Regina senior publishes half a dozen books throughout pandemic

The COVID pandemic has left many people with a lot of time on their hands, and at least one man has put it to good use.

Keith Landry, 70, from Regina,  says he has always loved writing but he never had the time to really immerse himself in his passion for it.

Since writing his first story almost two years ago, Landry has now published six true crime books. Five of them came out in 2020, during the pandemic.

“The first story I wrote was inspired by a story that I had heard many years ago that my grandfather told me when I was 10 years of age,” Landry said. “My grandfather was one of the first officers to go to a mass murder on an island in west Quebec called Allumette Island, he told me that story, what happened, and I remembered it so I thought I would put it on paper.”

Landry initially wrote a few short stories back in the 1980’s before sending them to amateur competitions where he would eventually earn first and second place. He then found himself too busy working and raising a family to find time for his writing. Still, he would often think of compelling ideas for novels.

He said that now, he’s making up for lost time and that it took him a lot of confidence to get the inspiration to put his work out there for everyone to see.

“I’ve told myself over the years, geez, you know, I think I could make great book if I sat down and did it, and I just never did it, I kept putting it off,” he said. “Now, I’m spending hours and hours researching stories.

“Everybody (has) talent, (and) you really don’t find out whether you can do it until you do it. Then you have to think, ‘We haven’t got a lot of time to do it, so why don’t you do it now?’”

Landry’s work is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, as he takes real crime stories before building upon them and giving personality and background to the characters he writes about.

Writing a book isn’t necessarily a one-man show, as he has had a lot of help along the way. Landry has been using local publisher Joose Publishing to make his crime stories available to the public. He has also gotten some help from his wife, Vivian, who is in charge of proofreading.

Some of Landry’s books can be found at the Penny University Bookstore as well as on Amazon, where they have been met with five-star reviews.

“If there’s one thing people have come back and told me is they love my tales and they love the fact that they’re easy reads,” he said. “I don’t make them overly complicated.”

Landry plans on releasing more books in the near future, as he hopes to keep on building upon his passion.

“I’m not about pursuing it for financial reasons. It’s about pursuing it because it’s a passion to me,” he said. “It’s not about finding out whether you are going to be so successful that you’re going to get a livelihood from it. It’s about putting something out there that makes me feel good about what I’m doing.”