As a child, Annette Collins liked to escape into books, and now she has penned her own escape though a tale of romance with a side of mystery.
“I was a very heavy reader,” Collins said. “I was always in my room reading.”
Collins, a Rotterdam resident and Niskayuna native, wrote her first book, “Thin Space,” after two-and-a-half years of pondering her romantic tale. She has started a few other books, but once the story of “Thin Space” started to unravel around a year ago, she couldn’t stop working on it. After taking a creative writing course 10 years ago, her creative drive started seeping out again.
“I saw I wanted to be a writer and then of course life happened,” said Collins, a mother of three. “My mind is a scary place to live, because I just look at things … and I instantly go into the mode of ‘Oh, I could do a story about that.’”
She admitted she’s a “huge talker,” so she figured she might as well translate it into writing to tell her story uninterrupted.
Collins will be featured at Niskayuna Co-op’s Sizzling Summer Sampling on Saturday, July 21, along with Katy Roberts, author of “Sammy’s Gold Stars,” so you can talk to Collins yourself.
“I like to meet new people,” Collins said. “I like to hear from people who have read the book … I like to answer questions.”
The event goes from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include seven local food producers offering samples inside and in front of the market at 2227 Nott St. Some of the procuts are Gatherer’s Granola, 3 Chicks and A Pea Hummus and Battenkill Valley Creamery.
Collins said she loves to read horror and mystery novels, but her writing tends to grapple with emotional, romantic and real-life situations.
“By nature I am a highly emotionally person, so I like to be able to put words to it,” she said. “I like to put it out there so that other people who feel the same way about different things in life can relate to it.”
A lot of the deep emotions conveyed in the story are those Collins believes most people often keep within themselves and don’t talk about with others. She can’t remember a particular trigger for the story behind “Thin Space,” but she said her conversations with friends are often focused on relationships.
The story starts off on a dramatic note, with a tragic accident changing the course of several people’s lives, and the story then follows a young woman’s journey to find meaning in her life. Fate moves the woman to reunite with her lost love and each faces the difficult choices on the journey.
Collins said the first half of the book is more of a romantic novel before the mystery begins to unfold.
Growing up in a creative environment is how she believes her interest in writing is started.
“There are a lot of people in my family who are very creative,” she said. “It was always something that was supported.”
Being a stay at home mom, Collins said some of the most challenging parts of writing the book were “staying in the moment.” She also made extensive efforts to make sure the reader wouldn’t have any questions by the end of the mystery.
“I paid a lot attention to all the little things that were dropped along the way and make sure that I addressed them,” she said.
As far as her future writing endeavors go, she is already in the initial stages of planning a sequel to “Thin Space.”
