One of those Facebook things is making the rounds and since it’s on the topic of influences, it seemed an eminently suitable thing to repost.  It’s not just that I’m lazy/busy.  No indeed. 1. Fairy Tales 2. The Incredible Journey 3. Andre Norton 4. Peter O’Donnell 5. Tanith Lee 6. C.J. Cherryh 7. Shirley Jackson […]

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All writers have them.  They’re the words you default to when you’re working on your first draft and you don’t want to slow down to find le mot juste.  They’re the ones you love the sound of or which have particular aesthetic and emotional associations in your subconscious.  They’re the ones you just think are cool […]

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Ok, I admit it.  I went to the Indigo and Amazon sites to see if the books are available for pre-order.  Indeed they are.  For some reason Blood and Chrysanthemums doesn’t appear in the main search, but it is there. So head on over and order yours today.

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Where do writers get our ideas, you ask?  Sometimes, we get them from other writers. There were many inspirations for my first novel, The Night Inside, but one of them was definitely a story by another writer.   I read Suzy McKee Charnas’ wonderful collection The Vampire Tapestry, which features a vampire quite unlike most of the others I had encountered to that point. There’s nothing supernatural about Weyland and […]

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We went to The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces from the Guggenheim show at the Art Gallery of Toronto yesterday afternoon.  I like modern art, particularly abstract impressionism and related styles, and we’ve been to MOMA, the Pompidou in Paris, The National Gallery in Washington and museums in almost every city we’ve visited.  We’re the people who […]

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  At last, some real news can be revealed. In the first big news, the talented team at ChiZine Publications is bringing out my first three novels as e-books, complete with stunning new covers.  A special thanks to Gillian Holmes for The Night Inside and Blood and Chrysanthemums.  They’ll be released in a few weeks. Secondly, […]

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No question at all. Patricia McKillip. If I could figure out a way to magically steal every scrap of poetry, plot, inspiration, craft and beauty out of her soul, I’d do it. (Ok, maybe I wouldn’t do exactly that but I’d    certainly be tempted…) I read The Riddlemaster of Hed in high school, while I […]

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The next writer I discovered (around the same time as Tanith Lee) was C. J. Cherryh, with her first novel Gate of Ivrel.  With a cover like this, how could I NOT buy it?*  The worlds created for this book, and the 3 sequels, operate at the intersection of fantasy and science fiction.  The main […]

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Because I can happily blather on about our trip… I realized I’d been remiss in not providing a link (mostly because WordPress appears to have changed something and I haven’t figured out why the link function doesn’t work anymore).   Until I figure it out, here’s the info, old-school:  www.flipkey.com/marcilhacsurcele-cottage-rentals/p250972/    Or just google “Marcilhac stone gite” and you’ll find […]

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      I’m a rotten traveller.  I get horribly stressed about missing flights and trains, I agonize over picking places to stay or eat, and I generally spend a good portion of any trip in a state of subdued anxiety.   As a result, I was inordinately proud of myself for taking two trips to France, one in […]

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