Woodbine Corridor resident pens ebook about love, aviation and travel.
Brian Panhuyzen is the author of 'Night is a Shadow Cast By the World', which he recently decided to make available as an ebook. It can be purchased on a number of platforms for $2.99.
Photo/COURTESY
Local author Brian Panhuyzen's novel, Night is a Shadow Cast By the World, has been a long time in the making.
Panhuyzen, an east end resident who has lived in the Woodbine Corridor area, near Dundas Street East and Kingston Road since 2004, started writing his 400-page book more than a decade ago.
Having dealt with several "near misses" when it came to getting the novel picked up by a Canadian publisher, he recently decided to make Night is a Shadow Cast By the World available as an ebook. It can be purchased on a number of platforms for $2.99.
"(My book) was sitting in a drawer. The thing that is important to me is that people read my work," said Panhuyzen, who has a degree in English literature from the University of Toronto and is considering self-publishing his novel at some point. He'd also love to see it made into a film.
The first 16 chapters of Panhuyzen's book are also in the midst of being posted twice weekly for eight weeks on Open Book: Toronto (www.openbooktoronto.com), a Toronto literary hub that focuses on Ontario's independent, Canadian-owned publishers.
Night is a Shadow Cast by the World, which Panhuyzen describes as a literary adventure about books, aviation, travel and love, tells the story of a man named Cordell Bechard, who disappears after going out to investigate the sudden landing of a DC-3 plane behind his home.
In the blink of an eye, Cordell climbs aboard the vessel and takes off leaving his wife, Marla, to figure out what has transpired as well as manage her husband's eccentric bookstore in his absence.
Cordell is transported on a worldwide adventure as he desperately attempts to return home.
Night is a Shadow Cast By the World is told through both Cordell's voice as well as from Marla's perspective.
The book was made possible through grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
Presently working as the IT manager for the Canadian Film Centre, Panhuyzen has always been into writing.
Years ago, he wrote sketch comedy working for a time as a writer for Montreal's Just for Laughs International Comedy Festival.
Panhuyzen was also into what he calls "strange avant-garde" poetry and has even penned a few screenplays, which were never made into films.
A Scarborough native who grew up near Port Union Road and Lawrence Avenue East and attended the nearby Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate Institute, he then got into writing short stories, many of which have been published in literary journals.
Back in the 1990s, Panhuyzen also ran his own small press called Tortoiseshell&Black, which was named after the two cats he owned with his co-publisher.
"Black" was Mali, who died about eight years ago and "Tortoiseshell" was Lesje, who died last week.
Panhuyzen, who has worked as a book designer and magazine editor, is also the author of a collection of short stories called The Death of the Moon, which was published by Cormorant Books in 1999.
Night is a Shadow Cast By the World, www.nightisashadow.com, is his first novel.
Panhuyzen's second novel, The Sky Manifest, will be edited this fall and is set to be published in March 2013 by ECW Press.
An avid cyclist who enjoys travelling, Panhuyzen trained to become a pilot in the late 1990s at the Toronto Island Airport but didn't complete his certification.
"I do intend to finish it at some point, if my wife lets me," he said.
He's also got a personal interest in airplanes, notably the iconic DC-3, which was commonly used in the Second World War.
For now, Panhuyzen, a married father of two boys, is happy to live out his adventures in his stories and on two wheels.