A Visit to Trafalgar

As most readers of the Constable Molly Smith series know, the town of Trafaglar, B.C. is closely based on Nelson, B.C.  I love Nelson. It's a small, quirky, friendly town, smack dab in the centre of the BC wilderness. It's located in a valley, alongside a river, surrounded by mountains on all sides.  There is a certain Brigadoon quality to Nelson.  It is literally on the way to no where.  You have to be wanting to go there, to go there.

Outside Big Eddies

Street scene, with Fleures Des Menthe Restaurant patio on the right

A perfect setting, I thought, for a series of crime novels. And thus, Trafalgar was born.  Others seem to agree with me, as there are now several mystery novels set in some fictional version of Nelson.

I visited Nelson recently, and decided it would be fun to take pictures of the real places that feature in my fictional town.  I posted some last week, and here are a few more.

The French Bakery introduced in IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLACIER, and featured in all the other books when Molly Smith moves into the apartment above. 

Bar of the Hudson House Hotel.  Where Smith meets her childhood friend Nicky in AMONG THE DEPARTED 

The " Big Black Bridge "

Big Eddie's Coffee Emporium, site of many meetings.

The police station (of course)

A street scene. Picture taken from inside "George's Restaurant" (hard to see, but what makes this "Nelson" is the kids band playing across the street)

Yup, Castlegar really is known as Cancel-gar, as Smith tells Winters taking him to meet a flight in WINTER OF SECRETS

Trying to Find Winter of Secrets

Listen to any writer these days and they'll be complaining at how in the modern publishing business it isn't enough that the writer write the darn book, they have to then be the promoter, the marketer, the sales person. All of which is, of course, extremely time consuming.

Case in point: I recently discovered that the paperback edition of Winter of Secrets has disappeared from Amazon.com. The book is out in paperback, it is in stock at Amazon, but it isn't on my author page or on the list of editions of Winter of Secrets. The reader has to go to some considerable trouble to find it. And I don't want them to have to do that.

Back and forths between me and the publisher and her and Amazon is generating a lot of bites and bytes but no improvement.

These days, Winter of Secrets is showing up on a lot of lists of Christmas mysteries and there is a big review set to come out in a California magazine, so I would like people to be able to find it quickly and easily. Right now, the best I can do is provide the exact link: http://www.amazon.com/Winter-Secrets-Constable-Molly-Smith/dp/1590587812/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292593844&sr=8-2

The book, BTW, is easily findable at BN.com, Amazon.ca, Chapters.ca and other sources.

Forty Reasons to Go On Living

How nice. The next Constable Molly Smith book, Winter of Secrets, will be released November 1st by Poisoned Pen Press. The Rap Sheet listed forty books they're looking foward to in the second half of this year (20 US and 20 UK) under the title Forty Reasons to Go On Living. Winter of Secrets is one of them. I'm delighted. Here's the full list for those of you who, like me, like to drool over your future TBR pile. http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/07/40-reasons-to-go-on-living.html