It’s been a full, long summer, both productive and relaxing… still in progress. Aside from a bounty of pleasure in nature, with friends, and making music, here’s a brief recap of news on the writing front. First, a view of my outdoor office:
Conference and Kootenays Book Tour
Next week I’ll be passing through BC’s West Kootenays on the way to Calgary, a writing conference called When Worlds Collide. There I’ll do readings from Hunter’s Daughter and sit on four different panels about writing and editing topics: Editing Tricks, Mystery in a Foreign Location, Does Being an Editor Make You a Better Writer, and Cyberpunk and Social Order. Along the way, I’ll stop in at Nelson’s Lakeside Park for an Open Mic reading, and visit my home for two decades, the tiny backwoods community of Argenta, where I’ll do a book reading and signing at the local library.
Book Launch and Landing
At the end of June I joined two other Victoria writers, Dave Duncan and Paula Johanson, launching our books released this spring by Canadian publisher Five Rivers. Due to a schedule switch, I arrived 45 minutes late, with just enough time for my reading from Hunter’s Daughter. The assembled patrons of the Canadian Legion hall didn’t seem to mind.
Works in Progress
I can’t quite say that I have two new releases on the horizon, but over the spring and summer I have completed substantial revisions on two new books. Here’s a sneak preview:
Red Rock Road, Light Blue Sea, a work of creative nonfiction, charts a metafictional journey to Spain. A midlife Canadian couple plays Quixote, Crusoe, Adam and Eve—tracking landscapes between bliss and burnout, art and love. The travel sections chronicle the backpacking trip of Wilson and Noella Greenwood at the edge of the pilgrimage map, as they chase sun and a haunting Moorish palace. Then, their Formentera cottage becomes a crucible of creative and romantic tension, yielding acceptance and embrace, renewed intimacy and new art.
The Last Book takes the picaresque literary tale of Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull and propels it into the speculative waters of time travel, multiple avatars, lost civilizations, White House hackers and a dystopian future, all via a 70s joyride through middle America. In this literate mashup, Cloud Atlas meets House of Cards—with other comparisons including Kerouac, Atwood, Vonnegut, Eco, Dick.
Stay tuned, as I move these titles through the publishing pipeline and into readers’ hands.
