A Strange Type of Comfort, that’s the title of Gaylene Dutchyshen’s new book.
Dutchyshen, from Gilbert Plains, expresses how it feels to be a published author.
“When it’s been a dream that you’ve had since you were a child or teenager it feels pretty good. It’s something you think you might like to do someday and then when it really happens, when they accepted it for publication, I was really excited about that. Now to see it out as a book and a few people have read it and they liked it. I’ve read some reviews that some people really, really like it and of course, not everyone’s going to love it, but it’s an amazing feeling.”
Dutchyshen says the novel has been a few years in the making.
“A lot of the novel got written in 2015 when I was taking a creative writing course, through Humber College with an author by the name of Sandra Birdsell, she was my mentor. I worked on it for about 10 months and got the first draft done. Over the next couple years, I wrote the second draft and the third draft and I finally sent it out in 2018, in August and by October that year, Dundurn Press from Toronto sent me an email and said that they were going to publish it and it wouldn’t come out until January of 2020. So I spent the whole of 2019 doing edits, working with an editor, working on the cover design, and we worked on the title of the book.”
The story is about two rural women, one is 58 years old and the other is in her early 80’s, and despite being from different generations, they have a common bond because their farms are next to each other. The two husbands’ families have a conflict which plays a part in the story, as well as the fact that the 80-year-old has a daughter the same age as the other main character, which creates some mystery. Dutchyshen says it’s a story of motherhood, friendship, and betrayal.
Dundurn Press has expressed interest in turning the book into a trilogy, and Dutchyshen is a third of the way through the first draft of a sequel novel.
This Saturday, Dutchyshen is hosting a book launch in the Gilbert Plains Legion Hall at 2 in the afternoon. She’ll be doing a reading, then have a Q&A period, and then the book will be on sale at the end.
The book is available at Dauphin Super Thrifty and Old September in Gilbert Plains.
