Marshall Godwin
Email: godwinm@mun.caI was born in the Harbour Breton Cottage Hospital on the south coast of Newfoundland in 1954. Two weeks later my mother and father took me home to Belleoram, a small outport community of about 500 people. I spent my childhood in Belleoram˙ until I was 14 years old when our family moved back to my birthplace of Harbour Breton. My very formative high school years were spent there and when I was 17 I left by coastal boat to go to university in St. John's. The rest is a matter of record...I married my high school sweetheart, Glenda Buglar, finished medical school at MUN, did my family medicine residency at Dalhousie University and since then have worked consecutively in Canso, Nova Scotia, Whitbourne, NL, St. John's NL, Kingston, ON, and finally returned to St. John's in 2005 where I am now working in the Discipline of Family Medicine, at Memorial University as a researcher, teacher, and family doctor. My wife and I have two children, both married with children. Besides writing, I enjoy spending time with family, especially grandchildren, fly fishing, and spending time in our summer place in Trouty, Trinity Bay where we hope to eventually retire ... and then I'll have more time to write! In 2003, I published my first book, The Bedford Murder: An Evidence Based Clinical Mystery, which was a narrative-based medical education book for physicians. It was published by the medical book publisher, Elsevier Inc, and has sold about 3000 copies. In 2007, I published my second professional book, the same format as my first, but about modern sexual behaviours, called Sex on Yuwer Street. It was self-published and I haven't really marketed it. Both these books had significant narrative components but I wanted to do the real thing, write a novel. Later in 2007, I began research for what would be my first novel, not related to medicine at all. It is called Belle Maro and was published by DRC Publishing in August 2011 (click to see the Facebook page). It has been well received. I have a second manuscript completed and hopefully it will be published over the next year. I love Newfoundland. I love writing. I write what I love and know. I have published 80 medical articles in peer-reviewed journals in addition to my two medical books and one novel. It is fiction writing that truly has my heart. How do I write stories? I imagine I am standing on the shore of a small lake looking inland. In the distance is a mountain. It is my goal. My plan is simple, get to the mountain. In my mind I start walking and I start writing. There is no obvious trail, there are lakes (ponds) and ravines, and bogs and barrens. I have to traverse them to get to the mountain. When I start I don't really know what I might have to go through to get there or what I will encounter. The book is about the path I take, the journey. It is about the things that happen and the people I encounter along the way. I don't know how it will end until I am almost there. When I arrive, the story has been written. That is probably not how most writers do it. It is how I do it. |