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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The Federation of British Columbia Writers functions on the unceded and ancestral territories of many Indigenous Peoples and cultures. As champions of language, we cherish the oral and written traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of this land. We commit to uplift the voices and stories of marginalized peoples and communities wherever we work.
We celebrate submissions from underrepresented communities and are actively seeking contributions from writers of all races, genders, sexualities, abilities, neurodiversities, religions, socioeconomic statuses, or immigration statuses. We encourage submissions from both published and emerging writers. We believe our strength as a community is in the breadth of our stories.
The FBCW gratefully acknowledges the support of the Province of BC, the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Magazine Association of BC.
Letter from the editor Letter from the deputy director
Our 1,700-plus members write in more genres and sub-genres than we can count, and that’s something to celebrate! It also presents us with the opportunity to explore the rewards of creative cross-pollination.
Karen Wilson knows all about the joys of writing across mediums. She took material from a personal journey and used it to write a book, create an online course, and craft a monologue.
Alison Colwell switched from fiction to memoir when her daughter got sick—and discovered she’s a better writer in both genres when she integrates their respective strengths. Monica Nawrocki expanded her writing territory even further, as she describes in a lighthearted tour through the six genres (and counting!) that have captured her heart.
And then there are the lessons that individual genres can teach us. Eric de Roulet argues that horror offers much more than a good scare, while Kirsten Mah makes a case for the emotional literacy that romance affirms. Erin MacNair encourages us to ignite our imaginations by exploring speculative fiction, and Lesley Taylor contends there’s nothing like the suspense-building strategies of a good mystery to keep readers engaged. For genre writers of all stripes, the Darling Axe dives into the necessity and perils of tropes.
Elizabeth Adilman’s introduction to the art of haibun and Kate Braid’s tribute to form poetry are mustreads for those interested in verse. While intended for memoirists, Beth Hendry-Yim’s organizational tips will be useful to anyone collecting research materials. And no matter what you write, Katharine Chan’s health-supporting suggestions point the way to “optimal energy and mental clarity.”
I hope you’ll find fresh inspiration in this issue—whichever your chosen genre.
Please stay in touch at rachel@bcwriters.
Rachel Dunstan Muller Managing Editor and FBCW Press Director
Iget it; labels can be helpful. For example, when you want to distinguish between a can of refried beans and coconut milk, which could make a big difference in the Thai curry dish. But assigning roles, characteristics, or identities in social contexts can fall to the dark side, where labelling can lead to stereotypes, discrimination, and a plethora of societal ills. Then there’s the fact that labels can oversimplify complex items or concepts, and create limiting expectations. Which brings us to genres in writing.
I’m not against them per se. I admit I have always been attracted to specific forms—creative nonfiction in the form of personal essays, and fantasy that introduces me to new worlds. For a couple of years running, I was on a dystopian novel kick: “It’s the end of the world and I just want to read.” Strangely, I couldn’t get anyone to join that book club.
There’s a place for choosing a genre. It provides an arena to play in; it sets up a few guideposts; we know what we’re signing up for. Genres are good for marketing too, aiding publishers in connecting with audiences.
But lately, I’ve been more and more curious about cross-genres that smash the boundaries of conventional storytelling, eliminate confining structures, unfetter the imagination, and expand audiences. I like the idea of fiery dragons showing up in a future decimated by climate change, or fantasizing about time travel in a steampunk novel. But that’s just me.
Regardless of your genre predilections, I know you’ll discover much to love in this issue of WordWorks. As a relatively new member of the FBCW, and one who has just jumped onto the team of staff and volunteers, I am pretty stoked about the webinars and writing intensives coming up over the summer. I encourage everyone, regardless of their preferred genre, to check them out.
Happy writing,
Jacqueline Massey Deputy Director
Love the one you’re with
BY MONICA NAWROCKI
Igrew up reading the Bible and the Bobbsey Twins. Almost exclusively. And so, verily, I say unto thee, my taste in literature was a tad narrow in the beginning. (But my decoding skills as a reader were phenomenal—a word I could read by the time I entered first grade.)
The first poem I ever wrote was surprisingly secular, and although it had great tension—what with the bear under the chair—my refusal to accept Mrs. Hipplehauser’s editorial feedback that mother did not rhyme with otter led to writer’s block. Eventually, I got back on track and by grade six, I was pumping out poems faster than Pablo Neruda. I knew that poetry was my love language and always would be. Until it wasn’t.
Fast forward twenty-five years, and I have moved to the west coast and decided to take some time away from my career as a teacher. My last teaching position in Manitoba was one that challenged and changed me in many ways and so, in my little cabin by the ocean, I began to journal about my days at the school for at-risk youth where I learned so much about the resiliency of children; about the connection between feelings, thoughts, and behaviour; about my own patterns and blind spots. My musings and ramblings went on much longer than I thought and, at some point, began to feel like a book. With the publication
of Thanks for Chucking That at the Wall Instead of Me, I discovered the power of connection possible with nonfiction. This book brought a wave of responses from people in many lines of work and walks of life, who said that reading the book was like having a cup of coffee with me. The energy of these connections filled me with a desire for more. I wrote essays, creative nonfiction, and blogs. I found I was much better at having conversations when I was the one doing all the talking! I knew then that nonfiction was my calling. Until it wasn’t.
One day as I was diving off a rock into the mouth of the lagoon and shooting through the water via the slipstream—like you do—I couldn’t help thinking, hey, this would make a great time portal. A story was rolling around in my head, and before you could say, I think I will write a book about the Japanese Canadian internment because there is a lack of engaging stories to open the conversation with middle-grade readers who need to know about this shameful part of our history, I had started my first novel. I loved research, I loved the imagination-play, I loved writing dialogue, and I loved eavesdropping on my characters (a skill I’d already honed as a teacher, obviously). I loved everything about writing fiction, and when Full Moon Lagoon was published, I was again overwhelmed by the connections it created: with students, teachers,
and even with the relatives of those interned. So many amazing moments with kids. Middle-grade fiction was definitely my jam.
Until it wasn’t.
After my second MG novel was published, I realized that I had started writing more and more short stories in recent years, and so I turned my attention to short fiction. And when I really focussed on it—eureka! This was it. This was true love. All the others were infatuations, but short stories were so well-suited to my writing style. Succinct, powerful little missives with the perfect balance of action, theme, and character.
I loved writing short stories, and they were literally everywhere I looked. I couldn’t go through the checkout at the grocery store without getting an idea for a story. No looking back, nothing but short fiction for me going forward, forever and ever, amen.
Until I discovered flash fiction.
Oh, my goodness! Even shorter, even sharper. This form celebrated the surprise ending, which was totally my schtick already! I was famous (in my house) for surprise endings in my short stories. This genre was made for me. Less stupid setting (which I suck at anyway), more precision— the blowgun dart of literature. I wrote flash fiction like Matsuo Basho wrote haiku. (I just wrote a flash about writing haiku. I’ll show you later.)
poems, flash, and short stories on our theme and experienced the pure joy of collaboration—of watching single ideas and images snowball into completely new artforms. I never could have predicted how thrilling this process would be, nor how satisfying it would be to share our work with the public.
I took workshops. I wrote. I read. I became one with the flash. I was the flash. Sometime during that love affair, I actually said that I was never going to put myself through writing another novel. Until I did.
But while I was writing the young adult story that had been on the back burner of my brain without me even registering it, I got involved in an art show. A mixed media show called Island Time with a ceramic artist and a visual artist. My words, their images. It was amazing. I had never experienced the rush of seeing my words represented visually. I wrote
We decided to revise the show for a new gallery. And so, one evening at a jazz club, I leaned over to the ceramic artist and whispered, with a mild slur but a rush of inspiration, that I was going to write a song for our next show. If she was anyone else, she would have said, But Mon, you don’t know how to read or write music, and you don’t play an instrument. But that’s not how collaboration works, people! She whispered back, “That’s a fantastic idea!”
And you know what? I did write a song. And it was performed at our opening and was a big hit with the hometown island crowd.
So, yeah, I’m a songwriter now. I’ve already written one for our new theme. That’s definitely my passion. From now on, going forward, songwriting. That’s the ticket for me.
Until it isn’t.
And I cannot WAIT to see what happens next.
Monica has lived in three provinces, had five concussions, owned a Ford Pinto, and married a woman long before it was cool; writing was inevitable. To date, she has published four books, and her short fiction has appeared in various journals and anthologies in North America and the UK.
For the love of haibun!
BY ELIZABETH ADILMAN
We are surrounded by form in our daily lives, from the repeating patterns of birdsong and migration, to the phases of the moon, waves on our oceans, and leaves fallen. The practice of haibun asks us to capture these naturally occurring moments and their underlying emotions in the contained consciousness and strict form of haiku, while still leaving room to meander along the boulevards of prose.
Haibun has wandered over hundreds of years from its birthplace in Japan, westward into its own artform, bridging worlds and brain hemispheres to offer both free verse and form. A hybrid poetic form, haibun is part travel diary, part conscious awakening, spanning the usual chasm that can divide a writer’s journey.
How does haibun connect us deeper to ourselves?
Haibun’s ingredient list is simple. The purpose of its initial prose is to convey information, while the role of its haiku is to help both writer and reader understand the feeling of a particular place and time. Along with the haibun’s title, the combined elements bring to mind the “aha” of a captured moment. The right chemistry is essential. Each ingredient must be able to both stand alone and enhance the others, to simmer symbiotically and provide opportunities for reflection.
Start by taking a walk outside. Use your phone or a notebook to capture and record small scenes that grab your attention. Don’t worry about getting the whole poem down at first, just notice what catches you. Use all your senses to hone in on the details of your scene—the sights, sounds, and smells. What do they trigger in you? Sometimes a photograph will do until later. Then, when you have time to reflect, write down your experience and think about why this experience has stayed with you.
In her haibun, “Around Here,” poet Roberta Beary jumps right into the scene, using lower case letters as one way to enhance emotion.
Around Here
things are starting to slip. the daily dog walk is a flat-out lie as is any form of exercise. personal grooming is more goal than reality. witness madprofessor eyebrows and stray nose hairs. everywhere are dusty stacks of expired energy drinks. that no one is willing to toss. at least not yet.
mother sleeps on and off we talk hospice
We feel the turns of thought and language embedded within both the prose and the haiku in this haibun, small “seasonings” to enhance and convey place and time. Notice how the title, the prose, and the haiku all help us understand the emotion underneath the situation. The prose is concise and nuanced, filled with innovative language, rhythm, pacing, and voice heard through common poetic devices, while the haiku distills the moment’s observation to its essence. In truth, it is said that a haibun is only as good as its haiku. According to Roberta Beary, haibun is comprised of the “Holy Trinity” of title, prose, and haiku. Haibun is flexible. Start with prose or a haiku; which one is up to you. What matters is that you write about an experience that has stayed with you, perhaps triggered by an underlying emotion.
The practice of haibun creates the kind of peace that can come from a challenging meditation. Prose is a walk; haiku is the birdsong that sings to you, makes you want to pause, dwell, contemplate, reflect, and see anew.
Elizabeth Adilman earned her MFA in poetry, with an emphasis on haibun. “Around Here” appears by permission of the author. It was originally published in Deflection (Accents Publishing 2015), by Roberta Beary.
Learning to sing: On writing form poetry
BY KATE BRAID
Years ago, when I’d just begun to teach creative writing, I learned about formal poetry from my friend Sandy Shreve, who was writing poems written to a set pattern herself. At first, I wasn’t interested. But when a student in the first poetry class I taught was having trouble writing about a painful issue, I advised him—on some Muse-given hunch—to try it in a given form. Up to then, he’d been an extremely slow writer, but overnight a sonnet poured out of him: the best poem he wrote all term. So I began to assign the writing of one form poem to every first-year poetry class, then taught entire courses in form. The results were powerful.
Today we’re so blinded by free verse, we’ve almost forgotten not just the discipline of formal verse, but that poetry started as an oral craft. Before printed books, poets travelled with a lyre and used rhythm, rhyme, and repeating patterns of sound to help them remember hundreds of lines of verse. Rhythmic pattern is deeply, physically reassuring, starting with your mother’s heartbeat—lub DUB, lub DUB. That is the soft/strong stress pattern we call “iambic.”
It seems like a contradiction, that accepting constraints can be liberating. I came to think it’s at least partly having structure, the rules themselves, and the focus required to follow them, that solves the poet’s problem of “how to get started?” We’re so distracted by “the rules” (sometimes also intimidated), we forget ourselves and write. Interestingly, this “new” attention to sound spilled over into all aspects of my students’ writing—prose and other poems.
Rhythmic pattern is deeply, physically reassuring, starting with your mother’s heartbeat— lub DUB, lub DUB.
When I couldn’t find a text on form poetry that included any Canadian poems, Sandy and I compiled an anthology of all-Canadian form poetry, In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry (Polestar, 2005). When we put out the initial call, we weren’t sure there’d be enough poems for the slimmest of volumes—but we were swamped! The book was so well received, we did a second edition, In Fine Form: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry (Caitlin Press, 2016) that is likewise in wide use by teachers and poets.
The first poetry class I taught entirely writing in forms, I accepted “almost” rhythm and rhyme—but the resulting poems weren’t great. For the second class, I was tougher and allowed no breaks from the rules. First, students practiced finding syllables, the weak and strong stresses in every line (the WEAK and STRONG STRES-ses), those hidden beats in language that we call metre. Then they started writing: sonnets, palindromes, glosas—there are hundreds of traditional forms, each with its own challenges and rewards. Was it Robert Frost who said 80% of spoken English is iambic? When I began to listen, it was everywhere: from songs (I LEANED / my BACK / a-GAINST / an OAK) to ferry announcements (pre-PARE / to LEAVE / the SHIP). All it takes is paying attention.
On the last day of that second class in which I insisted everyone follow the rules of each form, we did a final student reading. Afterwards, several students came to me with looks approaching awe. “Did you feel it?” they almost whispered. And I did. The music in their poems sang loud and clear.
Kate Braid has written many books of nonfiction and prizewinning poetry. Her newest book of essays will be published by Caitlin Press in spring 2025. Thanks to Sandy. See www.katebraid.com
Organizing your memoir memorabilia
BY BETH HENDRY-YIM
You’ve lived a lot, been places, experienced other cultures, dealt with trauma, loss, and disease, survived and thrived, made mistakes—big ones—picked yourself up, and carried on. Now, with more years behind you than ahead, the story of how you got here burns to be passed on. But where do you begin? How do you organize the relevant photographs, conversations, letters— and everything else that embodies your life—then match them up with the story you want to tell?
Florence Riley began writing her memoir about homesteading in the Cariboo at the age of eighty-two. A meticulous collector of memories, her stashes of letters, journals, and receipts for tools, lumber, and groceries (and whatever else was needed to “prove the land”) were stored in bankers boxes stashed away in a separate bedroom. But whenever Florence decided it was time to write, one look at those boxes set her off in other directions, cleaning out the storage shed or scrubbing out the drains in the bathroom sink.
Everything at hand
Like having the right tool for the right job, creating the right environment for organizing saves time and energy. Florence put one box at a time by her kitchen table, along with folders, paper clips, markers, and envelopes. Every morning she would spend time organizing the material in that one box. With decades of memories to sort through, tackling one box at a time got her closer to recording what it took to homestead. Find your spot, keep it simple, and have everything you need at hand.
Florence put one box at a time by her kitchen table, along with folders, paper clips, markers, and envelopes.
We all have collections of memorabilia stored away in albums or boxes waiting for inspiration, but the thought of getting organized can be a roadblock to actual writing. Whatever the shape of your memoir—circular, fragmented, or chronological—the memories you want to share, as well as the physical memorabilia that can help jog your memory, are part of the story. Organizing your materials in advance will allow your mind and writing to flow, without the fits and starts of backtracking to find the right detail or piece for the right place!
Build your database
Whether you choose to store your stash online or in hard copy, start by creating labelled year and month folders to make it easy to locate a specific piece or item. Keep the labelling format consistent, with year, month, and item. In each year’s folder, include photographs, snippets of conversation, memories, journal entries, letters, ideas, and links to outside events that were happening in the world at that time.
Set aside time to make a list of memories for each year, which will provide you with excellent writing prompts and jumping-off points for your next piece. If any of your memorabilia is three-dimensional, take a picture.
Lists to the rescue
Now it’s time to create a master list of everything in the folder, adding to it as you add more material. With a master list, you can cross-reference pieces with any important details or records you want to include in your final text. Make the item names
short, concise, and consistent. Store this master list in a sheet protector at the front of each box, or in a clearly marked “Master List” folder for each year. This was key for Florence. As she hit her nineties, memory was shifting. With a master list, she was able to find corroborating material or cross-check facts for accuracy—like the cost of a bag of nails, or the correct ear of the deer in her garden in which she shot a hole. Make a hard copy and store it in a binder for each year. Word and Scrivener both offer ways to label items for ease of cross-referencing. Refer to their help menus for more details.
Use your system
Writing memoir is about creating scenes you will eventually put together into a book-length manuscript. These scenes are the most important part of your memoir. Create a separate document for each scene or piece you generate, and title it clearly to identify the year, month, and subject. Add it to the annual folder and attach any corresponding material.
Save your revisions
Florence hand wrote each story, but when she began typing them to the computer, she edited to “ improve” the originals. After all the editing, she found that a piece often bore little resemblance to its first draft, and some of the original story was too important to leave out. When you edit a piece, save the latest version as a new document labelled with the same title and a new version number. For example: 0346shotdeerv2—with 03 being the month, 46 being the year, shotdeer being the subject, and v2 being the version. Always keep a copy of the original.
Writing memoir isn’t easy. Bringing up past events can be hard, with muddled timelines, vague transitions, and repeated stories. External details, whether a
letter from your estranged mother or a receipt for a pregnancy test, anchor pieces to time and place.
Leave a legacy
Florence started writing at eighty-four, and she finished The Last Cariboo Homestead at ninety-one. She has a lot of living behind her; not so much in front. What happens if illness or death interrupts her story writing? What if it interrupts your story?
Florence’s next book is about her experience as secretary to BC’s Opposition Leader during the 1960s. At 104, time is precious, and although she has almost completed the manuscript, once she is gone someone else will be responsible for her museumquality material. Fortunately, it is very well organized!
Beth Hendry-Yim is a writer, author, Nana, and gardener. Her short story, “What Mothers Are Supposed to Do,” won a BC Literary Award, and her writing in a Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation publication helped land a national marketing award. Her work has appeared in Island Parent, Natural Life, The Navigator, and the Nanaimo News Bulletin, and she is the author of Fresh Start: A Workbook and Guide to Healthy Living. She is currently working on a book about gardening, grandchildren, and climate change, in that order.
Images supplied by Florence Riley: left to right, Florence and Ron Riley, Florence with a coyote at Ruth Lake, Florence with her memoir.
What the world needs now
BY KIRSTEN MAH
Romance is currently experiencing a surge in popularity. It is hot—often in more ways than one—and it sells. Romance novel sales in Canada have experienced a 42% increase since 2017. With over $1.44 billion in revenue in 2023, romance is single-handedly fueling the expansion of adult fiction. What draws readers to romance?
Loneliness and the yearning for connection.
Given the instability of the past five years, it's no wonder that the world is in the midst of a new epidemic. In November 2023, the United Nations declared loneliness a global health concern, citing its serious impacts on physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity—effects which are comparable to smoking and physical inactivity. The pandemic, environmental challenges, armed conflicts, and economic stress have left many of us feeling anxious, depressed, lonely, unseen, and disconnected. Romance sales began their upward climb during the dark days of the pandemic lockdown. When left with lots of time and few other choices, many people returned to books—romance most of all.
And they liked what they found.
One of the irrefutable rules of romance is that it must have a “ happily ever after” ending, or at least a “ happy for now.” In an uncertain world, it’s a comfort and a big draw for many readers to know that they don’t have to worry about whether the characters they’ve come to love or admire are going to get hurt or suffer.
They like knowing that everything will be okay.
Romance novels offer a ray of sunlight in the darkness, a space to unwind and relax. Love stories help us feel more connected to others because they focus on relationships. Immersing ourselves in the connection between characters creates a sense of closeness that can help to stave off the loneliness and disconnection that many of us feel. When we witness characters going through tough times, we’re buoyed by their success.
We feel validated if we are going through something similar in our own lives. We feel seen. Romance can help us cope in tough times by bringing us a little happiness, allowing us to explore our own wants and needs as we read. Above all, romance is a space that values and recognizes the “soft skills”—attributes like effective communication, emotional literacy, and collaboration. These skills are more commonly found in romance’s primary readership: women. Romance affirms and recognizes that what is often perceived as a weakness by the world is actually a superpower. This is why I choose to write and indie publish contemporary romance. I want to spread light and love with my stories, to connect with my readers and assure them that I see them, and that I understand what they’re going through. I want my novels to be a soft place to land in a hard and lonely world.
To paraphrase a well-known song, what the world needs now is love, sweet love, and in one sweet (or spicy!) package, that’s what romance delivers.
In a way, romance writers—and readers—are saving the world one love story at a time.
Under the name Keay Francis, Kirsten Mah is the author of relevant, smalltown romance set in the supernatural beauty of contemporary BC. Kirsten used to be a teacher but wisely switched to writing fiction, because it is much easier to get her characters to do what she wants. The third book in her current Port Russell romance series, Revolution, entered the world on May 23. Kirsten can be found online at www.keayfrancis.com
Beyond being scary: How horror can enrich our storytelling
BY ERIC DE ROULET
For a dozen-odd years, I didn’t really talk about my love of horror in polite company. The genre has something of a PR problem, being popularly associated with slasher gore, head-spinning exorcisms, and an uncomfortably narrow demographic of fans. Perhaps because I’d internalized these views, I explored the genre through online fan spaces instead, only to be disappointed with shallow discourses preoccupied with serial killers’ quirks, victims’ poor decision-making, and whether a given franchise is “scary enough.”
It wasn’t until I got serious about writing fiction that I realized the main draw of horror for me, atmosphere aside, is the way these stories put disempowered characters into high-stakes situations and force them to find agency—or else. It’s this focus on perilous power dynamics that elevates horror and can elevate our own writing if we’re willing to learn from it.
Rest assured, writers who are feeling squeamish don’t have to grit their teeth through a Stephen King novel to learn these lessons. Introspective stories with slowburning tension have existed alongside the sociopathic and the supernatural as far back as gothic classics like Jane Eyre and Poe’s works. And contemporary horror is undergoing a renaissance as authors from marginalized backgrounds share incisive perspectives on fear, including diaspora authors here in Canada such as Ai Jiang, Suzan Palumbo, and Lindsay Wong.
Two pieces are illustrative here: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s late-19th century feminist touchstone “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the 2023 novelette Linghun by Ai Jiang. Jane in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a new mother confined to a country estate as a “rest cure” for her postpartum depression. Wenqi in Linghun is a high-schooler whose mother spirals downward in unhealed grief as she lives, by choice, with the ghost of Wenqi’s brother. Notably, neither protagonist is threatened with the likes of murder or spiritual possession. (The most violent episode in Linghun involves a brawl among housing applicants in a grim satire of metro Toronto’s real estate market.) Instead,
the stories’ oppressive atmospheres are rooted in disempowerment, as readers see in Jane’s gendered mistreatment and Wenqi’s emotional labour in service of family obligations. Suspense builds as readers come to realize how the protagonists are imprisoned in their own dysfunctional relationships; their struggles to escape their situations test their character growth as much as anything else—and double as incisive social commentary. Regular readers of gothic horror know that protagonists often risk succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome or a psychological break, a death-of-self with the same narrative gravity as a conventional murder. In a compelling story, the challenge characters are up against doesn’t have to be larger than life, but it has to be larger than themselves if readers are to take the stakes seriously. Writers who worry that their protagonist’s success comes too easily can take a cue from horror by reconsidering whether their lead is sufficiently vulnerable. And if the stakes don’t feel particularly dire, leaning into protagonists’ anxieties can produce tension and emotional resonance—no need to artificially inject action into the plot. If we writers can set aside our genre stereotypes and pick up a horror novel or two from the library, we can better understand how to tell visceral stories that are grounded in real-world issues and not merely scary.
Eric de Roulet (he/him) is a former international English teacher now based in Kelowna. Perhaps ill-advisably, he’s at once pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD and success as an SFFH author. He’s also written nonfiction about fiction for Typebar Magazine, Worldbuilding Magazine, and his blog, Sad but Building Worlds
Blurring the lines
BY ALISON COLWELL
Iwrote genre fiction. And loved it. I couldn’t imagine writing anything else. I wrote my first novel for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in 2015, and then over the following four Novembers I wrote the next four books of my YA fantasy series. I was having fun, dreaming up new characters and plots and fabulous settings. Then in 2019, my daughter got sick. She was in and out of Children’s Hospital for a year. My partner left and I was suddenly a single parent to two teens. Life got really hard, really fast. And I just couldn’t write made-up stuff anymore. I couldn’t pretend in my writing, just as I couldn’t pretend anymore in my real life. I was fighting to keep my daughter alive; writing fantasy felt frivolous.
So, I started telling my truth. I switched to memoir, writing about us, where we were and how we’d gotten there. Memoir was the only way out of the wilderness in which I was mired. Putting words on a page helped me find meaning in what was happening to my family. The words helped me make sense of my world, my story, my life. Memoir helped me understand how I thought about what I was feeling and helped me see where I was heading. In the time before, I had taken Odyssey workshops and learned about “crafting compelling scenes,” “how to write riveting descriptions,” and “how to bring my story to life.” I had taken classes from Storied Imaginarium and immersed myself in storytelling, reading and retelling myths and fairy tales. I read every book on the craft of fiction I could find.
When I switched genres, I took everything I’d learned from writing fiction and used it to write
memoir. Setting descriptions are just as important for the hospital room we lived in for ten days, as they are for the remote islet off the west coast of Vancouver Island where my protagonist met her first water horse in my last NaNoWriMo novel. Even in memoir, it is still necessary to fully realize the characters. Whether the antagonist is a shortsighted developer set on buying up a small town to eliminate magic, or a hospital administrator intent on discharging my daughter because she isn’t getting well fast enough, both characters have to be believable with their own motivations and habits. That the settings and characters in memoir are real doesn't exempt me from the need to show my readers the world of the story on the page.
In fiction, I learned that scenes are the building blocks of a story, and how each character’s actions and desires propel the story forward. Memoir is no different.
Writing fiction taught me about Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and when I wrote about my life, the act of shaping real experiences into narrative helped me to see that an arc exists. It revealed that while there are dark nights of the soul and moments where all is lost, there are also high points when the hero returns with the elixir.
In the next few years, I studied creative nonfiction at the Sage Hill Writing School with mentor Lorri Neilsen Glenn, who taught us to explore different ways to structure nonfiction pieces. We had intense discussions about the ethics of writing about family. In writing memoir, I learned to tell my truth on the page. Memoirists can leave things out but
can’t make things up. In fact, leaving things out is essential. Memoir is about taking the blocks of a life and sculpting a story that makes sense. I have an Abigail Thomas quote pinned to the bulletin board above my writing desk. “Write as clearly, honestly, and plainly as possible. Cut everything else.”
When I was writing creative nonfiction, I learned to draft until I found my theme, then to go back and cut everything that didn’t belong until the theme shone. The following November, I wrote a memoir about the year I spent in and out of the hospital with my daughter. Then I spent the next year polishing it, using all the tools I’d learned in fiction writing. My daughter got better. Life wasn’t so painful, and I started writing fiction again. But in the same way my fiction skills had informed my memoir writing, now the reverse was true. I looked for the truth buried in a short story, then I cut and polished so the theme could shine. I learned what the story needed and what could be cut. I experimented with structure. My writing got leaner. Better. I wrote stories like “Eight Reasons for Silence.” It’s a fictional retelling of the “Six Swans” fairy story, but underneath it’s an exploration of why women in abusive relationships often don’t speak out. I discovered that even though something is fiction, it can still be true.
Then I took another fairy tale class with Carina Bissett, and, instead of a retelling, I wrote a memoir piece. I had noticed the parallels between the way the witch imprisoned Rapunzel in a tower, and the ten days I spent keeping my daughter in
a hospital room on the seventh floor. I started playing with incorporating traditional fairy tales into the true stories I wanted to tell.
A couple of years later, my son got sick, and I spent months going back and forth from the hospital. This time, I kept writing, because it didn’t seem frivolous anymore. Whether I was writing fiction or memoir, I was still searching for a truth I wanted to explore.
I’ve just finished writing a second memoir that includes both essays and fairy tales, and I’m in the process of looking for a publisher. I continue to write and publish in both genres. And both kinds of writing are better for my practice.
Alison Colwell is a single working mother of two teens and a survivor of domestic abuse, all of which inform her creative writing. Her creative nonfiction can be found in the climate change anthology Rising Tides, The Fieldstone Review, NonBinary Review, The Fourth River, The Humber Literary Review, Ocotillo Review, and Hippocampus Magazine, and her fiction can be found in Daily Science Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, Tangled Locks Journal, Crow & Cross Keys Magazine, and Carmina Magazine. www.alisoncolwell.com
A health writer’s healthy habits
BY KATHARINE CHAN
From superfoods and sleep tips to how to meditate, I write a lot about health. However, I’m neither a gym rat nor a protein shaker. Here are the healthy habits that set me up for optimal energy and mental clarity as a writer.
Wake up and consume mindfully
The first thing I put into my body every day is a large glass of water, which replenishes the fluids that I lost while asleep. I keep my phone away from my bed so that I don’t consume any content that would put me on edge for the rest of the day.
I take my time to drink my cup of joe, smelling the nutty aromas and allowing each sip to linger in my mouth. This helps boost my mood and alertness, setting me up for a productive day of writing.
Stand, don’t sit
Sitting too long is the new smoking according to some studies, so I write using a standing desk with an anti-fatigue mat. It’s great for my posture, prevents back problems, and improves circulation. Standing also makes taking breaks easier, as I don’t have to change from a sitting position. I can quickly stretch my legs and do a forward fold to restore my energy.
Focus on one thing at a time
Eat away from the desk
I’m a foodie, so I love eating. My lunches are simple, delicious, and quick to prepare. Lately, I’ve been enjoying sandwiches with homemade pickled veggies and fresh fruit. I take the full thirty minutes for lunch away from my desk. This prevents mindless eating, changes the scenery, and amps me up for the rest of the afternoon.
Get outside
Some Canadian doctors prescribe nature to their patients to help reduce stress. Rain or shine, I’ll put my sneakers on at the end of the day and go outside for a brisk walk. I wear a pedometer watch, aiming for 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day. Daily walks get my heart rate up and give me a second wind for the evening with my kids.
When I return from my walk, I’ll review and update my to-do list to set myself up for success the following day. This helps prevent the last-minute scramble before bed, fretting over what needs to be done. My list is ready to be tackled, and I can sleep easily.
I batch tasks so I don’t get pulled in a million directions. First, I’ll write down five health ideas to pitch. This gets the creative juices flowing. Then I check emails without responding. Next, I review and prioritize the tasks on my to-do list. This typically takes about thirty minutes.
Finally, I begin my first writing session. I don’t typically write for more than an hour without stopping, because the quality of my writing wanes after that. When I find myself checking my phone or deleting the same sentence, it’s time to shift gears, drum up a pitch, respond to emails, or take a break.
Katharine Chan, MSc, BSc, PMP, is the author of three books. She has over fifteen years of experience working in British Columbia’s healthcare system. Her bylines include VeryWell Mind, CBC Parents, CafeMom and Family Education She covers health, wellness, parenting, relationships, and personal development.
One story, three ways
BY KAREN WILSON
In my late 20s, my whole world changed. I lost weight and had to navigate life with a new identity. For the first time, I knew what energy and ease felt like. Everyone wanted to know how I did it. Did I share that trying to keep the weight off was killing me? No, instead I wrote my first online course: “The Love Your Body Now Club.” I enrolled a few friends, but then told no one else. No one appeared to be googling “how to love my body.” I moved on. When I finally learned how to befriend my body years later, the real transformation was clear—and I was determined to share my story again. By now I’d gained experience as a creative professional, helping organizations and business owners write and assemble their online education projects. With this additional experience, I blew the digital dust off the online course and turned it into a nonfiction book. From there, a monologue popped out.
Let’s dive into how I scaled my personal story across three different genres—and how you can start, too.
Set the stage
Begin by determining why you are sharing your story. There is no wrong answer, but ensure the WHY is big enough that it will carry you through the days you want to quit. Next, distil your story into its simplest
form. If you had just a few minutes to tell your story, what would it be? Finally, choose your initial genre.
Be prepared for more writing as you go: more stories for your book, more lessons for your course, and more scenes for your monologue.
Begin development
If you are using your personal story to write a nonfiction book or an online course, first identify what your book or course is going to help people do or be. Next, write a list of all the things readers or students will need to know in order to get to the transformation you are offering. Now you have an outline for your chapters or course modules.
Genre #1: nonfiction
The nonfiction book allows the largest scale of your story. In each chapter, the WHAT (the transformation), the WHY (its significance), and the HOW (an action item to get the reader closer to the transformation) come after a relatable STORY. The book is where you give depth to draw readers in. It’s your chance to fill in all the gaps in shorter versions of your story.
There's a delicate dance between not overthinking a writing project and rushing it. Admittedly, I rushed a little too much when I self-published my book on
Amazon. I did three edits of the book myself, and then I hired three different virtual assistants to read through my draft for grammar, formatting, and to ensure that it flowed. I am very pleased with what came out of the process, but I am currently working on a second edition. I look forward to exploring the many other ways to approach publishing.
Genre #2: online course
The online course translates your story into a series of lessons. It is particularly strong on the HOW (your framework with an action plan). As we promote our courses, we share the WHAT (framework) and the WHY (the framework’s necessity). Our STORY (how we got to our framework) appears both in the marketing and throughout the course in anecdotes and analogies.
The writing structure I use for lessons is to share WHAT the lesson is, a very short story that illustrates HOW I found the solution, and an ACTION ITEM that gets the student closer to the promised transformation.
Do not get stuck in the weeds of digital needs. Many course creation gurus will sell you a platform before your course is even written—but you do not need anything fancy to get started. I’ve experienced wildly successful courses delivered via a simple daily email. Less is more in this genre. My biggest online course mistake was that “The Love Your Body Now Club” was way too big! As I gained more experience working for other organizations and businesses, I learned that the quicker the win for the student, the better for all. You need finishers. Start small and scale up as your students ask for more.
Genre #3: performance monologue
document, changed past to present tense, and found places that I could show instead of tell.
To get the story to come off the page, I explored it in rehearsal. I worked on memorization, and when I had the words locked in, I created scenes. Instead of talking about conversations, I reenacted them. I added props and costumes.
The original version of my “one woman show” had musical bridges performed and written by my niece, Megan. They were customized to reinforce the character’s state of mind and to connect the stories. When I perform solo, the music becomes spoken word. It’s powerful to feel the energy of an audience stepping into your work with you.
If you had just a few minutes to tell your story, what would it be? Finally, choose your initial genre.
Taking the monologue to a theatre environment has also helped me to strengthen my POV skills.
Be self-accountable
Whichever genre you choose, get up early and write or rehearse before starting your workday. Schedule time every day to work on your project. Do it first while your brain is fresh. Touch it every day. Life fluctuates, and sometimes we have to shift priorities. A tenminute session is better than nothing. This will keep your momentum strong.
Write your first draft like no one is watching.
To speed the writing process, wait until the first draft is complete before editing your work.
One story, three ways. Which will you choose to share your next chapter?
The monologue is all STORY—a living, breathing piece of work that continues to evolve over time. When you tell your story onstage, audience members put themselves in your shoes and relate your experiences to their own. The transformation is a co-creation.
The first step I took to create my monologue was to poll my book readers for their favourite chapters. I then copied the chapters into a Word
Karen Wilson is a self-published author, storytelling speaker, and a Lifestyle Transformation Guide. She lives, works, and plays in sunny Shuswap, BC. Visit Karen at karenwilson.online
You had me at Nancy Drew!
BY LESLEY TAYLOR
Ican’t remember who gave me my first Nancy Drew—most likely my mother, who herself was an avid reader—but from that moment on I was hooked. And I certainly wasn’t the only young reader hooked on Nancy, the teenage sleuth who first appeared in the 1930s.
Agatha Christie, internationally acclaimed bestselling author of classic detective fiction, has also captivated audiences for decades, and her books, along with the Bible and William Shakespeare’s works, appear on the list of all-time bestsellers.
The appeal of crime fiction
We know that readers of all genres expect to be entertained, and that all great novels include interesting and engaging characters, a compelling plot, conflict or tension, and dialogue that brings characters to life.
In addition to these aspects of storytelling, good mystery fiction provides mental challenges in the form of puzzles to be solved. Typically, the main plot involves a murder, but not all mysteries include a homicide. Perhaps the protagonist has something from her past to hide, or a character disappears and then reappears later in the book without explanation.
The evolution of mystery books
The first mystery novels appeared in the early 1800s, but it wasn’t until the late twentieth century that mystery writers began to openly tackle social issues in their work. The late author Peter Robinson chronicled the plight of women sex slaves in England and Europe in many of his police procedurals.
In addition to learning about current social issues, readers are often keen to learn about a novel’s setting, or about how police or other professionals work.
Take for instance Ian Rankin, international bestselling author of the John Rebus detective series.
While not all mysteries involve murder, all good mysteries keep writers on their toes and readers engaged until “ The End.”
In his first few novels, Rebus lived in an imaginary world Rankin created, but today these settings include real places, like the Oxford Bar that Rebus frequents (Rankin is a patron too), along with other recognizable Scottish landmarks.
If you decide to use real places, events, or even people, make sure you get your facts straight.
Your readers will be disappointed if you don’t do your research!
While not all mysteries involve murder, all good mysteries keep writers on their toes and readers engaged until “ The End.” Nancy Drew was my introduction to the mystery fiction genre, and I’ve been hooked ever since—re-reading old classics and discovering new writers in the field.
Another rule of detective fiction is that something happens early on to draw the protagonist into the action. From this “ inciting incident,” the story develops on two levels: what is obvious to the reader, and what the author keeps hidden until the end, providing just enough clues along the way to keep the reader engaged. Mystery writers use timing, red herrings, misdirection, and the placement of clues to keep readers guessing. With a little modification, all of these suspense-building strategies can be used by writers in other genres.
After retiring from a career in health care, Lesley self-published a leadership book for introverts. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her enjoying the outdoors or cooking up something tasty in her kitchen. She is currently working on her first mystery novel.
Speculative fiction: A whole new world of possibility
BY ERIN MACNAIR
“Ididn’t know you wrote speculative fiction! Cool,” a relative texted me, after reading one of my short stories in a magazine.
“Thanks!” I offered, immediately googling speculative fiction. Had I unknowingly chosen a genre I'd never heard of? At the time, I'd just made the writerly leap from nonfiction to fiction, chasing the desire to write what brought me joy—to write what I didn't know but wanted to learn. Scientific breakthroughs, the spacetime continuum, sentient animals, shape-shifting humans in real-life settings—all the ideas that thrilled me were suddenly available, and now they had a name. Spec fic, as it's sometimes called, instantly appealed to me—a genre rooted in my youthful favourites: science fiction, fantasy, horror (thank you, Ray Bradbury, for my earliest introduction). Spec fic takes a hard left from realism, bending towards otherworldliness, magic, and all possible futures. It shares similar components with magic realism, where fantastical elements are rooted in community and culture and often aren't explained, just accepted. Speculative fiction takes risks; that's what thrills me as a writer.
I'd written literary fiction, but I only found my “voice” after injecting a dose of the bizarre. My engagement with the subjects I loved bloomed, this world-bending alchemy too enticing to ignore. I learned to expand my horizons, to push myself to try new structures and new points of view, to take an idea and zero in on its emotional impact but in an unexpected way. My imagination was set alight—I'd found my writing joy. A definition from the literary journal Orca: “... consider what might be, instead of what is. ... speculative writing could concern an alternative political structure, an ecological future, certainly alternate history, and maybe even a romance. Think, what if ...”
And what if is where the fun starts. This simple question enriches my writing process immensely; it forces me out of my comfort zone and often requires research, offering me another look at the world with childlike wonder.
I recommend trying it, even as an exercise. Allow yourself a moment of suspended belief, an unconventional history. What if you set your nonfiction stories in a world under the sea? Give yourself permission to alter facts. Create a world in which everything turns out beautifully— or doesn't, if dystopia holds more allure.
But what if I won't be taken seriously as a writer, you ask? Popular culture is dominated by realism, it's true. But the stories told through generations—passed down through history—are rooted in the speculative. Think back to your childhood. Which stories do you remember? Were they highly imaginative? Chances are they were, and that their enchantment stuck with you, the revered tales much like welcome friends. The popularity of spec fic is evident in its many fiction offshoots: space opera, slipstream, cli-fi, steampunk, gothic, fairy tales, ghost stories ... the list goes on. Obviously, writers are craving new ways to explain and explore our humanity, pulling at threads of the extraordinary.
I no longer worry if I'll be taken seriously. If my prose is well-written, if I've delivered a story that sticks in the mind long past its reading, I've done my job. If you're lucky, like me, speculative fiction will find you like a beam of light from a distant planet. Follow that beam towards inspiration. Endless possibilities await.
Erin MacNair (she, her) lives in North Vancouver, BC. Her stories appear in The Walrus, subTerrain, Orca, Prairie Fire, EVENT, Grain, and elsewhere. She's written a short story collection with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and is working on a speculative fiction novel. More info at www.erinmacnair.com.
Four questions for the 2023 FBCW Literary Contest winners
BY FBCW STAFF
We are pleased to introduce the winners of the 2023 FBCW Literary Contests: Susan Down (flash fiction, “Three Things I Like About My Cactus”), Angela Kenyon (creative nonfiction, “This Boy”), Cheryl Knopp (short fiction, “Fear No Evil”), and Joanna Streetly (poetry, “Ringtone”). The four winners generously shared some thoughts about the creative process that led to their winning submissions. What was the inspiration for your winning piece?
Susan Down: My inspiration for the piece came from seeing my neighbour’s outdoor shelf of small barrel cacti in the summer. They seemed like teddy bears to me—but far too prickly, of course. I imagined a child owning one of the plants and giving it human traits.
Angela Kenyon: I wrote the first draft of this piece some years back. It was much longer, around 4,000 words. But like most of what I write, it was just a file floating somewhere in the cloud with all my other writings. In the summer of 2023, I realized that what would have been my father’s one hundredth birthday was coming up on February 3, 2024. I decided to work on the story again and perhaps send it out into the world as a token of my love for him.
Cheryl Knopp: I was working on a space western novel with a feisty, misfit protagonist who inspired the main character, and I wanted to write a short-form action story.
Joanna Streetly: I had been very ill for a couple of months, dependent on doctors and
medications. “Ringtone” reflects a state of sudden, crushingly-deep opiate sedation, in which a person is unable to make themselves move or react—or even to know the meaning of familiar sounds (like the chime of a text message).
What about the creative process excited or challenged you most as you worked on your piece?
Susan Down: I loved the whittling required for flash fiction. I was captivated by the idea of telling a tale under a certain word limit. It forced me to continually comb through the story, tightening it by pulling out a phrase and replacing it with a single word. I am writing a novel as well as short stories right now, and I find that the daily exercise of writing flash fiction really improves the quality of writing in my longer projects.
Angela Kenyon: The biggest challenge I found in rewriting this memoir piece was overcoming the need I felt to explain everything. The setting was England, not Canada. It was the 1960s. How much about my first family did readers need to know?
Cheryl Knopp: Writing an unreliable narrator who wasn’t intentionally misleading was great fun. The biggest challenge was to hit the right balance between revealing things and hiding them, to keep the truth obscured until the end. I love how writing short stories sharpens your pacing skills.
Joanna Streetly: I always enjoy trying different poetic forms, but what excited me this time was the way enjambment conveyed how immersive
LITERA RY CONTESTS
The winners, runners-up, and shortlisted authors of the Federation of BC Writers 2023 Literary Contests will appear in our annual contest anthology. Look for Roots to Branches, Volume 3 this fall.
Images, clockwise from top left:
Susan Down, flash fiction
Angela Kenyon, creative nonfiction
Cheryl Knopp, short fiction
Joanna Streetly, poetry
the experience had been, while the physical arrangement of text as a solid block (no spaces) hinted at the heaviness and inescapable nature of the state to which I’d been subjected. What experience were you hoping to create for readers when you wrote this piece?
Susan Down: I wanted readers to empathize with the stoic anguish of the child through the cactus description. The child is lacking parental support and caught up in the system, and not always served well.
Angela Kenyon: This was exactly the question I arrived at when I struggled to decide what I should or should not cut from the draft. I wanted readers to know my father, and perhaps care for him through understanding the depth of my connection to him.
Cheryl Knopp: My aim was to challenge the reader’s ideas about who we consider monsters versus the genuinely monstrous, and to highlight how, as a society, we so often give horrible behaviour a pass when it comes from people with social clout.
Joanna Streetly: I wanted to convey the sudden heaviness with which morphine knocked me out, but also the way it replaced my normal awareness with this blur of bizarre images. That heaviness was a real physical weight, like a lead blanket, and it made my body forget to breathe. I would surface intermittently in a panic of air hunger, but I could never surface long enough to escape the grip of the drug, so there was also an underlying state of fear, inertia, and helplessness.
What has helped most in your development as a writer in this genre?
Susan Down: To better understand the flash fiction genre, I read many excellent stories from annual competitions, such as the one from FBCW as well as online publications. Flash fiction can be 1,000 words, or 100 or less. I have tried to write shorter pieces, but I think the 500-word length is the Goldilocks of the genre—just right.
Angela Kenyon: I think that maintaining my lifelong habit of deep reading contributed the most to any development I have made in creative writing. By deep reading, I mean the process of diving slowly into another world and being there without distraction. It’s a different process than the skimming, scanning kind of reading I seem to do when I’m on the internet. In 2023, two books in particular—Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids (2010), and Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of travel writer Bruce Chatwin (1993)— opened the door for me to write more memoir.
Cheryl Knopp: Because the story is a genre mash-up, reading across them all influenced world-building and clarified reader expectations. I also spent a lot of time researching slang and common expressions of the period.
Joanna Streetly: A background in music has helped me to hear poetry—to know if I need to add or subtract a syllable or vary a rhythm by lengthening or trimming phrases. I have also taken at least one poetry course per year, usually a six-week course involving a lot of reading and homework and learning, and these courses have made a massive difference to my understanding of poetry and its vast potential.
MEMBER milestones
Alexander Boldizar’s new book, The Man Who Saw Seconds, was listed by Publisher’s Weekly as a notable book for 2024 and was one of four Consortium books featured at the American Bookseller Association’s 2024 Winter Institute.
Hilary Crowley has published her first podcast, Mini Saga in South Africa. Hilary reads excerpts from her book and describes her travels in South Africa. The podcast is available on Spotify.
While David P. Fraser is primarily known as a Canadian poet, over the last ten years he has been working on the Jack McQueen Mystery Thrillers series. He has now launched the first four books in the series.
At the age of 77, Patti Shales Lefkos recently completed an 800 km trek in Nepal. Look for her second travel memoir, NEPAL ... IT’S NEVER TOO LATE: Rediscovering Love, Connection and Personal Resilience on The Great Himalaya Trail, in 2025.
CJ Vermeulen recently re-read the four novels he wrote and published in 2020/21—and found them terrible! He has rewritten them, and his new test readers think they are a huge improvement and deserve re-publishing.
Manolis Aligizakis was recently shortlisted for the 2024 Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Awards in Warsaw, Poland. This Polish award recognizes the outstanding artistic contribution of a poet on the international stage.
The Blessing of the Black Wolves by JS Murphy has received the Gold Reviewers Choice Award for Western Canada, and the Fantasy Classics Silver Award, making this debut novel a four-time award winner. Murphy is humbled, grateful, and thrilled.
Julie Wise recently had a poem published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice. “Rewilding” can be read at https://rb.gy/g743io
Claudia Cornwall’s book, Print-Outs, will be featured in an online exhibit at the Mackenzie Gallery in Regina, from May 9 to August 11. https:// mackenzie.art/experience/digital-art-projects/ post/wake-windows-the-witching-hour/
LAUNCHED!
new titles from fl ˘cw members
It's Okay, She's Just Gone Home
Linda Baker | November 2023 | 9781739027407 | $25
Nan has died, but it’s just her body that has given up the ghost. Literally. Joyful stories, secrets revealed—a Victoria family realizes Nan’s impact as Nan herself shares stories from beyond the veil.
Precarious Nation
Carol MacDonald | August 2023 | 9781777911317 | $18.69
Using little known Canadian historic facts, this true story from 1869 takes readers on a roller coaster of suspense, romance, deadly conflicts, misuse of public perception, lies, and deceit.
Inked Inceptions, Prompted
Conceptions
Valerie Lorraine | November 2023 | 9798864599754 | $15.99
This poetic anthology brings together twelve unique and powerful voices to entertain readers with the magic of their pens. Become entranced with the beauty of their words and different perspectives.
I Know That Woman
Virginia Dansereau | May 2023 | 9781778068515 | $20
A collage of poems featuring women from the ages of three to ninety-three in various situations, some joyful or playful, and some facing the truth of violence in our world.
The Price of Cookies
Finnian Burnett | Off Topic Publishing | May 2024 | 9781738988525 | $15
In this series of connected flash fiction pieces, people navigate the trials of life with tears, arguments, and—above all— love and compassion.
Winter
of Siege
Jan DeGrass | MW Books (Garden Bay) | December 2023 | 9780995277830 | $20.00
In the harsh winter of 1941–42, Anna Leonova must return to the besieged city of Leningrad over the perilous ice road in a desperate search for her mother, the traitor.
FiNDing Hope: The Mind-Body Connection and the Importance of Being Seen and Heard
Jocelyn Bystrom | Stone Tiger Books | October 2023 | 9798989250103 |
$13.81
The remarkable story of Jocelyn Bystrom's seven-year struggle against a rare but growing—and largely undiagnosed—mental health condition known as Functional Neurological Disorder.
Westcoast Chronicles
Ian Kent | November 2023 | 9781738093700 | $21.99
An account of the wild history of Victoria during the 1800s as told through the life of a vivacious young woman who runs a saloon, gambling den, and bawdy house—all while fighting for women's rights.
“Amelia, where did your bones go?” Gilbert asks in a rhetorical verse conversation to Earhart—from one poet to another. Gilbert writes Lady Bird at the same age Amelia was when she disappeared.
Flower Girls
J. David Forst | October 2023 | 9781999469139 | $6.99
Jamie hopes her vow-renewal ceremony at a beach resort in México will go off without a hitch, while Paloma and Ignacia are her grownup flower girls who just want to have fun at home for the weekend!
UNQUIET MINDS:
Youth
Anthology of Art and Poetry
Luke Kernan (editor) | December 2022 | 9781777459109| $45.00
This anthology of art and poetry incorporates over five years of advocacy work with artists, performers, and poets to meaningfully address the critical wellbeing and mental health of youth.
OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON
Neil Garvie | Pod Creative | December 2023 | 9798210699275 | $15
This collection of poetry and prose takes a stab at the big questions—a cheeky look at things from an average person’s perspective.
Education Assistants:
Testimonies and Tributes
Terrance N. James | December 2023 | 9798210807335 | $16.50
Fifty testimonies written by Education Assistants (EAs) and fifty tributes from parents, teachers, and administrators provide insight into the EA role and the people who perform EA duties.
There's a Trombone in My Toolshed J.P. Bailey | December 2023 | 9781775279341 | $19.75
This fun, colourful rhyming picture book for children ages two to seven features a trombone that has somehow made its way into the shed and enjoys interacting with various tools and machines.
To quote Winston Churchill, “ If you are going through hell, keep going.” This is what Oliver Rook must do when various authorities—health, police, courts—fail him and his family.
In memory of her grandmother, a residential school survivor, Mallory unflinchingly confronts the systemic abuse, misinformation, and prejudice against First Nations peoples and seeks the meaning of family.
Zulaikha
Niloufar-Lily Soltani | Inanna
Publications | November 2023 | 9781771339568 | $24.95
This literary and historical thriller explores the impacts of war and oppression through a sprawling, tender, imperfect love story, and Middle Eastern music and poetry.
The Celestial Wife
Leslie Howard | Simon & Schuster
Canada | April 2024 | 9781982182403 | $24.99
A young fundamentalist Mormon girl facing a forced marriage escapes her strict, polygamist community and comes of age in the tumultuous 1960s. Set in British Columbia and based on true events.
The Dragons & Snogger Granx
E Mossman | March 2024 | 9781990414541 | $22.95
Lewis realizes his life-long dream when he meets his great-grandparents. They are aliens—from another planet. On a visit to their faraway home, he encounters more than he ever expected.
The Man Who Saw Seconds
Alexander Boldizar | Clash Books | May 2024 | 9781960988072 | $30.50
Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future. When government agencies become aware of Preble’s gift, he will do whatever it takes to protect his family—even if it costs him his humanity.
From award-winning writer Jann Everard, a short story collection about love and loss. “... a thought-provoking and bittersweet collection.”—Kathy Page (Paradise and Elsewhere; Dear Evelyn)
When old toy soldiers start popping up on Mary Frances’ window, her search for clues leads her to a wider mystery. Things aren’t where they should be. Or, perhaps, they aren’t when they should be.
Dance Through Time:
A 60s Activist Then & Now
Terry Dance-Bennink | Friesen Press | January 2024 | 9781039198760 | $17.49
The memoir of a 60s activist who's still on the front lines, despite being legally blind. Dance Through Time celebrates the power of political solidarity and spiritual connection.
Better Angels
David Floody | Implosion Press | July 2023 | 9780991900480 | $21.95
Unlikely heroes may surprise you, especially the strong women in your life, and even elderly but faithful black Lab Retrievers. “All God's angels come to us disguised.”—James Russell Lowell
Travels with Athóma
Daniel G Scott | Aeolus House | February 2024 (audiobook) | 9798823499613 | $10.00
In this fictional memoir in verse, a man relates his boyhood encounters with a sibyl who befriends him and teaches him songs that transport his spirit into trees, insects, animals, and more.
A Natural Cause
Leslie Wiens | November 2023 | 9781039196407 | $26.00
UBC student Liz Grant is thrilled when Professor Gilby offers her and Caroline summer work doing surveys. Years later, she makes a discovery about the evil use of the data she was collecting.
Fifty More or Less
Chris Lihou | November 2023 | 9781778353352 | $17.99
A collection of very short stories and poetry speaking to life's highs and lows, pain and joy, desires and losses, quirks and realities, and even a bit of its silliness.
Bird, Making No Sound: Collected Poems
Carol L. MacKay | February 2024 | 9780973984415 | $13
Mackay, an introvert and oft-published poet in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies, has released her first collection, which celebrates the gifting of voice through poetry.
150 million kilometers away
Annthea Evangeline Whittaker | Departure Bay | January 2023 | 9780995469686 | $10
A collection of nine poems that address love and loss, grief and memory, friendship and art, and the incredible power of redemption that new children in our lives might offer.
Jonathan and the Sacred Scarab
James Bowlby | Friesen Press | January 2024 | 9781039160132 | $25.00
Jonathan never intended to be hunted down by a madman working for an evil Egyptian god, but everything changed when he found the Sacred Scarab. His journey to find his missing father will be dangerous—especially with Set, the God of Storms and Chaos, hunting him!
Halfway Home:
Thoughts from Midlife
Christina Myers | House of Anansi | May 2024 | 9781487012441| $23.99
With wit and warmth, these personal essays move from first bra to first hot flash to consider the lessons learned from media, culture, and each other, about how life (and midlife) should unfold.
Vanishing into the Blue
Kamal Parmar | Silver Bow Publishing | March 2024 | 9781774032930 | $20
This slim book reflects on the quiet beauty of Nature as she opens the doors of imagination with her soft, satin words.
What if you were given up for adoption NOT because your mother didn't want you, but because she was trying to protect you from a curse?
Whiny Baby
Julie Paul | McGill-Queen's University Press | April 2024 | 97800228020745 | $19.95
Expansive in form and voice, Julie Paul’s second poetry collection offers both love letters and laments, calling on us to simultaneously examine and exult in our brief time on earth.
Killing Imaginary Friends
Ardelle Holden | January 2024 | 9781990523021 | $3.99
What does a boy do when his imaginary friends never die? After twelve years of coming-of-age angst, Oliver Frampton must prove what happened to the real Teddy and Alex when he was eight.
Representation of Disability in Children's Video Games
Drawing on child development theory supported by neuroscience, this book looks at how
children’s engagement with stories in video games helps create the perception of disability they have as teens and adults.
Tropes: Contempt or comfort?
BY DAVID BROWN AND MICHELLE BARKER
Every genre has its tropes: the happily ever after and meet-cute of romance, all those orphans and chosen ones in fantasy, the red herrings and incompetent police officers that abound in mysteries. Our knee-jerk reaction as authors might be, been there, seen that about a thousand times. We want our work to be new and different.
Maybe familiarity breeds contempt—but it also creates comfort. A reader who picks up a romance or fantasy novel will have certain expectations going in. They’re looking for a particular type of book, and if you don’t give it to them, they’ll be disappointed.
But publishers are looking for something new. If you write the same old same old, they won’t buy it.
This feels like the sort of impossible situation we love to put our protagonists in but would prefer to avoid ourselves.
So what’s the solution?
First, it’s important to know the tropes of your chosen genre. Read widely. Get a sense of the expectations; review publisher guidelines.
story shapes—but the people who populate your story? People are infinitely unique and interesting. If you want to stay true to reader expectation while also giving your readers something new, explore the varieties of human nature. Take two people who should never be in the same room together and force them to go on vacation—or solve a mystery, or hunt down that artifact.
Subversion
Another approach might be to explicitly subvert the tropes readers come to expect. Instead of the meet-cute happening in a coffee shop or a bookstore, maybe it happens at a funeral. Instead of the hero of the fantasy novel being the chosen one, maybe they’re the kid who gets chosen last for everything. The one voted least likely to succeed. This way, you’ll be including the tropes your readers are looking for, but they will delight in the fresh spin you’re giving these familiar elements.
If you want to stay true to reader expectation while also giving your readers something new, explore the varieties of human nature.
Second, remember that the originality of your story doesn’t hinge so much on the tropes. The key to originality lies in character nuance. Your reader will expect a meet-cute in your rom-com. What will surprise them is the freshness of the two people who are meeting. They’ll expect a quest in your fantasy novel, or a magical artifact that will solve an important problem. But who is going after that artifact? What does it do? How will the quest challenge your hero in unexpected ways?
What you want to avoid are stereotypical characters. There are a limited number of basic
In conclusion
Tropes are really only as fresh as the people who move through them. Give your reader characters with strong voices and flaws and quirks—characters who feel like real people, in other words—and the tropes will become touchstones rather than cliches.
Michelle Barker and David Brown are award-winning writers and senior editors at the Darling Axe, which offers narrative development, editing, and coaching. Learn more at darlingaxe.com.
