By TOM GODFREY
Author Heather Babcock grew up in Alderwood and got hooked on words at the local library where her mom once left her as a child during ‘story time’ as she ran an errand.
“When my mom came back to pick me up, the librarian told her that I had been ‘absolutely mesmerized’ by the story-telling,” Heather explains. “She can come back anytime,’ she told my mom.”
She spent all her spare time at the Alderwood Library studying novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Betty Smith, Toni Morrison and Hubert Selby Jr.
Now her debut novel Filthy Sugar is being launched by Inanna Publications in two “virtual Speakeasy” sessions in Toronto on June 4 and 18.
“I am very excited and proud of my debut novel Filthy Sugar,” says the author. ”It took a lot of hard work and I totally loved the writing process.”
Set in the mid-1930s, Filthy Sugar tells the story of Wanda Whittle, a 19-year-old dreamer who models fur coats in a department store, but lives in a rooming house with her family in the “slums” behind the city’s marketplace.
“Bored with the daily grind, Wanda finds inspiration in the celluloid fantasies of the Busby Berkeley musicals, Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow movies,” she says, adding the work was inspired by women of the Pre-Code era of Hollywood film.
“After a chance encounter with the mysterious Mr. Manchester, proprietor of the Apple Bottom burlesque theatre, Wanda is thrust into a world of glitter and grit, where the guys talk tough and the dames are tough.”
“On her journey from rags to riches and back again,” the story unfolds. “Wanda experiences an awakening and achieves personal independence as she discovers that a girl doesn’t need a lot of sugar to be sensational!”
The book has been getting good reviews and is described as “a time travelled, tantalizing and tumultuous tale,” by Valentino Assenza, the co-host-producer of HOWL and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Lisa de Nikolits, author of No Fury Like That and Rotten Peaches, says: “Wanda will take you to another time and place, but a place where love, lust, greed sex and power are just as heartbreaking and complex as they are today.”
Heather loves writing and has had her works published in Descant Magazine, Front & Centre Magazine, The Toronto Quarterly and in the collection GULCH: An assemblage of Poetry and Prose.
Copies of Filthy Sugar are available at Inanna Publications at www.inanna.ca and other book sellers.
The virtual speakeasy will take place on June 4 at 7:30 p.m. via Zoom. Those interested can RSVP at https://mailchi.mp/248144d4ab21/speakeasy. The book will officially launch via live-streaming on June 18 as part of Inanna Publication’s partnership with Toronto Lit Up.