The Seven Prequels: coming September!

Once upon a time, 

seven outstanding authors of youngCanLit 

Eric Walters

Sigmund Brouwer

Norah McClintock

Shane Peacock

Richard Scrimger

Ted Staunton

John Wilson

came together and formulated a series like no other. 

It is called Seven (the series) 

from Orca Book Publishers, 

and all seven books were simultaneously published in October, 2012.

The seven linked books, which can be read in any order, 

focus on the 7 grandsons of David McLean 

and the 7 journeys his death sends them on.

Between Heaven and Earth by Eric Walters

Close to the Heel by Norah McClintock

Devil's Pass by Sigmund Brouwer

Ink Me by Richard Scrimger

Jump Cut by Ted Staunton

Last Message by Shane Peacock

Lost Cause by John Wilson

77777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777

Two years later, the Seven Sequels were born.

The seven cousins from Seven 

come together at their grandfather's cottage 

and discover evidence of David McLean's mysterious past, 

sending the seven out on a new set of adventures.

Broken Arrow by John Wilson

Coda by Ted Staunton

Double You by Shane Peacock

From the Dead by Norah McClintock

Sleeper by Eric Walters

Tin Soldier by Sigmund Brouwer

The Wolf and Me by Richard Scrimger

777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777

Next month the Seven Prequels arrive!

This time the seven books emphasize the origin stories of the seven grandsons and their relationships with their grandfather and tell...

How It All Began

Weerdest Day Ever 

by Richard Scrimger

Barracuda 

by Sigmund Brouwer

Separated 

by Shane Peacock

Jungle Land 

by Eric Walters

The Missing Skull 

by John Wilson

Slide 

by Norah McClintock

Speed 

by Ted Staunton

Look for the books on September 20 2016 

and 

enjoy more news and extras (including the Seven teachers' guide) 

at Orca Book Publishers at

www.thesevenprequels.com

Trial by Fire: A Riley Donovan Mystery

by Norah McClintock

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0936-9

231 pp.

Ages 12+

April 2016

Everybody’s hiding something, big or little.  Everybody tells lies, even if they’re little white ones.  Everybody is a potential suspect until they’re eliminated from the list.  Every smile might be hiding black thoughts and even black actions. (pg. 154)

Teen Riley Donovan has already had a complicated life.  Her mother died when Riley was a baby and her father, who travels extensively as a medical docor with an international charity, left her in the care of her sixties rocker grandfather Jimmy Donovan with whom she toured for years.  Upon his death, Riley has moved in with her mother’s sister Ginny, a police detective, with whom she has just relocated to a small town.

Their moving boxes haven’t even been broken down before Riley discovers the barn of their neighbour, Mr. Goran, on fire and the man trapped within.  In critical condition, Mr. Goran is unable to say what happened, though small-town gossip suggests he set the fire himself for the insurance money.  Riley cannot believe that the kind gentleman from Kurdistan who welcomed them so warmly and spoke so lovingly of his farm would be capable of such fraud or destruction.  Though warned by her Aunt Ginny against poking her nose into police business, Riley discovers a small-town community steeped in bitterness and discrimination against Mr. Goran and knows that their neighbour was the victim, not the instigator.  And Riley sets out to prove it.

Though Norah McClintock's better-known mystery series for young people include her Robyn Hunter Mysteries, Chloe and Levesque Mysteries and Mike and Riel series, Riley Donovan is hardly a newcomer to Norah McClintock's repertoire of crime fiction.  This series which includes at least six titles previously published in Australia is now being published in Canada by Orca Book Publishers and Trial by Fire is essentially our introduction to this young sleuth and fortunately there is a follow-up title, From Above, due out in October. (Earlier English titles published by International Masters Publishers include Breaking In, Picking Up the Scent, Framed, The Secret of Golden Acres, Schooled and Web of Lies.)

While not as gritty as some of Norah McClintock’s other mysteries, Trial by Fire is as packed with the plot twists and turns of any of her award-winning crime fiction.  Moreover, setting it in a small-town, rife with familial connections and intolerant attitudes, adds further tension to this first-rate mystery.  As for Riley, she’s a character whose life adventures I hope we’ll continue to share.  Her past has shaped her into a conscientious and compassionate young woman who sees beyond the surface and endeavours to make things right.  What better grounds to establish a teen solver of mysteries?

My Life Before Me: Interview with author Norah McClintock

With my review of Norah McClintock's book My Life Before Me, her contribution to the Secrets series from Orca Book Publishers, posted above, I am pleased to offer a little something extra.  As part of Orca's Secrets Blog tour–in which I'm delighted to be participate!–I have the pleasure of posting a Q & A with Norah McClintock in regards to her amazing book and the writing process.

I'm pleased to post that interview here. Enjoy!

Norah McClintock, author of My Life Before Me

HK:  The plot in My Life Before Me is so intense, mixing a young woman’s search for her past with a murder mystery and racism and the civil rights movement.  What germ of an idea did you focus on as the starting point for the story?

NM:  I once read about a woman who had discovered that her father had attended a lynching along with many other seemingly respectable white people in town. It happened in the 1930s, I think, and, contrary to what one thinks when one hears about lynching, it didn’t happen in the American south. It happened in a northern state. That was the sum total of my initial idea. This bears absolutely no relationship to Cady or her quest. But it was the thing that maybe me wonder about family and knowing: what we think we know versus what really happened; how what happened can change everything in a moment.



HK:  The whole Seven Secrets takes place in 1964.  How did you research this time period to ensure setting authenticity in My Life Before Me?  What was the hardest about writing about a teen for a time period during which you were a very young child?

NM:  I would like to say that I wasn’t even born then, so I had to slog through tons and tons and tons of sources to make sure I was as accurate as possible. That’s certainly true for some members of the group. But I was able to draw on actual life experience. When I was a kid, a cousin several years older than me – about Cady’s age, in fact – lived with us for her high school years. She shared a room with me. So I had a pretty good idea about what 1960s teens were all about. 



HK:  Nellie Bly and the field of journalism are important aspects of My Life Before Me.  Why did you choose to emphasize this in your book?

NM:  I gave Cady my passion. I also gave her my part-time job. I actually did what I describe for a local newspaper.

Cady was adopted once in her past and then given up to an orphanage. She has been rejected by two sets of parents, not just one. So her focus was never going to be on where she came from. She doesn’t care. At least, she doesn’t want to care. When we meet her, she has just been dumped by her boyfriend because of his mother’s prejudice against orphaned girls, who, at that time, were more often than not children who were born to unmarried women – something that was deemed shameful and for which women suffered terrible consequences. So Cady’s focus is on finally taking charge of her life, following her dream, refusing, despite all the odds, to give up until she proves herself – just like Nellie Bly.

HK:  Considering the circumstances with which she has had to endure most of her life, Cady could be justified in harbouring a lot of anger and bitterness.  Yet she accepts most situations with a grain of salt and much wisdom.  How did you keep from embittering her to her life’s realities?

NM:  Well, she is kind of bitter about her boyfriend and his mother and the whole town that she can’t wait to leave. But she’s not a person who is interested in her own past. She is focused firmly on the future and who she wants to be. She can’t wait to get started. But her life experience is not one of being ill-used, abused, or even badly brought-up. The orphanage were she was raised was not a huge institution. It was small, charity-run, not well-financed, but it was home. Cady’s resentment is not directed there, although her restlessness stems from there.



HK:  Co-authoring books can be an odious task as well as fulfilling as authors attempt to work with each other’s strengths and weaknesses.  But writing Secrets, just as with Seven the Series and the Seven Sequels, must be a completely unique writing process as you and six other authors must co-ordinate your works.  What did you find most compelling about this process–you have done it three times now–and what recommendations would you make to other authors who might like to attempt this?

NM:  You have to be willing to go with a premise that is not necessarily your own and prepared to negotiate with other writers to make sure that the story elements you all need are included, where necessary, in the basic proposition of the series. You have to deal with a few curve balls, too. I was thrown a huge one when work started on the Seven prequels, but that’s another story. Coordinating the instigating situation is probably the hardest part. The person I feel sorriest for is the series editor, who had to make sure that nothing in one of the books contradicted anything in the other six, etc. It was a lot of work and sometimes meant that the editor had to negotiate with two writers to come to a compromise. I think maybe sometimes she also issued fiats. The result was always fine.



HK:   I don’t know if Eric Walters is thinking of a set of sequels to the Secrets series but if it happens, I can think of a number of ways to take it.  Cady’s journalism, another crime or mystery, her remaining family,  a possible romance.  Where would you like to take Cady’s story given the chance for a sequel?

NM:  Oh, there are so many possibilities. She’s young. She has drive and ambition, the 1960s, as they are thought about in popular culture (which is not a true reflection of reality, by the way), are just getting started, and change is in the air. 


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Thanks to Orca Book Publisher publicist Melissa Shirley for arranging this Q & A and to author Norah McClintock for sharing with CanLit for LittleCanadians’ readers a glimpse into her writing and her new book My Life Before Me.

My Life Before Me

by Norah McClintock

Orca Book Publishers

978-1459806627

248 pp.

Ages 12+

September 29, 2015

Cady Andrews has dreamed of being a newspaper reporter and when her home, the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls, burns down, the story she is going to pursue is her own.  Just like the other six older girls–Toni, Sara, Betty, Tess, Malou and Dot–from the Home who must set out on their own, Cady is given clues to her identity or heritage.  Though she wants to reject it at first, hopeful of a new and exciting life, totally different than the pathetic one of twice-orphaned Cady Andrews, she takes that single clue–a yellowed newspaper clipping of a photo of the vandalized tombstone of Thomas Jefferson who died in 1948 in Orrenstown, Indiana–as the means to grab the attention of the Toronto newspaper editor who thinks the newspaper office is no place for young women.  

But it’s 1964 and it’s a time of the growing civil rights movement and a time of anger by those who can’t abide change.  Not surprising Cady’s questions in Orrenstown and then in Freemount where the grave is located draw a lot of attention. From the  three old men whom she meets at the diner, one of whom becomes her go-to person for local info, Sheriff Bradley Hicks who keeps popping up, a black youth named Daniel and his mother Lila Jefferson, and Maggie Nearing, who runs the local newspaper and the rooming house where Cady stays, Cady gets everyone gossipping and sometimes answering her questions.  Though she learns that Thomas Jefferson had been imprisoned for killing a white man and died while trying to escape, the story details seem to take on different perspectives depending on with whom she is speaking.  And his status as a war hero seemed to rub some people the wrong way.

What Thomas Jefferson, a black man, has to do with blond, blue-eyed Cady is not readily evident, but as with any crime story, a little bit of digging goes a long way to uncovering a few bones and ultimately some skeletons that many would have preferred left hidden.  In fact, some locals are threatened by Cady’s interest in the story as evident by threats she endures because of her enquiries.  Luckily she’s a determined and clever young woman and follows her single clue from one lead to another, meeting more and more people, and revealing an overwhelming racial discrimination and a story of murder, lies and corruption.  That clue may have been given to her to help find her family, but it’s probably more important in what she learns about herself.

But I promised myself that I would never commit the same sin.  I would never be afraid to do the right thing.  I didn’t want to go through life hating myself or regretting decisions. (pg. 242)

There’s a great reason that Norah McClintock is the queen of YA crime writing and I’m so impressed with the story she was able to create within the premise of the Secrets series and still accommodate a plot involving murder, mystery, and civil rights.  My Life Before Me demonstrates that our lives are more than the total of our own experiences; they are also shaped by experiences before our own births.  That single newspaper clipping clue about a man of no relation to Cady is able to open the doors to her past and her origin, though never obvious or confusing.  She will learn from whence she came, though her birth is neither a happy nor a horrific story.  But the story in which her birth is embedded is greater than her own, because it tells of a society that was hurtful and dishonest and prejudiced, and in 1964 still only starting to change for the better.  Moreover,  Norah McClintock easily places the reader in a different time–a time in which skin colour sadly mattered and justice was not always so.  And yet, readers will be impressed by Cady’s strength of character, regardless of the roadblocks constantly placed in her way, and the way she faced adversity with wisdom and poise.

Never spit into a well you may need to drink from. (pg. 7)

And even though much of the mystery regarding Thomas Jefferson skirts Cady’s own story, she makes it into a story that was important to tell and share, for a good greater than her own need.  I truly hope that Cady will continue to be given voice by  Norah McClintock as I think they both have lots more important ideas and stories to share, whether about being given to the orphanage for a second time or about the new life she makes for herself as a newspaper reporter.  Lots for more stories to be told, I’m sure.

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Something special as part of the Secrets blog tour!

Read my interview with author Norah McClintock about her writing and her new book My Life Before Me in my next post today.

Secrets Blog Tour is coming!

Sh-h-h...  but tell everyone:

Secrets

to be revealed

September 29, 2015

The newest series of seven books, orchestrated by Eric Walters for Orca Book Publishers, is on its way, ready to tell the seven concurrent stories of seven young women raised at the Benevolent Home for Necessitous Girls in the town of Hope, Ontario.  The year is 1964.  When a fire rips through the building, the seven oldest girls–Toni, Sara, Betty, Tess, Malou, Dot and Cady–are each given an envelope with some things, perhaps clues, from their pre-orphanage days.  And therein lie the stories of Secrets.

And if you're the only one who hasn't seen the fantastic notice for the series, here it is:

Starting next Tuesday, blogs across the internet will host the blog tour for the release of Secrets.  I'm pleased to announce that I will be hosting a review of My Life Before Me and a Q & A with the book's author, Norah McClintock.  I was thrilled to be asked and delighted to share the honour with readers of CanLit for LittleCanadians.

Here are the list of books and their stops on the blog tour:

Innocent 
by Eric Walters

Hosted by Lost in a Great Book
Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Shattered Glass
by Teresa Toten

Hosted by Spellbound Book Reviews
Wednesday, September 30, 2015

The Unquiet Past
by Kelley Armstrong

Hosted by Ya Book Shelf
Thursday, October 1, 2015

Stones on a Grave
by Kathy Kacer

Hosted by teenreads
Friday, October 2, 2015

My Life Before Me
by Norah McClintock

Hosted by CanLit for LittleCanadians
Saturday, October 3, 2015

A Big Dose of Lucky
by Marthe Jocelyn

Hosted by Lost in a Great Book
Sunday, October 4, 2015

Small Bones
by Vicki Grant

Hosted by Pop! goes the reader
Monday, October 5, 2015






Mark September 29-October 5 on your calendar and please join me and others in celebrating the release of a series that is sure to get readers (ages 12+) excited about reading, a different era, and the secrets that make for great stories.

The Seven Sequels: They're coming!

The Countdown Begins!

On October 1, 2014, The Seven Sequels, the seven sequels to The Seven Series, will be launching officially.  

When The Seven Series hit the shelves in October of 2012, no one could have anticipated its popularity with young readers.  I saw boys at school who rarely pick up a library book waiting for the return of a particular volume.  I had an intermediate teacher reading an advanced reading copy I had of Ink Me (Richard Scrimger, 2012) and then students relentlessly pestering me about the ETA of the books.  And last year, three of the ten nominees for the Red Maple award of the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading were volumes in The Seven Series!

The Seven Sequels will bring seven new titles from the same seven authors who brought us The Seven Series, with the seven grandsons of adventurer David McLean, newly passed, undertaking new adventures that will take them from Cambridge to Uruguay.

The books are:

• Sleeper by Eric Walters
• Broken Arrow by John Wilson
• Coda by Ted Staunton
• The Wolf and Me by Richard Scrimger
• From the Dead by Norah McClintock
• Tin Soldier by Sigmund Brouwer
• Double You by Shane Peacock

For more about The Seven Sequels, visit www.thesevensequels.com

But listen to this!

Here's something else for readers to get excited about: not only will there be digital editions with the classic paper copies, Orca Book Publishers is offering the unabridged audiobooks (i.e., the entire book is read) of the series! (In fact, it's possible to pre-order the complete Seven Series or Seven Sequels as an audiobook collection.) For audiovisual learners, audiobooks are an amazing way for students who learn best by listening to get into books. Personally, I prefer audiobooks as an alternative to the radio while I drive.

Freebies!

To help promote the upcoming series and the audiobooks, Orca Book Publishers is giving away free audio samples from The Seven Sequels--one each week until October 1, 2014. The first audio sample is Chapter 1 of Eric Walters' Sleeper and can be downloaded here.  New samples can be downloaded at http://www.thesevensequels.com/audio.php each week until the books are out.

Let the anticipation begin!

Look for reviews of the books in The Seven Sequels in the upcoming weeks here at CanLit for LittleCanadians.

A Sea of Sorrows: The Typhus Epidemic Diary of Johanna Leary, Ireland to Canada East, 1847

by Norah McClintock
Scholastic Canada
978-1-4431-0710-5
175 pp.
Ages 9-12
September 2012

Norah McClintock, three-time Arthur Ellis award-winning author for Best Juvenile Crime Book, surprising treats readers with this first foray into historical fiction.  However, this should not be surprising as Norah McClintock graduated with a degree in history from McGill University and shows great skill in bringing the past in Dear Canada's newest title, A Sea of Sorrows, to reside comfortably amongst her more contemporary award-winning volumes.

A Sea of Sorrow follows the story of thirteen-year-old Johanna Leary and her family from the blight-ravaged potato fields of Ireland to Canada in 1847.  Sorrows will plague the Learys, Ma, Da, fourteen-year-old Michael, Johanna and baby Patrick, each step and nautical mile of their journey from the hunger and poverty of their homeland to the farm of Da's brother, Liam, in the New World.  From their long walk to Dublin to catch a steamer for Liverpool and then boarding the sailing ship for Canada, the journey is arduous, sorrowful and forlorn.

Although never recognized at the time, the ships carrying the Learys and other families became known as coffin ships for the rabid spread of cholera and typhus that claimed the lives of young and old alike.  By the time the ship comes into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, Johanna's family has lost little Patrick, and Connor Keenan, a young man who'd disguised himself as a girl to evade arrest for threatening and robbing some landlords, has lost his father, sister Colleen, and brother Kevin.  But arriving in Canada does not lead to landing and disembarking in Canada, as the countless line of ships anchored in the harbour indicate.  Those who are deemed ill, including Ma and Mrs. Keenan, are sent to the hospital on Grosse Isle.  The others must remain on the ship in quarantine to contain the spread of the disease.  Not surprising that during their days in quarantine, without fresh food or water, and waiting for medical inspection, even more people fall ill.

Following ten days in quarantine, only Da, Michael and Johanna with Connor and his little brother Daniel, are sent by steamer to Montreal. Again, the sorrows of separation and loss overtake the joys of officially arriving in Canada, as Da, who is ill, is taken away to the immigrant sheds, and Johanna and Daniel are taken with all the girls and youngest boys to an orphanage to be cared for by nuns.

And so, for the Learys, their new life in Canada alongside Uncle Liam has dissolved with each death and separation, just as it did for so many who travelled from Ireland at that time.  The mass exodus contributed to the horrific conditions on board the ships, which in turn led to illness and death.  Unfairly, the Irish immigrants were seen as bringing disease with them and became a spectacle and deemed worthy of prejudice and discrimination from the Canadians.  Even their starvation was twisted to be indicative of laziness by some.

A Sea of Sorrows is not a happy story, although Norah McClintock's epilogue offers some tidbits of happiness for some characters. But, it is a dramatic glimpse into the ghastly situations many Irish immigrants experienced circa 1847, leaving one horrific situation of poverty, starvation and discrimination for another that offered a glimmer of hope but within similar circumstances.  And Norah McClintock never sugar-coats Johanna's accounts, just as the girl would not have been able to do so; there was no sweetness to spare for her tale.  As rotten as the potatoes they fled, many of the Learys' lives festered along with numerous of their countrymen, with only the occasional murphy or Leary able to survive, albeit scarred.

A powerful telling of a historic tragedy. 

Guilty

by Norah McClintock

Orca Book Publishers

978-1554699896

223 pp.

Ages 12-15

2012

Reviewed from ebook

978-1554699926

There's usually no single truth because every story varies with the perspective.  So too with crimes.  And in Norah McClintock's Guilty, two young people, Finn and Lila, see two crimes from two different perspectives.  The first crime, ten years earlier, had Lila's father, Louis Ouimette, accepting a guilty plea for the murder of Finn's mother.  Now, only three days after Louis Ouimette's release from prison, Finn's step-mom Tracie is shot, and Finn's dad shoots Louis in self-defense.

While Lila tries to deal with the loss of her father and the logistics of being alone and returning to live with her aunt in Boston, she tries to reconcile her confusion about the events that took her father's life.  Her dad had always told her that he hadn't killed Mrs. Newsome but the stolen goods had been found in his apartment, so he took a plea to get out of prison faster to be with his daughter.  But what was he doing at the Newsome's when he'd vowed to be turning everything around for her?

Meanwhile, Finn is helping his father cope with the loss of his second wife (even if Finn couldn't stand her): going to the police station, helping with funeral arrangements, tiding up Tracie's wardrobe.  But Finn can't help but be reminded of his mother's murder.  He'd only been seven but finding her body when he and his dad had returned from an evening out at his dad's club had been traumatic.

When Lila goes to the police station to enlist the help of Detective Sanders, she meets Finn who shares with her his rage at the man who killed his mother and how his dad had killed that man, unaware that he is speaking about Lila's father.  That meeting is but the first that bring Lila and Finn together as she pursues information from the police files, from a prison tutor and from old work mates at Mr. Newsome's club, as well as discretely from Finn, who begins to reconsider what he knows about both crimes. 

Guilty is a perfect example of why Norah McClintock is the queen of Canadian YA crime fiction, having won the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction at least five times.  In Guilty, the reader knows that there are major gaps in the police reports about the crimes from the onset, with Finn claiming to be a witness when the reader can tell the limits of his observations.  And with Lila delving into the details of both crimes, using only the resources most people could access (e.g., internet, library, newspapers, interviews, etc.), her pursuit is reasonable albeit determined.  She is not just looking for the answer to, "Who-dun-it?" but also to "Why?" and "How?," making the mystery far more complicated to unravel.  Guilty is great plot-driven crime novel that doesn't sacrifice its fine characters for want of a better story.  With both Finn and Lila coming at the crimes from different perspectives, converging at a dramatic life-threatening climax, Norah McClintock keeps the story fast-paced and intriguing, hopeful for justice (the coveted aim for most readers of crime fiction) and even peace of mind through resolution.

SEVEN: Orca's upcoming series

Today's release of the following book trailer launches the hype for Orca's upcoming series, Seven. Watch the trailer to discover why the books of Seven will be much anticipated.

Uploaded by OrcaBookPublishers on Feb 7, 2012

As obvious as it may seem, the number seven is the key to the whole series.  In his will, adventurer and grandfather David McLean leaves seven letters for his seven teen-aged grandsons: D.J., Steve, Spencer, Bunny (a.k.a. Bernard), Rennie, Jim (a.k.a. Webb) and Adam.  In the letters, each boy is asked to undertake a specific task that will lead him on an adventure to Iceland, Spain, France, Tanzania or somewhere in Canada. Each book will tell the adventure of one grandson.

The series will be authored by seven of Canada's exceptional writers for young people.  As of today, the Seven website lists the following titles and authors as the books in the series:

• Between Heaven and Earth by Eric Walters;
• Lost Cause by John Wilson;
• Jump Cut by Ted Staunton;
• Ink Me by Richard Scrimger;
• Close to the Heel by Norah McClintock;
• Devil's Pass by Sigmund Brouwer;
• The Last Message by Shane Peacock.

Seven, unlike any other series, will have all seven books released on the same day: October 10, 2012.  Judging by the quality of these authors' writing, this is definitely a date to mark on your calendar.  I anticipate much thrilling action, vibrant settings and convincing characters, with each author bringing their own strengths to the books.  Readers can undoubtedly look forward to Richard Scrimger's sense of humour, Norah McClintock's sense of mystery, John Wilson's take on history, Shane Peacock's dark plotting, Eric Walters' character-building challenges, Ted Staunton's musicality, and Sigmund Brouwer's problem-solving strategies to enrich the tales. Definitely a series for all readers.

Details about the books (plus a countdown widget) are available at the Seven website.