I spent my Mother’s Day morning eating a traditional breakfast of mushrooms on toast (tradition in my family, at least) and then I took a few minutes to lazily surf around the internet. The ever wonderful Zinn Education Project has a fabulous post today on facebook in honour of Julia Ward Howe and the origins [...]
read on... →While the world has been memorializing the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I’ve been thinking about a quieter, yet equally mysterious passing that happened on the same day.
In the mid-nineteenth century a man who became known as “Jerome” was found on the shores of Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, mute and missing [...]
read on... →“The worst thing I can do when I’m stuck is to start thinking and stop moving my hands.” – Lynda Barry, author of Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book
This past March Break, I had the privilege of teaching a creative writing workshop for tweens and teens at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. [...]
read on... →Lately I’ve been chasing after the bliss that comes from unfettered art making. That, I’ve learned, is where the “good stuff” lives.
For me, the start of a new project means writing page after page of thoughts, ideas, scenes, dialogue etc., just so I can get to something good. I circle around the tale — [...]
read on... →Here are a few highlights from my recent trip to Toronto.
Yes, it’s true. The fabulously talented Erin Morgenstern (author of The Night Circus) “accosted” me at the Toronto Public Library Foundation’s Book Lover’s Ball. And, of course, I loved every minute of it. In truth, we were mostly bonding over our love of [...]
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There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
- Emily Dickinson
Libraries hold a special place in my heart. The public library in my hometown of Lebanon, Indiana was the place I spent most Saturday mornings as a child. My mom [...]
read on... →Dear Cookie,
I’m sorry.
Your husband put me up to it.
He said it was for your own good.
Please forgive me.
During the first part of December, I made several appearances at bookstores and malls in Nova Scotia. My last obligation of the season took me to the Chapters store in Dartmouth, where I [...]
read on... →I’m often asked, how much research goes into your historical fiction? And more specifically with this new novel, was it difficult to write about New York City, (even the New York of another era,) while living in Nova Scotia?
The answer to the first question is loads. It takes a tremendous amount of [...]
read on... →The other day I sat down at my table and wrote a note – with pen on paper. When I was finished, I folded it in half and placed it in an envelope bearing stamps I had to lick to get to stick. There was something quite nostalgic about the ritual, and the fact that [...]
read on... →There’s a fair bit of excitement in my world these days as I move from editing mode to the three short months before the launch of The Virgin Cure in Canada. This past week I celebrated both my birthday and the arrival of the “pages” for the book. Along with marking yet another year older [...]
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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
