I love learning about the author’s inspiration for a cover, the characters and even the setting of the novel. So let’s give a hearty welcome to Ryan Lawrence.
Crafting the Canadian Landscape of Vindictive
It is often said to write what you know. Sometimes, there is a strong desire to write about where you know, too—so to speak.
From the beginning, before laying a finger on my keyboard, I knew my novel, Vindictive, would take place in Canada. While I planned to set scenes in several well-known Canadian locales, my primary objective was to create a totally original city to position the bulk of the story within.
The desire was present, the innovative passion robust, but truthfully, the idea to create this city did not burst from my noggin like Athena from Zeus’s head, dynamic and unexpected. Instead, it was inspired by Mark Frost and David Lynch’s quirky, totally original town of Twin Peaks. The notion that I could craft a place wholly from my imagination and fill it with sexy, crazy, and dramatic—okay, melodramatic characters greatly appealed to me.
Growing up in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, I read many books set in non-Canadian cities. From Charles Dickens’s London to James Baldwin’s Paris to Anne Rice’s New Orleans to countless books set in New York. I rarely got taken to a Canadian landscape. If I did, these novels usually took place in rural prairies, small-town Northern Ontario or the bucolic countryside and fishing villages of Maritime provinces.
While these stories were entertaining, their settings authentic to many Canadian voices and experiences, I wanted something to reflect a landscape nearer to my personal urban upbringing. I yearned to read stories where a location I was more familiar with was brought to the forefront. I had little in common with the depression-era backdrop of Hugh Garner’s Toronto-set Cabbagetown—a high-school reading requirement.
In University, I complained to anyone who would listen, professors and fellow students alike, that I was desperate to read something modern set in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. Something with nary a cliff or prairie thistle to be found.
Thanks to suggestions from amazing people, I discovered Tanya Huff and Brad Fraser. These are two Canadian writers who set their work in Toronto, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta, respectively. The contemporary, urban feel of these novels blew my mind. The use of modern locales, familiar cultural settings, and trendy establishments in Huff’s Blood Books series and in Fraser’s play Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love was refreshing. It was a different Canadian flavour, a welcome change, and one that resonated with me. This was the engaging fiction I was looking for.
When the time came for me to breathe life into Vindictive, I wanted my readers to feel the same connection to contemporary urban Canada I felt reading these works.
Crafting a Canadian setting for Vindictive was not only important to me as a Canadian writer, born and bred, but it was pivotal to the authenticity of the book. The reader had to know unequivocally that this book possessed a modern but still accessible Canadian self-identity.
Vindictive takes place primarily in the fictional city of Fairporte, Ontario, Canada. As I write in the novel, Fairporte is a city “very much like Montreal, but one drenched in its own unique blend of French and English culture.” As a Canadian, it was important to me to acknowledge the unique duality of our French and English cultures. Due to this, the novel’s text encompasses both English and Quebecois dialogue (with English translation following). If anything aside from Poutine, Nanaimo bars, and Jimbo the Drag Queen reflects the uniqueness of the Canadian identity, it is our official bilingualism.
A small, playful element of language I feature in Vindictive is something others might consider a cultural stereotype. Still, that label and opinion do not negate fact: it is a real thing. “Eh” is a confirmational, a word attached at the end of sentences to confirm if something is a truth, and it is peppered throughout my novel. Specific characters have this colloquial expression tagged at the end of certain statements because I hear it in conversation regularly. Many do not even realize they speak it. I know I say it, so I wanted to incorporate it within my story. It may seem silly, but I find its use comforting, a familiar element of the Canadian identity, of home, however cliché it may seem.
Vindictive takes the reader on a journey across Canada. From the snowy landscape of British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley to the student hub of downtown Montreal. From Toronto’s upscale residential neighbourhood “The Bridle Path” to the LGBTQ-oriented corner of Church and Wellesley. Danger, adventure, and romance flow in abundance across this diverse Canadian terrain, converging at the nucleus that is the enigmatic city of Fairporte.
Vindictive states that: “No form of revenge is petty; all revenge is reasonable.” Setting a novel entirely in Canada is also reasonable—and quite entertaining!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Ryan…and kudos on a fantastic cover!
Vindictive by Ryan Lawrence
GENRE: Thriller
BLURB
The best revenge is revenge. Getting it is all that matters.
Jules Cartell has it all: wealth; beauty; a handsome, loving husband; a partnership in her father’s law firm; and the top executive position at one of Canada’s leading corporations, Cartell Worldwide. Aside from her secret, problematic desire for the married owner of the internationally renowned Château Bergé, Jules believes she and her life are pretty perfect. But the discovery of an unforgivable crime perpetrated against her family by her husband, Phillip, years before the two met sets Jules down the path of revenge. There is no option for forgiveness. Phillip has to pay. An eye for an eye.
It is said that when seeking revenge, you should dig two graves. Someone from Jules’s past, someone aggrieved by her actions, seeks vengeance for themselves. This is an enemy without compassion, without morality, without mercy. An enemy who will accept no restitution short of Jules’s death.
In the city of Fairporte, ON, secrets, lies, and betrayal can be found everywhere. As adversaries close in, will Jules get revenge before her past catches up with her? Unexpected allies may be instrumental to her success. They may also be the key to her very survival.
EXCERPT
She cried for Ethan and for the bright-eyed girl she could no longer be. Jules wanted to run away from this place of death. She also wanted to run away from her selfish choice to ensure her survival, her future. Jules wished all of it had never happened. But it did happen, and she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.
“Ethan! No! Ethan!”
Startled, Jules quickly turned and looked in the direction of the shrieking bellow. It was William, tearing down the woods, screaming his brother’s name over and over again.
Having discovered his charges missing from the house, William had reluctantly gone about searching for them outside. Sadly, it was not soon enough to intervene and prevent the devastating incident.
When William finally reached the clearing, he stopped at the edge of the lake and looked out upon the scene of broken ice and still water. With clenched fists, he fell to his knees and screamed in anguish. His brother was dead and gone, swallowed whole by the cold, murky depths.
Angrily turning towards Jules, William showered upon her a rage so pure, so palpable it might as well have been a physical smack across her face. His glare was full of hate. And so were his words.
“Why didn’t you help him, you fucking bitch?! You did nothing! You let him drown!”
Jules stood as immobile as a stone and ate her emotions, swallowing all her sadness, guilt, and self-reproach. She owned the choice she had made. The only one possible. The correct choice. She understood William’s pain, but she was well aware of his vile nature.
Jules had her suspicions of what might diffuse her attacker: using his own words—his ignorance and prejudice—against him. Maybe then he would leave her alone. She had only done what was necessary. All she could do.
And who was he to blame her anyway? Was he there when it happened? No! He had been too busy playing video games to look after them, too busy to save his brother, too busy to have prevented all of this in the first place.
Be mean, Jules silently told herself. Act like a grown-up.
With unwavering resolve, staring William down with cold, hard eyes, Jules scoffed, “What the hell could I have done? I’m just a girl. Right?”
AUTHOR Bio and Links
Ryan Lawrence was born and raised in Guelph, Ontario. He is a 2000 graduate of The University of Guelph in English. Ryan has worn many hats professionally, including working over 12 years as a custom art framer. While writing has always been a part of his life, it was only after leaving this profession that Ryan seriously took his education and passion for writing by the horns and began the journey towards Vindictive, his first novel.
Since 2002, Ryan has lived in London, Ontario, with his husband, Todd, together since 1997, their cat Dora, and his massive comic book collection that once fell on Todd. He’s okay.
CONNECT WITH Ryan Lawrence
- WEBSITE – ryanlawrenceauthor.ca
- FACEBOOK – https://www.facebook.com/RyanLawrenceAuthor/
- INSTAGRAM – https://www.instagram.com/ryanlawrenceauthor/
- TWITTER – https://twitter.com/RyanLAuthor
- GOODREADS – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22020369.Ryan_Lawrence
PURCHASE LINKS Vindictive
- AMAZON.COM – https://amzn.to/3qkh4nq
- AMAZON.CA – https://amazon.ca/dp/0228864739
- AMAZON KINDLE – https://amazon.com/dp/B09HFZ4C56
- INDIGO CHAPTERS – https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/vindictive/9780228864752-item.html
- BARNES & NOBLE – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/vindictive-ryan-lawrence/1140231175
- APPLE IBOOKS – https://books.apple.com/us/book/vindictive/id1588454627
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