Category Archives: Essays
Danica and Leonora
Friendship interests me as a writer. It can be a mysterious thing. Usually it grows over time, someone becomes a presence in our life and at some point we realize how much we value them – and often that comes … Continue reading
Children of Earth and Sky: An Origin Story
Croatia has roads in many places going back to the Romans. They joke today that the old roads are better graded and designed than the new ones. It is probably true. On a book tour many years ago, I was … Continue reading
6 Books I Love
Guy Gavriel Kay described the process of picking his six favourite books as a thoroughly regrettable, “evil, sadistic exercise.” This first appeared at www.cbc.ca in 2016. The historical fiction that first hooked him Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff … Continue reading
Something to Write Home About
This first appeared at https://thewalrus.ca in 2016. I wrote my first, never-published book in a fishing village on the south coast of Crete at the end of the 1970s. I went back, two winters later, to write most of The Summer … Continue reading
On the Strengths of Fiction Done as Near-History
This first appeared at http://boingboing.net/ in 2016. The origin story of Children of Earth and Sky, my current novel, begins with my Croatian editor being the first person ever to tell me about the Uskoks of Senj. He did that … Continue reading