Everybody knows that the library is filled with a bunch of authors but this weekend, they're off the shelves and in living colour.
To help the city put on its annual StArts Fest celebration (in conjunction with the province's Alberta Arts Days extravaganza), the St. Albert Public Library is hosting a spate of real live authors to get people even more excited about writing and the written word in general.
Two of those authors are Edmonton-based writers Gayleen Froese and Wayne Arthurson.
Froese is a novelist and musician who has been in the writing game for years. A few years after publishing her first novel, Touch, she entered BookTelevision's famous contest called The Three Day Novel.
She describes the experience as a boot camp with a twist. She, along with 11 other contestants, were sequestered in an Edmonton bookstore and charged with the task of cranking out a completely new full-length work in 72 hours. All of this was televised, of course.
"That was a lot of fun," she recounted. "We had to sleep in the same room, with these complete strangers. You're not strangers by the end of that weekend, let me tell you."
She figured it all worked out well, for her genre anyway. She admits that it certainly wasn't a normal weekend for her but it was still a good experience for a writer of paranormal murder mysteries.
Froese will conduct a reading from her second novel, Grayling Cross, which was published in the spring. The story is the sequel to Touch. It follows her two protagonists, the psychic Anna Gareau and the public relations expert Collie Kostyna as they help out some local magicians and take assignments for an underground supernatural society known as the Embassy.
They find themselves helping out an Edmonton investigator who is looking into the disappearance of a teenage psychic. Of course, dark happenings occur, and Anna and Collie start to wonder if they're working on the right side.
Froese herself is content to keep working in the magical realm.
"I think that it's a fun way to play with societal commentary and look at things from a different angle than you would in general fiction," she said." You get to take another approach to talking about what it's like to live in Western Canada or in Edmonton."
She's excited to be in St. Albert, especially at this time of year. She admits to being a fan of fall.
"I love Halloween in one sense and in another sense it's really just another day. It's just like every other day in my life," she laughed.
The other author
Wayne Arthurson is a former journalist whose first book, Fall from Grace, garnered him a solid reputation. Not only that, it also gave him the opportunity to actually focus on his writing.
He said that it's exhausting to keep applying to publishing company after publishing company and only collect rejection letters from the enterprise. But he did land a two-book contract from Forge Books.
"This novel was rejected by 15 to 20 publishers in Canada. The first American one to read it was the one who gave me the sweet deal. It was a five-year process of trying to sell it in Canada and then trying the U.S. and then they went, 'Whoa! Something set in Edmonton? That's never been done before! We're keen on that'."
It seems that there are a lot of similarities between Arthurson and Froese. Both of their newest books are mysteries set in Edmonton. Interestingly enough, Arthurson also landed a spot on The Three Day Novel back in 2006.
His presentation on Monday will include a reading from Fall from Grace plus a brief history of how he got to be where he is today. Not every small town journalist can make it in the world of books but somehow he managed it.
"I thought that journalism would be a good way of actually making money while I wrote fiction," he said.
That ploy seems to have worked. His next novel, A Killing Winter, is set to be released next spring.
The St. Albert Public Library has a fine selection of titles from both of these authors on their shelves as well.
