BOOK NEWS AND SPRING TRAVELS!!

BOOK DEAL NEWS: I'm delighted to tell you about my latest book deal with Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books

This new suspense novel, will be published in early December of this year, and I hope to have a cover reveal and more info by the time my next blog comes out. I'm also excited to tell you that an audio version of my bestselling novel, THE PERFECT FAMILY MAN, will be available on July 18th, 2023 and can be pre-ordered here.

SPRING TRAVELS

This year I escaped the final chapter of one of our longest winter seasons yet, by traveling south to Arizona. We stayed in the beautiful suburb of Fountain Hills and spent a couple of weeks golfing, swimming and walking. As usual I took a whole lot of pictures to store in my "possible locations for a novel" folder and filled a notebook with observations, descriptions, potential characters,intriguing scenarios and story ideas.

It's true that fiction writing is a twenty-four-seven obsession. As a writer, you're always on the lookout for the quirky side of humanity. Constantly watching to see how people interact and always collecting sensory details that will help you develop a rich and plausible setting for a future novel. Since we made the journey by car, I was able to experience many different types of landscape from the endless, flat prairies of Manitoba and North Dakota to the hills and canyons of South Dakota, to the wild, undulating hills of Nebraska, to the spectacular foothills of the Colorado Rockies, to the intense desertlike vistas of New Mexico, and finally to the red-rock mountain splendor of Arizona. We returned home to a virtually snowless Winnipeg. Mission accomplished!

In this blog I've chosen to review sci-fi works with feminist themes, starting with CAMP ZERO by Michelle Min Sterling: This thought-provoking and intriguing read had me hooked from the beginning, with its portrayal of a world utterly changed by rising temperatures and extreme weather conditions. As a result, the greedy powerbrokers and plunderers of earth's riches turn their sights to Canada's northern regions—the only place in North America where cold temperatures make life bearable and fresh water, ice and snow actually exist. Also the only place still hiding precious mineral reserves under the permafrost. The story follows Rose, a paid escort/prostitute who travels north from The Floating City (in Boston Harbour), to a bleak camp in Northern Alberta's old oil patch where a reclusive architect is supposedly building an idyllic campus dedicated to finding ways to live in harmony with nature. Rose's new life is reminiscent of The Handmaiden's Tale in that she's there simply to "service" the project's management who subscribe to a strongly patriarchal version of life. Another story strand follows Grant, an idealistic young academic, eager to escape his power-magnate father and forge his own future path. But the most fascinating story is of "White Alice" an all-female research group of scientists sent to the far north to monitor climate change. Instead they gradually discover the real reason why they've been sent there. The author paints a plausible and chilling vision of a future world , and poses the question that even when earth's resources are dwindling and we are on the brink of potential disaster, how far will power-hungry men go to continue to amass personal wealth when the consequences might be the destruction of humanity and how can women band together and work in harmony to prevent them? Thanks to NetGalley, Atria Books and Knopf Canada for providing an ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.

SERIES REVIEW: THE POWER (Amazon Prime)Based on the brilliant bestselling novel by Naomi Alderman, this series truly brings the book to life thanks to a brilliant script by Alderman, Sarah Quintrell and Raelle Tucket and a stellar cast of Toni Collette (Margot), John Leguizamo (Rob),Ria Zmitrovicz (Roxy),Halle Bush (Eve), Toheeb Jimoh (Tunde) among numerous others. The main premise of the story poses an intriguing question—what happens when women develop a mysterious power to elecrocute at will? The answer being a complete reversal of the global power balance. Tables are turned when men are forced to realize that mere physical strength is no match for women's newly discovered ability to generate deadly electric force. Some male characters embrace the opportunity to forge a new future in which men and women work together as equals, while others see it as an unwelcome subversion of nature's natural order that must be curtailed by any method possible. The result is a thrilling and action-packed series driven by unforgettable characters. I highly recommend!!