Brown is a September colour; it always makes me think of ‘back-to-school’, of walnuts and chestnuts on the ground, the bindings of books, tree leaves changing to tan and rust and fluttering off branches to dance on the wind. I don’t think brown gets enough respect. While it’s not flashy, it carries so many qualities …
Have you ever battled a dragon? Or a demon? Or performed a ritual to place a hex on someone? (If you say ‘yes’ to the last one, I don’t want to know.) One of the oft-spouted maxims of writing novels is ‘Write what you know’. For science fiction and fantasy writers, that’s often impossible, because …
You may find this paradoxical, but I’ve never been a good letter-writer. I just didn’t like the medium, which was in vogue when I was a child and teenager; once I sat down with pen and paper, my mind invariably went blank. In those days, there didn’t seem to be much in my life that …
When I was little and feeling unwell, my mother would make me a bowl of porridge sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. To this day, I make it for myself when I’m under the weather – healthy, comforting and evocative of a time when I didn’t have to worry about myself, when my parents would …
Sci-fi and fantasy writers get to use our imaginations and inflict strange scenarios on the inhabitants of the worlds we create. After all, what’s an interesting story without some chaos or conflict? We might imagine distant planets that are constantly storm-tossed, or vast deserts strewn with enormous skeletons of unidentified beasts (like Tatooine in the …
Last week was something of a wash for me productivity-wise, as I’ve been serving in the role of part-time caregiver to an elderly aunt, largely because of my pharmaceutical and medical knowledge. In one of my many past careers, I worked as a pharmacy assistant in several retail drugstores, and I learned a lot. The …
Eating good food is, for me, one of the joys in life. I especially love to explore the cuisine of the different places my hubby and I travel to. We’ve doing this for many years, and it’s really come in handy since I started writing novels. I can provide ambience just by describing what a …
“Books are like imprisoned souls until someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.” – Samuel Butler Today is National Read a Book Day. Readers are why authors exist, and from what I’ve seen over the years, all novelists started out as avid readers, developing a love for storytelling and the power of …
It’s been an intense week doing final edits on Book 1, so this week’s blog is an exploration into the swamps that haunt our forests. The photo was taken in a provincial park in southwestern Ontario, just as leaves were starting to put on their colours. We came upon this weed-strewn marsh where nothing seemed …
Should I tell you that I had some amazing reason for not posting yesterday as usual? I could try, but it’s not in my nature to dissemble. The truth is that my body is still fighting off this prolonged summer cold and I forgot. (Adding reminders in my phone calendar as we speak.) Lots of …
