News & Events

First Posted Summer 2015

October 28, 2015: Reading at The Gardens on Tenth, Altona. Photo by M. Hoeppner

July 12, 2015 - Reading and signing at The Langham and District Heritage Museum, Langham, SK.

July 12, 2015 - Reading and signing at The Langham and District Heritage Museum, Langham, SK. (M. Gossen)

February 26, 2015 - Reading & Signing at the South Central Regional Library, Altona, MB, during Reading Week.

February 26, 2015 - Reading & Signing at the South Central Regional Library, Altona, MB, during Reading Week.

DECEMBER 8, 2014 - BOOK LAUNCH at the Gretna Prairie Centre, Gretna, MB.

Engaging in Question & Answer before reading from The Lost Encore. My son-in-law, English teacher and poet Mick Friesen, interviewed me about the novel and my approach to writing. (Photo by Jim Toews)

Part of the exchange between Mick Friesen and me…

Mick Friesen: This is your first book. Where did you get the idea to write a full-length novel, instead of a collection of short stories, for example?

Doreen Mierau: The story developed into a novel inside me that I could no longer contain.

MF: Did you begin writing with a clear goal to publish?

DM: No. I only focused on writing the characters out of my head.

MF: How did you begin writing the book?

DM: For several months I recited a litany of excuses to myself, unsure of how to begin and afraid, knowing it would take over my life. When my daughter told me the characters wouldn’t go away until I wrote about them, I set a date-August3, 2010. I sat down on our verandah that afternoon and wrote the first chapter using an unplanned flash-forward technique. It started an avalanche of writing that lasted an entire year. And that was the first draft scribbled in longhand on loose-leaf pages, eventually using twenty-two ballpoint pens. It was all about getting the book written and not about doing it grammatically correct at the time. Looking back, I find it interesting that, compared to the other chapters, very little of the original draft of that first chapter was changed throughout the editing process. Writing this novel brought me so much satisfaction.

MF:Tell us something about where the ideas came from for this novel.

DM:The main characters had occasionally flitted through my mind for decades. However, by early 2010 I knew how they looked and thought and spoke, and their family trees were forming in my mind. When these characters became so real that I saw them sitting in my living room one morning, I knew I had to begin writing their story or see a doctor!

MF: The cover art: how was that created?

DM: I wanted to add a local aspect to my book so I asked the artist, Margruite Krahn of Neubergthal, MB to read and interpret the scene in the book that would change the course of the life of the main character, Angele.

MF: There are many song lyrics in your book I don’t recognize. Did you write them and how did that come about?

DM: The song lyrics literally wrote themselves into the text where I described Angele in concert or making a recording. Sometimes I realized I had written lyrics to the music of a classical piece playing in the background. At other times the cadence of my steps as I walked produced the words I needed and I had to hurry home to write them down.