A warm welcome to R.J.Harlick (Robin) for our Monday Interview. As its
summer we will be sure to find her at her log cabin in the wilderness of West
Quebec dealing with a myriad of wild animals and domestic ones as well. Two
beautiful standard poodles, Sterling and new pup Molly, keep her company when she is not taking
pictures of an assortment of woodland creatures.
For a
city girl she sure likes roughing it.
Pam:
Canoeing, snowshoeing
and hiking in the forests where you live a good part of the year play a big
part in your writing of the Meg Harris stories.
The wilderness setting and your knowledge of the First Nations culture
contribute a wonderful insight into aboriginal lore. How did you go about
researching for this series?
Robin:
Let me say how thrilled I am,
Pam, to be doing an interview for your blog. Thanks for inviting me.
They always say write what you know, so I set my series in a place I
know and love, the West Quebec wilderness where my cottage is. I also wanted to
populate this setting with the people who traditionally live there, English
Canadians, Quebecois and Algonquin First Nations. I initially only intended that
my Algonquin characters have a walk-on appearance, but as the writing of the first
book, Death’s Golden Whisper, progressed, I became very attached to them. And
so First Nations people and their stories became an integral part of my Meg
Harris series.
However, my knowledge of their customs was minimal, so I relied on the internet and library for my research. I also wanted to ensure I reflected their culture as accurately as the story would permit, so I consulted with several members of Kitigan Zibi, the closest Algonquin reserve to Ottawa.
When Meg Harris travels to other Native communities, I consult with
members of those communities too. Since
I am not as familiar with these settings as I am with the Meg’s West Quebec
home of Three Deer Point, I travel to these fare flung places myself and
invariably come back filled with story ideas that I never would’ve gleaned from
the internet.
Pam:
Your sixth book in the Meg Harris mysteries, ‘Silver
Totem of Shame’ is in the publisher’s hands and is due for release in 2014. Do
you see yourself running out of stories to tell about Meg? Can you tell us a
little about it?
Robin:
I had great fun writing Silver Totem of Shame.
Once again Meg gets to travel, as did I, this time to Canada’s west coast, to
Vancouver and Haida Gwaii, the home of the Haida. I’d grown up with stories about these fabled
islands from my father who’d worked in one of the logging camps as a student
before WWII. So when the time came to send Meg on another trip, I leapt at the
opportunity to explore them and came back bubbling over with inspiration.
As the title suggests the plot revolves around totem pole carving. Meg Harris and her new husband are staying in a houseboat on Granville Island. While out exploring the island, Meg comes across a crime scene where a young Haida carver was murdered. This sets off a chain of events that sends Meg to Haida Gwaii in search of his killer.
During my trip to the islands, I learned that the many crests carved into a totem pole are not haphazard, but are meant to tell a story. So I have interwoven into the plot the unfolding of an ancient Haida story through the carving of a totem pole. Needless to say,it all comes together with a surprise at the end.
I wish I had a copy
of the new cover for you to post, but unfortunately it’s still in the drafting
stage.
To answer your first
question, Pam, I have too many stories about Meg in my head to ever run out. In
fact, I am busy plotting the seventh Meg Harris mystery.
Shortlisted for the 2010 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel! -
Pam:
Your fourth book ‘Arctic Blue Death’ is a
favourite of mine. You travelled to the Arctic to experience life in the frozen
north. Tell us about your experiences there?
Robin:
I have always wanted to visit Canada’s Far North, so when it came time to write the 4th Meg Harris
mystery, I decided to send Meg to Baffin Island, so I could go too. Although so
much information about the Arctic is available on the internet and in magazines
and books, I felt I had to experience it first hand to get a real sense of this
mysterious, barren and hostile land. So during the longest days of the year, I
visited Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut and Pangnirtung, an art centre, where I
learned about Inuit print making, which became a central theme of ‘Arctic Blue
Death’. I met many people, from a young Inuk RCMP constable to a retired teacher who’d spent over 30 years living in the north. I came away with story ideas that couldn’t have come from the internet or books. Many found their way into the plot.
I also learned that though it was a fascinating land to visit, it was a
place where I couldn’t live. As I result I couldn’t write about it with
rose-coloured glasses. Many readers familiar with the north have told me how
accurately they felt I had portrayed it. I have even had a couple of readers
use it as a travel guide on their first visit to Iqaluit. Thanks goodness, I
had everything in their right place.
Robin and I at the Chapters .
Pam:
In ‘Green Place for Dying’ Meg is a crusader
and rails against injustice and the indifference she finds with the authorities
when native women go missing. Are you a
crusader Robin? Could you or would you confront the police into more action on
these missing women?
Robin:
I will make a lot of noise and
rail against this or that, but I’m afraid I’m not as brave as Meg. And although I may carry on about it with my
husband, I’m afraid that is usually as far as it goes. Perhaps Meg is my way of
dealing with injustice.
Pam:
You are able to weave city life with the
wilderness and two different cultures to blend into a story we can get our
teeth into. Does storytelling come
naturally to you?
Robin:
I find this whole process of
storytelling fascinating. It doesn’t come naturally to me. Ask me to fully plot
out a story before writing it and I wouldn’t be able to. But put a pen in my
hand or more accurately a keyboard under my fingers and the story seems to flow
through the writing of the words. Sure I have my moments when I’ll hit a wall and
wonder what in the world Meg should do next, but invariably she makes her way
through a crack and carries on, often taking a completely different direction from
the one I thought we were following.
Pam:
Without giving too much away we learn that Meg
has many human frailties. She battles alcoholism, feels guilty and makes many
wrong decisions regarding her relationships. Yet she is a fighter. Is Meg
someone you have known or is she truly a fictitious character?
Robin:
Meg was spawned in my mind and
has taken on a life of her own. I feel
I’ve had little control in the kind of person she has become and I rather enjoy journeying with her through each successive book. If you were to ask me to describe her, I probably wouldn’t be able to. But I know what she is all about, her likes and dislikes, her reactions to events, to people. Occasionally my editor will suggest a change related to Meg and I will instinctively know that it is something Meg wouldn’t do.
Pam:
You worked in the corporate world for many years.
How hard was it to make the transition to novel writing?
Robin:
When I decided to write my first
novel, I had pretty well finished with the corporate world. It wasn’t something
I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Writing was. Writing had been one of
the activities I had enjoyed most while working. But it was business writing,
which I quickly learned was very different from creative writing. So with the
writing of my first book, Death’s Golden Whisper, I learned how to write
fiction. I rewrote that book four times until I finally mastered it.
Pam:
As the president of
Crime Writers of Canada
http://crimewriterscanada.com/ can
you use your crystal ball and tell us how healthy or not Crime/mystery writing
is in Canada?
Robin:
It is a very exciting time for Canadian crime writing. Twenty years
ago, there were only a dozen or so crime writers, many of them languishing
undiscovered in the back book shelves. Today we have over 250 published members
in Crime Writers of Canada with a number hitting the best seller lists not only
within Canada but also internationally as more and more readers discover our
uniquely Canadian voice. I like to think that the next big wave in popularity
will be the Canadians. Watch out
Scandinavians, here we come!
Pam:
Who has influenced your writing
the most?
Robin:
Pam, I am not sure if any one
writer has influenced me. But I do love reading mysteries and have done so
since a child, starting with Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. I have always
enjoyed British mysteries and the way they are subtly crafted. Writers like,
P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. I also have my favourite American writers, like
Michael Connelly and Elizabeth George, who is really writing along the British
tradition, and Elliot Pattison. I particularly
enjoy reading Canadian authors and do have my favourites to numerous to list.
Pam:
What are you reading right now and is your next book in the works?
Robin:
I am currently enjoying the post Great War period of Mel Bradshaw’s latest book, Fire on the Runway. While I haven’t yet put pen to paper, my mind is a whirl of plot ideas for the seventh Meg Harris mystery. Meg will return to her beloved Three Deer Point, and she will find herself cut off from the rest of the world by a major blizzard. With Eric away, her only companion will be
Adjidamo, the boy Sergei saved in Red Ice for a Shroud. And she just might have
a new puppy….
Thanks Robin for spending the time with us today. We wish you much
success with your series and we look forward to ‘Silver Totem of Shame’ due in
2014.
RJ Harlick is an escapee from the high tech jungle. After working for over
twenty-five years in the computer industry, first for major computer
corporations such as IBM and DMR Group, then with her own management
consultancy practice, she decided that pursuing killers by pen would be more
fun than chasing the elusive computer bug.
Originally from Toronto, R.J., along
with her husband, Jim, and their standard poodles, Sterling and Miss Molly now
bides her time between her home in Ottawa and log cabin in West Quebec. A lover
of the outdoors, she spends much of her time roaming the forests of the
Outaouais. Because of this love for the untamed wilds, she decided that she
would bring its seductive allure alive in her writings. This she has done in
her Meg Harris mystery
series, where the wilderness setting plays almost as large a role as the main
character, Meg Harris. There are currently 5 books in the series, with the
sixth, Silver Totem of Shame, due for release in June 2014. The 4th
book, Arctic Blue Death, was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best
Novel.
She has also published short
stories with the latest When the Red, Red Robin… appearing
in the Ladies Killing Circle Anthology, Bone Dance. One of her
stories, Lady Luck, was a winner of the 2002 Bony Pete award and appears in the
Bloody Words Anthology.
I hope you are all
enjoying these interviews as much as I enjoy doing them. The next author
interview is to be posted Friday, August
2nd. Vicki Delaney is
in the hot seat.
Keep cool where you are.
Talk soon,
Slainte,
Pam