School teachers in the South Cariboo might remember Axel Matfin as a student who always had his nose in a book and finger on some kind of wild writing project.
Now, as the 25-year-old publishes his first novel, Bartender, Darkness on the Edge of Town, he’s thanking those educators for their support, understanding and the sometimes blind eye they turned to his behaviour.
Darkness is the first book in his The Bartender mystery trilogy and Matfin launched it in style on Nov. 26 at Calabash – a trendy restaurant in Vancouver’s Gastown.
An upbeat atmosphere and live piano music set the stage for what Matfin thinks was the perfect event for his 90 guests.
He works in the restaurant industry to pay the bills and says he as learned a lot about cultivating mood.
“Most book launches are pretty dry, and I was going to make this one good.”
Still a virtual unknown in the tough Vancouver writing community, Matfin has since been hitting the pavement hard with his book, building an ever-thickening hide as he tries to convince book stores to stock his novel.
Matfin self-published the book under his own company, Adventure Publishing, after coming to terms with the reality that nobody was going to do it for him. A team of hired artists created the slick cover and logo and Matfin says he feels he’s on the right path now.
Just after secondary school graduation, he had little more than a lot of optimism in his pockets when he left his country home in Lone Butte for a place and a writing future in Vancouver. It didn’t take him long to be humbled and realize he didn’t yet have what it takes to compete as an author in the big city.
“It wasn’t like writing in 100 Mile, where anything was good enough. I slugged it out for the first two years just writing blogs in an arts scene that seems exclusive and superficial.”
Matfin has never had a doubt about being a serious writer. He has a voracious appetite for reading which manifested early.
He talks about sneaking books out of his elementary school library without signing them out because he seemed to always have his allowed quota of books.
It drove his mom, Barb Matfin, nuts, and although threats of squealing on him were constant, he was never reprimanded by the school librarian.
“I think my teachers actually figured it was kind of cool that I wanted to read so much, so nobody ever said anything.”
By the age of 15, he’d written two books, which, as a young and naive teen, he had high hopes for.
“They never got published, but that was probably for the best. It was just part of the learning curve.”
