Caroline Adderson is a prolific author as well as former mentor for The Writer’s Studio at SFU. She continues to teach courses through SFU’s Writing & Publishing Program. Adderson is a writer of both adult novels and children’s books, with 12 books published and at least two confirmed for release next year. She finds an interesting complement between these two different genres, and finds that having multiple projects actually balances her writing life. “Kids books are shorter, you can put it aside and come back. An adult book you could work for three years on it, while kids books may only take about six months.”
Her work is also balanced by a new interest in the heritage of Vancouver houses. Her fascination began when exploring the history of her own house. In an essay about this research published in Geist magazine, Adderson says when her 96 year-old neighbour Pearl passed away, the house she’d lived in since she was 11 years old was slated for demolition. “[The house’s] stories and secrets, which were intertwined with the stories and secrets from my house, would be lost forever when the house went down. These old houses are repositories of narrative. Not only do they contain the histories of all the successive owners, but also they carry the history of all the materials that were used to build them.”
And so Adderson began watching the other houses in her neighbourhood, and soon became distraught about the houses being torn down. She began to research the stories behind the houses, inspired to do something even just personally, to document these disappearing houses. She now runs a Facebook page called Vancouver Vanishes, posting photographs of demolished homes and who the original residents were.
Adderson is currently working on an adult novel told through multiple short stories. Some have dubbed these types of novels — consisting of collections of stories rather than the traditional novel form — “Linked Short Stories” and Adderson is interested in form and experimenting with the label “novel-in-stories”. Some of the stories have already been published, including “Poppycock” in Best Canadian Stories 12 and “I Feel Lousy” in Eighteen Bridges magazine, which won the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Gold Medal for Fiction.
Caroline Adderson’s books for children are also constantly receiving nominations and awards, such as the first book in her new John Dooley series. The first two early chapter books for kids have already been published, with four more expected. Each book takes place during one week in the life of a young boy, named John Dooley of course. Adderson’s middle-grade novel, Middle of Nowhere, has also been shortlisted for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize as part of the BC Book Prizes. Earlier in April 2013, Adderson joined the BC Book Prizes On Tour for a week, visiting schools, libraries, and bookstores in the Peace Region of British Columbia.
E.R. Brown — or Eric as friends call him — has been a full-time writer for more than 20 years but only recently published his first novel. He began as a technical writer working for advertising agencies and government, and now does freelance compiling annual reports and website copy. “Corporate writing is an invisible presence,” Brown explains, mentioning he had fiction aspirations for a while before completing The Writer’s Studio at SFU in 2004 with Caroline Adderson as his mentor. Almost Criminal was inspired by a conversation with a friend about the pervasiveness of marijuana in British Columbia, and published by Dundern on April 20, 2013. “There is an enormous economy going on [with marijuana], nearly $8 billion annually, and no one talks about it.”
Brown’s previous creative writing had been literary pieces published in magazines such as EVENT and Prairie Fire as well as a radio play on CBC. So when his novel began taking form, it was initially as literary fiction. However, his agent told him “if there are Hells Angels, it’s not a CanLit novel” and suggested he explore the crime fiction genre. “Canada is very uptight about divisions [between literary and genre fiction], which isn’t the case in the UK,” states Brown. Once he allowed the crime thriller to come through, the story took off.
The research process was not as difficult, despite pot being an illegal substance in Canada. “There are lots of textbooks, including a book on Amazon called How to Start a Grow Op,” explains Brown, who also cited a CBC documentary about the weed business as a helpful source. But he had difficulty verifying facts and descriptions. He travelled to Nelson and Harrison, which are “big weed towns” according to Brown, but no one wanted to talk. Fortunately, Marc Emery, BC’s ‘Prince of Pot’ was one of Brown’s early readers of the manuscript and caught several factual errors. Brown also had a friend-of-a-friend, who wished to remain anonymous, who would answer questions.
During our interview, the question of legalization or decriminalization arose. “Once you understand what’s going on, you see just how the policies influence things.” He explains that the police find weed a “massive pain in the neck” whereas opponents believe it feeds Hells Angels’ activities, which “would only get worse if it was decriminalized, but if you legalize it, you can tax it and put it in stores.” But Brown says he “can’t see it [legalization] happening anytime soon, unless tempted by tax dollars.”
Almost Criminal is available in print and ebook format. Brown is already working on his next novel, also crime fiction, but isn’t ready to disclose the subject except to say it’s a completely different world from weed. “Crime fiction is a lot of fun. There is more plot than literary novels but you still have to be a good writer.”
