Watermarked Series
This year, I’m publishing my series, Watermarked. Twelve interlinked stories, one each month, will be posted HERE. It’s a simple way for me to get them “out there.” To celebrate what I’ve learned from writing them and move on to new writing projects.
Subscribers will get an email notification. By December, the whole series will be accessible using the Watermarked link on the home page. You can subscribe HERE.
This month, you will meet Claire and Michael in the story, “The August Regatta.”
I hope you will enjoy Claire, Michael, Brianna and Stéphanie’s coming-of-age experiences. Achieving maturity isn’t age-related.
Please invite anyone you know who might be interested in joining us. I look forward to your comments. Please remember that all these characters and situations are fictional.
Writing and Conferences
With the short days and long nights, it’s is a perfect time of year to update my website and read and learn more. The ninth annual North Island Writers Conference is next weekend, January 16th to 18th, at North Island College. Catch an interview with Susan Juby, our keynote speaker, being interviewed by the fabulous Sharon McInnes, for our local radio station, Dig FM (formerly CVOX), on the program Beyond the Page. Susan is a terrific example of the many roads to “adulthood.” She is a prolific and funny writer.
I’ll be taking the short story session, led by Claire Mulligan, who is currently the Haig-Brown writer-in-residence in Campbell River. She has an MFA in screenwriting. I’m curious to learn about the “Mulligan Method.”
An hour up the Island Highway, the Campbell River writers’ conference, Words on the Water is on March 13th-14th. I’ve never been, so a new adventure. The delightful Michael Crummey and Vincent Lam are among the speakers.
What Am I Reading
This fall, NIWC chair and my writing group member, Joline Martin, published War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War. Joline alternates interviews with resisters with chapters on the political context of the times. I was in high school in the GTA in the mid-60s, but I remember the street scene outside Rochdale on Bloor Street, a haven for dislocated resisters. It’s a history worth revisiting in 2026.
I hadn’t read Alan Hollinghurst since The Line of Beauty, where nearly every sentence is rich, dense, and exquisite like a dark chocolate hedgehog. But the nights were long, and I got lost in the life of Dave Win, a biracial boy, growing up in 1960s Britain in Our Evenings. He has a white, single mother, a seamstress (which I loved). He endures public school, racism, sexism (he’s gay) classism and the Thatcher era on his journey to become an actor. It’s long, detailed and delicious.
That’s all for now
Thanks again for dropping in. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and will read the first story of my series, Watermarked.
See you again in February. Meanwhile, I’m listening to the rain pounding the metal roof and the southeaster that’s rattling the front windows.