Kitchener author launching debut novel
Students and staff at Lackner Woods Public School know her as Madame Papastergiou, but for the past four years, the part-time French teacher has been putting pen to paper as Jennifer Farquhar, her maiden name and nom de plume.
Farquhar has always considered herself a writer. In 2004, she was a runner-up in the Toronto Star’s prestigious short story competition, the largest of its kind in Canada.
Since that time, marriage, three kids and a teaching career have provided competing priorities and, so, for her 40th birthday, she decided to be a little selfish, committing to gift herself time — more specifically, the time to write.
“I’ve had a novel percolating for years,” said Farquhar, a native of Manitoulin Island, whose debut book rooted in her childhood surroundings was recently picked up by the Canadian indie publisher Latitude 46.
A book launch will be held Monday at Words Worth Books in Waterloo, but it hasn’t happened overnight. As the author can attest, it’s been a roller-coaster of emotions, rejections and rewrites that’s brought her to this point.
The first draft took only five months to write, but Farquhar spent nine months revising it. She researched how to get a literary agent, which she said “you absolutely need” to get a debut novel published in Canada these days. “All the advice was it has to be polished before it gets sent out, so I revised and revised and revised, and finally I felt like it was ready.”
After reaching out to a dozen or more literary agents in Canada, as well as a handful south of the border, seven requests for the manuscript trickled in. “From what I’d learned, that was a huge success in and of itself because they get inundated with queries and your odds are incredibly low.”
Yet, after feeling like she won the lottery, Farquhar said there was a painful pause, one that lasted nine months until the final
rejection letter arrived.
Most were one-liners, but one agent provided a reviewer’s analysis that led to a major restructuring of the novel, and ultimately Farquhar attaining a literary agent in Canada.
Because money in the publishing business isn’t as plentiful as it once was, there isn’t the same spirit of generosity between publishers and editors to work with a manuscript from a new author, Farquhar explained. Her agent said the book needed to be ready to go or no publisher would buy it, later passing it to an editor at Penguin Random House who helped with another rewrite.
After another series of rejections, Farquhar went back to the drawing board one more time, using critiques from publishers to rework the ending and tone down a character, among other changes, before finally receiving a publication offer.
“I’ve been through this entire book 32 times, some of them huge, structural rewrites, other ones just looking at one character or something, but all of them have been from start to finish,” Farquhar said. “Having it bought was the most exciting day of my life.”
“Watermark” is a fictional story that takes place in northern Ontario on Lake Huron in the 1970s. It’s centred around the life of young girl Morina McInnis, whose character would be about 10 years Farquhar’s senior in real life. The author calls it an “evocatively written love letter to the 1970s in an under-represented but treasured part of our country” that serves as a virtual character in the novel.
“I think that a lot of Canadians can relate to this setting,” she said. “Anyone who’s spent any time in northern Ontario — there’s a lot of nostalgia there …”
“And there’s a question about whether this tragedy was the fault of this girl, or whether there was a supernatural element. There’s a lot of superstition around this island where this family lives as well as some Indigenous stories that the children know of.”
The timeline shifts to the year 2000 when Morina, as an adult, feels the need to return.
“There’s a lot of unravelling of family secrets and a lot of redemption involved in what she discovers when she goes back to this island she fled as a teenager,” said Farquhar. “It’s about loss. It’s about regret. It’s about family. It’s about redemption,” she said. “It’s a little on the dark side.”
As are Farquhar’s upcoming titles, including a second book that’s already in the hands of her publisher. That story takes place during the fallout from the tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011 in Japan, another setting Farquhar is familiar with after living and teaching there for three years. A third book she’s almost finished writing entails yet another Canadian tragedy.
“This isn’t just one book for me,” said Farquhar. “This is a lifelong dream of having a writing career on the side of my teaching career.” While she doesn’t expect get rich off her first title, she sees it as a foot in the door of the literary world.
Farquhar will be at Lackner Woods Public School on Thursday, June 21, for an “Ask our Author” evening with families and students before going out on tour this summer in northern Ontario. Stops include Tobermory, two events on Manitoulin Island where she’ll be spending most of the summer with family, as well as a boat cruise in Sudbury. Also, earlier this week, Farquhar found out that she’ll be a panellist at the Word on the Street Festival this September in Toronto, where she’ll give a 30minute talk.