Port Alberni’s Marilyn E. Burrows has been writing for most of her life, and she has finally published her first novel.
Down by the River was released in July of this year by Austin Macauley Publishers. It is a mystery fiction novel that follows a family in a small town and their struggle for answers after a car crash changes the course of their lives.
“It’s all about community,” said Burrows. “It takes place in a community called Allerton and it’s about the intermingling of all the people who live there. There’s a large degree of hope in the book that I think you find in most communities.”
Although Allerton is a fictional community on an unnamed island off the west coast, Burrows says readers from Port Alberni might notice some similarities.
Burrows has been writing since she was in her teenage years.
“I find it’s a way of dealing with all those changes that are happening in your life,” she explained. “I started out writing poetry and I had an amazing creative writing teacher in Grade 11 who encouraged us in the writing process.”
While she has been writing for years, she never took the step to get published.
“It’s a big step,” she said. “I was very shy and introverted. You pull back a bit, and life takes over.”
After retirement, Burrows found that she had a lot more free time to return to writing. She first came up with the idea for Down by the River while she was at Victoria Quay one day, watching the Somass River and all the activity surrounding it. Her first draft of the novel took three or four months, while edits took another year. She sent her manuscript out to a variety of different publishers and was “surprised” to get an immediate answer back from Austin Macauley, a publishing company based in the U.K.
Down by the River is the first in a series of four books, with the next one coming out in a few months. Along with the rest of the River series, Burrows is working on a second series of books, this one based in the Prairies.
“I have enjoyed the writing process, and continue to enjoy it,” said Burrows.
Burrows says most of her writing is done in the evenings, and editing is done during the day. She says she usually “has a bit of a plot” in mind when she starts writing, but doesn’t plan things out in detail.
“I like to see where it goes,” she said.
Outside of writing, Burrows also enjoys gardening. She lives in Port Alberni with her husband, Doug, and cat, Ginger, and has two adult children who also live on Vancouver Island.
Down by the River can be purchased at Mobius Books in Port Alberni. It can also be found online on Amazon or on the publisher’s website at www.austinmacauley.com.