The first snowfall came a couple of weeks ago and with it, enough ice and wind to bring Nova Scotia Power to its knees. As busy as keeping the fire in the woodstove going, and scooping up buckets of snow to melt for flushing the toilet kept me, there was a blissful quiet that [...]
read on... →I got pencils.
I got paper.
I got fiction.
Who could ask for anything more?
Not Alice Munro. Beaming, with yet another story to tell, she accepted her second Giller Prize- this time for her short story collection, Runaway.
Pregnant with floating rose petals and Mary Walsh’s [...]
read on... →On the eve of the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, writers here and there around the world are steeling themselves for the wait. (They whisper soft wishes to themselves as they clean closets, lift jar after jar after jar of homemade preserves and pickles out of a boiling pot of water, or make [...]
read on... →Readers are going gaga over Jane these days…and with good reason. After all, her books contain all the elements of a good read; satire, romance, deception, with a bit of mystery thrown in for good measure. Although Jane Austen may not of been the original princess of “chick-lit” (Fanny Burney 1752-1840 had a bit [...]
read on... →
As I push forward with the last half of yet another round of revisions on the novel, I find that I am reaching out into the literary world, looking for inspiration and answers. Can a book be written over too many times? Do other writers struggle between making art and making a [...]
read on... →It’s nearly summer and most people are thinking of slowing down, trying something new, taking a trip to the cottage. For me, summer 2005 means driving around the province for little league baseball games, getting out in the garden, getting the novel in tip-top shape and watching (and participating in) this year’s political fireworks.
I’m [...]
read on... →This is taken from my personal journal entry of March 30, 2004.
Lately it seems like there’s more and more talk out there about how difficult it is for writers (and artists in any discipline) to make an income that places them above the poverty line.
I don’t consider myself to be some sort [...]
read on... →Since the Super Bowl breast incident, boobs are everywhere. (Did you see CHristina Aguilera at the Grammy’s?) During this season of red carpets and awards it seems that breasts have come into their own. Dress designers are doing their best to put them on display and starlets are donning the scant-topped creations with an [...]
read on... →Fannie Mayis closing her doors. Have you ever tasted a Trinidad? If not, then you missed out on an amazing delicacy that was…a silky, sensuous, cholately truffled center huddled in cloak of toasted coconut and white chocolate. My first time? Joey B. made me eat one. “A sure cure for heartaches and hangovers” he [...]
read on... →One of the long standing holiday traditions in my family has been getting a copy of The Old Farmer’s Almanac in our stockings. It was a rite of passage to see the hint of goldenrod yellow poking out the top of my sock on Christmas morning. (I was probably twelve or thirteen when I [...]
read on... →
When I was a child I loved finding things…a jar of my grandmother's old buttons, a cigar box filled with boy scout badges and river stones, a flouncy party dress pushed to the back of my mother's closet - circa 1955. With every relic I discovered, there came a story. Real or imagined, the tales that surrounded each object were magic, making the 'thing' more immediate, something more than it was before I'd found it.
Fact or fiction, fantastic, joyful or sad, stories make us more than we were before we found them. Welcome to my shoebox of buttons, sealing wax and scribblings.
- posted on 16/05/2012 23:03:49
