Las Vegas announced itself as I stood in the check-in line at our hotel. The man in front of me was on his phone, dictating to Siri. He seemed to be texting his wife, and said he was looking forward to getting busy as soon as he checked in, going all graphic about what they […]
The non-ancestral Verrall turns out to have been an eccentric. This was Jacob Verrall, who owned Monk’s House in Sussex before Virginia and Leonard Woolf bought it from his estate. (That’s a photo of the sitting room above.) As I wrote last time, my husband is descended from a long line of Verralls living in […]
Let’s start with an anti-climax. The Jacob Verrall I wrote about last time, the man who owned Monk’s House in Sussex before Virginia and Leonard Woolf, probably wasn’t a close relation to our family. Looking through the genealogical research done by my mother-in-law, Mary Knox, I found no Verrall by the name of Jacob, and […]
One small fact sent me diving down a rabbit hole as I read about Virginia Woolf. In 1919, Virginia and her husband Leonard Woolf bought a cottage south of London called Monk’s House. It was located in Sussex near the River Ouse, where Virginia would drown herself in 1941. The Monk’s House name cropped up […]
I’ve been preoccupied with shedding possessions lately. Getting rid of stuff, which is boring and time-consuming and surprisingly fraught. It also lies behind my decision to read Mrs. Woolf and the Servants, An Intimate Look at Domestic life in Bloomsbury, a book about writer Virginia Woolf and her circle written by British historian Alison Light. The […]
It started with a call from the Canadian Diabetes Association. Their truck would be in the neighbourhood, and they wanted to know if I had any used clothing or small household items to donate. I’m pretty sure that’s how they put it. I’ve heard their spiel often enough to get it more or less right. […]
A brief encounter with a lovely old flirt. This was in 2004 at the Banff Television Festival, as it was then called. I was hanging out with my friend Judy Gladstone, who knows everyone, and she suggested we take Albert Maysles to a party. Leaving me at a festival karaoke night with a couple of […]
When you’re researching a novel set in the past, the details you churn up can often sound surprisingly contemporary. Who called reviewers from The Times of London “despicable assassins of men’s reputations?” You’re probably thinking of a raft of contemporary politicians and actors, but in fact it was the actor William Macready in 1838. Lately, […]
This is the kind of thing I often see in early drafts of scripts: Several characters sit across a table from each other talking about how broke they are. Eventually the characters head outside for a walk through the woods or alley, largely because the writer knows they can’t sit in the kitchen forever. Outside, […]
“So that’s how I ended up with 250 rolls of toilet paper and 250 boxes of Kleenex.” I have no idea what the jock talk sounds like in the dressing room during men’s hockey tournaments, and maybe I don’t want to. But this weekend, that’s what I heard as I laced up my skates for […]
Usually writers start a new piece by telling ourselves the story as we type. We craft the first lines, the first page, the first scene, considering every word. As we should. But I discourage writers from getting too attached to their opening, because it almost always needs to be cut. When I’m editing the manuscript […]
The one thing you don’t want to hear about one of your books is somebody saying, “There’s all sorts of stuff in there that’s wrong.” But when I returned a call from Mary Lou Fisher, that’s what she said about my e-book, Contender: Triumph, Tragedy and Canadian Baseball Player Harry Fisher. It’s the story of […]