For 20-year-old Sandy Chambers, the spring of 1968 was all about making love, not war. Her dream of experiencing free, no-attachment sex quickly turns into a nightmare when the man she meets while hitchhiking to a remote hippie community turns up dead.
So begins 'Fake Out,' Port Alberni author Faye Bayko's debut novel. Bayko set her novel on Vancouver Island's remote west coast, where her characters live and work in the original Wickaninnish Inn, built on the south end of Long Beach in 1964.
"While this novel is my first jump into fiction, I am no stranger to writing," she said. "Since 1989, I have written everything from ad copy to columns to feature articles, mainly for newspapers."
Bayko wrote for Lethbridge Magazine and its sister publications, the Kelowna Daily Courier and various other weekly newspapers. She has a diploma in Studies in Leisure Services from the former Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) and she worked recreation jobs in B.C. and Alberta.
She first considered writing a novel set on Long Beach in 2009. She took her son on a trip to Pacific Rim National Park following his graduation from film school in 2008. She learned there have been two Wickaninnish Inns 鈥� the first one was located where Kwisitis Visitor Centre is now located, on Wickaninnish Beach. The other is a world-class resort situated at the other end of what is now Chesterman Beach.
She began researching the history of the area, interviewing people who lived in the area during the time the national park was formed. She read every historical book she could find on the area.
The actual writing process took about two years, and she hired her own editors even though she decided to self-publish the book with Tellwell Publishing.
'Fake Out' is the first of four books planned for the Long Beach Mystery series, all set in the Long Beach area between the years of 1968 and 1973. Bayko is concurrently writing a non-fiction companion book about some of the real-life settings from the novels. She also envisions a couple of shorter novelettes springing from the series as well as a website with different features.
Fake Out takes place in 1968 at the height of the hippy movement on Vancouver Island. The main character, Sandy, hitchhikes from Victoria to the hippie community of Wreck Bay, an hour's walk through the bush from the original Wickininnish Inn on what was known at the time as Long Beach.
Bayko's favourite genre is the murder mystery, and her novel does not disappoint: within the first 50 or so pages a murder occurs, and the book begins to play out from the perspective of four people whose lives are intertwined in some way because of the murder. There is Sandy, a naive 22-year-old dropout searching for the freedom portrayed by hippie culture; Conny "with a Y," a 22-year-old supervisor of the cleaning staff at the inn, trying to earn enough to move to Hollywood; Tom, 21, a rich kid from West Vancouver banished to the remote west coast to work off the embarrassment he's caused his father; and David, 39, an RCMP corporal with Ucluelet detachment.
"I love mysteries," says Bayko, "they're my go-to genre."
Bayko does not use a timeline for her books and she said the most difficult part of writing her first mystery was "who knows what when. "It's made me appreciate mysteries and also writers more."
She spent a long time developing her characters, and it shows through the descriptions, dialogue and how they interact with other characters. "I've also tried to ground them in their setting and time period," she said.
Bayko said she hopes readers are entertained when they read 'Fake Out,' "I want them to become a bit more informed about the area and history around them."
'Fake Out' is available at Blackberry Cove Marketplace in Ucluelet, Mermaid Tales Bookshop in Tofino, Mobius Books in Port Alberni, Mulberry Bush Bookstore in Qualicum Beach, Blue Heron Books in Comox and Volume One Bookstore in Duncan.
