Vancouver Island | Vancouver Island
Mar.01.2013
It has been raining steadily since we crossed the Oregon-Washington border, in thick cloud cover, yesterday afternoon. We've flown into Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, for our last few trips up here (to visit my mother), because the airport is small and the wait at Customs and...
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Feb.22.2013
“Abandoning” a series is a harsh word. It sounds like an author tucked the books into a heated drop at a foundling hospital, or a love affair petered out. Maybe sales fell into the abyss.
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Nov.27.2012
The Next Big Thing Interview:
I was tapped by Barbara Fradkin, one of Canada’s most decorated mystery novelists, to join this blog tag. Check out her entry at
www.typem4murder.blogspot.ca/ Scroll down to Nov. 21.
As for my answers,
1. What is your working title of your book?...
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Mar.07.2012
Losing Fifteen Years Overnight Without Botox
In 1993 when I started writing my first crime-fiction series with Northern Winters are Murder, I picked a protagonist nearly identical to myself, a common mistake. Belle...
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Oct.26.2011
The road to prison is lined by cedars tall enough to block the setting sun. The tarmac is slick from an evening shower and the narrow glimpses of ocean that glisten like spilled ink between the ruddy trunks appear more ominous than the calm I always associate with lapping waves.
At the end...
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Aug.02.2011
To everything there is a season. Add to that environment, weather, and serendipity. Think you’ve seen everything in your wild neighbourhood? I doubt it.
As an author who respects setting, as I wrote my fiction, I became a keen observer of nature in some highly opposite places, from...
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Jun.16.2011
The Raspberry Plastic Soaker Tub in the Chainsaw House
Except for back in 1971 in grad student days when I had a claw-foot tub in a bathroom with termites and dry rot in the floor, I don’t remember any of my bathtubs. I was glad just to move out before I dropped through to the basement....
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Apr.23.2011
Culture shock is guaranteed when you set foot on magical Vancouver Island. Whether you soar over the emerald jewels in the sparkling blue water or mingle with the mists as your ferry threads its way to paradise, you have left behind the familiar frosty country. Some say it’s the climate....
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Jan.10.2011
I've been up north all week. It was cold, grey, some nights starry-bright, the North Star almost straight ahead, the Big Dipper filling with cloud. Even brackish water froze: clumps of sedge poked through the ice. A bald eagle sat on the tip of a fir tree. The ocean--Strait of Georgia rather--...
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Jan.01.2011
Northern Ontario and Canada’s Caribbean are as far apart in reputation as in distance, but they’ve been my home. Seven months of winter or of rain, I made peace with my environment by taking Ortega y Gassett’s advice: “Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are.” The...
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