Subscribe to A Novel Journey , a free bi-monthly newsletter, that takes you along with Ann as she writes her next novel.
If you denied your loved one's last dying wish, would you blame them for haunting you?
Maggie Cooper has lost sight of the living. Three years after her husband Peter's death, Maggie is estranged from her daughter and removed from her son. She wears Peter's one remaining item of clothing - a spattered sweatshirt - and spends more than the occasional night sleeping in her car, away from the memories of their once-shared bed.
Now available as an E-book !
Replete with coyotes, dog-headed gods and broken tractors, In The Hands Of Anubis is a wonderfully playful exploration of human relationships and the unexpected guides we meet in life.
Trevor Wallace, a tractor salesman with a lost childhood and a stalled relationship, is en route to Africa on business. In the Frankfurt airport he stumbles over the bag of Constance Ebenezer, a gregarious old lady travelling the world with extraordinary contraband in her luggage.
Now available as an E-book !
Sometimes it’s the little things in life that make all the difference—like chromosomes, sperm, tiny bugs or an endangered seabird that nests in an old-growth forest. But, what’s big or what’s little depends entirely on your perspective.
At three feet ten inches tall, Faye Pearson knows all about perspective. A scientist doing entomological research in the tallest trees on Vancouver Island, Faye’s struggle to function in a world not made for people her size is poignant and heartwarming.
Subscribe to A Novel Journey , a free bi-monthly newsletter, that takes you along with Ann as she writes her next novel.
Dear Reader:
Many of you have asked when my next book will be out and so far, all I have been able to say is that I’m working on it, and as the process of writing and publishing a book goes, it could be some time.
So as a way to bridge the gap I am offering a free subscription to a bimonthly newsletter which will start on April 4 (4th book, 4th month, 4th day). The newsletter will be emailed to you every two months for the time period it takes to research, write, publish and promote a book. The newsletter will include short draft excerpts from the book, interesting information I come across while researching the book, and details and musings about the process of bringing a novel to publication. In other words, I will take you along with me on the journey of birthing a book. You can vicariously experience the joys of the creative process, the excitement and satisfaction of watching a character come alive on the page, the ups and downs of the search for a publisher, the satisfaction and emotional high of holding the finished book in your hands. For the year following publication, the newsletter will shift focus to the promotion process and will include notices and invitations to readings, copies of reviews and reader’s reactions to the book. The newsletter will be casual and friendly, easily read in a short sitting, and produced in a simple email format so as to be available to everyone, including those with dial-up internet. As the book nears publication, I will offer an advance purchase option to newsletter subscribers which will include a signed personalized copy of the book.
To introduce you to the book, which now has the working title, High Clear Bell of Morning, and is about a family and an ecosystem in crisis, I have included a short excerpt at the end of this message.
If you are interested in coming along on this literary journey with me, simply email me and let me know you want to join. I will put your email address on my newsletter subscription list. I will never share your email address with anyone. You will start receiving newsletters on April 4, 2011. If you subscribe after that, I will send an archive of previous newsletters so you don’t miss anything.
Patron of the Arts option: If you like what you experience through my newsletter and wish to support this endeavour, I will gratefully accept donations by cheque or by credit card through Paypal. Please email me for the mailing address or instructions on how to use PayPal. In return for your generous support, I will include your name as a Patron of the Arts at the end of the newsletter, on my website and in the acknowledgement section of the published book. .
I hope will join me! Please pass this along to anyone else you think might be interested.
Happy reading.
Ann
Excerpt: The High Clear Bell of Morning
(Note: This excerpt was shortlisted—as part of a longer short story of the same title—for the 2010 Bridport Prize in the UK.)
In the dark, Glen eased Ruby from her bed. Careful not to wake Sybil and their infant son, Sam, he carried his daughter through the house to the kitchen in her pyjamas, marvelling at how he could still gather her body in his arms like he had when she was newborn, her weight warm and trusting, the line blurred between where she ended and he began. He gently jiggled her awake and she opened her eyes to half mast, squinting at the brightness of the kitchen lights.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Happy birthday.”
The girl’s eyes flew open and she lifted her head. “Am I six?”
He nodded.
“Are we going?”
He nodded again.
At the kitchen table she drank juice and slurped hot oatmeal while he dressed her. Once the tousled fog of sleep had lifted she vibrated in the chair with excitement. “Will we see them, Papa, will we?”
“I’m betting yes. Maybe they know it’s your birthday.”
As he steered the boat out into Haro Strait, Ruby’s wild coppery curls cascaded down toward the water as she leaned over the gunwale to feel the crest of the bow wave cold and wet against her fingers. Dawn and except for the movement of the boat and the hum of the motor, the water was still as death. The boat, the girl in her red life jacket and himself crouched in the stern to steer, reflected in the mirror surface of the sea. He watched her hair turn gold from the rising sun, the painted strands ruffled by the boat’s wind, and sniffed the air, wondering if he could teach himself to smell whales before he saw them. The sky so smooth and blue he swore he could hear the high clear bell of morning.
Off Turn Point at the entrance to Boundary Pass, she cried out and pointed to starboard. Two boat lengths away a dorsal fin sliced up from below and through the air like a sabre, followed by the powerful black body, the grey saddle patch and the punch of air from the blowhole. The eye embedded in white swivelled toward them. On its far side a second dorsal fin, small, a calf, rose beside the adult, blew, and with a flip of tail flukes, the two dove. Ruby scrambled back beside him and they scanned—she to port, he to starboard—for another sighting of the whales, for more whales, residents travelling in matriarchal groups their whole lives.
“Which ones are they, Papa?” she asked turning her eyes, green-blue like the sea, to his. “What’s their names?”
He knew the adult, the dorsal fin short and curved with a nick on the leading edge, the saddle patch double lobed like a kidney. “L17.”
“A girl or a boy?”
“A girl, a mother. She’s a grandmother too. Looks like she has a new calf.”
Ruby’s eyes glowed. “Does the baby have a name?”
“Not yet.” He reached for his camera case. “If we can get a photograph, we can give him one.”
Ruby lifted his heavy binoculars to her eyes, her fingers clenched around the double barrels as she squinted through the lenses across the expanse of ocean. “Where are they?”
“Safe under the water.”
“But we won’t hurt them, Papa. Do they know?”
“I’m not sure.” He lifted her to his knee and they watched in silence, the only other sign a distant blow. By the time they reached the spot the whales were gone.