A lover of independent bookstores, Peterborough author Erica Richmond would choose nowhere else but Peterborough’s Take Cover Books to celebrate the release of her latest children’s book, Pixie and the Fox.
Fresh off the exhibit of her Mail Art Stories Project last month, Richmond — who is also the founder of Open Sky Stories, a writing community for which she hosts writing groups and workshops — will be at the Hunter Street bookstore at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 10th and will read from her new book at 8 p.m.
“I would love to have people there and enjoying this space because their shop is lovely,” says Richmond. “I’m so happy to have them in town to find some connection through books and stories and just enjoy everyone’s company.”
The self-published Pixie and the Fox tells the story of, not surprisingly, a pixie who meets a fox. After the fox tells the pixie how much he loves her light, laughter, and sparkle, the pixie follows him on his adventures until she apprehensively enters a cave. When the fox leaves her, taking away that light, laughter, and sparkle with him, she is left on her own without the things that made her special.
“She has to look deep within herself and remember the things that make her who she is, and how to get them back and find her way out of the cave,” says Richmond.
Illustrated by Peterborough-based artist Brooklin Holbrough, the story is the second in the Pixie series, which follows the character as she learns to understand and tackle complex feelings and experiences. Just as the first book in the series, 2020’s Pixie and the Bees, was based on Richmond’s experience living with anxiety, the second book is also “based a lot” on her own life.
“I wouldn’t say that the fox is one specific person in my life, but it’s (based on) experiences that I’ve had of losing myself a little bit and experiencing relationships that are less than healthy,” she says. “And then having to dig in, remembering who you are and remembering your worth, and finding your way back from that.”
Though it’s the second in the series to be published, Richmond actually wrote Pixie and the Fox about six years ago. As with all the personal and “healing” writing she does, she needed to wait for the “right time” and to be in the right place before releasing it.
“I’m in a different place right now where I’m able to talk about things that I might have shied away from before,” she says. “It feels like I can have these conversations with people, and I really want to have these conversations and talk to people because this is a huge issue that we’re talking about a lot more than ever before.”
While the books are designed for children with Holbrough’s whimsical illustrations and Richmond’s easy-to-follow writing, the Pixie stories and the messages within them are universally valuable to adults as well. In fact, when first writing the books, Richmond hadn’t even envisioned them as being for children.
“I try to make it very accessible and use a lot of the patterns that are in children’s books, which I find makes it lighter than it would otherwise,” she says. “It’s more possible for other people to read it too, as with any type of media.”
Richmond says her stories are also a great way to introduce children to serious subject matter, without actually naming anxiety, mental health, “invisible illnesses,” or toxic relationships. She has heard feedback from parents of children who connected with the stories, and loves being able to have conversations around them when she’s attending events.
“These books really are just the beginning of the conversation and just a way that we can share a connection,” Richmond says. “Kids of all ages run into relationship difficulties. Relationships aren’t easy, whether it’s with friend groups or parents or family members or, as you get older, romantic relationships. This is the same, but it’s told through a pixie and a fox.”
While Richmond is looking forward to the in-person launch of Pixie and the Fox at her local bookstore, she is already a regular at Take Cover Books. As a small business owner herself, she says she goes out of her way to support independent bookstores whenever she can.
“Take Cover Books is very supportive of local authors with so many events and the big stores and Amazon just don’t do that,” she says, urging her readers to buy from local small businesses. “People who decide to own an independent bookstore are doing it because they just love books and I think that’s amazing, and I want to support them as much as I can.”
Beyond the book launch, Richmond has more speaking engagements and author readings already scheduled throughout the end of the month and the rest of the year.
“When I first decided to publish Pixie and the Fox last summer, I realized I’ve always wanted to do more speaking events and talking to people,” she says, noting that she developed a keynote for that purpose. “It introduces a lot of the concepts that I write about and the style of writing that I have.”
Among others, she has speaking engagements at Peterborough’s Keith Wightman School, the Peterborough Public Library, The Word on the Street Toronto Book and Magazine Festival, and even has an event in her hometown library in Dresden.
“My mom was the head librarian when I was growing up, so it feels really special to be going back there to do an author engagement event,” she says.
While she doesn’t know what lies ahead for her beloved heroine, Richmond is certain we haven’t seen the end of Pixie.
“I love the genre, and I find writing it is just absolutely the most healing thing ever for me,” she says. “I find a lot of comfort in writing the story. The key with it is to write it as a way of healing, but then I try not to share things into the world until I feel ready that this story can come out.”
In the meantime, Richmond is in the process of another healing journey. She is writing a collection of essays which focus on her life over the past 10 years, chronicling her grief in losing the father of her children to suicide after having separated from him six years prior.
“I feel my experience is a bit unique and I’ve written a lot about it, but I’m getting more intentional about it and I’m writing a lot of essays that will be put together as one collection,” Richmond says.
As with Richmond’s other projects, Peterborough will be ready for anything she releases into the world whenever she is ready to do so.
For more information about Richmond and her work, visit openskystories.com. For more information about Take Cover Books and upcoming events, including the Pixie and the Fox book launch, visit takecoverbooks.ca.
