D.J. (Dorothy) McIntosh is the former co-editor of the Crime Writers of Canada's newsletter, Fingerprints, and is a Toronto-based writer of novels and short mystery fiction. Her short story "The Hounds of Winter" was nominated for the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story.
Her first novel, The Witch of Babylon, was short-listed for the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award, and won a Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for best unpublished (at the time) novel. The trade paperback version, published in Canada last year, was named "One of Six Enduring Historical Thrillers" by CNN (along with works by Umberto Eco, Wilbur Smith, Kate Mosse, Agatha Christie, and Dan Brown), and honored as one of Amazon.ca’s Best Books of 2011. The hardcover version debuts in the U.S. this week.
The book is set in modern-day New York City and Iraq and follows street-smart Turkish-American art dealer John Madison, who is caught up in the aftermath of the looting of the Baghdad Museum. A race to beat the bad guys to an mysterious ancient Assyrian treasure leads Madison on an international treasure-hunting adventure of lost relics, ancient sorcery, alchemy and the Mesopotamian cult of Ishtar. Author Louise Penny said of the novel, "I think The Witch of Babylon is going to blow everyone’s socks off, and Dorothy McIntosh will establish herself in the pantheon of Canadian writers."
D.J. is on a blog tour this week and stopped by to take some Author R&R (Reference and Research) with In Reference to Murder:
If there were ten rules for writing, one of them almost certainly would be “write what you know.” We authors hear that over and over again. I chose another path because I felt passionate about my subjects. My lack of knowledge didn’t stop me but it did necessitate years of research.
One way to look at a novel is as an extended lie; it is fiction after all! A writer’s job is to convince readers that what is fabricated is real and the more skillfully achieved, the more enjoyable the read. My approach was to pack as many facts and recognizable place names or other elements into the book as possible without diluting the story. That’s why I’d never choose a fictional city for a setting. The liberal use of ‘facts’ though, whether historical or contemporary, means that research has to be comprehensive.
The Witch of Babylon is set in two locations, New York City and Iraq. The challenge with New York was to find unique venues as the city has been written about so well and so often. Not being a New York native compounded the issue. It took three separate visits to find these venues, a welcome task I must say as I love the city so much.
I started by wandering, to the Village, Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen (now called the much less colorful Clinton) and the Lower East side. New York is a bountiful feast for authors because almost everywhere, something – a building, a park, an elevated rail line, a store window – catches our attention. I found a fantastic gothic high rise with terraces and gargoyles sprouting at the roof line, an abandoned steel arch bridge spanning the Harlem River and the Dominican Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer, not as well known as the cathedrals but exquisitely beautiful with remarkable stained glass windows, candle lit chapels and saintly relics. My love of music took me to Kenny’s Castaways, a historic New York music club that nurtured stars like Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith in the early days. These are just a few of the many gems I discovered.
Iraq presented the opposite problem. The Witch is set in 2003 at the advent of the war so it was impossible to visit there. To paint a convincing picture of Baghdad and Mosul in the north, I relied on hundreds of newspaper articles, photos, blogs written by Iraqi civilians, journalists and soldiers and books (notably Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos and William Patrick) detailing the looting and recovery of antiquities from the Iraq Museum. I watched many hours of television war coverage and you-tube videos. One of these taken in real time by a soldier that showed a high wall of sand as it swept toward a military encampment, left an indelible impression. There was a wealth of material to choose from and I’m so grateful to the bloggers, reporters and photojournalists who risked their lives to bring us the story of the war.
The third major research area concerned history. Mesopotamian achievements easily equal those of the Egyptians but surprisingly, little has been recently written about them for the lay reader. My main source was a book: The Might That Was Assyria by H.W. Saggs supplemented by lots of internet searches. Speaking with university professors helped enormously as well. Research turned up many fascinating facts. I had no idea for example, that a Babylonian scholar first posited that the earth revolves around the sun or that, in the Parthian era a rudimentary battery was developed more than a millennium before the modern version, or that the alchemy had its beginnings in perfume making. Learning about the three great Mesopotamian cultures, Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian, was so fascinating it became a pastime I really looked forward to. All three novels – Book 2 and 3 to come – focus on some aspect of Mesopotamian history. So by not following “write what you know” whole new worlds opened up to me.
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