Night shift
Hello, friends. I have a confession to make: I’ve always been quite a prima donna when it comes to writing time. When I was childless, I needed three-hour blocks of uninterrupted writing time, minimum,...
View ArticleWriting Redux
Hello, friends. I was absent again last week – not because I wasn’t thinking about you, but because I was speechless with frustration. Let me tell you why. About two years ago, I wrote a little quiz...
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Courage!
I went for a walk last night and saw this snail. It was 3 metres from the spot where I’d last seen it, about 10 hours earlier. I felt a flash of camaraderie for this snail, because I’ve been kind of...
View ArticleOn performance
Yesterday, my almost-four-year-old had a birthday celebration at his preschool, to which his whole family was invited. It was absolutely beautiful: thoughtful, focused, loving, and joyful. And yes, I...
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In praise of Hilary Mantel
Hello, friends! This summer, while on vacation, I wandered into Armchair Books, the lovely independent bookstore in Whistler, BC. (It’s a great bookstore – well-curated, friendly staff who are happy to...
View ArticleScenes from a suburban adolescence
Hello, friends. Yesterday, I read Amusingly Horrible Things Moms Have Said at The Hairpin. It’s fairly amusing; certainly not the best thing I’ve read on the internet, but it must have stirred...
View ArticleIt was a dark and stormy night.
Hello, friends. I was just tinkering with what I think will be the first chapter of Rivals in the City and thinking about Elmore Leonard’s dictum, “Never open a book with weather.” (There’s a ton more...
View ArticleThe cure for perfectionism
Hello, friends. Yesterday, my four-year-old was on the brink of tears because the picture he was drawing failed to live up to the picture in his head. I watched him and thought, “Oh, my darling. You...
View ArticleFrom A to B
Hello, friends! The lake is frozen, it’s snowing like crazy, and I’m dreaming of this Galangal and Coconut Milk Soup. (Don’t heed the blogger’s advice to substitute ginger for galangal. Go galangal, or...
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On nosiness
Hello, friends. I’m very sorry I forgot to blog last week! There was definitely something missing from my week and I couldn’t figure out what it was, but when I logged in to WordPress this morning, it...
View ArticleCafé Cliché
Hello, friends. For the past 2 weeks, I have resumed working in a coffee shop. I do the morning routine, shedding kids along the way, and turn up at my favourite old-new café (it moved). I order a...
View ArticleWriting Rivals in the City
Hello, friends. This is the week in which I come clean and try to explain why it took me so very long to write The Agency: Rivals in the City. This is going to be a difficult post to write. I hate...
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Ahem
Hello there, friends. I’m sorry for my lapse last week. I had an outrageously slow internet connection (now partly fixed – it’s only somewhat slow) that made even a simple email check a struggle....
View ArticlePersistence
Hello, friends. I’ve been thinking this week about life’s important, meaningful, and really unglamorous lessons. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about that Thomas Edison quotation: “Genius is one...
View ArticleWhat is a novel?
Hello, friends. I recently had a long and utterly engaging conversation with three fellow writers: two of them critically acclaimed poets, all of us writers of novels. We were talking about the act of...
View ArticleRivals in the City: the transatlantic edition
Hello, friends. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Rivals in the City will be published in the UK/World in June 2014. The gorgeous cover, designed by Walker Books, is here. And now I have a pub date for...
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Code Name: Verity
So, Code Name: Verity. It was first published in 2012. It was shortlisted for both the Printz Award and the Carnegie Medal, so it’s not as though I’m drawing attention to unsung heroines, here. But I...
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A(nother) fresh start
Hello, friends. It’s been a while since I talked about my work-in-progress, and that’s no accident. I have been tussling with Monsoon Season, aka the Next Book, for ages now. I’m almost ashamed to say...
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Author Math
One of the things I find consistently surprising in historical fiction is how very long it takes to get from one place to another. The Agency novels are set in London between 1858 and 1860. They’re too...
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Writing Diversity in Dialogue
Hello, friends. I hope you have a celebratory libation in hand. I certainly do, because today is Rivals in the City‘s birthday! As many of you know, this has been a long time coming, and there were...
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