Brian Horeck might live in Aurora, but he spends as much time as he can at his camp near Webbwood.
During one such blissful sojourn at camp more than a decade ago, Horeck set a minnow trap, and was shocked to find he'd caught a bunch of large, strange-looking waterbugs.
“I thought, 'Oh my God, baby aliens,' emptied them back into the water, tied the minnow trap onto my ATV and drove off,” said Horeck, who was born and raised in Sudbury.
“I pondered in my head 'What an idea for a story.' I love good stories, especially unique ones. Why would the aliens be there, what would they be doing? I built a story around it and played on different things in my mind.”
Although Horeck had no background in writing, and in fact disliked English class when he attended Sheridan Technical School as a teen, he got to work on what became the 2005 self-published novel “Minnow Trap.”
It's about some Northern Ontario fishing buddies who find “bizarre and frisky little creatures” in a minnow trap and come to realize this is a sign of extraterrestrials on earth.
“Minnow Trap,” as well as his second novel, “Frozen Beneath” — which, by the way, is about ice fishers who find evidence of aliens — both sold about 10,000 copies in bait and tackle shops and tourist destinations.
“I think it sold well because people can relate to it,” he said.
“I see millions of vehicles driving up the 400 highway to cottage country every weekend from Toronto. They want to spend their money in Northern Ontario, hunting, fishing, kayaking and hiking.”
Horeck has just come out with his third novel, “Minnow Trap 2,” also self-published.
Set 10 years after the first book, the group of cottagers who “faced a horrifying encounter with extraterrestrials” now collaborate with a different alien species in an effort to stop global warming.
Having received advice from author buddies such as Sudbury's Sean Costello and award-winning novellist Joseph Boyden, Horeck worked with a copy-editor both on “Minnow Trap 2” and on “Frozen Beneath.”
He admits “Minnow Trap” could have used a good edit before being released, but he did the best he could at the time, and people still seemed to like it.
“Like I told Joseph Boyden, if we were compared to food, you're fine dining and I would be a hot dog in a pool room,” Horeck said.
“But people like that hot dog in the pool room. I look at it that way — books are like meals because you have different tastes.”
He said he's currently working on “Frozen Beneath 2,” and hopes to release that book about a year from now.
All three of Horeck's books are available for purchase online at Amazon. The paperback version of “Minnow Trap 2” cost $13.08 and the Kindle edition is $7.95. Horeck said he hopes to release the book in major bookstores next spring.
