Wallaceburg father & daughter duo team up for new book

John and Becca Gardiner (Aaron Hall)

Wallaceburg’s John and Becca Gardiner have teamed up to produce a brand new “literary collection”, which has recently hit bookshelves online across Canada and the United States.

The father and daughter duo, John with the words and Becca with the illustrations, worked together to create Memories For Sale: Tales From A Small Town.

A launch is scheduled to take place at James Street Eatery in downtown Wallaceburg on Thursday, July 20 between 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. People will have the opportunity to meet both Becca and John, enjoy some food, purchase a signed copy of the book or a t-shirt, view the original art work for the book and listen to some music and readings from the book as well.

A lifetime in the making

John is a long-time journalist in the community, having worked in the editorial department at the old Wallaceburg News. He also ran the CKTimes online newspaper for many years.

Throughout his life and career, John, who is also a veteran musician, has always dabbled in creative writing on top of his journalistic work.

The new book is a culmination of a lifetimes worth of material, John said.

“There are 12 short stories, there are 12 pieces of poetry and there is a short novel,” John told the Sydenham Current in a sit down interview from the back porch of his Wallaceburg home.

“I’m calling this a literary collection, rather than just a book, because there is really three different literary forms in the same book. What is really represents in some ways is my opus. I’ve been a creative writer for most of my adult life, I’ve been scratching stuff out. I’ve had a fair amount of success getting short stories placed in different places but I’ve never had a publishing deal. I’ve got boxes full of rejections, I’ve sent a lot of stuff out over the years.”

Now 64, John said he wanted to create something that would leave a long-lasting impression.

“I’m starting to get older,” he said.

“I guess your mortality starts to click in and you start to think about that a bit. I wanted to leave some kind of legacy behind, almost as much for my family as for a wider readership. Obviously, I’m hoping to sell thousands, tens of thousands of books and really get it out there… but if it doesn’t get out there, my 11-year-old grandson has already read a couple of the short stories and I am thrilled with that.”

John said the short stories are written in a variety of diverse voices.

“The first story, When I Was Crazy, was written from the viewpoint of a 17-year-old girl,” he said.

“So it is her experiences, what happens to her, she has a bit of a mental health issue when she was younger. There is a story in the book called Reminders, which is written from the viewpoint of an eight-year-old girl. There many voices represented, several great senior stories.”

Another one of the stories is entitled, The Melancholy Man, a story John calls his best known work, which has previously been published in India and translated into several different languages, including Classical French.

“It was set very much in Wallaceburg and was about an old jeweler we had in town here, Bob Leach,” he said.

“The story was about Bob’s business winding down, he was getting older, there were big changes happening on James Street, small businesses were disappearing. He could see that, it was his way of life, he worked on the main street since the early ’50’s. He could see that it was all coming to an end, that type of retailing. I went in to interview him for a progress edition and that’s where I got the idea for the short story. It has done really well for me.”

John said Memories For Sale: Tales From A Small Town is his effort to try and reach a wider audience.

“The subtitle is ‘Tales From A Small Town’ because most of the writing in the book reflects ‘small town.’ Most of the action takes place in a small town, not Wallaceburg, not Hanover, but people who know those two places and read the book will see sign posts,” he said.

Overall, John said he describes his stories as “emotional thoughtscapes.

“My goal in writing is to create vivid, emotional images in the readers mind. That’s the goal and that’s what I’m after. It’s serious stuff, it’s introspective stuff. People may find that a little different, a little change of pace coming from me, but I hope give it a chance. I think they’ll find it’s worth investing some time in.”

Illustrations reflect the words

Becca told the Sydenham Current her dad approached her and asked if she would be willing to do some illustrations for the book.

“I said ‘I don’t have time’ and then I said that I would do it, and then I procrastinated,” Becca said.

After several postponements with the book, the artwork eventually came together.

“I’ve had maybe 18 months to work on it and I ended up doing 14 paintings in the matter of about six weeks,” she said.

“I have only ever put one thing in a show as an adult. I had some stuff when I was younger and in high school, but I hadn’t seriously looked into making art in years and years. Even just to sit down and wrap my head around creating things, I’ve been taking stabs at it now that my kids are starting to get older. To make a body of work of this size was a bit daunting.”

An illustration was created to coincide with each short story, plus cover pages for the poetry section and the novel inside the book.

“I read through the stories before, and then I read through them again,” Becca said.

“I would sit down and start to work, and whatever jumped out at me that day with regard to that story was what produced itself on paper.”

Needless to say, Becca’s dad was impressed with the final product.

“I was blown away,” John said.

“If you read each of the stories you will see that the illustrations are bang on in terms of representing what needs to be represented in that story. She did a really good job of getting inside the story and coming out with a really good image from it. I think that was really important for her to go in and feel the stories like I do.”

The cover for the novel inside the book, The Gawd Book, also turned out to be the cover for the entire book itself.

“It’s sort of a coming of age story about a boy named Gawd,” Becca said.

“I sort of took that in my mind and ran with the imagery of a shroud, and because this is a story about a young man coming of age and my dad was the writer, I put the hippy glasses on, painted my father’s face and then I pressed it similar to the way The Shroud of Turin would have been pressed over God’s face, and then I re-pressed it, put weight on it and pressed the image into the paper and then threw the Crown of Thorns on there. So, that’s my dad.”

Becca said her and her dad spent an entire evening creating the image.

“I wrapped towels around my dad and continued to paint his face, and press his face and then re-press his face until I got an image that I thought was suitable,” she said.

“So we spent a couple of hours doing that. It was kind of ridiculous and little bit fun.”

Father/daughter bond

John said he probably wouldn’t have done the project at all, if Becca hadn’t agreed to collaborate with him on the illustrations.

“It was really super important to me for that to be able to happen,” he said.

“Her kids are slightly older now, so it was a little bit easier. She has done such amazing work in there, the cover is so striking. When her kids are raised, he is going to make some amazing art… you watch.”

John said he is lucky to have her.

“People don’t know about her yet, but someday her artwork is going to be in demand,” he said.

“In the meantime, we’ll get her to do little bits here, little bits there when she has time to do it. I want to give her the opportunity too. If the book takes off and sells 100,000 copies. I’ll take her with me.”

Business side of things

John said he self-published a series of short story books back in the early 1990’s in the Wallaceburg area.

However, with Memories For Sale: Tales From A Small Town he wanted to do things “by the book.

“This book has its ISPN number, it’s all copyrighted. Archway, the publisher is a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, which are the big publishing house in the United States. I knew they were a very reputable organization. They’ve been great and they’ve produced a very quality product,” he said.

The book is available in soft cover, hard cover and e-book.

It’s available right now at Barnes and Nobel, Chapters and Amazon, .ca and .com, and in Kindle-friendly versions.

John said while he enjoyed a recent book launch in his hometown of Hanover, and is looking forward to the launch in Wallaceburg as well, it will be the online sales on Amazon and Chapters that determine the fate of the book.

“Recently, Archway sent out an interactive press release surrounding the book to around 30,000 journalists across North America,” he said.

“They are getting word out there for me. Next summer, if I choose, we could have an authors reception at the World Book Expo in New York.”

To purchase a copy of the book, click here.

You can also purchase a copy of the book by contacting John at gardiner@kent.net or by calling 519-627-5978.


– Photo credit: Aaron Hall

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