Here’s something that bugs me: sentences constructed as “this needs to happen.” For example, on a news report about the lack of mental health care workers in Nunavut, the journalist said “more nurses need to be hired in Nunavut.” That’s obviously false. Maybe nurses do need to be hired. Professionals need jobs. But that’s not […]
I’m a writer, a speaker, and an editor. Some consider the combination to be some super being but, in reality, I am just a regular man. In other words, I write, I talk and I correct. I began life as a writer, the proverbial newbie, who felt he knew it all and had the best […]
Businesswoman, author and blogger Rachel Abbott is my latest victim guest contributor. We all know how smart she is: she sold off her business and now lives in bucolic paradise in central Italy. The author of Only the Innocent, which has held #1 spot on Amazon for a well-deserved long time, Rachel has generously agreed […]
Whenever I watch TV shows like Downton Abbey, or movies like The Remains of the Day, stories that centre around servants in a thankfully extinct era, I am always struck by the attitudes of the servant class — the way that they reinforce their own subjugation, partly because it allows them to abuse those lower […]
The new year came to Ottawa with a high, clear sky, a pale winter sun refracting off smooth expanses of pristine white snow. With the temperature around minus 30 C in the morning, the packed snow on the pavements squeaked. By afternoon, the temperature has warmed to the minus 20 C range. The radio meteorologists […]
An independent novel review I like it when an author sets his book in his home town, especially when it’s a place that doesn’t normally get mentioned in much mass media. The depth of knowledge comes through in the detail and that makes the story that much more realistic. For me, even nicer that it’s […]
“The guy with the bad attitude has been following me all week.” Seb Kirby gets right into the story in Double Bind. There’s not a wasted word in this book: no background, no world-building, no nonsense. The writing is spare and clean, active yet evocative, told in first-person present tense, which enhances the action and […]