ENGAGE

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become. (C.S. Lewis) I lurk on a few writers’ online message boards, and the other day someone posted about his dislike of […]

Roots and Branches traces the image of the tree throughout the fiction of G. K. Chesterton, interpreting the underlying message of his religious convictions through biography and literary analysis. This book introduces the uninitiated to a classic British author, allows students of Chesterton to mine his enigmatic work for metaphysical connotation, and encourages current-day writers to build

It’s said that reading fiction requires willing suspension of disbelief. We writers strive to weave a fictional dream of gossamer threads and avoid anything that might break the spell we cast. And so we choose our genre and build our story idea around specific conventions—checking vocabulary lists for children’s sci-fi, building psychological tension into thrillers,

I’m currently in the South of France, where the countryside in warmer seasons is saturated in lavender and olive, yellow and azure. But it is winter even here, and so the colours are more subdued–except in bakery windows! On this vacation again I’ve pressed my nose up against the glass of many patisseries and boulangeries (they still make a difference here between which

I am so delighted to have won TWO honourable mentions (with the third short story I entered also selected as one of 35 finalists) in this wide-reaching contest that attracted well over 1,000 entries, awarding only 12 prizes. And in my delight I’ve been sharing the news everywhere, many friends and associates rejoicing with my giggling joy. I mean, who’d

Soup making is more art than science. Baking chocolate cupcakes is science, as anyone who’s added a pinch too much soda knows. And of course entire cookbooks have been devoted to soup recipes (take the title of this post, which is the fictional name of a cookbook I refer to in my upcoming novel)–as though the

It’s corn season here in southern Alberta, where the long hours of sunshine ripen golden cobs to sweet perfection. As some of you know, I’ve been collecting soup recipes for a while on behalf of the main character in the novel I’m currently drafting (almost done!). So in celebration of the season and my dear

I’ve been a very errant blogger of late because my head has been in the clouds of novel drafting. I’m just at the stage now of cleaning up my manuscript so I can see what I really have, and then I’ll  begin edits in earnest before I send it off for the perusal of a

A friend of mine in Saskatchewan—a neighbour I know from ranching days—is a farm wife who grows lentils. I asked her for her favourite recipe, then tweaked it a bit, and might use it as one of the soups appearing in my novel. (Feel free to improvise your own ingredients.) It’s delish! LEMON LENTIL SOUP

I just got off the phone with my dear friend Christelle, whom I met twenty years ago in a small town in the Savoie department of the Rhône-Alpes and who now lives in the South of France with her husband and two boys. Christelle is a true Frenchwoman, a university teacher who has taught me