Category: On Writing
How My Anxiety Inspired My Books
I awoke in the middle of a fish bowl. Well, it wasn’t really a fish bowl, but it checked all the same boxes: I was on display, people were staring, I felt alone, afloat. In reality, I was lying on the cold, polished floor of Toronto’s busiest department store. Along with the designer fragrances, expensive […]
Why I Write, Katie Kennedy
I write because I want to make things better, and stories teach us what to do when you discover the ring is evil, or just where papa’s going with that axe. I loved hearing my dad tell of driving down to Mississippi to register black voters in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He and a […]
Why I Put Dogs In My Fiction
Every time I attend a book club or read at a bookstore I am asked “Why do you include dogs in all of your books?” In fact, I didn’t include animals in my novels until my second book, ‘Lost & Found’ when a black Labrador with a heroic personality walked onto the stage of my […]
All Set
You probably learned in high school that, along with story and character, setting is one of the essential elements of a novel. Those days of hurried readings and book reports are long gone, but I clearly remember thinking: who cares about setting? I just want to know what the story is about. Except that the […]
The Song that Wrote the Book
I loved everything about HBO’s adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies. I shivered at the ominous crashing of waves beneath the precarious bridge Reese Witherspoon drove across in the opening credits. Felt the chill first notes of “Cold Little Heart” by Michael Kiwanuka, the perfect soundtrack to all those rich folks’ deceits and machinations. […]
Fictional Characters to Murder or to Marry
Actually, I found this a worrying exercise for it turned to be much easier to find a character to do away with than to marry. In my teenage years, I badly wanted to kill off Jane Austen’s Emma for she was ‘handsome, clever and rich’ and I was most definitely was none of those things. […]
The Writing Is The Best Part
Many people tell me that they’ve always wanted to write a book but don’t think they could actually do it. I always encourage them to try. Each of us has a story to tell, it’s just a matter of finding the time. What I don’t tell people is this: The writing is the easy part. […]
On Deadlines
A little over a month ago, at the end of October, I agreed to write this piece about deadlines. At that time, my editor was expecting me to deliver a draft of my new novel by Christmas. As I type, there are two and a half hours left until the end-of-November deadline for this article […]
Neglected Lady Novelists And Me
It was the 1980s and I was a student in London when I began to discover women writers who, despite belonging to my grandmothers’ – or even my great-grandmothers’ – generation, had voices so compelling and authentic I couldn’t stop reading them. They included Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen, Barbara Comyns, Rebecca West, Stevie […]
Dear Mr Bezos…
Dear Mr. Bezos: Your net worth just passed $95 billion. A mind-numbing number. Do you ever pause at a price tag? Worry over paying the bi-annual property tax? Waver between buying gas for your car (or paying the electrical bill for the Tesla) and taking mass transit? Or, as most authors do, use the blank […]
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