Gord Beacock
asked
Peter Clement:
Not really a question, but it is. You seemed to disappear about the time of the original SARS outbreak. I know you are Canadian and seemed to recall you being in Toronto in which the medical community was hit hard. I was sure you were one of them. Apparently that's not the reason. How come so long between books? BTW, I missed you. I loved your books and recommended them to others.
Peter Clement
Hi Gord. Thank you for your lovely note. Around the time of the first SARS outbreak I was still in Montreal. My "seeming to disappear" had to do with my determination to write a story that I couldn't get out of my head but was more ambitious than anything I'd tried before--it became The Darkness Drops and took me five years to complete--and a desire to once more divide my time between writing and the practice of medicine. This blend also gave rise to a number of short stories ( For a full year I struggled to make a story about sexual assault work as a full length book, then realized three of the chapters were all it needed to pack its full punch. That became the short story titled Therapy and was shortlisted for a national book award. (I lost out to Margaret Atwood.) In between my medical duties, (my clinical focus these days is on mental health, especially during Covid-19 I took my time writing The Woman From The River. As a result of the extra work, the suspense and joinery of it's complex plot are all the leaner, making it my most compact novel yet. Was it worth the extra time and effort? I look forward to any comments you may have should you do me the honour of giving it a read.
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