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

It is an eery feeling when an author publishes a murder mystery and soon after that, a crime takes place that is strangely similar to the one in her book. I know the feeling because it has happened to me. Not long after my murder mystery "Stormy Cove" was published, a young woman disappeared on the Northern tip of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, exactly where my murder mystery is set. In "Stormy Cove", a young woman disappears without a trace, too.
When I came to Northern Newfoundland, I instantly thought that this is a region where somebody could make a body disappear very easily. There are swamps, hundreds of small lakes, there is wilderness, the tundra - and there is the North Atlantic. When you dump a body in the North Atlantic, it won`t wash up on one of the beaches. It just vanishes.
The woman who disappeared in November 2016, a mother of two, hasn´t been found yet. The police treat her disappearance as suspicious and as a possible homicide. The locals talk about who they think is the murderer. But the police has a hard time finding the perpetrator. There is no body, no crime scene, no witnesses.
This is the dirty little secret in criminal investigations (and in crime fiction): So many cases are never solved. Thousands of murderers commit the perfect crime and get away with it. Only in crime fiction, we have the answer at the end of the book. Still, I haven`t given up hope that the woman - her name is Jennifer - will be found one day and that there will be justice for her.

Recently I read that book ads with the word "missing" in them are very successful. I have no way to verify this claim but what I know is that stories of missing persons fascinate and scare me. People go missing all the time. Many, many people. In the isolated region in Northern Newfoundland where I am spending the winter, five people have gone missing in the last thirty years. One case is probably a murder.
I have read several books about people who went missing in the wilderness because I am surrounded by the vast barren tundra. One thing strikes me over and over: It is easy to get disoriented and lost in the wilderness. One doesn`t even have to make a huge mistake. A wrong turn, then another one, and soon you cannot find your return path anymore. Most lost persons keep going, first with hope, then in panic, putting distance between their starting point and the trail they are on. Which makes it more difficult to locate them.
Bad weather especially works against you when you are out there in the harsh unknown. Or the heat. I read an incredible story from 2006 about a young couple who drove up a mountain in Southern California on a train, hiked a short distance to a view point with other tourists and to a waterfall and got lost. They spent three hot days and three cold nights in the wild. They had no food, no cell phones and no adequate clothing. Eventually they found the camp of a dead hiker who also got lost. With his matches they started a forest fire that would be seen from a helicopter. It worked: they were rescued. What an amazing story. But it could easily have ended with their deaths. Here is a link to the story: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna12737512
My advice: Always tell somebody where you are going to.
If you like to read more about my life in a tiny village in Northern Newfoundland, you can subscribe to my monthly newsletter on my website www.bernadettecalonego.com/eng

Murderous Morning: A heart-stopping crime novel with a stunning end.

My latest author letter starts with this paragraph: " I remember a great short story that I read many years ago. This is a short summary: A murderer escapes a prison and the people in the entire region are in panic because of it. All of a sudden, there is a string of break-ins, and soon dead bodies are found. Victims of the murderer, it seems. There is no trace of the fugitive, however. He remains elusive. Winter comes and goes. As the snow melts, another dead person is found: It is the killer`s body. It turns out that the other murders were committed long after the escaped prisoner had frozen to death. The allegedly oh so innocent people in the area had exploited the situation in order to commit crimes that would be attributed to the murderer. A ingenious story."
Every month, I send out an author letter (for which you can sign up on the homepage of my website www.bernadettecalonego.com) with news that I normally don't share anywhere else. You get more than one glimpse of my life in a tiny fishing village on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland.
The snow has disappeared now, but I haven't discovered any bodies like in the short story above. They are entirely on the pages of my mystery novels. But on the beaches, there are carcasses of seals that were crushed between the ice pans of the pack ice. Nature is not always benevolent. Nor are the humans.
In this rural, rugged existence of mine in an isolated, mostly COVID-free environment, everything is reduced to the essentials. With so few distractions and stimuli, I can concentrate on my writing - and publishing: My mystery thriller “Cries from the Cold” is almost ready to launch in the paperback version. Publication will be before the end of May. I’m so excited! You can also preorder the e-book that will be out June 25. It is the first case for detective sergeant Calista Gates. A German reader wrote to me: “I like Calista Gates, she is tenacious but very good at handling people and she also has a vulnerable side to her. I hope you keep her as a character in your next book.” I do, and now I have a Calista-Gates series! I hope to have the second book translated soon.
Four days ago, I discovered the first flowers under the snow-free bleached old grass. My life is complete!

In British Columbia where I spend part of the year (usually the winter), forest fires are raging and there is no end in sight. I am in Newfoundland still, watching the catastrophe from afar. Sometimes I remember the summers on the Pacific coast with awe. Swimming in the ocean, being able to wear light summer dresses, sitting in the garden, drinking iced coffee early in the morning, sleeping in the shade of tall trees.
But right now, I wouldn't want to be there. I used to complain about the short summers in Newfoundland on Canada's east coast. But I have turned into a fan. Yes, it is true, the ocean is way too cold for swimming in most places, and the lakes, too. But the beaches are so pristine and unspoiled. The water is crystal clear and the nicest spots are for me to take, with hardly any people.
Yes, it is often windy (just like now) and I have to wear hats which make everyday a bad-hair-day. It is impossible to read a book sitting outside. But the wind keeps the mosquitos away and cools me down on hot days. I think in Newfoundland, I have become a cold-weather person. I cannot stand the heat anymore.
Recently, I made a joke about my latest crime novel "Cries from the Cold": No cries right now, it is not cold, it is hot here. A friend from British Columbia asked: What do you call hot in Newfoundland? I said: wearing an undershirt in the house and having warm nights.
I know it doesn't sound like much but it's perfectly fine for me.
I will remember it when the first blizzard hits the Newfoundland coast in a few months.


CRIES FROM THE COLD: A bone-chilling mystery thriller.

In the North of Newfoundland where I spend many months every year, the fall is a good and a sad time for me. Good because my fisherman finally has time to come on some of the hikes. The autumnal colours are fantastic, there are still some warm, sunny days, and the harvest of fish, potatoes and new crime novels is done. But it is also a time when the local restaurants and coffee shops close and some of my friends and acquaintances leave the area for their winter homes. I am sad to see them go. I feel deserted in a weird kind of way. Weird because I will leave later, too, and fly to Vancouver and then travel to the Sunshine Coast. I am deserting friends, too.
The last winter was comparatively mild for Northern Newfoundland. I don`t expect another mild winter ahead of us.
The farewells remind me of how important it is to have friends in an isolated, remote area. With friends, you don`t really feel the isolation. As a "stranger", it is also important to know other strangers who regularly spend some time elsewhere. We have a common language and shared experiences. These people are my anchor in choppy waters far away from home. Although Newfoundland has become a second home to me.
And then there is the comfort of books, of course. What would I do without them? To be able to download stories to my e-reader wherever I am is an incredible blessing.

My next crime novel with detective Calista Gates is now in the hands of my copy-editor and hopefully, I will be able to publish it in December. I will keep you posted.
Enjoy the remaining fall days before the Christmas craziness sets in - I`m determined to make the best of it![
[bookcover:Cries from the cold|58428996]

Sometimes I like to read books that would not naturally be on my reading list. "Hooked" by Sutton Foster is one of those books. I didn`t even know who Sutton Foster was when I picked up her memoir. I won't tell you too much about the content here but the subtitle is "How Crafting saved my Life."
Several years ago, when I decided to spend a large part of the year in northern Newfoundland where I had met and fallen in love with a man, one of my main worries was: Will I be bored in that tiny fishing community on the edge of the North Atlantic? What will I do in my spare time or on dark evenings? Little did I know that this should have been the least of my worries because I always find something to do. Not only that: There doesn't seem to be enough time to do all the things I want to do.
I tried some crafts, like painting sea shells or glass fusion at the local college, or crocheting blankets, endeavors that I liked but have given up in the meantime.
I founded a local cat and dog rescue group, did fundraising and fostered animals (still do), I started walking dogs and painted furniture. This year I wanted to learn the traditional Newfoundland skill of "rug hooking", creating small pictures made of wool threads in burlap. I had to postpone it to next year.
Most of my time I spend writing books and reading but I always tell myself that I need another craft hobby for leaner times. I love card games and invite my neighbors who love it, too. I wouldn't say that card games save my life but they make it more enjoyable (which is a lot).
So maybe it's true that a rather mundane activity can improve our quality of life drastically. But nothing, nothing beats reading a good book! At least for me.

I don`t really see myself as one of the people who flee the Canadian cold and overwinter in places like Florida. But as a matter of fact, I am one of the so-called "snowbirds".
I spent the winter in the mild climate of the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia and I'm glad I did. The snowstorms in northern Newfoundland were relentless and frequent while I was away. Now that I'm back, there is still pack ice in the bay and huge piles of snow everywhere.
This is nevertheless the place I want to be now. Driving up from the airport in Deer Lake, I saw caribou and moose. And I stopped to take a video of the raging ocean which fascinates me endlessly. I almost froze my fingers doing it.
Today the sun is out. The locals haven`t seen it for the entire month of April. I have started to walk the neighbours' dog again and I take care of our foster cat. Covid has spread in the area which makes it difficult to meet people.
I've already encountered the first tourist, though. She asked me when the ice will be melted in the bay. I don't really know. Chances are that the wind will drive the floes out onto the North Atlantic before it melts.
During the winter months, I missed several polar bears wandering through the coastal communities. One of them climbed on a roof and when the lady in the house opened the door, there it was, in all its glory. She quickly shut the door! Her neighbour's surveillance camera caught it all on film.
There are snowbirds in the yard, too, and it is not me. When these birds turn up in northern Newfoundland, it is a sure sign of spring. I should know by now that spring looks very different here from anywhere else. This is one of the reasons why I`m happy to have arrived. It's an adventure!

Bernadette Calonego

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

It is a funny coincidence but as I'm writing about a polar bear in my new mystery thriller in the Detective Calista Gates series, people I know have posted pictures on Facebook of a polar bear wandering through one of their coastal communities. It happens almost every spring in northern Newfoundland. You don't have to go to the Arctic to encounter polar bears. If you live on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland, chances are good that you'll see one through your living-room window! My favourite fisherman told me that his ancestors used to call them "water bears" because they are incredibly good swimmers. I have only seen a polar bear in nature in a net. He had been tranquilized by wildlife officers and a helicopter flew him dangling in a net across an ocean strait to Labrador.
The polar bears in northern Newfoundland and Labrador are healthy and thriving because there are so many seals and sufficient pack ice. A few years ago, a polar bear broke into a shed in Goose Cove and ate some tame ducks. And another one stuck his head into a kitchen. That was quite a scare for the family in the house, as you can imagine, But nobody was hurt or killed.
I will be back in northern Newfoundland at the end of April (right now I'm in British Columbia), and chances are small that there will still be a lonely polar bear trying to find his way home. But you never know. In my book, Detective Calista Gates will be up close and personal with one of these giants. I don't know whether I should envy her or whether I should be glad that it never happened to me... What do you think?
Bay of Evil


Bernadette Calonego