Originally published, May 17, 2009
Thanks so much to everyone who attended! A big crowd, a lovely summery view over English Bay, fine food, a lot of ambient noise from the bar, and very brisk book sales. People’s Co-op Books sold every copy brought to the event. The English Stories was well and truly launched.
Originally published, Monday, May 11, 2009
Most dates for my Ontario tour with The English Stories are now set.
Ottawa — June 6th, The Manx Pub Reading Series, 370 Elgin Street
Waterloo — June 8th, 7:30 pm, with Terry Griggs, author of Thought You Were Dead, at Wordsworth Books, 100 King Street, South Waterloo
Guelph — June 9th, with Terry Griggs, and with Kari Grimstat reading from Hans Eichner’s Kahn & Engelmann, at The Bookshelf, 41Quebec Street
Windsor — June 11th, TBA
The Toronto reading date will be confirmed in the next day or so.
Originally published, Friday, April 24, 2009
Yesterday copies of The English Stories arrived chez moi. Such a striking cover! The interior design looks so clean/clear. Altogether I’m really pleased. There are also some zippy bookmarks that I’ll be glad to hand out.
My father used to claim that an author, on opening a newly published book, is sure to find at once a typo or other error that every single proofreader (including the author) missed. Mine hasn’t presented itself yet. . . .
The actual publication date is 1 May, but there’s already a review, by James Grainger, in the May issue of Quill & Quire (p 31). Two Biblioasis books are featured, Terry Griggs’ Thought You Were Dead and my English Stories. Both reviews are favourable, although mine does end with the odd statement that the stories “achieve a brooding resonance.” ???
Next week the schedule for my time in Ontario, in late May and early June, should be up on this site — so do check back here.
Originally published, Saturday, March 28, 2009
Biblioasis has a blog called Thirsty, at www.biblioasis.blogspot.com I’ll be writing for it occasionally this spring.
My first post appeared on 27 March, about how The English Stories began. When writing the first, I didn’t realize there’d be a suite of them.
Soon I’ll do a post on memory. I was surprised, when working on later pieces in The English Stories, at how much detail about those years in England was still safely in my head.
Back on 12 March, there’s a post by publisher Dan Wells about the book as a whole.