I have a newsletter. Sometimes I post things to it, though not as often as I should. I did one yesterday. I think it was a super fun one. If you’d like to see it, it’s here. Among other things, I write about the time (Autumn, 2023) BC Bookworld wrote Read more…
Setting in fiction is one of those topics those of us with fiction on the brain talk about pretty endlessly. What makes it? How do you create it? What do you do with it or without it? For some of us, setting is everything (eg: Ray Bradbury in “There Will Read more…
LA Weekly has named me as one of their “Top 15 Authors to Read for 2023,” which strikes me as astonishing. (There are so many great authors out there! ) I am happy about it, though. And if LA Weekly says it, it must be true, right? Grab one of Read more…
I’m much too candid and tell too many secrets on a recent episode the SinC Writer’s podcast. Interviewer Julie Hennrikus did too good a job! (Spoiler alert: if you listen long enough, I cry.) You can find the podcast on your favorite app, or download it here.
All of the social medias are reminding me that today it is four years since “Terminal City,” my contribution to the Akashic anthology Vancouver Noir, won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story. So much about that is worth remembering. First of all, if you haven’t had the chance Read more…
Like a lot of people, I’ve been having some fun playing with artificial intelligence via ChatGPT. Most recently, I asked it to recommend books for people who liked my 2021 novel Endings, which is now the first of the Endings series. The third book in that series, Dead West, will Read more…
Almost everyone who has known me while I’ve been writing novels has heard me say these words. I’ve said them in lectures and in conversations at cocktail parties. I’ve said them to hopeful editing clients and to mildly interested would-be writers on the tennis court. “Write the book that’s in Read more…
For me, writing a novel is like a horse race while driving a herd of cattle in the dark. Many years ago, before Negotiating With the Dead came out, I interviewed Margaret Atwood. When I asked her to tell me one thing about the book, she said: I went around Read more…
Some of the characters in my books have pottymouths. Not a lot but a few. I can’t control them. There they are, going along as nice as you please and suddenly — boof! — something off-color will emerge. I’ve tried to chastise those characters and let them know that some Read more…
Today on her stellar “Craft Talk” substack newsletter, Jami Attenberg talks, among other things, about questions writers should be asking themselves. Things like: In the past I have had students ask me if I think they should quit their day jobs and focus on their writing. It almost always feels Read more…