Of Agents and Angles

I’ve never had a literary agent representing me. All the writing gigs I’ve landed – novels, plays, articles etc – I’ve secured off my own bat. But I’ve always worked on the assumption that at some point I’d need an agent, a savvy ally who could help me punch up a level in my career […]

School’s Out – unpublished prologue

The blog Daily Writing Tips recently published Three reasons to ditch your novel’s prologue. It contains much wisdom. The following extract was part of the pitch that got School’s Out commissioned, and it stayed in the book ‘til very late in the day, but I eventually decided to cut it. My editor was a bit wary […]

A cautionary tale for writers

or ‘Why I spent ten years being pointlessly annoyed at Neil Gaiman when I should have been doing something useful instead’ Way back when, I was an aspiring comic book writer living in Toronto. I used to hang out with talented and successful people like Salgood Sam and Ty Templeton, and I spent my every spare minute […]