Lou Allin's Blog
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Jun.13.2013
The story of the miller’s daughter and her photo album in my earlier blog (“Aunt Belle’s Hundred-and-Four-Year-Old Secret”) did not end in Dinorwic, Ontario, in 1909 when a heady summer in the remote...
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Mar.22.2013
Author Leanne Dyck is lucky (and brave) enough to live on sunny Mayne Island off the coast of British Columbia. She is a women’s fiction author whose writing has appeared in Island Writer, Kaleidoscope and Canadian Stories literary journals. From 2006 to 2009 she self-published paperbacks, ebooks...
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Mar.09.2013
In 1909 in a miller’s family in Arva, Ontario, near London, a young woman fell ill. What better place for fresh air and lighter duties than her uncle’s in Dinorwic, Ontario? Charles Self ran a boarding house for loggers in...
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Feb.22.2013
“Abandoning” a series is a harsh word. It sounds like an author tucked the books into a heated drop at a foundling hospital, or a love affair petered out. Maybe sales fell into the abyss.
...
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Feb.13.2013
In 1987 I realized that my parents were mortal. Northern Ontario was a long way from Pt. Charlotte, Florida. Now my mother faced advanced bowel cancer, an operation, and chemo at 74. “Should I come down?” I’d say in our call...
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Jan.27.2013
There’s a hierarchy, and it’s not a pretty one. I was “lucky” to have been diagnosed eleven years ago with breast cancer at an early stage. A mastectomy, three months of chemo, no side effects, plenty of energy and only a 13...
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Dec.30.2012
One of the cardinal sins for beginning a novel is starting with the weather, about as bad as waking up in the morning. Yet living in the North of the North of the North, how could I ignore what defines our lives? Northern...
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Dec.11.2012
On the Queen’s birthday celebration in May 1896, an overloaded trolley car collapsed a bridge, killing over fifty people in British Columbia’s capital. Victoria has a rich history beginning with the HBC, the Royal Navy, and a few gold...
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Nov.27.2012
The Next Big Thing Interview:
I was tapped by Barbara Fradkin, one of Canada’s most decorated mystery novelists, to join this blog tag. Check out her entry at
www.typem4murder.blogspot.ca/ Scroll down to Nov. 21.
As for my answers,
1. What is your working title of your book?...
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Nov.02.2012
One father was all I needed. I had five mothers and loved each one in different ways. They were born between 1890 and 1925. The year I came along, the oldest was fifty five and the youngest was eighteen.
My birth...
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Sep.26.2012
What a fool I was in Bush Poodles are Murder to give sleuth Belle Palmer’s friend a breast cancer “scare.” Nothing serious. Not the real thing. A false positive mammogram that led to a perfectly fine ultrasound. The...
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Aug.08.2012
I got a special 67th birthday gift, costing a few dollars but beyond priceless. A picture of my grandfather, George Allin. I had never seen his image. He killed himself in 1918. It wasn’t something that I felt comfortable about talking with my father, who always checked our gas stove dials...
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Jun.20.2012
I admit to wearing make-up in my distant youth, not very much because I am essentially lazy. Sending my memory back to college and the dating game from 1963 to 1980, I limited myself to a powdered nose and lipstick. For fancy...
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May.23.2012
A wandering scholar, I’ve lived many places. The absolute worst was 1915 Pershing Avenue, named for the general but pronounced perISHing.
It was 1975 and I was in desperate need of a job. Universities had hired every professor they would need until the year 2000!...
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Apr.28.2012
Buddies since we both won the War of 1812! I was honoured to be asked by seven American author friends to join their blog tour, and what a great time it’s been. The mystery-crime writing community has always been amazingly generous, offering help and promotion and moral support.
...
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About Lou
A dual citizen of the US and Canada, Lou Allin is the author of the Belle Palmer series, starting with Northern Winters are Murder and ending with Memories are Murder. The novels take place in Sudbury, Ontario, the Nickel Capital of the World. She also wrote...
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