Making the case for cold calls...

Picking up the phone and calling someone you have never met before and perhaps has no idea who you are and what you want can be daunting, particularly if you're interviewing an expert in a field of which you know very little. Like agriculture or mining. Who knew, for example, that triticale was a cross between Durham wheat and rye or that kimberlitic pipes, those unique, carrot-shaped rock formations, could indicate a cache of diamonds thousands of feet below the surface!

I certainly didn't, but, for a few years, this was my life. I was a freelancer, working for a small communications firm in Ottawa. They had a contract to produce a monthly publication on research and development in Canada and I wrote the copy.

It was fascinating, once I grew more comfortable making those calls, and I came away from that job with a greater assurance, and an idea for a juvenile mystery involving an abandoned gold mine, an enterprising thirteen-year-old with a nose for crime, and one cranky old guy named Weirdo who refused to sell his shares.

Great concept, one small problem: I knew very little about reopening dormant mines other than the fact that, thanks to new technology and better processing methods, getting the gold out of the ground was now easier and more cost effective.

So I phoned a company I knew was in the process of acquiring an old mining concern. I'd done my homework; I knew they needed to control at least fifty-one percent of the shares before they could proceed, and I knew exactly who I wanted to speak with; what I didn't know was how complicated it would be to track down the original shareholders, many of whom would either be quite elderly or have already died.

Now here's the thing about cold calls. No matter how well prepared you are, or how well you know your subject; whether you're trying to interest someone in your work or simply looking for information, finding a personal connection really is worth its weight in gold.

Well didn't the chairman of the company I was calling, have a daughter who just happened to have lived in the building next to Susan and me at university. I wouldn't have known the woman if I fell over her, twenty years is a long time, but that didn't matter. My cold call just got a little warmer.

I got the information I needed, pitched my story idea to my publisher and two years later, the book was in print.

I called it Paper Treasure.

f & f, Anne