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Category: Writing and Editing

News item about my Freedom to Read Week visit to Weyburn

It’s not, alas, from the Weyburn Review, the newspaper I used to edit: instead it’s from Weyburn This Week. The interview was conducted before I made my appearance at the Weyburn Public Library last week for Freedom to Read Week, but didn’t appear until after…and while I appreciate the coverage, it’d have been nice to …

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A brief discourse on freedom to read and freedom to speak

I’m reading in Weyburn tonight at the Weyburn Public Library. It’s partly in honor of Freedom to Read Week, and so here, in a nutshell, is my Freedom to Read philosophy: People should be free to read whatever they want. Want more? Okay, I’ll add this: People should be free to write and say whatever …

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A sneak peek at Masks

That gorgeous cover, by Paul Young, will grace my next book from DAW, Masks, written under the pseudonym E.C. Blake. I just got it this week, and now I’m doubly excited about the book coming out. Here’s what DAW has come up with for the book jacket flaps (Masks is coming out in hardcover, my …

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The Space-Time Continuum: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a storyteller, not a social worker!”

My latest “Space-Time Continuum” column from the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild‘s newsletter Freelance… *** This column I want to return to the World Fantasy Convention held in Toronto last November…and a panel that rubbed me the wrong way. Entitled “The Changing Face of YA Fantasy,” the panel was described this way: “Fantasy works for young adult …

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Not enough readers, not enough time: the end of my regular science column (for real, this time)

All right, this time it’s for real: I’m pulling the plug on my weekly science column (I haven’t written one for about a month anyway). And it’s all MailChimp’s fault. MailChimp is actually a great way to send out nicely formatted HTML newsletters, and I’m very glad to use it for that purpose. However, MailChimp …

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Aging my heroine, fulfilling my pledges

As I noted last week when I made my excuses for not blogging very much, one of the tasks keeping me occupied was rewriting Masks, the first book in my upcoming trilogy for DAW (under the pseudonym of E.C. Blake). This was an interesting pass through the manuscript, because its main purpose was to change …

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The traditional “Blog post about why I’m not blogging much”

I know, I know. I post about getting a cat and then I fall silent, which can lead to only one conclusion: the cat ate my blog post. Not quite true, although Shadowpaw (Look! Another cat photo! Because there’s such a shortage of those on the Internet!) is sitting on my lap as I type …

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I finish a play…and sing of Saskatchewan

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been writing a play, tentatively titled The Piano Bench: A Love Story with Evening and Ghosts. Today I finished the draft script, which I’ll be passing on the fine folks at Regina Lyric Musical Theatre, which I hope will be staging the play (with me directing it) this fall. Since it’s …

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Two songs from The Dragonslayer

Many years ago I took it into my head to turn a short story of mine, “The Dragonslayer, “into one-act stage musical, intended for high schools. In brief, it was about a teenager who was a whiz at killing dragons when playing Dungeons & Dragons, who gets called into an alternate world to deal with …

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Why books are better than the movies made from them

My 11-year-old daughter Alice and I, during a before-school stop in a coffee shop this morning, were discussing books that have been made into movies: specifically The Hunger Games, which won several People’s Choice Awards last night. “Why are the books always so much better than the movies?” asked Alice. A question for the ages. …

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My introduction to science fiction for non-SF audiences

I’ve occasionally been called on to talk to various groups—teachers, librarians, others—about science fiction. It’s an interesting challenge, since you can’t be sure that your audience knows the first thing about the topic. I start, of course, by establishing my bona fides: talking about my own writing and publications. Then I go on to say …

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You got fantasy in my reality!

The latest installment in my “The Space-Time Continuum” column on science fiction and fantasy that appears in Freelance, the newsletter of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild; inspired, as you will see, by a panel I attended at the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto. There are, broadly speaking, three kinds of fantasy tales. There is the kind …

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