No, I’m not going to talk about my cats (of which I currently have none). I’m not going to talk about other people’s cats (much as I am fond of them). This is the next installment of “Influences” so I’m going to talk about books about cats and about writing about cats. As a child, […]

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My interview on Speculating Canada is up now. Many thanks to Derek for his thoughtful questions. Check out the other interviews on the site as well, especially the recent one with Helen Marshall, whose “Hair Side, Flesh Side” collection is currently in my “to read’ pile.

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At a planning retreat for my day job, we were all given a Bond Girl alter-ego. I was lucky enough to be Diana Rigg’s character from “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. Sadly, I’m not in the least like either the Divine Ms. Rigg or her character. Sigh. But this picture is definitely going on the […]

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A few words of warning up front: I am in no way impartial about the House of Pomegranates, the wonderful people who run it, and David Keyes’ new collection of short short I Do So Worry For All Those Lost At Sea. The House of Pomegranates Press published my short story collection and the illustrated […]

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At the recent World Fantasy convention here in Toronto (ok, Richmond Hill), I was on a panel about the late, much-missed Twilght Zone magazine. I was fortunate enough to make my first professional sale to TZ, after having entered their annual short story contest and finished as a runner-up for my story “The Party Over […]

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By rights, Modesty Blaise should come much later in the influence sequence, but a friend mentioned this series the other day, which sent me back to reread the first two. I think the second of the series (Sabre-Tooth) made it’s way into our house in one of the boxes of books that my Dad brought […]

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My website was hacked last weekend. Why anyone would hack it is beyond me, but there you go. Thanks to Deane for the quick restore. “Understanding WordPress and Social media 101” is going on my “things to do” list now.

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No one, even at their most charitable, would call me technologically adept. My brother, his friend (and my future husband, though we didn’t know it at the time) and I were once discussing an article that had posited that the world would be divided into techno-lords and techno-peasants. Richard claimed techno-lord status, I was clearly […]

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I can’t count the number of times I’ve read Nicolas Stuart Gray’s Mainly in Moonlight. I know that I took it out of the North York Public Library Children’s Section so many times the librarians must have wondered why my parents didn’t just buy me a copy. (Actually, I’m not sure why either. My father […]

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One of my earliest reading obsessions – and on that has a had an ongoing influence on my writing – is fairy tales. My family had two collections that contained the classic stories, along with some more obscure tales, and while I can’t remember the titles, I can still see the illustrations clearly. I’m still […]

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