Villain or Victim; Other or Us?

I tell my creative writing students that their readers will surprise them. I say that, once their story’s out there, someone will come up with a theme they’d never thought of, or a take on a character that’s strange and new and yet totally credible. I tell my students...

Acknowledgements (hold the mustard)

I haven’t had any trouble with each of my three books’ dedications. With the wording, perhaps, but never with the names, which slipped onto those first blank pages as if I’d been turning them over in my head for as long as I’d been writing the books. (Yes, OK, so...

Launch!

84 Harbord Ave.  Bakka-Phoenix Books.  Saturday, November 5, from 3–5:30(ish). I’ll be there, along with ChiZine Publications and Martin Springett, to mark the official debut of The Pattern Scars.  Come join us!  (There’ll be tarot card reading and...

Fall and First Daughters

Autumn makes me crazy, in a prickly, poignant kind of way.  Twenty years ago, I would have used the word “aching” to describe how I was feeling about it. Indeed, I likely would have needed a copy editor to point out that I’d used this word ten times in three pages....

A Book is Born

A cat is indifferent. I, however, am delirious. A plethora of thanks to Brett Savory for driving this precious copy through downtown rush-hour traffic so that I could hold it NOW. It’s beautiful.