Tag Archives: murder

Burnaby Burning Signing Event

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Folks,

I will be signing a very limited number of copies of Burnaby Burning (http://www.amazon.com/Burnaby-Burning-Gordon-McFadden/dp/1480144452), my breakout novel.

Jan’s Paperbacks (https://www.facebook.com/janspaperbacks http://www.janspaperbacks.com/) is hosting the event on June 22 from 1pm to 4pm.  Fellow author Mark Shaff will be there signing his latest release as well.  See http://www.janspaperbacks.com/event/mark-shaff-and-gordon-mcfadden-book-signing for more details. Jan’s paperbacks is located at 18095 SW Tualatin Valley Highway, in Aloha, OR. ( http://mapq.st/11JrXup ).

Please come out, say “Hi” and check out a copy of Burnaby Burning.

Thanks,

Gord

The scene of the crime – an attempted murder!! I visitied it yesterday.

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Well, not really.  It is the scene of a crime in a book I am writing.  Yesterday I was in Sacramento for a business meeting.  At the end of the day, I headed back to SMF. The best route to the airport took me within a couple of miles of a scene that I have written where a bad guy gets chased down on his motorcycle and wipes out on a Union Pacific railway crossing. A train – with fortuitous timing – ambles along and runs him over, severing a leg and destroying his motorcycle.

The cool thing about yesterday was that, when doing research for the book, I had picked the location by looking at a map of Sacramento and finding a likely location – train crossing in an industrial area but not too far from the main police station, and then used Google Earth to get the best feel for the area I could. I did not really expect the actually be able to visit the location.  But luck was with me.

The actual road – Elder Creek Road – is wider and more traveled than I expected, and the tracks cross the road further from the intersection of Power Inn Rd.  Neither of these effect the story much.  Interestingly, there is only a curb on the south side of Elder Creek, but not the north side. I need to rewrite a little.  Also, there is an Army Depot a little further along Elder Creek.  Maybe some soldiers can be running over to help…..

New Book – First chapter written

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Well, it has been written for the first time.  The novel has, so far, no working title.  The file Scrivener directory is DrugDeath.scriv, but that will change.  Probably.

This novel will be simpler in its construct.  There will be no time travel, and more action.  Mark from loop vacation is introduced as a younger, more bad ass self.  He is also less experienced and, who knows, may make a few mistakes in his desire to save his younger brother.

The novel takes place in Vancouver, BC.  I lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, and I love the city.  Two of my kids were born there. Ironically, due to a hurriedly added line in Loop Vacation, this story takes place after I moved from Canada to the US.  Kinda funny. It is actually fun to reconstruct some of the streets in my mind as I write the story.  It has been a dozen years since I lived there, and I find I have to check a map to verify locations.

And then there is the question of technology.  In early 2006, were we texting like crazy like we are now?  Were there traffic cams?  I am sure there were in general, but in Vancouver, at the intersection of Kingsway and Knight, was there a red light cam in 2006?  Well, probably not since there is not one there now, but you get the idea.  This have changed in 6 years; enough that I have to watch it.  No 3G smart phones then, for sure.

Also, just for fun, I have given my protagonist a white 1993 Honda Civic DX hachback with a stick.  This is almost the same car I owned while I lived in Vancouver until I moved to the US and they (the US immigration dudes) told me I could not take the car with me.  I loved that car.  The kids that owned it before me dropped the engine out of an Acura GS into it.  Fun. Fun car in a fun city.

Hopefully, no one will ever call this story fun.

Cause it ain’t.  It is a harrowing dash for life, with a motorcycle gain in hot pursuit, determined to kill enough people to keep the lot of them out of prison.  And the only way out is completely unthinkable.

Next Book

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Ok – So I don’t have a working title yet.  But I just finished the plot definition, character outline and most of the location descriptions for the book.  This is a prequel to Loop Vacation  in that it introduces a younger, more intense Mark.  He helps his brother out of a pretty bad jam involving an infamous bad ass MC.  The story is set in Vancouver, BC for the most part.  Why Vancouver/ I lived there for many years and love the city.  When I was there, i wrote a short story closely related to what this book will be. I liked the idea of contracting the natural slendor of the city to the darkness of the criminal element.  That short story was set in Vancouver, and Richmond and New Westminster and (most ironically), Hope, BC.  I saw no real reason to move the story somewhere else.  The short story was no more than the middle three chapters of this book.

For the structure of the book, I have built it around my older brother’s description of how plots should be laid out. See http://www.tonymcfadden.net/?page_id=826 .  Although I am clearly better looking and more fun than my older bro, he has published more books than me, and I respect his writing.  So I decided to use the outline he has described.  I thought it might feel a bit like writing to a formula.  But in fact, it does not.  It is more like organizing things a little better.  But the writing is still all mine, for good or bad.  The pinch points represent my characters.  In the second pinch point, for example, a really tough biker – tough as in a logger in BC by trade – is going to ride his Dyno to a small town in Idaho for the sole purpose of burning down the house of the parents of the protagonist.  Are they inside?  We will have to see.

This book, and one other, will join Loop Vacation in the ebook market before Christmas rolls round again.  With luck. So, I need to get work.  Time to write the hook.  In the next 4000 words or so that I write, Eric Multon, younger brother of the now famous Mark Multon, is going to witness a hit by a couple members of a motor cycle club, in Vancouver at night…

It was a dark and rainy night…..

Oh, and Loop Vacation is available from Amazon:

(Paperback)    http://www.amazon.com/Loop-Vacation-Gordon-McFadden/dp/1470178230/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334417531&sr=8-1

(EBook) http://www.amazon.com/Loop-Vacation-ebook/dp/B007GEYENM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334417647&sr=8-2

Gord