For Thomas Chamberlain, the community he’s found in New Brunswick writers and in the programs offered by the WFNB has been the key to help him turn an isolated hobby into a craft, and launched his second act as a novelist.

This year, he’s received a book contract for a novel (working title, Happenstance) he began writing many years ago as a teaching tool for his English students. Not bad for a person who never considered himself to be a writer. His novel will be published by Galleon Press in October, 2025.

In 2023, Thomas submitted his novel excerpt to the David Adams Richards Prize for Fiction Manuscript (DAR prize), and won an Honourable Mention, which was a huge surprise. He was not expecting that outcome, and decided to attend the literary soiree, which presents the awards to the winners and gives them opportunity to read from their winning pieces. “When I went to WordSpring that year in Saint John, I was shocked and amazed at the quality and pedigree of the writers, and the writing that my manuscript was competing against. I had no idea. I thought it would be just like a bunch of amateur writers who wrote stories. But it wasn't like that at all. That’s when I figured I had something. It was a big tipping point for me.”

The writers he met that evening (WFNB members John Hanson and Trent Pomeroy) offered to read some of his work and gave their ideas and guidance. They became friends, and encouraged him to join local writers’ groups, to read at open mics and learn at workshops. Zev Bagel, managing editor of Merlin Star Press, gave him some pointers when Thomas brought his work to a WFNB Blue Pencil Café. With this growing circle of writers surrounding him, he made good progress, and they told him that the next step was to hire an editor, who would help him make his manuscript submission-ready. He hired Lee Thompson, and after ten weeks of rewrites, the manuscript was ready to re-submit to the DAR prize in 2024, and this time, he won second prize.

The 2024 judge, Newfoundland and Labrador author, Trudy Morgan-Cole, passed her congratulations on to Thomas upon hearing that his work would be published. “This is wonderful news,” she said. “I really loved all three of the winners, and I'm looking forward to seeing this one in book form - I felt the most suspense about this one - I wanted to know how it turned out!”

With a lifelong career as a math and English teacher, Thomas underplays his early writing experiences. “I did a little bit of writing in the eighties and nineties for the local paper, and I wrote an article for an outdoor magazine [now defunct], called Eastern Woods and Waters, but nothing of this magnitude.”

His first foray into writing longer projects was a memoir about school teaching that he began 15 years ago. He received some feedback and encouragement from the well-known author Gerard Beirne, an Irish writer who lived in New Brunswick for several years and served as writer‐in‐residence at the University of New Brunswick and as an editor of The Fiddlehead. (His son, Luke, is also an author and WFNB member, living in Saint John.) “Gerry told me I was writing roughshod all over the English language, but that I was telling a great story,” Thomas laughed, “so he helped me organize the manuscript.”  Dreamcatcher Publishing, a press in Saint John at the time, showed an interest, but the owner passed away suddenly, and Dreamcatcher subsequently folded before Thomas’s memoir could be published. “I kind of lost interest after that.”

But Happenstance was birthed several years ago as a bit of writing on a smartboard that students in Thomas’s English class would read, and they responded so well to his female main character, Darby, that he decided to continue to use her as a teaching tool. The character’s story began to grow and percolate in his mind. Over a couple of years, he decided on a plot and took about a year to write the first draft. He continued to use his work as a teaching tool until his retirement.

A few years later, Thomas’s partner Denise, “who is a100-books-a-year reader,” asked him about his reading habits. He said, “well, I do read, not as much as you--but I wrote a novel once.” After reading, she suggested that he enter it in the New Brunswick Writing Competition, and another friend, Saint John poet and WFNB member Melanie Craig Hansford, gave him advice on how to submit his manuscript. And the rest, as they say, is history.

After getting his novel submission-ready and sending the queries off to publishers, he received many rejections, but Lee Thompson, publisher of Galleon, contacted him again. “He said he couldn’t get the story out of his head, and they would be interested in taking it on if I was interested, which of course, I was.”

In the end, Thomas believes that winning that first Honourable Mention provided validation: it made him believe that he belonged to the community of writers and the win gave him the confidence and freedom to seek help from others and improve his work.

He realizes that the romantic image of a writer, sitting in his or her basement and writing a perfect manuscript from the beginning, never happens. “Seems like the only isolated part for me was writing the first draft. After that it was help, help, help, advice, advice, rewrite, advice, advice -- the first year was the easy part.”

The 2025 NB Writing Competition is open to submissions in eight categories for New Brunswick authors until March 31 (Wfnb.ca/Writing-Competition).