A Conversation with Mike Martin

The familiar musty scent of books envelopes you, the room’s warm glow relaxes you, and the walls lined with deep rich mahogany shelves filled with wonderful books are just waiting to whisk you away to a wonderful land called Imagi Nation. Looking around you notice there is one empty seat just waiting for you. A low murmur of amiable voices gently greets your ears and immediately you sense you are among friends. Someone hands you a steaming cup of coffee and you sink down into the supple leather of one of the most comfortable chairs ever created, an Eames chair, with its cushions and arm rests luxuriously padded and its perfectly pitched, firm back. It really is as comfy as it looks.

A hush falls over the room as the velvety tone of a voice as rich as deep dark chocolate and soothing as warm Corinthian leather begins, “Welcome, once again, to the Reading Room, my friends. I see lots of familiar faces and some new ones. We’re glad you could join our conversation.

Please help me welcome our guest today:

Mike Martin was born in Newfoundland on the East Coast of Canada and now lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a long-time freelance writer and his articles and essays have appeared in newspapers, magazines and online across Canada as well as in the United States and New Zealand. He is the author of Change the Things You Can: Dealing with Difficult People and has written a number of short stories that have published in various publications including Canadian Stories and Downhome magazine.

The Walker on the Cape was his first full fiction book and the premiere of the Sgt. Windflower Mystery Series. Other books in the series include The Body on the T, Beneath the Surface, A Twist of Fortune and A Long Ways from Home.

A Long Ways from Home was shortlisted for the 2017 Bony Blithe Light Mystery Award as the best light mystery of the year. A Tangled Web is the newest book in the series.

James: What is your writing dream?

Mike: I think I’m already living it. 10 books in the Sgt. Windflower Mystery series and maybe more to come. I feel blessed.

James: WOW! That’s great to hear, Mike.

What has influenced you the most as a writer?

Mike: Somehow I have this innate need to write. I have to or I’ll go crazy. So I would say that has influenced me the most.

James: Interesting, a lot of writers say the same thing. I know I experience a compulsion to write soon after finishing a book.

What was the hardest part of writing your author bio?

Mike: I hate talking about myself so it’s all hard.

James: Yup, I know what you mean, Mike.

What behind-the-scenes tidbit in your life would probably surprise your readers the most?

Mike: I’m not the mystery fan in the family. That would be my partner who introduced me to all kinds of mysteries

James: If you could have a cuppa with any author, dead or alive, who would you choose and what is the first question you would ask him or her, Mike?

Mike: I don’t think I’d have a question but I’d love to meet JRR Tolkien to thank him for his gifts to the world.

James: Can you name one good writing habit you’ve established? How has it helped your writing?

Mike: Perseverance. The way to write a book is a page at a time. 1,000 words a day for 3 months and then see where you are. Certainly the makings of one.

James: It’s fascinating to note how we are driven to write but then it is only through perseverance that we complete our mission.

Words cannot change reality, but they can change how people perceive reality. Proverbs 15:4 “Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.”

What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?

Mike: I started reading young, before I went to school and I discovered early the magic that words had to take you places, anywhere you wanted to go. Without leaving your chair.

James: Ah, yes, that wonderful land called Imagi Nation. I know it well, my friend.

In your opinion as a writer, Mike, what is the secret of writing well?

Mike: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. And read a lot. More than you write.

James: Well put, Mike. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph.

Do you feel that it’s most important to have A) Strong characters; B) Mind-blowing Plot twists; or C) Epic settings?

Mike: To me, strong characters can overcome the plot and settings. They can live and thrive anywhere.

James: I’ve always found that if I just gave my characters an idea/plot they would take it from there.

If you wonder what a story is about, you are thinking about the plot. Plot often involves the goal someone is trying to reach. For instance, mystery stories and novels are usually plot-driven, meaning the plot is the most important element of the story.

A completely different type of story is the character-driven story. Many "adult" novels tend to be character based. This is often to see how people change due to hardships or expectations.

Lastly, setting is sometimes overlooked in stories, which is a shame, in the hands of a masterful writer setting can have a deep metaphorical impact on the reader and give vital information that the author wishes to convey.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?

Mike: I sometimes give some minor characters the name of someone that I know and I have used family member’s names as well. But you have to be careful. Not everybody appreciates that. On the other hand I have some people who are sure they are the person I based the character on. They are almost always wrong.

James: Human nature is a funny thing, isn’t it, Mike?

"Memoir isn’t the summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It’s not; it’s a deliberate construction." (William Zinsser) If it’s not too personal, Mike, would you please describe one memorable moment in your life that would make a good memoir?

Mike: Far too many to just pick one. But then again, sometimes our memories are just not that interesting to other people.

James: True enough, Mike, but there’s a little voyeur in all of us, isn’t there?

What, in your opinion, are six reasons writers need each other?

Mike: Companionship, friendship, sharing ideas, collaborating (not stealing their ideas), cross-promotion, building a market for readers. If another writer succeeds, I do, too.

James: I like your sentiment, my friend, that, “If another writer succeeds, I do, too.”

What question do you wish that someone would ask about your book, but nobody has? What is your response to that question?

Mike: Almost nobody asks about the social issues that are embedded in the books. The opiate crisis, human trafficking, even suicide.

James: Is there a serious problem with bikers, drugs and human trafficking in Newfoundland? Was there a something specific that compelled you to write about those particular issues?

Mike: There is a serious problem with illegal drugs in Newfoundland, but not unlike many other areas of the country. And the drug trade has been run by outlaw biker gangs forever. In the last number of years there have been skirmishes on the island between rival gangs over control of the business. Human trafficking is a problem all over Atlantic Canada with young girls being brought into the sex trade by the same bikers who run the drug operations. I write about it to highlight these very real problems facing small communities all over the country with almost no resources other than an overworked police to try and deal with it.

James: It is frightening and sad when you realise the magnitude and pervasiveness of this evil. It is even more disheartening when you realise how underfunded and understaffed the thin blue line is. It must be demoralising for the men and women who serve and protect to feel they can but win battles but never the war.

I'm curious. Do you prefer the American spelling of words or the British/Canadian?

Mike: Canadian

James: I used British spelling in my first four International League of Paladins series. They are set in Cornwall, England and Scotland. However, I refuse to be americanised.

Mike: I think I continue to use Canadian/British to bug my American readers.

James: You have a new book coming out May 31st; could you please tell us your inspiration for Safe Harbour and perhaps an excerpt or even the opening sentence?

Mike: The inspiration for Safe Harbour is in the most part my homage to the characters, like Sgt. Windflower, who keep coming to me and telling me their stories. I just write them down. And to the many readers who are on this journey with me. They inspire me every day.

Windflower looked across the lake. Well, he would have if he could have seen anything through the thick blanket of fog that had been sitting on Quidi Vidi Lake for the past seven days. One whole week, he thought. Every day since they had arrived in the port city of St. John’s, it had been the same. Windflower knew the lake was out there because he remembered running around it as his daily exercise when he was temporarily stationed here a few years back.

Sheila Hillier, his wife, knew the lake was out there as well. She’d spent a couple of months doing rehab at the nearby Miller Centre when she was recovering from a serious car accident. If there wasn’t any fog, she could look out her window in May and see the rowers getting their practice in as part of their training for the Royal St. John’s Regatta, an annual event that took place down there in August.

But it was a long way from spring as Windflower gazed out his window at the typical scenery for a January morning. He was the first one up, except for Lady, his collie, and Molly, the cat who never seemed to sleep anyway. She would close her eyes sometimes, but Windflower had never come into a room with her in it when she wasn’t awake and watching him. Windflower liked this time of day when his two children got up. They were Amelia Louise, his soon-to-be two-year-old daughter, and his almost-daughter, Stella, who he and Sheila were fostering.

He liked this house on Forest Road, too. It wasn’t similar to his and Sheila’s in Grand Bank on the southeast coast of Newfoundland, but for a rental it suited them perfectly. It had four bedrooms, two and a half baths and a large backyard for the kids to play in and, if the weather held, for Windflower to barbeque. But the likelihood of the weather staying just simply foggy and damp was not good. There was snow in the forecast and more snow coming after that.

Windflower had been in snowstorms in St. John’s before. It was hard to miss one if you travelled here regularly in the fall, winter or spring. And they didn’t come with a few flakes or a few inches of accumulation. No, snowstorms here often meant feet of snow, sometimes in the double digits, and he had come out some mornings to look for his car, only to find it buried under a virtual mountain of snow. The worst storms came in double or even triple waves. That’s when a storm system would blow through and dump one load of snow and then drift out to the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately for the good people of St. John’s, it would blow back in and repeat the damage—sometimes more than once.

Windflower grabbed his anorak and hat and took Lady out to the backyard. He also brought his smudging kit. Inside were small packets of his four sacred medicines: cedar, sage, sweetgrass and tobacco. There was also an abalone shell, a small box of wooden matches and an eagle feather fan that had been gifted to him by his grandfather many years ago.

He placed small amounts of each medicine in his abalone shell and lit them with a wooden match. Smudging was a way to cleanse his body, mind and spirit, and how he smudged was to use a fan or the feather to pass the smoke from the burning herbs over his head and body. He even sent the smoke under his feet.

He had been taught to pass the smoke over his head to give him clear thoughts and wisdom, over his heart to keep it pure and lead him to wisdom, and under his feet to let him walk a straightforward path in his daily life. He would also allow the smoke to linger around him as long as he could to remember that he was not alone in the world. Then, when he was finished, he would lay the ashes on bare ground so that all negative thoughts and feelings would be absorbed by Mother Earth. Lastly, he would pray. Today his prayers were all about gratitude.

This was a good morning to be grateful, thought Windflower. Amelia Louise was a happy, healthy child. Sheila was happy to be back in school full-time as she pursued her dreams of an MBA. And little Stella, their four-and-a-half-year-old who’d been through a lot in her life, including the recent loss of her mother, was starting to settle into their household. Windflower himself had just started a new assignment as public outreach coordinator with the regional Royal Canadian Mounted Police office in St. John’s.

Sergeant Winston Windflower had been a Mountie for all his working life. After training in Regina, he was posted to British Columbia for two years on highway patrol and another couple of years in Halifax before arriving to the province nine years ago for a posting in Grand Bank. Wow, he thought. That was a long time. Most of his career had been spent in the field and on the ground, so he was a bit apprehensive about this job in St. John’s. It was only for a year, but it was his first desk job. He wondered if he’d become stir-crazy sitting in the office so much. But that was something else he could pray about.

His last prayer was for himself. He didn’t pray for patience. His uncle told him never to pray for patience because Creator would only send more opportunities to practice it. Instead, he prayed for calmness and guidance, and for the wisdom and courage to ask for help. That was something he wasn’t very good at, and something he surely needed.

His prayers and rituals complete, he and Lady went back inside to start the rest of their day. Things happened quickly in his house once everyone was up in the morning. Windflower put on the coffee to get himself ready. Soon, he could hear Amelia Louise calling out and Sheila moving to get her. He went upstairs and saw that Stella was also awake but shy and uncertain about what to do.

Windflower went through her clothes for the day with her. Stella was going to school for the first time, junior kindergarten, and Windflower could tell she was both excited and afraid. He and Sheila had talked to her about it again last night to try to reassure her, and this morning Stella was trying to put on her brave little girl face. But she started to cry as Windflower was leaving, so he went back and held her. Once she stopped crying, he left her to get dressed and went downstairs.

James: I can relate to just following where my characters lead and I like your sentiment that you are on a journey with your readers, my friend.

Thank you, Mike. It has been an interesting and insightful pleasure talking with you. Kíhtwám ka-wápamitin or I will see you again.

Thank you visiting with us today. We know you have many demands on your time and we appreciate you sharing some of your valuable time with us. We sincerely look forward to reading your comments and questions in the space provided below.

Mind how you go everyone and stay safe; until next time, my friends.