Stories
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 […]
Time Squared: A Best Book of 2021
Well, this is nice. Time Squared was named one of the Books of the Year by the 49th Shelf website. Check out their recommendations here. Lots of great books on the list, both fiction and non-fiction. Plus, they’re running a giveaway!
I Hate How the Pandemic Hits Women
It’s strange the way these two pandemic years have done something to time. People talk about how 2019 feels as if it was five years ago. I catch myself being unable to estimate how long ago something happened. Was it three or four years ago we met in that bar? But maybe there’s something else […]
Book Review: What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
Who deserves to win a major award? A lot of people do, but far from everybody. There’s such a thing as quality, although Black and other writers of colour have lately questioned whether the creative writing school definition of literary quality is rooted in a white male aesthetic. Show Don’t Tell. Is that a buttoned-down […]
The Old Guys: Sidemen to the Big Bands – 2
“What can I tell you about my people?” The great Duke Ellington was echoing a question from a long-ago interviewer. “Well, I’m glad you’re recording. Of course, I had such an influence from the people. Because that’s the better word. The people, not my people. The people are my people. That is—people.” And what about his work? “It’s strongly American Negro music. There’s a […]
The Old Guys: Sidemen to the Big Bands – 1
I was working in a small and windowless CBC Radio studio in the old red brick building on Jarvis Street in Toronto. On the other end of the phone line was a man about the same age as the building named Russell Procope, a musician, one of the sidemen from the Big Band era of […]
A Pandemic Request: Please Define Normal
I’ve heard people say life is getting back to normal, but I’m not sure that’s true, even a year and a half into the pandemic. We all have to cope with big losses, family and friends gone or disabled. We also face so many small daily changes that it’s disorienting. I’ve taken my spavined right […]
Time Squared Launched!
We launched Time Squared this week, and during a Q&A, Elizabeth Renzetti asked a challenging question. She asked a series of them—Liz being, of course, an award-winning Globe and Mail columnist as well as an author herself. Check out her wonderful essay collection, Shrewed. But I’m thinking of one question in particular. Why is Robert Denholm always a […]
How to Bring Back Your Backlist – 2
Technical stuff. This is for writers with backlist books they want to put up online. Also for people who want to self-publish a book they’ve written. Same process, at least at the start. As I wrote last time, I’ve re-published older titles for several years. I can’t emphasize enough that for published writers, the first […]
How to Bring Back Your Backlist – 1
I just checked one sales site. In the past three months, five copies of my backlist e-books were downloaded in Ethiopia, I have no idea why. The National Library of Malaysia bought my travel memoir, Foreign Correspondences. Other titles on this particular site—I use three of them—were sold in the U.S., the U.K. the Netherlands, Australia […]
Poor Player: The Backstory
It’s out: the e-book of my first novel, Poor Player, which I’ve published with a lovely, flashy new cover. The book is a noirish literary thriller set in Mexico. Human rights, drug trafficking and foreigners: the action occurs at a heady nexus. Jack Hall is an actor who comes to Mexico, quitting his hot career in L.A. […]
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