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Local thriller writer to divulge her secrets

North Vancouver award-winning author Jackie Bateman is kicking off a new series at the North Vancouver City Library May 11, intended to offer North Shore residents a unique opportunity to engage with some of the community’s finest wielders of the pen
Local thriller writer to divulge her secrets

North Vancouver award-winning author Jackie Bateman is kicking off a new series at the North Vancouver City Library May 11, intended to offer North Shore residents a unique opportunity to engage with some of the community’s finest wielders of the pen and take steps toward improving their own writing skills.

The Writing with Writers Series is a joint presentation of the library and the North Shore Writers’ Association and Bateman’s inaugural presentation is entitled Chills & Bellyaches: Writing Thrillers, Mysteries and Crime.

“One of the things I’ll be talking about at the workshop is that new writers of thriller, crime and mysteries have to be so leading edge at the moment,” says Bateman. “The big names that people know of, like Ian Rankin, Stephen King or Lee Child, have built their reputations over many years. As a new author, you need to compete with the most current, praised, most innovative, prize-winning debut novels – that’s what editors are buying today. It’s a very competitive market out there. So we’ll be talking a little about that – how the genre’s changed and merged and fluctuated over the years. We must all be leading edge – easy, right?”

Bateman has so far released the first two books in The Lizzy Trilogy, 2011’s Nondescript Rambunctious, which won a Canadian First Book competition, and 2014’s Savour, continuing the dark story of Lizzy and her obsessive nemesis Oliver. The third and final literary thriller in the series is set for release in spring 2017 and all three novels have been optioned by Vancouver-based Calypso 35 Films for a potentially three-season television series. Jeff Murphy, who won a Best Writer Award at the 2014 Welsh BAFTAs for TV mini-series Hinterland, has come on board to write the screenplay.

“I’m really thrilled to have him writing it, he’ll be brilliant,” says Bateman.

With the writing of the trilogy complete, Bateman is currently plugging away on two other manuscripts.

“I’ve been working on a young adult book, which is not quite done,” she laughs, “it’s not quite ready for the world, and that’s what I’ve been working on this past year.”

She describes the novel as a gritty young adult book set in council estate Scotland. “It’s a very sort of present day, salt of the earth teenage angst book. I’m hoping that it will be finished by the end of the year,” she says.

Bateman’s second project is set in 1970s Kenya where she grew up. “It’s quite dark and based on the lives of two very different women,” she says. Bateman grew up in Africa, mainly Kenya and Nigeria, and spent time in London and Edinburgh before moving to the Lower Mainland in 2003.

In addition to working on her own projects, teaching writing has been another strong focus as of late. For the last year she has been volunteering with the Writers’ Exchange, a Vancouver-based non-profit that works to get inner city children excited about reading and writing.

“I’ve really been enjoying that,” she says, adding she’s therefore looking forward to the opportunity provided by the new North Shore Writing with Writers Series to connect with a whole other group of community members and likewise help them discover their own potential and hone their craft.

While she’ll run through the various facets of writing a thriller, mystery or crime novel, as well as topics like writing dialogue, creating living, breathing characters, as well as setting and context, the event will be very casual and collaborative in nature and those in attendance will be prompted to do some writing of their own. “We’re going to get creative. We’re going to read and we’re going to do a bit of writing together, a lot of thinking. People can ask questions. It’s going to be a casual open discussion about the writing process,” she says, adding there will be wine.

Bateman encourages community members of all backgrounds to attend, from beginners to accomplished writers. “It’s nice for writers to get together in an environment like that because writers, we’re just alone in our thoughts for hours and days. If you didn’t love it, you wouldn’t really do it. I think it’s nice for especially new writers to get together with other people and talk about the process and perhaps hopefully come out learning something new,” she says.

Writing with Writers: An evening with Jackie Bateman, Wednesday, May 11, 7- 8:30 p.m. at the North Vancouver City Library. Free. nvcl.ca