Authors showcase their work at Books in the Barn

Through extensive collaboration, the Niagara-on-the-Lake Writers' Circle has provided the inspiration for many residents to become authors.

“People who think that writing is a solitary thing are wrong. They need to join a group,” NOTL author Marie Kelly said outside of the Books in a Barn event the group held on Dec. 4 in Old Town.

Kelly was selling her book “Secretary for the Billionaire.”

Being part of a group, writers “get the support and they get the editing help, they get everything they need. We all help each other,” she said.

Kelly started writing in 2010 and became an iTunes bestseller.

“So, I was good at it, the stories anyway,” she said. “But the writing itself, I struggled with the editing and everything. Finally, I joined the writers' group.”

Kelly said asking people close to you to help edit your work is not always the best choice.

“Your friends or family will never give the book the eye it needs,” she said.

Writers' Circle members are always willing to aid each other with editing and give constructive feedback to how a story might improve or grow.

After Patricia Nicholls-Papernick’s mother died, she decided to write a book about her and her struggle with Alzheimer's. The Writers' Circle recommended she expand the story and bring in other members of her family, specifically her father.

“And that’s how 'Annie and Fred' got made,” Papernick said about her first book.

Papernick wrote and published two books this year, the aforementioned “Annie and Fred” and “Season of Miracles.”

She had never written a book before joining the Writers' Circle.

“One of the questions I asked after being at the first meeting was, ‘Is everyone here an author?’ And they were like, ‘Relatively, ya,’” Papernick said.

“If I had known I might not have joined. And then, here (my first book) is. I’m now one of them!” she exclaimed.

Paul Masson worked as an economist and published many non-fiction articles. But switching to creative and fictional writing proved challenging, Masson said.

Masson, who hosted the book sale, was showcasing his anthology “The ABC Files: A Collection of Three Novels.”

Richard West is one of the most seasoned writers in the group. He began writing in 1993 and wrote on and off for 20 years.

“I didn’t start writing seriously until I joined the Writers' Circle six years ago,” West said.

He’s published four books in the last five years. Two of them belong to a series titled “Lightning People.”

“I’m very proud that I did it. I’ve really done it for me but hopefully some other people might like reading it. Sometimes they do,” he joked.

“I do!” Papernick chimed in.

West has also turned his work into audiobooks for those who enjoy that form of digesting literature.

The veteran writer among the group is Sharon Frayne, who worked as a reporter for the St. Catharines Standard when she was still in high school.

She got a degree in journalism from Western University and then worked as an English teacher.

Now retired, she is happy to be writing full-time, Frayne said.

Her 2016 book, “Caught Between The Walls,” is a historical novel that tells the story of British orphans who were shipped to NOTL and sold into indentured servitude out of the old NOTL jail, she said.

The old jail was located where Rye Park now sits. “Four thousand orphans came to Niagara-on-the-Lake,” she said.

Information on members of NOTL’s Writers' Circle and links to their books can be found on the group's website, notlwriterscircle.com