Writers are interesting creatures. Often reclusive, they are also windows to society, commenting and musing on all things human.

Four writers from around Western Canada are gathering at the Cornerstone Café to talk about just that – the writing process and everything it entails.

Victoria resident and the author of Blackouts, Craig Boyko, is among the authors taking part in At the Mike: Forward Fiction on Dec. 2 at the Fernwood coffee shop.

He recently released his debut book, a short story collection in which he writes from various narratives. Included is “OZY”, a tale of a 12-year-old who fights for top spot on an arcade game.

The story won the 2007 McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for Short Fiction. Boyko said most of his inspiration comes from – surprise – other books, but not always from the ones he enjoys the most.

“Ironically, it’s usually when I’m somehow dissatisfied with a story or piece of writing that I find myself most wanting to do a variation on it, to ‘correct’ it or respond to it in some way,” he said. “A perfect piece of writing makes you wish you’d written it, but doesn’t give you much of a foothold for trying to turn it into something new.”

Other writers coming to Fernwood are Dragonflies author and Mayne Island resident Grant Buday; A.S. Penne, author of Reckoning and a resident of Halfmoon Bay, and Calgary’s Samantha Warwick, who recently released her debut novel Sage Island.

They spoke about their craft, outside influences such as movies or other writers and who they write for (other than themselves).

In Sage Island, the Montreal-born Warwick, who now calls Calgary home, follows 19-year-old Savanna Mason in the 1920s as she competes in the Wrigley Ocean Marathon – a 22-mile race from Catalina Island to Los Angeles. Inspired by true events, the book delves into such themes as prohibition and class relations.

Warwick spent seven years coaching competitive swimming between 1997 and 2004 and has participated in long distance open-water swim races in B.C., California and New York. She wasn’t sure who she wrote the novel for, but was sure it was something she wanted to write.

“I don’t think I had a particular audience or demographic in mind,” she said. “Ultimately, I hope that my readers from all walks of life will be intrigued and or find solace in some aspect of the story. We live in a culture that has very loud ideals of what success and failure look like. I hope to reframe our ideas and perceptions of failure in my current and future writing.”

Penne, who’s won such coveted fiction awards as the Ian St. James Award in the U.K. and the Writers’ Digest award in the U.S., launched the short story collection, Reckoning, this month.

It delves into “the weaknesses inherent in being human and the manifestations of those weaknesses on relationships, and features such titles as “How to Take A Lover.” Penne, who wrote the stories between 1992 and 2006, said she’s usually deep inside her own world when writing a short story – but there’s always exceptions to the rule.

“Outside influences are not usually present in any conscious form in my work,” she said. “Predominantly, it is an idea or an image that I work from and that means letting myself sink into the significance of the aspect, asking why it has stayed with me and why I need to explore it. Having said that, I have, at times, read certain authors and come away with wanting to experiment with their style or the structure they’ve used.

“Once I was in an art gallery in Cardiff where a painting by Eugene Carriere struck a chord,” she continued, noting a memorable exception. “The exhaustion on the face of a young mother fit so perfectly with the image of a character I was working with that I bought a postcard of the painting to sit on my desk. It’s still there.”

The work of prolific novelist Buday includes A Sack of Teeth, which follows a young boy navigating a dysfunctional family, and the recently released *Dragonflies,* which revolves around the story of Helen of Troy and Odysseus, who wishes to return home after a decade of war.

Buday has had specific inspirations for his writing, one being Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, set in post-Second World War Europe and included on Time Magazine’s top 100 English language novels list written between 1923 to 2005.

In terms of his own audience, Buday was once again to the point.

“The ideal reader is one who gets my jokes,” he said. “I would like to think everyone gets my jokes. The world would be a better place. More laughter.”

At the Mike: Forward Fiction gets underway at 7 p.m. The Cornerstone Café is at 1301 Gladstone Ave. Admission is free and for more information call 250-360-0829.