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Area authors taking flight with new book
Area writers were celebrated Friday during the launch of the book Take Flight: True Stories of How Dreams Shape Our Lives at the Didsbury library.
Laura Crowe, who edited and published the book, described it as “a collection of true short stories that are written by other people. I have one essay and one short story in there, and there’s 13 short stories and 14 authors.”
The launch party attracted an attendance of about 90-100 people, according to Crowe. At the event, authors – mostly unpublished up to now - were given a chance to read excerpts of their stories and visit with the community.
Crowe said she got the idea from an acquaintance of hers.
She had expressed interest in starting a magazine and her friend suggested she try something in the form of a book instead.
“So I made a workshop called ‘Publish Your Unique Short Story,’ and that was mostly to help authors figure out what kind of story they’d like to write, and which part of their life they’d like to write.”
Authors were asked to aim to write 2,500 words.
“A lot of the authors were thinking that they had no idea what to write about,” said Crowe, “and once they started writing, they had no idea how to stop. So it was my job as the editor to help them pare down what the actual core of the story was.”
Now that the book is finished and printed, Crowe must market it.
She said it is available on her website, and authors have also bought books to sell to people they know.
Her next step is to get the copy into an e-reader format, as well as contact Amazon, Chapters, libraries, and other bookstores.
One of the attractions of the book, she said, is that there’s a variety of styles and stories, as well as funny and serious subject matter.
“They’re all so different, so most people find something they like in it.”
Crowe said one of the most enjoyable things about the project was seeing how the first drafts evolved into what they are now.
“That’s probably the major reward for me,” she noted, “and the secondary reward is the excitement of the authors seeing the finished product and seeing their names in print and riding the wave of their excitement, which was also why I wanted to do the project in the first place.”
Crowe indicated that she is interested in doing a similar project, possibly in fiction.
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