Jessica Burton

At an age when most people are thinking about retirement, Jessica Burton is starting a new career."I'm 65 now, and I started to realize that there is more time behind me than in front of me," said Burton, a single mother of four daughters and seven grandchildren.

"If I was going to write a book, I had to get a move on."

The result is Burton's first novel, an engaging murder-mystery called Death Goes Shopping which follows a shopping centre's promotions director as she attempts to deal with the aftermath of a shooting in a mall.

"Everyone says write what you know," she said."Well, I know newspapers, shopping centres and knitting."

Although not a traditional job for a mystery's protagonist, having been a promotions director herself Burton knew it was full of literary possibilities.

"People don't really understand what a promotions director does," said Burton."It's an interest racket to be in, but it's not a 9-to-5, Monday to Friday job.Anything that can go wrong, does."

Burton said the story is fiction, but with lots of autobiographical details drawn from her own days in promotions, and also as a former member of the Brampton Guardian's sales department, where one of her duties was helping organize the Miss Brampton pageant.

"Through my work, I had written a lot of articles for trade publications and done some copywriting, but I wanted to try my hand at fiction," she said."It was something I was going to do 'someday'."

The opportunity finally presented itself after a visit to Toronto's annual giant book fair, Word on the Street.

"I was playing this literary Jeopardy game and once you reach a certain stage, it asked for your name and address," she said."When the registrar from George Brown called me later to tell me I had won an eight-week course in creative writing I told him he must have the wrong person, because I never win anything."
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And so, at the age of 65, Burton had finally realized her dream to be an author.With the release of the book, she made another life-altering change: she gave up smoking after 40 years.She said although she doesn't miss the cigarettes, she does miss the cigarette packages.

"When I would get an idea, I didn't always have a piece of paper handy to write it down, but I always seemed to have a cigarette package," she said."I would write it on the top, rip it off and leave them lying all over the house, until I finally collected them up to write the book."

She's using the ideas to put together her second novel, tentatively titled Death Goes to Market, in which the two main female characters from Death Goes Shopping set up a flea market in a country town.

"A shopping centre is really just a small village, with all the personalities and problems that go with that," she said."A flea market is the same thing, just packed into one day."

She said she hopes her success will inspire others to finally put pen to paper.

"I'm somebody's little old nanny, I shouldn't be writing murder mysteries," she said, with a laugh."But I did it anyway, and I'm glad I did."

The book is available at the Brampton Chapters, Indigo and Coles Book Stores, or on-line at the Chapters, Indigo and Amazon web sites.