When you get your first good book review, and not from some writer to whom you will be reciprocating, bless their hearts, but from a celebrated writer like Joan Barfoot, I’m afraid there’s no end to your desire to reblog it and mention it at the drop of a hat. So here is the beginning […]
Toronto Public Library Free Writing Workshop
Writing Workshop: Light Fiction, Serious Themes Presenter: Anna Dowdall Does light have to be trivial? Does serious have to be boring and strident? Are you a beginning or aspiring writer interested in exploring how genre fiction (romance, mystery, humour, science fiction, fantasy—the kind we all love to read!) can also express the things that […]
New Release!
Dear friends— A week from today, on Friday, August 25, AFTER THE WINTER comes out. I’m excited to bring you the first book in a new mystery series set in Quebec, THE ASHLEY SMEETON FILES. “A perfect read for a rainy afternoon…,” says my first review! AFTER THE WINTER stems from my addiction to mid-twentieth […]
First and Second Natures
A while ago I watched Hitchcock’s film VERTIGO again. The more I watch his movies the more I love Kim Novak, more than other Hitchcock female leads such as Grace Kelly and probably right up there with the extraordinary Tippi Hedren. And the more I marvel at the way Hitchcock movies combines excellence with popular […]
Toronto Gothic
The Canadian writer Margaret Millar was Agatha Christie’s favourite mystery novelist. For very good reason. THE IRON GATES (1945) is set in Toronto – the gated park in the book being Toronto’s very own High Park under snow. The novel falls into the category Urban Ontario Vintage Winter Gothic – a category I might have […]
Book Covers that Haunt…
I can’t fully explain my love of these vintage Gothic romance book covers, that were very common even into the 1970s and sold a variety of qualities of books from pulp to classics. You can find this type of pulp cover on inexpensive paperback reissues of classics, such as JANE EYRE. They’ve burrowed into my […]
I am obsessed with the Gothic!
This is a great British Library article – it reads almost like a how-to checklist to write Gothic-infused romantic suspense like AFTER THE WINTER! How persistent these conventions are, I note while rereading Daphne duMaurier’s REBECCA, and I would add a few other motifs on a smaller scale to the article’s: a child in peril, […]
Obscure Female Writers Who Shouldn’t Be…
I love stumbling across a writer like Emma Lathen. Two writers, actually, as it’s a collaboration of two, a collaboration that was long kept secret. One was a Wellesley College graduate, the other a Mount Holyoke graduate, and they met afterwards in the 1950s at Harvard. They had successful business/law careers while writing a series […]