Author Dave Butler read from his first book, ‘Full Curl,’ on Thursday at Fort Macleod Library. Butler has published three novels in the Jenny Willson mystery series.
Award-winning Canadian author Dave Butler gave his audience a glimpse into the life of an environmental thriller writer Thursday at Fort Macleod Library.
Butler, who has published three novels in the Jenny Willson mystery series, had long thought about writing books.
“I always had book ideas,” said Butler, who grew up an avid reader of fiction, thrillers and mysteries.
Butler earns his living as a forester and biologist living in Cranbrook, B.C., and is also a photographer and writer whose work appears in many Canadian publications.
The demand for words to accompany his photos sparked the writing aspect of Butler’s career.
“I actually started writing to sell my pictures,” Butler said. “I was trying to sell my pictures to magazines and editors kept saying, ‘Great images, but we need a writer to write the story.’ So I thought, hey, I could do that.”
Butler took a creative travel writing course at the College of the Rockies, where he learned about a directed studies course on writing a book, with participants required to produce a chapter a week.
“I thought, if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it. It gave me the pressure to do the writing.”
Butler published his first book, Full Curl, in 2017.
Full Curl was short-listed for the Unhanged Arthur Award (Arthur Ellis Awards; Crime Writers of Canada) for best unpublished crime novel in 2015.
In 2018, Full Curl won the Arthur Ellis Award for the Best First Crime Novel in Canada and was a finalist in the mystery category in the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writers awards.
While at a function in Toronto, Butler met the mystery writer Ian Hamilton who advised that if he had a strong character to consider writing a series of books.
Butler promptly went back to his hotel room and sketched out the plots of the next two books in the Jenny Willson series. He pitched the series to a publisher and was offered a contract.
Butler describes his main character, Jenny Willson, as a hard-edged, caustic-witted warden from Banff National Park. That’s a job Butler held for a time.
“She hates wildlife poachers as much as she hates ladder-climbing bureaucrats,” Butler said. “She’s a bit of a rebel, and I’ve also found that she’s a bit of an alter ego for me. In my job I have to be a confident diplomat in dealing with government. So sometimes I get Jenny to say things out loud that I would love to say but can’t if I want to keep my job.”
Butler’s second book, No Place for Wolverines, was published in 2018.
That was followed in 2019 by the third book in the Jenny Willson mystery series, In Rhino We Trust.
The settings range from Banff National Park to Yoho National Park in British Columbia, and the wilds of Namibia. Butler researches the locations hard to make sure he gets the geography right.
“I wanted Jenny to see new people, new cultures, new landscapes,” Butler said of his location choices.
Butler in his novels tackles subjects ranging from poaching to land use, showing many sides to each issue.
“I tend to write a lot about the environmental issues that we face as a society but I don’t do it to preach a certain view. Every character that I put in a book I can actually make them come from a different perspective. What it tends to show is these issues have a lot of complexities. It’s never just black or white.”
Butler is working on a stand-alone project with the working title Run River Run, which he describes as a cross between A River Runs Through It and The Davinci Code. The story details cross-border water issues.
Butler is also working on a new thriller series whose main character is a former wildlife officer in Namibia who leaves the country under a cloud of suspicion when her partner is killed. Her first assignment in North America in the book titled View to a Kill takes her to Alaska.
Butler spoke of the hard work of writing novels, which require extensive re-writing and editing, and the tough business side of the business.
As difficult as it can be at times, Butler said writing has its rewards.
“Seeing if for the first time is a pretty exciting experience,” Butler said of receiving a printed copy of his books.
