Ever wonder where the expression “Close but no cigar” originated? I had two occasions last month to wonder. This is what I learned. Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, players who succeeded at fairground games of strength, accuracy, and skill were commonly awarded a cigar as a prize. The games were notoriously…

Last month I told you about my desk and the wall beside it. The wall behind my desk tells more stories about my life as a writer. The Painting For my first young adult novel, set in Nova Scotia, Thistledown Press hired Iris Hauser, a Saskatchewan artist to create a cover. They knew the setting was…

It’s been a tough bunch of months. There are more tough months ahead. I know how privileged I am to be having, personally, a “not too bad” pandemic, as far as pandemic experiences go. I’ve been lucky to have writing projects on the go that are engaging my heart and mind. And I enjoy photography…

It’s still just once a week that I login at Yoga Today for an hour of yoga practice – usually on Monday morning, before I get back into my work and think I’m too busy to fit it in. But there’s one instruction that the women leading the online classes offer that stays with me…

I sure have! Most of the people in the photo here are authors. A few are illustrators. How many can you identify? Can you find me in there? All but one of the authors lives in Canada. Can you find her? She’s really famous! Meeting and hanging out with other authors is one of the great…

I love taking pictures. Last summer someone complimented me on my eye and even said she’d like to hang some of my work in her gallery. I haven’t done anything about that yet, but her encouragement gave me the idea of sharing some of my photos on my blog. I hope that what I pull…

This month’s photo, like last month’s, was taken in Nova Scotia – this time on the beach at the Kejimkukik Seaside Adjunct. We’ve taken our Seaside Writing Workshop Retreat participants there each year, and hope to again this year, but in this photo it’s my lovely daughter enjoying the enormous sky and exploring one of…

Of all the photos I shot during a spring river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest a few years ago, my favourites fell into the category of “Doors & Windows”. This one was taken in Miltenberg, when I wandered away from the tour group, as I found I tended to do quite a bit. How about…

There’s a bit of a disconnect between the mood in this photo and the mood I’m anticipating at the Hackmatack celebrations in Moncton this week, when hundreds of kids from all over New Brunswick will gather to honour the authors of books they have been reading this year. But there is a connection. Both came…

A ten-minute walk from my home, I can enjoy this lovely view. Well, not quite. Since this photo was taken two years ago, a metal barrier of sorts has been embedded in the rock with a sign attached warning hikers “Deep Gorge Keep Back from Edge”. If I were drunk or otherwise inspired to foolhardy…

I love the colours in this hammock. I love reading in it, too. But although we’re coming into our fourth summer in our current home, we haven’t yet found a place to hang it. Soon I hope, though, now that the heavy-lifting part of the work on my upcoming ya novel is done. (More on that…

Is there anything more lovely than a summer sunset over a lake? This photo was taken looking out over Lake Huron on the way to the cottage in 2008. How many summer sunset photos do you have in your collection? 🙂

This is my mother dancing with my father in 1974. It’s one of my favourite pictures of her. Sadly my mother passed away in 1996 with COPD, the same condition that took the life of Peter Gzowski. She would have been 86 in a couple of weeks. If you’re still watching over me, Mom –…

The next excerpt from my PYI keynote in a series that started in December 2011… One of the greatest pleasures I know, while driving, is watching my odometer in anticipation of a symmetrical reading. I find beauty in numbers like 010 010 and 088 880. Even 135 351 is lovely, or 075 075. Sometimes I’ll…

Since the two Sock Fluff posts straddling this one address some of my reading pleasures when I was growing up, I thought it would be fun to post a photo of me taken during that period of my life. Here I am with my dad. I blogged about him in the month of his birthday…

It’s easy to love the colours of a Caribbean sea, captured during my first ever vacation to a warm place last month. But there’s beauty to be found in the often monochromatic world of a Canadian winter too. On the first day of this winter, I was struck by the bits of ice forming on…

I wasn’t crazy about writing when I was a kid, but I did like it when the teacher gave us a picture as a starting point, especially if the picture inspired questions. Who? What? Where? And the best one: Why? What would I have written if she’d given us this photo (which she couldn’t have…

I sometimes get teased because I like taking pictures of my food. Like this spinach salad full of strawberries, blueberries, and toasted almonds. What makes this salad special is that it was made by an old friend who insisted on bringing it to my house when we got together this spring for a long overdue…

When I posted Photo of the Month #1 almost two years ago, I had every intention of showcasing one of my photos each month. It hasn’t turned out quite that way. Although this will be my last official “photo of the month”, I’ll still be putting up a photograph from time to time, but I’ll…

So, I thought I’d taken a pretty cool photo of a clam shell on the beach this summer and posted it for the assignment on symmetry in the class I’d been taking the month before. (The “classroom” stays open even when the class is officially over.) The instructor, Joy Sussman, suggested: I think this would…

I hereby declare my writing retreat a success. On the morning of my last full day there, I hit Send! I could go home happy. Not only did I accomplish what I’d hoped to with my novel manuscript (my first for adults), I also managed to do some work on a picture book text and…