I was five years old when I decided I wanted to be a writer. To be fair, most people don’t find their calling that early in life. But the passion and fascination I’ve had for books, the literary world, and the arts, never left me. Now, as Moncton’s inaugural Anglophone Poet Laureate, a professional editor & writing consultant, as well as the host of the Attic Owl Reading Series, the writing world is my entire life.…
Originally presented on September 13th, 2020, This two-hour webinar features Bill Arnott giving a recorded workshop he gave for the Federation of BC and Yukon Writers for both self-published and traditionally published authors. Workshop attendees paid $45, but accessing the recorded session is only $12. This supports the Federation as well as the presenter.
Throughout the webinar, Bill presents his tips on:
“A town is a tin of children in an ocean,” writes Anna van Valkenburg in her debut poetry collection, a rich, unpredictable, and deeply surreal exploration of identity and the multiple contradictions we each embody. These poems, set in locations real and imaginary, magical and banal, inhabited by figures out of Slavic folklore and a Boschian landscape, strive to unearth truths, especially those that are difficult or uncomfortable, using Bertolt Brecht’s maxim “Do not fear death so much as an inadequate life” as a touchstone.…
The Essentials of Ads and Promo
Here’s something you might know. If not, let me share.
For some time, we’ve needed to see an ad multiple times before it resonated—stuck—sufficiently looping in our headspace to motivate us to act, in other words driving us to actually purchase the item being promoted.
In the earliest days of advertising a single placement could well result in action.…
Terri Favro is the author of three novels: Sputnik’s Children (a Globe100, Quill & Quire Book of the Year and CBC Books Top 10 book for 2017, shortlisted for the Sunburst Award and longlisted for 2020 CBC Canada Reads), Once Upon A Time in West Toronto, and The Proxy Bride (winner of the Quattro-Ken Klonsky Novella Award) . Her popular science book, Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact and Speculation, received a starred review on BookList, the review site of the American Library Association. …
Writers, whether you know it or not, you’re a business owner. Specifically, an entrepreneur. The sooner you acknowledge and embrace this, the better. And the easier it’ll be to promote and sell books.
Herein lies the dichotomy. As writers, we inherently don’t want to promote—to sell ourselves and our stories. We write because we enjoy it—selecting words to communicate a vision—moods, scene, dialogue.…
Luke Inglis works and lives on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. His debut novel, Something Drastic, was just published by NON Publishing. The book’s strange protagonist, Earl Qume’s poisoned mind has altered his reality and transformed his surroundings into omnipresent threats. After his wife kicks him out and he finds himself on the run from the law, he escapes the concrete confines of Toronto to find refuge in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.…
Helen C. Escott is the author of the widely read blog-turned-book I Am Funny Like That, which has over 222,000 readers, and two bestselling crime thrillers: Operation Wormwood, which was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in 2019; and Operation Vanished, which was the Silver Medal Winner for Best Regional Fiction, awarded by the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards.…
Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.…
I have found the various writing communities in Canada to be very supportive of each other, and JewishFiction.net certainly fills an important niche in this country. Jewish Fiction .net is the online literary journal that was founded by Dr. Nora Gold, who continues to act as editor-in-chief to this day. Dr. Gold is also a published author herself, with 2016’s The Dead Man (Inanna Publications) being her most recent.…
Over the course of her working and writing life, Monica Kidd has been tugged in several directions: science, medicine, journalism, and literature, especially poetry. Her most recent poetry collection, Chance Encounters with Wild Animals, was published by Gaspereau in 2019. It followed three other collections: The Year of Our Beautiful Exile (2015), Handfuls of Bone (2012), and Actualities (2007), all published by Gaspeareau. …
Larry Tremblay is a playwright, poet and essayist in addition to novelist, and we feel the playwright at work in this book as scenes shift before us. Tremblay plays with us. He walks us through a “trap full of mirrors” where reflections cannot be trusted. The play within the play, the book within the book told through multiple characters’ points of view.…
… around the time I signed my first book. The purchaser, someone I’d known for years, looked at me with an excitement I’d never seen them display prior to the publication of my modest trade paperback – a book about personal development and designing a good life – what we labeled self-help in the day. It became a national bestseller. Fifteen years later people still buy copies and seem to enjoy them.…
When my first book came out, I was suddenly thrust into the spotlight as “an up and coming young Canadian poet to watch out for” simply by having the good luck to land on a few awards lists. My book Bonfires, published by Nightwood Editions, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award and won the CAA poetry award in 2004.…
Kushwaha is the author of Side by Side (2018, Inanna Publications), a book that I put on the 2020 long list for “The Very Best!” Book Awards for Best Fiction. Ms. Kushwaha has a new novel coming out in late January entitled Secret Lives of Mothers & Daughters, to be published by HarperCollins), which I am looking forward to reading.…
