Tag Archives: climate change

Theft Between the Rains

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Today it is my pleasure to welcome author Luba Lesychyn and her international art theft mystery novel, Theft Between the Rains.

Author’s description

What would you do if you worked at a reputable international museum and art works listed as still missing since WWII began showing up on your doorstep?

 

That’s the substance of the newest urban art theft thriller Theft Between the Rains by Luba Lesychyn.

 

Drawing on her more than 20 years at Canada’s largest museum, Luba reintroduces many of the affable and quirky characters from the prequel, Theft By Chocolate. Also resurrected is the malicious art thief who has been on the world’s most wanted criminal list for decades.

 

Theft Between the Rains takes readers behind the scenes at museums and to parts unknown of Toronto. And with water being a character unto its own, Luba uses both humor and thriller elements to weave a page-turning story while simultaneously illustrating how changing weather patterns and flash flooding are impacting metropolitan centers globally.

Making Storms into a Character

I have a background in geophysics, so when I heard that part of this story involves changing weather patterns, I was quite curious about how and why Luba Lesychyn included the weather in a story about art theft.

Here is her fascinating response:

I have been living in Toronto for over 30 years and in the last decade, we have been witnessing an alarming increase in the number and intensity of flash storms that have resulted in flooding as we’ve never seen before. Viewing news footage with cars floating down main thoroughfares in Canada’s largest city is a very recent phenomenon, and a very frightening one.
Some years ago, I saw a documentary called Lost Rivers, a good portion of which is set in Toronto, and it addresses how cities have undergrounded their urban rivers and streams and use them as part of their sewage systems. This strategy may have been effective a century or two ago, but cities have become concrete jungles and water from these increasing number of intense downpours has nowhere to drain.
I’m becoming much more of an activist the older I get, and when I watched the documentary, I was reminded that Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, in which both my books are set and where I worked for more than 20 years, is situated above one of these undergrounded streams. I was inspired to craft a story around these buried waterways and to use water and weather as primary motifs in the book and bring to light the fact that we need to act urgently to restore these natural systems to their daylighted glory as part of our climate change management. This kind of increased urban flooding is not just a problem in Toronto. We’ve been seeing this occurrence in metropolitan cities across North America and around the world.
I realized that in my book, I could bring attention to this phenomenon and, at the same time, use weather and storms to drive my plot and employ mother nature to create drama, conflict, and crisis throughout the novel. What wasn’t clear to me at first was how I was going to weave it all into an art theft story using the characters I had created in my first book, Theft By Chocolate.
But idea after idea was sparked and it resulted in a unique tale that I hope readers will find entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking. Perhaps people will recognize the same issues in their own cities and be moved to lobby for more urgent environmental remediations and assess the value of daylighting undergrounded rivers. Embedding this kind of subtle messaging in my books and genre is another way to reach people and perhaps make them more aware that we need to act in ways that will benefit generations to come.

About the Author

Luba Lesychyn is a popular Toronto-based mystery writer, a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, and a respected author in the library readings and events circuit.

In her two books, she draws from her more than 20 years of work experiences at the Royal Ontario Museum (Canada’s largest museum), and her time working for a private museum consulting firm to write humorous, international art theft thrillers featuring amateur sleuth Kalena Boyko. Her newest book, Theft Between the Rains, is a sequel to Theft By Chocolate (about a woman looking for chocolate, love and an international art thief in all the wrong places) published in 2012 by Attica Books and launched in Canada and the UK.

Luba currently spends her time writing and virtually touring Theft Between the Rains in which lead character Kalena Boyko returns to find herself pulled into international art theft intrigue when masterpieces missing since WWII start appearing on her doorstep.

Find the Author

Website: https://lubalesychyn.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Luba-Lesychyn-Author-180423355396109
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6094572.Luba_Lesychyn
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesychyn/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ca/lubalesychyn/_created/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LubaLesychyn

Buy the Book

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Luba-Lesychyn/e/B00G9EPC8G
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/search?query=luba+lesychyn

Yes, there is a giveaway

Luba Lesychyn will be awarding a print copy of Theft Between the Rains to a randomly drawn winner (US or Canada ONLY) via rafflecopter during the tour.

Enter here to win.

This post is part of a tour sponsored by Goddess Fish. Check out all the other tour stops. If you drop by each of these and comment, you will greatly increase your chances of winning.

My Favorite Excerpt

The establishment’s boutique served as a retail antechamber to the dining area, and it would take every single molecule of self-control to bypass the exquisite jewelry-case-like displays that were making all of my senses dance. Rather than gems, however, the delicate glass cabinets were appointed with rows of truffle delicacies infused with Bombay chai and Tahitian vanilla, Seville orange and sweet curry.

The chocolaty delights sported deliciously creative names like Thai Me Up, Curry in a Hurry, Hot Mess, and Belle du Jour. From there my eyes wandered to wall displays strategically populated with pastel-hued macarons flavored with lavender and cassis, figs and red wine, passion fruit and pistachios. The white floors and walls formed a perfect backdrop highlighting the vibrant wares. I dug in my heels and cantered forward like a horse with blinders on.

Thank you!

Luba Lesychyn — we appreciate your sharing your book Theft Between the Rains with us! Best of luck with sales, and with all of your future writing.

Electrify Africa

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Writing a novel in which at least half the action takes place in a sub-Sahara African nation made me more aware than I had been about the day to day struggles in a developing country. Mind you, “more aware” merely means less ignorant. I’ve never lived anywhere without electricity, clean water, and ample food and my research produced information and sympathy, not understanding. But as my hero of x0 concludes, knowledge and concern are a start.

beautiful life3I work with several Nigerians, in real life, and enjoy the occasional opportunity to see the world through their eyes. They give me a feel for how complicated their homeland is, and how well-meant simple solutions often fail. Obviously, problems everywhere else can be complex too. I work in the oil industry, and have a grown child who makes his living trying to understand climate change. We both want what is best for this planet, and we each spend our days surrounded by those with very different opinions about how that should be achieved.

All of this came together for me recently when I received an impassioned email plea, from Bono of U2 no less, to support the Electrify Africa Act. It was described as “a life-saving bill that would help Africa bring electricity to 50 million people for the very first time”. This sounds wonderful. Nigerian co-workers tell me that much of the electric power in their country comes from diesel generators, a smoky, noisy, inefficient part-time solution that they suspect puts money in somebody’s pocket. I am all for a better answer and even willing to see some of my tax dollars used to get there.

I received a follow-up email a few days ago saying the bill had passed. Wahoo! Furthermore, I was informed that my representative,Texas Republican Congressman Kevin Brady, had voted for it. Wait a minute. Maybe I am being too cynical here, but over the past several years I have noticed that Congressman Brady and I don’t agree on a while lot of things. If he voted yes, perhaps I’m not as informed about this bill as I thought.

Indeed, a little more research showed that the bill is controversial and the issues are complicated “Access to power is a principal bottleneck to growth in Africa. Six hundred million Africans lack access to a power grid” reads one headline. Yes, we need to do something about that.  “Two U.S. initiatives to provide Africans with electricity seem likely to lead to large, climate-polluting projects rather than the locally sourced renewable energy rural Africa needs” says another. Okay, I may be starting to see where my pro-oil-industry congressman fits in.

sungazing7The Nation takes it a step further and adds that “Proponents of Electrify and Power Africa have been most publicly enthusiastic about new discoveries of vast reserves of oil and gas on the continent, which has many African activists wary of a resource grab.” USAID, a U.S. Government agency working to end extreme global poverty puts it somewhat differently. “Power Africa encourages countries to make energy sector reforms while connecting entrepreneurs and U.S. businesses to investment opportunities.”

What to do? Go with an initiative that will be backed by many more, and yet may well invite more problems into a continent that desperately needs less of them? Or hold out for a better, more environmentally friendly and Africa-centric solution? Remember “electricity allows businesses to flourish, clinics to store vaccines, and students to study long after dark. But for more than two-thirds of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, these opportunities simply do not exist.” Politics is a messy business. For now, I’m going to reluctantly cheer on the passage of this bill on the grounds that trying to solve a problem is better than doing nothing. Let’s hope that is true in this case.

(Thanks to the Facebook pages of Your Beautiful Life and Sungazing for sharing the images shown above.)