Mar 2009
A Pennie for Your Thoughts
30/03/09 18:01 Filed in: Writing
Last Thursday night, I had the happy privilege of
meeting up with my old writing pal, Ross Pennie, at a
coffee shop in West Hamilton. Ross, John Hewson and I
spent three happy years meeting every two or three
weeks to share our drafts, swap tall tales and
challenge each other to get better as writers. Both
Ross and John are medical doctors by training and
wonderfully skillful writers by talent and hard work.
They are also exceptional human beings.
Ross published his medical memoir, The Unforgiving Tides, a couple of years ago with a small publisher in the Hamilton area and then worked his own tail off to make it sell. And sell it did. He then decided he wanted to try fiction on for size, specifically medical mysteries, and John and I had the honour of being involved on the ground floor of that venture.
As I've mentioned before on this blog, Ross's first medical mystery novel, Tainted, has recently been published by ECW Press in Toronto. The early drafts were very good. The published novel is even better. I'm still reading the beginning stages but I'm impressed with how good it is: how much credit for that John and I can claim I'm not sure, of course.
But I'm not writing this entry to talk about Tainted. More on that book later, once I've savoured every word. I'm more interested in writing about what a nifty evening it was to chat with Ross now that he's a published purveyor of fiction.
In preparation for our meeting, I had wandered over to a place called Bryan Prince Booksellers, just up the street from the coffee shop, to see if they had Ross' book on the shelves yet. In keeping with Prince's commitment to local authors, they not only had it in stock, it was beautifully displayed both in the big picture window at the front of the store and on a table inside. For good measure, a stack of Tainted sat right by the cash register, with the other "must buy" books. This is just a small sign of the fantastic support Bryan Prince gives to writers from the Hamilton area.
I met up with Ross in the line for coffee. He had a copy of the book in hand for me and I was admiring its cover while we waited to order. The barista looked up, saw the novel, and cooed, "Oh, that looks good. What is it?": one of the nicest unsolicited compliments I've ever heard. Ross beamed while I opened the cover and held the author photo on the dust jacket up next to Ross's smiling face. The barista was duly impressed.
Ross and I took our coffees and sat down to share our news. We talked family, we talked writing, we talked publishing. Ross told me he's already about a quarter of the way through the next "Zol Szabo Medical Mystery" and filled me in on the basic plot. I gave him a little update on Phillip Gold and we compared notes.
Ross was good enough to sign my copy of Tainted for me and I'm even mentioned, alongside John, in the Acknowledgments at the back. A nice compliment for both of us. After our coffee, Ross and I walked back to Bryan Prince to look at his book in the window. What a great experience, to stand with a first-time novelist and share in his joy at seeing his beautifully published book in a bookshop window!
Other than the very pleasant chance to catch up with an old friend and a respected colleague, I also gained some excellent tips from Ross on how to improve my Gold book. I'll be looking to work up a strong subplot, something in a legal, courtroom line to compliment the main mystery plot. I'll also be working to add some convincing personal habits for my main character.
No, Ross didn't suggest that one directly. But he does it so well in Tainted that I figure I'll steal the idea from him.
Ross published his medical memoir, The Unforgiving Tides, a couple of years ago with a small publisher in the Hamilton area and then worked his own tail off to make it sell. And sell it did. He then decided he wanted to try fiction on for size, specifically medical mysteries, and John and I had the honour of being involved on the ground floor of that venture.
As I've mentioned before on this blog, Ross's first medical mystery novel, Tainted, has recently been published by ECW Press in Toronto. The early drafts were very good. The published novel is even better. I'm still reading the beginning stages but I'm impressed with how good it is: how much credit for that John and I can claim I'm not sure, of course.
But I'm not writing this entry to talk about Tainted. More on that book later, once I've savoured every word. I'm more interested in writing about what a nifty evening it was to chat with Ross now that he's a published purveyor of fiction.
In preparation for our meeting, I had wandered over to a place called Bryan Prince Booksellers, just up the street from the coffee shop, to see if they had Ross' book on the shelves yet. In keeping with Prince's commitment to local authors, they not only had it in stock, it was beautifully displayed both in the big picture window at the front of the store and on a table inside. For good measure, a stack of Tainted sat right by the cash register, with the other "must buy" books. This is just a small sign of the fantastic support Bryan Prince gives to writers from the Hamilton area.
I met up with Ross in the line for coffee. He had a copy of the book in hand for me and I was admiring its cover while we waited to order. The barista looked up, saw the novel, and cooed, "Oh, that looks good. What is it?": one of the nicest unsolicited compliments I've ever heard. Ross beamed while I opened the cover and held the author photo on the dust jacket up next to Ross's smiling face. The barista was duly impressed.
Ross and I took our coffees and sat down to share our news. We talked family, we talked writing, we talked publishing. Ross told me he's already about a quarter of the way through the next "Zol Szabo Medical Mystery" and filled me in on the basic plot. I gave him a little update on Phillip Gold and we compared notes.
Ross was good enough to sign my copy of Tainted for me and I'm even mentioned, alongside John, in the Acknowledgments at the back. A nice compliment for both of us. After our coffee, Ross and I walked back to Bryan Prince to look at his book in the window. What a great experience, to stand with a first-time novelist and share in his joy at seeing his beautifully published book in a bookshop window!
Other than the very pleasant chance to catch up with an old friend and a respected colleague, I also gained some excellent tips from Ross on how to improve my Gold book. I'll be looking to work up a strong subplot, something in a legal, courtroom line to compliment the main mystery plot. I'll also be working to add some convincing personal habits for my main character.
No, Ross didn't suggest that one directly. But he does it so well in Tainted that I figure I'll steal the idea from him.
Some Great Thing? Not So Much
29/03/09 08:10 Filed in: Reading
I'm back. A very difficult week away leaves me tired
and emotionally drained. Not the best circumstances
under which to try to do any writing but at least
I've been reading. I've just started Ross Pennie's
new medical mystery Tainted, which is great
so far, much better than my previous reading
expedition: Lawrence Hill's Some Great
Thing.
I have read and admired Hill's writing for some time, especially his non-fiction work on race relations (for want of a better term this early on a Sunday morning) in Canada. I have used an essay he wrote for Maclean's Magazine in training programs at work and am very much looking forward to obtaining a copy of his recent work, The Book of Negroes.
Published in 1992, Some Great Thing was probably Hill's first or second novel. I received it as a gift recently and, frankly, had never heard of it. Having read it now, I can see why.
This is no great book. In fact, the writing in it is surprisingly poor, in my opinion. The story of a young journalist of south asian background who returns to his hometown, Winnipeg, to take a job with the local daily newspaper and get reacquainted with his race-proud dad, Some Great Thing flounders around for a coherent story line from start to finish and, after failing to find one for 240 pages, simply stops. The characters are stereotypes of the worst kind and Hill literally tells us what to think rather than allowing us to develop our own understanding of the people and events of the book.
It's an early effort, no doubt, but Some Great Thing provides for me more evidence to prove my theory that often the writing itself does not matter in the decision of what gets published. If the subject matter is something the publishers feel will sell, they figure the reader won't know how bad the book is until after he has paid his money and taken the book home to read.
I have read and admired Hill's writing for some time, especially his non-fiction work on race relations (for want of a better term this early on a Sunday morning) in Canada. I have used an essay he wrote for Maclean's Magazine in training programs at work and am very much looking forward to obtaining a copy of his recent work, The Book of Negroes.
Published in 1992, Some Great Thing was probably Hill's first or second novel. I received it as a gift recently and, frankly, had never heard of it. Having read it now, I can see why.
This is no great book. In fact, the writing in it is surprisingly poor, in my opinion. The story of a young journalist of south asian background who returns to his hometown, Winnipeg, to take a job with the local daily newspaper and get reacquainted with his race-proud dad, Some Great Thing flounders around for a coherent story line from start to finish and, after failing to find one for 240 pages, simply stops. The characters are stereotypes of the worst kind and Hill literally tells us what to think rather than allowing us to develop our own understanding of the people and events of the book.
It's an early effort, no doubt, but Some Great Thing provides for me more evidence to prove my theory that often the writing itself does not matter in the decision of what gets published. If the subject matter is something the publishers feel will sell, they figure the reader won't know how bad the book is until after he has paid his money and taken the book home to read.
New Beginning, Long Break
20/03/09 12:41 Filed in: Writing
Just when I launch a new beginning of this blog, I
post an announcement that I, along with Phillip Gold,
Abigail Massey, George Weasley, Aberforth Dumbledore
and all the other characters I enjoy to write about,
will be taking a brief break.
I am about to board a plane back to Ontario for a week's visit. I'm hoping to see friends and family, visit the fabulously renewed Art Gallery of Ontario and just mope around Toronto and Hamilton for a while.
Since I can't take my RapidWeaver with me (well, I could but it would be a huge production) I'm afraid I won't be able to post anything during my vacation. Marlee Marie will probably put up a post or two of her Dog's Blog while I'm away so check out her action!
See you soon.
I am about to board a plane back to Ontario for a week's visit. I'm hoping to see friends and family, visit the fabulously renewed Art Gallery of Ontario and just mope around Toronto and Hamilton for a while.
Since I can't take my RapidWeaver with me (well, I could but it would be a huge production) I'm afraid I won't be able to post anything during my vacation. Marlee Marie will probably put up a post or two of her Dog's Blog while I'm away so check out her action!
See you soon.
A New Beginning
19/03/09 04:41 Filed in: Writing
This is a new beginning. My web-design program,
RapidWeaver, for some reason converted the original
files of this blog into "php" files, rather than
"html" files, rendering them unreadable for many (if
not all) people. Worse still, all my efforts to
correct the problem have failed completely. It's one
of the things I hate about computers (yes, I am
that old): things can go wrong in some quiet
little corner of program code and you have no chance
of figuring out what or why or of correcting the
problem.
So, I start a new page for the blog. This one seems to be working. Of course, if I want to have the 70 plus earlier posts available from this new page, I'll have to block and copy the text for each one into the new page. Right now, I'm not seeing that as being worth doing. Sorry. The text is still saved on my computer but, for now at least, won't be available on-line. No great loss, perhaps, but frustrating for me nonetheless.
Now, on to the last post.
I have some rewriting to do on the last section of Phillip Gold, more because I hammered out a difficult scene than because the writing is particularly bad. Sometimes I do that: I plow through a scene that I know is going to be complex and challenging, with several layers of meaning, numerous characters and a great deal of thematic and tonal importance just to get the basic elements and structure down. Then, I let it sit for a couple of days to get some distance from it. Finally, I go back to it fresh and start an intense rewrite, highlighting stuff I wanted to highlight, adding in elements I might have left out, etc.
It's a variation on the way Stephen King apparently writes. From what he says in On Writing, he hammers out the entire novel in rapid fashion, then goes back and expands on stuff he's given short shrift, identifies and heightens themes and images that have emerged in the writing and fine-tunes the writing itself.
I do that more on a scene-by-scene basis, especially with complex scenes. So I'll try to do some revising this evening.
On a public announcement note, my friend Ross Pennie has informed me that his new novel, Tainted, is now available in stores and through on-line book sellers (like Amazon). It's published by ECW Press from Toronto and it looks like they've done a great job of it. I had the honour of workshopping Tainted as Ross wrote it in and around 2007 so I know it's great. I'm interested to see the changes the professional editors asked him to do and excited to see it in its true, hard-cover form!
So, I start a new page for the blog. This one seems to be working. Of course, if I want to have the 70 plus earlier posts available from this new page, I'll have to block and copy the text for each one into the new page. Right now, I'm not seeing that as being worth doing. Sorry. The text is still saved on my computer but, for now at least, won't be available on-line. No great loss, perhaps, but frustrating for me nonetheless.
Now, on to the last post.
I have some rewriting to do on the last section of Phillip Gold, more because I hammered out a difficult scene than because the writing is particularly bad. Sometimes I do that: I plow through a scene that I know is going to be complex and challenging, with several layers of meaning, numerous characters and a great deal of thematic and tonal importance just to get the basic elements and structure down. Then, I let it sit for a couple of days to get some distance from it. Finally, I go back to it fresh and start an intense rewrite, highlighting stuff I wanted to highlight, adding in elements I might have left out, etc.
It's a variation on the way Stephen King apparently writes. From what he says in On Writing, he hammers out the entire novel in rapid fashion, then goes back and expands on stuff he's given short shrift, identifies and heightens themes and images that have emerged in the writing and fine-tunes the writing itself.
I do that more on a scene-by-scene basis, especially with complex scenes. So I'll try to do some revising this evening.
On a public announcement note, my friend Ross Pennie has informed me that his new novel, Tainted, is now available in stores and through on-line book sellers (like Amazon). It's published by ECW Press from Toronto and it looks like they've done a great job of it. I had the honour of workshopping Tainted as Ross wrote it in and around 2007 so I know it's great. I'm interested to see the changes the professional editors asked him to do and excited to see it in its true, hard-cover form!