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It’s taken close to 10 years for sentences scribbled in a notebook between handing out maps a campground guides at the Elk Point tourist information centre to become the best-selling teen novel in town, but author Jennifer Van der Hoek says that the first printing of ‘The Phantom of Lone Pine Lake’ was “sold out before I could even get them into stores.”
Van der Hoek, who has been collecting Elk Point Fair creative writing aggregate awards since her childhood, started writing the teen mystery “after I had a dream about part of the plot.” She recently rewrote the tale about an orphan looking for her father who stumbles across a murder she has to investigate, “when I finally got around to publishing it.”
She “went the self-publishing route, rather than dealing with rejection letters.” Van der Hoek notes, “Some famous authors have gone this route, and later found a publisher that wanted their books. It’s a good way to start.“
With the entire first printing sold, Van der Hoek is eagerly awaiting delivery of the next 100. “Hopefully the second printing will end up in stores. I hope to get some into the U of A (where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree) and Red Deer College (where she worked after graduation) bookstores.”
Both the Elk Point Municipal Library and F. G. Miller High School library have copies, she notes, “in case people want to read it before they buy one,” and book clubs in both Red Deer and Elk Point are planning to read the book this coming fall. “I think that’s pretty cool.”
With this book well and truly launched, Van der Hoek is 300 pages deep into her next book, but while ‘The Phantom’ is for the 13-and-up crowd, the Winter’s Nights is aimed at readers aged 17 and older.
“It’s not a sequel to the first one. It’s a vampire book, but it’s not about sparkly vampires and mope-y werewolves. It’s not a teenage love story,” she notes. And, while the first book is “set in a fictional small Canadian town that is definitely not Elk Point, in this one, I do mention Elk Point.”
This book, too, has a lengthy history. “I started when I first worked in the tourist booth. By the time it’s published, it will be 10 years since I started it.”
Winter’s Nights will be part of a series, Van der Hoek says. “I’m already working on more in the vampire series, as well as other books. One is a psychological thriller that I expect to finish in a couple of years. I have no shortage of ideas.”