The return of the Willetts on Wine: A Virtual Winetasting

My wife, Margaret Anne, and I have off and on over the years written a wine column called The Willetts on Wine. The new Regina magazine Toast asked us to resume it, and so we have. Here’s the first one! Having a glass of wine is a very sociable activity, whether it be a drink …

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Master of the World makes Sunburst Award longlist

I’m pleased to announce that Master of the World, Book 2 in my Worldshapers series from DAW Books, has been named to the longlist of the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Master of the World is on the list in the Young Adult Fiction category, the same category Worldshaper was …

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New review of Worldshaper: “a ripping yarn”

This is an interesting new review of Worldshaper, from Hal C F Astell at The Nameless Zine. He raises questions about the novel’s world that I enjoyed reading because they are in fact the very questions I begin to address in Book 2, Master of the World (as he hopes I will) and Book 3, …

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Cover art reveal: Star Song, coming soon from Shadowpaw Press

Shapers of Worlds, the Kickstarted anthology featuring work by some of the first-year guests on my podcast, The Worldshapers, will likely be the next Shadowpaw Press title, but I’m also working on others, including a young-adult science fiction novel called Star Song…and here’s the cover art! (Dan O’Driscoll is the artist–he does covers for Bundoran Press, so he …

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A short story reading on video

Lyric Theatre in Swift Current asked me to record a short story for the “Write Out Loud” component of their Lyric Theatre Digital Stage. I chose to read “Memory Jam” from my collection Paths to the Stars (available from www.shadowpawpress.com). I thought you might enjoy it, too, so…here it is!

The Worldshapers podcast an Aurora Award finalist again for Best Fan Related Work

I’m very pleased to announce that my podcast, The Worldshapers (“Conversations with science fiction and fantasy authors about the creative process”) has, for the second year in a row, been nominated for the Aurora Award for Best Fan Related Work–an award it won last year! (That’s the very nice trophy in the photo.) The Aurora …

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Cover art and TOC for upcoming anthology featuring my story “Beneath the Pall”

One inspiration for the Kickstarter I just successfully ran to fund the Shapers of Worlds anthology was Zombies Need Brains LLC, a publishing company set up by my fellow DAW Books author Joshua Palmatier to publish original anthologies, all funded through Kickstarter. For the upcoming anthology My Battery is Low and it is Getting Dark, …

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Great new StoryBundle includes my first DAW novel, Lost in Translation

The new Bundoran Buddies Book Bundle II, curated by Bundoran Press publisher and editor Hayden Trenholm, is now available. It includes my first novel for DAW Books, Lost in Translation. (I’m definitely a Bundoran Buddy: Bundoran published my Peregrine Rising duology, Right to Know and Falcon’s Egg; Right to Know was part of an earlier …

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The Banana-Dragon: An improvised fantasy story

Last night I tried out Writers at the Improv, a long-running event in Calgary at ConVersion and more recently at When Words Collide, run there by the Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, as a Saskatoon Public Library event, part of my gig as Writer in Residence. When I did it in Regina while writer in residence, …

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FUNDED: a Kickstarter for an anthology of short fiction from some of today’s top science fiction and fantasy authors

My Kickstarter campaign to fund Shapers of Worlds, an anthology of short stories from some of the authors who were guests my Aurora Award-winning podcast, The Worldshapers, in its first year, was a great success, raising $15,700 CDN, well above the original goal of $13,500. As a result, the anthology is full-steam ahead, heading for an August …

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Master of the World shortlisted for Fiction Award, 2020 Saskatchewan Book Awards

The shortlist for this year’s Saskatchewan Book Awards, honoring the best books by Saskatchewan authors, was announced Friday, and I’m thrilled to be able to tell you that Master of the World, Book 2 in my Worldshapers series from DAW Books, has been shortlisted for the Fiction Award, sponsored by Muslims for Peace and Justice. This is the second year …

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A new seven-sentence short story

Last night, as part of my ongoing gig as writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library, I led a large group of writers through the Seven-Sentence Short Story exercise, created by science fiction and fantasy author (and former English teacher) James Van Pelt. I’ve used this as an exercise several times now in writing classes and …

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