Thoughts on Publishing "Astrid Falls: A Legend of Vancouver"

The thing about writing a novel, I’ve found, is that you need a big idea. Big in scope. You need a problem that needs a couple hundred pages to solve, and also, if you can swing it, you need something interesting to show people about the whole “being human” thing.

It took me a couple years of scribbling beforehand to find my big idea, and in the summer of 2013, I started writing Astrid Falls. I wrote on and off between theatre contracts, which more or less amounted to a part time job for almost eleven years. The vast majority of that time was spent teaching myself how to write long-form narrative fiction; how to know when to be specific and when to let the reader fill in the gaps; how to drip feed information; how to paint palpable pictures without getting bogged down in the details. This skillset took agonizing hours of trial and error to acquire, and, of course, I’m still learning.

It also took me as long as it did because I was constantly, painfully aware that the things I was writing about—race, culture, history—would upset people, even just by my mentioning them. I needed time to do a lot of listening and a lot of reading, enough time to convince myself that I had, at least, a conscientious understanding of these things. I also knew that no matter what I wrote I was going to make somebody somewhere feel uncomfortable. And for that, I will take my lumps.

In the end, I wrote something that early readers have told me is funny, and at times moving, and I think that’s the best I could’ve hope for. I am as yet unsure if another novel will follow, but writing this story has taught me a great deal about making art, about searching for truth, about the whole “being human” thing—and maybe those lessons were worth all the time and work and worry. Maybe I’ll do it again. Maybe I’ll finish it before the next eleven years are up.

If you want to know more about the book, click HERE.

Cover art from “Astrid Falls: A Legend of Vancouver”.