NovelTag
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October 25, 2022On Giving Yourself Room to Change (Or, Eros the Bittersweet)
A few months ago, I talked to someone on the phone. I didn’t know this person well and though I’d seen them over Zoom somewhat regularly for our work together, I never really noticed them too much. ...
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September 29, 2022On Listening to Music and Writing a Novel
Do you listen to music as you write? I often do, particularly when writing a short story, but it has been several months since I typed the night away with a melody playing in the background. At this moment, ...
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August 05, 2022Book Therapy: Help! I’m Alive
“Usually the isolation is a result of some life trauma. Does your brother have trauma?”“Fuck, I don’t know. Who doesn’t have trauma?”—Gurjinder Basran, Help! I’m Alive Lately I can’t ...
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October 15, 2021Read an Excerpt from Richard Scarsbrook's The Troupers, the Story of a Strange & Fascinating Family
We're wrapping up our spotlight on excerpts this week with a glimpse into acclaimed author Richard Scarsbrook's new novel The Troupers, in which the Trouper quintuplets are raised by their overbearing ...
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May 18, 2021Sink into a Dark, Tense, & Brilliantly Crafted Family Mystery with an Excerpt from The Good Son by Carolyn Huizinga Mills
For three decades, Zoe has harboured a secret about her brother. By now, she's almost forgotten, assuming that life has moved on. But when the investigation into the death of her family's erstwhile neighbour, ...
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April 14, 2021Book Therapy: Satellite Love
“I think my favourite thing about humans was how they couldn’t fathom the thought of being alone.”—Genki Ferguson, Satellite Love My birthday is in April and I’ll admit I’ve never been very ...
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February 26, 2021Grinding Out a New Novel
Writing a novel is a grind. It’s an arduous, meticulous, and often repetitive process that can take years. There’s the actual typing of words onto the page, and then come the edits and rewrites, which ...
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October 16, 2020Poets Becoming Novelists: On Trusting Leaps and Fragments
I finished the first draft of my novel in mid-March – in the first week of isolation. I hadn’t grasped the gravity of the pandemic then, so I was grateful for the sudden reprieve from the real world. ...
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September 03, 2020How To Become That Kind of Bitch (or, One-Night Stands and New Selves)
Before the pandemic, I had a one-night stand with a person I met at a rave, Tyler. The morning after we slept together, I was buttering my toast and he began to ask probing questions about my life and ...
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July 28, 2020How to Keep Dreaming in the Pandemic (or, How I Finished the Third Draft of my Novel)
Living in a pandemic means that we are facing death every day. Thinking about death pushed me into survival mode. I was stressed and depressed to the point of migraines and insomnia. I stopped doing things ...
