Tell us about your book.
People doing what people do.
How did you come up with the idea for this work?
Someone told me about cops doing surveillance on a camper van and, ahead on the road, it exploded because it was a drug lab on wheels.
How did you come up with the title?
I think most of what [...]
Tell us about your book.
The premise of Samurai Code depicts the extreme methods used by some organized crime families to protect themselves from informants or undercover police officers and reveals how innocent people can be targeted for murder.
How did you come up with the idea for this work?
I came up with the idea for this [...]
Tell us about your forthcoming novel.
My first two attempts at fiction were mystery novels, one of them based on a real murder I investigated in the British colony of Aden (now Yemen), the other set in the north of England, where I lived and studied for several years. Later, as a university professor, I taught [...]
Tell us about your book.
The Boy in the Picture, my third book, is the one with which I have the strongest personal connection. It tells the story of young Edward Mallandaine, the boy in the iconic photo of the driving of the Last Spike in the Canadian Pacific Railway. That momentous occasion back in 1885 [...]
Tell us about your book.
Growing Up Ivy is historical fiction for YA readers, set in Toronto and rural Ontario during the Great Depression. Twelve-year-old Ivy Chalmers is sent to live in the town of Larkin with her grandmother when the girl’s actress mother abandons her in order to try her luck on the stage in [...]
How did you come up with an idea for this book?
In a book I was given about Jerry Potts, the frontiersman and scout, I read that he had been hired by the newly formed North-West Mounted Police Force to help find a notorious whiskey trading post. Well before I finished the book, I knew I [...]
What was the creative process like for you?
I love stories. For me the creative process is just writing down stories I have heard and want to share with people. Or sometimes it’s about writing out stories I have made up, stories that in my mind always take off when I start thinking: “What would happen [...]