Blog
Meet me at the diner: Debut author Arlene McFarlane
With this post, I'm launching a new, occasional series on my blog featuring interviews with author friends about their new releases. I've called it "meet me at the diner" because in the small communities I write about, diners are gathering places with a special,...
Remembering my mom…and a special giveaway
Sunday, November 20th is World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. It's a day I've marked since my mother was killed crossing a street while returning home from an ordinary, afternoon shopping trip. Road death is sudden, shocking, and it forever changes the...
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
I often describe myself as linguistically confused. Although I grew up in prairie Canada, I haven't lived there in many years. As Tech Guy would attest, and except when I'm speaking with old friends, any remnants of my childhood Midwestern twang have long since...
What’s in a name?
In the past month, I’ve been called Rebecca, Mary, Megan, and Jessica. At church last Sunday, another parishioner asked me where "Jennifer" was, mixing up English Rose and I. Together with a struggle to name a character in my work in progress, and a report in...
Gratitude and new beginnings
My small town has recently welcomed a Syrian refugee family. Soon after their arrival, the newspaper ran a picture of the mom, dad and their three young children playing in the local park. It was an ordinary, yet also extraordinary scene. Our new neighbours have spent...
Family reunited
If you read my blog regularly, you know that when my daughter, English Rose, and I moved to Canada from England in July 2015, we left a very important person behind. For the past fourteen months, my husband, Tech Guy, has remained in England, working to support our...
Letting go
"You’re the writer. Spin it." I didn't appreciate it then, but those words, spoken by a sales guy with a swagger, a bespoke suit, and a Porsche, marked a defining moment in my life. Although I'd dabbled in fiction, I wasn't writing it seriously. Instead, my days were...
Be careful what you wish for…
The summer of 2016 has been my first full summer in Canada in almost sixteen years. When I lived in England, I often thought about Canadian summers with wistfulness. As gusts of cold wind buffeted my umbrella, and I sloshed through puddles on my way to my day job, I...
The tale of a travelling china cabinet
This week, a moving van arrived at my home. It brought a china cabinet that's been in my mother's family since the mid-nineteenth century.In the furniture world, the cabinet is a stately dowager duchess or grizzled elder statesman. Made of solid wood, it sits on...
Photo by Robin Spencer, Spencer Studio