Local Authors

Born in Winnipeg, David grew up on a diet of Marvel comic books and Edgar Rice Burrows novels. In the seventies, even after Tolkien's great work, both Fantasy and Science Fiction were still considered grade B stuff, until George Lucas changed the status of Science Fiction forever with Star Wars. Suddenly the genre was in vogue and marketable.

From Fire Drakes:
"Gamel, the aging Sorcerer-Emperor of the powerful Nagualian Empire, plots to bring the entire continent of Coronis under his thumb. Magdalen, his beautiful young apprentice, has betrayed him by stealing an ancient amulet that endows the owner with total control over a host of FireDrakes. Setting their differences aside, they have cobbled together an alliance that includes the half-crazed swamp witch, Agilina, and her deadly army of were-beasts."

Eva has been a food and ornamental gardener all her life, and interested in garden design for over 40 years. She was sole proprietor of a native plant nursery for six years, assisted in the design of the xeriscape demonstration garden for the City of Penticton, and has recently published a book on gardening called Cultivating the Wild:

"Until recently, indigenous plants of British Columbia’s Southern Interior and Eastern Washington were rarely seen in private or public landscapes.  These plants were often unknown or considered unsuitable for gardens and were not readily available.  Over the past decade or more during which I and others have promoted the inclusion of native plants in landscapes, however, interest in this type of gardening has grown greatly.  The many values of native plants in built landscapes are beginning to be recognized and municipalities have begun to embrace them for public spaces. "

Born in St. Catharines, Ontario I’ve since lived in Winnipeg, Regina, Vancouver and Chilliwack. But Penticton is finally home. I’ve been writing stories since I could write and was once given the advice to write the book I wanted to read. Since I love a gripping narrative and a hint of mystery, my first novel, Shelter, opens with a missing person. I wondered what would happen if a mother, who has always been the best of mothers, left her two daughters in the rugged country of the Chilcotin and didn’t come back. By the Secret Ladder and A Pilgrim in Ireland are my two previous books, both memoir.

Francie's new novel, Shelter, is the story of two sisters, Maggie and Jenny, and their quest to find out what happened to their mother who left them to billet in Williams Lake, a small town in British Columbia, and never came back. Set in the 1960s and 70s in the wilds of the Chilcotin, where it's still possible to lose yourself, the novel explores the attachment we have to our mothers, and the expectation we hold that they will always be our mothers, and nothing more.

Rie was born in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia and has recently returned there.  She holds a Masters Degree in Social Work, plays the harp, practises and teaches yoga, sings in choirs, reads books voraciously, bikes and walks as her main modes of transportation, digs, plants, weeds and enjoys the bounty of her vegetable garden and writes every moment she can.

From No More Dragons:
"I'm writing because it's starting to get to me.  Plus I need to tell someone.  It's my dad.  I'm sure you'll keep a secret.  I know I'm pretty dumb and a bad hockey player, but he doesn't need to tell me all the time.  Right?
Like on Friday night, driving home from hockey practice, he said, “Why don't you did in the corners?  You lazy or something?  Hug?  Hug?”  He jerked his head towards me.  I could already feel the whack across my chest.  “You a coward?  Afraid of getting hurt?  How could I have a dumb-dumb like you for a son?”
....I hate hockey most of the time.  But Dad won't let me quit.  He forced me into it in Grade Two, and it's obvious I'm never going to be good.  But he says all boys play hockey, and he won't have his son not playing.
Mom came out as Dad stomped into the house.  “How'd hockey go, love?”  She smiled with just the corners of her mough.  I grunted in reply.  I think she knew.  I wish she would do something about him.  Leave, preferably.  I wish I could do something, but what's a thirteen-year-old like supposed to do?"

A transplant from southern Ontario, Laurie is passionate about her adopted home in BC. She loves foreign travel and writes about these experiences in magazines, newspapers and online, but she is best known as an expert on the Okanagan Valley and surrounding region. Her stories and photographs reflect an interest in everything from architecture to winemakers. She is the author of two novels and the travel essay guidebook Grandma Wears Hiking Boots: A personal guide to the Okanagan Valley. Her Okanagan photo gallery will be released in November 2011.

Laurie's unique take on Okanagan trails, wildflower excursions, wine tasting, farm tours, family attractions, historic sites, cultural pursuits, mine tours, jumping off mountains and her favourite subject—food—suggest this book should be called: Grandma Wears Hiking Boots and Sneakers, Snowshoes and Skis, Flip-flops and Terminally Gorgeous Heels—but there wasn’t room on the cover. Carter's zippy style and self-inflicted humour make this collection of anecdotes, observations and recommendations a lively page-turner for armchair travellers and serious Okanagan explorer.

Janey Volden grew up in Kenya, East Africa. Her love of travel, especially into the remote area of Northern Kenya, gave her the inspiration to write Gabbra's Song, a young adult novel published in December 2006. Gabbra's Song is endorsed by Raise-A-Reader in the South Okanagan. Volden won contest awards for both young adult and children’s writing at the Penticton Writer’s conference in 2003 and 2004. She resides with her husband Bruce in Okanagan Falls, BC. They have two sons, Oliver and Casey.

Have you ever seen a tribesman shoot an arrow into the vein of a camel, pump the blood into a gourd filled with warm camel's milk, then drink the mixture down? Now that's SURVIVAL! Gabbra's Song centres on Riley Forbes, a dynamic Canadian teenager and budding photojournalist. She is virtually abandoned by her father (an international aid worker) for a two-week spell in northern Kenya, living as a Borana tribeswoman, facing the challenges of strange food, odd clothes, and nomadic tribal life. Gabbra and Nagya, the daughter and son of the Borana chief, return with Riley to Vancouver, to complete their education and experience their own culture shock. Riley is swept into a bittersweet relationship with Nagya, the strong, roguish warrior, and Gabbra falls in love with a boy forbidden to her if she were at home. Most importantly, Riley has a vision: an urgent fundraising project in her hometown to raise money for irrigation equipment for her friend’s village in northern Kenya.

Don Gayton is a working ecologist and author of six books of non-fiction, including Man Facing West, Okanagan Odyssey, Interwoven Wild and The Wheatgrass Mechanism. His omnivorous interests include fire ecology, grape growing, flying model airplanes, native plant gardening and why his socks never match. Don grew up in the Western US, immigrated to Saskatchewan in the Vietnam era, and is now a Summerland resident. He has been shortlisted twice for the BC Book Awards, and was a winner of the US National Outdoor Book Award as well as the Canadian Science Writer's Award.

From Okanagan Odyssey:
"Valleys are often learned by random encounter. An impulsive hike, a conversation, a local history book, even a car breakdown on a back road, can infuse bits of clarity onto the local ecology and culture. A well-crafted local wine is also a great asset to this educational process. Having lived in the Okanagan Valley for a few years, I was frustrated by the agonizingly slow growth of my local knowledge. Here was this place, this contradictory Okanagan: part urban big city, part rural orchard and ranch, and part wild ponderosa pine and rockbluff. I was not satisfied with the conventional view of this region, which is all about real estate, conservative politics and golf.  I needed to take the Okanagan on, immerse myself in it, drill down through layers of superficial understanding, and traverse it and all its contradictions, from the US border to its northern terminus...."