The reviews are rolling in

"Meg Harris...gets and education in evil in Harlick's absorbing fifth mystery"  Publishers Weekly


"Author R.J. Harlick's Meg Harris series shakes the boundaries with each successive novel and has reached a new plateau with A Green Place for Dying..." Hamilton Spectator


"R.J. Harlick has picked a tragically relevant focus for her latest Meg Harris crime novel..."  A Joan Barfoot review that has appeared in several Canadian papers including, London Free Press, The Whig Standard, The Examiner, The Nugget, Fort McMurray Today....


"...solid writing, strong characterization, a tight plot and a wonderful sense of place." Reviewingtheevidence.com


"Anyone who appreciates complex, realistic characters and a strong traditional mystery set in an unfamiliar environment should make an effort to look for A Green Place for Dying. You'll be shocked to discover what you've been missing." Lesa's Book Critiques


"All of the Meg Harris books are steeped in this rich culture that adds a deeper texture to the novels. The mysteries are solidly plotted and provide new challenges to Meg. And she in turn, works through her own demons and insecurities....This is a series you'll want to read from start to finish."  Mystery Mavens Canada


"Last night I opened 'A Green Place for Dying'...It's five a.m. and I'm still up. This is one seductive book." Jayne Barnard's blog

Upcoming signings

I'm heading off tomorrow, March 24, to Peterborough to sign my latest Meg Harris mystery, A Green Place for Dying. I'll be at Chapters Peterborough from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. On Sunday, March 25, I'm heading to Kingston, where I will do two store signings. In the morning from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm, I'm at Kingston Indigo and then I rush up Princess Street to Kingston Chapters for another signing from 1:30 pm to 4:00. If I'm a bit late you will know why. The crowds at the Indigo wouldn't let me leave until I had signed the last book.....:)

The following weekend I travel again. This time to Toronto, where I will be signing at the Queensway Chapters in Etobicoke from 7:00 pm to 9:00 on Friday March 30. Then on Saturday March 31 I scoot over to Waterloo to sign at the Waterloo Chapters from 1:00 to 4:00. I finish up my tour with a Sunday, April Fools Day signing at in St. Catharines at the Chapters. I'll be there from 1:00 pm to 4:00.

This ends my organized book tour, but I will be doing one more signing at the end of April on Monday April 30, at a very fun event, called the Festival of Mystery, in Oakmont PA. Put on by the Mystery Lovers Bookshop, it is a fabulous event. Throngs of avid mystery fans line up at the door waiting to get in and when the doors finally open, they pounce.

I hope to set up some more signings, possibly in Montreal. I will let you know the dates once confirmed.

Upcoming Ottawa events

With the release of A Green Place for Dying fast approaching on Feb. 17, my event card is starting to fill up.

It kicks off with a bang and a wickedly fun celebration of the launch on Tues. Feb. 28 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the Heart and Crown in the Market. Be sure not to miss the Ottawa book event of the year....yeah, right. I wish. But I promise it will be lots of fun.

Then on Saturday Mar. 3, from 1:00 pm to 4:00, I will be at one of my favourite Chapters, Rideau Chapters on Rideau St., where else but next to the Rideau Centre. I always have great fun at this store meeting many fabulous readers and I usually manage to sell a book or two or three or more.....:) And the staff are super there.

If you miss me on Saturday, you can catch me at Chapters South Keys, in the South Keys Shopping Centre, another great signing store. I'll be there from 1:00 pm to 4:00

The following weekend I'll be in the west end of Ottawa. On Saturday, March 10 from 1:00 pm to 4:00 at Chapters Pinecrest in the Pinecrest Mall and then on Sunday, March 11, from 1:00 pm to 4:00 at Chapters Kanata in the Kanata Centrum Mall. And I tell you I love signing at these stores too. Terrific staff, terrific clientele.

On Saturday, March 17 from 12:00 to 2:00 pm, I will be at my favourite independent bookstore in Ottawa, Books on Beechwood, who is also handling my launch sales. The store is located on Beechwood a block north of the Vanier Parkway.

I am also looking at book signings at two more Ottawa stores. When I have these finalized, I will let you know.

And when I am finished with Ottawa, I am off to other book stores in southern and eastern Ontario and Quebec. It promises to be a very busy couple of months. But hey, I love doing these signings. Gives me a chance to get to know my readers.

Book Launch!

Put February 28th in your calendar. I'll be launching the next Meg Harris mystery, A Green Place for Dying, from 7:00 pm to 9:00 at the Heart and Crown in the ByWard Market in Ottawa. I plan to make it a rip roaring launch!

My blog awakens

As the release date for A Green Place for Dying closes in, you will be hearing more from me.  Only two months to go! I'm getting very excited. Even though this will be my fifth book I still find it thrilling to hold the newly minted book in my hand.

The reviews are already starting, with last week's review in Publishers Weekly. I was ecstatic. If you like the review I would appreciate if you could 'like' it.

Now the nail biting begins in earnest as I await other reviews. You never know.... It is always an anxious time when the baby you have been nurturing for so long is finally released into the wide world. You never know how it will be received.

Drawing From Real LIfe

I thought you would find my blog that was posted on Mystery Maven Canada this week intriguing, so I am reposting it on my own blog. It will give you a bit of insight on where I get some of my ideas for the Meg Harris mysteries. And if you aren't familiar with the Mystery Maven Canada blog you are definitely missing something. It is the go-to place to discover the latest happenings in Canadian crime writing.

Reposted from Mystery Maven Canada

         Most fiction writers draw on their own experiences and people in their life to help create their stories and give them life. And I’m no different.  While I have never intentionally based any of my characters on family or friends, except that is for Sergei, Meg Harris’s black standard poodle who is as loving and as mischievous as on my own standard poodles, I do drawn on aspects from my own life. I thought I would share some of these with you, starting with Meg herself.

Since the Meg Harris series is written in the first person point of view, readers often ask if Meg is me. Invariably I reply “No, not really”, which is indeed the case. After all she is a red head, an escapee from an abusive marriage and she struggles with a drinking problem, none of which could be used to describe me.  But like me, she did grow up in Toronto and she has a cottage.

However, while both our cottages are made from logs and are set in the wilds of West Quebec, I gave Meg Three Deer Point, the cottage of my dreams; a large turn-of-the-century timber and stone building with a turret and wraparound verandah that is perched on a granite point overlooking the sometimes still and other times angry waters of Echo Lake. That is another fun aspect of writing fiction; you can give your characters belongings and experiences that you have only dreamed about.

In the first book, Death’s Golden Whisper, Meg discovers letters and postcards written by her Great-aunt Agatha to a friend during her grand tour of Europe undertaken shortly before the First World War. I borrowed this idea from my grandfather, who during a similar European trip sent his mother postcards of his travels. As I child I spent many an intriguing hour reading these postcards and imaging what it would have been like traveling to these exotic locations.  In the same book Meg also finds a diary written by her Great-aunt. Instead of arbitrarily using any date for the entries, I used the month and day of the birthdates of various members of my family.

I also have fun with names. Meg herself is named after my grandmother. I wanted a name that could be shortened to a number of different nicknames and Margaret fit the requirement; besides I wanted to immortalize my favourite grandmother. In Arctic Blue Death, her mother’s cook calls her Maggie, the name my grandmother often went by.  In Red Ice for a Shroud she’s called by the French version, Marguerite, which incidentally means ‘daisy’.  Her last name ‘Harris’ is derived from the street I grew up on in Toronto, ‘Harrison Rd.’

In each of my books, I also make a point of naming one or two secondary characters after my various nieces and nephews. In Arctic Blue Death, I named Meg’s father and her uncle after my grandfather and great-uncle, her sister after my mother, while I gave a fictitious Arctic town the name James Lake, after my husband. And I must not forget that one of my villains uses one of my father’s names. If he were still alive I know he would be laughing uproariously.

I enjoy spending much of my time in Canada’s great outdoors and have used some of my adventures in my books.  Red Ice for a Shroud starts off with Meg and Eric clearing cross-country skiing trails, something my husband and I, along with friends, do every fall in preparation for a winter of skiing. And I do love skiing, an activity Meg thoroughly enjoys too.

Canoeing is another matter. In The River Runs Orange Meg finds herself paddling madly down a whitewater river and she dumps, which pretty much mirrors my own experience with whitewater paddling. In fact Meg doesn’t like whitewater anymore than I do, although we both love slicing through the still, flat waters of a lake. And to give you a taste of what Meg endured when she dumped on the DeMontigny River, I've added some photos from my own dump that happened on the Madawaska River a few years ago. I'm the one in blue and my husband was in the stern. I bumped over every ledge of this Class III rapid known as The Staircase until I reached calm water. I was not a happy camper.

There are countless other instances in the Meg Harris books where I have drawn upon my own experiences, but I will save those for you to discover.

Gwaii Hanas

I had so much fun sending Meg to Canada's Far North for Arctic Blue Death the fourth book in the series, that way I got to go too, that I decided to send Meg on a trip to another Canadian wilderness for the as yet untitled book 6 (I've decided silver will be in this title). Since I was going to be on the west coast for Bloody Words in Victoria, I decided Meg and I would travel to Haida Gwaii, the land of the Haida or the Queen Charlotte Islands as it is also known. As I child I would often listen to my father speak of these magical islands, his voice filled with no little amount of awe, where he had gone one summer while at university to work in one of the logging camps. So I always had a yen to visit this distant mountainous archipelago on the edge of Canada's Pacific coast.

I spent seven days with my husband, getting to know the islands and the people. Part of it was spent on a four day boat trip to the uninhabited southern part, to Gwaii Hanas National Park. I tell you, I fell in love with these wild, mystical islands and its people. And I came back full of ideas, information and photos. I can't wait to get started on this next Meg Harris mystery.

Please check  Gwaii Hanas photos to view a sampling of what we experienced.