Libraries are places to discover and love stories.
Sometimes they sit on shelves waiting for a reader to bring them to life and sometimes they are read aloud and shared.
Monday the Maidstone Library welcomed Myrtle Conacher of Mervin who spoke about her writing and read from her book, The Crocodile Connection.
Conacher wrote her first substantial piece, a novelette, while she was in nursing training. She tied it with ribbon and placed it in a chest years ago. Her roles as a wife, mother and active member of the community kept her from finding the time to write until after her children had grown.
"When we were first married, we were too poor for a typewriter and paper," she said.
She encourages other writers to set time aside to write.
"Don't spend time trying to get the opening sentences right, let it be, go on writing," she said.
Conacher spoke about the problems of writer's block and having to rein in characters that seemed to come to life and veer away from the path she had created in her outline.
With experience living in Ghana, Conacher decided to set The Crocodile Connection in a fictional African country. She read parts of the book introducing those in attendance to the characters and the setting.
During the three-year span it took to write the book, she had a period where the story was stalled and she quickly wrote Murder on the Maritime Tour, inspired by observations on her own tour of Eastern Canada.
She has had both books published by Benchmark Press in Regina and is currently in the process of publishing Jonah's Daughter, a book she wrote even earlier and had to have transferred from floppy disk to a more suitable format.
She isn't writing anything new at the moment, but may begin a new project after the summer has finished.
Conacher answered questions about her books and the writing and sold and signed a few copies before everyone shared a coffee and visit with more stories and ideas filling the library.
