Bird on a Wire

Janice MacDonald shares insight into her new Imogene Durant Mystery Series and Victor & Me in Paris.

Congratulations on launching Victor & Me in Paris, the first book in your new Imogene Durant Mystery Series. Please tell us about Imogene and what your plans are for her and her new series.

Janice MacDonald: Imogene Durant is what the French would call “a woman of a certain age,” newly retired from her career as a Comparative Literature professor at the University of Alberta. She taught world literature in translation, with a leaning toward popular culture work. Honoured in her later years with the presenting of the annual Bessai lecture, she gave her talk on reading a book in situ, from her fanciful decision to read Crime and Punishment while on a conference in St. Petersburg. The lecture was published, and *Fyodor & Me in Russia* became a minor and continuing bestseller, much to everyone’s surprise. Now that she has retired, her publisher wants her to “go somewhere else and read something” to see if magic can strike twice.

She has never been to Paris, and has never really travelled solo, so she heads off on her adventure with excitement and trepidation. But that is part of her philosophy, that the frisson of fear in setting out to parts unknown is good for your blood circulation, and like crossword puzzles, keeps your mind alive. She has no particular expectations beyond reading a book set in Paris while in Paris, but being open to adventure, she discovers that she isn’t ready to be written off and shelved just yet.

When Imogene first arrived on the page, I had no idea she was going to become involved in mysteries. I had assumed I was writing a standalone novel exploring the jumping off point that retirement, divorce, and incipient old age created – crone lit, as it were. Instead, Imogene rented an apartment up four levels of stairs, pulled on her ballet slippers and made friends with a police officer. And as soon as I figured out what else she could read where, we were off to the races.

The series will take Imogene to a variety of places around the world, reading and coming to understandings about the situations she becomes enmeshed in through the literature she is reading. Along the way, she ponders the big questions about the sustainability of tourism, the joys and terrors of travel, aspects of loneliness and camaraderie, and ideas about how countries celebrate or ignore their cultural icons. She also gets involved in other peoples’ problems, and occasionally gets involved with other people romantically. She meets old friends, makes new ones, eats marvelous food, window shops and occasionally buys fabulous clothes, and helps to solve international crimes. And of course, she is constantly reading some great literature and talking about it, occasionally lapsing into lecture mode. She just cannot help herself.

In many ways Victor Hugo becomes Imogene's travel companion. What considerations did you undertake in having Victor along for Imogene's journey to Paris?

Janice MacDonald: A couple of things got me ensnared with Victor Hugo. When I was in Paris, I went to his house quite early in my month there. It has been turned into quite a marvellous museum, and I was really taken with his standing desk and a sample of some of his early drafts in a glass case. There was something so humanizing and connecting about those artifacts that I found myself tuning into Hugo in a very strong way.

Then, I was flipping through some guidebooks my landlord had thoughtfully provided on the shelves of my apartment, and discovered also that I was living on the street where the student barricades that feature in Les Misérables had been erected, and I swear I felt a frisson of electricity run right through me. The shadow of Imogene started to form, and her need to read a novel in situ dictated some of her background to me. All of a sudden, I was on a research trip, not a holiday. I had been planning to walk everywhere, go to museums, read Colette and eat brie and macarons while in Paris and not much else, to tell you the truth.

Unfortunately, my landlord’s bookcase didn’t run to novels, and I ended up purchasing a huge and weighty new translation of Les Misérables, a book I hadn’t read since childhood, though (she said in a very braggy voice) I had read it in French. (Travel tip: don’t buy a three-kilo book to drag home with you.) So, I was familiar with the story, I had since seen the musical and even watched my daughter play Fantine in a high school production. I am still rather proud of creating a bonnet with hair extensions sewn onto the edges for her to wear in the first act, so she could miraculously be shorn later.

I remember as a kid loving Jean Valjean so much, more so than the rather vindictive Count of Monte Cristo, though possibly not as much as Athos the musketeer. Reading it as an adult, I was startled by how abridged the first version I had read had been, but still Hugo provided such a portrait of decency in the face of tribulation with Jean Valjean.

There is a strange thing that happens when you read fiction in situ. It’s like those plasticized pages of the human body in the old World Book encyclopaedias, where you layer the bones and then the nerves and the organs, and then the muscles, page by page, building a deeper view each time. I was seeing the Place de la Bastille, say, gleaming and spacious in the sunlight, and then I was picturing the elephant statue with Gavroche over in the corner, or I was walking home from the Monoprix with my groceries, thinking of Éponine dying just where I turned to head to my apartment.

Victor Hugo took me by the hand and embroidered my vistas, offering me a deeper vision of Paris than I’d have managed on my own.

To the reader's delight, there are always a lot of moving parts in in your work. How did you keep track of everything—evidence, and motive, and clues when drafting Victor & Me in Paris?

Janice MacDonald: While I do seem to have an extraordinary memory for arcane trivia and perceived personal slights, I find more and more that I need to write things down if I want to recall them. Luckily for me, there are writing utensils almost everywhere I look in my world, and if all else fails I open the notes section of my phone, which is full of grocery lists, book titles people have recommended, spellings of Mexican trees, and the name of a friend’s first beau who was “a real Heathcliff of a man.” I really should clear out my notes section after this.

When I am about two-thirds of the way through a first draft, I start keeping notes in one of those nice notebooks people always give writers as gifts (yes, some of us do use them), noting the general page of the manuscript or chapter number where something happens, or where Imogene is, or who she is with. I leave spaces between each of those notes because things change all the time at this stage of the imagining. That notebook is also good for lists of names of people (because I am constantly heading back to figure out what I named the goofy constable) and who belongs to who in families, and what someone’s last name is. Those lists are especially good for when you’re writing a series, because people pop back up in the fictional world when you least expect it.

Once a first draft is done, I get set to plot it out visually. I used to have quite a bit of room for a cork board in my home office, but time and downsizing several times has made that impossible. So now I use one of those trifold boards kids use to display their entries in the science fairs, and I buy all sorts of post-it notes, different colours and sizes. The post-it thing I learned from a project management course I was once sent on, so this hint is brought to you by the Government of Alberta. One colour of square will stand for a character’s actions, a circular post-it will be what I write clues on, another coloured square turned diamond-wise will be events like murders or grisly discoveries, neon stickies will be wherever Imogene is in danger, or where she figures things out … and when I set them all up, I can see where things are grouped, and whether or not there is a fallow area that needs “zhuzhing up” (this expression brought to you by my obsession with Jonathan van Ness).

Finally, I like to print the whole manuscript out before I head into the third draft, and the post-its come in handy again for tabbing sections. This way I can sort out where things need to be shifted and cut, paragraph by paragraph.

Agatha Christie once said something to the effect that while of course you had to play fair with the reader and provide all the clues they would need along the way, there was nothing to say you couldn’t put the clue in upside down or hidden next to three very juicy red herrings, and that’s something I’ve tried to pay attention to. Of course, so much of what I try to play with is WHY someone would do something even more than WHO would be doing it, so I think there is more than just the puzzle game to Imogene’s adventures.

Thank you! Looking forward to launching Victor & Me in Paris at Audreys Books Ltd. on November 7th at 7:00!