The support fostered through the mother-daughter bond of Judy Pettersen and daughter Hilary Faktor led to the pair being published in a Canadian anthology of twisted family traditions earlier this month.
Blood Is Thicker: An Anthology of Twisted Family Traditions hit the shelves on June 14. Among the 15 authors published in the anthology are the two Flin Flon natives.
While the short stories in the anthology are all works of fiction, both Pettersen and Faktor were fuelled in their writing by the real-life decline in health of Judy’s husband and Hilary’s father, Clarence.
Pettersen’s short story, “The Race,” focuses on a family in a town that holds a race each year in which the person who comes in last is killed. Having found out about the call for submissions for the anthology in late January, Pettersen pounded out the story in a month to submit it by the deadline.
“There’s the extended family, and they get together, and there’s a lot of rivalry in the race – who’s going to do good and who’s not going to do good. But in the end, family is family,” said Pettersen.
“I partly wanted to make that point, and I partly wanted to celebrate families. What Clarence was going through at the time, it fuelled me a bit. It fuelled the tension and the love between parent and child.”
Pettersen, who has self-published two works of fiction always had an interest in writing, but it wasn’t until she took a creative writing course through UCN in the early 2000s that she really hit her stride with it.
“We met at Hapnot every Wednesday night from 7 pm to 9 pm. Our class had so much fun that by the end of the six weeks it was 7 pm to midnight. We just had a blast.”
After the course, Pettersen wrote her first book – she said she hasn’t done anything with it, but her daughters enjoyed reading it.
Faktor’s story, “The Secret’s In The Sauce” grew out of a project Faktor started during National Novel Writing Month in November 2017. Faktor intended to turn the plot of the story into a novel, but when she discovered it fit the criteria for the anthology, she decided to submit it in short story format.
“Sometimes writing is slow-going, but I found this story really flowed for me,” said Faktor.
“It’s about a woman who discovers her son-in-law is abusing their daughter and feels powerless to stop it. Eventually she’s forced to take matters into her own hands.”
Faktor explained that as she was writing the story, her father was dying of cancer and had just a few weeks left to live.
“That feeling of powerlessness and watching a loved one suffer was something I could identify with – the cancer representing the abuser. Writing this story gave me an outlet for my own pain and allowed me to explore all of those emotions.”
As for being published alongside her mother, Faktor said she feels blessed.
“Writing can be lonely work, but we’re able to bounce ideas off of each other and encourage one another when we need a pick-me-up,” said Faktor.
“Judy is an amazing editor, and I’m so grateful that we can share our work with one another and get genuine feedback. We don’t hold back when critiquing each others’ work. In fact, I think because we know each other so well, we can be brutally honest and that makes our work stronger.”
Blood Is Thicker: An Anthology of Twisted Family Traditions will be available at the Flin Flon Public Library. Pettersen and Faktor will do a reading at the library on July 17.
