Category Archives: Author, Author

Books Worth Buying in 2013

By Richard | Published December 16, 2012

Ellen Oh Two friends have novels that will hit bookstores in 2013, and I’m THAT excited! Ellen Oh has been an online friend for years, and I’ve always been impressed with her kindness, thoughtfulness, patience, and intelligence. When she landed a three-book deal with HarperTeen to bring The Dragon King Chronicles to North Americans readers, [...]

Also posted in Books | 3 Comments

Author Melanie Hooyenga Answers 25 Questions

By Richard | Published December 9, 2012

As I grow older, I find myself seeking out kindness. That’s how I first met Melanie Hooyenga. In the funny way that social media works, our paths had crossed for years, but we never really connected. It’s like we had been to a few parties at the houses of friends we had in common, but [...]

Also posted in 25 Questions, Books, Writing | 5 Comments

Blessedness

By Richard | Published April 25, 2012

A few hours after my operation, I wept. Yes, I was a simmering kettle of emotion. My neurosurgeon had recently informed me that my pituitary adenoma was massive, much bigger than expected, but he quickly added that the operation had gone well, so I was relieved. A few minutes later, I looked upon the faces [...]

Also posted in Life, Wall-E—The Neuroendocrine Tumor | 17 Comments

The Feasts of Lesser Men

By Richard | Published April 16, 2012

Stephen Parrish‘s The Feasts of Lesser Men is a spy novel based on the author’s real life experiences with the 8th Infantry Division (Mechanized) in Germany during the Cold War’s dark and dirty days. For most of this week, you can download it for free. You don’t need a Kindle to read it; Amazon offers [...]

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Author Niki Jabbour Answers 25 Questions

By Richard | Published February 5, 2012

I’m not sure why it’s always been there, but I have a soft, quiet spot in my heart for gardeners. And lately, for this gardener in particular. We’re friends. But, surprisingly, Niki Jabbour and I have never met. Niki and I both wrote for The Halifax Daily News in the 1990s, where I was a [...]

Also posted in 25 Questions, Books, Canada, Food & Wine, Global Warming, Life, Nova Scotia, Sustainability | 5 Comments

Author Chris Benjamin Answers 25 Questions

By Richard | Published October 4, 2011

Even though he’s much younger, I want to be like Chris Benjamin when I grow up. He’s the respected Sustainable City columnist at The Coast, Halifax’s progressive weekly, and I delight in watching him skewer the ecologically inept even as he finds the heart of the matter in issues that are pressing for the planet and [...]

Also posted in 25 Questions, Books, Canada, Global Warming, Nova Scotia, Sustainability | 2 Comments

Conflict and Storytelling

By Richard | Published September 5, 2011

The characters in the Secrets of the Hotel Maisonneuve were a sweet gift. I woke from the long nightmare that was 14 years of daily migraines, and found an idea for a late-middle reader swimming around in my recently-unaddled brain. Interestingly, the story swirled around characters created by Kristina for a picture book that she [...]

Also posted in Writing | 4 Comments

Dragons, Queries, and the Shards of Narsil

By Richard | Published July 31, 2011

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans. None of my plans for this year have come to fruition, yet I still feel as if I’ve handled a difficult illness with a modicum of grace and good humor. And that, and a double-loonie, will get you a cup of coffee at [...]

Also posted in Books, Life, Wall-E—The Neuroendocrine Tumor, Writing | 4 Comments

Bait

By Richard | Published July 19, 2011

I don’t often enter writing contests. But I took an hour on Monday morning to work on an idea that seemed to fit, and then entered Jason Evans’s Clarity of the Night contest. Several writing friends have already done so. In a nutshell, writers create 250 words of prose or poetry based on a prompt [...]

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Is This Microphone On?

By Richard | Published June 17, 2011

The intrepid Peter Dudley — a man among men which, interestingly, makes him a man among many women — asked writing friends to post audio or video clips that show us reading recent work. (I may not have done this properly, but I don’t fraking care! It’s been a rough month. :-) Making a recording [...]

Also posted in Books, Entertainment, Writing | 5 Comments