Halifax Explosion

Paperback Release Day in Canada!

Bookstores have already been receiving their stock and sneak peeks of books on the shelves have been popping up in my feeds, and today is the official paperback release day of WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT in Canada!

I’m beyond pleased at the Canadian response to this book! Check out your local Chapters/Indigo, your favourite indie bookshop, or Amazon. Fantastic news… it’s also been picked up by Costco Canada! You can find links by visiting the HarperCollins Canada site here.

If you happen to see a copy on your shopping travels, snap a pic and send it to me with the location through my socials – either tag me or send it in a DM. I’ll feature your snap in my stories!

Thanks for celebrating with me, and happy reading!

Celebrate the paperback release with me at the Halifax Public Library!

Tomorrow is the “official” release date for the Canadian paperback of WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT, and so if you’re in the Halifax area, I’d love for you to join me and my fellow author B.R. Myers for a fun evening tomorrow night! I’ll do a reading from the book, and then we’ll sit for a chat about the book, my process in writing it, and maybe even some random things about both of us. Bookmark on Spring Garden is the bookseller for the evening, and I will be around to sign your copy!

It all happens at 7 p.m. at the Central Library on Spring Garden – I hope to see you there!

 

Paperback Release Day – US and UK!

Huzzah! It’s the first of August which means it’s release day for the paperback of WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT in the US and UK!

Check your local bookseller in the US and if it’s not on the shelf, you can have it ordered in! Are you more into libraries? Request it at your local branch! Libraries have limited budgets, but reader requests help. And if you prefer to shop at an indie bookshop, check out Bookshop.org and support indies.

In the UK, head on over to my publisher’s page at One More Chapter and click on the drop down for retailers – you’ll get a lovely list of places where you can find it.

If you happen to be out and about (imagine me saying that in my best Canadian accent!), and you spy a copy of WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT, snap a pic and send it to me letting me know where you saw it – you can tag me on socials or send it in a dm – and I’ll post it to my stories!

 

Information Wanted – The Halifax Explosion

I’m a bit late posting my blog on this, as life got a little crazy and I decided that I needed to add my first bout of Covid to the mix (4 days after my latest vaccination. UGH!). However I really wanted to highlight the 106th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, which is the setting of my next book, WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT.
I learned so much while researching this event that happened in Halifax, NS – a place I now call home. Fun fact: despite growing up only a province away, I didn’t learn about the explosion until 12th grade, and I learned about it in a literature class, not history! In Atlantic Lit we read BAROMETER RISING by Hugh McLennan. I LOVED it and through the characters learned about this massive tragedy in Canadian history – the largest manmade explosion until the US dropped the atom bomb on Japan.
It was a natural choice for me to choose this period in Halifax history as the time setting for my book. As I created characters who navigated this tragedy, I also looked for real events and information I could use in developing my story. And while searching for bits and pieces about babies and orphans, I came across this ad from the Evening Post on December 18. The word baby is highlighted, as that was a search term I used at Newspapers.com (what a fabulous research tool!)
Granted, I took a small liberty and used the date of December 23 when one of my characters spies this ad in the paper. But think of it: this child is in the hospital, no one knows her name or who were parents are or where she came from. It is now twelve days after the explosion and no one has come to claim her. Was she orphaned? Separated from her parents? Is someone trying to find her?
The papers were full of these kinds of advertisements and requests for information, and reading through them was, I think, my favorite part of my research process. WHEN THE WORLD FELL SILENT will hit shelves in August 2024… I can’t wait for you all to read it!

From the Research Files: Bluebirds

One of the things I love about writing historical fiction is all the neat research I get to do. A ton of it never makes it even close to the story, but it does help me immerse myself in the period and the lives of my characters.

Nursing Sisters, Mowat, McNichol, and Guilbride, First World War.

(Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3395710)

While I still wait for all the official stuff with my first historical release, I thought I’d give a little BTS glimpse into one of my research topics: Canadian Bluebirds.

Bluebirds were WW1 Nursing Sisters and so named because of their uniform – generally a blue dress with a white apron and the somewhat cumbersome nursing veil… can you imagine having to wear something like this all day? (I’m thinking they must have itched like crazy!) They served both overseas and at home (for a great story featuring a war nurse at the front, check out BLUEBIRD by Genevieve Graham). My main character, Nora Crowell, did her training at the Victoria General in Halifax, and when the story opens in the fall of 1917, she’s serving at Camp Hill Hospital – a brand new hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, that cared for convalescing soldiers returning home from the front.

In researching nursing at home, I came across some stories of real women who fulfilled this role, and I gave a few of them walk-on roles during the time of the Halifax Explosion. One is Jessie Smiley. Jessie also trained at the VG and served overseas in England. At the time of the explosion, she was at Camp Hill Hospital. Because she’d worked with Ear, Nose, and Throat patients in England, she was well-suited for treating the facial injuries suffered by so many explosion victims. Another walk-on role is Matron Cotton. I took some liberties here; Dorothy Cotton actually did not return to serve at Camp Hill until 1918, after a varied and incredibly distinguished service during the war – including being in Petrograd and witnessing the revolution.

Jessie Smiley, VG School of Nursing 1915, VG Nursing Archives

Not to be forgotten are the VADs – Voluntary Aid Detachment workers. These first-aid trained women worked at the hospital fulfilling more menial roles such as making beds, seeing to soldiers’ comforts, serving meals. The line almost seems a little blurred with the nurses at times as nurses were often not permitted to perform many tasks. But as the saying goes, necessity breeds invention. “Before the explosion, nurses could only do what doctors said they could do. After the explosion, the need was so great, they were doing things they had never done before, like removing glass, and suturing wounds. Nurses got together and said, ‘We can do more.’” (Gloria Stephens, VG Nursing Archives) Nora, my main character, has a fair hand at suturing – something she’s never done outside of her training before.

To be a nursing sister, a woman had to be single, between the ages of 21 and 38, a British subject (which Canadians were) and trained at a qualified nursing school. And while they carried the title “Sister,” they were not associated with any religious order. Canada was also the only country to give the nursing sisters a rank; they held the rank of lieutenant.

If a woman married, she was required to resign her commission. Let’s just say that that policy led to secrets sometimes being kept… including a secret in my story.

 

 

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