Introducing…S!
My latest Hope Sze thriller, Graveyard Shift, was inspired by a local police officer who stopped a massive medication theft. But I needed both his and the police department’s permission to talk about that, and I didn’t know the officer’s last name.
Then this happened: “Oh, it’s Dr. Yuan-Innes!”
I ran into Constable Michael Ménard, who recognized me and said, “You’re one of our favourite doctors.”
Gosh. I shook his hand, thanked him for making my day (turns out that part of their criteria is “doctors who don’t make us wait around in the department forever”), and explained my dilemma about how to find one of his officers post-theft.

“Do you know the case number?”
“No.”
“Do you know when this happened?”
I shook my head. I remembered that I’d been in the middle of writing Death Flight. I took notes and swore this would be my next book. But I didn’t date my notes.
“You could call the department and ask.”
Wouldn’t that seem kind of fishy?
I asked at the hospital, and Margo Flaro figured out the officer’s identity. I contacted him through social media, but I also asked Const. Ménard if he’d mind letting S know, because it can also feel off if a near-stranger contacts you through social media. By the way, Const. Ménard was recently cited for ten years of service (https://www.cornwallseawaynews.com/…/recognizing-service-a…/), and has won an award for teamwork (http://www.cornwallpolice.ca/…).
So now I can finally tell you that S, who appears in Graveyard Shift’s acknowledgements under only that initial, is actually Sgt. Scott Coulter!
You probably don’t know about that near-theft because he *prevented* it, after being alerted by the hospital security guards. Shout out to Nicole Spahich and other security guards, as well as all the police officers who keep us safe!
Massive thanks to The Review (https://thereview.ca/…/local-hero-inspires-new-thriller-gr…/) and the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder Content Works (https://www.standard-freeholder.com/…/yis-latest-thriller-i…) for reporting this. We need more positive coverage about good work.
I’m excited that Scott’s getting recognition from the Cornwall Police Service itself: http://www.cornwallpolice.ca/…/cps-officer-inspires-new-thr…

Thanks to CBC’s All in a Day for hosting us! https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/cornwall-drug-bust-inspires-new-crime-thriller-1.5356070

And @LetsGoCBC’s Richard King for reviewing Graveyard Shift.

Now some quick real talk. I didn’t blog about Graveyard Shift because I always figured I had time. I’d do it later.

Well, now we’re at the beginning of the Canadian COVID-19 pandemic. I have to work in the ER tomorrow. We’re an hour away from Ottawa, where public health has warned of community spread. I work in a tiny hospital with no CT, no portable chest X-ray, and bare minimum labs after hours.

Health care workers have more than 10 times the risk of catching COVID-19. We don’t exactly know why but assume it’s because we get exposed repeatedly over and over while exhausted and under-protected. American M.D.’s have to rewear their N95 masks post-intubation or have none at all, and we’ve learned of Italian doctors who died with no protective equipment, not even gloves.

So I started a petition two days ago that was immediately signed by 62 physicians and had the support of many more. We need to protect our workers NOW. Don’t wait until we run out of masks and gloves. Let’s go! This is the time for war-like measures. Our colleagues are dying around the world, and we have only a tiny window of time before it happens here.

“I hope we get to 1000 signatures in the morning,” said one of my new friends.

“I want thousands,” I replied. Dream big. You may not win, but you might as well try.
To my astonishment, http://change.org/COVID19frontline has hit 64,000 signatures as we speak. Dr. Carol Loffelmann and Dr. Michelle Cohen and I have spoken to the media. We’ve been in discussion with entrepreneurs, puzzling out how to get that equipment made.

This morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the government will work with existing manufacturers and may repurpose other industries in order to make PPE.

This is a crucial strategic move. Thank you.

However, I will relax more when we’ve covered everything in this petition. We want the PPE not only ordered but available to our front line workers, with masks and gloves accessible for the police and other essential services. We want to test patients properly and care for you with enough doctors, nurses, respiratory technicians, and other crucial personnel, using the correct medications and equipment. And we want everyone else to stay home and healthy.

So thank you, each and every one of you, for signing this petition and bringing us one step closer.

As Winston Churchill wrote, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

On Genre, Flirty Canadians, and Movie Deals

Melissa Yi: I have to ask you what inspired you to write such an unusual debut novel. For those of you who haven’t yet devoured PETRA’S GHOST, an Irish expatriate named Daniel gathers his wife’s ashes and intends to spread them as he walks the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage through Spain. He follows in the same footsteps of a woman who disappeared while walking the Camino. The missing woman and his wife’s death weigh on Daniel even as he tries to establish a relationship with another pilgrim, an outspoken California librarian named Ginny.

Ginny says “Everyone has a story.” Is this, somehow, your story? Even if it’s only in a metaphorical sense, as with resurrected chickens in Capilla de la Magdalena?
C.S. O’Cinneide: To a large extent, the story in Petra’s Ghost is very much my story of when I walked the Camino Frances in 2015. If you check out the blog entries from my trip (https://www.shekillslit.com/camino/) you will recognize many of the places and experiences contained in the book. What you won’t see in my blog entries is the fact that a woman did indeed go missing off the pilgrimage when I was walking. Her real-life story did not end well. With the exception of one sketchier stretch of the trail, I felt extremely safe walking on my own in Spain, but this poor woman was never far from my mind. So, it was not surprising that when I came home to write that she found her way into my novel. The Camino, much like life in general, has its dark and its light aspects, and I have always enjoyed contrasting those two elements in my writing.

MY: Honestly, as the author of the witty SheKillsLit.com blog, I expected a hilarious, satirical thriller, more like how you describe your next book, The Starr Sting Scale, featuring a six foot three hitwoman. I would call Petra’s Ghost more literary horror. What made you decide to tackle death, guilt, abuse, family, Dante, and the supernatural?
CSO: Yes, The Starr Sting Scale is a very different book! More than one editor has been caught laughing out loud at their desks while working on it. Petra’s Ghost does have humour in it (I can’t seem to write without it), but it has been promoted as literary. The horror label came as a surprise to me (and my publisher) and made me question what horror is and how we assign genre. Do people consider Victorian ghost stories like A Christmas Carol horror? Is The Notebook a romance novel? In any case, I am honoured to have been pegged in the same genre as Shirley Jackson, my writing idol.
As far as how these more horrific elements made it into Petra’s Ghost, I can only say that I don’t seem to have control over that in my writing. One time I tried to write a short story about a woman baking brown bread during the height of the suffragette movement and by the end of it she had poisoned her own children. My writing always seems to go to dark places. It must be a cathartic of some kind. But it is always used as a literary device to look at larger issues, like the economic vulnerability of women in the early 1900’s in the case of the brown bread short story, or in Petra’s Ghost as a vehicle to examine the hell we can make for ourselves when we pair the sisters of guilt and grief.

I was also surprised that there was very little Canada, except for a French Canadian woman hitting on Daniel. When I’ve read other novels by Canadian authors and publishers, they tend to wave the maple leaf. What made you and Dundurn decide to take it in a more international direction?
CSO: Don’t forget the Dutchman’s sister-friend who is Canadian too!

MY: Yes, all hail the flirty Canadian contingent! Kidding.

CSO: The book was completed by the time my publisher got their hands on it, so they had no say on the Canadian content or lack thereof. I love books that feature Canadian places and people. It is so refreshing to read about the things we know and recognize. But I think Canadians are capable of writing books about far more than just Canada. The Camino is a very international experience and it lends itself to an international cast of characters. Most pilgrims are usually from another country other than Spain, but they all become citizens of the Camino when they come to walk it.
In that way I suppose it is a Canadian story, since we live in a country peopled for the most part by those who have come from somewhere else.

MY: These are my favourite lines, and they’re a description of Petra’s teaching. She tended to each pupil as she did to her painting, with appreciation for the different textures and hues. He can remember her laugh as she recalled the pranksters and her furrowed brow as she felt for the shy ones.
I feel the wealth of empathy and could sense her visual art and her art of teaching, all at once. Any comments?
I am the poorest visual artist you will find, having never progressed beyond the passable stick figure. And I am not a teacher. But I think my love and empathy for children comes out in these lines. I have four kids and have unofficially adopted some more into my life over the years. They have all brought me a great deal of joy (and furrowed brows) with their “different textures and hues.”

MY: Four kids plus. Wow!

When I attended Bloody Words and Bouchercon, I noticed a divide between cozy writers and noir writers in that cozies preferred to puzzle out the murder intellectually and avoid any description of blood. Tanis Mallow gave an impassioned defence of gritty crime scenes because that kind of description makes you feel the horror of murder instead of treating it
as entertainment. Petra’s Ghost comes down on the descriptive side. Thoughts on this?
CSO: Hmm. I think it comes down to what you like to write (and read) rather than a defence of one or the other. I think all good mysteries had better give you an intellectual puzzle so I’m not sure if that is really a distinguishing factor. I believe the real question is, do you want the murder in a mystery to be described with the same detail that might be used to describe a sunset in the same story? Once again, I think that just comes down to personal taste. In Petra’s Ghost, the landscapes and architecture as well as the frightening things Daniel sees are described just as evocatively. That’s the way I write. I don’t think I could do it differently. For those who don’t like that amount of detail when it comes to frightening things, this could be jarring. And they can stick with the cozy mysteries and enjoy the sunset. I won’t be offended. Except honestly, they will miss a really good book. : )

MY: I want to ask you about your pen name. Does it have a special meaning to you?
CSO: The initials are my own (my first name is Carole), and O’Cinneide (oh-ki-nay-da) is my last name, Kennedy, in Irish. This is the original version of the surname before it was anglicized by the British. Many people in Ireland still use it. There were so many Carole Kennedy authors out there when I first started publishing, I wanted to differentiate myself. And of course, Ireland holds a very special place in my heart, as you can probably guess from the wonderful Irish ex-pat character of Daniel in Petra’s Ghost.

MY: Yes Congrats on the rave reviews, the critical acclaim and film/TV rights battle for Petra’s Ghost! How are you enjoying this journey so far?
It is a little surreal to tell you the truth. It seems to come in spurts that attention. I am still not sure how it will translate in terms of sales. But I must say I was pretty shocked when I found half a dozen emails in my in-basket inquiring after film rights. That was definitely not something I expected. But I suppose in all that, the most meaningful moment in this debut novel journey was the personal note a reader sent me via Goodreads. She told me that Petra’s Ghost had moved her deeply with its message about guilt, grief and ultimately redemption — and that she had cried while describing the story to her husband. I could get dozens of five-star reviews in the major media and they couldn’t possibly mean as much to me as that.

MY: There you have it. Proof that your personal reviews matter. Thank you for giving such an intelligent, gracious interview, C.S. I hope my friends enjoy Petra’s Ghost as much as I do!

Here were my worries for the launch day of Human Remains.

1. Would anyone buy my book?

2. Would anyone show up for my launch in Cornwall?

This dredges up bad memories, like being picked last for a baseball team, times a thousand. I never thought I’d play for the Major Leagues. However, I want to not suck at writing and getting my books into the hands of people who like to read them.

A few more problems. Last time I launched a Hope Sze book, Stockholm Syndrome, I got the flu and then, for the first time in my life, pneumonia. I didn’t want to go through that again.

The last two Hope books had hit the Kobo bestseller list of Top 25 e-books after a CBC interview—but I didn’t have a CBC interview lined up for launch day, although Murder in Common had posted a review, and the Standard Freeholder and the Review had shown their support.

I’m lucky to have readers buy my books in person, in print, at my hospitals, but that doesn’t register on Amazon or Kobo. To hit the bestseller list, I need people to buy online.

Luckily, they did. They had my back on Facebook and on my mailing list. I hit Kobo’s Top 10 and cracked the medical list on Amazon.ca. Thank you, thank you!

This is me cracking Kobo’s Top 10 with MARGARET ATWOOD at #6. Hey, Maggie, want to hang out? Wait, we are already … ON THE BESTSELLER LIST.

Yes, you can buy Human Remains on Kobo! It hit #1 in Women Sleuths, don’t’cha know.

Hi, Amazon! Thanks for getting me to #1 in Medical Thrillers!

Kobo even does a map to show where your buyers are, world-wide. Thanks, Kobo!

So that was hurdle #1. Yay, people bought my book around the world!

#2: I drove to Cornwall, quite exhausted, not knowing who would show up. I was pretty assertive about asking people, even handing flyers to both an American and a Canadian border agent (hi, T!). But you never know who will actually take the time to haul their carcass to the Cornwall Library on a Tuesday evening.

Hooray, people came!

I wasn’t late! Good thing, too, because the usual elevator was broken, and I had to come up the freight elevator to get set up.

My launch was part of DNA Day, the only Canadian place to celebrate the discovery of the double helix structure and completing the Human Genome Project. I have to say that, when asked, at least two people named not only Watson and Crick but also Rosalind Franklin. I handed out DNA origami and played my interview with Dr. Bill Stanford before reading from Human Remains, answering some creative questions, and making them do the wave.

It was fun. Every time I do a launch, different friends can or can’t come. It’s like throwing a party and seeing who shows up.

Some of my friends rarely do physical book launches anymore. They’d rather stay home and write. At most, they’ll have a Facebook party. But I can name two good things that came out of my Cornwall launch.

1. I met Troy and Robyn Guindon. He’s an acclaimed local author, and Robyn is the pharmacist and owner of Wholehealth Pharmacy, where she prides herself on one-on-one care with her patients.

We laughed about the fact that my family still has our Christmas tree up. Robyn said, “We did that, too! One year, we put up little balls for Easter.”

“Anastasia wanted to do that, but we didn’t get around to it!”

Robyn also has a collection of historical mortar and pestles. “Do you ever use a mortar and pestle?” I asked.

“Once in a while, to crush aspirin that we use in a salve.”

A show globe. Normally green means all is well and red means a plague. Uh oh.

“For what?”

“Psoriasis, to reduce the scaling.”

I had never heard of it, but it makes sense that you might try to gently abrade the white scales of psoriasis. So I learned something from Robyn, and you can, too! Plus, if you go, you can pick up one of Troy’s or my books, because she has good taste like that.

My books are also now available at Henderson’s in Lancaster!

2. A teacher at Holy Trinity asked me to come to his English class. So I drove away from my first book launch with a school visit set for the following week.

But first I had to face my next challenge.

3. In two days, on April 27^th, I would have my first Montreal launch, at a beautiful Old Montreal bookstore called Librairie Bertrand.

I haven’t lived in Montreal since I graduated from the emergency program. Most of my friends have moved away.

I started wearing blue hair to some of my launches. My family thought this was hilarious.

What if zero people showed up in Montreal?

Well, I couldn’t let Max turn eleven without mentioning it here!

This year, his goal was to pass level 10 swimming when he was ten. Not only did he pass level 10, but he also passed Bronze Star, although he struggled to lift bigger kids out of the water as he pretended to rescue them.

He also read a ton. I read all the Harry Potters to him, and our gifts were almost all books this year. I gave him graphic novels (“Please be Lunarbaboon,” he prayed over his last present), and his dad gave him the Percy Jackson series and Axel F sheet music. He’s read all the Wimpy Kid books, so we just finished Snoopy.

He wrote a melody for himself and played “The Entertainer” over and over at Christmas. He also started drawing comics.

On the downside, he failed organization, so we limited his screen time to an hour a day until he passed it the next term. He loves TV and computer more than anything else in life.

Overall, though, we’re lucky to have a happy, loving, healthy boy who’s slowly moving toward teenagerhood. He’s not there yet, but he’s showing signs. Like, I asked my family how Max had changed over the past year, and Anastasia said, “He has a little moustache.”

No one asks me about adolescence yet, but it reminds me of when strangers would ask, “Does he walk?” or “Does he talk?” At first, the answer was no, then “A little” and “Sort of” before it became a holy yes. It’s a continuum. He certainly doesn’t listen to me as much as he used to. “Why?” <door slam> Once he even cranked up the radio behind that door. So I know greater storms are coming. But for now, he’s still a pretty gentle soul. “Doux comme un agneau,” said his teachers in grade one, and he is.

Our friend Sandra gave us a night’s stay at the beautiful Alt Hotel in Ottawa. For some reason, they had a cube in the room. Max put it on his head, so Anastasia did, too.

Now I miss Max being 10.

Matt bought him a badminton set for his birthday, and that’s a big hit. Anastasia broke it three days ago. She tripped over the pole and broke it while chasing after a maple leaf. (“My leaf!” she cried. I mention this because it’s such a little kid thing to do. That leaf was crucial to her.) But Max rigged up a stick to put inside the hollow pole, and we played again today before Matt got a wooden dowel in there.

Happy birthday, Max-o. We love you.

Mommy