Over the last decade, depending what projects were in drafts or edits in a given year, I’ve bounced from century to century, often overlapping (in the last year, for example, I’ve worked in the 19th century for Assassin’s Creed, in the 5th […]
This is a question authors sometimes get, and it’s a lovely one. (Thank you!) There’s a short answer, and a longer answer, and ordinarily I don’t inflict the longer answer on people in casual conversation. But I’m going to elaborate here, because […]
Back in August I decided to buy a typewriter. I’ve never really used one — I learned typing in “Informatique” class in French immersion in 1989, a class that, as I recall, spent a great deal of time on teaching us how […]
I’ve lived in Ottawa since 1995. The writing community here has helped me immensely as an artist — from the open mic nights at the Tree Reading Series where I first read my fiction in front of people, to the writers’ critique […]
I’m very pleased to say that The Embroidered Book won the Aurora Award for Best Novel this weekend. Luckily, I had made some speech notes and put on a fancy dress just in case! What a lovely honour even to be nominated […]
Today’s the publication day for The Chatelaine, my weird fantasy novel set in Bruges in the 14th century. There are many things I love about this novel: the spiteful, middle-aged woman at its heart, her companions (her head-in-the-clouds daughter, a sharp-tongued mercenary, […]
I’ve been thinking lately about conceptualizing a book as a machine, partly because I was pondering the choice of that word in the message on Woody Guthrie’s guitar, and partly because “machine” is a broad category which is useful for considering the […]
My latest novel, The Valkryie, is out in the world! It’s available in ebook and audiobook everywhere — and let me just say something about the audiobook, because I’m listening to it now, and oh my goodness, when I got to Chapter […]
Music is a big part of my writing life, and I make a playlist for every novel, to help me keep a sense of the novel’s themes and tones in my mind. I may play it while I’m working, but more often, […]
She could not remember a time when she had not known the story; she had grown up knowing it. That’s the opening line of The Hero and the Crown, the 1984 fantasy novel by Robin McKinley. Funnily enough, I can’t remember the […]