The cover of a promotional brochure for the Ladies’ Home Journal. From the Nicholson Collection, which means I have it somewhere in a box somewhere.
Gee, I’m frazzled. Just as I finished the first rough draft of my novel Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the tumultuous 1910 era, based on the authentic information in the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ I see that someone comes to my website looking up “The Montreal Ripper 1910.”
Now I know an awful lot about Montreal in 1910, as this blog shows, and I know of no Montreal Ripper. Well, tracing the link back, I find that the French CBC, or Radio-Canada, is currently airing a new 9 part mini-series about Montreal in 1910, that appears to be half Period Piece, half Forensic Thriller.
So someone has got there before me and juiced it up a bit more than I intend to. Good for them!
The blurb I find online says that Musée Eden, the name of the mini series, is an in-depth look at the life of women in 1910 as well as a crime thriller. (Damn! That’s what Tighsolas is all about.) And it takes place in the red light district. Well, I only recently added a scene about the Red Light District in my story Flo in the City, because, even I know sex sells and because the ‘social evil’ as it was called back then was an issue and even involved the middle class, their men of course. (I also did this as an inside joke. Whenever I swore as a girl, my French Canadian mom would say, “You talk like a girl from de Bullion Street.” There was even a variation, “You dress like a girl from de Bullion Street.” I had no real idea what that meant. I thought it meant I talked like a poor girl. I only lately realized my dear mother was likening me to a prostitute. My mother likely said it, because her mother said it to her. Today, I just wish I had a place on de Bullion. It would mean I was rich.
But, frankly, Flo in the City is an authentic look into middle class anglo life in Montreal in 1910 and has to stay that way, even if I ‘fill in the blanks’ a bit. I guess if I put vampires into the story, it would be more marketable to teens, but,hey, they’ve already done that with Pride and Predator 
Anyway, what an interesting event, this mini-series! I missed the premiere. Just a few days ago I decided to go on tour, giving talks about Women’s Life in 1910 to various groups. (I used to go around giving talks on various women’s issues in the 80′s and I gave workshops on literacy and such in the 90′s.) So, now, I have a hook. It’s always important to have a hook.
