The Story Behind the Story with Amanda Evans & Shannon Dykens of Saint John, NB Canada.

 

Amanda and Shannon are the owners of Partridge Island Publishing.

Making one of their wishes come true, they became proprietors of a book store in the Container Village in Saint John NB.

They have graciously offered space for NB Authors in their store.

They have accepted my invitation to be guests this week.

 

 

Since there are two of us talking about this we’ll give you our ‘how we met’ story, since that started it all.

Amanda Evans and Shannon Dykens met at the first-ever meeting of Write Now Saint John in January 2019 and quickly became friends, and that became the foundation of Partridge Island Publishing.

 

 

Working Title: In the Fog Anthology

 

 

Synopsis: We actually have 2 in the fogs to talk about

Monsters in the Fog is our 5^th entry in the In the Fog series, and as the name suggests, it is full of monsters.

Monsters come in many forms and we have collected some of the best from Atlantic Canadian Authors to share with our readers in what turned out to be the darkest of our books so far.

Lost in the Fog is our current open call, and like the previous 5 books, any author in the Atlantic Provinces is welcome to submit stories for consideration until January 31^st, 2024. The story does have to make use of the theme of being ‘lost’.

 

                                                                                            From PIP website.

 

The Story Behind the Story: The story behind the In the Fog series is the story of Partridge Island Publishing.

As we previously said, Write Now Saint John was just getting started in early 2019 and we set a goal as a group to write a book. We knew we wanted it to be an anthology so everyone would get to see something in print, and we knew that we wanted it to be something that we would do every year so we could see the improvement and bring in new authors.

Because it’s Saint John and always foggy we decided that the title would reflect our lifestyle so we chose the ‘In the Fog’ anthology series. We knew we did not want to exclude any authors based on what they wrote, so rather than choosing a genre each year, we would choose a theme and the authors could spin that theme however they wanted.

We tried to find a publisher in Saint John that would take us on and print this book. There was no one, so we talked to a lawyer who thought our story was interesting and agreed to get us incorporated.

Although we have grown and a lot has changed, we are still community-oriented, and every year we get the community to take part in helping us choose our new theme. For Lost in the Fog we had well over 200 votes to help us make that choice!

 

 

 Website: Partridge IslandPublishing

 

A couple questions before you go:

Scribbler: Can you tell us about the perfect setting you have, or desire, for your writing? Music or quiet? Coffee or tequila?  Neat or notes everywhere?

Shannon always has to have music playing whenever she writes, and she’s mostly a pantser, although she does create Pinterest boards for each story.

Amanda never cares if it’s quiet or loud, when the urge to write hits, it hits. She’s a plotter by nature, but you just never know.

 

 

Scribbler: What’s next?

Shannon is working on 2 more novels in her Baxter’s Lake Boys series.

Amanda has no idea.

 

 

 Thank you ladies for being our guests this week. 

              Wishing you a ton of success.

 

 

And a HUGE thank you to our visitors and readers.