Guest Author: Vicki Delany

Earlier this year I attended Left Coast Crime in Hawaii and had the pleasure of catching up with Vicki Delany, a Canadian author whose book VALLEY OF THE LOST I had already read and reviewed.

Vicki contacted me recently to ask if I was going to be at Bouchercon in Indianapolis, which I wasn't, and to let me know that her latest novel, the third in the Constable Molly Smith series, will hit the shops on November 1. It is being published by Poisoned Pen Press.

Vicki tells me that WINTER OF SECRETS is a departure from her usual method of writing: she called this Writing Without a Net.

Normally, I build a story this way: setting-characters-plot. That is, I decide where to set the book, who’s going to be the main character or characters and then come up with a plot. Now that I’m working on a series, steps one and two are pretty much defined before I even begin. But as for the plot – with Winter of Secrets I did something very different than the way I’ve always worked before.

For most of my adult life I was a computer programmer and then a systems analyst. I write books like I designed computer systems. I start at the end – I know who did it and why – and then I go to the beginning and create an outline that will, hopefully, chart a course to get me to that end. Like designing computer systems: you really should know what you want to achieve (i.e. is this programme going to credit the client’s account or debit it?) before you begin. I have met some computer programmes that I don’t think were ever intended to achieve anything, but that’s another matter.

I was spending Christmas 2007 in my favourite place in the world, Nelson, B.C., the inspiration for the fictional town of Trafalgar. It was snowing, quite heavily, but as is the norm in those mountains, there wasn’t any wind and the snow was falling straight down and not drifting. This, I thought, would be a mess if they had winds like we get in Ontario. And the opening scene popped into my head.

What a great idea, thinks I. I started writing the opening scene and carried on typing frantically away from there. I knew who died, but I didn’t know who killed him, or why, or even if anyone did! It was quite a strange feeling; a pure leap of hope, that I would find some inspiration down the line.

I was nearing the climax – I knew what I wanted to happen there – but I was still unsure between two possible candidates for the role of villain. Over the course of the writing, I had several people in mind, but as it evolved only two were good prospects. I felt sort of like a real Constable Molly Smith, judging the suspects and juggling clues until, with a burst of inspiration, I solved the crime!

My second drafts are usually a lot of work, but with this book, it was even more so. Because I didn’t know that X was the guilty party, I had to go back and make X know more than they seemed to and Y know less. The personality of X didn’t change much throughout the book, but it had to be tweaked a bit to make the crime more plausible, and to drop a few clues here and there. And all the clues that pointed to Y had to be toned down.

It was a fun way to go about it. Will I do that again? No. It worked because I had a very definite idea for the opening of the book and I was prepared to work my way forward from there. But all in all, I prefer to have a good outline before beginning. When I started working on the next book in the series, NEGATIVE IMAGE, I put that net up first!

WINTER OF SECRETS is the third in the Constable Molly Smith books, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the Interior of British Columbia.
Vicki is also the author of the Klondike Gold Rush series beginning with Gold Digger, set in the raucous heyday of the Klondike Gold Rush, and standalone novels of suspense.
Vicki lives in rural Prince Edward County, Ontario, where she rarely wears a watch. Visit Vicki at http://www.vickidelany.com. She blogs with five other mystery writers at http://typem4murder.blogspot.com and about the writing life, as she lives it, at http://klondikeandtrafalgar.blogspot.com

Vicki has just begun a rather gruelling schedule of promoting her book, and her full itinerary is here. If you live in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia, check the schedule for where you might find Vicki sometime in the next 6 weeks. We wish her well. I seem to remember that last time she went on book signing tour, she broke her arm!