You’re invited to a criminally exciting evening on Thurs. April 23, 7-9 p.m. at Chapters Rideau, starting with Interrogating the Authors — top crime writers Brenda Chapman, Barbara Fradkin, Eva Gates/Vicki Delany, R.J. Robin Harlick, MaryJane MaffiniVictoria Abbott, and Mike Martin put each other on the hot seat. MC is Erika Chase/Linda Sundman Wiken. Followed by the big reveal of the Crime Writers of Crime Writers Canada Arthur Ellis shortlist, and the Capital Crime Writers’ Audrey Award shortlist.
Canada’s Security and Intelligence Community: Responding to Terrorist Threats
Topic: Canada’s Security and Intelligence Community: Responding to Terrorist Threats
Speaker: Dr. Martin Rudner
When: Wednesday, May 13, 2015 at 7:00 pm
Location: Honeywell Room, Ottawa City Hall
Learn about terrorist threats facing Canada at the next CCW meeting (May 13, 2015 at 7 p.m. at city hall.
The focus of this month’s presentation is the contemporary terrorist threat environment facing Canada, including religious extremism, violent secessionist movements, state-sponsored terrorism and domestic extremism. Dr. Martin Rudner, professor emeritus at Carleton University will examine Canada’s national security strategy, outlining the statutory framework, the architecture of the Security and Intelligence system, policy mechanisms, and operational activities. These will cover intelligence collection, analysis, policy coordination, law enforcement, threat disruption, and international liaison. Attention will be paid to accountability and oversight mechanisms. The talk will conclude with a review of lessons that need to be learned.
Martin Rudner is Professor Emeritus and a distinguished professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. Before his retirement from Carleton in 2007, he was a professor in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a founding director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Affairs. His article “Intelligence-Led Air Transport Security: Pre-Screening for Watch-Lists, No-Fly Lists to Forestall Terrorists Threats” was recently published in the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. Dr. Rudner is the author of over one hundred books and scholarly articles. He is also an associate editor of Frontline Security. While supposedly retired, he attends and organizes conferences and seminars and is frequently consulted for his ideas and opinions on security and intelligence issues. Dr. Rudner has also served as an expert witness at the behest of the Crown in national security cases before the Federal Court.
CCW April 2015 Meeting: Elections & PIZZA!
Got a taste for blood (and pizza)? Feeling bloody-minded? Then why not join us!
Our next meeting is on Wednesday April 8, 2015 in the Honeywell Room at Ottawa City Hall. It begins at 6:45. Pizza will be served. The 2015-2016 election for the CCW Executive will then take place. PLEASE COME TO THIS MEETING IF YOU ARE FREE. If you are interested in putting your name forward for any of the executive positions, please email Michael Murphy president@capitalcrimewriters.com. The CCW executive needs new blood. We welcome fresh blood to the executive.
Our yearly book exchange also takes place. Bring a couple of mysteries you have read to the meeting, leave them on the table and go home with something new to read.
Time permitting, we will have a round the table discussion of what we are currently reading. Go home with suggestions from CCW members of what to read next, from Ottawa’s most discerning mystery readers
IF YOU ARE COMING TO THIS MEETING, PLEASE REPLY TO Michael Murphy
president@capitalcrimewriters.com so he knows how much pizza to bring.
FINAL REMINDER: Entries for the “Audrey” short story contest close on April 1st. No fooling.
Brenda Chapman interview and gift-card contest
Bitten by Books is running a live, world-wide Q and A chat with Brenda Chapman on Tuesday, March 17 beginning at noon Mountain time. Pre-register and get points for draws – a $25 Amazon gift card or copies of Butterfly Kills. On the day, you just need to check in, and take part if only for a question or comment or two, from anywhere in the world.
http://bittenbybooks.com/author-brenda-chapman-interview-and-amazon-gift-card-contest-317-rsvp-here/
Brenda Chapman book signing
Brenda Chapman will be signing her books Cold Mourning and Butterfly Kills at Perfect Books, 258 Elgin Street (at Somerset West) on Saturday, March 7th from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Come and meet Brenda at one of Ottawa’s remaining independent bookstores! Here’s a link to their site: http://perfectbooks.ca/PB/
CCW MONTHLY MEETING, March 11, 2015
CCW MONTHLY MEETING
March 11, 2015, Honeywell Room, (2nd floor) Ottawa City Hall, 7 pm
Jon Willing & Tony Spears, both of the OTTAWA SUN.
TOPIC: Police beat & Court Reporting
Jon will speak about police reporting & Tony will speak about court reporting
Jon Willing spoke briefly at ‘Capital Mayhem’ (organized by CCW & OPL) last year. That limited his time to provide insights into courtroom procedures and action. He is currently the City Hall reporter for the OTTAWA SUN, but before that was their police beat reporter. Jon did his undergraduate work at the University of Waterloo then obtained his Masters in Journalism from the University of Western Ontario in 2003. Before coming to Ottawa in 2006, he worked at the WOODSTOCK SENTINEL-REVIEW and the GUELPH MERCURY.
Tony Spears is the OTTAWA SUN courts reporter, providing vivid sketches of fraudsters and murders to the delight of a tabloid readership. He’s covered three federal budgets, which caused him to consider taking up murder himself. He has also worked as a general assignment reporter for the OTTAWA SUN & OTTAWA CITIZEN
February 11th, 2014 WORKSHOP
GOAL! MOTIVATION AND CONFLICT: THE FOUNDATION OF COMMERCIAL FICTION
Next meeting, February 11th, 2014, Ottawa City Hall, Honeywell Room.
Madeline McBride will present this workshop. Writers , are your characters’ goals and conflict strong enough to carry the story? This interactive craft workshop will help you describe what your characters want, the stakes, and what’s stopping them from reaching their goals.
In an exercise using a simple template, you’ll identify your hero/heroine’s internal and external goals, motivations, consequences/stakes and conflict (GMCC). Those willing to share will have the opportunity to get feedback on their work-in-progress GMCC’s. The resulting comprehensive GMCC sentences, one for each character can be key elements of pitches
This workshop is based on Debra Dixon’s GMC: Goal, Motivation & Conflict, arguably an essential craft resource for writers of commercial fiction genres such as mysteries, thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy, romance etc.
Madeline McBride (Presenter) is currently President of Ottawa Romance Writers Association, writes as Madelle Morgan. She’s completed six books, although three were for practice as she honed her craft! She won or placed in several writing contests.
Brenda Chapman launches Butterfly Kills
Plan to help Brenda Chapman celebrate the launch of Butterfly Kills on Sunday, February 8th from 2-4 pm at Whispers pub in Westboro. This is the 2nd in the Stonechild and Rouleau police procedural series – Books on Beechwood will be on hand to sell copies. All are welcome.
Butterfly Kills
A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery
By Brenda Chapman
A Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery
By Brenda Chapman
Jacques Rouleau has moved to Kingston to look after his father and take up the position of head of the town’s Criminal Investigations Division. One hot week in late September, university student Leah Sampson is murdered in her apartment.
In another corner of the city, Della Munroe is raped by her husband. At first the crimes appear unrelated, but as Sergeant Rouleau and his new team of officers dig into the women’s pasts, they discover unsettling coincidences. When Kala Stonechild, one of Rouleau’s former officers from Ottawa, suddenly appears in Kingston, Rouleau enlists her to help.
Stonechild isn’t sure if she wants to stay in Kingston, but agrees to help Rouleau in the short-term. While she struggles with trying to decide if she can make a life in this new town, a ghost from her past starts to haunt her.
As the detectives delve deeper into the cases, it seems more questions pop up than answers. Who murdered Leah Sampson? And why does Della Monroe’s name keep showing up in the murder investigation? Both women were hiding secrets that have unleashed a string of violence. Stonechild and Rouleau race to discover the truth before the violence rips more families apart.
Crime does pay
It’s that time of year!
Turn your murderous fantasies about your annoying neighbour or Napoleonic boss into fabulous crime fiction, and submit your story to the Capital Crime Writers Short Story Contest.
The Deadline is April 1, 2015 (we’re not joking). Learn more about contest rules here.
Forensic anthropologist cracks historical Canadian murder cases
On Tuesday, July 15th, 7:00 pm at the Ottawa Public Library on Metcalfe Street, join us for a presentation by world-renowned forensic anthropologist and historical crime author, Dr. Debra Komar, on how she uses her modern forensic skills to turn some of Canada’s most notorious historical crimes upside down.
Along with meticulous archival research for her books, Dr. Komar proved the innocence of those who swung at the end of a nineteenth-century hangman’s rope, creating reverberations in the modern-day courtrooms of the country.
This event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase.
The Lynching of Peter Wheeler is the second of four books planned by Komar about historic crimes in Canada.The first in the series, The Ballad of Jacob Peck, was released in 2013 to critical acclaim.
The Lynching of Peter Wheeler
“Her body lay broken in the sitting room. Blood pooled thick and glutinous around her head. A container of homemade preserves lay half-eaten beside her, a spoon still cradled inside. The bloody fingerprints on the handle beckoned a sickening thought: her assailant had paused to eat the jam after killing her.”
So begins The Lynching of Peter Wheeler, a shocking story about the state-sanctioned lynching of an innocent outsider wrongfully convicted of killing a teenage white girl in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia.
On a cold winter night in 1896, fourteen-year-old Annie Kempton was home alone having a taste of freedom without parents or family around. Sometime before daylight she was wrenched from her bed, a violent struggle ensued, and her throat was slit.
Peter Wheeler was an itinerant labourer of African descent who had finally found a home in small town Bear River. Uneducated and too trusting of authority, Wheeler was bewildered at the reaction when an inquest witness seemingly pointed out a lie in his testimony.
From then on Wheeler was placed atop the suspect list by authorities, where he stayed until swinging dead from the hangman’s rope.
The Lynching of Peter Wheeler tells the tragic and fascinating story of how an isolated Victorian community, with an unsophisticated inquest panel, was influenced by an arrogant detective who fancied himself a media darling.
With conservative mores left traumatized in the wake of a young girl’s vicious murder, and the salacious headlines splashed across the local newspapers in a yellow journalism war, Wheeler never stood a chance.
Debra Komar spent months meticulously researching in libraries, museums, and archives to prove the hapless Peter Wheeler wasn’t the killer, and examines how authorities denied him justice with a rush to judgement.
She uses her formidable forensic skills along with riveting prose to draw readers into an investigative page-turner that leaves you astonished at the outcome.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Debra Komar is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a practicing forensic anthropologist for over twenty years, Komar has investigated human rights violations for the United Nations and Physicians for Human Rights and testified as an expert witness in The Hague and across North America. She is the author of the book Forensic Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Practice for Oxford University Press (2008). Komar’s first historical crime work, The Ballad of Jacob Peck, was released to critical acclaim in 2013.