Last night my colleague and I undertook our 4th annual trek to the Toronto Antiquarian Book Fair, an event to which I very much look forward. Alas, it takes place only once a year, and life affords only so many opportunities to seek out such rare and marvelous books. But there is another way to satiate one's hunger for many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, and that is, fittingly, by reading books that are about books...
Worlds Without Clocks – Depicting Time in Fantasy Writing
The sonorous tolling of the Telriand Bell echoed over the city, rolling down the cobbled streets to tremble in every darkened doorway and mist-shrouded alley. To those few wakeful souls who heard it, the sound signified one thing: Halfnight had fallen over Toval. For Laeress, though, it had another meaning. The Cloaked Hour, as it was known among the Reavers, had finally begun. It was time to move...
Book Review – Lethal White
Since his capture of the Shacklewell Ripper, Cormoran Strike has had an upswing in clients appearing at his door, but when an unstable madman descends upon his office with a delusional story of a murdered child, Strike and his partner Robin find themselves drawn into a scandal that reaches high into the halls of power, and deep into the indecorous past of a wealthy family.
Summer of the Sketchbook
I've written almost nothing these past two months. Yet I have not been lost in a creative wasteland. I've been making art instead.
Book Review – Undermajordomo Minor
A young man, bored by his humble life and forced from his home by his seemingly callous (though more likely long-suffering) mother, sets out to take up employment in the only place that will have him: a mouldering castle where the few remaining servants are always certain to lock their doors at night...
By The Numbers: How I Wrote A Half Million Words – Part 1
In this, the first of a multi-part series, I'll look back on how I wrote my first novel, describe how I tracked my productivity in doing so, and examine what the data I gathered tells me about myself as a writer.
Book Review – Kushiel’s Dart
It took me a long time to work my way through this book, for several reasons. The first, and least important, is that it is a brick. Weighing in at a whopping 1,015 pages (yes, that’s a comma in that number), this book is no breezy, book-club volume. It’s a commitment. Like buying a turtle.
Jacket Blurbs and Other Forms of Torture
Writing a smashing good jacket blurb, or, How to Talk About Your Book At Parties.
Book Review – Beren and Luthien
I will begin by saying that this book is most definitely not for the Tolkien neophyte. The Silmarillion is unquestionably required reading before attempting this collection (for collection it is), and a firm understanding of that work at that.