Susan Swan's Blog, page 4

Anxiety Pancakes: The Horror of Vulnerability

I’m waiting for reactions from two very knowledgeable readers to the latest draft of my new novel, The Dead Celebrities Club. The experience of waiting is like floating free in a void, as if I’ve been set adrift in the galaxy without a space station in sight. Adrift? Really? Yes, adrift in the sense that […]

Anxiety Pancakes: When Is A Novel Finished?

In the spring, I said I was finishing my novel, The Dead Celebrities Club, about a white collar fraudster who starts a betting game about old and frail celebrities in a US prison. My dreams told me I was on the home stretch. Well, it turns out there are home stretches and then some. The […]

Riding through the Waves like Poseidon Scouting Out Film Locations

On Labour Day Sunday, I rode through the waves like Poseidion with my brother John and the young film makers who are making a film of my last novel, The Western Light. It is set in a tourist town on the Georgian Bay. We scouted out the lighthouse on Hope Island, part of a trio […]

Film Deal for The Western Light with Upcoming Canadian Women Producers

Three young creative Canadian women film makers have come together to make a feature film based on the prequel to my international bestseller, The Wives of Bath. The prequel is The Western Light about Mouse Bradford, a precocious girl who is pushed to the brink when she mistakenly places her trust in an institutionalized ex-hockey [...]

As Promised, Stories about Bad Decisions You Don’t Regret

A bad decision you don’t regret comes perilously close to a good decision although there is usually a lot more harrowing side effects than in a simple good decision, like helping the blind person pick up a dropped bag of groceries. And as promised, here are stories from my generous friends about bad decisions they [...]

Stories about Bad Decisions You Regret and Bad Decisions You Don’t

Before my talk at Trampoline Hall on Monday, my friends on Facebook generously gave me stories about their bad decisions. The ones I’ve posted here are done with their permission and my thanks. The discussion on Monday night eventually asked the obvious question: what is a good decision? I suggest that a good decision is [...]

Trampoline Hall

Trampoline Hall is an anti-lecture series that happens the first Monday of every month in Toronto. It’s the brainchild of writer Sheila Heti who thought it would be interesting to hear people talk on subjects that don’t have to do with their jobs, or professions. You speak from 10 to 13 minutes on your subject [...]

Good Night, Descant–a Literary Gemstone for Four Decades

An old-fashioned newspaper columnist once told me that writing a daily column meant sacrificing his day to thinking up the next column. “It’s a bitch of a mistress,” he said. “She takes up every waking minute.” I don’t know what running a literary magazine entails exactly but I can’t help thinking it, too, is a [...]

Talking to Orillia Writers on February 22–Come if you’re in the hood

I’m giving a writing workshop in Orillia on February 22. Come if you’re in the area. You can find out more information from The Writers’ Community of Simcoe County http://simcoewriters.ca/simcoe/news/ Here’s some of the information about my workshop published on their website IS YOUR WRITING DEAD OR ALIVE? It’s a compelling issue in the craft [...]

Join Us For Early & Traditional Christmas Dinner from my Novel, The Western Light

OK, I’m cooking Christmas dinner early with Sang Kim for about 40 special guests at the Wind Up Cafe. The meal is based on Big Louie’s traditional Christmas dinner in my novel The Western Light. Big Louie is Mouse’s grandmother and she tops things off by cooling sparkling Burgundy in the snow. So if you [...]

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