Search
-
March 21, 2023Murder at Sea, a Roaring 20s Romp, & an Aristocrat with a Shady Past: Read an Excerpt from The Merry Widow Murders
The last thing Lady Lucy Revelstoke—the endearing protagonist of Melodie Campbell's madcap historical mystery novel The Merry Widow Murders (Cormorant Books)—needs is anyone prying into her past.The ...
-
September 28, 2017Cynthia Flood on the Books of Her Life: Lessing, Sewell, Kipling, & More
Whether she is telling a story that stretches over decades or one that is compressed into a matter of hours, Cynthia Flood has a knack for peeling back the surface and delving deep into the human condition. ...
-
September 27, 2015
"You shall go through it all."
I wish that I could say that I’ve spent the month reading and re-reading Virginia Woolf novels, but I haven’t. It’s been a month to make you reel, and I’ve been reeling through it, through work, ...
-
June 06, 2018Kim Moritsugu on the Writing Life, Her Best and Worst Events, & Guidance from Nora Ephron
Kim Moritsugu's smart, tight, witty, and character-driven novels have earned her tons of fans. Her brand new, seventh novel, The Showrunner (Dundurn Press), shows that there is just as much drama and ...
-
June 07, 2017The Dirty Dozen, with Pasha Malla
Trillium Prize winner Pasha Malla's new novel Fugue States (Knopf Canada) tells the story of Ash, an intellectual, anxious radio host, and his uncouth, entitled nightmare-bro of a friend, Matt, who shows ...
-
May 29, 2023
Bringing It All Back Home
As I write this, I am sitting outside in the backyard of a rowhouse in Toronto’s East End. The wind is stirring the leaves of a big maple tree spreading its branches high above me, and stirring the ...
-
October 20, 2025Writing Protagonists Who Don’t Care If You Like Them
As writers, we want our readers to connect with our protagonists, to root for them and relate to them. It makes sense – human connection is at the heart of storytelling. If a reader just utterly hates ...
-
March 08, 2021On Giving Myself Permission Not to Write
I know I have to write it. The essay I’ve been trying to write for a year and a half.I will be in the grocery store or out in the muck of a hike dripping with sweat and a sentence of it will come to ...
-
June 11, 2018
Tweet Tweet: A City’s Past & Present: Remapping Vancouver
@poetchelene: After reading and researching about the setting in my novel I felt compelled to recognize the city as a character. #hogansalleyfactorfiction “Junie stood on her balcony overlooking the ...
-
May 29, 2020Making Time: Why Now is the Perfect Time for Tarot
I don’t want to pretend that I know the history of the Tarot or how it should be used, but I’ve been using it for the last three years because it’s been immensely helpful. I’m not an “expert,” ...