I had the chance to talk with four of the 2024 Canadian Book Club Award Winner about the writing and publishing process. We talk titles, character development and backstory. Each of the authors has written in a different genre, which made for a compelling discussion. Our conversation was far-reaching—from sex parties and trips to Mars to roadkill and stately homes.
Books discussed:
Love Ad Lib by Evie Alexander
Fortune Favors the Dead by Susan Jane Wright
What the Living Do by Susan E. Wadds
Ares by Jayson Adams
About The Canadian Book Club Awards:
- Canada's largest reader's choice awards
- Open to all authors, regardless of publishing type (self published, hybrid, traditional)
- Readers just want good books!
- Submissions for the 2025 awards are open
- Sign up to be a verified reader and help select 2025 finalists books
Follow the Canadian Book Club Awards:
Instagram: @thecanadianbookclubawards
Website: canadianbookclubawards.ca
Follow the Authors:
Evie Alexander
Website: eviealexanderauthor.com
Instagram: @eviealexanderauthor
Susan Jane Wright
Website: susanjanewright.ca
Instagram: @susanjjwright
Susan E. Wadds
Website: writeyourwayin.ca
Jayson Adams
Website: jaysonadams.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:20):
Amy, hello. Welcome back to the red
for book review, I am your host,Amy Tyler,
and today I'm going to beinterviewing four authors who
are all award winnerswith the Canadian book club
awards, and it's part of aseries I'll be doing over the
(00:42):
summer. And all four of theseauthors, they're located all
around North America and the UK.
They've each of them havewritten works of fiction, but
each one is in a differentgenre. So I had a chance to sit
down with them and ask them.
Most of them, I asked them thesame question, and it was really
(01:04):
interesting how they hadcompletely different answers.
But the four books and the fourauthors are what the living do.
By Susan wasFortune favors the dead by Susan
Jane Wright,and love ad lib by Evie
(01:25):
Alexanderand Aries by Jason Adams. And
just a little reminder about theCanadian book club awards. It's
Canada's largest Readers ChoiceAward, and it's open to all
authors, regardless of yourpublishing type, whether you're
(01:45):
self published author, atraditionally published author,
or a mix of the two.
And the idea is it's supposed tobe books that are more popular
or just generally readable, andyou can still submit submissions
if you want your awardconsidered for next year's
(02:08):
awards and and also if you'reinterested in being a verified
reader. So you the authors canbe located anywhere, but the
readers that actually choose thewinners have to be Canadian. So
if you want to get moreinformation, log on to the
Canadian book club awards.ca.
(02:31):
Now let's move over and talkwith the authors.
Hello. Hi everybody. Hi. How areyou? Hi, hi. Evie, Jason, Susan,
I'm so glad to have you here onthe podcast,
and so I had a chance recently Iinterviewed some of your peers
(02:53):
who won in the nonfictioncategory. So all of you, I
grouped you all together becauseyou've written works of fiction,
but I wanted to start off byasking a question about the
beginnings of your books. AndJason, you, I'm going to let you
kind of kick us off, because youwrote an interesting thing about
(03:15):
kind of the start of your books,and how you grab people right
away. And my question for all ofyou, I kind of want to go
around, is, how do you decidehow to start a book? And how is
that? How do you, I'm sure youthink about the distractions
competing for people'sattention. And so how do you go
about hooking a reader from thevery first page? Jason, why
(03:37):
don't you start and tell usabout what you've kind of said
in the past about grabbingpeople on the first page. Yeah,
I guess I kind of wrote a littlemanifesto on,
like my books, they get startedfrom the first sentence, and
they were like, throw you intothe fire, and everything pushes
forward. So my thinking therewas when someone lands on Amazon
(04:02):
on your book page, after thethey look at the blurb, and then
they look at the rating, thenthey go on to read the sample.
And so you kind of have justthose few pages to convince them
that your book is worth theirtime. So really, to do that, you
have to jump straight into theconflict, or you have to
steadily build tension from thevery first line.
(04:23):
So, yeah, my goal is to is forthe reader to feel kind of
constant momentum, and that'swhat keeps them turning the
pages.
So Evie, I'm going to jump overto you. I don't even know what
to say about your opening. Istarted to read. I was like,
wow, okay, on the very firstpage. So I think you subscribe
to Jason's school of thought. Doyou want to tell us more about
(04:47):
your opener? Yes, yeah. 100% youhave to get you can't set up a
world. You've got to take thereader right into it, right from
the get go, and you've got togo, here we are.
And I like setting. I likestarting all my books with some
kind of drama and ajuxtaposition. So in this book,
(05:09):
Love ad lib. You've got LordHenry Fox Brook, who is a
British aristocrat,but he is very well. He's very,
very uptight, and his parents.
His parents, there's three. Hehas three parents are involved
in a poly amorous relationship,and they're very kind of loose
(05:30):
and happy, and he's very, he'svery embarrassed by them. And so
the whole setup of the book isabout them trying to get him to
come home and to take hisrightful place in the family.
And he doesn't want haveanything to do with that. So the
easiest way for me to set up thekind of jarring juxtaposition is
to have him being called back inthe middle of the night, and he
(05:51):
is straight into the family hometo this like Downton abbey on
steroids, and there's hisparents are running a sex party.
And of course, he's mortifiedand doesn't want anything to do
with it. And his father said,Look, we're really worried about
you. You know you need to findlove. And he goes, and he makes
up the fact he's got agirlfriend, so it's a fake
(06:12):
relationship love story. And sohis dad says, Don't worry. No,
this is the boy said he had agirlfriend. Don't worry. And his
dad has got a room full of womenfor him. And he's like, What are
you doing? And he goes, this isnot what I want. So she his
father says, Don't worry. Andthen he takes him across the
corridor, where there's a roomfull of men, and he goes, this
might be more your thing. So Ideliberately started the book
(06:35):
with something completelyoutrageous to not only hopefully
hook the reader, but to show thedifference of why Henry doesn't
want to come home, because thisis what his family set up His
life, and he doesn't want tohave anything to do with
it. Well, you it is outrageous.
And I was like, what? Okay, Ididn't even know what to think,
and it definitely made me wantto keep reading.
(06:58):
And Susan wads, what about you?
Well, my book is literaryfiction, so I don't you know,
start with the an explosion. Iwant to hook people. I want to
hook my reader with an emotionalresponse. So even though the
book starts with an image ofMichelangelo peeling cadavers
(07:19):
skin to see what's underneathit. I just and then immediately
going into my protagonistscraping road kill. So, I mean,
it is kind of sensational, butmy main drive was to create an
emotional response so thatpeople want to know the
(07:40):
character and what's drivingher? Yeah, definitely in media
res, but it's, you know, it's ait's a little quieter.
Adore that. That's great. Yeah.
So you're creating curiosity,all of your Korean curiosity,
but you're at a lower volume.
(08:00):
And I would say the same goesfor you, Susan, right? Because,
and I have to say, I read a fairbit of mysteries, and I felt
that you, you obviously are alove, lover of old fashioned
mysteries, and I felt there's abit of a build there. So can you
talk about that? Maybe it's abit different with mystery?
Sure, sure. Well, I do agreewith what everyone else has said
(08:21):
with respect to trying to find ahook to get them into the story,
because, as Jason was saying,You need to
make sure they stay with youafter they see the cover and the
blur. And what I did in my bookto start it was I had one
character, hadiza, arguing witha chef about something screwed
up, and the protagonist, Evie inmy book, basically trying to
(08:43):
say, let's just not get toocarried away with this. We can
put in fiddlehead ferns insteadof these wild asparagus. And
then the next line basicallysays that while we're having
this argument, Finley dyingbehind a dumpster at the BAM
Springs Hotel. So the idea therewas to try to get someone to
say, okay, there we got twopeople arguing about some kind
(09:04):
of function at the band SpringsHotel, and there's a dead guy
dying somewhere here, and it's,I love what reading Margaret
Atwood stuff. She's not amystery writer, per se, but what
she said was, if you're going towrite a mystery, you want to
drop a body within 10 pages,because people are expecting
that, and they're looking forsomething like that. So we need
(09:24):
to draw them in, to give themthat expectation. And then
you're right. Then it startsjust more of a slow burn. It's
not more it's not like an actionthriller where things are
blowing up every paragraph orevery chapter. It's more of a
How did we get here? What'sgoing on? What are the dynamics
of the people involved, andwhat, you know, why on earth has
been dead, and how does this?
Did this happen? So I, like theothers, were saying it's, it's a
(09:45):
way of trying to just draw themin there, when there's so much
competition for attention withall the different books and the
genres that we see out there.
Okay, um, you know, it just alsooccurred to me, I wanted to ask
you about, um.
Place as a, as a,as a character, so to speak.
Because I think in thisquestions for Susan Wright and
(10:05):
for Evie, both your thebuildings are characters. So can
you talk about that? And I knowwhat Susan Wright, why don't you
start because I knowparticularly mysteries that's
very common to have, like agrand home, and why is that such
a good setting for a mystery?
Well, as you said, it's a grandhome. It's when you've got the
(10:28):
band Springs Hotel, which hasbeen around since like, 1883 or
something, and it's huge. It'sgot staff everywhere. It's got
history. It has its own kind ofcharacter in that it's this
grand dam in the middle of anational park. It's got what I
loved about it, and I've gonethere quite a few times, and
we've gone on private tours, sowe've had a chance to hear
(10:50):
firsthand from the tour guidesabout the fact that people think
that the hotel is haunted. Andthere's a woman who died on her
wedding day because she trippedon her wedding gown years ago,
and just broke her neck when shefell and and there's Sam the
Bellman, who was was a ghost whowas there in the 1960s who
people swear has helped them getinto their rooms. So the
(11:12):
atmosphere of this place and thefact that there's so many people
in the background that we don'tsee who are actually making the
whole thing work, it just struckme as a really good place to try
to set the story. And what aboutyou, Evie, what about you? And
the home worth Well, I grew upin a small market town called
caution in Wiltshire. Andcaution court is the stately
(11:36):
home which I kind of, I don'tknow if you can see, is Fox
Brook Manor, and so I grew up,and when we were at school, part
of going to school was you wentto caution court, you learned
about the history. And it's sointeresting, because just
outside of caution court is whatlooks like this massive old,
crumbling ruin, but it's aVictorian folly, actually, maybe
(11:58):
slightly earlier, because thewhoever it was who lived in
caution court, just decided hedidn't want to see poor people's
houses, so he built this fakeruin, which is called a folly,
so he didn't have to look at thepoor people. And so I grew up in
caution. I grew up with cautioncourt. And because the geography
(12:18):
of the place whereby you had thetown, you had caution, but on
the very edge with the biggeststate then. So it wasn't like it
was in the middle, it was on theedge. And so I wanted to write
about something that I knew Ilove, I love aristocrats. I love
aristocrats gone wrong. Andalso, when I was growing up in
caution, when I was a littlekid, there was a very flamboyant
(12:41):
couple who lived in anotherstately home in the next kind of
town along and they were intonaturism, and they were very
bohemian, and they would wanderaround Horsham shopping,
essentially naked, and this wasin the 70s, and me and my
brother would be going, Mommy.
Why are they dressed like that?
(13:01):
And they, you know, these werethis completely crazy couple
that stayed with me, so that'swhy I want to kind of get that
vibe and mix it with the statelyhome that was in caution. Okay,
that makes sense. I want to knowyou, all of you, tackle some
weighty themes, whether it'stechnology, environment, health,
and it's clear to me that youeither because some of the
(13:23):
backgrounds, your professionalbackgrounds before, or there are
things you're looking to saymore than just only entertain.
So could you talk about how muchare you motivated by desire to
educate versus entertain, andhow do you balance those two
things when you're writing anovel. Susan Wright, I would
(13:43):
like to start with you. Okay, somy background is, I'm a lawyer.
Did law for many, many years inhouse corporate. Corporate
lawyer became part of theexecutive management team, and
in the course of my my career,I've had an opportunity to work
with many, many, many very rich,very powerful men. And what I'm
(14:04):
always astounded by is just howmuch freedom they think they
have to do whatever they want todo in the interest of the
corporation and their own wellbeing. And so I'm, I'm, I always
try to look at the world withfrom the perspective of people
who think they can do whateverthey want, or who have a huge
ambition. And in this story,there are people who aren't
(14:25):
quite that rich, but they have ahuge ambition to be that rich,
versus what kinds of thingshappen as a result of that, you
know. So like I said, I was inthe energy sector, and you have
the balance betweenfossil fuels. And in my case, we
were talking about a fossil.
This, this little thing. This isan Amy light. Oh, yeah. In the
story, yeah. And in the story,they're mining Amy light,
(14:48):
because Amy light is the thestone that the provincial stone
for Alberta. And these thingsactually are turned into little
gems. But they're, they'reamazingly special things, and
they're being torn on theground. You have to be.
How you do them, and you may ormay not have to give them to the
museum if they're perfect. Andin my story, there's a fellow
who's driven just the waysomebody in the Klondike Gold
(15:09):
Rush would be to make a fortunedoing this, and believes he can.
So it's the whole idea ofsomebody who has a huge ambition
with a lot of power versus thereal world, which is trying to
say, Hold on, wait a minute.
This could be dangerous. This,you know, you have to watch what
you're doing and the impact hehas on his life, his family,
people around him. So that'sthat's an important thing for
me, and it comes up off and onin all my books. But the trick
(15:31):
is, as you said, to find thebalance, because people don't
want to be lectured to. Youknow, you're reading a fiction
book and you're trying to learnstuff where you find interesting
scenes, but you don't needsomeone harping at you to do it.
So that's sort of the way I tryto approach it. What about you?
Susan, lads, oh yeah. It'sfunny. When I saw that question,
(15:53):
it kind of made me laugh,because I thought, well, I
totally, I don't think the wordentertain
so I write what I'm compelled towrite, and I don't have like a
target audience. I write becauseI need to write this story.
(16:14):
You know, it's like EmilyDickinson said, You got to tell
it. Tell it all true, but tellit slant. So I had a story that
was, you know, my story, butit's funny because I, when I
first wrote it, it was 10 pageslong, and a friend of mine said,
Wow, this is like you'reyelling. Everything was
happening all at once. So I hadto take the story and sort of
(16:37):
stretch it out. So I thinkultimately, what I was trying to
get across was that disease,illness, even death, isn't
anyone's fault, you know that,and this might this is what my
protagonist is struggling with,is the belief that, belief that
her cancer is somehow is paybackFor, you know, things that she
(17:00):
feels guilty for.
So although I did not kill myfamily or feel like I killed my
family, I had to make it alittle bit more dramatic. So
anyway, I needed to write it. Ineeded to,
yeah, get it down, and then, andthen see where it landed, see
what, you know, throw thatspaghetti at the wall and see
where it's stuck in. Luckily,it's stuck in a lot of places.
(17:23):
And you know, when you write thepersonal, when you write
intimately, it will hopefullyreach the universal. And
evidently, that's what it did.
But I don't, I don't know whatthe hell I'm doing. I just write
it because I need to,honestly, I'm a total pantser.
You know, you know what that is,yes, tell, tell, tell the
listeners, what a pants. It'ssomeone who flies by the seat of
(17:45):
their pants. I am not a plotter,which means I cannot. I try. I
really, really try to makestructure to make. I've got all
kinds of Scriveners and notesand whatever,
and but then I just go madly offin so many different directions
that, and that's to me, that'sthe delight is to find out. Oh,
(18:06):
okay, so I have this character.
She feels guilty. Well, why?
What did she do? So then I haveto create that. Well, I have to
make her kind of tough. Okay, sogive her a job where she's
working with men and shovelingroad kill and having to sort of
work in this misogynistic world.
So these things come in as Iwrite. It's not like, I decide
ahead of time. It's like, oh, Ineed this. I need a best friend.
(18:28):
What's she going to be like?
It's like that. So I, you know,finding a balance totally but it
kind of comes after, you know,after I've got all the scenes,
and then I'm like, Okay, now,now we have to, now we have to
structure this thing so thestructure comes after all the
writing. So there's a lot ofpages that get discarded,
(18:51):
unfortunately,that make that makes sense. What
about you? Jason,so I'm generally not aiming to
educate. It's more likeentertain by presenting an idea
for your consideration. So mybackground is tech, and in that
world, people are very enamoredwith technology, and I feel like
I have kind of a more balancedview of that. So Aries, which is
science fiction about the firstmanned mission to Mars.
(19:17):
The main theme is that mancarries his problems with him,
even to the stars. So we thinkabout space travel as like a
fresh start, but I wanted topresent to the reader, you know
what if this grand, nobleadmission of exploration was
actually something far more basethan they were expecting?
So yeah, so my priority isalways to tell a compelling
(19:40):
story, not to deliver a lesson.
And I kind of feel like if you,if you take a moment to preach,
you can end up killing momentum.
So if you have anything that youwant to say, you kind of have to
seamlessly work it into theevents of your story.
Well, you said you have such anaccomplished background in tech,
so I was assuming that maybe.
(20:00):
You do have more of a it soundslike maybe this is an escape for
you. Just passion is that greenwriting in general.
So I've started some softwarecompanies. I worked for Google
on the Chrome browser for about10 years,
and but computers for me weremore of a like a creative outlet
(20:20):
then, sort of like a technologything.
AndI guess, yeah, right, writing
science fiction has become mynew creative outlet. Okay,
so you know what I want to gocome back to you, Susan wads,
becauseI do have a question about
(20:41):
character building. All of youhave female protagonists, and I
wanted to talk about how you goabout. There's so many different
ways to develop your characters.
And it sounds like you weresaying you just kind of
write from an inner place, andthen you go back and develop.
(21:01):
Can you talk a bit about how youcreated your character, and are
they based on anyone? And dothey have a back story? Tell me,
oh yeah, they have a backstory.
No, I love I love this questionbecause I love my character.
Sherry Coleman is a theaterwriter, but she has this thing
that she calls the sacred image,which is that that image that
(21:22):
stays with you, that is, can bethe epicenter of what it is
you're going to write about. Andfor me, it was a woman standing
on a road crew with a stop slowsign. And I thought, what if,
you know, because there neverseemed to be down in the
ditches. They're just standingthere, poor things in the sun.
And I thought, well, what would,what would a woman be like if
(21:44):
she was on the crew? Well, she'dhave to be kind of tough. And so
I like to flip the script in alot of ways, give her a job that
is traditionally held by men.
She's 37 her boyfriend is 26he's more in love with her than
she is with him. I just, youknow, I just wanted to play a
(22:05):
little bit those kind ofdynamics and so. And I also say
what Brett Catlin is, is my sortof alter ego, if you will, that
she's very scrappy. She's digsher heels in. She's kind of,
she's very stubborn all thethings that I'm not, but I kind
of wish I was, but,you know, so she's, yeah, the
(22:28):
sublimated self, if you will. Soit was really fun to have a
really scrappy character that,you know doesn't give a shit
aboutwho's feeling she's hurting,
and, you know, she's notcareful. And, yeah, so that's
sort of the formation of Brettto make her
(22:50):
a little bit interesting, andjust, you know, how would she
be? So that really helped mewrite the story of how she
navigated, you know, the cancer,the fact that all the different
things that happened in herpast, she definitely has
backstory.
It comes pretty early in thestory that she was groomed by
her older cousin after the firethat killed her father and baby
(23:13):
sister. So you know, there's allthis trauma in the background.
So this is why she developedsuch a such a tough skin.
I did an event recently where Iwas sitting at a table and
people come up and say, sowhat's your book about? Like,
trauma, it's about cancer andwanting to die. Would you like
(23:34):
to read it? So it's a hard sell,as far as you know, a pitch, an
elevator pitch goes. Butultimately, the book is about
hope and about, you know,redemption and all of that kind
of stuff, which is a just hardto say when you're sitting at a
table in a mall. But the nicething is that when people read
(23:54):
it, they get it and they, youknow, they relate to it anyway.
Well, it's very well writtenclearly, because the subject
matter, on the face of it, isn'tsomething that people are dying
to read, and yet, you've madeit. I mean, you've won an award,
your people are reading it, andit says a lot about your writing
style. So okay, Evie, I want toknow about you. I'm assuming
(24:15):
maybe this couple you talkedabout. I'm not sure if I want to
know if you see yourself in anyof these characters. But no, no,
not at all. And I'm alwaysattracted to people to write
about, people that are not likeme.
And so Libby Fletcher, the leadcharacter in love ad lib she's a
(24:35):
an improv comedy actress, so sheruns improvisational comedy
workshops, and I had gone to ameeting a few years ago that I
was expecting to be about x. Andthe moment I go into this
meeting with most people I'venever met before, this woman
comes bounding up to me withthis massive smile and goes,
Hello, what's your name? And Iwas just completely and utterly.
(25:00):
Taken aback by this woman, likecomplete in my face being
beaming at me, so enthusiastic,and she and it turned out this
meeting was going to be animprovisational comedy workshop,
and I was terrified. I justwanted to run away. I did. Was
not expecting it, because itsprung on us, and I ended up
(25:20):
kind of loosening up and havinga really good time. So in so
Libby is kind of based onHeather, this lovely lady who
was just so enthusiastic, and itwas that kind of energy. And I
put my reaction into Henry. SoHenry who so in their meet cute
is an improvisational comedyworkshop at his work, and he
(25:41):
works in the City of London, andhe's completely side swiped and
terrified and doesn't want to bethere. So I kind of put myself
into Henry, and then, yeah,Libby was very much based on my
first impressions of Heather.
Okay, that's a that's veryspecific. And do you do have
like, I know one thing thatpeople do, maybe Jason, I'll ask
(26:04):
you this question, do you havesometimes people develop a whole
bunch of storylines thatactually the reader never knows
about, and it's a way for themjust to create a deeper
character? Do you do anythinglike that? Or what's your
processgoing it's kind of the opposite.
I guess it's sort of pantsing alittle bit, even though I plot
(26:24):
out my novels. Butthe character doesn't start
really with too much of abackstory, but it kind of grows
as I write more about them. Idon't have a great example from
my current book, but from myfrom Aries, but my current book
there, there are two characters,and I had them on the page, and
they started bickering as awearing dialog. And then I could
(26:48):
actually, like feel that therewas something deeper, kind of
fueling that friction. And thenwhat surfaced to me was that
they had dated in the past, andthat the woman had called off
the relationship. And so then sothat actually became, that's
part of the story that I never,like really thought about as I
sat down and pictured thesecharacters. But it kind of, it
kind of came out of me justhaving them interact on the
(27:12):
page. So that's kind of, yeah,so my characters, they kind of
develop as I as I write aboutthem. Okay, so kind of a lot
like Susan watts, I think, yeah.
What about you? Susan Wright,how do you develop your your
protagonist? It's at it's almostlike halfway between plotting
(27:33):
out who they are, because I dohave a sense of who they are
before I start the story, Ifigure out, you know, how old
they were and where they went toschool, and very just short
notes on that, and maybe a senseof what their character would
be. But then, like Jason said,as they start working on the
page, it's interesting howthings start to happen with the
characters. It's almost likethey become they come alive on
(27:54):
the page for you, and you startgoing down little paths to find
out more about them, which isweird. It's hard to explain that
to people. And as a lawyer, youknow, most people, when they're
lawyers, they're prettyfundamentally cut and dried,
rule of law, blah, blah, blah,but I think a lot of lawyers are
frustrated actors and writersand comedians and whatnot. So
(28:15):
there's a bit of that that comesout, I think, in the book, just
from the perspective of peopleare a little different than you
expect. So Evie is in a lawfirm. She started her own law
firm after this terrible blowoutin the big firm that she used to
work at with another partner,and they picked up a third,
younger partner that is nowworking with them. And what I
like about the dynamic is thatwe've got the older fellow, not
(28:37):
that much older than Evie. He'sthe guy that came with her from
the big firm, who's more cut anddry, driven by the rules,
careful, cautious, doesn't wantto get into trouble. And Evie
tends to look before she leaves,which is not a classic legal
lawyer characteristic. Normallyyou tend to be more careful. And
AJ, who's the third partnerthere, is kind of in between the
(29:00):
two of them. He's almost likethe voice of reason in between
the two of them. And whathappens as a result of that is
thatmost of the lawyers I know like
the law. They went into the lawbecause they like the rules. But
what you learn as you go is thatthe law doesn't necessarily
deliver justice, and that's areal dilemma for I think, the
world, and it's certainly adilemma for Evie, in the
(29:22):
situation she finds herself inbecause she wants to see justice
done, and so that's what willpush her to go farther than her
other partner, for example, andthat's what pushes her into
situations that can lead totrouble for her so and I like
that about her. So you talkabout how the character is kind
of leaving you. So does thatmean you don't know the ending
(29:44):
of your book, or do you know theending of your mystery
beforehand? That is a reallygood question, because what
drives me nuts is, as I'm goingthrough my book, and I know I
start with kind of an idea of,this is what happened. This is
the person who got killed. Andthis.
Who killed that person, and Evieeventually will figure that out.
(30:04):
And then, as I'm going along, Istill usually have the same
person who's the victim, but mykiller starts to change, which
is, you know, can make youbananas when you're trying to
set up a mystery story andyou've got clues that suddenly
this is irrelevant. This doesn'tmatter. And it's,
I work with my daughter as myeditor, and so when we are
(30:27):
working together on something,and she'll ask me where I am on
the book, and I'll say, I'm notsure if I'm going to have blah
blah be the killer after all.
And she goes, You can't do this.
We have a deadline. We have toget this thing done. What do you
mean? This isn't the killer, andit just happens, right? And then
I'll go and I'll work my waythrough and I'll get comfortable
with who I am going to have thekiller be. But I've done this. I
(30:50):
thought at first maybe it wasjust the first book that I had
this issue with, but I've donethis every single time, and I'm
working on my fifth book now, soI guess that's a bit of the
Panther element, even though Ido have a rough idea of what I'm
going to do, but yeah, it's fun.
Let me I want to ask you allabout the titles of your book,
and I'm currently editing a fewbooks myself, and I've been
(31:11):
working with the author on thetitle, and one of the titles
completely changed, likecompletely and I'm just
wondering, How did you land onthose titles? Did you come up
with them? Did an editor and didyou? Did you have an alternate
title that you want to sharewith people? Um, what about you?
Jason,I feel like my my titles just
(31:37):
kind of fall out as of what'sexpected of science fiction. So
like the Mars mission is Aries,the ship they take to get there
is called Aries. It's namedafter the god of war. I
don't know that it's necessarilya great title, though,
(32:03):
because thatit feels I don't know, maybe,
perhaps obscure.
There's one award I went to pickup, and the person mispronounced
the name, so she obviouslydidn't know what ares was, which
is interesting, yeah, but yeah,my titles, it's, they just kind
of fall out. I don't reallyhave, I might have a for other
(32:26):
books. I've had working titles,but they're, they're not at all
like titles you would use,right? What about you? Evie,
well, a lot goes into mydecision on titles. The first
is, how long is it? Because whenyou've got a romance cover, you
know you want to give the leadcharacters room to be on the
(32:50):
cover, so you can't have, like,a massive load of text. So I
tried to go for three words, twoor three words for this series.
So I planned out all the titlesof the series before I've even
written and then the secondthing I do is to have my list of
titles that might work. Then Igo onto Amazon, I write them in
and say, How many other booksare called blah, blah, blah. So
(33:13):
obviously you want to go withthe title that is the right
length. Has never been usedbefore, or if it has been used
before, then hardly you know thebooks that have written. No
one's read them. Then I wantedto have maybe love or something
like that in the title. And lovead lib because lib she's Libby,
so it's love ad lib. And ad libis because it's a fake
(33:36):
relationship, romance. She's animprovisational comedy actress.
They're making it up as they goalong. So they fall in love. So
it's love ad lib with Libbybeing obviously Liv being her.
So that's how I got the titlefor love ad lib. It was, is it
short? Has it been used before?
Is it relevant? And, you know?
And this was nice because itlinked the comedy, the
(33:57):
improvisation stuff, and hername. That's interesting about
having room for the characterson the top on the cover of
romance. That makes a ton ofsense. What about you? Susan
watts,yeah. So the original title was
roadkill. And I was like, thatwas a bit sloppy. So we changed
that. And then I thought, okay,so the whole motivation of this
(34:21):
story comes from a house fire.
So I called it and her longingfor home so I called it home
fires. And a friend of mine hadit printed up in an arc for me,
and it looked like home fries.
So I thought, we're not doingthat then. So, but there's this
beautiful, beautiful poem byMarie Howe called WHAT THE
(34:42):
LIVING do. And it's about, she'stalking to someone who has
passed away. And and I thought,Oh, my God, this is perfect,
because the whole quest of myprotagonist is to figure out
what the living do, how to go onliving. And it just, you know,
it was a goose bumpy.
Moment when I when I came uponthat, oh, that's I love that.
(35:05):
What about you? Susan Wright,titles are really hard for me.
My books spend a lot of timebeing book number one, book
number two, book number three. Ihave a really tough time with
titles, and as I go through, asI'm writing them, I start
jotting down things because youuse phrases or the theme lends
itself to certain things. Butwhen you're writing in the
(35:27):
mystery genre, it's a littlelike what Jason was saying.
There's certain expectations ofwhat a title would be, so that
when someone picks it up, theydon't go, Oh, this must be
literary fiction, or this mustbe something else you want to
give them a clue. Now, havingsaid that this one actually did
use the word dead, like it's alittle bit like what Amy was
saying, where you check withAmazon, you see what the names
(35:47):
are and what what works in thisgenre. So dead, murder,
something like that helps. But Ijust find it really tricky. So I
try to keep my titles to aboutthree words or so, and
they come to me towards the end,and then I have a big debate
with my daughter editor, whosays to Me, you can't use that.
(36:09):
Everyone has used that. No onewill ever find your book on
Amazon if you use that, which istrue. So then I have to come up
with something else. She's verygood at that, and and I am
hopeless at that. So it's one ofthe huge it's a big challenge
for me, you know, just want tosay it's so interesting that a
couple of you have said you needto have really short titles. And
I guess it's a genre basedthing, because now there are
(36:31):
some titles that go on for like,three sentences.
You know, they're often funny orhumorous or clever, but it's, I
don't know. Sometimes I thinkthere's no hard and fast rule
for anything, but you guys seemto have nailed it well.
So that's kind of all myquestions. And I really
(36:54):
appreciate all of you forjoining and want to congratulate
all of you, and that's reallyinteresting about the title. I'm
going to think about that morenow. More now pertaining to
genre, and obviously searchesand that kind of thing. But
anyway, thank you so much, andI will talk with you later.
Thank you so much for hostingus. So nice meeting you. Nice to
(37:15):
meet you. Thank you. Amy, thankyou. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Thanks so much to all four ofthe Canadian Book Club Award
winners that I had the chance tointerview today, and I just
wanted to remind you of theirtitles and names. And today, I
interviewed Jason Adams and hissci fi book is called Aries
(37:41):
and Evie Alexander'svery unique rom com is called
love ad lib.
And Susan Jean Wright'smysteries set in the Banff
Springs Hotel is called Fortunefavors the dead.
(38:06):
And the final book is what theliving do, by Susan wads, and
it's a beautifully written bookabout loss and love. So thanks
so much. And also, I want toremind you, if you're interested
in becoming a verified readerfor the Canadian book club
(38:28):
awards for the 2025 awards,which will be judged starting
this fall, you can log on totheir website at the Canadian
book club awards.ca.
You do need to be Canadian toread the books,
but you don't to if you have abook you want to submit, anyone
(38:51):
in the world can do that. So youcan also log on to the Canadian
book club awards.ca, and findout the links for how to submit
your book for consideration. Sothanks so much for listening,
And I'll talk to you later.
(39:22):
You
Amy, hello. Welcome back to the red
for book review, I am your host,Amy Tyler,
and today I'm going to beinterviewing four authors who
are all award winnerswith the Canadian book club
awards, and it's part of aseries I'll be doing over the
(00:42):
summer. And all four of theseauthors, they're located all
around North America and the UK.
They've each of them havewritten works of fiction, but
each one is in a differentgenre. So I had a chance to sit
down with them and ask them.
Most of them, I asked them thesame question, and it was really
(01:04):
interesting how they hadcompletely different answers.
But the four books and the fourauthors are what the living do.
By Susan wasFortune favors the dead by Susan
Jane Wright,and love ad lib by Evie
(01:25):
Alexanderand Aries by Jason Adams. And
just a little reminder about theCanadian book club awards. It's
Canada's largest Readers ChoiceAward, and it's open to all
authors, regardless of yourpublishing type, whether you're
(01:45):
self published author, atraditionally published author,
or a mix of the two.
And the idea is it's supposed tobe books that are more popular
or just generally readable, andyou can still submit submissions
if you want your awardconsidered for next year's
(02:08):
awards and and also if you'reinterested in being a verified
reader. So you the authors canbe located anywhere, but the
readers that actually choose thewinners have to be Canadian. So
if you want to get moreinformation, log on to the
Canadian book club awards.ca.
(02:31):
Now let's move over and talkwith the authors.
Hello. Hi everybody. Hi. How areyou? Hi, hi. Evie, Jason, Susan,
I'm so glad to have you here onthe podcast,
and so I had a chance recently Iinterviewed some of your peers
(02:53):
who won in the nonfictioncategory. So all of you, I
grouped you all together becauseyou've written works of fiction,
but I wanted to start off byasking a question about the
beginnings of your books. AndJason, you, I'm going to let you
kind of kick us off, because youwrote an interesting thing about
(03:15):
kind of the start of your books,and how you grab people right
away. And my question for all ofyou, I kind of want to go
around, is, how do you decidehow to start a book? And how is
that? How do you, I'm sure youthink about the distractions
competing for people'sattention. And so how do you go
about hooking a reader from thevery first page? Jason, why
(03:37):
don't you start and tell usabout what you've kind of said
in the past about grabbingpeople on the first page. Yeah,
I guess I kind of wrote a littlemanifesto on,
like my books, they get startedfrom the first sentence, and
they were like, throw you intothe fire, and everything pushes
forward. So my thinking therewas when someone lands on Amazon
(04:02):
on your book page, after thethey look at the blurb, and then
they look at the rating, thenthey go on to read the sample.
And so you kind of have justthose few pages to convince them
that your book is worth theirtime. So really, to do that, you
have to jump straight into theconflict, or you have to
steadily build tension from thevery first line.
(04:23):
So, yeah, my goal is to is forthe reader to feel kind of
constant momentum, and that'swhat keeps them turning the
pages.
So Evie, I'm going to jump overto you. I don't even know what
to say about your opening. Istarted to read. I was like,
wow, okay, on the very firstpage. So I think you subscribe
to Jason's school of thought. Doyou want to tell us more about
(04:47):
your opener? Yes, yeah. 100% youhave to get you can't set up a
world. You've got to take thereader right into it, right from
the get go, and you've got togo, here we are.
And I like setting. I likestarting all my books with some
kind of drama and ajuxtaposition. So in this book,
(05:09):
Love ad lib. You've got LordHenry Fox Brook, who is a
British aristocrat,but he is very well. He's very,
very uptight, and his parents.
His parents, there's three. Hehas three parents are involved
in a poly amorous relationship,and they're very kind of loose
(05:30):
and happy, and he's very, he'svery embarrassed by them. And so
the whole setup of the book isabout them trying to get him to
come home and to take hisrightful place in the family.
And he doesn't want haveanything to do with that. So the
easiest way for me to set up thekind of jarring juxtaposition is
to have him being called back inthe middle of the night, and he
(05:51):
is straight into the family hometo this like Downton abbey on
steroids, and there's hisparents are running a sex party.
And of course, he's mortifiedand doesn't want anything to do
with it. And his father said,Look, we're really worried about
you. You know you need to findlove. And he goes, and he makes
up the fact he's got agirlfriend, so it's a fake
(06:12):
relationship love story. And sohis dad says, Don't worry. No,
this is the boy said he had agirlfriend. Don't worry. And his
dad has got a room full of womenfor him. And he's like, What are
you doing? And he goes, this isnot what I want. So she his
father says, Don't worry. Andthen he takes him across the
corridor, where there's a roomfull of men, and he goes, this
might be more your thing. So Ideliberately started the book
(06:35):
with something completelyoutrageous to not only hopefully
hook the reader, but to show thedifference of why Henry doesn't
want to come home, because thisis what his family set up His
life, and he doesn't want tohave anything to do with
it. Well, you it is outrageous.
And I was like, what? Okay, Ididn't even know what to think,
and it definitely made me wantto keep reading.
(06:58):
And Susan wads, what about you?
Well, my book is literaryfiction, so I don't you know,
start with the an explosion. Iwant to hook people. I want to
hook my reader with an emotionalresponse. So even though the
book starts with an image ofMichelangelo peeling cadavers
(07:19):
skin to see what's underneathit. I just and then immediately
going into my protagonistscraping road kill. So, I mean,
it is kind of sensational, butmy main drive was to create an
emotional response so thatpeople want to know the
(07:40):
character and what's drivingher? Yeah, definitely in media
res, but it's, you know, it's ait's a little quieter.
Adore that. That's great. Yeah.
So you're creating curiosity,all of your Korean curiosity,
but you're at a lower volume.
(08:00):
And I would say the same goesfor you, Susan, right? Because,
and I have to say, I read a fairbit of mysteries, and I felt
that you, you obviously are alove, lover of old fashioned
mysteries, and I felt there's abit of a build there. So can you
talk about that? Maybe it's abit different with mystery?
Sure, sure. Well, I do agreewith what everyone else has said
(08:21):
with respect to trying to find ahook to get them into the story,
because, as Jason was saying,You need to
make sure they stay with youafter they see the cover and the
blur. And what I did in my bookto start it was I had one
character, hadiza, arguing witha chef about something screwed
up, and the protagonist, Evie inmy book, basically trying to
(08:43):
say, let's just not get toocarried away with this. We can
put in fiddlehead ferns insteadof these wild asparagus. And
then the next line basicallysays that while we're having
this argument, Finley dyingbehind a dumpster at the BAM
Springs Hotel. So the idea therewas to try to get someone to
say, okay, there we got twopeople arguing about some kind
(09:04):
of function at the band SpringsHotel, and there's a dead guy
dying somewhere here, and it's,I love what reading Margaret
Atwood stuff. She's not amystery writer, per se, but what
she said was, if you're going towrite a mystery, you want to
drop a body within 10 pages,because people are expecting
that, and they're looking forsomething like that. So we need
(09:24):
to draw them in, to give themthat expectation. And then
you're right. Then it startsjust more of a slow burn. It's
not more it's not like an actionthriller where things are
blowing up every paragraph orevery chapter. It's more of a
How did we get here? What'sgoing on? What are the dynamics
of the people involved, andwhat, you know, why on earth has
been dead, and how does this?
Did this happen? So I, like theothers, were saying it's, it's a
(09:45):
way of trying to just draw themin there, when there's so much
competition for attention withall the different books and the
genres that we see out there.
Okay, um, you know, it just alsooccurred to me, I wanted to ask
you about, um.
Place as a, as a,as a character, so to speak.
Because I think in thisquestions for Susan Wright and
(10:05):
for Evie, both your thebuildings are characters. So can
you talk about that? And I knowwhat Susan Wright, why don't you
start because I knowparticularly mysteries that's
very common to have, like agrand home, and why is that such
a good setting for a mystery?
Well, as you said, it's a grandhome. It's when you've got the
(10:28):
band Springs Hotel, which hasbeen around since like, 1883 or
something, and it's huge. It'sgot staff everywhere. It's got
history. It has its own kind ofcharacter in that it's this
grand dam in the middle of anational park. It's got what I
loved about it, and I've gonethere quite a few times, and
we've gone on private tours, sowe've had a chance to hear
(10:50):
firsthand from the tour guidesabout the fact that people think
that the hotel is haunted. Andthere's a woman who died on her
wedding day because she trippedon her wedding gown years ago,
and just broke her neck when shefell and and there's Sam the
Bellman, who was was a ghost whowas there in the 1960s who
people swear has helped them getinto their rooms. So the
(11:12):
atmosphere of this place and thefact that there's so many people
in the background that we don'tsee who are actually making the
whole thing work, it just struckme as a really good place to try
to set the story. And what aboutyou, Evie, what about you? And
the home worth Well, I grew upin a small market town called
caution in Wiltshire. Andcaution court is the stately
(11:36):
home which I kind of, I don'tknow if you can see, is Fox
Brook Manor, and so I grew up,and when we were at school, part
of going to school was you wentto caution court, you learned
about the history. And it's sointeresting, because just
outside of caution court is whatlooks like this massive old,
crumbling ruin, but it's aVictorian folly, actually, maybe
(11:58):
slightly earlier, because thewhoever it was who lived in
caution court, just decided hedidn't want to see poor people's
houses, so he built this fakeruin, which is called a folly,
so he didn't have to look at thepoor people. And so I grew up in
caution. I grew up with cautioncourt. And because the geography
(12:18):
of the place whereby you had thetown, you had caution, but on
the very edge with the biggeststate then. So it wasn't like it
was in the middle, it was on theedge. And so I wanted to write
about something that I knew Ilove, I love aristocrats. I love
aristocrats gone wrong. Andalso, when I was growing up in
caution, when I was a littlekid, there was a very flamboyant
(12:41):
couple who lived in anotherstately home in the next kind of
town along and they were intonaturism, and they were very
bohemian, and they would wanderaround Horsham shopping,
essentially naked, and this wasin the 70s, and me and my
brother would be going, Mommy.
Why are they dressed like that?
(13:01):
And they, you know, these werethis completely crazy couple
that stayed with me, so that'swhy I want to kind of get that
vibe and mix it with the statelyhome that was in caution. Okay,
that makes sense. I want to knowyou, all of you, tackle some
weighty themes, whether it'stechnology, environment, health,
and it's clear to me that youeither because some of the
(13:23):
backgrounds, your professionalbackgrounds before, or there are
things you're looking to saymore than just only entertain.
So could you talk about how muchare you motivated by desire to
educate versus entertain, andhow do you balance those two
things when you're writing anovel. Susan Wright, I would
(13:43):
like to start with you. Okay, somy background is, I'm a lawyer.
Did law for many, many years inhouse corporate. Corporate
lawyer became part of theexecutive management team, and
in the course of my my career,I've had an opportunity to work
with many, many, many very rich,very powerful men. And what I'm
(14:04):
always astounded by is just howmuch freedom they think they
have to do whatever they want todo in the interest of the
corporation and their own wellbeing. And so I'm, I'm, I always
try to look at the world withfrom the perspective of people
who think they can do whateverthey want, or who have a huge
ambition. And in this story,there are people who aren't
(14:25):
quite that rich, but they have ahuge ambition to be that rich,
versus what kinds of thingshappen as a result of that, you
know. So like I said, I was inthe energy sector, and you have
the balance betweenfossil fuels. And in my case, we
were talking about a fossil.
This, this little thing. This isan Amy light. Oh, yeah. In the
story, yeah. And in the story,they're mining Amy light,
(14:48):
because Amy light is the thestone that the provincial stone
for Alberta. And these thingsactually are turned into little
gems. But they're, they'reamazingly special things, and
they're being torn on theground. You have to be.
How you do them, and you may ormay not have to give them to the
museum if they're perfect. Andin my story, there's a fellow
who's driven just the waysomebody in the Klondike Gold
(15:09):
Rush would be to make a fortunedoing this, and believes he can.
So it's the whole idea ofsomebody who has a huge ambition
with a lot of power versus thereal world, which is trying to
say, Hold on, wait a minute.
This could be dangerous. This,you know, you have to watch what
you're doing and the impact hehas on his life, his family,
people around him. So that'sthat's an important thing for
me, and it comes up off and onin all my books. But the trick
(15:31):
is, as you said, to find thebalance, because people don't
want to be lectured to. Youknow, you're reading a fiction
book and you're trying to learnstuff where you find interesting
scenes, but you don't needsomeone harping at you to do it.
So that's sort of the way I tryto approach it. What about you?
Susan, lads, oh yeah. It'sfunny. When I saw that question,
(15:53):
it kind of made me laugh,because I thought, well, I
totally, I don't think the wordentertain
so I write what I'm compelled towrite, and I don't have like a
target audience. I write becauseI need to write this story.
(16:14):
You know, it's like EmilyDickinson said, You got to tell
it. Tell it all true, but tellit slant. So I had a story that
was, you know, my story, butit's funny because I, when I
first wrote it, it was 10 pageslong, and a friend of mine said,
Wow, this is like you'reyelling. Everything was
happening all at once. So I hadto take the story and sort of
(16:37):
stretch it out. So I thinkultimately, what I was trying to
get across was that disease,illness, even death, isn't
anyone's fault, you know that,and this might this is what my
protagonist is struggling with,is the belief that, belief that
her cancer is somehow is paybackFor, you know, things that she
(17:00):
feels guilty for.
So although I did not kill myfamily or feel like I killed my
family, I had to make it alittle bit more dramatic. So
anyway, I needed to write it. Ineeded to,
yeah, get it down, and then, andthen see where it landed, see
what, you know, throw thatspaghetti at the wall and see
where it's stuck in. Luckily,it's stuck in a lot of places.
(17:23):
And you know, when you write thepersonal, when you write
intimately, it will hopefullyreach the universal. And
evidently, that's what it did.
But I don't, I don't know whatthe hell I'm doing. I just write
it because I need to,honestly, I'm a total pantser.
You know, you know what that is,yes, tell, tell, tell the
listeners, what a pants. It'ssomeone who flies by the seat of
(17:45):
their pants. I am not a plotter,which means I cannot. I try. I
really, really try to makestructure to make. I've got all
kinds of Scriveners and notesand whatever,
and but then I just go madly offin so many different directions
that, and that's to me, that'sthe delight is to find out. Oh,
(18:06):
okay, so I have this character.
She feels guilty. Well, why?
What did she do? So then I haveto create that. Well, I have to
make her kind of tough. Okay, sogive her a job where she's
working with men and shovelingroad kill and having to sort of
work in this misogynistic world.
So these things come in as Iwrite. It's not like, I decide
ahead of time. It's like, oh, Ineed this. I need a best friend.
(18:28):
What's she going to be like?
It's like that. So I, you know,finding a balance totally but it
kind of comes after, you know,after I've got all the scenes,
and then I'm like, Okay, now,now we have to, now we have to
structure this thing so thestructure comes after all the
writing. So there's a lot ofpages that get discarded,
(18:51):
unfortunately,that make that makes sense. What
about you? Jason,so I'm generally not aiming to
educate. It's more likeentertain by presenting an idea
for your consideration. So mybackground is tech, and in that
world, people are very enamoredwith technology, and I feel like
I have kind of a more balancedview of that. So Aries, which is
science fiction about the firstmanned mission to Mars.
(19:17):
The main theme is that mancarries his problems with him,
even to the stars. So we thinkabout space travel as like a
fresh start, but I wanted topresent to the reader, you know
what if this grand, nobleadmission of exploration was
actually something far more basethan they were expecting?
So yeah, so my priority isalways to tell a compelling
(19:40):
story, not to deliver a lesson.
And I kind of feel like if you,if you take a moment to preach,
you can end up killing momentum.
So if you have anything that youwant to say, you kind of have to
seamlessly work it into theevents of your story.
Well, you said you have such anaccomplished background in tech,
so I was assuming that maybe.
(20:00):
You do have more of a it soundslike maybe this is an escape for
you. Just passion is that greenwriting in general.
So I've started some softwarecompanies. I worked for Google
on the Chrome browser for about10 years,
and but computers for me weremore of a like a creative outlet
(20:20):
then, sort of like a technologything.
AndI guess, yeah, right, writing
science fiction has become mynew creative outlet. Okay,
so you know what I want to gocome back to you, Susan wads,
becauseI do have a question about
(20:41):
character building. All of youhave female protagonists, and I
wanted to talk about how you goabout. There's so many different
ways to develop your characters.
And it sounds like you weresaying you just kind of
write from an inner place, andthen you go back and develop.
(21:01):
Can you talk a bit about how youcreated your character, and are
they based on anyone? And dothey have a back story? Tell me,
oh yeah, they have a backstory.
No, I love I love this questionbecause I love my character.
Sherry Coleman is a theaterwriter, but she has this thing
that she calls the sacred image,which is that that image that
(21:22):
stays with you, that is, can bethe epicenter of what it is
you're going to write about. Andfor me, it was a woman standing
on a road crew with a stop slowsign. And I thought, what if,
you know, because there neverseemed to be down in the
ditches. They're just standingthere, poor things in the sun.
And I thought, well, what would,what would a woman be like if
(21:44):
she was on the crew? Well, she'dhave to be kind of tough. And so
I like to flip the script in alot of ways, give her a job that
is traditionally held by men.
She's 37 her boyfriend is 26he's more in love with her than
she is with him. I just, youknow, I just wanted to play a
(22:05):
little bit those kind ofdynamics and so. And I also say
what Brett Catlin is, is my sortof alter ego, if you will, that
she's very scrappy. She's digsher heels in. She's kind of,
she's very stubborn all thethings that I'm not, but I kind
of wish I was, but,you know, so she's, yeah, the
(22:28):
sublimated self, if you will. Soit was really fun to have a
really scrappy character that,you know doesn't give a shit
aboutwho's feeling she's hurting,
and, you know, she's notcareful. And, yeah, so that's
sort of the formation of Brettto make her
(22:50):
a little bit interesting, andjust, you know, how would she
be? So that really helped mewrite the story of how she
navigated, you know, the cancer,the fact that all the different
things that happened in herpast, she definitely has
backstory.
It comes pretty early in thestory that she was groomed by
her older cousin after the firethat killed her father and baby
(23:13):
sister. So you know, there's allthis trauma in the background.
So this is why she developedsuch a such a tough skin.
I did an event recently where Iwas sitting at a table and
people come up and say, sowhat's your book about? Like,
trauma, it's about cancer andwanting to die. Would you like
(23:34):
to read it? So it's a hard sell,as far as you know, a pitch, an
elevator pitch goes. Butultimately, the book is about
hope and about, you know,redemption and all of that kind
of stuff, which is a just hardto say when you're sitting at a
table in a mall. But the nicething is that when people read
(23:54):
it, they get it and they, youknow, they relate to it anyway.
Well, it's very well writtenclearly, because the subject
matter, on the face of it, isn'tsomething that people are dying
to read, and yet, you've madeit. I mean, you've won an award,
your people are reading it, andit says a lot about your writing
style. So okay, Evie, I want toknow about you. I'm assuming
(24:15):
maybe this couple you talkedabout. I'm not sure if I want to
know if you see yourself in anyof these characters. But no, no,
not at all. And I'm alwaysattracted to people to write
about, people that are not likeme.
And so Libby Fletcher, the leadcharacter in love ad lib she's a
(24:35):
an improv comedy actress, so sheruns improvisational comedy
workshops, and I had gone to ameeting a few years ago that I
was expecting to be about x. Andthe moment I go into this
meeting with most people I'venever met before, this woman
comes bounding up to me withthis massive smile and goes,
Hello, what's your name? And Iwas just completely and utterly.
(25:00):
Taken aback by this woman, likecomplete in my face being
beaming at me, so enthusiastic,and she and it turned out this
meeting was going to be animprovisational comedy workshop,
and I was terrified. I justwanted to run away. I did. Was
not expecting it, because itsprung on us, and I ended up
(25:20):
kind of loosening up and havinga really good time. So in so
Libby is kind of based onHeather, this lovely lady who
was just so enthusiastic, and itwas that kind of energy. And I
put my reaction into Henry. SoHenry who so in their meet cute
is an improvisational comedyworkshop at his work, and he
(25:41):
works in the City of London, andhe's completely side swiped and
terrified and doesn't want to bethere. So I kind of put myself
into Henry, and then, yeah,Libby was very much based on my
first impressions of Heather.
Okay, that's a that's veryspecific. And do you do have
like, I know one thing thatpeople do, maybe Jason, I'll ask
(26:04):
you this question, do you havesometimes people develop a whole
bunch of storylines thatactually the reader never knows
about, and it's a way for themjust to create a deeper
character? Do you do anythinglike that? Or what's your
processgoing it's kind of the opposite.
I guess it's sort of pantsing alittle bit, even though I plot
(26:24):
out my novels. Butthe character doesn't start
really with too much of abackstory, but it kind of grows
as I write more about them. Idon't have a great example from
my current book, but from myfrom Aries, but my current book
there, there are two characters,and I had them on the page, and
they started bickering as awearing dialog. And then I could
(26:48):
actually, like feel that therewas something deeper, kind of
fueling that friction. And thenwhat surfaced to me was that
they had dated in the past, andthat the woman had called off
the relationship. And so then sothat actually became, that's
part of the story that I never,like really thought about as I
sat down and pictured thesecharacters. But it kind of, it
kind of came out of me justhaving them interact on the
(27:12):
page. So that's kind of, yeah,so my characters, they kind of
develop as I as I write aboutthem. Okay, so kind of a lot
like Susan watts, I think, yeah.
What about you? Susan Wright,how do you develop your your
protagonist? It's at it's almostlike halfway between plotting
(27:33):
out who they are, because I dohave a sense of who they are
before I start the story, Ifigure out, you know, how old
they were and where they went toschool, and very just short
notes on that, and maybe a senseof what their character would
be. But then, like Jason said,as they start working on the
page, it's interesting howthings start to happen with the
characters. It's almost likethey become they come alive on
(27:54):
the page for you, and you startgoing down little paths to find
out more about them, which isweird. It's hard to explain that
to people. And as a lawyer, youknow, most people, when they're
lawyers, they're prettyfundamentally cut and dried,
rule of law, blah, blah, blah,but I think a lot of lawyers are
frustrated actors and writersand comedians and whatnot. So
(28:15):
there's a bit of that that comesout, I think, in the book, just
from the perspective of peopleare a little different than you
expect. So Evie is in a lawfirm. She started her own law
firm after this terrible blowoutin the big firm that she used to
work at with another partner,and they picked up a third,
younger partner that is nowworking with them. And what I
like about the dynamic is thatwe've got the older fellow, not
(28:37):
that much older than Evie. He'sthe guy that came with her from
the big firm, who's more cut anddry, driven by the rules,
careful, cautious, doesn't wantto get into trouble. And Evie
tends to look before she leaves,which is not a classic legal
lawyer characteristic. Normallyyou tend to be more careful. And
AJ, who's the third partnerthere, is kind of in between the
(29:00):
two of them. He's almost likethe voice of reason in between
the two of them. And whathappens as a result of that is
thatmost of the lawyers I know like
the law. They went into the lawbecause they like the rules. But
what you learn as you go is thatthe law doesn't necessarily
deliver justice, and that's areal dilemma for I think, the
world, and it's certainly adilemma for Evie, in the
(29:22):
situation she finds herself inbecause she wants to see justice
done, and so that's what willpush her to go farther than her
other partner, for example, andthat's what pushes her into
situations that can lead totrouble for her so and I like
that about her. So you talkabout how the character is kind
of leaving you. So does thatmean you don't know the ending
(29:44):
of your book, or do you know theending of your mystery
beforehand? That is a reallygood question, because what
drives me nuts is, as I'm goingthrough my book, and I know I
start with kind of an idea of,this is what happened. This is
the person who got killed. Andthis.
Who killed that person, and Evieeventually will figure that out.
(30:04):
And then, as I'm going along, Istill usually have the same
person who's the victim, but mykiller starts to change, which
is, you know, can make youbananas when you're trying to
set up a mystery story andyou've got clues that suddenly
this is irrelevant. This doesn'tmatter. And it's,
I work with my daughter as myeditor, and so when we are
(30:27):
working together on something,and she'll ask me where I am on
the book, and I'll say, I'm notsure if I'm going to have blah
blah be the killer after all.
And she goes, You can't do this.
We have a deadline. We have toget this thing done. What do you
mean? This isn't the killer, andit just happens, right? And then
I'll go and I'll work my waythrough and I'll get comfortable
with who I am going to have thekiller be. But I've done this. I
(30:50):
thought at first maybe it wasjust the first book that I had
this issue with, but I've donethis every single time, and I'm
working on my fifth book now, soI guess that's a bit of the
Panther element, even though Ido have a rough idea of what I'm
going to do, but yeah, it's fun.
Let me I want to ask you allabout the titles of your book,
and I'm currently editing a fewbooks myself, and I've been
(31:11):
working with the author on thetitle, and one of the titles
completely changed, likecompletely and I'm just
wondering, How did you land onthose titles? Did you come up
with them? Did an editor and didyou? Did you have an alternate
title that you want to sharewith people? Um, what about you?
Jason,I feel like my my titles just
(31:37):
kind of fall out as of what'sexpected of science fiction. So
like the Mars mission is Aries,the ship they take to get there
is called Aries. It's namedafter the god of war. I
don't know that it's necessarilya great title, though,
(32:03):
because thatit feels I don't know, maybe,
perhaps obscure.
There's one award I went to pickup, and the person mispronounced
the name, so she obviouslydidn't know what ares was, which
is interesting, yeah, but yeah,my titles, it's, they just kind
of fall out. I don't reallyhave, I might have a for other
(32:26):
books. I've had working titles,but they're, they're not at all
like titles you would use,right? What about you? Evie,
well, a lot goes into mydecision on titles. The first
is, how long is it? Because whenyou've got a romance cover, you
know you want to give the leadcharacters room to be on the
(32:50):
cover, so you can't have, like,a massive load of text. So I
tried to go for three words, twoor three words for this series.
So I planned out all the titlesof the series before I've even
written and then the secondthing I do is to have my list of
titles that might work. Then Igo onto Amazon, I write them in
and say, How many other booksare called blah, blah, blah. So
(33:13):
obviously you want to go withthe title that is the right
length. Has never been usedbefore, or if it has been used
before, then hardly you know thebooks that have written. No
one's read them. Then I wantedto have maybe love or something
like that in the title. And lovead lib because lib she's Libby,
so it's love ad lib. And ad libis because it's a fake
(33:36):
relationship, romance. She's animprovisational comedy actress.
They're making it up as they goalong. So they fall in love. So
it's love ad lib with Libbybeing obviously Liv being her.
So that's how I got the titlefor love ad lib. It was, is it
short? Has it been used before?
Is it relevant? And, you know?
And this was nice because itlinked the comedy, the
(33:57):
improvisation stuff, and hername. That's interesting about
having room for the characterson the top on the cover of
romance. That makes a ton ofsense. What about you? Susan
watts,yeah. So the original title was
roadkill. And I was like, thatwas a bit sloppy. So we changed
that. And then I thought, okay,so the whole motivation of this
(34:21):
story comes from a house fire.
So I called it and her longingfor home so I called it home
fires. And a friend of mine hadit printed up in an arc for me,
and it looked like home fries.
So I thought, we're not doingthat then. So, but there's this
beautiful, beautiful poem byMarie Howe called WHAT THE
(34:42):
LIVING do. And it's about, she'stalking to someone who has
passed away. And and I thought,Oh, my God, this is perfect,
because the whole quest of myprotagonist is to figure out
what the living do, how to go onliving. And it just, you know,
it was a goose bumpy.
Moment when I when I came uponthat, oh, that's I love that.
(35:05):
What about you? Susan Wright,titles are really hard for me.
My books spend a lot of timebeing book number one, book
number two, book number three. Ihave a really tough time with
titles, and as I go through, asI'm writing them, I start
jotting down things because youuse phrases or the theme lends
itself to certain things. Butwhen you're writing in the
(35:27):
mystery genre, it's a littlelike what Jason was saying.
There's certain expectations ofwhat a title would be, so that
when someone picks it up, theydon't go, Oh, this must be
literary fiction, or this mustbe something else you want to
give them a clue. Now, havingsaid that this one actually did
use the word dead, like it's alittle bit like what Amy was
saying, where you check withAmazon, you see what the names
(35:47):
are and what what works in thisgenre. So dead, murder,
something like that helps. But Ijust find it really tricky. So I
try to keep my titles to aboutthree words or so, and
they come to me towards the end,and then I have a big debate
with my daughter editor, whosays to Me, you can't use that.
(36:09):
Everyone has used that. No onewill ever find your book on
Amazon if you use that, which istrue. So then I have to come up
with something else. She's verygood at that, and and I am
hopeless at that. So it's one ofthe huge it's a big challenge
for me, you know, just want tosay it's so interesting that a
couple of you have said you needto have really short titles. And
I guess it's a genre basedthing, because now there are
(36:31):
some titles that go on for like,three sentences.
You know, they're often funny orhumorous or clever, but it's, I
don't know. Sometimes I thinkthere's no hard and fast rule
for anything, but you guys seemto have nailed it well.
So that's kind of all myquestions. And I really
(36:54):
appreciate all of you forjoining and want to congratulate
all of you, and that's reallyinteresting about the title. I'm
going to think about that morenow. More now pertaining to
genre, and obviously searchesand that kind of thing. But
anyway, thank you so much, andI will talk with you later.
Thank you so much for hostingus. So nice meeting you. Nice to
(37:15):
meet you. Thank you. Amy, thankyou. Bye. Bye. Bye.
Thanks so much to all four ofthe Canadian Book Club Award
winners that I had the chance tointerview today, and I just
wanted to remind you of theirtitles and names. And today, I
interviewed Jason Adams and hissci fi book is called Aries
(37:41):
and Evie Alexander'svery unique rom com is called
love ad lib.
And Susan Jean Wright'smysteries set in the Banff
Springs Hotel is called Fortunefavors the dead.
(38:06):
And the final book is what theliving do, by Susan wads, and
it's a beautifully written bookabout loss and love. So thanks
so much. And also, I want toremind you, if you're interested
in becoming a verified readerfor the Canadian book club
(38:28):
awards for the 2025 awards,which will be judged starting
this fall, you can log on totheir website at the Canadian
book club awards.ca.
You do need to be Canadian toread the books,
but you don't to if you have abook you want to submit, anyone
(38:51):
in the world can do that. So youcan also log on to the Canadian
book club awards.ca, and findout the links for how to submit
your book for consideration. Sothanks so much for listening,
And I'll talk to you later.
(39:22):
You
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