Ruth Welburn

Yesterday, I was in an all-day Zoom meeting with several other writers and our writing coach. These Zoom meetings are so enjoyable. I learn so much about writing and about life in general. Yesterday, the topic was “relationships.” After a brief discussion, we write for the day. I had planned to spend the day clearing up odds and ends in my writing world, but our writing coach suggested I write something first about our discussion. After all, writing is about relationships; our relationships have a way of creeping into our writing, and sometimes our writing helps us understand our relationships. 

After the warm-up exercises, a writer who is publishing a memoir began the discussion session. She was shaken by the negative reactions from some of her siblings. One brother isn’t speaking to her anymore because of her book. Another member talked about her relationships with writing, herself, and how she was blindsided by her divorce. She wondered why she didn’t see the signs, if she had been too trusting. I reflected on how encouraging it is to have the kind of support I am getting from friends and relatives. Another writer described how hard it is for her to watch her daughter’s pain as she goes through a divorce. Another mentioned a writing workshop she attended where almost everyone was writing a memoir. They were given an assignment to write from the antagonist’s point of view. The exercise caused such emotional upheaval that many could not write for a couple of days. 

As troubling as relationship problems are, everyone in the group was so supportive and offered new ways to look at them that we were all laughing. The candid exchange made me reflect on my own childhood, divorce, and family problems. 

I realized how differently siblings remember or perceive the same experience. A lot has to do with the chronological place we hold in the family. I am the oldest girl and the second oldest of seven children in the family. In my early years, I remember the family as it was in better times, before my father lost his arm and before the birth trauma of my brother, who was three years younger than me. He died when he was five after spending over a year of his young life away from his family in the Red Cross Cripple Children’s Hospital in Calgary. I remember a time before my father’s horrific accident that subsequently changed not only our lives but also presented new challenges and shaped who we came to be. These experiences creep into my new book, Land of the Watchers. In the chapter where the community comes together to build a house for the pregnant protagonist and her new husband, the narrator muses: 

“It is an exciting time when a new home is built. A young couple is filled with love and dreams of a bright future together. The community looks forward to meeting the children who will grow up in this house. It is a time before life has harmed hopes for the future. No one ever considers the possibility of disappointment and tragedy. … this is not a time when sickness, injury, or mortality creeps into the minds of the people. Today is a day for dreams and hopes for a perfect future.”   

One thing my youngest brother holds against my father is based on an untruth we led him to believe. I just turned twelve. My brother was two. I was home from school for Christmas break when it happened – the news report that led both my mother and father to take the property at Winterburn instead of waiting to sell our house so we could buy the one they wanted at Saint Albert. That report was so traumatizing that we basically fled from Jasper Place. I blocked it from my mind and clung to the story that Dad chose the farm at Winterburn over the one at Saint Albert because the soil was better. Neither Mom nor Dad wanted to move to Winterburn, Mom because there was no electricity or running water, and the house was smaller than the one we had. The truth is that my parents were trying to sell our two-bedroom house in Jasper Place and move to a three-bedroom, two-story house on a farm on the Saint Albert Trail. The farm at Saint Albert was in working condition and only a short drive on a paved highway from my father’s night job in Edmonton. Life would have been easier for all of us, but organized crime had followed the oil boom into Jasper Place. The year was 1953. The men had returned home after four years of fighting in WWII. A new police force had been established in our burgeoning town, and the chief imposed a curfew to curb crime. Things were tense. The criminal gangs struck back. What they did was so horrible, I cannot speak of it. Our house wasn’t selling because of the crime and the time of year. The newly widowed woman who owned the farm at Winterburn lived alone, one and a half miles down a dirt road that was often impassable. She offered to hold the mortgage we needed and couldn’t get from the bank until we sold the house, so my parents accepted her offer. We had to get a custodian to let us into the school to retrieve our belongings.

Marketing 

Back in my present life, I am finally starting to market my two latest books. I have to say I am very fortunate to have a supportive family and friends. The book of Memories I put together for the residents of Shannon Oaks and published last February got such good reviews from the Writer’s Digest Self-Published E-book Award Contest, that I decided to download Grammarly, proofread the book for spelling and punctuation and ask my graphic designer, Iryna Spica, to upgrade the cover, put pictures in colour and add her magic touch. Iryna created this blog for me and has been helping me set up a social media platform. She offered some valuable advice to improve the appearance of the book of Memories.

Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards

I entered the revised book of Memories into the 2025 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards for printed books. Top award winners in each category will not be notified until October 19, 2026. Winners will be listed in Writer’s Digest magazine in the Spring issue of 2027. There is only one prize for each category, but again, all entrants will receive a brief commentary from one of the judges.

The New Brunswick Connection

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I was born and raised in Alberta and have lived on Vancouver Island for the last 25 years. Before that, I spent seven years in Calgary and one year in Australia, but I lived in New Brunswick for over a third of my life. During that time, I raised three sons, worked in Medical Laboratory Technology, earned an undergraduate and master’s degree from UNB in Fredericton, and worked at the university for eight years. Two of my sons and several grandchildren live in Fredericton. Others live in Charlottetown, PEI.

My son, David, ordered a copy of the newly revised book, Shannon Oaks Memories, and graciously offered to take it to the Fredericton Library and to three Fredericton bookstores: Chapters, Westminster Books, and the UNB bookstore. Chapters has agreed to display my book on their “local author” shelf. David has received additional copies of the book and will take them to the other bookstores. David took the three photos below.

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All three bookstores have carried my previous historical fiction, The Devil’s Ruse. At the time my first book was published, two of the bookstores invited me to do a book signing. David’s daughter accompanied me and helped with the signing. She was in high school at the time. Now, she is married, lives in Fredericton and has two children.

Local Marketing

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Years ago, I took my first historical fiction to the Greater Victoria Public Library. This year, I submitted my newly revised book of Shannon Oaks Memories to their 11th Annual Emerging Local Authors Collection. Every year, they highlight books written by Southern Vancouver Island authors. The collection will be displayed at the Central Branch and is available to browse online on BiblioBoard. I have been invited to the unveiling celebration at the Central Library here on May 23^rd.  It is always fun to meet other local authors. I will take some photos at that time and post them on this blog.

I will also take the book to Russel’s Books, Bolen Books, Monro’s, and Indigo to see if they will put the book on consignment. They did carry my other books for a time. I will also go into Ivy’s bookstore here in Oak Bay, where I live, and to the library and Tanners Bookstore in Sidney, where I used to live.