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As a novelist who writes primarily for young audiences, Elaine Breault Hammond has a chance to inspire many budding writers. On a book tour across Canada, she had a chance to compare notes with a classroom full of six-year-olds who had just finished writing their own book and were busy illustrating it. When it came time to ask questions, one young author raised a hand and asked, very seriously, "When you write a book, do you use a pencil or crayons?"
Elaine answered truthfully that these days, she uses a computer. Since she made the big switch from writing long-hand to writing on computer, she has completed a series of three historical novels-The Secret Under the Whirlpool, Beyond the Waterfall, and Explosion at Dawson Creek-all published by Ragweed Press. She credits tight deadlines more than her computer for her productivity. After her first novel was accepted for publication, she produced the next two books in the series each in just one year-and each year was clipped on either end by a book tour and by the long process of transforming a manuscript into a published book.
Elaine and her husband grew up in Manitoba, but from there moved on to adventure, chasing teaching work, higher education, and a family of four through half Canada's provinces and even down into the States. When they finally settled on the Island, Elaine suddenly had "hours in the day and no excuses for not writing." She gathered up personal experience, historical research, and imagination to write The Secret Under the Whirlpool, a story about the expulsion of Island Acadians. "People know about the Nova Scotia expulsion because of Longfellow's poem," she said, referring to the well-known "Evangeline." "I started to think that maybe people didn't know about the PEI expulsion because there had never been a work of fiction about it." Her subsequent books in the series of historical fictions, one set in Manitoba and one in British Columbia, span the country with the single theme of "ordinary Canadians who face horrendous difficulties-and face them with a great deal of dignity." She and her fiction insist that "heroes are the ordinary people who opened up the land."
These days, Elaine's book tours travel as far across the country as her themes, bringing her into the wilds of Canada. She recalls that at snack time in the Yukon, she was offered bear sausage and moose jerky, which she found "exciting." She also stayed in a log cabin, complete with outhouse, and became convinced she saw bear tracks in the snow outside. Her son insisted the tracks were from local dogs, but for Elaine, an active imagination adds up to adventure.
A plan to collect her short stories for adults has taken a back seat to writing another work of historical fiction for young readers. This time, her main characters will change, and she will allow herself a leisurely two years to "enjoy the process." Her readers will patiently look forward to her next book. As two grade seven girls said to Elaine after one of her readings, "In most books, you read and read until you get to the point. In your books, something happens in every chapter." Elaine Breault Hammond approaches life as an adventure-as a chapter waiting to happen. Her readers hope she won't be waiting long.