In Conversation with Jasmin Kaur author of If I Tell You the Truth

With Kaylie Seed

Photo by Tajinder Kaur

The main characters of If I Tell You the Truth are both fierce and courageous women, can you tell our readers where your inspiration for Kiran and Sahaara’s voices came from?

Kiran and Sahaara are an amalgamation of experiences, witnessings and emotions. As a Punjabi girl growing up around women who empowered me to be who I am, sisterhood has always been an important part of my life. My friends and I have had candid conversations about everything from relationships to toxic in-laws to healthy friendships and sexual abuse.

I remember sitting with my friends as a young adult, discussing the fact that a powerful man had abused one of our loved ones. We discussed all sorts of strategies to bring about justice for

the victim but encountered roadblocks every step of the way. The worst was the knowledge that community leaders wouldn’t support us in speaking the truth. The “safety” of a powerful man was more important than any victim. It was experiences like this that solidified Kiran and Sahaara’s voices. I wanted them to speak all the truths that we were told to keep to ourselves. I wanted to craft a world where their radical truth-telling could be a tangible reality.

If I Tell You the Truth is a mixture of poetry, prose, and illustrations. What was the process like for you to arrange these mediums to create a story that flows so effortlessly?

It was a huge learning experience and definitely didn’t begin so effortlessly. In my first draft of the book, the majority of the story was told in prose and punctuated with poetry between prose chapters. As the story evolved through revision, I considered all the ways in which poetry may be more meaningfully woven in to drive plot and conjure emotion. I think that the effortless flow naturally came about because I tried not to force too much plot-progression into a single poem. I read and re-read the transitions to make sure that readers wouldn’t feel like they missed a step in the story because they didn’t fully process one stanza.

A follow-up to the question above, how did you choose which parts of your novel would be written in poetry and which would be written in prose?

I find that narrative poems are helpful in drawing out drama in brief snapshots. It gets trickier to bring to life complex, multi-character scenes within a handful of stanzas. I’ve written three-character scenes as poems but I don’t think I could go any wider than that without completely confusing the reader.

I also considered pacing. There were sections we needed to breeze through and some we needed to steep ourselves in. Poems were helpful in moving us through large swaths of time during which there were only a few major events. Where we needed to slow down and fully saturate ourselves in a certain setting or exchange, prose worked better.

If I Tell You the Truth focuses on some heavy topics including sexual abuse and immigration trauma, were these emotionally draining for you to put onto paper, and if so, how were you able to compartmentalize so that you didn’t burn out?

I tend to write in small chunks and then give myself breathing space. After I meet my word count goal for the day, I spend the rest of the day doing things that bring me joy and calm—reading, drawing, yoga, Netflix. It also helped that the writing was spread out over the course of months.

Recording the audiobook for If I Tell You The Truth was actually much more difficult. I narrated the book over the course of four days and had to fully immerse myself in the emotions of each character in order to bring them to life over audio. Audiobook narration is a lot more like traditional acting than people may realize. I think it requires the narrator to draw from the same emotional well that a stage or film actor would. Before I recorded some of the heavier scenes, I pushed myself to fully submerge into character, imagining the frightening spaces that my characters would be walking through, the anger and fear coursing through them. This took a whole lot out of me and I was glad that we finished recording in under a week.

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing If I Tell You the Truth?

Less is more! Perhaps this isn’t the most thrilling surprise, but I learned, after my first draft was way longer than I originally planned, that I could strengthen the story with concision. I think that when you get so immersed in backstory and worldbuilding, you intuitively feel you need to give your reader all of the context that is in your head. But that doesn’t always serve the story. I had to really think about what scenes and bits of context the story could survive without. Some of those less-than-pivotal scenes were cut from the story entirely or transformed into bite sized poems. 

Now that you’ve written two gorgeous novels, I have to ask, will there be another book from you in the future?

Yes, I hope so! I’m currently working on a fantasy novel about teenage Punjabi witches, set in Canada.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors who are trying to navigate the publishing world?

Don’t doubt the value of your voice. Rejection can be discouraging but it doesn’t mean that your work isn’t worth reading. As writers, we’re going to experience creative growth for as long as we choose to craft stories. Our work was precious at our first drafts, it’s precious now and it’s going to be precious once we have twenty years of experience under our belts. We need to be able to give ourselves space to grow, though. That means listening to and applying feedback without allowing the feedback to diminish our desire to create.

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of my all-time favourite novels, melding everything I love about historical fiction with fantasy. I don’t know that there’s a singular book that’s had a profound impact on my writing, but Neil Gaiman’s MasterClass course on writing was fundamentally formative for me. I finished the course sobbing because I was so moved by Neil’s teaching.

Lastly, who is your inspiration when it comes to writing and why?

Sunni Patterson was one of the first spoken word poets I encountered online. The fierceness of her voice, political conviction and imagery completely mesmerized me. At the time, I didn’t know that I, too, could be a poet. I just read and reread her poems aloud because I felt so much power coursing through her words. When I finally picked up a pen and eventually stood behind a mic to share my words, it was through the inspiration of poets like Patterson. The magnetism of her performances were my reference point for how to convey passion as a poet. The rest, I suppose, is history.

In Conversation with Alana Pidwerbeski author of Noises of the Night

With Christine McFaul

Photo by Samin Abarqoi Photography

Noises of the Night is a lovely bedtime read: sweet and soothing with such striking illustrations. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to chat with you about the process of creating such a delightfully Canadian picture book.

This book is such a calming read. Are there any books or lullabies from your childhood that were a favourite at bedtime? 

I loved Dr. Seuss as a child, something about the rhymes and rhythms always caught my attention! Books like Sleepy Bears by Mem Fox, and Sarah Squirrel and the Lost Acorns (Julie Sykes and Catherine Walters) always caught my attention. I was in love with the artwork on every page, and I would admire them while my mother read to us before bed. As for lullabies specifically, I was born in December and my mother always sang Silent Night to me, and that song still has a special place in my heart to this day.

You have chosen to include sounds that are so perfectly evocative of a Canadian night. Which Canadian night noise do you personally find most soothing? And conversely, which one drives you crazy! 

I love the sounds of rain, crickets, and frogs. These are the sounds I heard most often growing up in a rural area of the Okanagan, and they are just so peaceful to me. For a long time traffic noises and city noises were very bothersome to me, it actually prompted me to write Noises of the Night. I was in Toronto one week for my sister’s graduation, and I barely slept a wink due to the constant sirens and traffic outside my window! It got me thinking about the plethora of sounds across Canada at night, and thus my lullaby was born! Now that I live in my own place in town, I have grown much more accustomed to the soft noises of cars driving by...sirens do still bother me though!

You are both the author and illustrator of this story. What comes first in your process: the pictures or the words? 

For me the story always seems to flow first. I actually wrote the lullaby two years before I even started my illustrations. I had lost touch with my art for the longest time, but I am so glad that I was able to reconnect with it on the pages of my story. I look forward to writing and illustrating more stories in the future.

This book is a celebration of the landscape and wildlife all around us. What inspires your creative process?

Like most, my creative process is a little all over the map. It took me over six months to illustrate my book, finding time in the evenings after work, or on my days off. I knew I wanted every sunset to be a little different from the next, and I would take photos of beautiful ones outside my window when they would arise, I think my phone is overflowing with them to be honest! I also knew I wanted to include landmark landscapes from all over Canada, I did my best to not leave anyone out! Diversity in books is also of extreme importance to me, and so the children in my book are painted to reflect that.

What is your favourite Canadian animal? 

Oh that is a very difficult question! I am an animal lover at heart, so I feel guilty to choose just one! Growing up my dad taught my sister and I all about our local animals and how to identify them. Having that knowledge still reminds me of those moments in my childhood. My grandparents also have a cattle farm, and so I was also exposed to farm life from the time I could toddle around in gumboots. Feeding cows, holding chickens, catching frogs, raising tadpoles, all animals hold a special place in my heart.

Do you have any new projects in the works?

I do! I am working on my illustrations for my next children’s book, currently titled All I Can Grow Are Tomatoes. It is a story about a little girl who wants to be just like everyone else, but her natural born talents keep getting in the way. Over the course of the story she learns to love herself for her differences, and realizes that everyone is different, and that is what makes the world such a wonderful place. 

I am also slowly working on a novel, but it could be years before I finish it at this rate!

Creating both the text and images for this book must have its challenges. What is one piece of advice that you would give to an aspiring picture book author/illustrator?

I think the hardest thing in any creative process is the fear that it won’t be perfect. That was a big curve ball for me, especially when illustrating (I wanted my book to be amazing and perfect!) but perfection is subjective. Trust your gut, take breaks, go for walks to change your perspective, and don’t forget to have fun!

What advice would you give to aspiring authors who are working on their first few novels and are trying to navigate the publishing world?

There are so many options in today’s publishing world. Research all your options. Traditional publishing can be daunting, and you may never get a response to your query letter. I know I received very few, and all were disappointing. Assisted publishing, and self publishing are always an option, and always a good starting point if it works well for the vision of your work. For me, it allowed me to paint my own illustrations, something that seems to not be very common in the traditional publishing world. Also, use Google, and research how to write strong queries, get your work proofread by someone else, run ideas past people in your life, but don’t let their opinions daunt you, let them inspire you to be the best you can be.

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

My must read book? That is a hard one! The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander was a book that really influenced my life and way of thinking two years ago, and I always recommend it to everyone. Untamed by Glennon Doyle was also a very poignant and soul touching read. In addition to this, anything by Margaret Atwood. 

When it comes to books that inspire my children’s books, I would have to say it is a mixed collection. I nannied for a number of years, and I always found it interesting to watch which books were chosen most often over the others.  Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site  and Steam Train Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker were always popular, as well as classics like Goodnight Moon, and Green Eggs and Ham. I have always loved rhyme and rhythm in stories, and I loved witnessing that today’s children seem to just as much. 

In Conversation with Michael Christie author of Greenwood

With Dahl Botterill

Photo by Cedar Bowers

Your previous books gave you ample opportunity to draw from personal experience but you've mentioned that Greenwood required a great deal more research. Were there any aspects of Greenwood's characters or plot that required a little less research? Any small opportunities to breathe your own tastes and experiences into the novel?

There are always these opportunities, in fact I doubt I could write about anything that I didn’t have at least some experience with. Often, I’ll do something in my normal, non-writing life, fully believing there will be no crossover between the two, until I eventually discover myself writing about it a few years later. This was the case for building our little house on Galiano Island, which I undertook mainly because I’m cheap and didn’t want to pay anyone to build it for us! But it was an experience that eventually informed the carpentry sections of Greenwood, and my general interest in wood and the lumber industry as well. But I feel a kinship with all the characters I’ve created, even those who have lived much different lives than I have. This is the wondrousness of fiction. To recognize our deepest selves in characters made of words.

Greenwood's story is multi-generational but it also presents very different attitudes and lives among those generations. Not only does each character have a very different personality but each also relates very differently to the trees that are so central to the novel. Was the breadth of these differences something that grew out of the story, or did the characters and their attitudes come first with the story being shaped by your cast?

You know I’m not really sure? I’m just awful at keeping a mental record of what idea develops in what order during a novel’s genesis. Because it’s often the case that the best ideas feel like they’ve always been so, and they rewrite those ideas that existed before them. My writing process is like a big, messy smorgasbord crossed with a riot, an event that the writing is an attempt to make some sense of and clean up. But with Greenwood, I guess there was no chance that I wouldn’t write about the vast differences among the personalities and ideologies of generations. Family members all aligned in their thinking make for a dull story! (And I doubt they actually exist. I mean, I’ve never met a family like that, have you?) But in the end, the many ways the various Greenwoods see trees compose almost a kind of history of environmental thinking in North America (in white, settler-colonial culture specifically, because indigenous people were obviously much more advanced in their ideas of ecology and stewardship.) From mere survival to wanton extraction to guilty appreciation to careful preservation to a kind of appreciative symbiosis. Hopefully we will be able make that last evolution.

Among such a wealth of characters are there any that you particularly identify with yourself either in the way they relate to trees and the world around them or just in some aspect of their personality?

As I mentioned, I identify with some aspect of all the characters in this book. I admire Everett’s resilience, Harris’s drive, Lomax’s doggedness, Temple’s pragmatism, Liam’s commitment to his work, Willow’s idealism, and Jake’s understanding of our interconnectedness with the natural world. Whether I actually have any of these qualities in any abundance is debatable! But I admire them all the same. In my mind, a writer doesn’t have any business creating a character with whom they do not identify, at least partially. The alternative makes for lifeless, inhumane fiction, which is something I would rather not write, or read. 

Your previous novel (If I Fall, If I Die) was set in your hometown of Thunder Bay and it resulted in a setting that felt not only very lived in but also very familiar - flaws and all - to the people that live there. Greenwood takes place in many locations but the various settings still feel very comfortable. Could you tell us a little about your process for developing the novel's settings?

The settings all originated organically from the story. But early on, I loved the idea of Everett taking a train trip with the baby, so it was fun to follow them all the way across Canada. And I suppose it was a good way to capture the vastness and beauty of the continent in the writing as well, especially since it contrasts so starkly with the world we are creating, one stripped of all this vast beauty. Oh, and I must point out that there were two mentions of Thunder Bay in Greenwood! One in the future section, when Jake is describing all the places that have become popular destinations now that much of the US is uninhabitable. And the second when Everett is riding past Port Arthur and Fort William, and recalls the events of his childhood. In fact, I’m going to try to sneak some Thunder Bay content into everything I write from now on! It’s one of those little writerly delights, to insert a place into literature a place that always felt so un-literary when you were growing up there. It’s a weird kind of rebellion. 

While doing the research for Greenwood did you make any little discoveries that particularly grabbed you? Was there anything you learned that really held on and led you in a direction personally that perhaps the book didn't actually make use of as much?

So many discoveries! In fact, these discoveries are always the danger of research, which can become like the Island of the Lotus-eaters, where you’ll become stuck for a very long time, if you aren’t careful. But reading about the history of Canadian logging was deeply interesting to me, as well as the current science around the mechanisms of tree communication, which is just utterly fascinating, and still feels like the most exciting area of scientific discovery right now. I guess this was a theme of the book, that everything is extremely complicated when it is examined closely. And this complexity of all things can be impossibly beautiful when we take the time to honour and examine it. As for discarded research, I will admit that I did a bunch of research on stamp collection, for some reason, as well as the harvesting of all kinds of wild mushrooms. Both of which may come in handy someday, however, whether in my writing life or my personal life. So I won’t declare those as failures quite yet.

What are you currently working on? Is there another book set for publication from you soon that our readers can get excited about?

I’ve been doing lots of publicity type things, as well as working with some great folks on the limited series TV adaptation of Greenwood, which has been fun. And I have a draft of a new novel that’s currently kicking around on my computer. It’s about a different fictional island in BC, and it seems to be going okay. No clue when I’ll finish though. I’ve only realized recently that writing Greenwood took a great deal out of me, and along with the obvious pandemic-related lethargy, I’ve been going through a bit of a recharge phase. The older I get, the more I realize how important rest is to this process.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors on the craft of writing and for those who are trying to navigate the publishing world?

Here’s a smattering of advice: write about what’s most important to you; write without knowing the answer to the questions you’re asking, and make sure you don’t answer them by accident; write with generosity for your characters, but without mercy for the unnecessary words that will inevitably bog down your sentences. And most of all: write the kind of book you want to read. It’s a cliché, but it’s true.

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson is my favorite book of all time. It captures ideas of home and nature and family and siblinghood and mental illness with such humanity and naked wisdom, I don’t think I’ll ever understand how she did it. To me it’s a perfect encapsulation of the great alchemy that is fiction. I read it every year, and I’m always left thinking: how could words—the same dull words that we see cascading past us on our screens every single day—possibly do this?

In Conversation with M.K. Krys author of This Town is Not All Right

With Kim McCullough

Photo by Shannon Mancuso

This Town is Not All Right is set in a fictional American East Coast town; how did you choose the setting and what were some of the challenges when writing the setting of this book? 

I chose a fictional setting for a few different reasons. The idea for the book came from a real life “UFO” sighting that took place in the 1960s in Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia. Local residents claimed to have seen an aircraft crash in the harbor, but when the coast guard arrived no trace of the craft was ever found. I thought it would be fun to write a story about kids who discovered the truth behind this crash. THIS TOWN was initially set in Shag Harbor, but as the plot unfolded the setting looked less and less like the real life town I’d based the story on. Somewhere along the way, I decided to stop trying to make the plot fit into the setting that inspired the story and let the plot flourish in a fictional one. Of course creating a fictional town has it’s own challenges. Namely, creating a fictional town!

The characters in this book all have different personalities, interests and strengths. I was struck by how clearly each character was presented. How do you balance the need for fast-paced action with the need for characters the reader can care about and engage with?

Thank you! I really believe that the best stories start with good characters. No matter how propulsive and fun the plot twists, a story will fall flat if the reader doesn’t care about the people they’re happening to. I’ve found that when I’ve focused my attention on creating engaging, three-dimensional characters first, the results are always better. Don’t get me wrong, plot is also important, but getting a handle on the characters is always my first priority. From there, the character’s individual personalities help inform the plot to a certain degree by how they react to the twists I throw at them. 

Are there any characters or events you wish you'd been able to explore more? If so, which ones, and what would you add or change?

I might have said yes at one point, but I now believe everything that made it into the final draft is all that needs to be there. I was fairly aggressive with edits. If it didn’t propel the story forward or provide meaningful characterization, I ditched it, and I hope that what’s left behind is a tight, fun plot that keeps young readers engaged. 

The twins, Beacon and Everleigh, are mourning the death of their older brother Jasper. What kind of research into grief did you do while writing this book?

I did a fair amount of research on grief, but the vast majority was informed by my experience with losing my dad at 18. Something that always stuck with me is how quickly everyone wants you to move on and heal. But grief doesn’t fade away quickly, or, in Beacon’s case, go away because the world needs saving. I wanted to show young readers that’s it’s normal for healing to take time, to highlight characters grieving in different ways, and ultimately, to provide hope that it will get better. The book is a sci-fi adventure, but at its heart it’s about a family dealing with loss. 

You’ve previously written books for Young Adult readers including Hexed, Charmed, and Dead Girls Society. What made you write for the Middle Grade audience with This Town is Not Alright? Was there something about this story that you felt appealed to a younger age group or was it a new challenge for you?

THIS TOWN actually started out as a young adult novel. But after I’d written a few chapters I realized the plot was better suited for a middle grade audience. I really liked the idea of younger kids who were still trying to figure out how they fit into their own world stumbling onto a world-sized problem. Once I made the change it really allowed me to run wild with fun, voicey characters and adventurous plot twists that might not have worked for an older audience. It was a lot of fun! And there’s the added benefit that my eleven-year-old can read this one.

Cloud Lake Literary serves as both a space for readers as well as writers. What advice would you give to aspiring authors? This could be about the writing process, the writers journey, or even about navigating the publishing world.

Get involved in the online author community. This business is so fun and exhilarating, but it can also be frustrating at times. It’s been tremendously helpful and comforting having friends who get it that I can turn to for advice and a good old-fashioned vent every now and then. Some of my closest friends are authors I met online. 

This Town is Not All Right ends on a significant and pretty shocking cliffhanger. Are there plans for a sequel? A series? 

The sequel to This Town, called THIS TOWN IS A NIGHTMARE, comes out August 21st, 2021! I can’t wait for readers to see what this spooky town and its not quite right residents have in store for you this time.

What are your “must-read” book recommendations and what books have had the most impact and influence on your writing?

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder has been my secret, not-so-secret, weapon. It’s a screenwriter’s guide on story structure that divides a story into 15 plot beats, each of which serves a particular function in a story. I highly recommend it for aspiring authors looking for a starting point. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Twilight. For all of its faults, Twilight did what a lot a lot of authors only wish they could, which is to keep readers obsessively engaged and turning the pages. It’s something I’m always striving for. 

On a personal level, my critique partner, Ruth Lauren, constantly inspires me. She’s incredibly driven and determined and the most incredible writer I know. Her debut middle grade novel, Prisoner of Ice and Snow, is out now from Bloomsbury. Think Prison Break meets Game of Thrones. Check it out! 

In Conversation with Nadia L. Hohn author of Malaika's Surprise

With Ashliegh Gehl

Photo by Elizabeth Dungan

What’s Malaika’s origin story? (When did she first surface for you? How long did you spend crafting her personality and lineage?)

My first Malaika story came about during the Writing for Children I class with Ted Staunton at George Brown College held at Mable’s Fables Bookstore in Toronto in 2010. One of my assignments was to write a picture book. I knew immediately that I wanted it to be based in the Caribbean and to feature Carnival. (In fact, one of the picture books that I illustrated and wrote as a child features both. I use this in my presentations.) The origins were also inspired by all kinds of things, including visiting Caribana parade as a child, my Jamaican heritage, Trinidad Carnival, and my family history.

What has it been like to tell Malaika’s story through Irene Luxbacher’s stunning illustrations? (Is it a collaborative process? Or is it an isolated experience?)

Originally, I wanted to illustrate the first Malaika book. My Groundwood publisher at the time, Sheila Barry, was very kind and honest. She said I have potential to be an illustrator but wanted to go with someone with more experience. When Sheila suggested Irene, I felt that she was the right choice—because she works in mixed media (how I envisioned the book), and her illustrations evoked so much emotion (I felt it in my gut). At that point, I had to let the book go in a sense, which was hard at first. This was my first picture book and I was new to the publishing process. I had to learn to trust that making a picture book is a collaborative process and that everyone involved wanted this to be the best book. I also adjusted to the idea that this story would also become Irene’s, and I am so glad that she connected with my story. We had not met until just before the launch of Malaika’s Costume but since then, we usually talk about the story after it’s complete.

You’re currently working on a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. How has this experience expanded the breadth of your storytelling?

The MFA program at the University of Guelph has provided me with an opportunity to study in other forms and genres beyond writing for children and young adults. My goal was to polish my craft as a writer in the adult genres. I have learned so much already and there are opportunities to learn from the greats in CanLit. I look forward to more growth.

What do you think needs to happen within the publishing industry to ensure that more #OwnVoices are published? 

I believe that a few things need to happen in order to ensure that #OwnVoices are published. First, in Canada, we need to continue regular measurement of representation working in the publishing industry, as well as start tracking who is getting published according to their identity, including Black Indigenous People of Colour (BIPOC). Next, we need to be comfortable using language, that is, adopt a “literacy” and comfortable vocabulary use of terms like equity, anti-racism, and anti-oppression within the publishing industry.  We need to have diverse individuals at the decision-making tables. We also need to be unafraid to say what we want in our calls for submission, as well as outreach to underrepresented communities.  

In June 2020, you organized the #KidLit4BlackLivesCanada rally. What was the significance of this event? Are there more rallies or events in the works for 2021? How can others get involved?

The significance of this event was, firstly, to ally with the #KidLit4BlackLives rally held in the US. It was also an opportunity for the Black Canadian children’s literature community and allies to respond to and grieve the incidents of racial injustices experienced by Black and brown peoples in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. My hope is to have another event in 2021, so please stay tuned. You can join the #KidLit4BlackLivesCanada Facebook group and e-mail: kidlit4blacklivescanada@gmail.com.

Our audience is comprised of writers as well as readers. What advice would you give to a writer setting out on their journey? This could be about the writing process or in publicizing and sharing your work.

Start writing. Find a community. Get feedback. Read. Keep at it.  

We are always interested to hear what stories you are working on next. Are you currently writing another book, or do you have one set for publishing later this year?

I just signed a contract for an anthology of sorts so please stay tuned. I am editing my middle grade novel, plus I have some picture books that I am revising along with my young adult novel.

What books are you currently reading and which books have had the most influence on your writing or that you would consider to be your must-read books? 

Currently, I developed a self-directed reading course with a professor focusing on contemporary young adult novels about Black girls as part of my MFA program.  As part of this, I just finished reading Facing the Sun by Janice Lynn Mather, a British Columbia-based author of Bahamian heritage. I just finished reading the young adult novel, Harriet’s Daughter, by Toronto-based Afro-Trinidadian poet M. Nourbese Philip which I had not read since the late 1980s. I believe this book taught me some early lessons about writing for young people. It made me feel that my story and experiences as a Black, Caribbean, and Canadian girl mattered. Even at that age, I knew this book was special. I have not seen one like it since, but it has made me want to write more books reflecting Black, Caribbean, and African identities in Canada.

In Conversation with Lang Leav author of September Love

With Jodene Wylie

Photo Credit: Chloe Angelo. Visit her Instagram page here

Special thank you to poet and author Lang Leav for offering such valuable insight into her life of writing, advice for writers, and some incredible book recommendations. Have you read September Love yet? Check out our book review here.

September Love is your seventh book of published poetry. It is introspective, considerate, and full of wonderment. How did you approach this collection (in its writing and in compiling which poems were selected) in comparison to your earlier volumes?

I was halfway through writing September Love when the pandemic hit. I completed the other half during isolation. I suppose this leant the collection a kind of duality. The introspection which is present in much of my work was considerably heightened by the six-week lockdown, which in New Zealand, was one of the strictest in the world. Everything stopped. And this sudden grinding to a halt put me in a different headspace. My priorities shifted. My calendar previously filled with travel dates and media commitments switched to meal planning, due dates for the chicken, and the rationing of supplies. This sudden need to be resourceful was born out of necessity but has since changed the way I live. In a strange way, it taught me to shut out the digital world as much as the real one. We forget sometimes that the internet is still very much a new frontier and writers of my generation are facing unchartered territory. I don’t doubt that my body of work would have been vastly different if it hadn’t been for the influence of social media. The pandemic allowed me a glimpse into this alternate universe, to write the way I probably would have, if I had followed a more traditional path. 

“Ingredients of a Poem”, which can be found near the start of September Love, outlines themes, topics, and directions that poetry can take and you end the poem with the line that poetry can be: “Whatever you wish”. Then, in “No Poet”, you write that “poetry is a candle burning gently, an everlasting flame coaxing something tender, turning all toward love”. While the topic of a poem can be about whatever the poet wishes, do you think that the purpose of poetry is to evoke and/or return to a place of love and understanding either for ourselves, those around us, or our world?

The purpose of poetry has always been a subject of great contention. Some think it is a way to showcase one’s literary prowess, others believe poetry is a powerful tool that can be used to unite and inspire. Recently, we saw the latter when Amanda Gorman captivated the world with her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’during the inauguration of Joe Biden. I thought the poem was monumental on so many levels. The line, ‘even as we grieved, we grew,’ was one of clear and astonishing beauty. To me, that line alone carries the resonance of some of the greatest poems of all time. The poem in its entirety felt like a beacon of hope in a period of such uncertainty and distress. I was disappointed to see Gorman’s work panned on social media for her simple and stark use of language. The notion that poetry should be difficult is so antiquated and elitist. I lean far more toward the sentiment that poetry should not center merely on the artful depiction of emotions, but the ability to express them in a way that is resonate and impactful. 

While “Stardust” and “Twin Flames” will forever be some of my favourite poems, “To the Guy Who Claims My Poetry Was The Cause of His Break-Up” is edging in to a top position. This poem, found midway through September Love, is a wonderful breaking of the fourth wall where you, the poet, respond to your reader (or your reader’s boyfriend). Many of your poems often seem to be one side of the conversation where your words speak directly to the reader. You offer commentary, advice, and consideration to your reader and even advice on managing critics in “The Golden Rule”. What do you most hope your readers will know and understand from your poetry?

My work had already gone viral by the time I posted up a picture of myself. Until then, the general consensus seemed to be that I was a dead poet, or a white, middle-aged man. I think the last thing anyone was expecting was a young, migrant woman. My sudden appearance was met with so much misogyny and derision, I was close to giving up entirely. The voices felt almost identical to the ones that had plagued me in the small refugee town where I grew up. In many ways, my upbringing had equipped me with the mental fortitude for handling my sudden emergence into the spotlight, and the consequent onslaught of sexist and racist comments. As a society, I think we must question why this treatment is reserved exclusively for women. And why these perpetrators are allowed to cause real world damage with total impunity. Many of my readers are also aspiring writers, hoping to follow in my footsteps. A large majority are young women, meaning they will likely be victims of the same targeted harassment that I have experienced. I have always spoken honestly and openly with my readers, through social media. It seemed a natural progression to continue this tradition through my work. I feel it is my responsibility to warn others about the world they are entering and ways we can look out for each other. I suppose I would like in some way to be the person to whom I would have sought comfort as a young woman at the onset of my career. 

After a number of publications and much success, your writing is now well-referenced and internationally acclaimed having truly made an impact on the poetry community. In “My Poetry” you write: “I wanted you to know my poetry, but I never meant for you to know me”.  How has your writing changed over the years and what influence has recognition had on how much of yourself you allow into your writing?

There needs to be a healthy separation between yourself and your work. Especially since we are all at the mercy of the internet when anything that is said about you, even false, can become deeply engraved in your narrative. Malicious spreading of lies and innuendo can lead to speculation about your private life that is not only harmful to your own mental health but affects your loved ones too, meaning the damage is two-fold. The process of writing is very much like a kind of osmosis, in the way you absorb the world that you inhabit. It has taken me years to recognise what a warped and twisted one it is. But there is so much beauty there too, and I think it is worth sifting through all the bad stuff to get to the good. Authors tend to grow through their books, and I think writing September Love was a way for me to exorcise my demons, both real and imaginary. It has shown me a way forward that feels the most authentic to who I am.  

What makes a poem, in your opinion, truly great? Is it strict rules to structure, creation of a newly defined structure, the ability to evoke an emotion or feeling, the unveiling of a new truth, or something more? What makes a poem great to you?

A pivotal scene in the movie, Dead Poet’s Society springs to mind. Set in a busy classroom of an elite prep school, English teacher John Keating is scribbling away on the chalkboard, whilst referencing from a textbook titled, How to Understand Poetry. On the board, he draws out a graph measuring the worth of a poem which the students are earnestly transcribing into their workbooks. Keating appears to be going along with this process when he stops and in a dramatic turnaround, slams the textbook for its clinical approach toward something as inscrutable as poetry. He then instructs the class of stunned students to rip out the pages of the textbook, as their initial hesitancy gives way to jubilation. I was only a teenager myself when I first saw the movie, and the scene has always stuck with me. Now, as a working poet, I think it is near impossible to judge a poem, due to the subjective nature of literature. To me, a meaningful poem is the coming together of elements, that are not necessarily exclusive to the words before you on paper. I am sure we have all experienced that wonderful rush when you stumble on a particular poem, and it suddenly becomes the center of gravity, drawing everything in your internal and external world, anchoring it in that moment. That’s why you can never truly experience the same poem in the same way twice. 

I encourage every writer to read your poem “The Path of a Writer” as you get to the root of the inevitable feelings they face with descriptors like “stumbling on the ruins of a lost city, talking to its ghosts”. What advice would you give to aspiring writers and poets on their own journeys?

Everyone’s journey is their own. There is no real measure of creativity and anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves. Writing should mirror our struggles and triumphs in a way that feels inevitable. I have an almost fatalistic approach when it comes to writing. I believe if you have a real passion for writing, it’s something you will naturally pursue, no matter the obstacles that are placed in your path. Throughout my life, I have gone through so many renditions of my creative self, only to arrive exactly where I had started. I suppose the best advice I could give to aspiring writers is to simply write. All you need is a pen and paper, and you’re set. Find your voice, no matter how long it takes, or how little you are rewarded for your efforts. Be prepared to spend your whole life perfecting your craft, and to find joy and fulfilment in the process. 

Are you working on a forthcoming book? Can you share a little about what it’s about and whether it’s poetry or fiction? 

I tend to write poetry organically and usually, there is a work of fiction running alongside this process. The two often complement each other. With the pandemic putting a line of separation between myself and my family, I’ve become really nostalgic for my youth. For writers, there is so much rich material to be found in the unattainable. When you are put in a state of inertia, the future is uncertain, so you tend to seek comfort in your past. From this distant place that I have spent so much time revisiting, a story began to emerge, and unravel before me. Sometimes you get lucky that way, a book seems to find you out of nowhere and takes you over. Then writing becomes almost effortless.  

Lastly, what have you been reading lately? Are there any books that have had a particular impact or influence on your writing that you’d recommend to our readers? 

I am such a comfort reader. I tend to go through a cycle where I systematically reread all my favourite books. I’ve just finished Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Now I’m reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I am so looking forward to Kazuo’s new book, Clara and the Sun which comes out next month. 

About Lang Leav:

Novelist and poet Lang Leav was born in a refugee camp when her family were fleeing the Khmer Rouge Regime. She spent her formative years in Sydney, Australia, in the predominantly migrant town of Cabramatta. Among her many achievements, Lang is the winner of a Qantas Spirit of Youth Award, Churchill Fellowship and Goodreads Reader’s Choice Award. 

​Her first book, Love & Misadventure (2013) was a break out success, and her subsequent poetry books have all been international bestsellers. In 2016, Lang turned her attention to fiction, and her debut novel Sad Girls shot to #1 on the Straits Times and other bestseller charts internationally. 

​Lang actively participates in international writers festivals and her tours consistently draw massive crowds. With a combined social media following of two million, Lang’s message of love, loss and female empowerment continues to resonate with her multitude of readers.     

Lang has been featured on CNN, SBS Australia, Intelligence Squared UK, Radio New Zealand and in various publications, including Vogue, Newsweek, the Straits Times, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She currently resides in New Zealand with her partner and fellow author, Michael Faudet 

In Conversation with Amy Timberlake author of Skunk and Badger

With Christine McFaul

Photo by Phil Timberlake

I loved Skunk and Badger. It was clever, funny, and unlike what I have been reading in the early reader category lately. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to go beyond the pages and learn more about the process of creating such an irresistibly quirky story.

Skunk and Badger are so perfectly paired. Was there a classic odd couple that inspired their characters?

It’s me! I mean, I am both of these characters. In some very real ways, this book is about my struggle with two characteristics of myself. I have my Important Rock Work and I fight for focus, focus, focus. And then there’s the Skunk side of me (joyful, playful, full of enthusiasms for nearly everything). I would like these two sides of myself to reconcile, and be good roommates. Is there hope? I am unsure. 

Which scene was most fun to write? Did you ever find yourself laughing out loud while concocting some of the more humorous exchanges?

I cannot remember! But yes, I chuckled as I wrote. ­North Twist has been a joyful place to inhabit.  

What was it like to work with the brilliant Jon Klassen? Were his illustrations how you pictured the characters / scenes while you were writing them or did they surprise you?

It was as if Jon plucked the characters straight from my head. I would open the email attachment and think, ‘Oh look, there’s Badger at his rock table.’ And then I’d realize I’d never seen Badger at his rock table, and I’d feel this chill. I kid you not, it was uncanny. So what’s it like working with Jon? A joy. I highly recommend it! 

This book does not shy away from using “big” words or from exploring subtle and complex themes. This seems like a rare choice in children’s books these days. Why did you decide to include both in Skunk and Badger?

I love words. I love their sounds. I love the way words roll on the tongue. Some words beg to be spoken for the pure pleasure of speaking them! I wanted kids to have that fun too, so I put all that play and music and syncopation into the sentences. And yes, this means that sometimes an unusual word puts in an appearance. 

I did think a lot about the vocabulary, and the presentation of the earth science. With the vocabulary, I’ve laid clues in the text – in lists of similar words, or in what Badger is thinking – so a young reader could understand by context. With the earth science, I took a lot of time and care, thinking everything through step-by-step. 

About the subtle themes: Yeah, I see what you mean, but life IS complex and kids live within life’s complexity. I don’t want to simplify what is not simple. I try to tell the truth as clearly as I can. I’m laughing now because SKUNK AND BADGER is a story with animals in sweaters, and yet, I don’t want too much sugar-coating! 

What do you hope readers will take away from this story (aside from a newfound obsession with chickens, of course!)?

It’s true! I imagine no one, myself included, will look at chickens in the same way after reading SKUNK AND BADGER. All those tufts! The feathered booties! And there really is a purple chicken – google ‘Lavender Orpington.’ 

Mostly, I’m hoping the story sticks in someone’s thoughts after the book is finished. I’m hoping for resonance, something to think about. Maybe it’ll be some aspect of Skunk and Badger’s relationship, or maybe it’ll be that someone will look at a rock with more interest. Perhaps someone will take up the ukulele! I’d love that! I do hope that people are brought together by these stories. I have fond memories of my parents reading stories aloud to me. I’d like SKUNK AND BADGER to be part of that reading-aloud tradition.    

Electronics, cell phones, computers, etc. are conspicuously absent in this story. Why did you choose not to include them? 

I’m chuckling. Yeah, there’s not that kind of tech in these stories. Kitchen gadgets – okay. Electricity? Fine. But they’re animals, and I have difficulty believing that animals would be as caught up in their electronics. North Twist doesn’t even have cars, so there are no roads, no parking spots. If you can’t walk somewhere, it’s too far.  

Are you more like Skunk or Badger?

I am definitely both -- see very long psychoanalysis of the writer in question number 1. 

With another fantastic novel that has gained a lot of praise and attention in Canada, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon?

EGG MARKS THE SPOT, the second Skunk and Badger story, will be published September 2021. This story takes them into the woods, and it’s got some turns! And Jon’s art is FANTASTIC. I cannot wait for you to see this book!  

What advice would you give to aspiring authors who are trying to navigate the publishing world?

To navigate the publishing world? You need an agent. That’s my short answer. Also, I think writing groups can be great. I have a dinner group of two other writers and pre-pandemic, we went out every month to catch up and talk business.  

But here’s what I try to do when I’m writing: I try my darndest to not pay attention to the publishing world. Instead, I ask myself: If I could only write one more book, what book would I write? Then I write that book. While writing, I try to find ways to let myself play. I am disciplined and I sit in the chair, but I want to have fun too! And if you’re like me, you may need some strategies for the chatter in your head – the naysaying, the recriminations, the reasons why writing this particular book is a bad idea. Finally, when I’ve done draft after draft and it’s as good as I can get it, I send it to my agent. I could not navigate publishing without my agent. 

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

I like John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, and Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. Also, Robert McKee’s Story is helpful once you’ve got a very good draft. 

BUT the best thing I’ve done for my writing recently has been to find writers I love and read everything they’ve written. I’ve only been doing this a few years, but the result has felt almost magical. It’s as if I wake up a better writer. I don’t know why this works for me, but it does. 

Anyway, here are some writers from my list in case you’d like to sample a few: Jane Gardam, Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood, Paulette Jiles, Tim Winton, Tessa Hadley, Jim Shepherd, Tove Jansson, Rebecca Makkai, Pat Barker, Brian Doyle and Miriam Toews.

Hey, thanks for having me! It was fun to chat!

In Conversation with Emily St. John Mandel author of The Glass Hotel

With Kaylie Seed

Photo by Sarah Shatz

The setting within The Glass Hotel goes between Canada and the United States. What kind of research did you have to do to gain insight into all of the different places your characters find themselves?

I hold dual citizenship between the United States and Canada—I was born and raised in Canada, but my father’s originally from California—which makes crossing the border a fairly frictionless experience. I think that because I’m used to moving easily across that border, my books tend to do the same thing. I grew up on and around Vancouver Island, so I didn’t need to do much in the way of geographical research. I’ve been living in New York City for the past seventeen years, so I know the city very well, but something I tried to convey in the book is that people living at different income levels live in fundamentally different cities, so I did have to do some research into what it might be like to be a billionaire in New York City. (Things like the existence of house managers, and how many housekeepers you need per thousand square feet for your mansion, that kind of thing.)

The only setting that required sustained research was the container ship. I read a fascinating book on the topic—Ninety Percent of Everything, by Rose George—and spent a lot of time reading blogs and watching YouTube videos by seafarers. 

There are a few different characters that the reader follows throughout The Glass Hotel. Can you tell our readers where your inspiration for Vincent and Jonathan came from and how you developed their distinct voices?

 I’ll start with Jonathan. Every character in this book is completely fictional, but the central crime in the story is closely based on Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which imploded in New York City in 2008. I was fascinated by that crime, but the thing is, while the crime was interesting, the criminal was not. If you read prison interviews with Bernie Madoff, he’s an utterly uninteresting figure, just a garden-variety sociopath blaming everyone else for his downfall. So with Jonathan, I wanted to create a character who’d committed this horrible act, but who wasn’t completely two-dimensional. He’s a criminal, but he’s capable of kindness, and he truly loved his first wife. 

Once I realized that the story was going to revolve around a financial crime, I realized that by default, I was writing about money as a theme. That became an organizing principle of the book: I decided early on that every section had to be about money in one way or another. I’ve always been interested in the phenomenon of trophy wives, these young women who monetize their beauty and make a very clear and mercenary choice in who they marry. I liked the idea of a wildly intelligent trophy wife, because that just wasn’t a character I’d seen before, and that’s where Vincent came from.

The Glass Hotel touches on some heavy topics including addiction. Why did you decide to explore this subject and what do you hope readers took away with them from your story?

 I've known a number of people over the years with addiction issues, and have a lot of sympathy for their struggles. I didn’t write the story with a message in mind; I just hope that people find it to be an interesting book.

Writing a novel is challenging, particularly one of this caliber. What did you learn while going through the process of creating and writing The Glass Hotel? Either regarding the topics within your novel and/or about yourself as an author?

This novel was very, very difficult to write. My previous novels only took about two and a half years to write; The Glass Hotel took five. I learned a lot about perseverance. There were a couple of moments where I contemplated turning the novel into two unrelated novellas—one of them a ghost story set partly on a ship, the other one about a Ponzi scheme—because I didn’t feel like I had the skill or the talent to pull all of the threads together into a unified whole. 

You have written a fantastic novel that has gained a lot of praise and attention: will there be another book from you soon and if so, can you tell us a bit about it?

Thank you for calling it fantastic! There will be another book, but probably not soon. I’ve been focused on a TV project lately, which I’ve very much enjoyed—I’m involved in adapting The Glass Hotel as a limited series. 

What advice would you give to aspiring authors who are working on their first few novels and are trying to navigate the publishing world?

I think an important idea starting point is that you shouldn’t assume the publishing world is closed to you. There’s a false narrative out there that in order to be published, you have to live in the right place, or know the right people, or have the right degree, or go to the right parties. It just isn’t true. I mean, let's be clear, I assume those things don’t hurt, but I don’t have a high school diploma, let alone an MFA, and I knew absolutely no one when I was starting out. My first agent found me in her slush pile. I do live in Brooklyn, but to be honest I’ve never perceived any career benefit from this; I love living here because it’s an interesting and beautiful place, but also it’s an expensive place to live and even before Covid I wasn’t going to book parties (nine out of ten of them are super boring!)

Other practical matters: you will likely never have enough time to write, because you’ll need to fit your writing around the margins of your day job, or your childcare responsibilities, or whatever else life throws at you, so it’s important to be ruthless with your time. In the pre-pandemic world, when I used to see friends, I had a pretty firm rule that if I had lunch plans with a friend on a Monday, I probably didn’t have time to see another friend for at least a couple days afterward, because I needed to get some writing done. I mostly stopped going to book parties years ago, because like I said they’re usually boring, and also they take up too much time. Also I don't watch nearly as much television as I'd like to, because there just aren't enough hours in the day. 

Related: if you tell yourself that you can only work under particular circumstances—e.g. in your home office, at a certain hour of the day, with a certain amount of time available to you to work, etc.—you’ll get much less work done than if you can train yourself to write anywhere, under almost any circumstances. (Can you write for a half-hour at your kitchen table with noise-blocking headphones while your kid’s watching Sesame Street? Or assuming this pandemic ends, could you grab 45 minutes at Starbucks on your lunch break?) 

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

I think the books that have influenced me the most are Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Française, Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. I find Mailer pretty hit-or-miss and dislike several of his books, but The Executioner’s Song has a clarity and lucidity about it that changed the way I write. Suite Française is my idea of a perfect novel; again, that quality of clarity and lucidity that I value so highly, and in a kind of deceptive simplicity that’s a pleasure to read and really hard to pull off. Await Your Reply changed the way I think about structure and point of view

In Conversation with Candace Bushnell author of Rules for Being a Girl

With Jodene Wylie

Photo by Wendy Carlson

Rules for Girls was co-authored by Candace Bushnell and Katie Cotugno. We are thrilled that Candace was able to chat with us about their new release!

Rules for Being a Girl has been published at such an important time in our history. What drew you to tell this young adult story and why now? Was there a triggering event or specific moment of inspiration that started the wheels for this book in motion? 

Candace Bushnell: For me, it was definitely inspired by me-too and so many women speaking out. These kinds of encounters have been going on forever. I’ve had them. And so have so many other women I know. Not exactly like this one, but similar. 

You have an established career in bringing women’s voices and women’s stories to the forefront – and not always in society’s perfectly shaped packages. Is it your goal to create community for women via your books and to help women find their so-called imperfect selves within their pages? Why is it important that we keep creating and telling these stories?

CB: The world is still a very patriarchal place. There are some realities of being human that are universal. This kind of abuse towards women begins young, and follows a pattern. You see this pattern in men like Harvey Weinstein. It is important to speak about it because abusers get their power by keeping their victims silent.  

How did you come to write Rules for Being a Girl as a co-authorship and what was the writing process like? Did you write a chapter and then review with each other afterwards or did you each have areas that you took care of independently? 

CB: We worked very closely with our mutual editor, who put us together on the project. I’d long been an admirer of Katie’s work. I’d never collaborated on a book before, so for me, it was a bit more like working on a script, which is also a collaborative effort. That being said, I think the brilliance of the book is due to Katie!

Interspersed throughout Rules for Being a Girl are what appears to be “recommended additional reading” of short stories and books with core feminist narratives. Was this a deliberate supplement to the novel and how did you select which stories to include? 

CB:  It was a deliberate supplement and we all worked together to suggest books. 

As she is about to embark on adulthood, Marin is put through a series of significant trials. Not only is she tasked to step out of her comfort zone to better discover who she is (leaving the safety net and security of her original friend-group behind) but she is also ushered to discover a strong voice from within.  How was Marin’s character developed? How did you strategically decide the trials she would face, when she would face them, and in what areas of her life? And how did you know that you had successfully helped her find her voice?  

CB: It started with a very general idea of wanting to work in this area and then it’s a question of putting down the beats (again, in this case, in an outline). Once you start putting things down, it’s easy to see the areas that aren’t working, that don’t “feel” right. So it’s instinct mixed with rewriting. And then there are polishes and it suddenly, somehow, magically works. (Or not. Sometimes books are like souffles.)

There are a number of secondary characters that impact Marin’s journey of self-discovery including Gram, Chloe, and Gray. Why was it important for these characters, these crucial figures in her life, to be present and impactful throughout her journey? What role did they play in helping her find her way?

CB: That’s a very good question. To me, it’s the kind of question I’d like readers to answer. And to ask themselves who to they have in their lives who are similar. I’d love to hear the answers!

We are always interested in reading more books! Will you and Katie be collaborating on another upcoming novel? And do you either of you, independently, have any upcoming books we can look forward to?

CB: Yes, I do have upcoming books, but I haven’t written them yet! Katie has many as well—so hopefully we will collaborate again in the future.

Cloud Lake Literary is for writers as well as readers. You and Katie have successful publishing careers. What advice would you give to aspiring authors on writing and in sharing their work with a broader audience? 

Sharing one’s writing is probably one of the most vulnerable things a person can do. So you’ve got to have courage. And bravery. You have to be prepared for people who won’t like it, or simply aren’t interested. And when this happens, you have to know how to persevere. Press on, as the English used to say. 

What is your “must-read” book recommendations and which books have had the most impact and influence on your writing?

Books are such a personal and individual thing. That’s the beauty of them. I have my list of books that influenced me, but they’re probably irrelevant to a lot of other writers (and readers). I think everyone should read whatever makes them feel good and helps them make sense of the world!

Photo by Wendy Carlson

In Conversation with Thomas King author of Indians on Vacation

with Dahl Botterill - Interview Saturday, September 26th, 2020

Dahl Botterill: Let's start at the beginning. What was the seed of inspiration that you first realized was going to become the novel we have before us? What drew you to write this story?

Thomas King: Well, first off, there's never really a seed. My partner Helen and I had been doing quite a bit of travel - in spite of my best efforts - and I thought, "well, maybe I'll write a travel book of some sort," and she said "don't write a travel book, write a novel," and I thought, "ah, well, maybe." So that kicked around for a while and I began thinking about some of the places we'd been, and some of the things we did, and I began coming up with a set of characters and voices, and that's normally where I start... with characters and voices.

And then it just went from there. I just started writing the thing, I didn't have an idea of what I was going to do or where I was gonna go; I just kind of find my way through it and sometimes - much of the time - that works. Some of the times it doesn't.

DB: So more a process than a seed. Did writing Indians on Vacation provide any particular challenges?

TK: Well, the only challenge, really, was my memory, and that was trying to remember the places accurately. Normally when I write a novel I create everything, and so I'm in control of that world. With Indians on Vacation there was the expectation that if I talked about Prague, that I talked about Prague in an accurate way... or Budapest, or any of the other places Mimi and Bird go to. So, trying to remember those places, and remember them accurately - and remembering my reaction so that I could incorporate it into the piece - was a bit of a challenge.

Normally I don't do that when I'm writing fiction.

DB: The aspect of writing a travel book and a novel simultaneously and having it work in both ways...

TK: Yes, it's a novel first, and has travel elements to it, exactly.

DB: On the flip side, as opposed to challenges, what was your favourite thing to come out of that process? Were there any tidbits of revelation or research that you found especially rewarding?

TK: Well, I try to do as little research as possible. Like I said, I like to make things up, but I suppose the fun part of that novel, for me, was Eugene and the other demons. When I discovered that I could create them as characters within the piece and use them for all sorts of nefarious purposes. That was kind of a delight, and I was looking forward to the sections where Eugene, and Kitty, and the twins, and Chip, came into play.

DB: Bird's demons. They're obviously entertaining, and they serve brilliantly to illustrate how different Bird and Mimi are in their personalities, but they also provide both Bird and the reader with some insight into what makes him tick. Could you tell us a little more about them? I love hearing that they were one of your favourite aspects because I really enjoyed them myself; what led to their development, and how that decision influenced your portrayal of Bird's journey and travels?

TK: Well, I talked to my partner about what I wanted to do; I told her I wanted to create a character who was sort of haunted, by some of the things that he did do and didn't do, and she said, "Well, if you're going to do that you might as well deal with your demons," and I thought she said 'you're going to have to deal with Eugene.' I thought she was just being funny and so I said, "You mean Eugene and the other demons," and she said "Yeah."

And when I said 'Eugene and the other demons' out loud, I thought, 'you know, that's a good name for a rock group, but it's also a good name for the demons that all of us walk around with. Once that started, I had Eugene, so I looked around to see what other kinds of demons we live with, and *bang*, there was Kitty, and Desi, and Didi, and Chip, all ready and available for me to use within the novel.

DB: Very early in the story, while sitting down at a restaurant, Bird laments that he and Mimi have forgotten their novels; what do you picture the two of them reading?

TK: Oh, anything they can get their hands on. Whenever Helen and I travel, we always try to travel with books. She can read off of a pad; I cannot, I have to have a physical book in my hand. Whenever we go to eat dinner, we read. We don't talk to each other, we just read and eat our food. You may think we're weird, but actually we've see other people do the same thing. It doesn't matter what we read, there's no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes, if we get into a country where english is not a predominant part of the language or culture, and we go into a bookstore that has one or two english novels, we have to just make do, and sometimes those things are awful... and sometimes they're okay. So we'll read anything from just literary fiction to mysteries... we don't read horror, we don't read sci-fi for the most part. I think if I had a choice between not reading and reading a horror book, I'd choose the not reading.

DB: Think about writing something else instead of reading that...

TK: Yeah, I can work on poetry, just get a napkin out and start scribbling away, or work on a piece of a novel, an idea for a novel.

DB: Prague. Much of the story takes place in Prague. Obviously some of that is related to your own personal knowledge of it; is there any other particular reason why it was chosen as the backdrop to Indians on Vacation? Was it mostly familiarity, or had it struck you in some way as an ideal setting for Bird and Mimi’s story?

TK: No, I don't know why; I could have chosen Amsterdam, I could have chosen Paris. Paris has been done to death by novelists, I don't know that Prague has, to that degree, I don't think it has. Prague just struck me as a good place to set it, in part because of the Charles bridge that kind of connects two sides of the city together. I was intrigued by the bridge with its statues of saints, that aren't the original statues anymore for the most part - many of those are reproductions, nobody seems to mind. It's just that mass of tours walking back and forth across the bridge every morning; I don't know what else would have drawn me to Prague. When we were in Prague, I would get up each morning and say to Helen, "So, we're in Prague," and it sort of became a little mantra I was able to use in the novel itself, and I kind of liked it, but no real good reason for setting it in Prague, to be honest with you.

DB: What aspect of the novel do you hope readers will take away with them after reading Indians on Vacation?

TK: No, readers will take away from novels what they will take away from novels, and whether I want them to do something or not doesn't matter. Once I turn a story loose in the world, it's loose; I've got no more control over that. I've had people come up to me and start talking to me about one of my books, and what I meant to do with it, and I'm just sort of banging my head against a wall, and saying, 'How could you possibly think that's what I had in mind?' So I've given up on trying to anticipate what people may or may not do.

I write primarily to please myself, and to please my partner, and if other people want to come along for the ride I'm more than happy to have them on the bus.

DB: I can totally understand that; I know I've many times been told, "You should send your thesis to the person who wrote the books," and I just exclaim, "No! It's completely my own reading of something!"

Okay, a few last questions, not directly related to the novel...

As someone with a prolific and established writing career, what advice would you give to aspiring writers on their own journeys?

TK: Well, first of all, unless you're really desperately drawn to writing literature, to where you just can't do anything else, find something else to do. It's a hard business - anything in the arts is a hard business - and there's no rhyme or reason for who's going to be successful in that and who is not. It can be very frustrating; I have people I know who desperately want to have some of their work published and they just can't seem to get any traction on that, and some are pretty decent writers. So it's a hard business to begin with, and it requires a fair amount of dedication because nobody writes those books but you. It's not as though you're building something, where you have ten other people that are helping you do it, and then you produce a product and the product is sold and you get your piece of the profit off it.

In writing, it's just you, and you have to be disciplined enough to stay at it. It doesn't mean you have to have a schedule, it doesn't mean you have to have a certain number of pages done every day; it just means that you have to be diligent, and you have to keep at it. So, I would say to would-be writers, that you need to consider that, to consider that kind of time, alone time... if you're a really gregarious person, writing might be a tough sell, because in order to get a book done, you have to spend a lot of time in a room with the door shut, you know? I like it, myself, but then, I'm weird. But, if it's something you're drawn to, then go for it; why not? My idea is that whatever you do in life, it should make you happy. If it doesn't make you happy, you shouldn't be doing it.

DB: Do you know yet, just what's next? We are always on the lookout for new books and stories. I know this one has just come out, but are you working on anything else?

TK: I've already finished something else; I've finished the next literary novel, it'll be out in May of 2021. So that's done, I just got a look at the cover copy the other day, as a matter of fact. And I'm working on a sixth Dreadfulwater - that's my mystery series.

DB: Yes, I'm familiar with it; I haven't read Obsidian yet, but I've read the first four and that one's next.

TK: Yeah, so there's number six; I'm about two thirds of the way through that, and then I've got another two projects that I'm tinkering with, to see if any of those interest me, if any of those have traction... they're both nonfiction pieces.

DB: So lots on the horizon, and I saw that the film documentary, Latimer's Inconvenient Indian, also just won a couple of awards, so that's exciting too!

TK: Yeah, Michelle's film did fairly well at TIFF, congratulations to her. I'm not a filmmaker; at one point in time I thought I was going to spend my life writing scripts. I thought that was pretty glamourous, getting to hang out with actors and what-not, being on film sets, maybe even do a bit of acting myself, perhaps. I discovered very quickly that it wasn't the kind of life that I wanted. Writing scripts meant that I had to work with a great many other people, many of whom were not writers in any way shape or form, and frankly I just don't play well with the rest of the children, it's always better for me to be on my own in the sandbox, as it were.

DB: Was that by any chance - just wondering - was that related to the Medicine River movie from years ago?

TK: Well, the Medicine River movie gave me a pretty good look at it, but no, Medicine River was pretty good. I had a good time on Medicine River. I wrote the script, I got to do a bit of acting - that was a mistake, I should never have done that, boy I was lousy - but I had a good time, got to hang out with the actors, made some good friends on set.

No, it was later one, I did some standalone film scripts. I would work up a film script that I thought was pretty good, and then between the director and the producers and whoever else, they would change it in ways that were horrifying to me, and made no sense as a story. So I saw that if you were a writer for film scripts you had very little control over what happened in the end, and I just didn't take kindly to that at all. On the one hand, you could say "Well Tom, you really didn't understand the business of writing scripts, you didn't understand how scripts had to be set up." Or you could say, "Well, you know, just grow up, that's what happens on all film scripts, writers get dumped as soon as a final copy of the script is turned in, and then they begin to change it around." But for me, if I'm going to take the time to write a story, I want that story to stay intact. I don't want it to be battered about through the boardrooms of Hollywood until it comes out the other end looking like... you know, if I put steak into the process and I get hamburger out the other side, I'm a little bit disappointed, let's say that.

When it comes to books-to-film, if somebody wants to make a movie out of one of my books, I say "fine," but I step away from the actual script-writing process. That way I don't get upset, my heart's not broken, I just stay out of the way; as they say, I just take the money and run...

DB: You get to see what somebody else got out of it without seeing your own efforts.

TK: That's right, that's right, you know? And frankly, films of my material are not my film. In some cases, they have little to do with the book. Sometimes they're just a springboard for the filmmaker, so that's their piece of creativity that they bring into the world; I brought my piece in, now you bring another piece in. The relationship? Well, they may be kissing cousins, they may not have seen each other in this world.

DB: Okay, one last question, then. What have you been reading yourself of late? And of course, is there any book has had a particular impact or influence on your writing? 

TK: Boy, that's a question I always try to avoid because it means I have to say that when I'm writing, I don't read much. If I do read, it's normally junk literature. I read over breakfast so I just want something that's easy to read; it doesn't have to have any great literary merit to it, I don't have to hunker down and pay attention. And most of the time, I'm writing, so my reading is pretty sketchy. Helen reads a lot more than I do these days. As far as books that have influenced me greatly, I don't know that it's books, but it's pieces of books sometimes, that come to mind.

DB: I know I can remember if I liked something, and snippets that stuck in my head, but I seldom remember the details of the plot.

TK: Yeah, it's just sort of a feeling I get from certain books. I seldom read a book again. People always ask me, "What book would you reread?" and I don't know that I would reread a book. Maybe I would, but I certainly don't reread myself ever. Once a book is published I don't even crack the cover unless I've got to do a reading from it.

DB: Well, thank you very much for speaking to me; I for one will be looking forward to all of these upcoming works. Have a great day!

In Conversation with Hailey Rodgers author of See Me

With Kaylie Seed

I must say, I think it is so important to constantly be learning and becoming more of ourselves especially in a world that wants you to conform to the “norm”. Where did you get the idea and inspiration to write See Me which is a guide to living your authentic life?

“Be fearlessly authentic.” These were three words I began to live by in my second year of university. The result? Happiness and success. 

In January 2019, which was during my second year in university, I was approached by one of my best friends, Julia Sun. She told me she was offered to write a book through an organization called, Creator Institute, who was looking for additional passionate writers to embark on this (crazy, insane, unimaginable) journey. She asked me if I wanted to hop on board and write a book in less than a year. At first I was perplexed at the thought of writing a book while in school, working part-time, participating in various extracurricular activities, and overall, being only 19 years old. Instead of succumbing to self-doubt and being intimidated by this daunting endeavour, I thought to myself, “Why the hell not?”

I began to think about a question I had asked myself earlier in university, “Why can’t we be authentic now at this young age?” I decided I would create a self-help (rather, self-discovery) book for young adults and provide my insights for how they can live an authentic life. I decided to incorporate my own experiences and twenty other individuals’ stories to explain how every person is both capable and deserving to live an authentic life.  My goal with my book was to inspire authentic living in young adults because we all deserve to feel confident in who we truly are.

Regardless of whether you read my book or not, you deserve to live an authentic life. One of my favourite quotes is: “Be fearlessly authentic.” I think the fearless element is a significant component of authentic living. To be authentic, is to feel confident in who you are as a whole, and to be able to express that in all facets of life. It’s one’s uncanny ability to go against the norm and to remain true to who they are. It’s one’s ability to love who they are, flaws and all. It’s one’s ability to pursue their values, goals, and dreams regardless of what anyone else tells them. Ultimately, being authentic is to be unapologetically yourself.

How did you choose the diverse array of people to interview for See Me?

The most interesting thing about my journey with my book was that as soon as I set my intention to write my book, I believe the Universe conspired to help me publish it. As soon as this opportunity presented itself, I had full belief that I was going to do this. As a result, people and events were placed in my life in a way that allowed me to share what I shared. I didn’t have a plan for my book whatsoever. Rather these individuals came into my life over the course of writing it which made the process so beautiful and enriching. Each individual was authentic but had an incredibly unique lesson to provide. They taught me so much and everything they shared was so invaluable that I had to put it in my book. 

What is the number one piece of advice you would give our readers on their journey to become their most authentic selves?

This is a challenging question as there are so many elements that go into living an authentic life (heck, I’m still learning!). However, if someone were to take that first initial step to living an authentic life, I would tell them to face their fears of being seen for who they truly are which then leads them to overcoming the fear of judgment. As soon as you let go of this whole idea of being judged (because judgment is inevitable), your life becomes a whole lot more liberating and meaningful. I recently discussed this in an Instagram post... 

One of the biggest challenges I faced while writing my book, See Me, was the fear of being judged. Sometimes when I was writing I would limit myself because I was afraid of what my readers would think of me. This was something I had experienced for the first few months of my writing journey. However, near the end of finalizing my manuscript I realized that if I did not share everything that makes me who I am, then I would be contradicting the main message of my book: be fearlessly authentic. Talking about authenticity and actually being authentic are two different things. As such, I realized that I needed to overcome this fear and to be authentic in all aspects of my writing (and of course, my life as well).

With any personal pursuit, when this sense of fear of being judged begins impacting your goal, think about how many people would miss out on the value of your work if it was never shared with the world. Think about how many people need your help and that your actions can positively impact many. You will have substantially more supporters and people benefited than those who do not support you. Remind yourself that any personal pursuit is a brave endeavour and that you should be proud of your accomplishment. 

Criticism and judgment is inevitable (yes, I have gotten some critical reviews) but at the end of the day you must ask yourself? “𝐈𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧’𝐬 𝐣𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 

𝐬𝐚𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞?” It’s up to you to answer this question.

Something else I did not add is that judgment is based on someone else’s perspective. Emphasizing SOMEONE ELSE’S. So at the end of the day, if someone is judging you in a negative light, that is a THEM problem, not a you problem. You know who you are at the end of the day, so stop trying to appease their perspective of you. It’s unfortunate because I sometimes get wrapped up in trying to be perfect and please just to prevent judgment but that judgment still happens anyways! As soon as you recognize that judgment is a THEM problem and not a YOU problem, your life is so much more liberating.

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing See Me?

As someone who was previously so shy and afraid of the world, I was surprised I developed this new philosophy: “Why not now?” 

I always used to think that we had to reach certain milestones in our lives to achieve audacious goals...I never thought that a young person could write a book. However, when I was presented the opportunity, it was like my fears were lifted and I said to myself “Why not now?” I realized that no matter what age you are, you can do whatever you want and make a positive impact. 

As I continue to tell myself “Why not now?” I continue to achieve great things. I think a lot of us develop timelines in our heads for achievement but as soon as you let go of those timelines and go for it, MAGIC HAPPENS! 

With such a great debut novel, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon?

I am hoping to publish another book in December 2021. Details will probably come out about this next year as I’m writing it slower this time around. 

Now that you’ve finished the process of publishing your first novel, what advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Read: The BEST way to learn how to write is to READ! Choose topics that intrigue you and read about them. 

Just Start: The best way to start writing is to START. It does not matter if you write the best introduction of all time right at the very beginning. Honestly, whenever I start writing, usually the first thing I put down on paper does not get included in the final piece. Starting is simply a way for you to generate ideas. 

Do Not Force It: The time allocated to researching, brainstorming, drafting, and editing varies with every piece. Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes and sometimes it takes me over a week. I think it is important to recognize that creativity comes in bursts. Do not waste your time overthinking your idea. 

Be Consistent: Although this may appear to contradict tip #3, it is important to note that writing (particularly a book) takes a lot of time and work. The word “consistency” is a little bit different for me. When I wrote my book, I had to consistently show up every single day to work on my book. Now, whether that be 20 minutes or 12 hours, it always varied. It is showing up to your work consistently that will allow you to thrive. 

Understand that the more you write, the better you will be at it: I often laugh when I read my first article I ever published online (for a platform called Her Campus) and compare it to pieces I recently wrote. My writing has improved drastically over the past two years and it was all mostly self-taught. The more your practice writing the better you will get at it. I think that the most beautiful thing about craft is that you will constantly grow and improve with it. 

Embrace Peer Editing: I truly believe that an ingenious piece of work doesn’t come through writing a story, rather it’s through the constant editing and revising that makes a writer’s work flourish. Peer editing can be daunting for some, however the more criticism you get, the better. You need to find someone who you are acquainted with who will give you honest feedback. 

You must have a passion for writing and what you are writing about!: This is the number one tip I can give you. Passion is the secret ingredient to thrive in the world of craft. Do not force yourself to do something you do not want to do. Do it because you love writing and what you are writing about.  

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

This is such a hard question because I find every book is unique in its own way and I think that’s what makes craft so beautiful! However, I got into the self-help genre when I read Sarah Knight’s, You Do You. I also enjoy memoirs like Chanel Miller’s, Know My Name. I love reading about stories of people who have overcome adversities and have used those hardships to enact positive change. 

In Conversation with Mallory Tater author of The Birth Yard

With Kaylie Seed

Photo by Rossanne Clamp

While I know that you have previously written a poetry collection (a book I cannot wait to get my hands on, by the way!), I just want to say congratulations on the publishing of your debut novel The Birth Yard! I thoroughly enjoyed The Birth Yard and I’m so excited to have the chance to interview a fellow Canadian. If you wouldn’t mind, I have some questions to ask you about The Birth Yard as well as your writing process.

Before women are sent to the Birth Yards they live with their families in The Den. What inspired the idea of The Den and the cult-like following that resides there?

As someone who grew up in a very traditional Catholic family, the idea this powerful institution and faith carrying on a perpetuation of heteronormativity, homophobia and othering with the protected term of “religion” has always fascinated me, especially when I pivoted away from faith and became an atheist. Sable, once she has more growth and understanding of her own maturation, sort of gets her own bird’s eye view of her world, her culture. I think maybe the same thing happened to me with Catholicism. 

But  I think the very first time I was captivated by extremist cults was during an Oprah episode I watched after school covering when the FLDS compound led by Warren Jeffs was raided. Many girls who had been sexually abused were rescued and put on live television to tell their stories. I thought of those girls as I was writing The BY. 

There are so many different rituals and rules in The Den; can you tell our readers what kind of research you had to do for The Birth Yard?

I think we’re really fortunate to live in a time where so much media and narrative on topics of our choice are very much at our fingertips. It doesn’t take much to get a top ten list of infamous cults such as the FLDS, People’s Temple, the Westboro Baptist Church, Children of God, The Source Family, and so on. There is a scene in The BY where the girls are forced to drink Feles’ hair and blood steeped into tea. I based this from the Aum Supreme Truth Cult in Japan who drank their leader’s blood as an initiation ritual. What I also think is really interesting is how much cults have in common no matter what their mission statements are, who their leaders are or what their numbers are. The main goal is control of its participants, the washing away of individuality and encouraging ultimate devotion. This control is achieved through labour (the members of the Source Family cult in California actually sold their houses and moved to work in the cult’s vegan restaurant and gave all of their earnings to the leader), through control of fertility and the female body (FLDS child-brides were and still are forced into polygamy at tragically young ages), and through chemical indoctrination through the use of drugs (Israel’s Lev Tahor cult forced its members to take psychotropic drugs). The examples of control tactics are endless once you really go down the rabbit hole. I actually had challenges picking and choosing how The Den would enforce its rules and what kind of rituals they would abhold. They’re less of a spiritual/propaganda group and more drug-oriented than anything else. And while the “cult rabbit hole” I went down was fascinating, it’s not dissimilar from True Crime narratives—they’re heavy. They’re pain-filled. They’re unkind. It wasn’t always easy to research if I’m honest. 

As a follow-up to the question above, what was the most challenging theme to write about in The Birth Yard and why was it an important theme to portray and work through?

The sexual assault and abuse brought into the lives of characters I’d grown to love. The silencing of their voices. Their hurt and fearfulness. But without emulating the pain of young women who currently live in cults, or those who have lost their lives in cults or who survived their experiences and escaped, the book would feel inauthentic, too sanitized. Sable’s resilience through her pain is what makes the novel move and find a sense of light in the dark. So yes, writing about Mamie’s molestation at the hands of Isaac or how Lion hurts the girls at the yard made me bitterly uncomfortable and sad but I think it was important because there is truth and gravity to that pain. And there is strength within the women of The Den to hold love for themselves and one another as a result of shared trauma and experiences. 

Sable goes from a timid, conforming girl to a boisterous, freethinking woman. Where did your inspiration for Sable come from? We’d also like to know more about creating her unique voice!

Thank you for saying her voice was unique. I haven’t been eighteen for a decade now (haha) so I tried to develop the youth in her voice—the curiosity, the naivety and then this anti-authoritarian underbelly that seems to storm out of her by the time she is at the Ceres yard. I have three sisters and we were all born within six years of each other. I think seeing how different we are, how close yet independent we are while having the same childhood fascinates me. When did we all of the sudden question our own faith-filled home lives, our own rules and rituals, our own losses, achievements and failures and make sense of them independent from our parents and one another? I am not sure. It just happened. It just happens to young people. This slow sense of reaching toward your own autonomy and your own sense of self once you’re almost into adulthood is so vulnerable and beautiful. I think it happens to Sable in the same way it happens to all young people. Except for her, it happens once she becomes pregnant and her innocence is truly fading. It’s the same way any teenager may ask themselves what do I believe in? Who do I want to surround myself with? Who do I want to be? But the situation for Sable is more dire and extreme because The Den is such a harsh, controlling environment.  

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing The Birth Yard?

 I learned I struggle with spatial descriptions—A lot of going up and down stairs in those Den bungalows early on! 

On a more serious note, I honestly learned more about the female body and pregnancy. I am not a mother and have never been pregnant. So I had to have a lot of dialogues with women I knew who had had those experiences as well as did some research into a more specific anatomical look at what happens to the body and the mind in each trimester. It’s not always a dramatic water break in a taxi on the way to the hospital like on television. And it’s not just always having to pee and craving dill pickles and being cranky. Pregnancy is so slow and delicate and terrifying and full of so much anticipation physically and emotionally. I had to work harder to understand what that might feel like and unlearn stereotypes and preconceptions of what pregnancy is. 

With such a fantastic debut novel, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon? 

Thank you! I am currently working on a novel about reality television. That’s all I’ll say because it’s still marinating with possibility and plot. But it will be funny/satirical. Unlike The BY. 

As someone who also works in the publishing field and who has founded a publishing house, how different is the process of publishing your own novel through a publisher compared to being a publisher yourself? 

 I’ve never been asked this question before! So I am the publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press. We publish limited edition poetry chapbooks. I think there are similarities in that, as a publisher, I feel a responsibility to care for our author’s work, wishes and sentiments. At HarperCollins, they did the same for me.  It’s also really nice to get a sense of what the experience is like on the publishing side of things to have a fuller understanding of the process, the labour and the love that goes into bringing a book into the world. 

As a follow-up question to the one above, what advice would you give to aspiring authors who are trying to navigate the publishing world

Read work by the publishers you admire. Volunteer at literary festivals and get to know local published authors in your community. Build up literary journal publications to help with being eligible for grants that can help fund your larger writing projects. Listen to the editorial boards and readers who may say no to your work—don’t see it as a personal insult and be open-minded to modifying and shifting the work to hold more clarity, relevance or timeliness. Rejection 100% stings but without it, you can’t improve and make alterations to your art. It’s an opportunity to reset and try a new approach until you work toward making a piece tonally intriguing, mechanically sound, socially conscious and uniquely your own voice. 

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

My must-read right now is How A Woman Becomes a Lake by Marjorie Celona. Stunning, muscular, highly narrative book with a good edge of mystery. It’s one I couldn’t put down. And the dialogue is exquisite. 

 I always come back to Jeffrey Eugenide’s The Virgin Suicides as one of my all-time favourites. It’s lush, chorally narrated, atmospherically mesmerizing and I have still yet to read anything else quite like it.

In Conversation with Waubgeshig Rice author of Moon of the Crusted Snow

With Kaylie Seed

Waub, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Moon of the Crusted Snow and I’m really looking forward to doing this interview with you about this haunting dystopian novel as well as your writing process!

I, personally, love a dystopian plot and Moon of the Crusted Snow knocked it out of the park! Where did you get the idea and inspiration to write Moon of the Crusted Snow? 

Thank you very much! I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’ve been a big fan of dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction since I was a teen, and when I started writing creatively, I made a goal of one day trying to write a story like that from an Indigenous perspective. The main influence, though, was the big blackout of August 2003 that impacted a big part of eastern North America. I was living in Toronto at the time, but that day I happened to be back in my home community of Wasauksing (which is about two hours north of Toronto) visiting family. When we learned it was a widespread and very serious outage, my two younger brothers and I started making survival plans. We thought about the people in our community we could partner with to make sure everyone was fed and safe. It seemed like a natural response for us, and it was actually very comforting to be there in a time of potential crisis. When I started dreaming up Moon of the Crusted Snow, I often recalled those days and how as Anishinaabeg, we had a very different response to a potentially world-ending moment compared to a lot of the dystopian books I’d read throughout my life. Also, I was very aware of the apocalypse my people already survived by being colonized and displaced. So all those factors came together quite organically for me.

The central setting for Moon of the Crusted Snow is a Northern Reserve in Canada. Can you tell our readers more about the setting and its importance in your novel?

It’s a fictional First Nation in far northern Ontario, about 300 km north of the northernmost fictional city. I wanted to make it more of a remote place to create space between the people who live there and those in the south to slowly build tension as the world-ending event - a power and communications blackout - unfolds. The people who live there were displaced from their original homelands closer to the Great Lakes by the federal government. They have a close connection to the land, and live mostly according to traditional land-based teachings. But it’s a community in transition because of new infrastructure like a road connection to the south, a hydroelectric dam, and more reliable cell and internet service. As a result, some residents are becoming a little detached from the land as this crisis strikes. The ones who cope best are those who can still find sustenance in the land. That’s one of the key themes in the story.

Evan Whitesky is incredibly smart and resourceful. Where did your inspiration for Evan come from?

Evan is based on the everyday people in reserves everywhere who are doing good things for their communities. I think the majority of people living in First Nations are like him. They’re resourceful, family-oriented, and dedicated to their nations. He’s a bit of an amalgam of some friends and relatives from Wasauksing. I’m inspired every day by the people back home who work hard to keep the community running in a good way. The pandemic has really brought those communal efforts into focus. A lot of people came together to ensure everyone stayed safe and healthy. I’m really inspired by them, and I’m proud of what they do for all of us. I often call Evan a “Rez everyman” because people like him help bust stereotypes about Indigenous people.

You incorporated Anishinaabe language and tradition into your novel. Was this something you learned as a child or was it something that you had to do some research on while writing Moon on the Crusted Snow? 

I was fortunate to grow up in my community during a time in the 1980s when a lot of people were reconnecting with Anishinaabe traditions. So I took part in ceremonies and customs from a very young age. I learned how to sing at the big drum and dance in powwows. What drew me most to my culture, though, were the stories. I was eager to learn about my heritage through the stories the elders told, whether they were about our history or fun trickster tales. I know some Anishinaabemowin (the language), but I’m nowhere close to being a fluent speaker. But the dialogue and words in the book are the extent of my knowledge. Fortunately one of my brothers is nearly fluent, so I consulted with him to ensure I had some phrases right. Otherwise I didn’t have to do too much research regarding the Anishinaabe cultural elements.

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing Moon of the Crusted Snow?

The most eyeopening part of the whole process was learning how to pace a story like this. I worked with a wonderful editor at ECW Press named Susan Renouf who really helped guide me through streamlining the narrative to make it develop in an effective and interesting way. It was the first time I really tried writing something in this genre, so I really appreciated Susan’s guidance. We ended up cutting a lot of excess from the front end of the story to better build the tension. She also really encouraged me to bolster the Anishinaabe elements, especially the language. You often hear horror stories of Indigenous authors having to scrub or whitewash culture in their stories to make them more palatable to non-Indigenous readers. By my experience with Susan was quite the opposite. She empowered me to highlight these elements proudly.

Do you currently have a new novel in the works? If so, can you tell us a little about it?

I’m writing a sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow! I’ve been commissioned by Penguin Random House Canada to develop the next part of this story. I hope to have a first draft done in about a year. I can’t give too much away, but the novel will pick up about a decade after the end of the first one, and will follow the characters as they journey south to see what’s left of the world. I’m really excited to revisit these characters!

Since you’ve published a couple of books, what advice would you give to aspiring authors in regards to writing and publishing?

Write away! Get that story done and get it out into the world. Don’t be afraid to reach out to authors for advice on getting published, or writing tips. And read as much as you can. I went to school for journalism and didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge of the publishing industry when I decided I wanted to pursue a fiction career. But I knew I had to get a book-length project written before I started showing it around. So I put some short stories together that I’d written when I was younger, which eventually became my first book, Midnight Sweatlodge. I applied for an emerging writers grant through the Canada Council for the Arts to get that done. By then, I’d been able to make contact with other Indigenous writers who had great advice on how to get published. But getting back to my first point, keep writing!

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

I have two “must-read” recommendations: Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson and Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. Both were very influential on my writing. It’s hard to narrow down just one book that has had the most impact on me. But for Moon of the Crusted Snow, it was definitely The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

In Conversation with Tristan Marajh, Short Story Writer

With Jodene Wylie

Your short story, The lesser man, is set for publication in down river road, a literary journal in Kenya. What is this story about and why was down river road the perfect place to share this story?

In essence, The lesser man is about engaging spiritually with oneself and others in the everyday. Protagonist Akihito Nakamura’s terms of engagement are applicable to any human dynamic or worldly setting. The lesser man is set in a public library – I have witnessed the everyday of that.

The “Ritual”-themed issue of down river road was an apt place to share The lesser man since Akihito has an odd daily ritual: he embraces a tree. I was interested in down river road as I very much enjoyed studying literature out of Africa in university. Down river road is available at bookshops and holds readings and events in Kenya and I’m very pleased that (another version of) the story is a part of that.

*Update: The lesser man has since been republished by The Miramichi Reader and can be read here.

You recently won 2nd place in the Scugog Arts’ Literary Arts Competition. Can you tell us a bit about your story and why you were drawn to write it?  

The Nashwaak Review first published the original and longer version of “The Complete Works of Min-Ju Kim” in 2015; the version that was one of the winners in the Scugog Arts Council’s Ekphrastic Competition is less, shall we say, acute. On an overarching level, the story is about trial through and triumph over depression; topically it is also a commentary on multiculturalism in Toronto, being in the Present and the necessity of self-accountability.

You have participated in a number of writing competitions and you’ve had your work shared in a variety of literary magazines. Do you find writing for a contest versus a literary magazine different? Is one more challenging than the other? How do you seek out and find new writing opportunities?  

Mostly, I write a story first then concern myself about possible avenues to submit it after the tale is complete. Very rarely do I write specifically for a particular magazine or competition (not being solicited to do so either helps). The nice thing about that is that I’m able to prospect my piece to a wide range of compatible venues of varying missions and thematic calls. This is very much a grind and builds my overall awareness of the literary publishing world along the way. It takes meticulous online/bookstore research and once in a while, word-of-mouth assistance: a poet friend and fellow winner of the Scugog Arts Ekphrastic Competition, Eleni Gouliaras, informed me about that particular venue. I will make notes of compatible venues, record their deadline dates, thematic calls, word-count limits, and any other pertinent information. I also sign up for their newsletters.

What have you learned so far in your writing journey that surprised you? Where have you seen the most growth and change in your own writing? 

What has surprised me thus far is how the advice of “write every day and read a lot” have not been true for me. I certainly don’t write every day (though I would like to) and – this may seem bizarre to read as it does to say – I have not read very much in the past few years. And that’s exactly how I’ve noticed the most growth and change: when I don’t buy into the notion that I should be this adamant, constantly-reading-and-writing writer. I am not knocking the advice; it just shouldn’t be taken as dogmatic adage and definitely shouldn’t detract from the quality of other aspects of living, which is often a consequence of excessive adherence to any particular ambition.

What are you working on next? Are you focusing on a novel, another short story, or something new and different? 

More short stories, as well as creative nonfiction. I don’t detect a novel in me at this point.

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

The “must-read” book I would recommend is the one that one writes for oneself. It may be a novel idea: what are your deepest Values and private Truths as a human being among others on the Earth? What are the fears you evade? Recognize the prescriptions, preconceptions and prejudices of your conditioned mind; examine how they have slyly embedded themselves within your impressionable and easily-impressed psyche from childhood. Write it all down; fill as many pages as you need to and don’t stop until you think you’re complete. And even then, still have more blank pages ready. Personal journaling often demands a truth-telling that you may not otherwise give yourself and others. One may discover one’s own writerly style doing this, but even better is when one discovers their life style. This is what Min-Ju does in The Complete Works and it’s nice that the story could be mentioned in answering this question.

Where can our readers learn more about you and your writing? Do you have a website or blog that they could check out?

I’ve been considering a website, but haven’t started work on that yet. Meanwhile, readers can peruse gracious literary publications such as Cloud Lake Literary who kindly interview me and link to or publish my work.

About Tristan

Tristan Marajh's work is published in the Canadian journals The New Quarterly, Existere: A Journal of Art & Literature, The Nashwaak Review, Ricepaper Magazine and upcoming in Blank Spaces Magazine. He is the recent winner of the 2020 Scugog Arts Council Ekphrastic Writing Competition for "The Complete Works of Min-Ju Kim", which also won 1st-Prize in The Free Association Books Short Fiction Competition. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, he now resides in Toronto.

In Conversation with Arnelle Collins author of Daddy on Duty

With Kaylie Seed

Arnelle, congratulations to you and your illustrator Taiye Okoh on your adorable children’s book! Daddy on Duty brought some much needed sunshine to my life right now. If you wouldn’t mind, I have some questions for you about Daddy on Duty as well as your writing process and some personal questions about what inspires you to write.

 I adore that you focused on parenting styles as the theme in Daddy on Duty. Where did you get the inspiration to focus on parenting styles for your book?

Thank you! My inspiration came from a very basic day that I had with my dad. My experiences with my dad are not the same as the story, but a similar outline—which is mom is gone, dad is in charge, and he does what he wants to do. Me focusing on parenting styles just came as I finished the story if that makes sense. Once I finished the story, I was thinking about what message I wanted to convey and it happened to deal with parenting styles.

 You wrote Daddy on Duty and Taiye illustrated it. How did you find working with, and collaborating with, an illustrator to create this book?

I found Taiye through this website called Fiverr. This website is awesome and has a bunch of freelancers all in one spot that does different things—such as T-shirt designs,growing your YouTube, gaming, and more! Taiye was listed as a children’s author, his picture examples were great, and I thought he would be the missing key in helping to bring my book to life!

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing Daddy on Duty?

 I learned that going through the process of writing isn’t the hard part. It is publishing week as well as marketing. Those are the two hardest things within the process. 

 With such a great debut children’s book, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon?

 I am not sure, maybe in the future, but as of right now, no. Although I do have plans to do more with this book so stay tuned!

 Now that you’ve finished this process of publishing your first children’s book, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Do not be intimidated to write a book if that’s what you want to. It is very doable and anyone can do it if they really want to. Take the idea and own it! After that, everything will fall into place and work itself out! Trust me!

 What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

To be honest, I do not have a recommendation because this was a random idea that came to me one night. I did not have the opportunity to look at other books because everything was closed due to COVID.

In Conversation with Ilze Hugo author of The Down Days

With Kaylie Seed

Photo by Stephanie van Gelderen

The Down Days parallels the current worldwide outbreak of COVID-19. What emotions did you experience during this time given that your debut novel is also about a pandemic? 

It was a very surreal experience to have this world, in which I’d been living in my head for quite a few years, partly come to life. In the beginning I kept catching myself noting and filing away small details, like how your glasses fog up when wearing a mask, and berating myself for not putting them in the book. Or getting chills when I experienced things that I had dreamt up in the novel play out in real life. The first time I had to drive through an army roadblock really spooked me, and for a moment, the parallels between real life and my imagined world seemed just a little too close for comfort. There were also one or two moments of completely irrational guilt, a part of my over-active imagination telling/asking whether my dreaming up this reality had in some way willed it into existence. I consider myself quite a rational person, but this kind of magical thinking made me really relate to Faith (one of my main characters) in a way that I hadn’t thought possible before. Because of her urge/compulsion to see patterns in random data and the need to connect the data in some way, to make things fit, I’d always seen her, as a character, as very unlike me. But on closer retrospection, I believe I do have Faith-like tendencies. I think we all do. I think humans have an inherent need to make sense of things and put disparate things together, to find patterns in life, to find meaning, and sometimes the things/facts we put together in our search for order/sense don’t end up fitting like we think they ought to. And so, conspiracy theories are born…

 Where did your inspiration come from to write The Down Days and what kind of research did you need to complete for this novel? 

The first seed of an idea was sown when I visited a medical museum in Cape Town that had a display on the history of disease and the relationship between disease and culture. The exhibition set my brain on a path that would eventually, after quite a few years, become the starting point for The Down Days. I read a lot on the history of disease, particularly how disease shaped culture and societies as well as how various diseases shaped the landscape of Cape Town. The work of South African historian, Dr. Howard Phillips, was particularly useful to me.  I also read up on the history of Cape Town and the history of slavery and colonialism in the city, as well as books about everything from the nature of truth to why we hallucinate. I read other pandemic novels. I read news articles about the Ebola epidemic which was happening in West Africa. I also read up on various other topics that I touch on in the novel – Venezuelan data dealers, Nigerian hyena men, digital sangomas, amakhosi possession, the South African occult police, how and why fake news spreads, conspiracy theories and why people believe them, etcetera.

The Down Days is a heavily character-driven story. Why did you decide to tell this story through multiple narrators? Specifically, Faith and Sans seem to be the main characters. Where did your inspiration come from for their voices?

It was very important to me to have multiple narrators for this story. One of the main themes I wanted to explore with the novel was the impact of disease/epidemics on culture.  I wanted to focus on how what is happening in this city is a kind of microcosm of the problems/ailments that existed in the larger society before the epidemic and how an epidemic manages to magnify these issues.  Another theme is how different people react to the same situation and how the different characters interpret and understand the same situation. I’ve always been interested in how something that seems to be a fact to me can be interpreted as fiction by someone else. For example, how something that seems black and white to me, such as the benefits of vaccination and the science behind it, can be interpreted so differently by someone else. Using multiple narrators was a way for me to look at the same situation from different angles, without being judgemental. It was a way for me to get a grip on how people can look at the same set of facts and interpret them so differently. And then, of course, the effect that this has on the spread of misinformation, particularly during times of crisis. Linked to this is the idea of how history is shaped by those who have the most power and therefore the loudest voice. I think in a sense the two main characters in the novel, Sans and Faith, are two different parts of my own personality. But they are also their own people entirely. Sans appeals to my more science-minded, fact-based, rational, and somewhat pessimistic side, while Faith is more of a humanist, more of an optimist who believes (or tries to believe) in the goodness of people.   She does hold some dodgy beliefs at the beginning of the novel and is drawn to conspiracy theories, but I think if you are living through a crisis situation in which it feels like there aren’t any clear-cut answers and your government isn’t open and clear in its communication and has essentially abandoned you, it is natural for people to grasp onto conspiracy theories and alternate facts. We have seen it during the Covid-19 crisis and in every epidemic throughout history. Pandemics are the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories. When people feel at a loss for answers they will grab at all sorts of straws.

 What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing The Down Days?

I guess the most surprising part for me was just the fact that I had managed to write a novel until the very end and managed to get an amazing agent and an amazing editor who connected with the book and were willing to take me on and publish it. Or the idea that there are people out there in the real world who are reading the book and connecting to it in some way, however small. When a reader reaches out to me through Instagram or Twitter to say that they connected to the story in some way it’s an absolute delight every single time. Now I just have to figure out how to do it again. 

With such a wonderful debut novel, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon? 

I am about 30 000 words into a second novel that I’m hoping to finish by the end of this year. Wish me luck.

Now that you’ve come to the end of this process of publishing your first novel, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Don’t give up. I know, it sounds cheesy, but that really is the hardest part of writing a novel and getting it published. Also: don’t believe people who tell you that being a writer is an impossible dream. Don’t be afraid of rejection. It’s part and parcel of the job. Don’t give up when you receive 1, 5, 10 or even a 100 rejections. Being a writer is more about perseverance and having a thick skin than anything else. Never take criticism personally, see it as an opportunity to learn and grow and look at your work from a different angle. Read! Widely! Read, read and read some more. And then some. Writing is ninety percent editing/re-writing. I think a lot of first time writers fail to get published, because they send out their work too soon. 

 What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

Some fantastic books have been coming out of Southern Africa lately. Some that I can recommend are: Triangulum by Msande Ntshanga, Intruders by Mohale Mashigo, The Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, Apocalypse Now Now by Charlie Human, The Zulus of New York by Zakes Mda.

It’s tough to say what book has had the most impact on my writing. I read quite widely in different genres and I think everything I read has an impact in some way. I think The English Patient by Michael Ondaatjie is one book that really inspired me to be a writer.  The book is not only a joy to read and an old fashioned adventure, but it’s packed with layers of meaning and has so much to uncover. It is a bit like a puzzle inside a puzzle and you get more out of it from every read. Another author who does this is David Mitchell. I loved Ghostwritten especially. And how there are so many Easter eggs and hidden connections and layers of meaning to uncover that the book feels a bit like a scavenger hunt and a great story rolled into one. I also love books that are a mash up of literary and genre fiction, providing both an enjoyable read and lots to learn and ponder on. And children’s books for their pure, unadulterated magic: His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman is amazing. And also anything that’s just a crazy, absurd, and unusual. Fun, literary roller coaster rides like the Library at Mount Char by Scot Hawkins or Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson. 

In Conversation with M.S. Lawrence Author of The Tao of Flower

With Kaylie Seed

Congratulations on your debut novel! I admire anyone who takes the time to put in the work to write and publish a novel - it is amazing! I’m pleased to be able to do some promotion for The Tao of Flower and to interview a fellow Canadian! If you wouldn’t mind, I have some questions to ask you about The Tao of Flower as well as your writing process.

Where did your inspiration come from to have the main theme be about Tae Kwon Do and fighting in general? Did you have to do a lot of research?

I have always been a fan of stories of determination, perseverance, and competition. My inspiration for this story I cannot pinpoint. The idea came to me fourteen, maybe even fifteen, years ago. My eldest was a taekwondo student at a club owned by friends of mine and my wife. We brought her to classes three and four times a week for a few years. I have always been a daydreamer and the seed of my story I would say was planted there. Beyond that I do not have much intimate knowledge of this specific form of martial arts. Over the years, many story ideas came and went but the story which eventually became The Tao of Flower never left me. It grew, details changed. I have many scattered notes, some I was unable to find, but the story was in my mind for so long that I didn’t feel the need to hunt them down. I chose taekwondo simply because of the Olympic event. There is no martial arts event with a larger worldwide audience than the Olympic Games which was part of Flower’s dilemma. My protagonist was not striving to please an audience, she was seeking to measure herself amongst the greatest fighters due to her relentless contemplation.

I love reading stories about father/daughter relationships because I find that there aren’t a lot of them out there. Being a father of daughters yourself, did you find this to be an easy topic to write about?

Yes, I did for the most part. Particularly with the dialogue. However, it was challenging to create a bond between two characters who were so different in every way. Another challenge was writing about some of the subjects the two conversed about. Some are topics of conversation I have never had with any of my daughters so I worked to make them as fluent and believable as I could not having firsthand experience to help me along.

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing The Tao of Flower?

For me, the most surprising detail of the writing process was envisioning an event, a conversation, or even plot points and how they are either altered, removed, or added upon through the entire writing process. The story you read, compared to the one in my head before putting finger to keyboard is vastly different but I feel my end product, which of course is the result of my initial ideas, became far more engaging as I wrote and revised portions of the story. A lot of the book was made up of my old original ideas but details came to me as late as my third or fourth rounds of revision.

Now that you’ve written your first book and decided to publish independently, what did you learn and what would you do differently for your next book?

I published independently but could not have done it without the help of the folks at Friesen Press Publishing. They were there to answer all the questions I had - and I had a lot. I feel I got my money’s worth using them, maybe more. One thing I plan to do differently with my current manuscript is edit and revise a little more thoroughly before submitting it to their editors. First time through their editing process, I found a lot of things I was unsatisfied with on my end. Had I been more thorough and a little more critical of my work before submitting my manuscript, I feel it would have made things easier on their editor and in turn on me in the later revision rounds.

Speaking of next books, are you in the process of writing something new right now?

I am currently working on my next book. I have completed a first draft and gone through a round of revision of this manuscript. I have had it read by a couple people who I felt would give their honest feedback and they have. I am glad they did because there are elements I was not happy with and through discussion with the readers my thoughts were reaffirmed and I have to work to fortify these elements of my story. But all who have read it say they did enjoy the overall story which was refreshing. Not sure how many details I should give but my next book is an origin story of another character within The Tao of Flower. It tells the story of this character and the two books intersect shedding light on undisclosed details in the original story. The stories are related but in no way the same. I would say The Tao of Flower would be classified as a light, coming-of-age story. The follow up story is a love story with an ending that none of my readers saw coming. My wife was not happy with me but loved the story.

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

Although I can’t call it a must-read yet, I am getting into a book named ‘Mess’ by a delightful young lady named J. Wray. I met her this past winter and overheard her saying she was an author. We got to talking and she really is an inspired individual. As for inspiration from my reading, I don’t know how to even incorporate the two. To this day, my favourite fictional novel is Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and I read it over twenty years ago. Most of my reading interest is given to autobiographies, primarily of athletes. I would not say they inspire me to write but I guess hearing actual figures share their most intimate secrets regardless of the shame or embarrassment they feel makes me feel that there are no boundaries in the fictional world.

In Conversation with Ed Ruggero author of Blame the Dead

With Kaylie Seed.

Photo by Leah Servin

Ed, I thoroughly enjoyed Blame the Dead. It was a gripping read and the perfect combination of a murder mystery along with elements of war. I’m honoured to be able to ask you some questions about Blame the Dead, your writing process, and to be able to do share your novel with our readers.

I’ve always been a huge fan of WWII historical fiction and this is the first novel that I’ve read that has a murder mystery woven into a WWII plot. Where did you get the idea to write Blame the Dead? What drew you to combine a historical fiction narrative with a murder mystery twist? 

I was drawn to the idea that the military’s job, in combat, is to create maximum chaos for the enemy. You want the enemy thinking that the world is coming to an end so that he forgets about his mission, so that his only concern is escape. But as soon as the battle lines pass by, someone has to restore order: everything from food distribution to the rule of law. I was intrigued by that point of friction. You have tens of thousands of young men (exclusively men in WW2) heavily armed and, sadly, inured to violence; yet someone has to reintroduce civilization. Medical people work hard to heal physical wounds; Military Police work hard to restore civilization.  In this book we see how both the medical and police function. 

Where did you gain your insight and knowledge about Italy during WWII? What kind of research was involved and most helpful to your writing? Tell us more about why you chose this setting for your novel?

One of my non-fiction books is a work of military history covering the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, so I was on familiar ground here. The non-fiction work was based on interviews with scores of veterans, so I had a pretty good feel for the time and place. I also relied on some terrific histories and memoirs, including some by Army nurses. I’ve been reading military history since I could read, and I spent eleven years in the US Army; I have a feel for how soldiers think and act.  I chose to make the protagonist a Military Police officer because that job allows him great freedom of movement.  He can get caught up in various kinds of adventures.

Eddie Harkins is a very likeable character. Where did you get your inspiration for his voice and character and was he based on anyone living or historical?

The characters probably—I’m not 100% certain—come from people and events I’ve observed, especially when it comes to soldiers.  No character is a straight riff on a real person, the idea is that a reader can see a real person doing those things. A friend of mine, also a veteran, said of Dominic Colianno (Harkins’ driver/side-kick), “He reminds me of every jeep driver I ran across in the Army.”

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing Blame the Dead?

I enjoyed learning about US Army and Allied nurses, who shared battlefield risks and operated under trying conditions—and all this at a time when most people thought women shouldn’t even be exposed to hard work, much less combat conditions.  

With such an intriguing and well-conceived story, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon? 

Blame the Dead is the first in a series I’m calling “Victory in Europe.”  Book 2, Comes the War, finds Eddie Harkins in London on the eve of the Allied invasion of France, investigating a murder. The victim was an analyst for the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, the blandly named US spy agency that was a forerunner of the CIA.

Since you’ve completed the process of writing and publishing a novel multiple times, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Read, write, persevere.

Read. I doubt you can be a writer unless you’re a reader. But piling up books on your night table isn’t enough; you must be an active reader. If you like something, ask yourself why you liked it. Parse it and try to figure out why it worked so well.  

Write. Practice. The more you do it the better you become. Try different styles and even genres. Blog posts, journalism, thank you notes—it’s all helpful.  Imitate writers whose work you admire; pick someone with a distinctive style.  Stretch your muscles.  When I taught composition years ago, we had the students write in imitation of Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff. We did not want the students to adopt Wolfe’s distinctive voice forever and always, but in order to imitate you have to discover how the writer achieves that distinctive voice.  You may adopt some aspects, or you may not, but you will have added to your toolkit. 

Persevere.  I read a story recently about a woman who went to her doctoral defense wearing a skirt made out of all the rejection letters she’d received from professional journals.  

I’m never going to tell someone that if you try hard enough, anything is possible. I think that’s patently untrue—I was never going to play pro baseball—but unless you stick to it, I mean really work your butt off, you can’t honestly say, “I gave it my best shot but I just don’t have the goods.” 

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

I don’t know about “the most” influence, but I can name two books I’ve been recommending for years for their style and storytelling: True Grit by Charles Portis and News of the World, By Paulette Jiles.  Both books offer lots of samples of exquisite writing—Jiles is a poet—and humor.  Mattie Ross of True Grit is one of the most distinctive voices in modern American literature, in my book right up there with Huck Finn. She’s funny as all get-out, often without intending to be funny. She’s also preachy, opinionated and fierce, in short, a three-dimensional character.  Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd of News is more quietly determined, but quick-witted and, at the last, a good person.

Thank you to Ed Ruggero for this interview and please be sure to pick up his novel Blame the Dead to see what a great story this is!

In Conversation with Natalia Rojas and Constance O'Connor authors of Every Family is Different

With Kaylie Seed

Natalia Rojas

Photo by Little Vintage Photography

Constance O’Connor

I adore that you both took different animal families and used them as a way to teach children that families are different. Where did you get the inspiration to write Every Family is Different?

Rojas: I think I first heard Connie’s idea about a children’s book that discussed different family dynamics in the animal kingdom while we were on vacation in Ontario. As an Early Childhood Educator, I have always been on the lookout for books that represent different families. So, I jumped at the chance to be involved with it. 

O’Connor: Thank you so much! I am so glad that you liked the book. Natalia and I are good friends, and we both love reading, writing, and story-telling. Natalia is an early childhood educator, and she mentioned that she finds it hard to find picture books with diverse families. I am a biologist, and so we realized that we could combine our different experiences and perspectives to write a children’s book where we use real examples of different animal families from nature to share a positive message about celebrating diverse family structures. 

You both wrote Every Family is Different and Lucy illustrated it. How did you find working with and collaborating with a co-author (versus writing a book yourself) and what was it like working with an illustrator to create this book?

Rojas: I have written and published another children’s story, Music is in Everything, in mid 2018. So, it was very interesting being able to compare and contrast the experiences. I thought collaborating as a co-author was fun, it had many advantages. Probably the best one was having another person to bounce ideas off of and working together to get the best rhythm for our story.  Working personally with an illustrator is a huge perk. You are able to really see your vision come to life! Lucy is amazing and her style was exactly what we were looking for. 

O’Connor: I’ve done a lot of collaborative writing for my work as a scientist. While writing a children’s book was very (very!) different than scientific writing, I found that the process of working with Natalia as a co-author came naturally. It’s really nice to have someone to brainstorm with! And working with Lucy was fantastic. Right from her first rough sketches, I thought that her artistic style fit the book perfectly. 

At the end of Every Family is Different you added in some interesting facts about each of the animals in the story. What made you choose those animals for your story and were there animals that you wanted to include but didn’t end up using?

Rojas: I think adding facts about the animals is so important for children to make further connections with the animals and our environment. There was a time where we played with having an animal from every continent and using a deer and fawn instead of a mama bear and her cub. However, I really like the animals that were chosen. I felt strongly that the animals should be recognizable to small children.

O’Connor: There are so many amazing animal families out there, and it was really hard to pick only a handful of animals for our book! We eventually picked our animals because they’re all recognizable for kids, and they’re from different parts of the world, and there is a mix of different types of animals (we have some birds, mammals, a fish, and a frog). We had initially wanted to have an animal from every continent. Ultimately though, we decided that the book would be too long for a children’s book if we included every animal that we wanted to. 

 What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing Every Family is Different?

Rojas: I was surprised how emotionally attached I ended up feeling towards this book. Having this abstract idea become something tangible filled me with a deep satisfaction. I am really proud of this book and I hope many people can enjoy it.  

O’Connor: I was surprised at how nervous I was when it was released! It gives me a whole new appreciation for how brave authors and writers are, to share their writing with the world.   

With such a great children’s book, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon?

 Rojas: Every Family is Different was my second book. Right now, I am putting a pause on new ideas and trying to promote what I have already written, as well as getting used to life with a new baby in tow. Writing is one of my biggest passions, I am always writing new ideas down. Time will tell when the next one will come to life. 

O’Connor: It took us about a year and half to write this book, and then another year to get through the publication process, and so perhaps there won’t be another one too soon! But I would like to write another book, even if it takes a few years to get there. I have a few little seeds of ideas, so I’ll be patient and see what they grow into. 

Now that you’ve finished this process of publishing Every Family is Different, what advice would you give to aspiring authors and co-authors? 

Rojas: I would say to take your time with your story. Make many drafts, revisit them often and do not be afraid to change things up. Writing and publishing a story takes time so patience is key. 

O’Connor: I think that my advice would be to just keep taking small steps, even when your goal seems far away and unattainable. At some points in the process, it seemed like we were never going to finish, but we just kept making small steps forward. I’m glad that we stuck with it! 

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

Rojas: I have so many must-read books. Sticking to the children’s genre, I would recommend any book by Mo Willems, although I am partial to the Pigeon books. His stories are always very amusing, and the illustrations and text are engaging. A book that has influenced my writing would have to be The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is my favourite book! I treasure it for its beautiful message and vivid imagery but most importantly because it’s a book that seems new to me every time I reread it.

O’Connor: This question is always too hard! I love reading, and there are too many. But I would say that my current favourite off my kids’ bookshelf is The Girl and the Wolf, written by Katherena Vermette, and illustrated by Julie Flett. 

*Both authors were interviewed separately for this article. Thank you to Constance and Natalia for their time in speaking with us.

In Conversation with Andrea Gunraj author of The Lost Sister

With Kaylie Seed

Photo by Mango Studios

I am so grateful that Nimbus Publishing sent me a gifted Advanced Reader’s Copy version of your sophomore novel The Lost Sister! I went into it not knowing anything about the book and I ended up falling in love with the story that you’ve woven. If you wouldn’t mind, I have some questions to ask you about The Lost Sister as well as your writing process, and some personal questions about books in general.  

Having two sisters of my own, it was wonderful to see a story centred around the relationships that sisters share between one another. Where did you get the idea to focus your story on the relationship between sisters? Do you think narratives with this foundation are universal and easy for readers to connect and identify with?

I’ve always enjoyed reading books about sibling relationships. There’s always lots of layers to explore because siblings are often weird family-friend-caregiver hybrids to each other. In sister relationships, it can be all the more complicated because your sister might know what you’re like better than anyone else, especially if you’ve grown up in the same house and have seen many of the same things. They’re more likely to poke a hole right through the image you’ve built up for yourself and others. There could be both a comforting closeness and an anxiety in that dynamic—and that kind of tense juxtaposition is quite helpful for writing fiction. 

The Lost Sister shifts between Alisha’s story and Paula’s story throughout the novel. Whose voice was easier for you to create? What challenges did each of these characters pose for you?

Alisha was definitely the easier voice to write. She’s a lot like me. I remember my friend Garnet reading an early draft and calling me “Alisha” the next day—it was so cute. That being said, Paula’s story was the one that was more compelling to write, mostly because it was a challenge. For Alisha, the challenge was writing her honestly with all her immaturity and making it relatable, not annoying. For Paula, the challenge was telling her childhood story from a child’s perspective, even though she would have written it in her older years.  

In your acknowledgments you mention that Mr. Garnet Smith was a huge inspiration for Paula’s story in The Lost Sister. Can you share with us and our readers a bit of his history and his influence on your story? 

Garnet was a loving, caring person. We went to the same church and lived in the same north Toronto neighbourhood so I knew him my whole life, really. He was a dedicated community volunteer and quite well-known and loved in the area. He was a loving father and husband and honestly one of the most giving people I knew. I always knew he had a “tough childhood”—it was in my early twenties that he shared that with me that he had been apprehended as a young child with some of his siblings and made to live in the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children. I was doing community-based violence prevention work at the time, so I was interested in learning more about the way institutions and policies impact children and families. He told me about some of the difficult, scary, and unfair things he went through, and how it affected his whole life. He told me about how he joined a group of survivors from the home who called for accountability and justice in a class action case. He was quite open with me and others who wanted to learn more. He felt that it was important for him to speak about it, though he was very supportive of those who didn’t want to talk about their traumatic experiences. I always appreciated the way he made room for both.

Later, maybe after the publication of my first novel, we started talking about writing about his story in a fictionalized account. I can’t remember if I brought it up first or if he suggested it to me. He gave me a wealth of articles and documentation about the home and the court case, so he made it so easy to do research. All I had to do was interview him, read the documentation, and look up secondary sources. He even connected me with people he knew doing work on the case.

Garnet passed away before the book was finished and got published. But it really does reflect his efforts and his open storytelling, and I’m so happy about that. Whatever is good about it comes from his influence.

What was the most surprising thing that you learned while going through the process of creating and writing The Lost Sister?

This sounds silly, but I was surprised to learn just how hard it is to write something well and that takes a lot of tries—at least for me. I should’ve known that; it seems so obvious! But I didn’t appreciate it fully until this book. It took a lot out of me and I know I’d have to believe in something deeply in order to properly survive the novel writing process again.

I also learned there needs to be more room to tell hidden stories about racialized people in Canada. Things are changing in the industry, and that is amazing. But I think the space for these stories is still too small. 

Now that you have written and published two novels, I have to ask, will there be another book from you soon? 

I’m exploring a new manuscript now. But it’s very slow-going. We’ll see what happens!

Having been through the process of writing and publishing more than one novel, what advice would you give to aspiring authors?

I’ve learned it the hard way: don’t give up, but don’t be stubborn. That means that you should write and be persistent about it but do your homework and listen to other opinions. Take courses and learn how better writers do it. When someone gives you feedback, don’t dismiss it or say they don’t understand what you’re trying to do. At the same time, don’t get too upset about critiques that aren’t constructive. They won’t help you very much. All feedback isn’t created equal and differences in tastes and perspectives about good writing are not always your problem. Finally, the traditional publishing industry is tough and in flux, struggling to be relevant in a tidal shift that is both cultural and economic in nature. So getting into it is probably going to be a weird experience. Don’t get too thrown off by the weirdness, and don’t let your expectations about “what should happen” get the better of you. 

What is your “must-read” book recommendation and what book has had the most impact and influence on your writing?

How much time do you have? If you want to write better, read The Anatomy of Story by John Truby and The Art of Fiction by John Gardener. When it comes to fiction, I feel I learn the most from books that deeply integrate voice. There are so many books that do it well but as of late I’ve learned so much from Swing Time by Zadie Smith, The Purchase by Linda Spalding, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. These are go-to books for me. And I’m adding more to the list all the time.