LEAD:
When Newfoundland's Wayne Johnston was writing his best-selling novel Colony of Unrequited Dreams he needed a fictional character to interact with the real, but larger-than-life Joey Smallwood. Readers and critics loved reading about the acid-penned Dorthy Parker-like Sheilagh Fielding. Now Fielding tells her own story in The Custodian of Paradise.

RUNS:  5:15

END CUE:  "...published by Knopf Canada."