(this post is an edited version of something I wrote on my personal (i.e. not public) Facebook, that friends & family seemed to enjoy so am sharing it here) Last week, ten years (technically ten years and twenty-nine days) after moving to the UK, I was sworn in as a British citizen. Hold your Brexit jokes, please. Despite the […]
I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip to LA, and thought I’d share a few observations. Spirit of full disclosure, I used to live in LA (first Hollywood, then Venice Beach) for a few years, and moved to London ten years ago. – LA thrives on creativity. What’s incredible about LA is that everyone you […]
Drum roll please… Here it is, the cover for KEEPING THE BEAT… How awesome does this look? You can (and you should!!) preorder it now via amazon.com and in Canada via amazon.ca or Indigo.ca. Keeping the beat is the new YA novel by me and Marie Powell, and published by new YA imprint KCP Loft. It […]
We don’t like to talk about failure. It’s icky, depressing, and we fear it’s contagious. But unless we acknowledge failure as a necessary condition for moving anything forward, we do ourselves a great disservice, and we risk believing in the myth of “overnight success.” Creative people – writers, musicians, actors, artists, poets – know this […]
This week I attended my very first Edinburgh Television Festival. The EITF is an annual conference of the great and the good of the British (and increasingly global) TV sector, and since Awesome is playing in primetime drama, thought it was worth showing up (inspired by Woody Allen: “80% of life is showing up”) and I’m […]
I’ve just returned from nearly a month in Canada, and was lucky enough to catch iconic (but largely unknown outside of Canada) band The Tragically Hip twice in their farewell tour. Last night, the band gave their final concert before a smallish venue in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario (my college town, where I first […]
This evening I’ll be participating in the weekly twitter discussion, under hash-tag #UKMGchat. It’s organised by the awesome Miriam & Lorraine for the benefit of all book-loving twitter folks around the world. I usually miss out because the 8 pm (British time) start time coincides with putting my kids to bed, and I have to […]
I usually keep this blog for riffing on creativity, storytelling, and all things literary. But unless you’ve been under a rock these past weeks, you know there’s a very important referendum tomorrow. The people of the UK are being asked to cast a vote to support staying in the European Union (EU) or leaving the […]
I’m back in western Canada — 30 years after my first trip to the region, a trip that changed my life. It was 1985 and I was with my Mom and sister at Toronto’s CNE (like a big county fair), and we stumbled upon a large model of the under-construction Expo 86 site in Vancouver. It […]
I’m in Banff, Alberta for my second trip to the Banff World Media Festival. For the uninitiated, Banff is part festival, part conference, and part market. It’s bias is towards TV, and has a distinct Canadian flavour, but it’s embracing all things digital and a global outlook. For four days, a major players from content creation […]
