The Aunt June Files - Turning Family History into Fiction by Deryn Collier

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We all have family stories, right? They're things like how mom and dad met, or that time Grandma threw a biscuit all the way across the table at supper. Then there are family secrets - some of which are so old they're talked about openly, like the fact great-uncle Paul was a bigamist, and some of which have never been revealed  - adopted Grandmother Elaine's biological mother died without ever revealing the identity of her father. 

The stories we learn from our family members are some of the most well-loved and well-worn tales we know. Most of us don't "do" anything with them other than to pass them to the next generation. But award-winning author Deryn Collier isn't most of us. And when she got an unexpected bequest, she found herself reimagining the tumultuous, exciting post-WWII life of her own extraordinary relative... a woman who was A Real Somebody.

 

 

Have you ever thought your family’s history would make a great novel? Do you have an ancestor with main character energy?

 

I have to admit this is not something I ever gave much thought to. That is, until I inherited the personal archives of my great-aunt when she died in 2014.

 

In many ways, my great-aunt, June Grant, was ahead of her time. She never married and became a career-woman instead. (She lived in a time when women were expected (or forced) to leave their jobs once they married.) She worked her way up from the steno pool to become a copywriter in a well-known Montreal advertising agency. 

 

I was named after her (my middle name is June) and I am a writer, just like June was, which I suspect is the reasoning behind her bequest. In addition to advertising, June wrote poems, essays and several novels that were never published. Unlike June, my writing has always been focused in one area; I knew I wanted to write mystery novels from the age of seven. For a while in my late teens and early twenties, June and I lived several blocks from each other in Montreal and we grew quite close. 

 

When June died, I found out I was named in her will. All her books, papers, photographs, unpublished manuscripts and three crates of paintings were passed on to me, a mystery writer.

 

When those boxes landed on my doorstep after traveling all the way from Montreal, where June lived her whole life, to British Columbia, where I live now, I knew I had to do something with them. Something to honor June, who was a truly remarkable woman. 

 

A portion of June's personal papers, including three unpublished novel manuscripts, now stored in archival boxes in my studio

Of course, I had to write a mystery novel! (What else is a mystery writer to do with such a treasure trove of material?)  I decided on a novel of gentle suspense, with June Grant as the protagonist. Not a murder mystery like my earlier books– I didn’t want to kill off any of my ancestors. I would write a story of a misadventure, one that June needs to resolve. I set out to create a cross between Nancy Drew and Mad Men’s Peggy Olson. 

 

The result, A Real Somebody, is out today with Lake Union Books. 

 

Turning family history into fiction was harder than I thought. Like so many projects that we commit ourselves to in life, if I’d had any idea what I was in for, I might not have started at all! My readers and subscribers to my email list quickly became allies. I sent them a letter every month with an update on my research and writing process, and they cheered me on the whole way.

 

Readers wrote back with stories of their own. Stories of family history, heirlooms, memories of Montreal. Stories of writing shorthand, of working in a steno pool, of typing contracts on 7-layers of carbon paper, of relatives who got into no end of trouble. Once my readers got wind of what I was up to, there was no turning back! 

My great-aunt, June Grant, at her family’s home in Montreal in 1947

 

A Real Somebody is indeed based on a true story – the story of how the course of my great-aunt’s life changed when her family fell on hard times. However, in order to be readable and engaging, a novel needs its own pacing, its own world, and its own reality, albeit a fictional one. I had to really mess around with the facts, in order to make the fiction readable. 

 

Every novel also needs an antagonist. For A Real Somebody, I turned my beautiful and troubled grandmother, June’s older sister, Daisy, into the villain. While she might look like the perfect housewife, it turns out that Daisy has plenty of secrets. Secrets that June sets out across the city to investigate, in an adventure that will challenge everything she thought she knew about her sister, her city, the world of advertising and ultimately, her own ambition.

 

You might say that in attempting to solve the mystery of my own family through fiction, I blurred the line between reality and family legend even further. I do hope my ancestors will forgive me!

 

I think that June would be delighted to see herself as a fictional sleuth, and to know that so many readers will meet her soon. I hope that my grandmother, Daisy, would have a good laugh if she knew that I’d turned her into a villain who knows how to have fun without ever messing up her lipstick.  

 

Reds and Readers: Do you have an ancestor that you think would come alive on the page? Someone with main character energy? I’d love to hear about your family’s equivalent of my Aunt June!

 

A REAL SOMEBODY

Montreal, 1947. To support her once-prosperous family, June Grant joins a steno pool in a prestigious advertising firm. For June, it’s hard to imagine having the kind of life her parents want—the kind of life her sister Daisy has, with a well-off husband and two precocious kids.

But Daisy might not be a picture-perfect housewife after all. As June makes her own waves in the advertising world, she probes a hidden side of her sister’s life.

June’s discoveries upend everything she thought she knew about her sister while challenging her own inner conflict about pursuing her dreams versus living up to expectations. Being a dutiful housewife might mean something else entirely.

Based on the true story of the author’s aunt, A Real Somebody charts the journey of a talented young writer who dares to break the conventions of her time during one pivotal season of her life.

 

 Deryn Collier has dreamed of writing mystery novels since reading her first Nancy Drew in the second grade. She has written two previous novels, Confined Space, which was nominated for a Best First Novel award by the Crime Writers of Canada, and Open Secret.

 

Deryn moved to Montreal as a teenager and instantly fell in love with the city, later graduating from McGill University. She now enjoys gardening, sewing and swimming year-round in a glacier-fed lake, and regularly over-shares about these hobbies on Instagram. She writes a newsletter to her readers called The Aunt June Files, where she shares a behind the scenes look at her work and research in progress. Visit her website at www.deryncollier.com to subscribe.