I’ll be participating at the second annual Chilliwack Book Festival taking place on Saturday, May. 23.
It looks like a fun event and I’ll have lots of books and other little treasures for sale!
Category: Writing Life
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Poet Laureate for Chilliwack
I have the honour of being the inaugural Poet Laureate for the Chilliwack Arts Council. The announcement took place last week.
Here is an excerpt:
The Chilliwack Arts Council is proud to announce the appointment of Taryn Hubbard as Chilliwack’s inaugural Poet Laureate. This milestone marks the launch of the Chilliwack Arts Council’s new Poet Laureate program, a dedicated initiative to raise awareness of the city’s vibrant literary arts community and celebrate the writers who call Chilliwack home.
As part of the role, I will be responsible for writing 4 to 6 poems:
As Poet Laureate, Hubbard will compose four original poems between April 2026 and April 2027, each offering a thoughtful reflection on the issues and observations of her environment and the wider world. The poems will be published and shared through the Chilliwack Arts Council’s website, newsletter, and social media channels, bringing literary art directly to the community.
I am looking forward to this! More to come on the experience…
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Poetry in the library
A few years ago, two of my poems were selected for an ongoing Public Art project by the City of Surrey. One of those poems, “This Place,” has been installed at the beautiful Clayton Library.
I had the chance to check it out and did a quiet reading of the poem. Check it out.
Video performance
Close up of the text
This Place
A streetlight to see
a road to travel
a bike lane to ride
a crosswalk to stroll
a plot to plant
a hand to hold
a friend to meet
a bird to hear
a dog to walk
this place to call home.
– Taryn Hubbard
About the poem
This Place, conjures a connection to place through its description of pathways, growth, and creaturely encounters. Installed within a small study nook at Clayton Library, it offers an invitation to sit and contemplate what makes a place a home.
Learn more about Clayton Library.
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Reflecting on the year
2025 was the year I discovered I really like to explore castles, and read about history and local lore. I loved these types of activities when I was younger, but over the years I didn’t make time for it. Luckily, this year brought it all back.
It was also the year I published my first novel, and edited and shaped my second poetry collection that will be out in the spring. I was able to stick to a writing routine that worked for me, and arranged my office so it really was a room of my own that I enjoyed working in. I call it my “everything room.” It has my stationary bike, my guest bed, my desk, and a wall of books.
I took a floatplane for the first time to Salt Spring Island in April. When I took it again in November, I felt like a pro! There was something special about stepping down from a small floatplane onto a dock and being right in the harbour of quaint Ganges.
But let’s start from the beginning…
Writing
Once I became a mother all those years ago, I felt a large shift within me. I was responsible for someone so small, so young. Minutes old, days old, months old. It was then I felt that life wasn’t this long journey, but something that was finite. It was with the thought of finiteness that I started to take my own routines and ambitions as a writer seriously. This could have also been that as a new mother, my focus areas changed and I didn’t have as much time to work on my writing. That made a sustainable writing routine all the more important.
This is to say that I am happy to report that I kept my writing routine going in 2025, well pretty much. I engaged in both the substantive and copy edit of my next book, Beautiful Unknown Future and worked away on the draft of my next novel. The substantive and copyedit of Beautiful Unknown Future was a great experience. I worked with poets Stephen Collis and ryan fitzpatrick. They both read my manuscript with care and gave me valuable feedback.
The publishing of my first novel took happened in April 2025, and it was quite surreal. I did some readings and book signings, and took part in a panel at the Fraser Valley Writers’ Festival (hosted by the University of the Fraser Valley). It was so much fun!
Travel
Travel began in 2024 and continued into 2025, with a dream trip to Scotland, England, and Ireland in the spring. We took trains, planes, and Ubers. It was so much fun. I soaked up the history and enjoyed trying new food and explored so many amazing shops and bookstores.
Closer to home, the travel experiences continued with a family trip to Victoria where we had a great time enjoying the ferry, the views, and quaintness of downtown Victoria.
I also ended up on Salt Spring Island not one but twice. It’s a beautiful little spot.
Next year
With a new year just around the corner, I’m looking forward to bringing much of what worked well from 2025 forward. This means keep a writing schedule and being gentle with myself if I can’t keep it up sometimes. There are seasons for generating and there are seasons for rest and reflection, this I’ve learned all too well over the years.
I’ll be happy to launch my new book in the spring, and hopefully finish up my novel project. Perhaps there will be a few special travel experiences as well. Oh, and I’m sure I’ll read a bunch of great books.
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Fraser Valley Writers Festival
The Fraser Valley Writers Festival is an annual two-day literary festival featuring keynote addresses, readings, panel discussions, writing workshops, live podcast recordings, and more, hosted at the Abbotsford campus of the University of the Fraser Valley. It’s free and open to all.
I’m thrilled to share that I’ve been invited to participate this year! I have been commissioned to produce a new piece on the theme “Sound” in the afternoon, and I’ll be chairing a panel on the theme “Silence” in the morning.
Here’s my schedule:
Saturday, November 8 at the University of the Fraser Valley’s Abbotsford campus:
11:15 AM – Panel 1 – “Silence”
Joseph Dandurand
Daniela Elza
Jen Sookfong Lee
Christina Myers
Chair: Taryn Hubbard
2:45 PM – Panel 2 – “Sound”
Kayla Czaga
Taryn Hubbard
Heather Ramsay
Nick Thran
Chair: Jen Sookfong Lee
There’s more
There’s a lot of great things happening at the festival this year, with a keynote speech by Charles Demers and Evelyn Lau scheduled for Friday, November 7. There are also workshops and a live podcast recording! There will also be books and conversation. It’s definitely my kind of event, and I’m looking forward to it.
Now to write my piece on “sound”…
When I published my first book, Desire Path, in late 2020, we were well into the pandemic, so in-person events were rare if not non-existent. In fact, I don’t recall if I had the chance to do anything in-person. All my readings were online, which I was grateful for because I really wanted to read from my first book!
Fast forward to this past spring with a debut novel set to publish, I started to think about author visits at bookstores. I’d seen other writers do this and I wondered if this could be a path for me as well.
First a few things to set the stage. One thing that may be surprising for people who aren’t published writers is how beyond the joy and torture of writing, editing and publishing books, authors are often also their own publicists and business managers. At least that’s how it’s been for me. In fact, once you receive a contract from a publisher, there is often a document that the writer must fill out called something innocuous like “author questionaire.” In this questionaire, among many other things, are questions related to your so-called marketing platform. In this section, the questions seek to understand if you have any networks, channels or special opportunities that may help connect your books to readers.
Well, let’s just say, when I got to this section of the questionaire, I felt a sense of overwhelm and a cold dose of reality trickling over me. What became clear was that between the pandemic, having two kids, changing jobs, moving up the highway to the edge of the Lower Mainland that I was a bit…alone and without many marketing opportunities.
I was able to skirt around this fact until one day in the new year an email came from my publisher asking me for a list of the book activities I planned to do, so it was time to roll up my sleeves and get serious.
This is what I did:
#1. Set some goals for myself
Once I got over the mortification that I lacked anything near a marketing platform, I got down to work to create one. As a communications and public engagement pro by day, I knew I needed to start by creating a basic strategy for myself. I’ve found that when faced with the feeling of being overwhelmed, it’s best to think about what I do have. In this case, it was communications, engagement and marketing skills.
A central part of my strategy were my goals. What did I want from this book? What did I want to do? Once I took time to think about this, I was able to create five goals that felt authentic to me and ones that I felt driven to accomplish.
Taking the time to set goals is time well spent before diving into the strategies and tactics of how you’re going to get there.
#2. Drafted my pitch
“Author bookstore visits” was one of the tactics outlined in my marketing strategy. One of the first things I did was make a list of all the bookstores that I might like to visit, starting with my favourites first. Once I had the list, I drafted a pitch email. While most of the emails took somewhat of the same form, I personalized each of them and that ended up being a good strategy.
In my email, I introduced myself, I shared a link to my book in their catalogue, and shared that I’d love to visit their store sometime in the spring. I also attached a poster that outlined a few more highlights about the book (see a sample in this post).
I heard back from most of the bookstores I contacted and pretty much all except one was a good fit. The one I decided not to work with wanted me to consign my book in her shop, which I wasn’t into because The Very Good Best Friend is distributed by the lovely people at Literary Press Group of Canada. Oh well!
The other stores were a go…and then I was onto promotion.
#3. Promotion, promotion, promotion
Once I had the visits booked, the self-doubt sank in. What if no one came? What if people just walked by without engaging with me? I didn’t think anyone would be making a viral video of me sitting lonely in a bookstore…so it was back to work for me. Just like writing, editing and publishing, getting the visits booked was only half the job, the next thing I needed to turn my attention to was promotion.
While the bookstore will use their channels to get the word out about the event, such as the events page on their website, in-store posters, newsletters and social media, an author should extend the efforts by using their own channels as well. If you have friends or family in the community where the bookstore resides, this is a good time to reach out to them and invite them to the event.
Here’s what I did:
- Added the events to my website
- Shared them on my social media
- Visited the bookstore beforehand to capture content for an authentic promo (see video below)
- Reached out to friends and family near by inviting them to the event
#4. Prepared for the day
The bookstores I worked with would set up the table, chairs, and tablecloth. They would also have the books there–this is a big one. I checked in with both of my contacts a few days before the event to make sure we had everything in order.
When it comes to curating your table, keep in mind the size. At one of my events, the table was a luxurious 6 feet, and at another one it was a small garden table. They both had my books on them and that’s what mattered to me most.
A few things I had with me:
- Pens! I had a couple of nice pens to use to sign the books
- Water bottle, coffee, and treats for the readers and the booksellers
- Book displays to prop up the book so it’s easy to see
- Small posters with easy-to-read features about the book
- A cute “Reading Room” sign (you can see it in the very first photo in this post)
- My journal (to keep myself busy during down times)
- A plan to share Stories on my meta accounts to keep the promotion going
#5. Created speaking notes
While I wasn’t speaking from a script, it helped to have a few things in mind when people came by the table. Remember, most of them didn’t know me and didn’t know my book. I had less than 30 seconds to engage them. Having a few conversation starters really helped!
Of course one of the main things you need to rehearse is what your book is about – what’s the hook!
For The Very Good Best Friend, it was a variation of this:
The Very Good Best Friend is psychological thriller about a woman who sets out on a journey to rescue her best friend who has dropped everything to join a secret intentional community run out of an abandoned, desolate mall in the countryside. As she gets closer, the she uncovers deeper and darker secrets hidden within its decaying walls.
It worked!
#6. Enjoyed the moment
Once the visits got into full swing, I enjoyed myself. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to visit a bookstore with your very own book. I have to say, it was pretty cool!
#7. Thank you’s and wrap ups
My author visits to date have taken place in independent bookstores. This are places I love and am happy to support. I always made sure to thank the hosts and to share a few parting shots on my social as an expression of my gratitude.
A final word
I enjoyed doing this round of author visits, but I will say that they do take time. As a writer who works full time and has a young family, I had to be selective about how many I booked for myself as I had to factor in the travel, the time, and the preparation & promotional work. All in all it was a good experience.
As I get ready to promote my next book, I look forward to organizing a few more author visits then!
Over the holidays, I had the chance to spend quality time with my family. We played games, put together puzzles, baked, cooked, watched movies, read, hiked, and so much more. It was lovely and it felt like the perfect refresh to a busy year.
2025 is looking like another busy year, and I’m here for it completely. My debut novel, The Very Good Best Friend, will be published around April and later in the year I’ll likely get to work more on my second poetry collection that will be published next year. It’s an exciting time, one filled with words and stories.
I’ve also been spending more time reading, which is the absolute best. I’m back into digital books and that has been wonderful as well. Libby, the app through the library, is fantastic and has encouraged me to read in genres I haven’t spent too much time in, like romance or non-fiction. I like it!
As I start to plan the next few months, I’m both excited and nervous for my novel to publish. It will no doubt be thrilling to see a physical copy, but it’s also nervewracking to share something I’ve created. The book is available for pre-order now.
My next project brings me back to a domestic space during a catasrophic, yet mysterious, weather event. It’s a story that started off as a novella, but over the last half of 2024, I developed into a first draft of a novel. It’s a rough first draft, but it’s a start. I’m looking forward to working on the second draft and third and so on and so on.
Writing is labour intensive and it’s reward to mainly personal at this point, but telling a story, sharing an idea, exploring a feeling, it’s how I enjoy spending my time.
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Fraser Valley Writer
Being a writer in the Fraser Valley informs my creativity, but that’s not because I have a large writerly community here or, really, any community at all. While there are opportunities for writers to meet and discuss work where I live, I have a hard time participating because of everything else I do, including working, taking care of kids, keeping my home clean, grocery shopping, and the list goes on.
It makes me wonder. What does it mean to be a writer in the Fraser Valley? When I was younger and lived in Metro Vancouver, I met up with lots of writers, attended readings, and felt generally quite connected. Since those days, my life has changed very much. The changes occurred slowly, but now as I look back I see all those changes amounted in a substantial shift in who I am. Moving, children, living through a pandemic, and a general change in how my free time is being spent—it has all contributed to my current existence and understanding of being a writer in this moment of my life.
After many years living in the Fraser Valley, I’ve noticed that elements of the lifestyle and environment have crept into my work.
This is most true with my current work-in-progress, a novel about a woman who survives something catastrophic in her rural home. I won’t get into more details than that as I am deep into the initial drafting stage.
When the initial seeds of an idea rooted in my mind, it was clear that the setting of this work would most resemble in some ways the Fraser Valley. While the actual setting of the book is not the Fraser Valley, I find myself describing elements of the natural environment here as element of setting in this new work. I’ve enjoyed taking the time to add descriptive details to my work that is fresh, relevant and personal to my own life.
I’m excited to see how the first draft will go. There is a lot to go, as I’m only half way through. More to come on this…
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Tips for Indie Writers
The term “indie” author means different things to different people. In this post, I’m thinking of indie author as someone who publishes with smaller, independent presses, otherwise known as indie presses.
Last week I prepared a few graphics for social media to share the cover of my debut novel, The Very Good Best Friend. It was an exciting moment to post this cover, which I adore, and to share a few words about the premise of the book with my followers, who are mostly friends, family, and people who know me personally.
The experience got me reflecting about my journey as a writer who has had the opportunity and good fortune to publish with independent presses in Canada.
Here is what I’ve learned so far about writing as an indie author:
#1: Write (and Edit!) the Weird Thing
My first poetry collection, Desire Path, took many years to write. By the time it was published, I felt like I had been working on those poems for close to a decade. I’m not sure if it was quite that long, but the poems felt like they were a part of me. This is to say that I spent a lot of time with that work. Poems from this collection were with me during different seasons of my life and, yet, I still felt energized by them as I crafted and refined them into a collection. I wasn’t writing what I thought someone should write, I was writing what I wanted to write. In Desire Path, I wrote about my specific experience in a specific community in British Columbia. When I read the poems now, I can still remember parts of my old neighbourhood and my old life, the things I saw, the places I visited, and how I interpreted the environment. As a reader, I like learning about other people’s neighbourhoods in this way. In fact when I travel I will seek out a very local or regional literary book, just to know what the poets are saying about the place (because it’s always much more interesting than any generic tourist pamphlet).
I was lucky to connect with a publisher that regularly publishes local perspectives on place and experience called Talon Books. Independent publishers are vital for their work bringing local and regional culture to a broader audience.
So write the weird thing. Pursue the project that excites and fuels you as a writer and a thinker, as a storyteller, because you will be spending more with those words, in that world time than you realize.
#2: Develop Your Publicity Chops
DIY Publicist? It’s not the first hat you think you’ll need to wear when you become an author, but it doesn’t hurt to start framing your writing through a publicity and marketing lens. In fact, once you have your manuscript in a solid place (don’t rush this and share it with beta readers if you can for feedback), the process of explaining and positioning your work begins and, honestly, it never really ends.
There are several key aspects of publishing with indie presses that will require you to start thinking like your own publicist. The first being your query letter. This is a one-page document that serves as your pitch to the editor where the intention is to pique their interest so they will read your sample pages and ask to see your full manuscript. A key component of the query letter is sharing your book’s hook. A hook grabs a reader’s attention, compelling them to flip page after page. Maybe you have known what your hook is from the moment you hit the keyboard or maybe you need time to really hone in on what it is. Think it through, as the essence of this hook will serve you as you develop and refine your publicity strategy.
Below is an example from my debut novel:
Carolyn sets out on a harrowing journey to rescue her best friend from an abandoned, desolate mall in the countryside, only to uncover deeper and darker secrets hidden within its decaying walls.
One-line description of The Very Good Best Friend
Once you have a signed contract with an indie press, one of the first things they will often send you is an “author questionnaire.” This questionnaire is your opportunity to share details about your biography, your platforms, and your book with your publisher. The content you share in this questionnaire is important and serves as the basis for many aspects of your book like cover copy, descriptions, marketing approach, etc. Take the time to fill it out as best you can, but don’t feel bad about not having a huge platform or many industry connections. We all have to start somewhere!
#3: Bet On Yourself
Indie authors need to bet on themselves. What this looks like is different for everyone. To me, it means finding time to write even though every part of my life is drastically pulling me in the opposite direction. By giving myself the consistency and space for my writing practice, by prioritizing writing, I am betting on myself. Over the last few years, I’ve had a mind shift in how I think about writing. It’s not a hobby. It’s my business. No, I don’t make much money from this business, but I have come to treat it like my business because it’s how I keep myself accountable. I invest in my business by giving it time. I research my business by reading books and following what’s being published. I plan my business by giving myself reasonable deadlines to get my writing projects finished and sticking to them as much as I can. I define my goals to keep my practice on track. No one can do this, but me.
Betting on yourself is more than just believing in yourself, it’s about understanding that no one can do it for you. It’s about understanding that going from initial idea to finished manuscript is not easy, but you will see it through because you need to.
#4: Take Time to Celebrate Your Wins
Writing is solitary work. It can take a long time to draft and re-draft and draft and re-draft a work. Taking the time to celebrate a milestone is a good habit. It doesn’t have to be a big celebrationg, maybe it’s a walk in your favourite space or a coffee at your local.
#5: Support Indie Presses and Indie Authors
Buy and read books from fellow indie authors to support them and the presses that publish them. Beautiful stores and fantastic stories, it’s a wonderful combination.
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On Summer Writing Projects
I love spring and fall, but there is something about summer and, even, winter that urges me to dive into a writing project with earnestness. Maybe it has something to do with the extreme weather common to both these seasons now and July is looking like it will shape up to be a hot month in the Fraser Valley.
In June I submitted edited versions of manuscripts to the publishers of both my upcoming books. It felt good. Both projects took years to write and edit, and both projects were started in the summer. It could be the heat of the summer that inspires me or maybe it’s the fact that the year is half-way through that fills me with the urgency needed to commit to a project consistently.
This summer I am working through the first revision of a new novel project. I started writing the first draft the summer of 2022 thinking that I could have it finished by December 2022, but it ended up taking me until December 2023 with everything going on in my life.
And here I am in the summer of 2024 starting down the path of the first major revision. Instead of being disappointed by how long it has taken me, I’m choosing to see the time away from the work as being helpful. And while I have probably forgotten a few of the aspects I had planned to address in the first revision while I was writing it, that’s probably okay.
There is something both gratifying and overwhelming about approaching a second draft. I have one novel project that I didn’t pursue past the initial messy draft. When I look at the file on my computer, I marvel that I even completed a full draft of that story. I wrote it during my first maternity leave. And while it holds a special place in my heart, there is only so much time I can give to my writing so I need to be working on projects that I truly love. I liked the old book, but didn’t feel I had the energy to give it all the work it needed. It was good practice.
This new revision project, on the other hand, I hope I can get through it this summer. My first novel took eight drafts to get to the shape I was happy with. And there is always more to do on a project, but there comes a time when I need to let it go to make space for a new one.
How I Approach the Second Draft
In the first big revision, i.e. my second draft, I approach it the following way:
- Take time away
- Print out a copy
- Read the copy first, taking notes on overarching themes and big plotholes but doing minimal page edits
- Do a ruthless hardcopy edit (i.e. strike A LOT out)
- Translate the edits to a new document and generate new writing
Then take another break and maybe start on something else, like an outline for my next project.
I’m curious to see how many edits it will take me this time…