Long time residents of Rupert will remember the days of Iain Lawrence at the Daily News, Lawrence was the Jimmy Buffet look a like who had a wonderful way with words and eventually would leave the north coast and live a very Jimmy Buffet like life.
Lawrence was a news reporter and then editor at the Daily News in the mid 1980’s a rather successful era for the local paper, which frequently had its staff breaking local stories and providing some of the best in depth reporting the city had seen.
Lawrence was a news reporter and then editor at the Daily News in the mid 1980’s a rather successful era for the local paper, which frequently had its staff breaking local stories and providing some of the best in depth reporting the city had seen.
While he was no terror on the local softball fields playing for the Daily News team in the Prince Rupert Slow pitch league, he was certainly a hard working and dedicated reporter who got the story right and usually got it first.
When he left the city in the nineties he was just beginning to enter the world of writing novels and magazine pieces, a tentative step into a rather cut throat business where brutal disappointment can come with the morning mail.
Since those early days he’s become a rather prolific author, especially successful in the adult fiction genre, his bibliography consists of 14 novels published by Random House of New York. From the early days of The Wreckers, through to non fiction books about his sailing experiences, Lawrence has found a passion for writing that has found a receptive eye from the book buying public.
Random House sales figures show that Lawrence has sold over 1 million copies of his various efforts, an impressive figure that probably won’t resonate much with the rather shy author. A fellow who just writes for the joy of writing, though we suspect that going to the mail box is a lot more enjoyable now than in the early days.
He continues to write each day and has Books 15 and 16 on the way shortly, one called the The Castaways and the other called Seance; which is a look at the world of Mediums in the era of Houdini.
It’s great to see that his life long dream of writing has become such a success, Lawrence is up for one of seven awards today at the BC Books gala, a celebration of literature in British Columbia. He has been nominated for his work Gemini Summer, released last fall. His nomination is a well deserved accolade and an honour that places him among some of the elite in BC and Canada's writing community.
He still has many friends along the North Coast from his days at the Daily News and his tireless days of research spent at the Prince Rupert Library. A frequent fixture around town those days, having made the daily commute from Dodge Cove to the city to work on whatever his latest project of the day was.
It might be time for the Library to host an Iain Lawrence festival, bringing him back up to the north coast from his southern islands home, it might give him an excuse to get the sail boat out again.
When he left the city in the nineties he was just beginning to enter the world of writing novels and magazine pieces, a tentative step into a rather cut throat business where brutal disappointment can come with the morning mail.
Since those early days he’s become a rather prolific author, especially successful in the adult fiction genre, his bibliography consists of 14 novels published by Random House of New York. From the early days of The Wreckers, through to non fiction books about his sailing experiences, Lawrence has found a passion for writing that has found a receptive eye from the book buying public.
Random House sales figures show that Lawrence has sold over 1 million copies of his various efforts, an impressive figure that probably won’t resonate much with the rather shy author. A fellow who just writes for the joy of writing, though we suspect that going to the mail box is a lot more enjoyable now than in the early days.
He continues to write each day and has Books 15 and 16 on the way shortly, one called the The Castaways and the other called Seance; which is a look at the world of Mediums in the era of Houdini.
It’s great to see that his life long dream of writing has become such a success, Lawrence is up for one of seven awards today at the BC Books gala, a celebration of literature in British Columbia. He has been nominated for his work Gemini Summer, released last fall. His nomination is a well deserved accolade and an honour that places him among some of the elite in BC and Canada's writing community.
He still has many friends along the North Coast from his days at the Daily News and his tireless days of research spent at the Prince Rupert Library. A frequent fixture around town those days, having made the daily commute from Dodge Cove to the city to work on whatever his latest project of the day was.
It might be time for the Library to host an Iain Lawrence festival, bringing him back up to the north coast from his southern islands home, it might give him an excuse to get the sail boat out again.
Random House features a web page devoted to his biography and his works, which is a great place to discover what he's been up to since he left the north coast.
The Vancouver Sun has a terrific biography of Lawrence and his work on its website today. From it, we Podunkicize his life and times below.
Adventures in writing
AWARDS I BC Book Prize nominee Iain Lawrence loves his genre, and so do young readers
Shelley Fralic
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, April 28, 2007
With his history as a sailor, a fish farmer, a logger, a reporter and a forest-fire fighter, it's not much of a stretch to discover that this, from the young-adult novel The Wreckers -- "There was once a village bred by evil. On the barren coast of Cornwall, England, lived a community who prayed for shipwrecks" -- was written by Iain Lawrence.
The Vancouver Sun has a terrific biography of Lawrence and his work on its website today. From it, we Podunkicize his life and times below.
Adventures in writing
AWARDS I BC Book Prize nominee Iain Lawrence loves his genre, and so do young readers
Shelley Fralic
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, April 28, 2007
With his history as a sailor, a fish farmer, a logger, a reporter and a forest-fire fighter, it's not much of a stretch to discover that this, from the young-adult novel The Wreckers -- "There was once a village bred by evil. On the barren coast of Cornwall, England, lived a community who prayed for shipwrecks" -- was written by Iain Lawrence.
Or this, from Gemini Summer: "In the quiet of Hog's Hollow, each member of the River family pursues a dream."
For if there is a common thread in Lawrence's books for young readers -- he's just polishing up his 12th for New York publisher Random House -- it's adventure. His stories are peppered with tales of prisons and pirates and shipwrecks and heroes and villains -- the kind of swashbuckling action kids dreamed about before PlayStation hijacked their imaginations.
It comes, he says, from a life-long affection for books like Treasure Island, which his father read to him and his brother.
Lawrence -- a finalist for one of the seven BC Book Prizes, to be awarded today -- was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., 52 years ago. He lived a peripatetic Canadian childhood: 11 houses and nine schools, all told.
That may be why he craves privacy and why you'll find him settled in solitude in a little waterfront house on Gabriola Island, where he has lived since 2000 with his partner, Kristin Miller.
Getting him on the phone takes some doing, since he's not much for chatting about himself. This shyness will keep him from making the trek to Victoria to attend tonight's BC Book Prizes gala, where Gemini Summer is a finalist (for the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize), along with three dozen other books in varied genres.
This much Lawrence will talk about: He always knew he wanted to write.
He began turning out short stories after high school, but publishers weren't that interested, so he took odd jobs to pay the bills -- stream-clearing in the Rockies, forest-fire fighting on Vancouver Island and even daffodil- picking -- until one day he found himself enrolled in journalism at Langara College in Vancouver.
After graduation, he headed north, reporting for papers in Houston and Burns Lake before settling in Prince Rupert, at the Prince Rupert Daily News.
It was there that he found his real home. The newspaper, the ocean, the small-town life -- it was his West Coast paradise.
Before long, he bought a sailboat, met his girl, and once again felt the urge to write fiction. He wrote several children's novels, including one about a shipwrecked boy. But instead he ended up selling two non-fiction books about his sailing adventures.
It was a Chicago agent who encouraged Lawrence to concentrate on writing for young readers, so he dusted off the book that would become The Wreckers and reworked it. Random House came knocking.
That was in 1998, 14 books ago. The Wreckers was soon followed by The Smugglers and The Buccaneers, completing his High Seas Trilogy.
His forthcoming novel, The Castaways, is set for release this fall. And he's putting the finishing touches on Seance, a novel about mediums during Houdini's time, to be released next summer.
Most days, Lawrence turns on classical music and heads for his computer right after breakfast, taking only a mid-afternoon break to walk the dog.
He still has a sailboat -- his third, the 32-foot cutter Connection, built by Miller's brother -- but doesn't take it out as often as he'd like.
And, having survived years of rejection, he displays a startling lack of confidence in himself as a writer. Although he's successful at it, by all accounts, he doesn't know how many books he has sold. "I get royalty cheques, but I don't look at [the numbers] because I don't want to be disappointed. But I think it's more than a quarter-million copies of The Wreckers."
In fact, reports Random House, Lawrence has sold more than one million books in North America.
But he prefers to measure success another way.
"I think I have the best job. I love going to work."
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