You know I have a lot more ideas for stories than I’ll ever have time to write. So I’ve been thinking, during idle times like going to the grocery store or walking the dog: maybe I need a new way to write long fiction. One that acknowledges that we’re distracted all the time, that our […]
It’s something you just cannot avoid or escape. It’s everywhere, and no matter how much you struggle against it, eventually you have to give in. Here it is, New Year’s Day, 2023. So I have to tell you my resolutions. Or plans. So here we go. The podcast As you know, I launched Beyond Barbarossa, […]
As winter teases us here in Ottawa, snowing and freezing and then treating us to warm sunshine, followed by freezing rain, I think of the looming winter in Ukraine. People there facing sub-zero temperatures without electricity, gas, or even running water. Yet the Ukrainian people continue to defy the Russian invasion. They’re committed to resisting, […]
COVID. War. Totalitarianism. Pandemic. Climate change. Terrorism. Nuclear war. Judging from hyperbole in social media, we are out-and-out terrified of these things. Just consider the rhetoric around the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Will he? Won’t he? Should we? The job of writers of fantasy and speculative fiction is to reflect our audience’s fears back […]
It’s the first of the month, and today you can download Book One of the Eastern Front Trilogy free, along with 50 more books as I’m participating in Authors XP’s First Day promo. Get them here: https://authorsxp.com/first-day-free-books AuthorsXP.com’s FIRST DAY FREE EVENT Free books on the first day of every month! 60+ FREE BOOKS – […]
This week, I’m participating in the blog tour for the trilogy by fellow Canadian fantasy writer, S.M. McEachern. I read this book a number of years ago, and liked it. And now, S.M. is promoting the whole trilogy with a blog tour. First, enjoy this excerpt from Book One in her series, which presents a […]
81 years ago on Wednesday, June 22, Nazi Germany launched the biggest land invasion in human history: Operation Barbarossa, its drive into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This began the biggest and bloodiest part of the Second World War in Europe, by an order of magnitude. On June 22, 2022, episode one of Beyond […]
I’m launching a podcast on June 22, 2022. And I invite you to join me. Beyond Barbarossa will explore the largest side of the Second World War in Europe, the clash between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It’s a subject that I learned a lot about researching The Eastern Front Trilogy (Army […]
Last month, I wrote that things couldn’t get much worse after I developed shingles and my father passed away from COVID-19. They did. February brought savage weather and the crybaby convoy that shut down my city for three weeks. Then things got even worse, again. As the last of the detritus of the crybaby convoy […]
What’s the difference between the way a writer imagines a realistic scene, and the way a reader experiences something? Could it be similar to the difference between the way we watch a motion picture about, say, a day at the lake, and the way we remember a day at the lake? I sometimes edit novels […]