Bestselling author Susan Juby grew up in the northern BC town of Smithers. She now lives in Nanaimo with her husband and two dogs and teaches creative writing at Vancouver Island University (VIU).
Juby’s fictional settings for most of her books are inspired by the places she has lived or visited, including her 2022 “cozy mystery” novel Mindful of Murder.
Juby describes the book as both a comedy and a mystery, set in a fictionalized spiritual retreat centre on Cortes Island, a hop and skip away by boat from Lund on the Northern Sunshine Coast.
“A cozy mystery doesn’t have explicit violence in this type of story,” said Juby. “The murder mystery, although murder is never funny, is solved by funny characters, but in a style that is a little less graphic.”
The protagonist Helen Thorpe, a former Buddhist nun, is an insightful, newly trained butler about to start a new career, when she is called back to the spiritual retreat centre she once worked at. Thorpe ends up becoming an amateur sleuth, tasked with trying to solve a murder.
On Tuesday, November 7, Juby will give a reading at Powell River Public Library, starting at 7 pm.
“I will also talk a little about my mystery writing [process] and all the different elements that go into a book like that,” said Juby. “I will talk about all the research I do, and how I developed an amateur detective character that I want to live with, and my readers will want to live with for a few books.”
Mindful of Murder is one book in a forthcoming series.
Juby teaches full time, encouraging her students to write and get published, but she admits it wasn’t necessarily her educational background that helped her get the book deal.
“What did help me get published was having someone be very encouraging,” said Juby. “My godfather and uncle would call me every day and ask if I’d submitted my manuscript; I probably would have given up after the first few rejections, but instead, because they were so pushy, I never gave up, I kept trying.”
Juby’s novels are set not in real places, but the Gulf Islands and Discovery Islands are more of an inspiration.
“I have always had a soft spot for small towns,” said Juby. “There is something about that combination of people who live in small communities: people with money, people with no money, those with alternative lifestyles, those working in the resource economy like logging, and they have to engage with each other.”
Juby admits that there are lots of weirdos in small towns.
“There is no one who appreciates weirdos more than me,” she added.
The library will also be part of a virtual event with Juby on Wednesday, November 29, at 7 pm. To find out about the in-person event on November 7, go to prpl.ca.
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