bruce county

It Began With a Story About a Groundhog / November 23, 2022 by Lena Scholman

Growing up on a farm, with many cousins and brothers, sometimes an aspiring writer just needs an escape to the city.

Ha ha.

I write this as a city woman now, escaping to the country, so that I can write. Life is funny.

Valley Hardware Release!

A few years ago, a friend and I had planned to go skiing up north, but it was so bitterly cold, we bailed and went back roads exploring instead. We were in the town where I grew up and I took my friend to my childhood hardware store. This is a magical place with an old fashioned cash register that clangs open and shut, where the wood floors creak with the memory of every customer who has ever crossed the threshold and the proprietor is, well, a character from a book. I had just finished a draft of a novel, and wanted to write some smaller pieces just for fun. I listened to a radio interview with mystery writer Louise Penney, who has written over a dozen novels about Inspector Armand Gamache and his crime-fighting life in the Quebecois countryside, and what kept her returning to this her protagonist over and over again was that it was a person she loved to spend time with. I realized that somewhere wrapped in my nostalgia for my own small town, were people I also wanted to spend more time with. So, I began to write a series of stories based around a city guy named Lorne and a hardware store he inherited from his from his ex-wife’s late father. Truth be told, he’s come to love small-town living in the cozy apartment above the shop that he now shares with the Reverend Monica Chalmers. Across the street, his ex, Sharanne, runs a successful beauty salon. Running between these two worlds is Ella, Lorne and Sharanne’s teenager, whose head is in the clouds – birdwatching, as always. Between farmers and townies, city folk and hippie nomads, the stories of life in the Valley portray unlikely souls becoming friends, and the kind of community one longs to experience beyond the page. Now, once again between novel-length projects, I've readied the compilations for publication in two slim volumes. Stay tuned and sign up to be the first to hear about a release date!

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