Category: General News

I am currently re-reading a thicket of short stories of mine, plowing through basically every non-novelized bit of fiction I’ve written since Kiss Me, my first and only story collection.  Some of the pieces go back a decade or more (the oldest being “Haunted Hayride,” published in The Ottawa Citizen in 1998!)  It’s like riding a time machine:  I remember so vividly the physical places and, even more vividly, the mood and emotional circumstances of their writing that I’m often surprised at the different people I’ve been.  No, not different people, exactly, but the different themes I’ve returned to in my life.  I can see myself in the preoccupations of these stories more clearly than if I stared at myself in the mirror for a whole afternoon.

It makes me think that what we call personality – the way we know others, know ourselves – is really a walking bundle of themes.  For some, it’s Lost Love and Missed Opportunity.  For others, Second Chances and The Cost of Lies.  Whatever the big concerns might be, they aren’t usually too numerous, as each of them are more then enough to buoy (or plague) a life to the end.  So not only are we understandable as themes, but we typically are comprised of only one or two.  Three if you’re an especially complicated soul.  And there’s not much you can do about changing them either.  Just try jettisoning one of your themes for longer than a week or two.  They always come back.

My last novel, The Killing Circle, is on a couple of university syllabi that I’m aware of (at both my alma maters, in fact – McGill and UofT).  Why does this tickle me so much?  I think, quite aside from the fizz of pride, it is the thought of young English and Canadian Literature scholars reading my work, just as I read others during my undergrad years.  It’s a bridge between two selves:  the student and the practitioner.  Sure, it makes me feel a little old.  But sometimes the years can bring new and unexpected pleasures.

I bring all this up because the novel that precedes The Guardians, The Killing Circle, is on the reading list of a great course Professor Nick Mount teaches at UofT.  Part of its greatness is that some of the authors on the list are invited to present a talk and converse with Nick and answer questions…and this hour is open to the public.  The Killing Circle session is coming up on Friday, March 18, at 3PM in the Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West.  If you feel like bailing from work a bit early, come on by.  Leafy quads!  Bright young minds!  Hitting the pub afterwards!

There’s a Readings & Appearances page on this site which has a list of, well, my readings and appearances.  But there’s a couple coming up soon I’d like to make special mention of, as they represent “home turf” to me (both are places/hosts I’ve done readings for before, and are close to my heart).  First off, on Wednesday the 16th, 7:30 PM, I’m at Harbourfront in Toronto, reading with Roberta Rich and Keith Hollihan.  Then on Wednesday the 23rd, also at 7:30, I’m reading with Ian Hamilton at the Princess Cafe, 46 King St. N. in Waterloo, hosted by Words Worth Books.  I know these are both mid-week things in godforsaken February, but it would be great to see you.

Last week, during a post-reading Q&A, I was asked what the main difference between writing novels and writing screenplays is.  My answer was instant:  “Meetings.”  Novelists will sometimes get together with their editors or publicists, and can even force themselves to attend conferences or workshops.  But compared to writers in the movie and TV rackets, they’re hermits.  The latter industries’ primary product isn’t scripts, but meetings.  There are writers known for being “good in a meeting,” and this can be enough to buoy an illiterate’s career for several years.  And so much turns on how one feels coming out of a meeting.  Analyzing the “vibe in the room” can be Jungian in its density and attention, the meeting studied like a fascinating psycho with multiple personality disorder.  A meeting in which “the energy just wasn’t there” can spoil a dozen lunches or more.

It sounds like I’m complaining.  The truth is, I get a kick out of these meetings most of the time.  If you’re working on a project you believe in with people you believe in, their articulations of how they see the thing you’re trying to realize are crucial.  More than this, the shared effort to nail an idea provides company.  Writing is a solitary occupation (and I love it for this).  But, sometimes, there’s nothing like a good-vibe meeting with a lot of energy in the room to make you feel less alone.