A pair of local authors are teaming up to discuss their latest releases in an upcoming author talk at the Collingwood Public Library.
The event, to take place March 15 at 2:30 p.m., features Deborah Buehler and Zanne Raby, who have both released new books in the past few months.
“When you write a book you want other people to enjoy it… I’m hoping to bring that to people with my book,” says Raby, a military veteran who released Spirits of Steel, her fifth novel in a science fiction series, in December.
Buehler’s book, TIARIS: When the Oceans Kissed, is about a multi-racial teen coming of age as she moves from Toronto to Panama, finding herself travelling back in time to 1906 during the building of the Panama Canal.
“She’s trying to get home and she’s running out of time,” explains Buehler, who works at the University of Toronto as a research analyst and draws on her experience as an ecologist studying birds the world over.
“I look at the book as a good story, a coming-of-age story but also a way for readers to learn about the tropics and history by going on an adventure with Tiaris.”
The seed for the story was perhaps planted during one of her trips to Panama while doing ecological field work with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in 2000. While away, she sent home emails she called the Panama Chronicles, which became the field notes for the novel she released earlier this year.
It was during a more recent visit when she learned about the building of the Panama Canal through a documentary that the story began to develop. At home, while working full time and raising two children, she registered in a novel writing course and set to work writing in her spare time.
“There was a lot of late-night writing,” she recalls.
Her novel delves into the tropical rain forest and the higher-altitude cloud forest, their respective plants and their possible uses during that time period with some emphasis on birds and the impacts the canal’s building had on the environment.
The first draft was completed in two years. She then finessed her work through the help of writing groups in Collingwood and Toronto.
Through that process she got to know Raby, who helped her publish the book.
“We’re learning from each other a lot and I really like that,” says Buehler who has ideas for a sequel.
Raby’s goal, with her book, she explains, is to transport people to another world in another time. While Buehler went back in time, Raby takes readers into the future with Spirits of Steel. She creates a setting where the population must deal with the result of earlier generations’ failure to address climate change and inequities.
Raby, who lives in Thornbury, served in the military for 38 years. And throughout all her deployments with the Royal Canadian Air Force, which included locations across North America, Europe and the Middle East, she read.
“While I was in the military, I loved reading and I started writing things” without really completing anything, she says.
After retiring in 2018, she finally took pen to paper, setting her first novel in the future, while drawing on her background. Since then, there have been four other books which she describes as military science fiction novels.
In that first book she envisions a mega country including the current Canada, Mexico and United States as the United States of North America, which has a closed border.
While she continues to sell her latest and previous novels, she is already at work on her sixth novel, which explores a fresh story line.
While the upcoming event at the library is free and also available virtually, Buehler suggests those who are interested register in advance.
