“Writing a novel is a huge labour,” says Patrick Lane, sounding like a prizefighter who had just gone 10 rounds with the champ.

“It’s hard, hard work. You write three, four, five hours a day for year, after year, after year ... Every once in a while you surface and stagger out in the light and say ‘Who am I? Where am I?’ Writers are miserable creatures, sitting in tiny rooms tapping at a keyboard.”

After four years’ work, Lane emerged from a little room in his Central Saanich home and found that Red Dog Red Dog, the novel he’d tapped out with his one-finger typing, had been embraced by the Canadian literary scene. Before its official release Sept. 30 it had already been named to the long list for the Giller Prize (the announcement of the shortlist was Tuesday night, after the News’ deadline), and was a finalist for the Writer’s Trust Prize.

Lane is thrilled to make both lists. “It’s great. I could be a Canadian and be humble, say ‘aw shucks,’ but it’s wonderful. It’s very exciting.”

Speaking from a Toronto hotel room, partway through a whirlwind publicity tour for the book, he admitted that writing a novel isn’t done to target awards. “You do it because that’s what you do. That’s my art.”

It seems Lane is thinking of that little room and the work that gets done there.

“This kind of thing, it puts you on the national stage for a month. Then, the next brand of cotton candy comes out next year and people start talking about it, and you, you go back to the room and start working on the next book.”

Lane knows of what he speaks, since this is not his first dance on the Canadian awards circuit. He won a Governor General’s award for poetry in 1979, and has been shortlisted for everything from the Charles Taylor Award for Literary Non-Fiction to the Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (winning that one once as well).

Lane, 69, pointed out that his new book is a departure from his traditional writing form. After 50 years and 25 books as a poet, the award lists are recognizing his first-ever novel.

Shortly after completing There is a Season (2004), a memoir dealing with overcoming addiction, Lane looked at himself and said, “Maybe it’s time I wrote a novel. Why not? I’d written in the long form with the memoir.”

Red Dog Red Dog was his fourth attempt at a novel, having left the other three unfinished. This time around, however, he felt he was in a place to do so. “I’m not young anymore, I was 65 when I started. I was sober and my life had changed so dramatically. I felt healthy. I hesitate to use words like ‘born again,’ but it’s like that, in a way, when you clean yourself up. I had the strength and perseverance to push through to the end.”

Sitting down in his little room to begin the book, he chose a setting and a time that he knew well. *Red Dog Red Dog* is set in 1958 in the Okanagan Valley, where Lane grew up.

“The 1950s are a decade that a lot of authors had never written about. It’s not a decade popular in fiction and I knew it very intimately,” he says. “I found a couple of characters, Tom and Eddy, in their early 20s, that were really struggling to survive, and I explored that.”

Despite the overlap, the novel is not autobiographical. “It doesn’t resemble my life at all,” he says, nor does Lane intend that the connection flavour the book. “I think a reader should go into a book so they can find themselves, not so they can find me.”

The story centres around the Stark Family: father Elmer, mother Lillian, and brothers Tom and Eddy; their secrets, their past and their relationships with the diverse cast of characters living in a small Okanagan town.

“I became really fascinated by the characters,” Lane says. “I loved the lives they were leading.” They also surprised him, changing his perception of the story, doing the unexpected.

“There’s this lovely character, Marilyn, and she was only supposed to appear in an early chapter. She said, ‘I’m not going anywhere, I’m going to be a big part of the book.’ And I said, ‘Well, okay,’ and Marilyn plays a huge part in the novel. She’s tough, she’s strong, and she’s got a lot of love in her.”

With his first novel finished, feted and available at bookstores, Lane will soon be free to consider what project he’ll next tackle in his writing room.

He’s clearly given it some thought: “I think I’ve got three novels in me,” he says. “I’m dithering and thinking about my second novel. If they ever let me off the treadmill I’m on and I go back to my little room, I’ll start the next novel.”

Lane has no intention of leaving poetry behind. He admits having a “deep and abiding love” for the form and says he would never walk away from it.

“Right now, I seem to have been bitten by the bug of the novel. I’ll follow that as far as it can go.”

news@peninsulanewsreview.com

sidebar:

In the Spotlight

• Patrick Lane reads from his first novel *Red Dog, Red Dog* tonight (Oct. 8) at 7:30 at the Alix Goolden Hall, 907 Pandora St.

• Red Dog Red Dog is available in local bookstores all over Greater Victoria.