Spring 2022 Newsletter

As I type this, I cannot believe six months of 2022 have already passed. 

It’s been a busy year!  Sneaking in time in the early mornings and weekends to work on revisions to How the Invisible Woman Learned to Fly: I think (I hope!) we are nearly there.

Meanwhile, I’m working on the second installment in The Invisible Woman trilogy.  I completed the overall plotting and wrote the first two chapters last summer, but between my day job and revisions to the first installment I didn’t have time to return to it until this summer.  Slow progress but progress all the same, and I’m pleased with how it’s shaping up.  Title for the second installment TBA, (The Invisible Woman: Behind the Mask?)  

It’s impossible to write in a vacuum, of course.  After years of field reporting, I’ve never been able to kick the habit of checking the news frequently.  And these days, more often than not, much of the news is not good.  I worry that the world we worked hard to create in the aftermath of two devastating world wars – institutions, norms, laws – is under immense strain.  Sure, those structures and rules were imperfect and imperfectly applied but still, they kept us from the abyss.  I doubt I am alone in wondering if we are once again on the edge of global violence, suffering and chaos.

Certainly, I think the planet could use some brave, heroic leaders right now.

Which brings me back to the questions that occupy so much of The Invisible Woman trilogy.

What is a hero?  What is bravery?  How do heroes…become heroes?

The Invisible Woman Marcie Blanchard is my answer to those questions.  I wanted to create a character that reflected the kind of heroes I’ve been privileged to meet in my work as a journalist.  Flawed, real people who found some way to make a difference, large or small, in others’ lives.  For the most part, the heroes I interviewed bore little resemblance to Hollywood heroes.  They were not good dressers.  Not in shape.  Not wealthy.  Not good looking.  Not always nice and usually not particularly articulate.  And above all, they were not confident.  But brave?  Yes! 

Consider:

Cold, wet, sleepy high school students and their teachers meeting Canadian veterans one November 11th morning.  The previous day the students and teachers had dug a trench and slept in it overnight (in northern Alberta – you bet it was cold!).  Local veterans, a number of them in their eighties, arrived in the morning to ‘inspect’ the trenches but I don’t think they were quite prepared for what they’d experience.  Many cried at the sight of what the students and teachers had done to acknowledge their sacrifices.  Brave soldiers.  Brave teachers and students too.   

Consider:

A single mother and her children living in a cramped apartment with little heat and a cracked leaking, toilet bowl.  Just try to get through a Montréal winter, or several Montréal winters, in those conditions.  You complain to city officials, but nothing comes of it.  It takes real courage – real bravery – to finally speak to a journalist and let the public see the squalor your landlord and uncaring city officials let you live in.  You risk the anger of your landlord.  You risk getting kicked out of your apartment.  But you do it anyway - for you, for your children, and for all the other tenants in your building living in similarly hellish conditions.  

Not a single Tony Stark or his ilk here.

For the most part, the heroes I met would likely not recognise their own bravery.  Or, if they did they would never call it bravery, never boast about it.  I think they’d make better world leaders than our current crop – those who have led us to the brink of World War III.