Welcome to my blog.  My name is Scott William Campbell and I am a writer.

I’ve been writing all my life.

This blog was created to serve two purposes: to have a chronicle of my work as a writer and to serve as a way of letting people know what I’m working on, who I’m working with and where you can find my stuff.

I was born in Canada’s first permanent European settlement – Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. I think this is where I get my love of small towns with big histories.

I attended high school at the Annapolis West Education Centre in Annapolis Royal and after graduation began working a few assorted jobs – gas station attendant, grocery store clerk, door to door salesman – for a few years.

Then, one evening, I accidentally went to a play. I thought I was going to a movie and was very disappointed when I arrived at the theatre to find that a resident summer stock theatre company was doing a production of Dracula. But I opted to stay and watch instead of driving back home again. Pun intended – I was bitten. I thought this show was the most magical thing I’d ever seen. I stayed afterward and introduced myself to the cast and made friends that evening who I would stay in touch with for years to come. I applied for and got a job in the theatre’s box office. That was the beginning of what would become a lifelong involvement in theatre.

I worked part time at the theatre for several years and it was during this time that I landed a position as a staff writer for the Annapolis Royal Spectator – a small weekly publication. My first editor was Sandra Meers.  She taught me a great deal about clear, concise writing – a skill that would prove to be invaluable over the years to come. It was also during this time that I won my first writing competition. It was a Christmas story competition and I won with a short story called, Home for Christmas. I remember it well because it was published in The Spectator (no, not while I was still working there) and they mixed up two of the columns when it went to press so about two-thirds of the way through the story, the ending happened and then it seemed to back track. It made for a very confusing read but it didn’t dampen my excitement or my enthusiasm for writing.

I stayed involved in theatre over the years and soon I was artistic director of our own theatre company –  The Original Cast Theatre Company Co-op. We staged several plays that I’d written as summer stock productions at Kings Theatre. We also were awarded the entertainment contract at the newly opened Upper Clements Theme Park. Part of our contract there was producing a dinner theatre that I also wrote – The Order of Good Cheer Dinner Theatre.

In 1993, I left the theatre company to pursue higher education. I enrolled at Acadia University in a BA English program. Although a great deal of time was spent writing academic papers, I did find time to write a one-act play called The Telling  and submit it to Acadia’s One Act Play Festival. It was selected and, along with five other plays, produced by the Acadia Repertory Theatre Company in 1995. The following year I wrote Two Toots Past Moose River – another one-act play – which was also selected and then produced by the ARTC.  I finished my BA in English and stayed on at Acadia to complete a Master’s Degree in Education with a specialization in Counselling.  This training and the subsequent experiences in human behaviour and the unique ways in which all of our minds work would prove to give me a focused insight into the human condition. This insight would eventually show the way to me creating much more developed and feeling characters in my stories.

Today, I’m a published writer – you can find more details about that in the posts section of the blog – as well as an educator. I teach Communications and Writing Skills at the Nova Scotia Community College. I live on an old farm in Nova Scotia’s beautiful Annapolis Valley with my partner, two dogs and a fat black cat named Omen.