Donna Milner would like to add a small clause to the old writer's motto of "write what you know." Scribes should also write where they know.
It is insulting to the intelligence of readers around the world to assume they only want stories of postcard America or major urban centres, in her view, and also insulting to the real life dramas people live in their own communities. She knows this firsthand because her first novel, After River, was spotted first by a literary super-agent in England, published in 12 countries and translated into eight languages - although it was set in her former hometown of Rossland (masked only by her change of the town's name to Atwood, a not so subtle Canadian literature reference in itself, eh).
She followed that up with another hit novel, The Promise of Rain, that was set in a borough of Vancouver. Again it was transparent that the setting was the Fraserview subdivision where she grew up.
For the past 40 years Milner has lived, raised a family, and worked in real estate in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. With her latest book Somewhere In-Between she finally turns her pen onto our region and also drops the municipality masquerades altogether. In the first 10 pages of the book she refers directly to the area by name four times, indirectly refers to it another four times, or five if you count her use of the word "paradise" as an adjective for the location.
"I have heard that before: advice to writers to avoid setting your stories in Canada because you'll lose your audience in the States. But we have such interesting settings and characters in Canada, why would I avoid that?" she said.
Somewhere In-Between goes all the way into her own experiences. The protagonist is a recently retired real estate agent who, with her husband, sheds her previous town life by moving onto a backcountry Chilcotin ranch, but in the attempt to downsize human interactions they end up facing off with one of the most intense relationships they have ever experienced.
Much of this mirrors Milner's own recent years. She and husband Tom left Williams Lake to live off the grid in a solar/propane-powered timberframe home at Rimrock Lake (about halfway between Williams Lake and Quesnel on the east side of Highway 97).
But the solitude was a mechanism for Milner to dig deeper into her sense of inner fiction. Yes, she bases her stories on actual elements of her life, but the make-things-up muscle is getting stronger for the novelist who only took up the pen in the latter stages of her main profession.
"I like the freedom of fiction. I like to base things on historical fact and real places, but I like the freedom for the characters," she said. "I was in real estate for over 20 years and when I retired I wrote some short stories, had a few smaller things published, but never thought I'd want to tackle a novel. But I followed the characters, and that's what I do most, more than following a story. The end story always ends up so different than I originally expected at the start. Sometimes they go where I don't want them to."
She is the kind of author who "writes in fits and starts, but I know I should be more disciplined and do it every day," she said. Like many novelists, she also gets stuck on research. Because her settings are always based in modern reality, she feels the urge to ensure the mundane details of the story are correct, so as not to jar the reader with a mistake in common processes and timelines. Often, she said, different versions of those truths are conflicting so she has to dig deeper into the matter or make a choice that might end up incorrect.
Even this is part of the fun, she said. With the success she's had, it's hard to argue against her formula despite the streak of good fate that arches over her writing career.
"I was very lucky on my first novel," she said. "I sent it to an agent in England, and it sat on their slush pile until someone in the agency picked it up basically by chance, and happened to respond to what I did. I'd sent them 30 pages; they asked to have the rest and asked me to stop sending it out to other agents. Jane Gregory is still my agent. She was responsible for getting it sold so extensively internationally. I'm told it was like winning the lottery."
Somewhere In-Between is showing strong results. Released in late February, it has received major critical praise in literary columns across the country. It has been in the BC Booklook (B.C.'s fiction and non-fiction titles together) Top 12 almost constantly ever since, reaching No. 1 in late March and still on the list this past week as she gets set to do her first publicity events since the book arrived on shelves.
Published by Prince George-founded Caitlin Press, Milner will meet the public at a book signing on Saturday at Books and Company at 2 p.m.
