To celebrate the release of her second book, On Veil Creek, Gaylene Dutchyshen hosted a book reading at the Dauphin Public Library, Saturday.

An avid reader as a child, she wrote her first novel in a Hilroy scribbler at the age of 13 and dreamed of becoming an author.

“I always wanted to write. I loved to read when I was a child,” she said.

“It was just something I always wanted to do. So I just set my mind to it.”

To help make her dream come true, Dutchyshen was 49 when she enrolled at the University of Manitoba in 2008 to complete here Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in English literature.

She wrote a short story titled Fence Lines and, a year later while enrolled at Humber College, Dutchyshen worked with author Sandra Birdsell to expand the story into what became her first novel, A Strange Kind of Comfort, which was published in 2020. That novel was shortlisted for the Best First Novel in Manitoba for the Manitoba Book Awards.

Dutchyshen originally planned to be a teacher, but the program she was enrolled in changed, meaning she would have had to take another year. But being married, she didn’t want to go to university for another year, so she quit.

“And then I just always wanted to finish that degree. And I love school. I love learning. I’ve always loved to learn and it was just an opportunity that came and I did it. I graduated and I was almost 50 years old,” she said.

Because she had trouble finding a publisher, Dutchyshen decided to start her own publishing company, Scarlet Sky Press.

“A lot of people who self-publish, that is part of the reason. I had a lot of people asking, ‘when is the second book coming out?’ And I thought, I wasn’t going to wait around forever to find a publisher that’s going to take it. And I just thought I can learn to do it myself,” she said.

So Dutchyshen took a publishing course online and purchased some software to format the book herself. She also contacted people looking for a book designer and found someone to do her book trailer.

On Veil Creek was printed by Leech Printing in Brandon.

Dutchyshen has a website www.scarletskypress.ca and she will submit an item to the Manitoba Writer’s Guild newsletter, hoping to attract other writers.

Read more in this week’s Dauphin Herald.