Linwood Barclay

Linwood Barclay, '77, is used to a busy lifestyle.

It all started when he was in grade 3. Barclay always knew he wanted to write and, at the age of nine, he busied himself filling notebooks with stories. By his teenage years, Barclay was writing 70-page novellas and moved onto full novels by his early twenties.

"They were terrible, so nobody wanted them," says Barclay.

Still, not bad considering Barclay didn't have the advantage of free time that most teenagers do. He was a busy kid.

"I had all this immense responsibility," says Barclay. "I didn't even really have teenage years in a lot of ways – not the way most teenagers do, with wildness and free abandon and having a lot of fun and getting into trouble."

The Barclay family owned and operated a cottage and trailer resort in the Kawartha Lakes region that they bought in 1966 and moved to in 1968. After his father's death, Barclay was running the resort and taking care of his mother and older brother. He recounts his life at the camp in his book The Last Resort.

Life at the resort presented a "unique way to grow up," says Barclay. "I was introduced to so many interesting people who came up there every year. The resort taught me that your whole life can be a story."

Barclay decided to go to university at Trent, which was within driving distance of the resort. It allowed him to maintain his responsibility to the family business while gaining an education at the same time.

"I'm glad it worked out that way," he says. "I had a wonderful time at Trent." In fact, Trent ended up playing a major role in Barclay's growth as a writer.

Although he began university with the intention of studying political science, he shifted to a major in English, where he formed a close relationship with Professor Gordon Johnston.

"Gordon was willing to indulge my practice of not taking things too seriously," Barclay remembers of his teacher and mentor.

For one class with Prof. Johnston, he was allowed to satirize poems instead of writing a formal essay on the poets themselves.

Their friendship continued beyond the classroom, with the two of them being so used to receiving rejection letters, writing fake rejection slips from imaginary publishers to each other, to see who could be funnier.

"I think he won," recalls Barclay. "He wrote this wonderful rejection letter to me from a fictitious poetry journal. The entire letter just read: 'That's it.'"

Trent fostered Barclay's interest in writing as it hosted several authors who ended up becoming friends and mentors to him.

Lady Eaton College invited Robertson Davies, one of Canada's most famous authors, to an event and Barclay was given the opportunity to dine at his table.

"It was really a very exciting thing to do. He was such a cool guy, so interesting and funny and clearly working at an intellectual level that I had no hopes of ever reaching," says Barclay with a laugh.

Another memorable evening at Trent was with his "all-time favourite" author, Kenneth Millar, who wrote under the name of Ross Macdonald. Barclay had maintained a long correspondence with him, and when the author visited the area, he gave Millar a tour of the university.

"It was like a kid getting to hang out with Gretzky," says Barclay. "It was a lot of fun."

For a few semesters, Canadian author Margaret Laurence was Champlain College's writer in residence. Barclay went to see her with all of the material he had written, having only read one of her short stories in high school.

"I had no sense of how important she was in Canadian literature," Barclay said.

After she had looked over his mystery novels and talked about them with him, Barclay decided he should read her work.

"I read all of her books over the summer and then came back in the fall. I must have come across as the biggest jerk in the world. I said 'Oh God, you're reading all my stuff and I hadn't read yours. You know, you're really good,'" he laughs.

Barclay and Laurence's relationship continued after Barclay graduated from Trent. She became a close friend to him and his wife, Neetha '76.

"Of all the mentors I ever had, Margaret was the singular most important and kind," Barclay says. "She was wonderfully encouraging. She was terrific."

After Barclay graduated from Trent and Neetha graduated from teacher's college in 1977, the couple married. Barclay continued to run the resort and began working at the Peterborough Examiner in September.

Because he was from the area, Barclay quickly moved into the position of district reporter, covering the territory outside of the Peterborough city limits.

"This also meant that I was the agriculture reporter. I didn't have a whole lot of expertise writing about the farming industry, but I would do my best," recalls Barclay. "Once, I was writing an article about a disease cows were getting…I became pretty convinced that I had it."

In 1979, Barclay left the Examiner to work with the Oakville Journal Record. He joined the Toronto Star in 1981. Twelve years later, in 1993, Barclay began column-writing.

"I loved doing the column, it was so much fun to do," he says. "It was a great way to work out all my hostilities and frustrations," he adds with a laugh.

In 2004, however, Barclay began writing crime novels, and he found that his fiction writing, on top of three columns a week, was getting to be too much.

"I found that writing a book a year and 130 columns a year was starting to kill me," he says.

In 2007, he released No Time for Goodbye and it "went crazy."

The popularity of the book allowed Barclay to take a year off to write his next book. But then No Time for Goodbye got even bigger in the U.K. and he found he had too much to do.

Barclay was already debating whether or not to return to the Star when they started to offer buyouts. "I decided I could give up my day job and make a living writing books," admits Barclay. "I had been using up vacation time from the Star to finish my books. I just couldn't relax."

Now, Barclay finds himself busy writing and traveling to promote his books. His newest novel, The Accident, was released the first week of August. This summer, Barclay was all over the globe in a relatively short time. In June, he was in Piacenza, Italy for a music and literary festival. After being home for a week, he was on the road again for Thrillerfest in New York City.

He returned home for just over a week again before packing for his biggest trip, the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England. He had just enough time to squeeze in this interview before leaving. England is his biggest market, so on top of the festival he will make plenty of public appearances.

And after England? A well deserved rest.

"I'm dying to sit on the deck and read the monstrous stack of books that's piling next to my bed," said Barclay. "I'm really eager to do nothing. I just want to sit on the deck and chill out