hope i caught all of the different states and provinces washington california colorado wisconsin michigan illinois north and south carolina georgia minnesota arizona new york new jersey missouri washington dc ohio texas pennsylvania and then here in canada folks from all over british columbia alberta manitoba ontario and quebec and even in edward county ontario so thank you all of you uh for uh joining us thanks raincoast books thanks novel idea and um thank you for your support of kingston writer's fest do stay safe and well and hope to see you back for our virtual festival september 23rd to 27th enjoy your labor day weekend everyone bye-bye bye bye

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Length: 64min 44sec (3884 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020