‘OrilliaMatters’ Press Release: Novel based on bizarre death of Canadian icon set in Georgian Bay.
Bay of Blood, a new novel set in Georgian Bay, is based on the mysterious death of renowned Canadian painter Tom Thomson.
The book’s idea came to author Andy Potter when he was watching a documentary about Thomson’s life and mysterious death called West Wind: The Vision of Tom Thomson. This would make a great novel, Potter thought. Then he thought, No, it wouldn’t. You can’t fly too close to the Tom Thomson myth. It’s sacred. He’s a Canadian icon.
So, Potter wrote a mystery novel based on Thomson’s death. Thomson died on July 8, 1917. The famous painter murdered in Bay of Blood died on July 8, 2017. There are other similarities, but the painter in the novel is not Thomson, and he’s not the main character. The novel’s main character is OPP Detective Sergeant Eva Naslund.
For many years, I worked in IT and wrote web-based software – mostly middleware – using various programming languages, among them Java and .NET. “OK, AMP, but what’s that got to do with writing fiction?” Patience, Grasshopper.
Most computer languages have no more than 100 keywords or ‘reserved’ words, and fifty or so main ones, such as if, then, for, etc. I used those fifty words over and over again. In essence, the world was reduced to fifty words.
How would that work with human language? Fifty words in English? Not a good thing. Are fifty computer keywords really enough? You’d think the paucity of computer lexicons would render the IT world flat and colourless. It could, and it did – from the 1950s to the 1980s. Think mainframes and keypunch cards.
Then came the UX (User eXperience) Revolution: user-friendly interfaces and web browsers. Next came smartphones and apps. Consider what’s been created with a fifty-word base: Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Of course, you could say that IT has pauperized the world, reduced it to two-dimensional screens, to a virtual realm, to a hell of trolls. Yep, there IS all that. But there is more. For instance, there’s blog space. You and I are ‘talking’ now. Well, I imagine you talking with me. That’s how I think of it.
Let’s do a very cursory comparison of a human language and a computer language. When learning a new human language, say English, if you master 1000 words you’re well on your way – not to being a poet, but to being functionally literate. Conversely, Shakespeare used over 21,000 words (and is credited with coining 1,800 of them). The Oxford English Dictionary contains about 200,000 entries. When learning to program in C++, you learn fifty or so keywords. Only fifty! It’s amazing what a CPU can do with fifty keywords.
Think of human culture as a whole. Human languages have spawned millions of books. Computer languages have spawned millions of URLs. I’m not suggesting we can compare human lexicons to computer lexicons. It’d be like comparing a book to a byte. So, let’s move on. At the moment, Web 3.0 is in its infancy. It will use the same fifty keywords. Can you expect them to accurately mirror the real world? No. But coders will keep trying.
PS: To all the code warriors and IT professionals out there: You’re right, you use thousands of variables and elements, not fifty. But I’m referring to reserved words. Look what you’ve done with them. Billions of humans are glued to their phones. Which brings new meaning to the old maxim: “Words are powerful.”
There’s a fine line between promotion and flaming, between enticing people to look at something and harassing them. The e-promotion world is huge. Here’s a look at one small country: the author/publishing nation. Caveat: This post may only appeal to authors. However, if you’re interested in e-promotion – be it for books, services, or anything else – read on.
The Game. “You’re an author now,” my publisher said. “Enlarge your social media footprint.”
Size twelve wasn’t good enough. Size twenty-four was the ticket. So, I wrote blog posts. I sent broadcast emails. I facebooked, linkedin, tweeted, and instagrammed. I was a hamster on the promo wheel. But who was caught on a bigger wheel? The people who knew me. For example, those who’d been online friends for years, back when I barely posted anything. Suddenly I was posting a river. “What the #*&?! This guy is foaming at the pen.” Sorry about that. And thank you for navigating the river.
Let’s leave aside tweets and I-grams and focus on blogging. When you publish blog posts, you are given the option of connecting to readers via the main social media dragons of the day (such as fb and LinkedIn). The dragons ask to use your email contacts to generate more traffic.
Sounds good, so you let them. They then ingest all the email addresses you’ve ever sent email to or received email from. The dragons blast every contact, even people who don’t remember you or emailed you ten years ago. Your contacts get burned. But your publisher gets happy. So somebody wins. Hey, maybe some of your contacts win too. They like what your site delivers. Good news. If enough of them are happy, there’s a win-win.
I’m no social media guru. However, I have a few simple tips about blogging. ONE: When the dragons ask to use your email contacts, uncheck ‘All’ and manually select the contacts you want. TWO: Pick the right time to publish your posts. I chose the weekend (I don’t want to blast people during the work week). THREE: Keep your posts short; most of mine are under 300 words (be good to your readers – they’re time-pressed).
“Bay of Blood is a vivid page-turner, one that promises more from both its writer, A.M. Potter, and its feisty protagonist, Sergeant Eva Naslund.” Steve Heighton, Governor General’s Award Winner | Author of The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep, The Dead Are More Visible and more
“Potter has written the quintessential Canadian murder mystery with a literary flourish and all the elements of a riveting read.” * Lesley Choyce. Author of The Republic of Nothing, Sea of Tranquility, The Book of Michael, among others
A Discovery of Strangers by Rudy Wiebe. Knopf Canada. 1994
Introductory Note: I wrote the following book review in 1995. Why am I republishing it (with a few edits)? What does it have to do with writing fiction? Two words: Voice Appropriation. If you want to bypass the review, feel free to skip to the bottom of the post. {Review first published by A.M. Potter. ® 1995}
Rudy Wiebe won the 1973 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction (Canada) for The Temptations of Big Bear. Long before the advent of movies like Dances with Wolves, Wiebe’s indigenous characters took centre stage. He appropriated a multitude of historical voices, regardless of ethnicity or station in life, and allowed each to tell their own version of events.
Wiebe’s second G-G award-winning novel, A Discovery of Strangers, follows the same general format. The reader views the 1820-21 Franklin Expedition through the eyes of not only the English explorers, but also the Canadian voyagers and Yellowknife natives who made it possible. Much of the story is told from the point-of-view of a young indigenous woman called Greenstockings. Wiebe could be accused of double voice appropriation. He’s a white male who wrote as a female, not to mention an indigenous female.
A Discovery of Strangers is as much a love story as a retelling of history. The beautiful Greenstockings is a man-magnet. One of Franklin’s junior officers, Robert Hood, is besotted with her. Wiebe’s account of their deepening attraction – which finally erupts inside her father’s lodge – is as tender and tragic as a troubadour tale.
A reader cannot help noting the stylistic affinities of Wiebe’s two award-winning novels. Both use similar narrative devices – flashbacks, visionary dreams, multiple points-of-view – as well as similar prose styles. It’s almost as if the author said to himself, Hmm, that worked before. I’ll do it again.
Wiebe’s descriptive passages perfectly capture the sub-Arctic terrain, largely harsh and unforgiving in the eyes of the whites, no less harsh in the eyes of the Yellowknife, yet also pregnant with life and joy. We read of eerie ice caves, the fickle migrations of the caribou, and the endless threat of starvation. We enter the past. It may be long-lost but, in Wiebe’s hands, it is also eternally-present.
Postscript, 2019:
When A Discovery of Strangers was published (1994), some people weren’t happy with Wiebe’s double voice appropriation, that is, writing from the point-of-view (POV) of both an indigenous person and a female. It’s no easy task for a male to write convincingly as a female, let alone for a white male to write as an indigenous female. However, Wiebe succeeded. Stylistically.
As to being politically correct, in 2019 many more people challenge Wiebe’s voice appropriation than twenty-five years ago. For the most part today, voice appropriation is frowned upon. A white male like me shouldn’t write from the POV of an indigenous person. I also shouldn’t write from the POV of a female. But I do. The protagonist and sole narrator of my first North Noir detective series is a female, Eva Naslund, a Swedish-Scottish Canadian.
Why do I use a female narrator? The answer is not simple. I understand that, for some people, it’s not politically correct. I understand that I can’t think or feel exactly like a female. {Incidentally, it seems to be OK for females to use male POVs. For example, in the mystery genre, Louise Penny’s protagonist is Armand Gamache, and then there’s Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.} Despite the recent voice appropriation furor, I persist. While I’m a supposedly honorable person (according to friends, and I don’t even pay them), I’m not always politically correct. I don’t think anyone is. I also persist because I write fiction. Works of imagination. Say no more.
My final spiel: I don’t care what narrative voice(s) you use. Write as a Purple Martian who’s in love with non-gender-specific star dust. If your POV is convincing, I’ll read it.
North Noir 