Tag: tracking giants
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How to ace your book page
Here’s how to create a book page that will dazzle your readers. It’s key to own your piece of the internet when it comes to promoting your book. Even if you have publicity and marketing support from your publisher, you still need to drive your own marketing. A book page is a place to collect […]
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Tracking Giants is now available for preorder!
It’s herrrre! My very excellent publisher Greystone Books slipped me a couple advance reader’s copies of my book. Yes that is Tracking Giants in my hand!! It comes out in May 2023 and I’d be truly delighted if you preordered. Maybe you can leave a fir cone and a preorder note under the tree this year? 🤷🏻♀️🌲 […]
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When a deadline sneaks up on you
Yesterday at lunchtime I remembered an essay I wanted to write. An essay that was due that day. It was a submission for a podcast, and if accepted would be turned into a short episode (10–15 minutes). It would be a great opportunity to do early US promotion for my book, Tracking Giants, coming out […]
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Keep the faith
When I started a short-term sabbatical in January to finish my book, Tracking Giants, I didn’t quite know where to begin. For three years, I’d been pecking away at my book around my day job as editorial director at a busy publishing house. Now that I had the space to work on the manuscript, I […]
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National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
I am a settler and guest in British Columbia, the unceded and traditional territories of numerous Indigenous Peoples who have distinct cultures and languages. I came here as a child with my family in 1987, immigrants from Ireland. In my project to look for big trees around the province, I attempted to learn about their […]
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How can you adapt your writing to changing conditions?
On our recent multi-day backpacking trip in the Olympic Peninsula, we had to revise our plan. We’d carefully plotted our campsites before leaving home, but the temperatures were too hot (climate crisis) to allow for super-long hiking days, so we changed our destinations while on foot. Our trip didn’t suffer as a result of the […]
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Dear Editors: co-creation
Dear Editors, I’ve been working on my first book for about four years. Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest is coming from Greystone Books in spring 2023. It’s a travel memoir of learning to search for big trees in my home province of British Columbia, Canada. My editor sent the […]
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Write for one person
The Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Carol Shields wrote, “A story is something moving to someone else. That is all.” A story has extra impact when you identify that “someone else.” Shields advised writing for someone in particular. She imagined herself whispering her story into her sister’s ear. When I wrote my first book, Tracking Giants (coming […]
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In praise of hobbies
Editors have impeccable taste. We shape writing so it lands with its target audience, but before that, we spot talent. It’s the literary equivalent of digging down deep in the record bins. (We also know a little about a lot, so you absolutely want us on your trivia team.) Each Friday, I share a book, […]