Another great review of Vices of My Blood

This review appeared in 6 different publications accross the country this past weekend. This book has terrific momentum

Madeleine Mertl, Canadian Press
Published: Saturday, May 27, 2006
(CP) - When Rev. Charles Howard Is found lying dead on the floor of his office at Chalmers Presbyterian Church, newly promoted Detective William Murdoch knows this will be a high-profile case. Given the prominence of the victim, he will be under pressure to solve the murder quickly.
So begins the sixth entry in the Murdoch mystery series - a couple already have been turned into TV movies - and fans will savour the richly drawn characters and enjoy unravelling its complex plot line.
Murdoch sees the victim has been stabbed and beaten, relieved of his pocket watch and his well-made boots. A consensus builds that Howard has been killed by a tramp with theft in mind.
Pursuing this line of inquiry, Murdoch spends a long, hungry and cold night in a work camp. He keeps his eyes open for the missing property and his ears for helpful gossip.
But after his glimpse of that brutal, dangerous way of life, where he manages to avoid losing his own more than once, Murdoch comes to believe the theft may simply have been an attempt at misdirection.
Since there is no sign of a struggle at the crime scene, Murdoch surmises it is more likely Howard knew his killer. Therefore, he decides to widen his list of suspects to Howard's personal and professional acquaintances.
There's Miss Dignam, the woman who found Howard's body and for some reason remains emotional devastated. There's the sour shopkeeper from across the street who is forever watching life at the Church and does not hold Howard in the same high esteem as others.
Even Howard's wife appears to be guarding a secret.
One of Howard's ministerial duties in Victorian Toronto was to decide if a parishioner applying for relief was deserving of it. Drunkards or indigents were not. Families of the disallowed parishioners were out of luck too. Was this a revenge killing?
Author Maureen Jennings also offers a detailed picture of 19th-century Toronto, which becomes a character itself.
© The Canadian Press 2006

A couple more images

These shots are from the same group of shots from below. I will work on some with the white background later today, Enjoy!

Shooting Fashion and Beauty with Natalie - our model

Working with Walter Melrose, the inventor of the Mola lighting system, was an eye popping experience. He taught us the use of four different Mola lights, The Demi, Seti, Euro, and Manti and how light reflects off of your subject, and also how the light runs off your subject creating shadows at certain angles.This is Natalie our model on Saturday, who is six feet tall. It was a great day and I have many more photos to work on and put up, Mola lights are easy to work with and certainly do an excellent job of lighting a subject. Enjoy!

Victoria Regina - a dog lover

I had a relapse of a nasty cold that I had when we were in Ottawa a few weeks ago. The big bummer was that this was our long weekend, Victoria Day weekend. In the US there is Memorial Day weekend this coming weekend (INDY 500). Guess what my wife was doing this weekend? Working in her 7th Victorian Detective Murdoch Mystery which is now completed but in re-writes. Coincidentally The NY Times named Beloved by Toni Morrison as their best book in the last 25 years. We went out to the bookstore and got a copy as neither of us have read it. And so there was Maureen working on her first Murdoch book that brings together some interesting US history in the form of a young negro woman who is kidnapped in Niagara Falls and taken down to Maryland to be sold as a slave. What does that have to do with Toronto 1896? Well we had the Underground Railroad here in Ontario back in the 1860's and a small black community in our fair city was created as a result, and whose descendants were from ex-slaves, hence a story thread for flashbacks. Maureen wanted to do a book that featured our black community and so she had a story idea that evolved into this new book. Nuff said about that, "A Journeyman to Grief" will be out next year. In the meantime in my self pitying misery I started, and was riveted by, The Trudeau Vector, a thriller, written by Juris Jurjevics, set in the Artic featuring Russians and a lost Submarine (much like the Kursk), a group of scientists working in a lab environment who find dead and with their eyeballs missing, a few of their colleagues. Also there is a female American scientist/doctor who parachutes out of an airplane into the middle of the
investigation in -60 Faranheit environment. This is my idea of a fantastic read. Well written, unusual, Russians, Americans, and Canadians, different, well re searched, guaranteed fun. I hope this book is considered by the Barry Jury because I think it one of the best thrillers I've read in a long time. We also finished watching the 2nd season of 24 at the same time season 5 was wrapping up on tv, Can't wait to watch season 3!! Back to my cough.

Broadcaster's choices - waiting for Murdoch

The new Murdoch Mysteries TV series of 13 episodes, all original scripts based on the characters from Maureen's novels, is slated for broadcast in September 2007. The show has been ordered and the contracts have been signed, the money is in, but we were initially told the series would be produced this coming Summer. Last week I got an email with a tentative production schedule. Here it is from Shaftesbury Films:
"We're planning on starting the story dept. late in the summer -- we're aiming for first week in August. This will enable us to develop the series thru the fall and be ready for prep in January -- we'll shoot in the spring as soon as we have leaves on the trees for power line coverage. We need to deliver the show for Sept 2007."
This was a tad dissapointing for us as we had expected a big film shoot this late Summer and Fall. So, now we have to wait awhile. The good news is that there will be a lot of time available to develop good scripts, and also lots of prep time. All this is subject to change, as the broadcaster could suddenly want the episodes sooner, but not likely. Also, the next Murdoch novel will be published next Spring, A Journeyman to Grief. So the publiation and publicity will dovetail nicely with the publicity surrounding the series. We also hope that Peter Outerbridge might still be able to play Murdoch. His other series is going back into production this summer, and if that ends up being the final season, there is no reason why he cannot reprise Murdoch. According to his agent, all of the casting decisions will be made much closer to the production dates of next Spring, so we have plenty of time to work on that end of things.

Photo op

I got to spend all of Saturday in a photography course shooting two models with various lighting systems and in two different studios. Photography is becoming my second most favourite thing to do, the first of course is working with my wife on her stuff. I am immersed in a program that is led by some of the busiest professional photographers in Toronto. Lucky me!! Here you see Marina, and Kareema. Kelvin is the dude in the photo with Kareema, he was on the course with me. Anyone want their photo taken?? email me, idenford.@mac.com

The Maiden in Snow . . . .

Is the German title of Except The Dying which was published back in 98. The cover in this note is from a reprint edition, published last year, of which we know nothing about!! So I penned off a letter to Maureen's agent to find out what is happening. Heyne is the original publisher in Germany and they still have Let Loose the Dogs in print. They have let the backlist go out of print, but this keeps their finger in the pie so to speak. Let's see what's what. More later.

Toronto no mystery to Canadian author

Maureen Jennings re-creates the past in Vices Of My Blood
Jamie Portman, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, May 08, 2006
TORONTO - If you want to know how a servant girl dressed in 1895 Toronto, just ask Maureen Jennings.
She'll also be able to pinpoint the location of the old Dominion Bakery, tell you what a fancy Victorian carriage looked like, give details of the city's drinking hours back then, explain the intricacies of the portable oil heater, discuss religious tensions between Roman Catholics and Protestants and offer some unsettling revelations about prostitution and the plight of the poor in Toronto at the end of the 19th century.
She touches on all these things within the first 10 pages of Except The Dying, her debut crime novel that won rave reviews when it was first published in 1997. It was Jennings' attention to detail that caused The New York Times to praise her for bringing to life "a violent but vital society of astonishing contradictions."
The 67-year-old novelist's zest for meticulously re-creating Canada's past shows up again in her latest book, Vices Of My Blood, which has just been published by McClelland and Stewart. This time, her intrepid police sleuth, Det. Murdoch, is called upon to solve the grisly murder of a popular Presbyterian cleric, and once again Murdoch's quest leads to some eye-popping revelations about Toronto society as it existed 110 years ago. The 19th-century poorhouse on Elm Street figures prominently in the new story. Jennings discovered the site while indulging in one of her favourite research methods -- hopping on her trusty bicycle and seeking out the hidden remnants of old Toronto. And a venerable row home on Ontario Street became her choice for Det. Murdoch's boarding house.
"I can go the speed of a horse and carriage," she laughs, adding that this is a good way of making sure she doesn't miss anything in her explorations. "To me, the way I work best is to try and make it very real, so I may see a house and say: 'This is the kind of house I think these characters would live in.' "
The actual Elm Street workhouses are long gone, but their facade can still be seen. Discovering them was the trigger for the new novel. "I have always been interested in social justice and poor people and how society deals with the disadvantaged," says Jennings, who grew up in England and admits her family was also somewhat disadvantaged "because we didn't have a lot of money." In the course of researching her six novels, she has discovered that the privileged class in late 19th-century Toronto saw poverty as "a morality thing."
It's not that Victorians were necessarily callous, she emphasizes, but their social conscience did tend to be defined by ingrained attitudes: they were, for example, more compassionate toward the mentally ill than they were to the poor, who were often deemed responsible for their plight.
In Vices Of My Blood, the murdered clergyman has held virtual powers of life and death over the destitute whose applications for welfare relief required his approval. Jennings was horrified when she discovered how paltry the assistance was "I worked it out. I couldn't believe how little they actually received. With a family of four, where typically the male would be sick or injured, they would get about five dollars -- a dollar a day."
That statistic comes from contemporary reports in which officials concluded it was possible to feed one person for 23 cents a day.
Jennings emigrated to Canada 50 years ago with her mother at the age of 17. She studied philosophy and psychology at University of Windsor and English literature at the University of Toronto. She then taught English at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute for eight years before setting up in private practice as a psychotherapist. However, over the years she never lost her desire to write. She honed her skills on short stories and poetry, admits to two unpublished novels, which she says were terrible, and did find a publisher for her non-fiction book, Map Of Her Mind.
Then in the early 1990s, she wrote two short period plays with a mystery background for Toronto's Solar Stage -- and that experience launched her career as a novelist.
"It got me going on the whole idea of historical mysteries, which I thought at the time would be easier than writing contemporary mysteries -- that's because I thought I didn't know enough about forensics and thought I could
do them with more of the Sherlock Holmes model of intuition and hard work and stuff like that."
That led to her first novel, Except The Dying, which begins with the discovery of the nude body of a servant girl outdoors on a bitterly cold winter's night and then proceeds to expose the seamy underside of Toronto society. That novel, which was published by New York's St. Martin's Press to enthusiastic reviews, also introduced readers to Det. Murdoch, an intelligent and dedicated policeman who is nonetheless an outsider because he is Roman Catholic.
"I wanted to make him a Roman Catholic because I wanted to play up the Protestant-Catholic conflict, which was so deep in the city at that time. I also wanted him to be single because I think that makes him more interesting -- especially to female readers. And that's how he evolved."
Except The Dying and the next two mysteries -- Poor Tom Is Cold and Under The Dragon's Tail -- were filmed and televised in Canada by Bravo, which has now commissioned a new 13-episode Murdoch series. These will be new episodes rather than adaptations of existing Murdoch stories, and his creator will serve as creative consultant.

Bugs and Our Series

Last night Maureen and I attended the premiere of BUGS at the Ontario Science Centre, an imax movie which has been sold around the world. The film is 40 minutes long and inlvolves watching various kinds of bugs, caterpillars, mantis', butterflies, flys, etc eating eachother, eating plants, and being eating by non-bug predators. It was an elightening experience, which gives you a sore neck if you are not in the right seats, as a lot of this IMAX experience involves looking up at the ceiling. The whole affair was put together by Shaftesbury Films, the producer of this IMAX film, and also of our Murdoch Mysteries Television series. So we got some more news last night. CHUM wants 65 episodes. That in fact works out to five seasons. This is all contingent on how well the first season is recieved. So with the success of the first season a must, the pressure will be on to cast the show correctly. We also got a chance to visit with Perry Zimel who runs one of the busiest agencies in Canada for actors. He told us that it is not out of the question for Peter to still do Murdoch, but that they were going back to shoot ReGenesis this year and that it would mean postponing production of our show until that was complete, as well as the fact that competing broadcasters do not like to have the same star in two different productions. So it is pretty clear that we will be remembering Peter Outerbridge as the star of the Movies of the week, and that the "series" Murdoch will be a different actor. Perry floated a name to us, Yannick Bisson, who plays a cop in a show called "Sue Thomas FBI", and he offered to send us his "reel of highlights". Perry is very keen to pitch Yannick as a possible Murdoch. Maureen and I found some clips of his work. We like him, but feel that Murdoch needs to be internal and a tad broody, much like Peter created. We are okay with a different looking Murdoch, but don't want a Murdoch who is different in personality. There will be a casting call in the Summer for the lead, so many actors will get a chance at the part. I am sure the producers want to make damn sure that they pick the right guy with so much riding on the success of the first season. It will be interesting to follow all this as it begins to take shape.

Vices of My Blood now into second printing

The success of Vices of My Blood in consumer purchases, within the first 30 days of publications, has caused the publisher, Mcclelland and Stewart, to order a reprint. The book is sold out at the two Canadian distributors. and also at Random House, who handle Canadian distribution. This is wonderful news for the Murdoch series.

Further thoughts on successful tv or fiction

I had another thought tonight about the suspense element in a book, or tv movie, or series. Along with all the other things I mentioned regarding being clear about what kind of show you are creating, thriller or character driven, I really beleive that the stakes need to be very high. In season two of 24, the stakes revolve around the possiblity that LA will be nuked. Catastrophic stakes. Now for a suspense story to work, obviously the stakes do not need to be that catastrophic. But within the sphere of the universe that is being created for the page or screen, the audience, or reader need to feel and believe that the end result of any bad thing that may happen, must be powerful enough for us to either keep watching or turning the pages. This may seem pretty obvious but there are too many stories and films in my opinion that never make that clear. But when it is clear, and we understand what will happen if the catastrophe is not averted, you want to travel the whole journey to get to that catharsis, to get to the finish and feel the relief. Thank Aristotle (The Poetics) for that idea.

Some more thoughts on 24 and why it works

Just finished episode eight of season # two last night. I cannot believe the twists and turns!! I think I like this season better because the stakes are higher (hunting the nuclear bomb that will blow LA sky high). But Kim, Jack's daughter, is sooooo dumb!! And I cannot believe David has let his ex back into his life!!!!! Oh God, tv does not get better than this. We also looked at the first episode of the first season of CSI. Terrific modern cop drama set in Vegas which has a character all to itself. Not quite as much fun as 24 but I clearly see why it is such a successful franchise, and to boot Krista Allen in a cameo? I kidded my wife and said "oh, there's George Clooney's girfriend" I think we're gonna have to get CSI Miami season one. All this is fodder for her creative consultant meetings on the upcoming Murdoch series because we get to study what works and what doesn't. You gotta be clear about what your goals are when producing a television series and decide one thing, is this a character driven series or a suspense driven series where character emerges a little here, a little there. So many of these kinds of shows don't work when that is not established right out of the gate. In 42-45 minutes, you ain't gotta a lot of choice and you want your audience to keep coming back each week. If this is not clear to an audience within the first few episodes of a cop or thriller series, I fear these goals have not been clarified from the beginning. Cliffhanger type suspense is paramount in 24 at the sacrifice of too much character development. But there has to be some character development because you need to care about what is happening to the people in the show, however it is clear that nail biting suspense is the master in 24, with all else subservient to that. A really good detective series should create a sense of peril and resolution. We also want to hate the bad guys and love the good guys, we want to feel things. So it is a complex puzzle that takes a good team to understand what to balance and what to cut. This is a fascinating process and one that we will be keeping our eye on once we start the production. Our executive producer, Bob Carney, has been involved in a lot of shows that have been huge up here so I am sure this is something he pays attention to.