Nov 7 2015
I spent a few days in hospital at the start of this month, undergoing some vascular surgery, and one evening while I was there, relaxing after visiting hours in a quiet, darkened ward with earphones in my ears as I listened to an audiobook, I realized that I was reliving one of my most pleasant […]
Oct 31 2015
I recently returned from Surrey, BC, where I attend the Surrey International Writers Conference every year, on the weekend closest to October 23rd. This was my twenty-second consecutive appearance there and I’ll be there again next time, God willing, because it’s the most exciting event, and the fastest-flying four days, of my entire year. The […]
Oct 24 2015
Last week I wrote about how perceptions of distance differ between Europeans and North Americans, and several people wrote to me, saying they knew exactly what I was talking about. But I’m still thinking about those differences and how they can affect us, even though most of us today would consider the topic to be […]
Oct 17 2015
I remember that on the north polar route on July 13, 1967, the Air Canada pilot banked our plane on one side and then the other, inviting us to look down at our first sight of Canada. We did, and were stunned by the vastness of the Arctic tundra and the countless lakes that dotted […]
Oct 10 2015
Most of the ideas for these columns come from ordinary, everyday circumstances that would be altogether unremarkable were it not for the fact that the simple act of noticing them highlights the kind of changes that are taking place around us all the time. I attend twice-weekly rehabilitation courses on living with COPD. They’re held […]
Oct 8 2015
Some time ago, before we launched into these recent website renovations, I wrote in here about the British version of The Guardians Trilogy and how, yet again, a publisher had changed the title of a series. At that time, two of the novels had been published in Britain, with The Forest Laird renamed to REBEL […]
Oct 3 2015
Today I am going to behave like a politician and abuse my privilege by speaking out on behalf of a minority — a minority that suffers lamentably for the lack of being spoken out on behalf of… How’s that for a blindingly masterful piece of syntax? I’m referring to the people I think of as […]
Sep 26 2015
I first took note of the activity on a Saturday afternoon about ten years ago, on my first visit to Palm Desert, in the Coachella Valley of southern California, where I was hard at work convincing myself that it might be a good thing to join the ranks of the Snowbirds who flock south annually […]
Sep 26 2015
Every now and then, and usually when we least expect to, we’ll stumble across something, somewhere, that reminds us of events about which we have totally forgotten. It happened to me, today, when I was scrolling through some old, archived files. I found an untitled Scrivener folder from 2010 that shouldn’t have been where it was, […]
Nov 13 2015
It’s about The Skystone…
I heard a report a couple of weeks ago, while I was attending the annual Surrey Writers Conference, that my first novel, The Skystone, had gone out of print. Several people in attendance there had been trying to buy the book from the Chapters/Indigo bookstore on site and had apparently been told that it was […]