I lead a monthly writing workshop called SHARPENING THE QUILL, details of which you can find elsewhere…

Lawrence Hill, a good friend and hugely successful writer, wrote to me recently to congratulate me on the success of my recent novel, OUR DAILY BREAD, which has been named to the Boston Globe and and The Globe & Mail as one of the best books of the year.  (Yea!) Published by Wordcraft of Oregon, a independent press in the United States, it is also soon to be published by Harper Collins Canada.  (Who originally turned the book…

Oh, Penguin, you've found my soft spot.  Books, books, beautiful books, as alluring on the outside as you are on the inside.

Take a gander at these beauties:…

Writing a novel is, of course, a mad undertaking.  It begins with an effervescent, glimmering vision of perfection, which sets the writer off on her ink-stained quest, assured that THIS time she will reproduce the vision exactly, and as scintillatinglt as it first appeared. This mirage is quickly followed by the mossy-toothed skull of doubt, and then long months of slog, wherein the writer is often only propelled forward by a dogged sense of duty, and fatalism.  In other words -- we keep…