Stories
One Broken Ankle, Many Moments
I broke my ankle on the winter solstice, which I hope means it will grow stronger as the days grow lighter and longer. No dramatic hockey accident, although I usually play hockey twice a week. The sad fact is, I tripped while carrying too many Christmas presents down the stairs. As I fell, my ankle […]
Book Review: Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto
I have a morning routine I try to keep to. Sometimes I’m too pressed to do much more than turn off the alarm, sigh and get up. But if I can, I wake up before dawn and wash my face, make a cup of tea, meditate for a while as the tea cools, do Wordle, […]
How to Sell Your Backlist
I love writing. Love it when people read my books. Hate doing a lot of the things you have to do to connect the books to readers. I’m not shy, and since I worked as a journalist for years, I have no problem at all doing interviews. In fact, I loved doing a podcast a […]
Book Review: Finding Edward by Sheila Murray
Sheila Murray’s brilliant book, Finding Edward, was nominated for the 2022 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. She subsequently won the 30th Annual Hamilton Literary Award, and the CBC named it one of the best works of Canadian fiction last year. This is Murray’s first novel, although that’s hard to imagine when reading it. As well as […]
Pandemic Stories: A Bearded Guy Asks
It happened to me for the first time mid-morning today. I was headed west on the subway to a dental appointment, sitting near one of the doors. The car was almost empty, only four of us, and I was the only one wearing a mask. A couple of stops along, one of the others got […]
I’m So Sick of Opinions
When I was a kid, my parents sometimes listened to talk radio. People phoning a blowhard host and venting. Him venting. It was always a he, and so were most of his callers. I hated it, especially when we were driving somewhere with the windows closed and the radio blasting. Now, with social media, it’s infinitely […]
Passings: Deaths in the Family
I’ve been thinking about the word “plangent” lately, a word with mourning tolling inside it like a bell. The weather has been perfect lately in Toronto, one breezy summer day following another, the sky a high light blue, the air warm and dry. But it’s mid-August and our short Canadian summer will end before long. […]
How Do You Write a Novel Set (Partly) in Russia?
Last fall, I began researching a new novel with the Russia writer Anton Chekhov as a character, oblivious to what was about to happen in Ukraine. That means I spent the past few months reading Russian history, biographies and literary criticism while reading and re-reading the literature, this at a time when Vladimir Putin’s army […]
On Being Called the C-Word
I was in the drugstore the other day, lining up to pick up a prescription. There were a few people behind me in the line, but a guy ignored us and headed for the prescription counter. “Excuse me,” I said, “but the line-up’s over here.” He turned and answered in this overdone oily voice, “Oh, […]
Why Are People Ashamed of Getting COVID?
Something I’ve noticed: people apologize for getting sick with COVID-19. Or maybe they laugh nervously when they say their daughter brought it home from university, their embarrassment combined with anger and impatience at her carelessness, at least if she doesn’t get very sick, or someone else in the family doesn’t get very sick. When people […]
I’ve had enough of this please
Blizzard today in Toronto with a Stay Home advisory. Continuing Omicron surge with Work From Home advice. That howl you heard across the city at 7 a.m. was parents learning that Toronto has closed its schools again for snow-related reasons on what was supposed to be the first day back to in-person learning. Around here, […]
Mary’s 100th Birthday
Happy New Year. For my mother-in-law, it’s a new century, since Mary turned 100 on December 22. And as she’ll tell you, it’s the second pandemic that she’s connected to, since her parents met during the last one in 1918. In fact, because of it. Mary’s father, Cecil, was a U.S. serviceman who landed in […]
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