News and Notes from the Field

If we’re Facebook friends,* you may recall that last week, I dumped a full glass of iced tea over the keyboard of my laptop. This act of clumsiness must have offended the ghost of Steve Jobs in some way, ... Read More  

Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge? It was quite possibly one of the weirdest things to ever go viral, but it raised a TON of money in support of ALS research. Which was awesome, because ALS, better known as Lou ... Read More  

  Calling all writer friends! Have you read Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces and Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey yet? If not, you should get on that. Mythic structure is a good starting point for novels, especially fantasies, but both authors ... Read More  

Is this nerdy? Yes. Do I love it from the depths of my nerdy soul? Heck yes! To all my friends attending the SCBWI Summer Conference this week – have an educational, inspiring time! I’ll be over here, trying not ... Read More  

All across the forests of Canada, wolves look for the same things.  They look for clean water and safe dens.  They look for a place where deer or moose are plentiful.  When wolves find everything they need in one ... Read More  

I watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Actually, I watched it twice, because I wanted to make sure I knew it well enough to actually comment on it. It was really good! This was a pleasant surprise, because most of ... Read More  

Raven Mad Daze was a summer festival that used to take place in Yellowknife. If the memory of my junior-high-aged self can be trusted, it happened on the summer solstice, when it’s just as light at midnight as it is ... Read More  

Why do TV shows have science consultants when they clearly don’t listen to what their consultants tell them? I have often wondered this. Generally while watching forensics procedurals. I still haven’t recovered from that episode of Bones where Dr. ... Read More  

Confession time: I do not understand why Star Wars is such a big deal. This is probably partly due to the fact that in general, I like fantasy a lot more than I like sci fi. But I love Edge ... Read More  

This is a story about crab cakes. The best crab cakes anywhere in the world, and what they mean. The Discovery of Crab Cakes Around 20 years ago, my rambling maternal grandparents decided to turn in their fifth wheel for ... Read More  

Presented at a library conference (librarians rock!). Did two school visits (kids rock, too!). Attended the AGM of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. Talked to a university student doing research on literature and Canadian identity. Sold books at ... Read More  

You know that level of exhaustion where you walk into a room, stand there for five minutes, and realize you don’t know why you’re there? Where it takes three times as long as normal to make earth-shaking decisions like “Do ... Read More  

If you’ve been here before, you probably know I love domesticated foxes (enough to write a book about them), but arctic foxes will always have a special place in my heart. One reason is that I spent 6 years ... Read More  

Tech Support and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary last week, which is actually a bigger accomplishment than it sounds like because we dated for 13 years before tying the knot. We wanted to be really, really sure. :P We ... Read More  

Next on Disney’s list of “animated-classics-remade-as-live-action” is Beauty and the Beast: What do you think about this phenomenon? Are you excited about beloved stories getting new life, or do you see this as yet more evidence that there are “no ... Read More  

If you’re in Nova Scotia, come on out. It’s a great opportunity to meet local authors, chat kid lit, and pick up a signed book. Free and open to the public – hope to see you there! Read More  

Deadlines are swarming like a school of sharks in search of blood, so I hope you’ll forgive me for recycling some blog content. I wrote this a year ago to celebrate the release of my second kid’s book on forensic ... Read More  

Because I spent two days doing this with the awesome kids of Pine Ridge Middle School. We had a lot of fun talking about the books that have an impact on us, then practiced techniques for having that kind of ... Read More