Four Days to Go… and some photographs

Just four days to go now until the official release date for The Finding Place! I received an email today from a 9 year old who may well be one of the first children to read the book. She told me she had to read it secretly in class when her teacher wasn’t watching because she couldn’t put it down. That’s the sort of email all writers must love receiving. I try to imagine how I would have felt as the teacher… and I know that if I ‘caught’ a student sneak-reading in class I don’t think I would have been angry at all. It’s hardly the same thing as making paper aeroplanes. Anyway, here are some more photos I have to share of magical [...]

2015-09-11T14:39:01-04:00September 11, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, The Finding Place, Young Writers!|
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The Finding Place: Signing Books!

Copies of The Finding Place are already in book shops! There can be few things in life, for a writer, more thrilling that browsing the shelves of your favourite bookstores, and seeing your own book there, among the others. Simply incredible. Today, I visited Another Story in Roncesvalles… and there it was in the children’s section. All the more thrilling because the first part of The Finding Place actually takes place in the Roncesvalles area. Five minutes later and I was seated at a table beside the books, signing copies. There is something rather strange about opening a book that is unsold, fresh off the shelves, and signing your name in it. I felt as if I was wilfully defacing someone else’s property. I had [...]

2015-09-10T00:01:00-04:00September 10, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, The Finding Place|
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Writing and Teaching Writing: It’s the Same Thing

A few years ago, I was interviewing to find a new writing teacher for our arts camp. One applicant told me in the interview: It’s good that teaching positions exist because when you can’t make enough money in the arts, teaching is the next best way to make money. Wrong. If an artist views teaching as financial fallback, then I would question how they define what it means to be an artist. As A.L.Kennedy puts it in her excellent book on writing, being an artist may be HARD, but it’s also a privilege. Privileges carry responsibilities. And those include the responsibility to inspire. We inspire by writing, making art, acting… but by creating, we also open a dialogue. We speak to our readers and to [...]

2015-09-08T14:20:15-04:00September 8, 2015|Life at Centauri, On Writing, The Finding Place, Young Writers!|
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The Finding Place: Book Launch Announced!

Join us as we celebrate the launch of The Finding Place! I’ll be there to share a reading from the book, and there will also be a photographic display of all the locations in China featured in the novel. Signed copies will be available for purchase and we’ll be celebrating with food and music! When?      Sunday 20 September, starting 4pm. Where?     Centauri Arts Academy, Studio 218A, 2323 Bloor Street West, Toronto (this is a short walk East of Jane subway; parking is available. We hope to see you there!

2015-09-07T19:01:46-04:00September 7, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, The Finding Place, Young Writers!|
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The Finding Place – Eight Days To Go!

Adopted from China: What does this mean? Kelly, the main character in The Finding Place, was adopted from China as a baby. While this is just one part of the mosaic that makes up her identity, when her father leaves the family, Kelly begins to question what it means to belong. Who were her birth parents? Why did she spend the first few months of her life in an orphanage? What does the Chinese part of herself truly mean? What is China even like? In the past 18 years, more than 100,000 children – mostly girls – have found their way from orphanages in China, into forever families all over the world. Why? Well, in many cases, their birth parents were unable to raise them [...]

2015-09-07T15:20:49-04:00September 7, 2015|Parenting, The Finding Place, Uncategorized|
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The Finding Place: Ten Days to Go!

Each day, for the next ten days, I will be posting a Behind-the-Scenes glimpse at one part of The Finding Place. These blogs will conclude with the release of my novel, ten days from now! Raizel’s Chocolate Shop Kelly’s special friend in The Finding Place is a girl by the name of Raizel. Even in the earliest draft of the novel her personality and her unusual name were very clear to me. However, her home wasn’t featured in the novel as it is now. Instead, the girls met to chat in a coffee shop that might easily have been Starbucks, or Second Cup. They drank hot chocolate, sitting opposite each other, and discussed their absent dads. There was something wrong with all this, but it [...]

2015-09-05T19:30:29-04:00September 5, 2015|On Writing, The Finding Place|
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The Finding Place: The Books have Arrived!

We hit another important milestone with The Finding Place yesterday when many, many boxes of books were shipped from the printer’s to the warehouse at Red Deer Press. I drove up to their offices immediately to collect my author copies. How thrilling it was to hold the book in my hands for the first time! Visiting Red Deer Press itself was equally exciting: being introduced to everyone who works there, seeing displays of all the wonderful books they have published… and then realising The Finding Place was displayed among them! It’s hard to believe, at times, that this is really happening. During our visit, I was asked to sit at an oak desk and sign copies of my book. This was, of course, the very [...]

2015-08-29T17:56:02-04:00August 29, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, The Finding Place|
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The Finding Place in Photographs!

Perhaps you have read The Finding Place, and you’re wondering what many of the landscapes described in the book actually look like. If so, this post is for you! Kelly’s birth village is a fictional creation, but is based on many of the villages I visited in the area around Yangshuo. The image above shows traditional cormorant fishermen putting on a demonstration like the one Kelly sees.

2015-05-16T00:58:49-04:00May 16, 2015|Home Page, The Finding Place|
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The Finding Place – Front Cover!

What a thrilling moment, to see the front cover of your novel for the very first time! And here it is. The background shows the Karst Peaks around Yangshuo, a magical landscape that features prominently in the novel.  

2015-05-15T16:10:45-04:00May 15, 2015|Home Page, On Writing, Parenting, The Finding Place, Uncategorized, Young Writers!|
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About ‘The Finding Place’

The Finding Place is about that greatest, messiest, most essential of all things: family. Kelly didn’t have the greatest start to life. Like tens of thousands of baby girls in China, she spent her first few months in an orphanage. She will never know why her birth parents couldn’t raise her – but poverty, and China’s one child policy, likely played a part. Kelly was adopted into a loving family at ten months old and for almost thirteen years lived the life of a typical North American kid. She may have wondered, occasionally, about her birth parents and birth culture, but she had parents who loved her, and she felt happy and secure. All that changed shortly after her thirteenth birthday when Kelly’s dad walked [...]

2015-05-14T23:20:34-04:00May 14, 2015|On Writing, The Finding Place, Young Writers!|
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