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Interview with Brenda Chapman – S. 10, Ep. 22
My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Brenda Chapman.
Brenda discusses her journey from writing for her daughters to becoming a published author, her inspiration for various protagonists, and her writing process. She also shares insights into her latest series, the Hunter and Tate Mysteries, set in Ottawa. Brenda emphasizes the importance of setting in her novels and offers advice for aspiring writers. Check out the interview for more about Brenda’s career and her approach to crafting compelling crime fiction.
You can download a copy of the transcript here.
Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. My guest today is a Canadian crime fiction author with 25 published novels as well as standalones and short stories. She writes various police procedurals and mystery series for adults as well as mysteries for middle grade readers, which I think is really cool.
(01:19): She is currently working on her new mystery series in Ottawa, set in Ottawa called the Hunter and Tate Mysteries. The third book in the series, Fatal Harvest, comes out in April, came out in April 2024. Sorry, excuse me. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards, including the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, so wow. Okay. So she was once the writer-editor, I have to note here of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which really intrigued me because I used to work at EPA, but we can talk about that later maybe. That stuff is fascinating to me. In any event, it’s my pleasure to introduce crime writer Brenda Chapman. Hey Brenda, how are you doing?
Brenda (02:10): Great, thanks, Debbi. Thanks for having me.
Debbi (02:13): Oh, it’s a pleasure, believe me. And finding out that you worked in pest management, wrote about pest management to me is just fascinating.
Brenda (02:22): I was only one of a group of writer-editors.
Debbi (02:25): Yeah. Well, very cool. Still, we’ll have to talk about that at some point. Back when I was practicing law, I worked at the Office of General Counsel, Pesticides and Toxics Division, so I worked a lot on FIFRA, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. What a mouthful, right?
Brenda (02:49): Fiction is much more fun.
Debbi (02:53): So anyway, when you first started writing fiction with serious Intent to be published, what inspired you to write for middle graders?
Brenda (03:02): Well, my daughters were 12 and nine, and I was actually teaching at the time. I was teaching kids with special ed and reading with some of them, and I thought—one girl brought in a book to read aloud to me, and I thought I could do a better plot than this. And that got me spurred into trying it, and it was really just to see if I could do it. So I wrote the Jennifer Bannon Mysteries. The first one was called Running Scared, and I really wrote it for my daughters. And when I finished the manuscript and my youngest was reading it and she said, “Mummy, you write just like a real author.” And I thought, wow, maybe I can get this published. So I spent my lunch hours trying to find a publisher and found one in Toronto. They took that first one and it turned into a four book series in the end.
The first one was called Running Scared, and I really wrote it for my daughters. And when I finished the manuscript and my youngest was reading it and she said, “Mummy, you write just like a real author.”
Debbi (03:57): That’s awesome. So you found one in Toronto then? That’s great.
Brenda (04:01): Yeah.
Debbi (04:03): Fantastic. Is it a small press?
Brenda (04:04): It was. They’ve been absorbed by Dundurn, which is a bigger middle press in Toronto, and they’ve taken over my books from that time and the Stonechild and Rouleau series, which is … I went from writing for kids to writing for adults, and I did the Stonechild and Rouleau series, which is seven books set in Kingston with an indigenous lead detective, a woman, Kala Stonechild, and yeah, that series has done quite well, and I’m actually now writing the eighth. The publishers contracted me to do another book.
Debbi (04:46): Fantastic. Congratulations. It’s wonderful. And I read your article, fabulous article on you there in that local paper.
Brenda (04:57): Well, that was actually my old university. Lakehead University a couple years ago interviewed me and people in my life in the publishing business and put together that article. So yeah, it was.
Debbi (05:08): Oh, that is wonderful. That is great. Let’s see. What has led you to choose particular protagonists in your various series? I noticed you have a number of them, different series and protagonists.
Brenda (05:21): Yeah, I have three adult series. So the Kala Stonechild, I was actually working at Department of Justice and I had the indigenous file in communications. I was a senior communications advisor, and Kala Stonechild came out of my frustration with everything I was reading in the news. I’d have to go through the news every morning and the missing and murdered indigenous women, the conditions on reserves. I’m sure it’s the same. I live in Ottawa in Canada, but I know it’s a lot the same in the US. So Kala kind of came out of that, and I knew when I was writing a series that I needed a hook and she kind of became my hook. In another series that I was writing at the same time, I was contracted by a different publisher to write adult literacy series of novellas. And for that they wanted a strong woman. They wanted conflict with someone else in her life. They wanted a good mystery set in Canada and humor, and it had to be written at a grade three, four level, but for adults.
I was a senior communications advisor, and Kala Stonechild came out of my frustration with everything I was reading in the news. I’d have to go through the news every morning and the missing and murdered indigenous women, the conditions on reserves.
(06:34): Yeah, yeah. So Anna Sweet is a PI living in Ottawa, and the mysteries are a lot of fun. The books are about 14,000 words, and that was kind of where she came from. And then the series I’m writing now, because Stonechild and Rouleau had been a police procedural, I thought, I really love police procedurals, but I’d like to not have both my main characters be cops. So Ella Tate is a reporter who’s been let off, let go from the paper as many have been. And she started up a true crime podcast and she freelances a bit with the paper, but she’s dirt poor. She’s living in a garrett apartment in the Glebe, which is the neighborhood in Ottawa near the canal, which I had lived in, and I actually put her in the apartment I used to live in before I met my husband.
I really love police procedurals, but I’d like to not have both my main characters be cops. So Ella Tate is a reporter who’s been let off, let go from the paper as many have been.
It was in an old brick house on the third floor and cold as heck in the winter just anyhow, she’s living there. And so she kind of came out of all that. And in the first book, which is called Blind Date, it’s about Ella Tate’s story and her background and how she had quite a rough life. Her brother, who she was looking after is living on the streets now. When the book begins, people in her life start being harmed and she begins to realize that they’re after her. And the apartment that she had had to move from when she lost her job, the woman there is assaulted and she looks a lot like Ella Tate, the protagonist.
Debbi (08:20): Yeah, fascinating. Very, very interesting. I noticed your series of novellas and I thought, wow, I love novellas. They seem like just a perfect length. It’s like not too long, not too short, just enough to get some meat on the bones.
Brenda (08:41): Yeah, yeah, they’re great. You have to be very tight with your words. You can’t have any extra ones. I had a terrific editor for that series and the Anna Sweet Mysteries, I really enjoyed writing them. They were a lot of fun.
Debbi (08:57): Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to try more of those, frankly, just for a sense of completion quicker. Do you find they’re faster to write?
Brenda (09:08): Oh yeah. They took about three months to write and a full length novel takes me about eight, nine months.
Debbi (09:16): Yeah, at least. Yeah, for sure.
Brenda (09:18): Yeah.
Debbi (09:20): Let’s see. Now, I saw that you stuck with a desire to set your books in Ottawa rather than in the US as you were advised. I think that’s an excellent decision, personally. I think we here in the States are fascinated with what goes on in other places, frankly.
Brenda (09:39): Yeah. Well, I have so many American readers that really enjoy the books being set in Ottawa, and I actually had one reader from Minnesota email me through my website and she said, I’m going to come up and visit all the places in your Stonechild and Rouleau series.
Debbi (09:55): Oh, wow.
I have so many American readers that really enjoy the books being set in Ottawa, and I actually had one reader from Minnesota email me through my website and she said, I’m going to come up and visit all the places in your Stonechild and Rouleau series.
Brenda (09:56): So she went to Kingston and all over and she sent me an email afterward and said it was just the greatest time and she had a photo of herself canoeing on a lake somewhere. It was just great.
Debbi (10:07): Oh, that’s great. That’s fantastic. Yeah, I’d love to go up to Canada and take the train across the country. That’s my big dream at this point. To see the Canadian Rockies.
Brenda (10:19): A beautiful trip.
Debbi (10:20): Yeah. How much research do you do before and while writing your books?
Brenda (10:27): It will depend on the book. Some of them, I do quite a bit of research. I read up on them. I do a lot of research on Google in looking for information. I use Google Earth a lot. Sometimes I write about a place I haven’t been, so I look it up on the map and then I find all the photos of it and read up the town, whatever their website is and that kind of thing. But a lot of it, I’m just making it up.
Debbi (11:00): Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah, sometimes you just kind of have to trust that a certain amount of common sense will work for you.
Brenda (11:11): Exactly. And sometimes I think, well, I don’t know exactly how this should go, but nobody else does either unless you’re in the profession. But I have had a couple of cops that have helped me out. They’ve read through my stuff and given me some pointers.
Debbi (11:27): Yeah, that’s always helpful to have people who are in the business you’re writing about comment on stuff, that’s for sure. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?
Brenda (11:39): Well, that fluctuates. I’m a pantser. I know that you’re a plotter, from a different video. So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing. And I’m not some really, really disciplined. I write when I feel I want to write, but lately I’ve been trying to write 500 words a day. I have a book coming out May 1st, the fourth in the Hunter and Tate series. It’s called Who Lies In Wait. So I’ve been working on that and now I’m working on the launch and all that kind of thing. But I also have a contract with Dundurn to have a book done June 1st, so I’m plugging away on that. So I’ve had to be more disciplined this time around, but I tend to write later in the morning and into the evening. Sometimes, off and on.
So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing.
Debbi (12:40): It’s interesting. I used to be an afternoon writer, now I’m a morning writer.
Brenda (12:45): Yeah.
Debbi (12:47): It’s weird how these things can work and how they can change.
Brenda (12:52): I used to be morning and now I’m more afternoon.
Debbi (12:55): Yeah. Let’s see. Yeah, as a pantser, wow. I’m just blown away by people who can just sit down and write without actually figuring out some plot points ahead of time.
Brenda (13:11): You have to edit a lot. There’s a lot. You find your clues and make sure everything’s lined up properly. So at the book I’m writing now, the manuscript, I have two months to pull it together, basically. I’m almost done writing it.
Debbi (13:26): Oh, good luck with that and I’m sure you’ll do great.
Brenda (13:30): Real work Is ahead. Yeah.
Debbi (13:32): Lots of experience at this point. What, 25 books? 24 books you have?
Brenda (13:38): Twenty-five, but the 26th is coming out in two months. So.
Debbi (13:43): You’ve done this before. It’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Brenda (13:47): Every time. It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long. I don’t know if you find this, that there comes a point where you go, this is awful. Why am I writing? And then it.
It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long.
Debbi (14:07): Oh, I know. I think every single writer must feel that way when they’re working on something. It’s like, what possessed me to go in this direction with this person? Why am I doing this?
Brenda (14:20): What makes me think I can do this?
Debbi (14:23): But then at some point you realize there’s a way to get through it and you get the thing done. It’s very interesting how that happens.
Brenda (14:32): Magical.
Debbi (14:34): It is. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of magic to it. So what author has most inspired you to become a writer?
Brenda (14:46): Well, as a child, I really loved Enid Blyton. Dunno if you’ve ever read her book, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven. I just loved books where they went on adventures and solved puzzles. I’ve always loved the murder mystery genre, read a lot through university. Which authors … I really loved To Kill a Mockingbird. I have to say that that book inspired me as well, and I know it is kind of a mystery. And in the crime writing genre, I love Michael Connelly’s books. There’s so many. Ann Cleeves, Denise Mina in Scotland. There’s so many great writers and I read quite widely.
Debbi (15:39): Yeah, me too. I like all different types of books. What do you like to read outside of the genre?
Brenda (15:47): Well, I belong to a book club and they pick, they’re quite well read and they pick different books, so I just enjoy reading whatever comes up,
Debbi (15:58): Whatever comes up.
Brenda (15:59): Right now we’re reading The Pull of the Stars by—see the book over here—Emma Donoghue. She’s a Canadian author and it’s about a pandemic 1918, and it’s told from the point of view of a nurse who’s working in a maternity ward and everyone’s sick, but it’s actually quite a good story with a lot of history to it. And so I enjoy all kinds of books.
Debbi (16:24): Yeah, I enjoy history and historical fiction, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?
Brenda (16:39): Don’t do it.
Debbi (16:43): Don’t do it? Don’t do it, if you want to make money right away,
Brenda (16:47): I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing. The other thing I would say is you just got to sit in the chair and do it, and it takes practice. It’s like any profession, you have to work away at it. You have to have good grammar skills and you have to treat it as a profession, I think if you’re going to be really good at it.
I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing.
Debbi (17:20): Exactly. Yeah, certainly you have to do the writing. You also have to get out there and have your writing looked at and commented on, get good criticism on it. Do you have beta readers or a writer’s group that you rely on?
Brenda (17:43): I do for this series. I have beta readers and they have the first look at it, and I’m really trying to find out if they’re enjoying it. And then professional editors, of course, editing is massive to make a book shine and I realize with every book just how important it is to put in that time.
Debbi (18:07): It is, it’s very important. And that’s something people really need to appreciate before they put their work out there, I think. How important it is to really make it look good and to make it something that people will want to read and want to keep reading.
Brenda (18:24): Most authors will tell you that their first book never got published, but they’re glad in the end that it didn’t.
Debbi (18:33): Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Would you say that Ottawa is a character in your books?
Brenda (18:45): Oh, definitely. To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description. But in this latest one, Who Lies in Wait, it’s set in winter in Ottawa. And during the period that I’m writing the book, it’s snowing. There’s a big blizzard, goes on for a couple of days, the power’s off. It’s just great for writing a murder history to have all this, but I think the setting and the mood and all of that is another character in the book. And I don’t know about you, but I love reading murder mysteries set in different places. Just for that. I’d like to find out more about the place.
To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description.
Debbi (19:33): Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I like that kind of thing. Definitely. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?
Brenda (19:43): No, it’s been great. I enjoy writing, I love reading, and I love hearing from readers. My website is brendachapman.ca and you can contact me through there. I also enjoy visiting book clubs to talk about writing, and I can do that by Zoom as we are today or in person.
Debbi (20:11): Alright, well that’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Brenda. I want to thank you for taking the time to be here to tell us about this and to talk about your books.
Brenda (20:20): Well, thank you Debbi. It’s been great.
Debbi (20:23): Well, thank you. And on that note, I will just say please, listeners, I would appreciate anybody who enjoyed this episode to please leave a review. I would really appreciate that. Reviews help a lot. Also, if you would take a look at our Patreon page, you’ll see that I’m now serializing the novel Red Harvest because it’s in the public domain now. And I thought, what fun to share. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op with the world on my Patreon page. So go to my Patreon page if you want to check it out, find out all about the Continental Op, that fictional detective based on Hammett’s experiences working as a Pinkerton agent. In any case, our next episode will feature Edward Zuckerman as my guest. Until then, take care and happy reading.
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My guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime writer Brenda Chapman.
Brenda discusses her journey from writing for her daughters to becoming a published author, her inspiration for various protagonists, and her writing process. She also shares insights into her latest series, the Hunter and Tate Mysteries, set in Ottawa. Brenda emphasizes the importance of setting in her novels and offers advice for aspiring writers. Check out the interview for more about Brenda’s career and her approach to crafting compelling crime fiction.
You can download a copy of the transcript here.
Debbi (00:52): Hi everyone. My guest today is a Canadian crime fiction author with 25 published novels as well as standalones and short stories. She writes various police procedurals and mystery series for adults as well as mysteries for middle grade readers, which I think is really cool.
(01:19): She is currently working on her new mystery series in Ottawa, set in Ottawa called the Hunter and Tate Mysteries. The third book in the series, Fatal Harvest, comes out in April, came out in April 2024. Sorry, excuse me. Her work has been shortlisted for several awards, including the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, so wow. Okay. So she was once the writer-editor, I have to note here of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which really intrigued me because I used to work at EPA, but we can talk about that later maybe. That stuff is fascinating to me. In any event, it’s my pleasure to introduce crime writer Brenda Chapman. Hey Brenda, how are you doing?
Brenda (02:10): Great, thanks, Debbi. Thanks for having me.
Debbi (02:13): Oh, it’s a pleasure, believe me. And finding out that you worked in pest management, wrote about pest management to me is just fascinating.
Brenda (02:22): I was only one of a group of writer-editors.
Debbi (02:25): Yeah. Well, very cool. Still, we’ll have to talk about that at some point. Back when I was practicing law, I worked at the Office of General Counsel, Pesticides and Toxics Division, so I worked a lot on FIFRA, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act. What a mouthful, right?
Brenda (02:49): Fiction is much more fun.
Debbi (02:53): So anyway, when you first started writing fiction with serious Intent to be published, what inspired you to write for middle graders?
Brenda (03:02): Well, my daughters were 12 and nine, and I was actually teaching at the time. I was teaching kids with special ed and reading with some of them, and I thought—one girl brought in a book to read aloud to me, and I thought I could do a better plot than this. And that got me spurred into trying it, and it was really just to see if I could do it. So I wrote the Jennifer Bannon Mysteries. The first one was called Running Scared, and I really wrote it for my daughters. And when I finished the manuscript and my youngest was reading it and she said, “Mummy, you write just like a real author.” And I thought, wow, maybe I can get this published. So I spent my lunch hours trying to find a publisher and found one in Toronto. They took that first one and it turned into a four book series in the end.
The first one was called Running Scared, and I really wrote it for my daughters. And when I finished the manuscript and my youngest was reading it and she said, “Mummy, you write just like a real author.”
Debbi (03:57): That’s awesome. So you found one in Toronto then? That’s great.
Brenda (04:01): Yeah.
Debbi (04:03): Fantastic. Is it a small press?
Brenda (04:04): It was. They’ve been absorbed by Dundurn, which is a bigger middle press in Toronto, and they’ve taken over my books from that time and the Stonechild and Rouleau series, which is … I went from writing for kids to writing for adults, and I did the Stonechild and Rouleau series, which is seven books set in Kingston with an indigenous lead detective, a woman, Kala Stonechild, and yeah, that series has done quite well, and I’m actually now writing the eighth. The publishers contracted me to do another book.
Debbi (04:46): Fantastic. Congratulations. It’s wonderful. And I read your article, fabulous article on you there in that local paper.
Brenda (04:57): Well, that was actually my old university. Lakehead University a couple years ago interviewed me and people in my life in the publishing business and put together that article. So yeah, it was.
Debbi (05:08): Oh, that is wonderful. That is great. Let’s see. What has led you to choose particular protagonists in your various series? I noticed you have a number of them, different series and protagonists.
Brenda (05:21): Yeah, I have three adult series. So the Kala Stonechild, I was actually working at Department of Justice and I had the indigenous file in communications. I was a senior communications advisor, and Kala Stonechild came out of my frustration with everything I was reading in the news. I’d have to go through the news every morning and the missing and murdered indigenous women, the conditions on reserves. I’m sure it’s the same. I live in Ottawa in Canada, but I know it’s a lot the same in the US. So Kala kind of came out of that, and I knew when I was writing a series that I needed a hook and she kind of became my hook. In another series that I was writing at the same time, I was contracted by a different publisher to write adult literacy series of novellas. And for that they wanted a strong woman. They wanted conflict with someone else in her life. They wanted a good mystery set in Canada and humor, and it had to be written at a grade three, four level, but for adults.
I was a senior communications advisor, and Kala Stonechild came out of my frustration with everything I was reading in the news. I’d have to go through the news every morning and the missing and murdered indigenous women, the conditions on reserves.
(06:34): Yeah, yeah. So Anna Sweet is a PI living in Ottawa, and the mysteries are a lot of fun. The books are about 14,000 words, and that was kind of where she came from. And then the series I’m writing now, because Stonechild and Rouleau had been a police procedural, I thought, I really love police procedurals, but I’d like to not have both my main characters be cops. So Ella Tate is a reporter who’s been let off, let go from the paper as many have been. And she started up a true crime podcast and she freelances a bit with the paper, but she’s dirt poor. She’s living in a garrett apartment in the Glebe, which is the neighborhood in Ottawa near the canal, which I had lived in, and I actually put her in the apartment I used to live in before I met my husband.
I really love police procedurals, but I’d like to not have both my main characters be cops. So Ella Tate is a reporter who’s been let off, let go from the paper as many have been.
It was in an old brick house on the third floor and cold as heck in the winter just anyhow, she’s living there. And so she kind of came out of all that. And in the first book, which is called Blind Date, it’s about Ella Tate’s story and her background and how she had quite a rough life. Her brother, who she was looking after is living on the streets now. When the book begins, people in her life start being harmed and she begins to realize that they’re after her. And the apartment that she had had to move from when she lost her job, the woman there is assaulted and she looks a lot like Ella Tate, the protagonist.
Debbi (08:20): Yeah, fascinating. Very, very interesting. I noticed your series of novellas and I thought, wow, I love novellas. They seem like just a perfect length. It’s like not too long, not too short, just enough to get some meat on the bones.
Brenda (08:41): Yeah, yeah, they’re great. You have to be very tight with your words. You can’t have any extra ones. I had a terrific editor for that series and the Anna Sweet Mysteries, I really enjoyed writing them. They were a lot of fun.
Debbi (08:57): Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to try more of those, frankly, just for a sense of completion quicker. Do you find they’re faster to write?
Brenda (09:08): Oh yeah. They took about three months to write and a full length novel takes me about eight, nine months.
Debbi (09:16): Yeah, at least. Yeah, for sure.
Brenda (09:18): Yeah.
Debbi (09:20): Let’s see. Now, I saw that you stuck with a desire to set your books in Ottawa rather than in the US as you were advised. I think that’s an excellent decision, personally. I think we here in the States are fascinated with what goes on in other places, frankly.
Brenda (09:39): Yeah. Well, I have so many American readers that really enjoy the books being set in Ottawa, and I actually had one reader from Minnesota email me through my website and she said, I’m going to come up and visit all the places in your Stonechild and Rouleau series.
Debbi (09:55): Oh, wow.
I have so many American readers that really enjoy the books being set in Ottawa, and I actually had one reader from Minnesota email me through my website and she said, I’m going to come up and visit all the places in your Stonechild and Rouleau series.
Brenda (09:56): So she went to Kingston and all over and she sent me an email afterward and said it was just the greatest time and she had a photo of herself canoeing on a lake somewhere. It was just great.
Debbi (10:07): Oh, that’s great. That’s fantastic. Yeah, I’d love to go up to Canada and take the train across the country. That’s my big dream at this point. To see the Canadian Rockies.
Brenda (10:19): A beautiful trip.
Debbi (10:20): Yeah. How much research do you do before and while writing your books?
Brenda (10:27): It will depend on the book. Some of them, I do quite a bit of research. I read up on them. I do a lot of research on Google in looking for information. I use Google Earth a lot. Sometimes I write about a place I haven’t been, so I look it up on the map and then I find all the photos of it and read up the town, whatever their website is and that kind of thing. But a lot of it, I’m just making it up.
Debbi (11:00): Yeah, I know the feeling. Yeah, sometimes you just kind of have to trust that a certain amount of common sense will work for you.
Brenda (11:11): Exactly. And sometimes I think, well, I don’t know exactly how this should go, but nobody else does either unless you’re in the profession. But I have had a couple of cops that have helped me out. They’ve read through my stuff and given me some pointers.
Debbi (11:27): Yeah, that’s always helpful to have people who are in the business you’re writing about comment on stuff, that’s for sure. What kind of writing schedule do you keep?
Brenda (11:39): Well, that fluctuates. I’m a pantser. I know that you’re a plotter, from a different video. So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing. And I’m not some really, really disciplined. I write when I feel I want to write, but lately I’ve been trying to write 500 words a day. I have a book coming out May 1st, the fourth in the Hunter and Tate series. It’s called Who Lies In Wait. So I’ve been working on that and now I’m working on the launch and all that kind of thing. But I also have a contract with Dundurn to have a book done June 1st, so I’m plugging away on that. So I’ve had to be more disciplined this time around, but I tend to write later in the morning and into the evening. Sometimes, off and on.
So the way I work is I come up with the idea of the crime and I decide who did it and the motivation, and that’s usually all I know when I start writing.
Debbi (12:40): It’s interesting. I used to be an afternoon writer, now I’m a morning writer.
Brenda (12:45): Yeah.
Debbi (12:47): It’s weird how these things can work and how they can change.
Brenda (12:52): I used to be morning and now I’m more afternoon.
Debbi (12:55): Yeah. Let’s see. Yeah, as a pantser, wow. I’m just blown away by people who can just sit down and write without actually figuring out some plot points ahead of time.
Brenda (13:11): You have to edit a lot. There’s a lot. You find your clues and make sure everything’s lined up properly. So at the book I’m writing now, the manuscript, I have two months to pull it together, basically. I’m almost done writing it.
Debbi (13:26): Oh, good luck with that and I’m sure you’ll do great.
Brenda (13:30): Real work Is ahead. Yeah.
Debbi (13:32): Lots of experience at this point. What, 25 books? 24 books you have?
Brenda (13:38): Twenty-five, but the 26th is coming out in two months. So.
Debbi (13:43): You’ve done this before. It’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Brenda (13:47): Every time. It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long. I don’t know if you find this, that there comes a point where you go, this is awful. Why am I writing? And then it.
It’s difficult. Every book has its own challenges and you always think at the end of it, it this any good? And I think part of it is you work on it for so long.
Debbi (14:07): Oh, I know. I think every single writer must feel that way when they’re working on something. It’s like, what possessed me to go in this direction with this person? Why am I doing this?
Brenda (14:20): What makes me think I can do this?
Debbi (14:23): But then at some point you realize there’s a way to get through it and you get the thing done. It’s very interesting how that happens.
Brenda (14:32): Magical.
Debbi (14:34): It is. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of magic to it. So what author has most inspired you to become a writer?
Brenda (14:46): Well, as a child, I really loved Enid Blyton. Dunno if you’ve ever read her book, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven. I just loved books where they went on adventures and solved puzzles. I’ve always loved the murder mystery genre, read a lot through university. Which authors … I really loved To Kill a Mockingbird. I have to say that that book inspired me as well, and I know it is kind of a mystery. And in the crime writing genre, I love Michael Connelly’s books. There’s so many. Ann Cleeves, Denise Mina in Scotland. There’s so many great writers and I read quite widely.
Debbi (15:39): Yeah, me too. I like all different types of books. What do you like to read outside of the genre?
Brenda (15:47): Well, I belong to a book club and they pick, they’re quite well read and they pick different books, so I just enjoy reading whatever comes up,
Debbi (15:58): Whatever comes up.
Brenda (15:59): Right now we’re reading The Pull of the Stars by—see the book over here—Emma Donoghue. She’s a Canadian author and it’s about a pandemic 1918, and it’s told from the point of view of a nurse who’s working in a maternity ward and everyone’s sick, but it’s actually quite a good story with a lot of history to it. And so I enjoy all kinds of books.
Debbi (16:24): Yeah, I enjoy history and historical fiction, that kind of thing. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. What advice would you give to anyone who’s interested in having a writing career?
Brenda (16:39): Don’t do it.
Debbi (16:43): Don’t do it? Don’t do it, if you want to make money right away,
Brenda (16:47): I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing. The other thing I would say is you just got to sit in the chair and do it, and it takes practice. It’s like any profession, you have to work away at it. You have to have good grammar skills and you have to treat it as a profession, I think if you’re going to be really good at it.
I wish I had taken a creative writing course at university. I took English literature, but I think I would’ve gained a lot from a whole four year degree in creative writing.
Debbi (17:20): Exactly. Yeah, certainly you have to do the writing. You also have to get out there and have your writing looked at and commented on, get good criticism on it. Do you have beta readers or a writer’s group that you rely on?
Brenda (17:43): I do for this series. I have beta readers and they have the first look at it, and I’m really trying to find out if they’re enjoying it. And then professional editors, of course, editing is massive to make a book shine and I realize with every book just how important it is to put in that time.
Debbi (18:07): It is, it’s very important. And that’s something people really need to appreciate before they put their work out there, I think. How important it is to really make it look good and to make it something that people will want to read and want to keep reading.
Brenda (18:24): Most authors will tell you that their first book never got published, but they’re glad in the end that it didn’t.
Debbi (18:33): Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Would you say that Ottawa is a character in your books?
Brenda (18:45): Oh, definitely. To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description. But in this latest one, Who Lies in Wait, it’s set in winter in Ottawa. And during the period that I’m writing the book, it’s snowing. There’s a big blizzard, goes on for a couple of days, the power’s off. It’s just great for writing a murder history to have all this, but I think the setting and the mood and all of that is another character in the book. And I don’t know about you, but I love reading murder mysteries set in different places. Just for that. I’d like to find out more about the place.
To me, the setting is so important and the feel you get from the setting. I don’t write a lot of description. I kind of slip it in so I don’t have great tracks of description.
Debbi (19:33): Me too. Yeah. Yeah. I like that kind of thing. Definitely. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish up?
Brenda (19:43): No, it’s been great. I enjoy writing, I love reading, and I love hearing from readers. My website is brendachapman.ca and you can contact me through there. I also enjoy visiting book clubs to talk about writing, and I can do that by Zoom as we are today or in person.
Debbi (20:11): Alright, well that’s wonderful. Thank you so much, Brenda. I want to thank you for taking the time to be here to tell us about this and to talk about your books.
Brenda (20:20): Well, thank you Debbi. It’s been great.
Debbi (20:23): Well, thank you. And on that note, I will just say please, listeners, I would appreciate anybody who enjoyed this episode to please leave a review. I would really appreciate that. Reviews help a lot. Also, if you would take a look at our Patreon page, you’ll see that I’m now serializing the novel Red Harvest because it’s in the public domain now. And I thought, what fun to share. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op with the world on my Patreon page. So go to my Patreon page if you want to check it out, find out all about the Continental Op, that fictional detective based on Hammett’s experiences working as a Pinkerton agent. In any case, our next episode will feature Edward Zuckerman as my guest. Until then, take care and happy reading.
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