By Tyler Waugh, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Daniel Burton has wanted to write as long as he can remember, all the way back to when he would stand on a chair and use the typewriter his parents bought the aspiring young author.
The Petty Harbour resident, named the 2024 Equinor ArtsSmart Scholarship recipient, continues to pursue his dreams as he works towards a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, where he is a Currie Scholar.
“My first real story that I wrote on that typewriter was a ghost story, so I've always been interested in kind of weird stories, supernatural ways that I can kind of reimagine my worldview in like a fantastical or interesting way that I hadn't seen before,” Burton said. “So, I always try to kind of represent things that I see in everyday life in ways that, you know, most people wouldn't see them to try and capture what is under the surface.”
One of several published short stories, “Whale Pavilion,” was inspired by a daytrip to the King’s Point Whale Pavilion with his mother. He was waiting outside for his mom, licking an ice cream, when he noticed an ominous, beat-up camper van.
“It was right in front of me and I hadn’t noticed it all that time before. The only thing I could think was ‘there’s a man waiting behind that door ready to shamble out and take me for a ride. I thought about that for a while on the way back home,” he said. “Of course. There was no man waiting behind the strange, lava lamp textured curtained window, but the story there was and so I went home that day and wrote a story about a boy getting kidnapped and taken for a ride in rural Newfoundland in a camper van and it got published.”
Burton has also written five novels – ranging from young adult to horror and psychological thrillers - with a sixth novel in the works this summer.
He has rounded out his creative writing with work as a journalist, beginning as part of a group that helped resurrect his high school newspaper and continuing at the University of New Brunswick with the Brunswick student paper, where he is currently an editor.
“I think that the journalistic writing style is so different from the creative writing style,” he said. “And so you learn a lot about clarity, you know, like I learned a lot about kind of eliminating certain tendencies in my writing and kind of making it cleaner.”
His ultimate writing goal is to be a horror writer, and he is working to publish his own books as a full-time job. But he understands it can be a long journey and may involve taking different paths.
“I think that breaking out to these other things, like journalism … I'm taking a publishing certificate as well, will be really helpful to buy me some time and hopefully I'll get a novel deal, you know, before I'm done school,” he said.
To learn more about Burton and his writing, visit https://www.dsburton.com.
