with Brenda Chapman
We are delighted to welcome mystery author Brenda Chapman to Omnimystery News today.
Brenda's second crime novel to feature police officers Kala Stonechild and Jacques Rouleau is Butterfly Kills (Dundurn; February 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to spend some time with her to talk about the series.
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Omnimystery News: What is it about series mysteries that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Brenda Chapman
Brenda Chapman: Writing recurring characters in a crime series allows me to develop my main characters — in this case cops — while changing up the cast of characters involved in the murders. The books that I enjoy reading the most have main characters whose lives I want to follow throughout an entire series because I become hooked on them as people and look forward to watching their lives unfold. Crime novels by their very nature provide a suspenseful and often dangerous setting in which characters navigate their lives. The lead characters have failings and oftentimes messy relationships but can be heroic when necessary, their lives connected by the crime they're attempting to solve. Just as in life, recurring characters become familiar friends to root for, but can often be intriguing and unpredictable.
In the Stonechild and Rouleau series, the main characters develop and grow over time just as real people do. They face personal challenges and deal with tragedy and loss. Kala Stonechild, a twenty-nine year old First Nations cop, spent her childhood in foster homes and comes with a lot of baggage. Intelligent and relentless when it comes to her job, she's a self-reliant loner who has trouble trusting. Her sergeant Jacques Rouleau is a somewhat jaded but humane cop in his early fifties who connects with this prickly and oftentimes difficult employee. As lead characters, their storylines are a joy to mine and develop from book to book.
OMN: Into which mystery genre would you place your books?
BC: Butterfly Kills is a police procedural. This category of crime fiction has a large following of readers who are usually eager to try out a new series, always an advantage!
OMN: Tell us something about Butterfly Kills that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
BC: The fictional narrative is anchored in a true, sensational murder that captured Canadian headlines for weeks. However, to reveal the crime would be a spoiler, so I will only say that the issue is current, fascinating and worthy of exploration.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
BC: I normally begin a novel by choosing a crime and a killer and work the plot toward the reveal. The opening chapter takes the most time to write since it starts the engine and drives the rest of the book. Even if the murder doesn't occur in the first chapter, I am setting the stage for its arrival. Plotting continues throughout the course of writing the manuscript. I've become more disciplined at jotting down notes and sketching chapter outlines as I go, although usually after the chapters are written. I spend many hours thinking about the next chapter as I lie in bed at night or ride the bus to and from my day job, using this time to work through plot problems in my head. I also spend a lot of time editing a passage or a chapter before going on to the next having learned that this is a necessary part of my thinking process. Many times, a light bulb moment comes to me and I'll say, "So that's why I wrote this scene in chapter two — it fits in to a twist in chapter seven that I didn't see coming." The process is a little bit mysterious and a great deal of hard work.
OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points for your stories?
BC: My research involves the internet for fact checks and Google Earth for geographical locations. I've lived in the locations that I select for my stories although I've also made several fieldtrips, usually to find places to commit murder. My husband comes along but has refused to get out of the car the last few times I've offered to have him check out an isolated location. (Could it be because I upped his life insurance?) I had a retired cop fact check the first in the series which was most helpful — for instance, did you know that a person cannot actually suffocate in the trunk of a car? My editors have been dogged at challenging facts that we've both set out to verify one way or the other.
OMN: You mentioned that you've lived in the locations of your stories. How true are you to the settings?
BC: My first books were set in fictional locations set in the middle of real parts of the country. This allowed me complete freedom to invent the town. The Stonechild and Rouleau series is set in real towns — Ottawa and Kingston with trips to Toronto, Montreal and various towns in the Ottawa Valley and Gatineau Hills. This is my stomping ground, a part of the country that offers a variety of settings. Ten minutes either side of Ottawa and you are in the country with woods, lakes and rivers. Canadians are obsessed with the weather and the Ottawa Valley and along Lake Ontario offer extreme conditions, just right for a murder mystery series. I try to hold true to the geography and layout of the cities and towns although will take a few liberties if necessary for the story. For example, I might invent a restaurant where a murder takes place since owners are not keen to have a murder on their premises, even a fictional one.
Kala Stonechild grew up in a small community in the north and she grew out of my own childhood in a town of two thousand on the North Shore of Lake Superior. She brings my love for the North and its rugged beauty to the city — this feeling in the blood that never quite goes away.
OMN: If we could send you anywhere in the world, our treat, to research the setting for a story, where would it be?
BC: We are planning a trip to Spain and Portugal so a murder in Barcelona could be an idea worth pursuing. I could make my serial killer travel to Tuscany, another location where I'd like to spend more time, especially if all expenses are paid.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And have any of these found their way into your books?
BC: I began curling in high school in Northern Ontario and took it up again, convincing my husband to give it a try quite a few years ago. Both of our daughters curl competitively, and our eldest is on Canada's national ladies team. We've spent many hours at curling clubs around the country watching both girls in competitions from the time they were eight years old. The odd curling reference has appeared in my books, but I haven't killed anyone in a curling club … yet.
OMN: What advice might you offer to aspiring writers?
BC: Write for the love of writing, and write what you enjoy reading. Success comes in many forms and is a moving target, but if you always come back to writing the love of writing, you won't lose perspective or the creative joy.
The great P.D. James didn't achieve true fame until her eighth novel Innocent Blood, which was published in 1980. She's been quoted as saying, "Monday, I was ticking along as usual, and by Friday I was a millionaire." I'm inspired by her perseverance but also heartened that someone as talented as James took a while to find her readers.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young? And do you think any of these influenced how and what you write today?
BC: As a child, I read everything I could get my hands on. The books that I liked best always had a mystery to be solved and a lot of suspense, and this never changed. I loved Enid Blyton's mysteries — The Secret Seven and The Famous Five series in particular. I also loved books set in foreign countries that allowed my imagination to travel..
As for authors who've influenced me, the list is long and still growing. Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye had major impacts when I was in high school. I continue to read crime novels, often having a few on the go at one time. Again, very difficult to pick a few, but some storytellers whose work I admire include Michael Connelly, John Harvey, Denise Mina, Giles Blunt, Louise Penny, Liza Marklund … the list could go on for a few pages.
OMN: What's next for you?
BC: I'll be working with my editor at Dundurn on Tumbled Graves, the third in the Stonechild and Rouleau series. I'm currently writing the fourth in the series and expect this will take me well into 2015. I've also got an adult literacy mystery series on the go — the Anna Sweet mysteries — four of these books have already been released by Grass Roots Press and I have a contract for the fifth for 2016. The first two books, My Sister's Keeper and The Hard Fall have each been shortlisted for a major award which is gratifying. I was a special education teacher for a number of years specializing in reading, so this feels full circle. When not writing, curling or travelling, I work full-time as a senior communications advisor in the federal government so lots to keep me busy into 2016.
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In 1997, Brenda left teaching to begin working for the federal government as a writer/editor. Subsequently, she worked in communications for the federal Department of Justice, a senior complaints and investigations officer in the Canadian Transportation Agency and a senior briefing analyst and senior communications advisor at Health Canada. In addition to her work as an author, Brenda is currently employed as a senior communications advisor for the federal Department of Justice. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at BrendaChapman.ca and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Butterfly Kills
Brenda Chapman
A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery
Two separate crimes, two tragic outcomes …
Jacques Rouleau has moved to Kingston to look after his father and take up the position of head of the town's Criminal Investigations Division. One hot week in late September, university student Leah Sampson is murdered in her apartment. In another corner of the city, Della Munroe is raped by her husband. At first the crimes appear unrelated, but as Sergeant Rouleau and his new team of officers dig into the women's pasts, they discover unsettling coincidences. When Kala Stonechild, one of Rouleau's former officers from Ottawa, suddenly appears in Kingston, Rouleau enlists her to help.
Stonechild isn't sure if she wants to stay in Kingston, but agrees to help Rouleau in the short term. While she struggles with trying to decide if she can make a life in this new town, a ghost from her past starts to haunt her.
As the detectives delve deeper into the cases, it seems more questions pop up than answers. Who murdered Leah Sampson? And why does Della Monroe's name keep showing up in the murder investigation? Both women were hiding secrets that have unleashed a string of violence. Stonechild and Rouleau race to discover the truth before the violence rips more families apart.
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