People were transfixed as they watched a royal seal placed beneath a signature.

The act took place as Port Hardy author JJ Sutherland (a pen name) sold and signed her newest book - The One and Fractured Thing - at the Telegraph Cove Craft Market Aug. 2.

The book is a sequel to her maiden novel The Once and Forgotten Thing - an exciting historical fantasy about a Saxon spy and a secret he steals that nearly destroyed the legend of King Arthur.

“This is the second one published and hopefully the third one is out by next summer,” said JJ. The first one is designed to be a stand-alone book.  “It has got a satisfying ending, but it is a series.”

JJ has been writing since she was eight. 

“I won a poetry award in Grade 2, and my teacher made me feel really good about my writing, so I kept writing,” she recalls. Her first novel got picked up by an American publisher in 2020. “That was amazing and that was my first book,” she explained.

Unfortunately, that publishing house went under during the pandemic, which was a shame, but JJ got picked up by a local publisher from Port McNeill – Darci Dobbs with Tempest and Jay Publishing.

“She is the one that has brought the sequel to reality.” 

JJ describes her books as fantasy/adventure.

“Most people hear fantasy now and they are thinking spice, but it is not that – they are spy novels.”

The Once and Forgotten Thing, set during the King Arthur era, is an idea that came to JJ in a dream. 

“I dream weird things all the time and I dabble out just a scene from a dream and I put them in a file and this one scene I couldn’t drop it,” she said.  “I just had to know what happened next, so I sat at the table, and I just thought well maybe this could happen and it was like the story was already there and I just found it,” JJ said, adding, “this one got written in just one winter”.

JJ feels a book starts with the characters. 

“Once you know your characters, they have their own ideas, they know what they are doing.”

For JJ, writing is her chance to escape somewhere else, and “for me it is an exercise in empathy putting myself in someone else’s shoes and a chance to live a life, or an experience, I never have, and to really, really try to immerse myself and be in that place and be in that person and experience something different and bring a level of authenticity to the writing, but to myself about a different experience,” she said. “That’s what I love about it.”

Writing is JJ’s full-time career.

For more on JJ Sutherland’s books visit tempestandjaypublishing.ca