THUNDER BAY – The author of The Art of Burglary knows a thing or two about the subject from when she was a kid.
Joan Baril, who released her first book of short stories on March 7, had an interesting hobby when she was 11 – she used to break into people’s houses.
“All the kids in my neighbourhood had gone to camp and I was all alone wandering around, bored,” Baril said in an interview with Dougall Media.
“And my parents didn't believe in camp because they were immigrants from England and they couldn't see the purpose of going to a camp and having an outhouse and having to chop wood.”
She was wandering around the neighbourhood when she decided to break into one of the bigger houses nearby. She’d heard they hired an interior decorator and wanted to see what they’d done with the place.
“I went through the basement window and from there I started on a life of breaking into houses just to see what they were like on the inside.
“Some of them were beautiful and some of them not so much. I broke into one house, and they had a moose head over the piano and my 11-year-old soul was upset by that.”
Baril never stole anything. She never even touched anything. The last time Baril entered a house, she brought along some friends.
“We broke in through the basement window again, but we got a very big surprise, and I won't tell you what it is,” Baril said.
You can learn what they found by reading the book, which contains roughly a dozen short stories out of the 90 stories that Baril wrote over the last 30 years.
Although Baril’s father was a police officer, she never got caught and didn’t get in trouble for her time spent touring other people’s homes.
When she sits down to write, Baril likes to think about life in the north and what women are like here.
“I like stories that have a purpose. They have a theme and some kind of point - for example if they talk about human nature.”
“It takes me a long time of thinking before I can write.
“A vignette or a little anecdote doesn't make a story. You have to flesh it out with the characters and have some kind of reason in the story. Why the story exists to me – that's important.
“As soon as I get the idea and kind of figure out where I'm going with it, I can write it overnight and then edit it down to a certain number of words.”
When Baril’s book first came out on Amazon, it was listed at number one.
“I couldn't believe it,” she said.
Baril will host a book launch on Saturday, May 4 from 2 to 4 p.m. upstairs in the Royal Canadian Legion at 229 Van Norman St.
She will do a signing and Entershine will sell the book.
