A busy summer saw this particular project come to a close on its first draft after several years. I wasn’t particularly satisfied with it, so put it away for a bit. Might look at it over the Christmas holidays and see about starting the second draft. Over the Labour Day weekend, I finally participated in […]
Read more "3 Day Novel Writing Competition"During the holidays, my family loves to puzzle and we often gather around the kitchen table pushing pieces together into the wee hours of the morning. As 2020 ends and the new year begins, this also describes the state of much my writing. In any other year, I would be deep in the revising stage […]
Read more "Putting the Pieces Together"Who could not use more charming stories of love and friendship during these times? Books often seem like the only friends you can hold close right now, so what better than to have a stockpile to keep you going? The keen eyed among you may notice the CJSW Radio journal from last year’s funding drive […]
Read more "All Hallow’s Eve, 2020"Yes, it’s been a long time between updates, but who among us has not been in that peculiar state wherein we find ourselves having fallen out of love of something we worked so passionately on only weeks (or months) before? If you check back to the post from last summer, the one where I joyously […]
Read more "Time, Perspective, & Coffee"Picked these beans up as Calgary Heritage Roasters are new outfit here in town that sprang up over the last year or so but haven’t been available in my neck of the woods. Also, props to Esi Edugyan, who grew up here. Fun-fact: a little kid saw the book and said, “I’m cheering for the […]
Read more "New Year, New Beans, New Books"August started with every ambition of continuing July’s espresso-fueled summer of writing and reading. A trip to The Roasterie here in Kensington furnished me with some delicious coffee beans and visions of spending hours outside with a few books that have languished on my shelves for far too long (most notably The English Patient and The Luminaries). […]
Read more "August is for Ambition"Summer started with a lot of good intentions. The Summer of Proust initiative continued with The Captive, while a flurry of activity found me deep into preliminary work on a new writing project, powered by Ritual Coffee’s Teenage Riot Espresso, found here in town at Luke’s Drug Mart, with a mind to have a first […]
Read more "July Happenings"Coffin Hop Press has continued to recruit local Calgary artist Tom Bagley* to create a consistent line of covers for them and Tall Tales From the Weird West is the latest addition! If you haven’t picked up a version with the original cover, feel free to grab one of these little beauties.* To be fair, […]
Read more "Tall Tales and Tom Bagley!"This winter, I spent some time out near Golden, British Columbia, enjoying the quiet. I had a delightful time staying at Il Nido, a bed & breakfast nestled between the Purcell and Rocky Mountains. Apparently, I read a lot of British literature and also drank some wonderful locally roasted coffee. I wish I’d brought another […]
Read more "New Year, New Beans, New Books"Kazuo Ishiguro has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although Kazuo Ishiguro has been on my To Be Read list for decades, my first and only direct encounter with Ishiguro’s work came in 1995 while I was writing for The Gauntlet and tasked with reviewing The Unconsoled. One of the sad realities of the world […]
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Coffee and Blarney 