Bernadette Calonego's Blog: Eventful - Posts Tagged "crime"

I walk a dog named Coco almost everyday, it is not my dog but belongs to a family in the remote fishing village in Northern Newfoundland where I am staying. Coco is shedding her winter fur right now: instead of looking like a lion she resembles more a seal (she is a labrador/husky mix). I wonder if there is an analogy with humans. Am I shedding something, too, now that it is April?
There are still ice floes in the bay and heaps of snow everywhere but luckily I don`t need any crampons and long johns anymore.
When one is shedding something, one must feel lighter, I suppose. I think I'm shedding books (smile). I'm in the process of publishing a German mystery novel and an English title: "Cries from the Cold". The latter is a crime thriller set on the wild coast of Labrador, with RCMP detective Calista Gates as the main character. It is the first book of a series, my first series, by the way. "Cries from the Cold" can be pre-ordered now on Amazon, the paperback will be out in approximately three weeks, the e-book on June 25.
You probably assume that I'm fascinated by cold regions, and you are right. I've never been a person who can stand searing heat. I would probably be a good candidate for a heat stroke in that kind of temperatures. I just spent my first entire winter in Northern Newfoundland but it turned out to be an exceptionally mild winter for this area. I've come to realize that the crucial thing is to dress appropriately. Even a face covering, if necessary.
I've just read the mesmerizing book "Ghost of Everest", about a search expedition in 1999 that found the body of famous climber George Mallory who died in 1924 on the highest mountain on earth. Mallory had none of the modern clothing that today's mountaineers have. Just silk underwear and layers of sweaters made of wool, jackets made of canvas, simple leather boots and a pilot hat for his head. It is hard to imagine how Mallory could venture like this into the Death Zone on Everest. But he did.
I like to be adventurous, too, but with a calculated risk. The heroine of my latest book "Cries from the Cold", Calista Gates, cannot afford that luxury. She is thrown into the brutal Labrador winter without any ropes or guard rails.
Would you like to find out how she was doing?
Three more weeks to go!

One of my three brothers will not read my mystery thrillers because they would keep him awake at night. I totally accept this (I have two more brothers who make up for it, they read my mystery thrillers even before they are published). I can get scared, too. Recently I listened to a true crime podcast. In the night, I woke up and was afraid of the dark!
On the other hand, my translator said to me that I should have more dead people in my books (is three bodies not enough?). Translating my novels, he obviously acquired a taste for dark thrills. In my personal life, I`m not always ready for them. When I watch a movie and it gets too violent I close my eyes. I cannot bear it. How much gore and horror can you tolerate, dear reader?
When my mother wanted to tell me stories about ghosts knocking on windows and lost souls wandering through a house at night, I fled. As a child, my imagination was too vivid to enjoy these tales.
Being a crime writer doesn't mean I'm not frightened in the face of danger. But it is almost impossible to predict how we will react in the face of somebody or something threatening us. Maybe we stay calmer than we think. Or people who seem to be strong break down.
I relish in building up suspense and reinforcing the mystery in my books but I don't have fun describing a bloody scene, a mutilated body or torture. Like with romance, the most intensive things that can happen are in our imagination. Once it is described in detail, it can lose its impact.
Does this mean I won`t listen to another true crime podcast anymore? Of course not. The thrill is addictive.

Readers ask me intriguing questions which I like. Somebody wanted to know how the dead are buried in very cold regions in the winter when the ground is frozen.
Here in northern Newfoundland, a few men with pick axes can do the job by digging a grave. In the Arctic, they sometimes use sledgehammers.
I have read that generations ago there were designated sheds where the dead were kept until the ground was ready for a burial in the spring. They were called the Dead House, Mort house, Corpse-House, or Charnel House. You can still see Dead Houses in Labrador, for instance, in Hopedale, Hebron and Nain (of course not in use anymore).
On Battle Island in Labrador where a lot of fishermen from other areas used to work in the summer, the bodies were preserved with salt, until they could be shipped to their final destination for the burial.
As an author of crime novels, death is a constant factor in my books. I try to treat it respectfully and not only for entertainment. It is harder for me to accept death in real life. I have this childlike wish that people can live long lives and that their passing is peaceful.
A contradiction to my mystery thrillers, I know.
If you like to know more about my life in Newfoundland, you can subscribe to my newsletter on my website wwww.bernadettecalonego.com/eng
All the best to you.
A Dark Chill

Every morning, my neighbour's wife in the tiny fishing community in northern Newfoundland where I spend the summers, dresses up as a Viking woman. She works at Norstead, a cluster of replica buildings of a Viking port. There she tells the many tourists who are flocking to that historic area, about what daily life was in a sod hut about one thousand years ago. She tells them - among other things - that the women went almost blind as they aged because they had to sow clothes and other things in a house that had very little light.
When I first visited that area years ago, before I started coming back every spring, I couldn`t have imagined that one day I would publish a mystery thriller that is set in this location and that in my story, one of the foreigners who visit the Viking site would disappear without a trace. My neighbour's wife who is reenacting a Viking woman is not part of the characters in my book but there are fictional people who work at the Viking Center and there is a local tour tour guide who sees something terrible happen nearby, and there are local vendors who are selling handicraft to the tourists coming from large cruise ships.
My new mystery thriller "Bay of Evil" that is available now on Amazon as e-book and paperback, has crime scenes in places not far from the bay where I live. The locals don`t mind their coves and sheds turned into places of violent acts in fiction because they know what the summer tourists see is beauty and serenity and majestic nature.
A local woman wrote to me on Facebook that she got the first two books of my Detective Calista Gates series as a gift for Christmas and that she can`t wait to read the third one. Now it is here! My crime novels are just a different tale: not a Viking tale but a story about murder and mayhem that is a bit less true than what happened in northern Newfoundland a thousand years ago.
BAY OF EVIL: A gripping mystery thriller
Bernadette Calonego