Terry Foss

I grew up in a little town in the central part of the island of Newfoundland, on the east coast of Canada. It was a town where you knew everyone, all 800 or so residents. It was a time when there were no locks on the door; a time when we went out to play early morning and only returned as it was getting dark, and the calls of our mothers echoed across the harbour, alerting us it was suppertime. My only source of books, back then, was the elementary school library, yet at a very young age I realized that books had the power to transport me from my tiny spot in the world to any place and any time...and so my journey began! Following graduation from High School in Lewisporte, Newfoundland, I moved to St. John's with my wife Sharon, where I completed two years of Civil Engineering Technology and then began a thirty three year career at the telephone company. In 2006, I retired and decided to pursue my lifelong dream to write. Some 20 years before I had sketched out the beginning of a sci-fi novel, so I literally blew the dust off those yellowed sheets of paper; and when the cloud dissipated and the coughing ceased, I got to work. I spent a couple of years on it but it just didn't make the grade and is sitting on the shelf for future polishing. That's for another day! Oh, by the way, during this time, my two daughters, Amy and Julieanne, got married and I now have three grandsons who have suddenly demanded a significant amount of my attention, in a delightfully happy way! Then one day, not too long ago, I was thumbing through one of the volumes of The Books of Newfoundland and I read that this guy by the name of Thomas Rowsell had been considered a "great" Indian killer. Well, that got me thinking; my mother's maiden name is Rowsell. Hmm...I wonder if he might be an ancestor of mine. And the idea of the Red Indian Series was born. With that three book series completed, I turned to a tale of a Beothuk massacre near the town of Hants Harbour, and published the completed story, Bloody Point, in 2019. I hadn't intended it this way, but the Beothuk story has taken on a pivotal role in my writing, and seems to find a way to play some part in each book I write. In October 2020 I published Beothuk Slaves, which as the name indicates, tells a story of a people torn from their families and home to spend a life in captivity and servitude, taken by Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real. In July 2022 I published HOLMES. This is the story of John Holmes, the first settler of Seldom Come By, a little town located on Fogo Island, in the central part of Newfoundland and Labrador. John's journey from England to the rugged outport of Newfoundland is fraught with perils and adventure he could never have imagined when first he set out as a stowaway from a port in England. Currently I am working on the story of Cormack's trek across the interior of Newfoundland accompanied by his Indian guide Joe Sylvester. This book should hit the shelves sometime in early 2024.