I'm currently working on a second novel as well as on a series of short stories influenced by Mayan tales and culture. Three are completed, one of which was written last spring and was made available to my friends. Here's the link allowing you to download it.
Maria Theresa The Bloody Catrina
My Ripper Hunting Days, the novel
My novel on Amazon!
Thursday, October 17, 2019
Saturday, April 7, 2018
MY BALTIMORE CONFERENCE PRESENTATION
Today was Day 1 of the Baltimore 2018 Ripper conference. Very interesting topics.
The topic I covered was "Tumblety: Historical and Criminal Evidence Issues". Here's the pdf version of the paper I wrote behind my presentation.
Feel free to share your comments.
Tumblety 2018 Baltimore Presentation
Tumblety 2018 Baltimore Presentation
Today was Day 1 of the Baltimore 2018 Ripper conference. Very interesting topics.
The topic I covered was "Tumblety: Historical and Criminal Evidence Issues". Here's the pdf version of the paper I wrote behind my presentation.
Feel free to share your comments.
Tumblety 2018 Baltimore Presentation
Tumblety 2018 Baltimore Presentation
Friday, January 5, 2018
My participation in author interviews.
I have the chance of contributing, with colleague authors, to this amazing web site, Book Reviews And Much More, by answering a few series of questions I would like to share with you.
You'll find the first one where I introduce myself: My background
Another one was done a few days ago: First 2018 interview
We were invited to write short Christmas storie which I did and uou will find it here: Til it happens in your Heart
You will also find a review of my novel, My ripper Hunting Days: Review of my novel
Enjoy.
Monday, December 4, 2017
My presence at the 2018 JTR Baltimore Conference
This might interest those who will be attending the 2018 RipperCon 2018 in Baltimore. I will be one of the speakers and will talk about Francis Tumblety and historical and criminal evidence issues related to him.
Spending years working on my novel, My Ripper Hunting Days, seems to pay off in different ways. The research I had to do on one of my main characters, Francis Tumblety, made me go through all the JTR books I could get a hand on, archives as well as well known JTR forums. So I think I know the guy pretty well. He's considered as one of the main suspects. I however noticed that many arguments used in his case supporting him as a suspect needed to be examined more rigorously something I which I did during these years. The reason for me was to see how far I could carry him in my storyline.
I fell upon many issues which will become the topic of the presentation and will cover these aspects:
- Gathering data
- Selecting data
- Understanding data
- Interpreting data
- Formulating Tumblety theories
I'm not dismissing Tumblety at all but will be pointing out historian and criminoligist POV problems concerning him which btw concern probably even more other suspects.
Saturday, December 2, 2017
A Christmas story of mine
A member
of one of the Facebook groups of authors I belong to suggested that we write
short Christmas tales to offer them to all those we know. A rather
awesome idea knowing that this group is composed of authors coming
from several countries worldwide who wrote books concerning famous
murderssuch as Jack the Ripper either fiction novels (like mine) or
non-fiction books like research or 'theories'.
So I
agreed to write one. Well, since horror movies are not especially my
genre although my novel contains graphic parts of JTR coroners
inquiries, I opted for a rather traditional style combining elements
of conflicts, humor and, of course, Christmas magic.
It has
only 19 pages. The title is 'Til it Happens in Your Heart '. You'll also find here an
interview I had with the owner of the site, Susan Ballinger: (Interview With Author Bernard Boley). It's somewhere in the middle of the page. On that same web site, she made a special Christmas calendar with lovely videos showing some books written by authors which will probably include mine: (Christmas Calender). Once you get there, you might as well have a look at my Xmas interview on this page: (Christmas Q & A).
My copyright is registered at the Quebec National Archive Library and has an ISBN number, thus no risk of intellectual property theft.
Enjoy and Merry Ho Ho Ho!
My copyright is registered at the Quebec National Archive Library and has an ISBN number, thus no risk of intellectual property theft.
Enjoy and Merry Ho Ho Ho!
Til it Happens in Your Heart _Mobi |
Til it Happens in Your Heart _Epub |
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Interview with Woodrow Riley, my main character
I was having my daily
Bloody Ceasar sitting in my patio in the beautiful city of Merida where I live when something rather unusual happened to me.
The main character of
my novel, Woodrow Riley, suddenly appeared only to tell me he had
accepted an interview with one of those famous writer's blog the name
of which I can't remember.
Anyway, this is the
content of his interview.
“Good evening
Woodrow Riley. It's a pleasure meeting you. It seems that you carry
quite a load in Bernard Boley's novel, 'My Ripper Hunting Days'. You probably
wonder what your creator had in mind when he decided
to call upon you as his main character in his novel. Do you want to
tell us something about this? ”
“It's a great
pleasure for me also to have this conversation with you, mister
Thompson. May I call you Gregory? ”
“Of course, you may.
”
“Let me begin by
making things clear. It's my diary and not Bernard's we are talking
about and he graciously offered me to be my editor, agent, ghost
writer and publisher. ”
“So you actually
existed? ”
“Have you ever heard
of Luigi Pirandello's play, Six Characters In Search of an Author? ”
“Who hasn't? ”
“Well, Bernard
turned out to be my Pirandello. ”
“Would you like to
expand a bit more? ”
“Bernard and I met
in one of those bars of the old part of Quebec City. As he would
always do, he wrote down some words on his damn notepad. You know,
the kind of bar where all the good looking women would find
themselves by the end of every afternoon hoping they would meet
Prince Charming, fall in love and happily live together for the rest
of their lives. I was reading while he was writing. I looked at
him and asked him, "What the bloody Hell are you doing? Didn't
you notice I was here each and every day you come here and you've
never noticed my presence?”
“Did he react?”
“Of course he did!
But not the way I expected. He kept observing the beautiful women all
around him, ordering Champagne after Champagne hoping one of them
would want a sip of his venom. God only knows what would have
happened to anyone of them should one of them had accepted. I had to
insist and remind him of the nightmare he kept having. ”
“And? ”
“So I told him, "I
know who you are. You're like the predator I hunted during months a
century ago. I'm the one whose's been sending you this nightmare and
you still can't figure out what it's all about?" Well after
three complete rewrites of the novel, he finally managed to
understand what I demanded of him. ”
“I'm I to believe
you are a ghost? ”
“Didn't you listen
to what I said? Pirandello, Pirandello for God's sake. ”
“Do forgive me,
Woodrow. So what's your story about? ”
“When I was a young
boy, I ran away from home hoping it would put an end to the miseries
I battled through because of my drunk and violent father just to find
out fifteen years later it only served to set up a countdown where I
found myself pursuing the man I was convinced to be Jack the Ripper
and whose name was Francis Tumblety? ”
“Was he the Ripper?
Did you catch him? ”
“You know what? Tim
Riordan's Prince of Quacks and Michael Hawley's The Ripper's Haunts
made a great fuss about Tumblety, but I'm the only one who knew
exactly what was going on. I personnly knew him when he was in
Whitechapel in the autumn of 1888. You know, London's East End.”
“With all due
respect, Woodrow, I'm sorry but you didn't answer my question.”
“Listen my dear
Gregory, if I told you what happened, you wouldn't believe me. I
helped Tumblety in gathering female body parts, met Gorden Fitzgerald
who became my protector, fell in love with his daughter, Elizabeth,
struggled with Frederick Abberline and became a friend of Charles Le
Grand, not to mention my close relation with Derrick O'Connell, a
member of the Irish Brotherhood. I almost lost my life more times
than one would want to. The rest belongs to you, if you decide to
know what actually really went on.”
“So it's not a
fiction?”
“There are so many
non fiction theories about Jack the Ripper and even if no one has
managed to come up with some valid historical and criminal evidence
or interpretation of what happened, Bernard decided it would be
better to submit it as a fiction because nobody would anyway accept
what I went through.”
“Did Bernard get any
comments about his telling of your story?”
Ripperologist's worst
Jack the Ripper novel writer's nightmare, David Green said in his
December 2016 review and I quote,"Bernard has written a
picaresque drama about courage and personal responsibility and the
consequences of family legacy. Its theme is not only how individual
lives may be shaped by the course of history but how history itself
is shaped by the actions of individuals. Ambitiously, several of the
novel’s most important characters are kept on the periphery of the
tale, and the Jack the Ripper murders are illuminated largely by
subordinating them to the unfolding of Riley’s individual destiny.
These are risky literary manoeuvers, but the author pulls them off
magnificently. This is a thoughtful, skillfully plot"
“So he did a good
job?”
“We both did a great
job.”
“It was a tremendous
pleasure having you with me Woodrow. Should we expect more of you? ”
“You shall if ever I
decide to haunt you while you're dreaming like I did with my good
friend Bernard. Until then, read our book, 'My Ripper Hunting Days'.”
Sunday, December 25, 2016
My opinion on my novel
I was asked by the 'Ripperologist' bimonthly magazine's fiction reviewer, David Green, what I thought about my book not as a writer, but as a reader. He had read my book and had already writen a review to appear in December's edition of the magazine. I had no idea what he would say although I had a few hints. This is what I told him:
It's
hard to distance oneself as a reader from a book I wrote.
Nevertheless, I'll try to tell you what I like about it.
We have
to go back to the first draft which was written in the third person
point-of-view. The story was totally different. Woodrow Wilson was
the Ripper and Gordon Fiztgerald became aware of it after having
observed him in a pub looking at other women in a very strange and
disturbing manner. From the moment he addresses him with these words,
“I know who you are”, a growing complicity builds up between both
of them. The problem I had with the plot, although it seemed
appealing was one could figure out the outcome.
The
second draft is basically the story we have in the final version, but
still written in the third person. I wasn't satisfied with most of
the sub-plots, not that they weren't interesting, but they did not
allow me to focus enough on what was going through Riley's mind.
Using the first-person point of view gave me that possibility and
presenting the story as a diary made it easier. It would also allow
for the reader a more personal connection with the main character.
Those are the reasons behind the third draft which, by the same
token, gave me the opportunity to add a romantic touch by including
Elizabeth. So this is one of the things I like about the book, the
use of the first-person POV.
The
problem, however, I had with this diary format was that I had to find
a way to deliver it. It's not like the diary of Anne Frank'or
Maybrick's diary. It couldn't just pop out of nowhere. Someone had to
have found it, hence the prologue and the epilogue. Why not going a
little further along the thin fiction/reality line and tell the
reader I was the one who found the diary. Epilogues often create a
questionable delay preventing the reader from entering quickly into
the story. They are used as an introductory setup of the story in
terms of location and period. To avoid this problem, I decided to
create a story around the story and have the reader jump into it
directly with what I consider to be a rather good opening hook:
“Prepare to drop the anchor”.
Of
course, one aspect I gave a priority to was working on a JTR story
which would not be the story of a police officer chasing the Ripper,
nor a JTR pursuit through time. I wanted to tell a story about
someone who lived in the district and had nothing to do with the
Ripper turn into a man hunter. It's funny to see that a story that
began in the first draft with someone befriending Jack the Ripper
turned into a story about someone who ran away from his home when he
was a young boy and hid himself from his past by working with corpses
only to find himself hunting the Ripper. Globally speaking, I tend to
believe the story is more than a Jack the Ripper pursuit and offers
an interesting blend of brutal reality, drama and wit.
Another
thing I like about the book is having tried to integrate, in the
dialogues, as much descriptive elements as possible, breaking them
down into small fragments. Too often, novels provide the author with
the chance to show how well they can write descriptions or narrative
parts. Of course, it does, but sometimes it slows down the pace at
the wrong moment. You'll find an example on pages 204-205.
Building
characters was probably the most demanding task I went through.
However, it's also the most fascinating one. It's like writing a
short biography for each one of the main characters. I must say that
Luigi Pirandello's play, 'Six Characters In Search of an Author'
showed me how important character creation is. Once it's done, all
the writer has to do is offer them a scene within his story and
they'll do the rest. I believe I gave them strong personalities.
Considering the fact that in most stories, the hero wins (and has to
be an American!!!), something I hate, Woodrow Riley had to be an
anti-hero. In the case of those who existed, Abberline, Le Grand,
Lusk, etc., I preserved what we knew about them seeking coherence
before anything else when I used them. I like what I did with Le Grand, turning him into Riley's quipping partner. I wanted to avoid
the kind of characters we find in movies such as In Hell where
Abberline is presented as someone in complete contradiction with the
person he really was.
There's also all the historical research the story required of me. Buying period maps, subscribing to archives. I even bought a 1888 Bradshaw railway guide just to get the exact departure time from the Euston train station when Riley leaves London to go to Manchester. All this doesn't make a story, but I enjoyed discovering details that became part of it such as the November 10 event where Riley almost gets lynched (p 351). It was based on an insignificant event that actually occurred on that day in Spitalfields. It was metionned on page 5 of London's Daily News, November 10, 1888 edition.
As for
the things I like less, I'll mention the extended use of inquiry
descriptions of the victims, although one cannot imagine a JTR story
without blood and gut cutting. Maybe I should have edited them more.
However, the aspect worrying me the most is this feeling I still have
about the end of the story. It may seem I crashed landed the end. But
then, there was no need for fast paced loaded action. Riley was
crossing the ocean, wounded, sick almost dying and still trying to
get a hold on Tumblety. In my mind, the main character had to be an
anti-hero til the end. Even if he had caught Tumblety, he would have
learned he wasn't the Ripper something everybody had already told
him. Then what? So I made him prefer surviving, something we don't
know if he actually did.
He didn't consider the way I handled the end the same way I did and told me how he felt about it:
My view is that the ending works very well indeed. Sometimes these kind
of shocking, dramatic revelations in the last paragraph can come across
as a little contrived and stage-managed - but I didn't feel this was the
case with
My Ripper Hunting Days. Besides, there are hints in the novel
that the astute reader will already have picked up on (i.e. on page 298
where we learn that Riley's father killed his wife in a Ripper-style
manner; and on page 384 he says "You're my..."
just before he dies).
When the magazine was realesed on December 24, I didn't expect such a positive review. This is what he wrote:
When the magazine was realesed on December 24, I didn't expect such a positive review. This is what he wrote:
Woodrow
Riley is a highly unusual young Irishman. He works as a laboratory
assistant at the London Hospital preparing bodies for dissection. He
seems a rather creepy figure at first, more at home among the dead
than the living, until a chance encounter with Francis Tumblety
propels his life in a new direction.
Tumblety’s
elaborate scheme is to harvest the reproductive organs of deceased
prostitutes and have Riley preserve them using the facilities at the
Hospital. To that end Riley supplies Tumblety with a black bag
containing amputation knives. But then the mutilated bodies of women
start turning up in Whitechapel… Riley sets out to hunt down the
man he believes has committed murder; but he also embarks on a
journey of self-discovery, delving into his own past and uncovering
uncomfortable personal truths.
The
novel is presented in diary format, which poses conundrums for the
reader: is it a reliable and comprehensive document? Does it set out
to deflect suspicion from Riley by manipulating the evidence in his
favour? Tumblety may be a credible Ripper suspect, but what exactly
is his relationship with Riley? Is the younger man being drawn
unwittingly into the role of an accomplice? Nothing is quite what it
seems and the astute reader soon learns to mistrust what the narrator
is telling us (at least part of the time). Characters dissemble and
utter untruths; they adopt disguises or assume false identities.
Innocent conversations turn out to be tip-offs or confessions.
Several
subplots offer counterpoint to Riley’s hunt for the Ripper. Early
on, he falls under the influence of Gordon Fitzgerald, a wealthy
philanthropist from Dublin, who has his own agenda. And it is with
Fitzgerald’s daughter Elizabeth that Woodrow seeks to resettle
destitute East End families in Quebec. Meanwhile, Inspector Abberline
and Sergeant Thick are taking a close interest in Riley’s Ripper
hunting activities, yet both officers seem preoccupied with an
earlier ongoing investigation into Irish Nationalism and Fenianism.
My
Ripper Hunting Days can be enjoyed simply as an historical murder
mystery, but I suspect Bernard Boley’s true intentions lie
elsewhere. He has written a picaresque drama about courage and
personal responsibility and the consequences of family legacy. Its
theme is not only how individual lives may be shaped by the course of
history but how history itself is shaped by the actions of
individuals. Ambitiously, several of the novel’s most important
characters are kept on the periphery of the tale, and the Jack the
Ripper murders are illuminated largely by subordinating them to the
unfolding of Riley’s individual destiny. These are risky literary
manoeuvers, but the author pulls them off magnificently.
This is
a thoughtful, skillfully plotted and fascinating work that shines
with intelligence.
I
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