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Narnia
Readers of The Ravenstones will doubtless claim that I owe a great deal to C.S. Lewis and the Narnia series. Rightfully so, and I’d be the first to admit it. I’m a great fan of Lewis, and not just for The Chronicles of Narnia, but also his brilliant, insightful religious works (The Screwtape Letters, The Read more
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Heroes
As children and teenagers, we all have heroes, or at least, people we look up to and respect. Often, they are parents, or older siblings or aunts and uncles. Sometimes, they are celebrities, athletes or simply people who give of themselves to others or to society in general. Sometimes, these admired individuals remain constant in Read more
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My Very First Piece of Writing
As a writer, I owe my parents a great deal, especially my mother who devoured books and loved going to the local library. Many of her passions became mine, especially detective novels (Agatha Christie, etc.), police procedurals (P.D. James), architecture (she eventually became a librarian at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture), art and Read more
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Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad
In light of the events in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, what 20th century novel would be the very first to come to one’s mind? George Orwell’s 1984, perhaps? Naturally. Many in the mainstream media have already commented upon the parallels. But more specifically, what would occur to a writer of stories about anthropomorphized Read more
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The Covers
My talented cover designer is Kari Rust. Not only does Kari provide the cover design for The Ravenstones, but she also writes and illustrates her own books (Tricky, Owlkids, 2017, and The House at the End of the Road, Owlkids, 2019). See here for information on her latest book. Kari lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Read more
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The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature (Part 2)
With an English mother (who read everything from natural history and essays to mysteries and poetry) and primarily English relatives, as a child I was invariably inundated with books by authors from the motherland. As such, aside from The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, Jnr. series (my father read the original Tom Swift books), I Read more
