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

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!

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!

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

Bernadette Calonego My crime thrillers are always set in places that I know personally. The detective Calista Gates series for instance takes place in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Some of you might know that every year I live several months in a tiny fishing community in northern Newfoundland. Detective Calista Gates is the police chief in St. Anthony, a town about half an hour from the village where I`m staying.
For my next crime novel, I have set my eyes on a very remote but stunning northern region between Labrador and the province of Québec. I love remote areas in the North: I was in the Arctic twice and also in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. But this time, I really have to get creative to be able to travel to my desired destination. There is a tourist lodge that offers accommodation and exploratory trips with seaplanes and hiking guides. But like everything that is far up in the Great North, it is expensive. Very expensive. A seven-day trip (two days for getting there) would cost me around 16000 Canadian dollars or 12000 U.S. dollars. How many books do I have to sell to make that kind of money? I know that there are really great novels written by authors who had never been in the location they wrote about - but you could never tell because the book is that good.
I`m torn between using my life savings to make the trip of my dreams in order to write the book that I want. Or maybe I just stay put and do a lot of research and let my fantasy go wild. In my new mystery thriller "Bay of Evil" (out on January 20, 2023), part of the action takes place in the Torngat Mountains in Labrador, another area that I would have loved to visit but it is very expensive, too. Luckily, Covid 19 made the decision for me: the destination was closed. I was allowed to use the experiences of a couple who trekked through the area a few years ago. It worked splendidly for my mystery thriller.
Isn`t reading to live on borrowed life? When we read about far-away places that are unattainable, don`t we go there in our imagination and they become very real?
Hey, maybe I make a lot of money with my new book and then I pack my bags and just go North! I will let you know, one way or the other. 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

My German editor told me recently she had noticed that there are a lot of cabins in my mystery thrillers. She's right. Cabins play an important role im my stories. How could they not: My crime novels are set in northern and other remote areas where a lot of people have cabins. Fishing cabins, hunting cabins, weekend cabins, party cabins, icefishing cabins, cabins along snowmobile trails, cabins in the woods, cabins on the lakes, cabins in the wilderness, cabins to get away from everybody.
There is a distinct cabin culture in isolated and rural areas. It is part of people's lifestyle and traditions. In my small community in northern Newfoundland, not many people can afford to go on cruises or beach holidays in Cuba or even to cities like Halifax or Montreal. But they do build a cabin to enjoy a getaway, especially in the winter when they can reach these wild locations on the snowmobile.
As it is tradition to visit people in their cabin, the cabin dwellers aren't alone for any stretch of time. Usually, visitors are welcome. They are offered tea and some cookies or they bring a bottle of rum or "screetch" with them and the chatting and hollering can begin.
Everything is simple in the cabins: old sofas, used cutlery, worn blankets, ancient calendars on the wall. But it is a great way to spend a day or two, to forget about village life and chores, to gossip and relax.
For me as an author of mystery novels, cabins are a fitting location for crimes, hideouts or eerie encounters. For this reason alone, I cannot promise there won't be any cabin in my next book. There is certainly one in "Missing in the Dark", my latest crime novel! And morbid things are happening there, I can tell you.

Our snowmobile broke down a few days ago and it needs to be repaired. The parts - if we can buy them - will cost around 3000 Canadian dollars. We hope to find used parts but it is uncertain. A new snowmobile can cost up to 30000 Canadian dollars, more than a decent car. One cannot really live without a snowmobile in northern Newfoundland in winter. My fisherman needs to go over the barrens to cut down trees for firewood. There are places that cannot be reached on the road when there is lots of snow. We will have to make a big decision how to proceed.
Sometimes people ask me if the costs of living are way higher in remote places in Canada's North than for instance in Vancouver. My usual answer is: "It depends." I don't find food much more expensive in our isolated area than in Vancouver (the Arctic is a different story). But in my tiny Newfoundland village, there is no supermarket chain like Costco within reach. (There is no IKEA store either on the entire island of Newfoundland.) On the other hand, I am not tempted to buy the latest fashion or exquisite furniture for our modest fisherman's house. I own a second-hand car with a battered windshield because the salty air and the salt on the roads in winter make a vehicle rust out in no time.
There is no opportunity to splurge on entertainment in winter: I pay ten dollars to participate in a competitive card game or bingo. The last concert I went to was several years ago (very few concerts come to our depopulated area). During the Iceberg Festival, I went to Trivia Night in the local pub which I really enjoyed (I even won a t-shirt!).
With Netflix, it is not so bad not to have a movie theatre in town - nor a book store. I do appreciate Amazon for book deliveries.
When I started to spend time in remote northern Newfoundland, I worried that I would be bored and not stimulated enough. It turned out that I am busier than ever. Writing mystery thrillers, but also meeting people, going on hikes, trying new handicrafts, training a dog, helping a cat rescue group as a volunteer, zooming with friends. And hey, if push comes to shove - the temptations of New York and Vancouver are just two flights away!

When I chose the title for the latest Detective Calista Gates mystery thriller, I had no idea how apt it is for the recent world events. In my small fishing hamlet on a peaceful bay, I seem far away from the turbulence in other countries. Naturally we experience autumn storms here, but when I look out of the window, the ocean is the strongest force of nature in my environment. On most days, it has more of a calming effect on me. However, even in a remote area like ours, you are no longer isolated because of (social) media and you can't stay completely away from disturbances. Or from developments that seem to be coming our way inexorably.
Even skeptical fishermen here are now talking about climate change because marine animals that normally live in warmer waters are appearing on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland, such as tuna, lobster and halibut.
In our area, only a few fishermen have a license for lobsters, or more precisely: there are only five lobster fishermen in a large fishing area. They are making a lot of money. The other fishermen think their union should lobby the government in Ottawa to get a temporary lobster license because their incomes are very low. But the five fishermen, who already have a license, are against it. This has led to tensions within the fishing communities, which is a great pity. It would be nice if more people had the common good in mind, because how can young people be interested in fishing if they don't earn enough money with it? If a new generation of fishermen does not follow, the fishing ports and villages will die out.
But back to Cold Dread: The paperback is already available on Amazon, just in time for Christmas. The e-book will be published on December 27. I wish you a suspenseful reading that is hopefully also very relaxing!
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