ESTEVAN — Maggie Mae Holmes says her new autobiography, God Knows Your Name, was a decade in the making, and she is excited to have it available to the public.
The first full-length book she has published, Holmes has held a couple of book launch celebrations, one at the Estevan Public Library on July 4 and the other in her hometown of Pierson, Man., on July 10.
“I was really excited with the turnout and how people responded,” she told SaskToday.
Holmes said she will also attend the Red Market Barn north of Kenosee Lake a couple of times in the fall to promote the book, and she hopes to attend some ministry meetings and conferences.
“I really like doing the markets and library book launches as well, because there is a variety of people who need all sorts of help in their lives in different ways, and I’m going to find them all in different places,” she said.
She said she counted 57 occasions in the book in which God did something “miraculously” to change her for the better. In one instance, she was paying $300 for Bible courses for Holmes and another woman. Holmes' daughter was then hit in the front tooth with a baseball; the tooth repair was going to cost $300. The following day, Holmes received a cheque for $300 from a person she had met once.
In another instance, a meeting with a gym owner in Regina led to Holmes' daughter getting a job, answering a prayer by Holmes that her daughter would get a job.
Holmes said she had help and encouragement throughout her writing process, because the book is something she never would happen. She recalled she had trouble learning when she was a child due to issues with her short-term memory.
“My mom took on teaching me, and she got me so I could read and write and do math and stuff,” she said.
Holmes still encountered challenges with commas and spelling complex words during the writing process, and she doubted her own abilities even though she believed she was supposed to write the book. But the encouragement she received from God and other people enabled her to complete the project.
“The last 10 years have been an interesting time of growth,” she said.
Holmes has also written separate non-fiction stories of a Second World War veteran and a war bride. Those experiences, coupled with her involvement in the Estevan Writers’ Group, helped her develop as a writer.
“It took me a long time to learn how to write, and then learn how to put it all into a nice, orderly book, chapter upon chapter," Holmes said.
The war bride book is a short story in the Pierson library, she said, while the story on the war veteran was given to the man’s family.
Holmes has been a member of the Estevan Writers’ Group for 25 years. For much of that time, she travelled to Estevan for meetings, but when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and restrictions were implemented, the meetings shifted to Zoom. Most meetings are still online, but some are in person.
“Every six months or so, we hand 3,000 words to each other. It’s sent through emails, of course. And we will sit down and critique each other’s work, and then we get together, usually in person but sometimes online, and we will go through and tell each other about what we like about the other person’s work, and what could be changed, what could be made better. That has helped me so much. That moved my writing forward quite quickly.”
At other times, the guild has brought in published authors to lead a workshop and teach specific things about the writing process.
An American-based group, Messenger Life, helped her finish writing the book and taught her about marketing. It helps Christian authors, she said, and provided another boost in getting her book published.
