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

Right now I feel like the reader of a slow-burning crime novel where not much happens at the beginning but the suspense gradually builds up and one expects something horrible to happen soon.
I am staying in a remote village in Northern Newfoundland and I have told many people how bad the winter is there, how brutal the storms, how cold the air coming down from the Arctic. Elaborating on the dangers, I felt almost heroic for the things I would have to endure. But so far the winter has been very bearable, sometimes even mild, with lots of rain instead of snow.
It doesn`t mean, of course, that the situation cannot change soon and that things will be really rough and scary. The unknown kills me.
I am also waiting for the feedback from my beta readers who are going through my latest German novel right now. They are the first humans to have laid eyes on this novel (except me). Will they like the book? Will they give a thumbs up or down? It is nerve-racking and - in contrast to the winter weather in Northern Newfoundland - I cannot protect myself with Arctic clothing and snowmobile helmets.
The only comfort is that virtually all authors go through the same dreaded waiting game. If my novel gets the approval from my beta readers, I will gladly endure whatever the next winter months will bring.
And if you like to play the waiting game, too: the translation of my next English crime novel is almost finished. Publication is planned for May. Stay tuned.

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!

Our house in northern Newfoundland is small and rather dark. Luckily my fisherman built a room just for me onto the back of the house. A retreat which is bright and airy. It has huge windows on all sides which is not so practical in the strong Newfoundland winds but beauty and comfort come first.
I live now with a roommate in our house. Her name is Calista Gates and she is the detective in my new mystery thriller series. I spend many hours with her, think about her, write about her, put her in place, let her move around, ask her what she wants to do. A very interesting roommate with strong views and a big heart. But she doesn’t always want to be the good cop. She is quite headstrong and wants room to develop new character traits. I’m very fond of her, and so are many readers. Which makes me happy.
I hesitated a long time to write a series with a female detective although I really wanted to. But I knew that my heroine had to be really captivating, likable, irresistible. Only if I was able to create a really convincing strong lead, my series could take off. I took the plunge, and Calista Gates was born. Will she win the hearts of my readers? Now that the series is a success in Germany and the first English translation has been published (title: "Cries from the Cold"), I am happy to see that she conquers the imagination of people.
I am not like Calista, in case you wondered. But we share one experience: culture shock.
I thought it would be interesting to send a big-city detective to a God-forsaken fishing village in Labrador in the middle of a bone-chilling winter. I can relate to the challenges she faces because of my own experiences in Newfoundland.
The dynamics in these insular settlements are very interesting. People live in each other's pockets, however a lot of things are swept under the carpet. They can resurface when it is least expected, and not always in a good way.
So whenever Calista Gates misses Vancouver and her family there, I take her into my bright, airy room at the back of the house and cuddle her. After some loving care, she is ready to take on a new murder case and a another fight for justice. Don`t we just love her?
CRIES FROM THE COLD

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.

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

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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I haven't published anything on my blog since February. A popular saying comes to mind: "I made plans, but life got in the way."
In my case, a long stay in my first home country Switzerland came in between and before that an unforgettable hiking holiday on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands that belong to Spain. It had been a dream of mine for a long time to go hiking there. I had seen great pictures on social media, and my longing grew with every day.
After breaking my ankle last fall, I was also eager to see if I was fully fit again. I was pleasantly surprised with everything: my healed bone, the beauty of Tenerife, the varied, well-signposted hiking trails, the impressive Teide National Park with the volcano of the same name, and with the accommodation in the pretty town of Icod de los Vinos.
I also enjoyed the warm, sunny weather there, and it was only March!

Now I'm back in Newfoundland. While many people in Europe and other places complain about the heat wave, the summer in Newfoundland is very pleasant, if you accept cool rainy days from time to time. Heat is not for me (I would feel uncomfortable even in a sauna), I have become a "northern" person.

I have also reconciled myself a bit with the frequent wind because it keeps the mosquitoes away. I don't want to have to walk with a face net all the time. Part of my life in northern Newfoundland is the constant change of clothes - taking off clothes and putting on warmer (or cooler) layers. Onion look is the order of the day.

This year, I wondered how the political situation will affect tourism here. Will the Americans visit us after so many Canadians are staying away from the United States (for good reasons)? It is the end of July and the balance is positive so far. Americans are still coming, and many Canadians are now traveling around their own country.

For my favorite fisherman, summer means hard work above all. Today he got up at four o'clock in the morning and I don't expect him back until late evening. The cod he is currently fishing for is again plentiful. But he has to be careful not to overload his small boat and capsize.

It is not only on the ocean where serious accidents can occur. Speedy machines of all kinds are a popular pastime here. A young man recently died when he crashed his Sea-Doo into a boulder below the surface of a small lake. His death has shaken the locals.

Soon friends from Switzerland will arrive here, and I can't wait to show them the wild, rugged beauty of the area. There are not many museums here, it is mainly nature and friendly people. The contrast with Switzerland will be fascinating for my friends, I think.

Some book news: My latest Calista Gates mystery thriller has been translated and the next step is copy-editing. I hope to be able to publish "Dark Moon Island" at the end of November. Stay tuned!