Candyass: finalist for The Big Moose Prize
My unpublished novel, Candyass, has been announced by Black Lawrence Press as one of their finalists for their annual novel contest, The Big Moose Prize 2026.
The Story Ends There
It’s not that I don’t like sequels–some of them are wonderful, in films and in books. But let’s face it, you have to disturb your characters from wherever you left them at the end of the last piece, and throw trouble at them once more, in a way that fits those characters and their world,…
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The wonders of slime mould
My short story “Flight” has just come out in Moss Magazine vol. 8. This wasn’t an easy story to find a home for. It’s set in Canada, not the US, and I’ve found it harder to place stories in US journals that are set in other countries. But it wasn’t just that: this story features…
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Rearranging the furniture
For months I was working on a story, interrupted frequently by work (I teach creative writing, and direct a creative writing programme), and by life (husband, kids, dog, cat), and unable to get past a certain point. My character had just arrived back in her home town to visit her father who’s in hospital. She…
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Spring, at last
It’s sort-of spring here in Interior Alaska, but then, spring comes in two parts here. First, break up: The snow mostly melts. The big early season mosquitoes start pestering us. Last autumn’s leaves, frozen beneath the snow all winter, re-emerge. The buds on birch trees make them look like knobbly strings unlit Christmas lights because…
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The trouble with sequels
I have to confess that when I’ve just finished a novel, and done all of the work of getting it down onto the page, and revising it over and over, and editing it, and going through proofs, the question that confounds me is: So, are you writing a sequel? I’ve never written a sequel because…
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First, know yourself
Recently I sat down with Robert Hannon for an interview about my new novel, Turnback Ridge, and about the ideas that inspired it. What a pleasure it was to talk to someone about my journey to Alaska, life as an immigrant, and the craft of writing, and to get messages and calls from friends who…
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A Day in the Life
Somewhere around the middle of the semester, I set my undergraduate fiction writers a task: write 1-2 pages about someone engaged in a job you’ve never done. Make it feel very real–and to do that, you’ll have to do research. Every semester I get pages about doctors and archaeologists, baristas, cashiers, butchers, mortuary workers. Some…
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Viewing the world anew
This summer, I took two of my sons to a sporting event in the Netherlands–they won medals, we hung out with their team-mates and other parents then, when it was all over, we stayed on for a few days. I’m from Europe, and there’s something about going back that is like a balm: seeing tiny…
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