I am moving on, folks!

My trusty old blog at Blogger is retiring. 

I have a new website with blog integration so I'll be posting there for the foreseeable. 

Click the link below to check it out.

NADINE DOOLITTLE BOOKS

I'll leave this blog up for old times sake but to contact me, you have to trot over to the website and click the Contact page. 

To get the real skinny on what I'm up to in 2023 (oh, the drama!) subscribe to my newsletter, The Butler Didn't Do It and receive a free short mystery for your pains. 

Long Shadows Fall is set in the St. Ives book club world with all the characters sleuthing in the old Abercrombie mansion. 

CLICK THIS LINK TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE BUTLER DIDN'T DO IT

I am grateful to Blogger for hosting me for free for a heck of a long time. I can't even remember when I started blogging about my writing-to-get-published journey. Rough times, a bit of bad language, tons of opinion and it's all chronicled in this blog. 

Thank you for reading. I wish you a very Happy Holiday and a bright 2023!

Still Standing in Wakefield

 Oh my god, we're famous.

If readers of Iced Under, The Grey Lady and The River Bride have ever wondered where I got the inspiration for Stollerton, the CBC's hit show Still Standing with Jonny Harris has profiled my gorgeous little village in all its glory. You can watch it here:

Still Standing in Wakefield

Nikki Mantell, interviewed in the piece, was my former boss at the LowDown to Hull and Back News. It looks all slick now, but you should have seen the offices back in the day. Now that was a newspaper office. Her father, Art Mantell, gave me my first real piece of writing advice that I remember to this day: "Where's the story, Nadine? Start at the story!" 

The whole town looks slick and happening now. The train was responsible for some of the economic turn around, but the real change (in my opinion) began with the purchase and renovation of the Wakefield Mill. When it was turned into a stunning boutique hotel, it signalled that the village was a place people would pay to visit. 

From Iced Under (which was written back in the day): 

Named for the family that founded it, the village followed the tips and bends of the Gatineau River with cramped carelessness, squeezed between the mountain and the old railway tracks. Its logging roots showed in the clapboard buildings that were hastily constructed, no one anticipating they’d still be in use a hundred years later. The population hovered perpetually at eight hundred and the economic health of the region was equally stagnant. Nothing to buy, nothing to sell, and what there was, nobody wanted. Like many quaint, picturesque towns in West Quebec, Stollerton hung on to existence with the tenacity of a weed.

Wakefield is likely to suffer for its unique physical beauty and easy-going nature. With COVID, we've seen a dramatic increase in tourist traffic, and while I'm happy for the business owners who have hung in there through the bad times, it makes the village less familiar. 

I hope visitors get transformed by the vibe as I did, as so many newcomers did, into calmer, cheerier people who realize there is nothing more important than the person standing in front of you. I hope they slow down on the back roads and look at the turtles instead of running over them. 

I hope they put their Tim Horton's cups in garbage receptacles instead of throwing them in the ditches. The ditches offer life to the most beautiful variety of wildflowers. They look scruffy and insignificant, a place to toss garbage--they are not. 

I hope they bend to the Hills instead of trying to bend the Hills to them. As a former Torontonian, I can tell you it's easier to give in.

I told a dear friend years ago that Wakefield loved me into being. It's true. Residents believe nothing is impossible and take it on fact that the most remarkable things can be accomplished, and usually with no money. Community centre? No problem. Hospital? Hold my beer. Build a bridge? Just watch us. Heritage museum, parks, trails? No worries. 

In my case, it was three crime novels and now a cosy murder mystery series. 

(My crime thrillers were formerly subtitled Gatineau Hills Mystery until I realized no one outside of the National Capital Region knew what the Gatineau Hills were. It is now the name of my tiny publishing company.)

Jonny Harris touched on the enormous creative output in Wakefield. Seriously, you can't swing a cat in this town without hitting an artist. Famous authors and musicians have come to the village, but it's the "famous to us" artists, singers, poets, writers, chefs, gardeners, philanthropists, librarians, historians, visionaries and business owners that have kept us going. When no one was here, they were here. 

Trains come and go. It's the people who make a place magical. 

The Frugal Author

It's Sunday. It's November. We've had snow flurries which I love. I am not one of those November-haters. I love November. Because:

1) It's hunting season.
2) It's quiet.
3) It's not too early for Christmas music.
4) It is too early to stress about Christmas shopping.

I woke at 6:00 am. Wrote/edited/swore at my latest manuscript. Then popped downstairs for televised church, then back upstairs for a teeny bit of writing. Just enough to keep me from sticking my head in a gas oven when I open the file again.

I joke about the gas oven. As if I could afford a gas oven.

Which brings me to The Frugal Author. I've been following an online discussion about how to weather the lean times in writing---a subject I consider myself an expert in as I've only known lean times. If you are considering chucking your job to write full-time, read on.

The Frugal Author: Tips to Living the Dream.

1) If you are currently spending money, stop. Break the habit of spending money while you still earn it. This will lessen the trauma to your central nervous system when you have no money to spend.

2) If you can save, save. If you can't save---see above.

3) Brace yourself to work hard. You will write every day, all day. Plan to write genre fiction even if you are working on The Great Canadian Novel. It will comfort you when no one buys your lit-fic and possibly pay some bills.

4) No. 3 does not apply if you are a New York City journalist, a plastic surgeon, or in the entertainment industry.

5) Don't worry about eating, it's overrated. But if you must, then learn to cook, shop local and (it goes without saying) don't shell out money for junk food (incl. booze). (I know, I know, this one hurt me too.)

6)  Do not go into debt for your books. Ever. You will be tempted. Resist. Hundreds of thousands of authors will back me up on this. Do not get so deep into debt that you can't write. This is the best advice I didn't take when I was starting out. I didn't take it and I still owe money for Living the Dream.

7) Self-publishing, you say? The temptation (and pressure) to spend is even higher. Do not spend more on your books than you can realistically expect to earn from them. And then ratchet those expectations down by about fifty percent. I'm not being negative. I'm being positive. You will positively have a tough slog to sell 100 copies of your book. Pace your expenses accordingly. Your market will grow ... but baby steps.

8) Agents reject you. Publishers don't respond. Your savings have dwindled and your life is shit. You never see your kids/husband/wife/mother/friends and your body is falling apart. Was it worth it? If your answer is no, then please do not quit the day job. Not a living soul will fault you for it. And if they do, send them to me and I'll set them straight.

9) The last frugal tip I have is for your ego. You'll have to adjust to working without reward. And don't kid yourself that the joy of writing will be enough. It's a hell of a joy but it's rarely enough to replace the validation, income, and society of the workplace. Think hard. There will be no reviews of your work. No feedback. You will have to accept silence for a very long time and write anyway.  

10) You took the red pill. You're all in and today is the first day of Living the Dream. You've got such a tiny economic footprint that you barely register on the grid of household expenses. You're eating rice and beans but on the upside, you've lost 10 pounds. The price of gas is something you never think about because you never drive anywhere. You write every single day. Even Sunday. And you are happy. Frugal living is a walk in the park. So the last tip is, this is the money shot. This day. This moment. Work hard. Give it your all. Enjoy every minute and give thanks.

I'll race you to the bestseller lists.

Mystery Maven Canada

At the moment my writing life is not terribly interesting. I sit down at the computer at 7:00 am, struggle mightily to shape the manuscript into something readable with flashes of brilliance before 12 noon. Then I eat sugar and noodle around the Web to read about lives more interesting than my own.

And guess who I found! Linda Wiken at Mystery Maven Canada! Linda is the former owner of Prime Crime Mystery Books in Ottawa and was (and is) a tremendous supporter of my first novel, ICED UNDER. She invited me to her bookstore for a signing happening at the same time as the Great Glebe Garage Sale. If you know anything about garage sales, yard sales, or tag sales I need not say more. Even my own kid popped in to say an extremely brief hello before whipping out to cruise the sale.

But Linda's store was soul quenching. The equivalent of cosying up to a blazing fire on a rainy day with your favourite mystery. I loved every minute of it. I'm no saleswoman though. I kept poking over the books. One woman thought I worked there. She asked me if I could recommend a good medical mystery. I actually felt sorry that I couldn't think of any.

On the journey to becoming an established author it's easy to forget those moments or to remember them as being unsuccessful. I think I sold three books (of mine) that day. But you know, it was a great experience. I have that book signing in my writing arsenal. I was sweaty and rattled and I felt like a fraud--it was amazing!

Linda Wiken now has her own booksignings to look forward to after landing a contract with Berkley Prime Crime for her series, writing under the pen name Erika Chase.

Congratulations Linda!! I'm very happy for you and I can't wait to read your first title when it's released in 2012.

Pay a visit to Mystery Maven Canada. They have exciting lives over there.

Tired, Rejected, Broke and Depressed or How I Came to Write Iced Under

November, 2003. It was bitterly cold. We were renting a cottage on a large lake in Quebec, a four-season home that didn't quite cut it in the fourth season. My marriage had ended two years before, I had two school-age children and a new partner, Tim. We were planning to build a house, the cottage was meant to be a haven while we waded through the paper work to begin construction. I was unemployed, he was self-employed.You can imagine how happy the bank was to see us coming.

I'm not sure what it was exactly that tipped me over the edge. I was a struggling romance novelist, unpublished, and broke. I kept sending out manuscripts hoping a publishing contract would provide us with a financial cushion, and me with a career. The rejections kept rolling in. I applied for writing jobs and didn't get them, I applied for non-writing jobs and didn't get them. Christmas was coming and with no money for gifts, I made coupons for my children that they could redeem for time playing board games, baking cookies or going skating. I wrapped bottles of shampoo and put them under the tree. (My kids still call this the "Shampoo Christmas.")

Finally, I received a rejection that said my latest submission wasn't special enough after I'd come very close to acceptance. Then the bank delayed approving our building loan. My last stab at remaining positive in the face of calamity evaporated when I planned to go to an event and no one wanted to go with me. Such a small, trivial thing. But I curled up in a ball in my bed and didn't get up again. That was in mid-November.

My ex-husband had to take over caring for our children. My poor partner, Tim, didn't know what to think. I'd sleep, wake, cry, sleep, wake, cry. The ice was forming on the lake outside the cottage. I listened to that. No therapy, no anti-depressants -- just me and the ice.

Then on December 1st a local radio station had the bright idea of running Christmas music 24 hours a day. I must have heard every Christmas song ever recorded over and over and over again. I listened to that station 16 hours a day, 7 days a week; passively at first because I didn't care enough to change the station. But then the words of hope, peace and goodwill started to work on me. Maybe it was the message of giving, thinking of others and gratitude that pulled me out of my depression. I have no idea why it worked. Christmas music therapy isn't for everyone. Tim said if he had to listen to one more Christmas song he'd have lost it. The radio station never did it again--too many complaints.

I was still pretty fragile but I managed to get up and get dressed in time for Tim's mother to arrive Christmas Day. She brought everything we needed for dinner and my kids saw me for the first time in six weeks. They liked their coupons.

But I was broken. I'd been writing romances for five years. I wasn't really a writer -- I was a dabbler, an opportunist -- I didn't read romances, I just wanted to make some money. I didn't have stories in me.

Then Tim showed me the ice that had been forming on the lake all the time I was in bed. The ice I'd been listening to in the night. It was shiny black and clear to the bottom. A rare phenomenon that happens when there is little snow but the temperatures drop to freezing; the ice forms crystal clear. Black ice. As I looked down to the reeds, I said "Wouldn't it be terrible if we saw something down there like a body?"

A few days later I penned the words "The ice was clear that year, clear as rain straight down to the bottom..."

After several revisions and several rejections, Iced Under was published in November 2008.

The moral of the story? You're going to get rejected anyway -- you might as well get rejected writing something you love. I'm still broke but I'm a writer. A real writer. And that takes the sting out of just about everything.