I have signed up for four book selling events this spring, and I’m looking for more. I absolutely love doing these events. I haven’t branched out to the outdoor ones yet, but I’m sure I will eventually.

I like meeting people. I like talking about my books. Even though I’m an introvert, when I’m talking about books, whether mine or someone else’s, I lose my shyness and enjoy every minute of it. I’ve found that most people love talking to authors. It seems strange to me, because I am an author, that most people I meet at these events have never met one before.

I’ll never forget my first fan girl moment. I drove seventy miles to meet Mary Higgens Clark. She was one of my favorite authors. I stood in this long line that ran around the inside of the bookstore and out the door, for an hour, waiting for my chance to meet her and get her to sign my book. What a thrill!

My first impression of Mary was that she was tiny and very charming. My only regret was I didn’t have a camera with me that day. That was back before cell phones, and you had to carry your camera with you. I remember being so jealous because the girl behind me in line did have her camera and Mary was gracious enough to agree to a picture with her.

My next fan girl moment was with Tony Hillerman. I wasn’t a huge fan back then, but my best friend was and we waited in line for a long time to get his autograph. He was delightful, and my friend was practically swooning when we left. I have since read some of his books and know why my friend was such a fan.

I’ve also had some very disappointing meetings with authors. One big name (really big name!) author I met was not personable. He acted like he didn’t want to be there. The bookstore had set up a question-and-answer time with him, and he was curt and acted like it was beneath hm to answer our questions. Was he just shy like so many authors are? I don’t know, but he could’ve been nicer. He went on to sell millions of books and if I mentioned his name, you would recognize it immediately, but he didn’t make a good impression on me. I guess his books are so good, and they really are, that people overlooked the fact that he really wasn’t a nice person.

Another author I met whose books I loved turned me off because she was so unapproachable. It was at a mystery conference, and she had a posse around her to keep her safe (I guess) from her rabid fans. I was so disappointed because I really loved her books. She later came out and said some scathing remarks about people who thought differently than she did, and I quit reading her books. Did she miss me dashing to the bookstore to put down my money for her book when it first came out? No, not at all, but even though I loved her stories I didn’t like her at all.

Most of my experiences with my book signings have been positive, but I don’t think anyone gets by without someone who wants to pick your book apart. One woman came to see me at an event just to tell me that she was angry at the way I’d ended the last book. She was very loud and her face was red as she shook her finger at me. And I had one woman get hold of me online to tell me that she thought there was a misspelled word in one of my books. She said she always noticed misspelled words and was sure I would want to know that she found one in my book. My first thought was, only one? 😊

But those encounters are few and far between, thankfully, or I would probably never step outside my house again! Most people I meet are wonderful. They are so excited to meet you that it’s very humbling. I’ve had several people tell me they’ve never met a real author before, and I’m thinking, I’m a real author? LOL

My philosophy for book signings or giving talks in front of a room full of people is, fake it till you make it. I put on my smiling face and do my best to be pleasant to everyone. I was even nice to the lady who screamed at me because the book didn’t end the way she thought it should. Do I sweat a little at each event? You bet I do! But the positives far outweigh the negatives.

My goal for each event is to make one new reader or one new friend. I’m doing my best to grow my readership. One of the hardest things for me is cold calling on bookstores. I really hate to do that. If you have a way that makes that part easier, please let me know. My challenge for this year is to get at least one more bookstore to carry my books.

by donalee Moulton

• Cardinal is a paranormal mystery set in Nova Scotia — part of the Paranormal Canadiana Collection. It builds around the story of Catherine McIntosh, a little girl who died on April 23, 1889, one month short of her ninth birthday. Many believe Catherine is still with us today, and if you visit her grave in Pictou County, as I did, you will see the tumble of wonderful gifts people have left in her memory. Catherine introduced me to another world, and her story is the heartbeat of the book, my first paranormal mystery.
  
• Private Detective E.M. Montogomery also makes her first book-length appearance in Cardinal.  (Can you guess what E.M. stands for?) The Halifax-based investigator has previously appeared in eight short stories, which have been published in anthologies and magazines across Canada and the U.S. When I was thinking about a main character to interact with Catherine and find a missing flesh-and-blood woman, Em emerged as the frontrunner. Below she meets her client for the first time – and learns this case will not be business as usual.

Day One

Saturday, April 25^th

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Gord Gillis is 62. He’s a retired firefighter. He looks like a 62-year-old firefighter, I think. Now admittedly, I have no idea what a 62-year-old firefighter should look like. Except he should look like Gord Gillis.

It’s a circular argument, and it’s giving me a headache. This is the stage in the client interview where the private detective, that would be me, leans back, nods, makes soothing sounds, and shakes their head in sympathy. I learned this technique when I was a cop with the Halifax Regional Police, and it has served me well as sole owner and employee of Bold Pursuit, although, at the moment, there is no boldness or pursuing required. Just a lot of nodding.

Gord needs to get his fear out before he can move on to dealing with that fear. Which is why I am sitting at a table in the Easy Street Diner sipping a now-cold decaf coffee. And nodding. It’s time to move on. I lean forward and give Gord’s hand, the one hugging his mug for dear life, a sympathetic pat.

“Nell sounds wonderful,” I say.

“Ms. Montgomery, you have to believe me. She would never leave me.” Gord says this emphatically. A hint of spittle makes its way to the corner of his lips. A hint of uncertainty travels with it.

I give Gord’s hand another gentle pat. I tell him to call me Em, like we are old friends enjoying an early morning chat. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Tell me everything you know. Even the tiniest detail can be helpful.”

Gord has a lot of details, and in the end, very little information to help me locate his missing wife. Nell went to Pictou, about a two-hour drive from Halifax, on Monday. She’s trying to find a brother she didn’t know existed until her mother died a few months ago. The deal was Nell would visit the newspaper office, the library, and the genealogy centre. She also intended to talk to the locals to see if any of them knew anything about her brother. She was also going to have lunch with a former colleague from the RCMP.

“It was a long shot, but Nell felt she had to go.” Gord picks at his napkin, turns and looks out the window. “She said he was family. You don’t turn your back on family.”

“Someone did,” I point out softly.

Gord brings his eyes and his attention back to the table. “Nell’s mother died in January. MAID. She had stomach cancer and opted for an assisted death. That gave her time to get her affairs in order.”

I wait. Unburdening takes time. I also learned this when I was a cop. It’s Interrogation 101. Gord plucks at his napkin. He is reminding himself he is not sharing family secrets; he is helping to find his missing wife. “Nell’s father got a girl pregnant when they were both sixteen. We’re not sure what happened to the baby. All we know is the baby was a boy, and he was born in the spring of 1955.”

Gord returns to plucking the napkin, or what is left of it. “It sounds so silly when I say it out loud, but we thought that might be enough to find him. Pictou is small, like 3,000 people small. And Nell had to try.”

It’s clear I’m heading to Pictou, and I’d like to get under way as quickly as possible. Gord will have to be nudged. I reach over and take the napkin away from him. I wad it in a ball and toss it on my plate. “What makes you think Nell is missing?”

Gord reaches for what is left of his napkin. He looks down at the shredded paper. Finally, he looks up at me. “The ghost.”

I probably should connect more with Regan McHenry, the realtor-protagonist in my first series, Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries because Regan started out as me. But “Nancy” only made it until she found a body. I was so disturbed by that event that I had to put some distance between me and make believe. So, the truth is, I connect much more with downsized-out-of-her-Santa-Cruz-County-Law- Librarian position and newly minted private investigator, Pat Pirard.

It’s not unusual for my characters to start out as people I know. Starting with real people works well for me until I want a character to do something my real person wouldn’t do. Often, they refuse to do what the story demands quite forcefully. Rather than argue with my characters, I have learned the best way to handle the situation is to change their name so they will become more mailable and bend to my will, although sometimes not without an argument.

There are only two exceptions in my name changing strategy. The first is Dave in the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries. The other character who has always retained her real name is Pat.

The real Pat is one of the most interesting people I know. She’s inquisitive, daring, friendly, resourceful, and curious, traits she retains in the books.  it’s fun to take some of her idiosyncrasies and incorporate them into my written protagonist. The real Pat giggles. In my books I say she sometimes giggles; the real Pat insists she never does. Both Pats, real and written, are incredible markswomen who always carry a 357 Magnum revolver with them, the real Pat in her purse, my Pat in the leopard briefcase she sports. Both Pats love bold jewelry and wear it liberally.

In the past, both Pats were the Santa Cruz County Law Librarian. The real Pat retired from that role and was happy to devote more time to the side hustle she had: being a PI. My Pat was downsized out of her job on her thirty-fifth birthday and had to become an unlicensed private investigator, not so much because she loved being a PI, but out of necessity to pay the bills.

The real Pat is confident about who she is and what she wants. Pat Pirard started out unsure about how to be a PI, struggled with deciding about a romantic relationship, and wondered if she could solve a case and get a paycheck before she and her pets, Dot, her Dalmatian, and her ginger tabby cat, Lord Peter Wimsey, got evicted because of non-payment of rent.

      In the series, time moves realistically with Pat getting her next assignment at the end of each book or immediately after the previous book ends. What Lucy Heard is my Pat’s sixth job and begins with her taking on a jury selection assignment, a role the real Pat has done but says was so stressful she will never do it again. My Pat, who has no experience with jury selection, reluctantly agrees to give it a try even though she isn’t looking forward to working with the famed attorney who has made her feel manipulated when she worked for him in the past. With each of Pat’s cases she’s been gaining experience and confidence and has learned to trust her instincts, but in this book, it feels like she’s starting over and will have to build belief in her abilities from scratch.

She accepts the challenge, though, and does a credible job with jury selection, happy to help because she believes the accused man’s bizarre story about how his fingerprints wound up on the murder weapon and why he was at the murder scene. The problem is that Pat sits in the courtroom and hears all the witness testimony which contradicts what the accused man told her. Self-doubt swamps her and she becomes concerned she’s helping a guilty man get away with murder.

She decides the only way she’ll be able to sleep at night is to solve the murder, something the police feel they’ve already done. After investigating and looking at things differently, she thinks she’s finally figured out what really happened. Unfortunately, her solution to the murder seems as far-fetched as the story the accused man told. How Pat tries to prove her thesis makes for some silliness and a few story kinks.

Thank goodness the real Pat approves of how my Pat solved the murder so I’m free to keep using her as a character and delighted to continue to bring a friend to the pages of mysteries.