"Inspired by Real Events"

How do you write crime fiction that's inspired by real events, without exploiting those events?

How do you write crime fiction that’s inspired by real events, without exploiting those events?

I’ve been thinking about this an awful lost the past week, as I do press for my White Rock-set crime novel Ocean Drive, as news of White Rock’s recent crime wave continues—a shootout and now two stabbings, one fatal.

A friend linked to a White Rock Facebook group which was upset about my Vancouver Sun profile, “The Dark Side of White Rock.” The gyst of the group’s complaints was that I’d exaggerated White Rock’s dark side (or completely fabricated it). The stabbing happened a day after this post, a grim irony of coincidence which I take no pleasure in, though it proves that crime and White Rock aren’t unknown to each other,

I don’t write roman à clef. No one is based on one actual person or event. Instead, what I try to do is capture the feel a place for me.

With Vancouver in the Wakeland novels, there are very complex feelings of gratitude and outrage and frustration, as well as writing against some of the bad takes of the city—the ‘horrors’ of the Downtown Eastside, the City of Glass, etc. I try to write Vancouver the way I see it.

White Rock is a little different. I don’t have the same love for it, to be honest, but I do have family obligations which bring me out there, and fond memories of the place. My family lived in South Surrey, on the border looking in at this older and more affluent area. Most of the people I knew there have either moved or passed away.

Some authors set themselves up as doyens of their subject matter. The things of which I’d called myself an expert are very few—Vancouver and writing, basically. Both change so fast that you lose out by not approaching them with an attitude of continuous learning.

When Invisible Dead came out, I made a choice not to promote the book in ways that either exalted me as an expert on Canada’s murdered and missing women crisis, or which felt exploitative. That approach probably hurt the book’s sales. But if that’s the reason I’m not writing this from the poolside of my villa, I’m okay with that.

All of which is to say that I look at Ocean Drive as reflecting some of White Rock’s dark side, its harsh divisions between idle rich and grasping poor. The real life violence is deplorable—so, I think, is pretending it doesn’t exist.

---

Reviews for Ocean Drive continue to be stellar, and I’m gratified by the kind words.

The Toronto Star: “One of those fabulously rare literary figures who actually gets better with each successive book."

The BC Review: "Seriously, someone turn this book into a movie."

The Richmond Sentinel: “we highly recommend Ocean Drive by Sam Wiebe, an author who has been called “The best crime writer in Canada” and “A master of the genre.”

Buy a copy now, if you haven't, or pre-order one for its US release in the fall…

---

Also gratifying: Sunset and Jericho has been nominated for the Peter Robinson Award for Best Crime Novel, by the Crime Writers of Canada. I got to do one event with Mr Robinson before he passed, and he was both gracious and very smart.

EVENTS:

Saturday May 4th I’ll be at the White Rock library from 2-4 for a reading and signing.

Wednesday May 8th is the book launch for both Ocean Drive and A Lonesome Place for Dying. 7pm at the Irish Heather.

May 16th at Western Sky Books in Port Coquitlam, I’ll be in conversation with AJ Devlin and JT Siemens, two stellar Lower Mainland writers.

My article on Highlander: the Series is up on Montecristo now. No TV show made more varied use of the Lower Mainland for settings.

Speaking of Montecristo, with Shogun’s popularity, the James Clavell article keeps getting shared. I haven’t watched the show yet, but I think people have overstated how much more culturally accurate the show is than the book—though I’m sure it gets stuff wrong, the theme of ‘British guy arrives in Japan thinking he’s civilized, only to realize Japanese culture is both complex and worthy of respect” comes directly from the novel. (People will go a long way to credit everyone but the writer for the stuff they like).

I hope Clavell’s film THE BITTER AND THE SWEET, aka SAVAGE JUSTICE, finally gets a release. I’m sure it’s not great cinema, but the premise—a Japanese woman coming to Vancouver for revenge against the people who interred her father—is pretty amazing.

Lastly, I’m on Letterboxd now: https://letterboxd.com/HellandGone . I don’t love the reviews (the jokey upvoted ones are always unfunny and always trash), but it’s the best way to keep track of which Dick Powell film noir, poliziotteschi and spaghetti westerns I’ve seen.