When I first developed the concept for my book Theft By Chocolate, I knew there was no shortage of chocolate addicts on this planet that might identify with lead character Kalena Boyko, a high functioning chocolate addict. But what I was less certain about was whether readers would be interested in a sassy museum mystery about a woman of a certain age looking for chocolate, love and an international art thief in all the wrong places. But, as it turns out, taking inspiration from my own embarrassing chocolate addiction and drawing from my more than twenty years of working in Canada’s largest museum has resulted in a story hitting a cord with readers.
As a writer, you expose a part of your psyche to the world that often leaves you vulnerable. But this is amplified a hundred-fold when characteristics of your protagonist are based so closely on your own life – particularly on one’s flaws. But I thought it worth the risk – surely, I was not the only person who had eaten an inappropriate number of pieces in a box of chocolates gifted to the office (“who ate all the chocolates?”). And certainly there were other people who have shuffled around papers in their workplace recycling bin so all the candy bar wrappers don’t remain visible at the top of the refuse pile. Over the years, I learned to laugh at my own sneaky antics, and it was time to invite the world to laugh along with me.
My amusing chocolate escapades weren’t the only experiences in my life giving me the giggles. It seemed as if every time I turned a corner in Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, I encountered some hilarious new situation. Whether it was working with a world-renowned expert in their field who wore their clothing inside-out or watching a live crab being flung twenty feet in the air after a child stuck their hand in a crab tank during a public presentation, working in a museum was never dull.
But, so often museums are portrayed in books and film with a weighty sense of gravity and are the setting for murderous events and high tech heists. There’s no doubt that stakes are high in places that safeguard the world’s most valued treasures. But they can also be places of hijinks and hilarity, and that was the portrait I chose to paint in Theft By Chocolate. It was my intention to unlatch a very particular door, one that has rarely been opened, into what is normally perceived as a rarified world. To me, this side of museum life was so utterly endearing that it kept me in one spot for more than twenty years, and that in a society in which people change places of employment more frequently than they change their socks.
My amusing chocolate escapades weren’t the only experiences in my life giving me the giggles. It seemed as if every time I turned a corner in Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, I encountered some hilarious new situation. Whether it was working with a world-renowned expert in their field who wore their clothing inside-out or watching a live crab being flung twenty feet in the air after a child stuck their hand in a crab tank during a public presentation, working in a museum was never dull.
But, so often museums are portrayed in books and film with a weighty sense of gravity and are the setting for murderous events and high tech heists. There’s no doubt that stakes are high in places that safeguard the world’s most valued treasures. But they can also be places of hijinks and hilarity, and that was the portrait I chose to paint in Theft By Chocolate. It was my intention to unlatch a very particular door, one that has rarely been opened, into what is normally perceived as a rarified world. To me, this side of museum life was so utterly endearing that it kept me in one spot for more than twenty years, and that in a society in which people change places of employment more frequently than they change their socks.
Theft By Chocolate is my first book and I can’t express the delight I experienced crafting the story about two of my personal obsessions, chocolate and museums. But I have also always adored a page-turning mystery or a clever museum heist tale. So it was with even greater pleasure that I was able to interweave a plot line based on a real-life and never-solved theft that took place at the Royal Ontario Museum in the 1980s. What was particularly surprising was that this theft was perpetrated with such ingenuity and simplicity that it shocked the security industry around the world and led to global changes in corporate and cultural security technology.
So just how was this heist carried out? Well, that’s where I am going to leave the blog readers hanging. You’ll have to pick up a copy of Theft By Chocolate to learn about the intriguing and ingenious circumstances. Although chocolate may not have been involved in the true-to-life theft, that didn’t prevent me from entwining the delectable substance into my own fictional rendering!
So just how was this heist carried out? Well, that’s where I am going to leave the blog readers hanging. You’ll have to pick up a copy of Theft By Chocolate to learn about the intriguing and ingenious circumstances. Although chocolate may not have been involved in the true-to-life theft, that didn’t prevent me from entwining the delectable substance into my own fictional rendering!