On the phone from Prince Edward County, Linwood Barclay is asked for his advice to Haliburton County authors, other than his standard read and write.
“When you show what you’ve written to your mom, or your husband, and they say ‘it’s wonderful’, don’t believe them. Because what else can they say? What are they going to tell you? ‘This needs work’,” the author of 24 novels and counting shares.
“It’s tough, but if doing it gives you pleasure – and your dream isn’t necessarily to hit the Globe and Mail bestseller list – but you find it’s relaxing, or it allows you to work things through, just keep doing it. But being able to make a living in this kind of business is rare.”
Barclay is one of those rare novelists, and the former journalist with the Toronto Star and Peterborough Examiner is coming to Minden July 13.
He gets lots of event requests and gets to pick and choose which he attends. He selected Minden as it’s close to his “old stomping grounds,” living for years just south of Bobcaygeon. His family owned Green Acres, a cottage rental and trailer park on the west side of Pigeon Lake.
“This is not heavy lifting to come up and do this,” he said.
He shared how his dad died when he was 16 and he largely ran the business. He spent hours cutting grass, his imagination running amok. “I would sit on my John Deere riding mower imagining stories and I think that is what has stayed with me… that kid was writing. I was cranking out stories like crazy from about Grade 6 on.”
Briefly turning to his latest offering, I Will Ruin You, Barclay is asked about resonating with the main character, Richard.
“Probably there is a little bit of me in all of the main characters,” he replies. “These main characters are in no way equipped to deal with the kind of people they’re going to come up against. They have regular jobs. They’re not ex-Navy Seals, spies or cops. They’re teachers, small-town newspaper reporters, used car salesmen because that’s the kind of people I know, who I hang out with. I always say, ‘what would it be like for people like us brought up against some pretty bad business’?”
He is asked about anxiety – something he references in his characters. “I’m a great worrier. About small things and big things,” he says.
Quoting Martin Luther King’s “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” he adds, “I’m starting to think it doesn’t look that way to me and so it’s easy to become very discouraged. It’s hard to find any kind of silver linings these days. There seems to be a celebration of ignorance lately and a rejection of actual facts. It worries me a great deal.”
Does writing fiction allow for an escape? Not really, he says, rather sometimes prickly subjects find their way into his books. For example, there is a theme in I Will Ruin You where parents question the appropriateness of a book that English teacher Richard is having his students read. Barclay is no fan of banning books. “If you have an axe to grind, you can still do it in the context of a thriller.”
He said he sometimes gets feedback from readers who do not want this opinionated content, and offers sardonically, “and my thinking is, that’s why we become writers, to keep our thoughts to ourselves.”
So, why is he continuing to do this – with novels 25 and 26 coming out next year?
“You can’t imagine not doing it. What are you going to do? Sit around, watch TV and have this great idea for a book and not do it? I think that would be hard. If you have a job that you hate, you can’t wait to retire and that’s wonderful. But to have the privilege of doing something you really enjoy, why would you throw that away?”
Bookapalooza begins at noon Saturday with an exhibit hall filled with dozens of local authors. Admission is free. A ticketed conversation with Barclay happens at 3 p.m. followed by a book signing. There’ll be a reception and dinner with the author at the Dominion Hotel at 6 p.m. This is a paid event. See more at haliburtonarts.on.ca/ bookapalooza
