Author Archives: Peter Darbyshire
The Real Vancouver Writers Series celebrates five years in an unreal city
Over at that weird newspaper thing I do, I talked to Sean Cranbury and Dina Del Bucchia about the Real Vancouver Writers Series. We cover it all — the origin story, the villains, the new hope for the future. You can even hear Sean and I drink coffee!
It was kind of a weird interview. I took a Cthulhu selfie before the interview started, and my recorder stopped working after that. Luckily Sean was recording. Then it started raining. In Vancouver! Coincidence? I think not.
“We created the Real Vancouver Writers Series based on the fact that when the eyes of the world were on Vancouver, when the biggest spectacle in the history of the city was going to occur, we were going to represent for the city, for the publishers and independent presses, for the people we knew,” Cranbury says.
“I think that there was a sense in the city that [while] the Olympics were happening, a lot of people felt like this city wasn’t itself … That’s why we call it Real Vancouver. It was a Vancouver that was true to itself and true to the streets and the neighbourhoods that make up the city that house the writers that make the art.”
The Dead Hamlets is featured on The Hook
I had the distinct pleasure of kicking off The Hook, a new guest post feature on Alex Shvartsman’s site. Alex is the author of Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma, which is perhaps the best title for a book ever. And it’s only $5 and change on Kindle! Why are you still reading this and not buying the book?
Anyway, Alex just launched The Hook, which lets writers explain why they opened their books the way they did. So click the link to find out why I began The Dead Hamlets on a dark and stormy night!
Thanks, Alex!
There’s a long tradition of dark and stormy nights in the theatre — lots of blackouts and thunder sound effects. The first stage directions of Macbeth, for instance, are “Thunder and lightning.” So I was hinting at the subject matter of my book in its opening lines. Shortly after that initial scene, I have Cross stumble into a theatre full of the dead — at which point things really get dark and stormy!
What’s your Moment?
I’ve really enjoyed some of the guest posts I’ve done at other blogs recently in support of my new novel, The Dead Hamlets. It’s been great to be a part of the Big Idea, My Bookish Ways, Eating Authors, The Hook and Unlikely Influences. I love reading what makes other writers tick, and it was an interesting process of self-discovery to think about my own works and writing processes a little harder when I wrote my guest posts. I hadn’t even realized how much things like the Gaudi church or mortality or other writers had affected me until I started talking about them on other people’s blogs. And, of course, it’s also great to reach out to the broader community for a little discussion — this writing thing can be a lonely business sometimes.
I thought it would be interesting to come up with my own version of those things, so I’ve created a space for other creators on my site. It’s called The Moment, where writers, artists, musicians, whatever can talk about the big moment that changed their lives. Here’s the general info:
Introducing The Moment
Every creator has a moment that changed their life — something they read, saw, experienced, heard, whatever. Let’s hear your moment. Tell us about what changed your life.
How to be considered
Send me a message at peter.darbyshire@gmail.com with “The Moment” and your name in the subject line of the email. Tell me what you’d like to talk about in the message. If it sounds good, I’ll get back to you about the details. I’m looking for around 250-1000 words.
Obviously, this is a chance to publicize your works. I don’t want The Moment just to be a self-promo feature, though. I’d like creators to genuinely talk about important moments to them. It can be about your new work, sure, but please make it about more than that at the same time. On the other hand, it doesn’t have to be about your work at all! I’ll do some promotion for you in the intro I provide, where I’ll list your new works, etc. So please think of it as a chance to share something rather than shill.
Who can contribute
Anyone who’s a creator — writer, artist, musician, you name it. To start with, I’m going to limit it to people I know in person or online, just to cut down on requests from random bots online. We’ll go from there once it’s up and running. I hope you like the idea. Let’s see what happens.
Read This! – The Devil You Know
The Devil You Know follows Evie, a young reporter working on the breaking Paul Bernardo story. (For those of you who don’t remember Bernardo, he was a serial killer and rapist who terrorized the Scarborough area in the 1980s.) Evie is haunted by the memories of a childhood friend who was murdered — which parallels author de Mariaffi’s own life. She spends her time researching other murdered and missing girls, to the point where she spends more time with the dead than the living.
Evie is also being stalked by a man who lurks on her fire escape, just outside her kitchen window. Or is she? The stalker is a phantom, never truly seen. He may be a killer waiting for the right moment to strike or he may just be someone she’s dreamed up. To say any more would be to give away too much of the story.
The settings of The Devil You Know are modern-day gothic: a newspaper vault that bears more than a passing resemblance to a tomb, the eerily empty cottage at the edge of civilization — hell, the man on the fire escape invokes the spirit of the vampire at the window. It’s a creepy, eerie book, one that’s made all the more powerful because it makes you realize that this is simply the daily life for many women around the world. The Devil You Know is the devil we all know.
Finally — some value for your dollar
Hey, I think the third Cross novel is the first of my books to break the 100,000 word mark. I’m really starting to ramble in my old age!
Sweet, sweet 16
Hey, my new book, The Dead Hamlets, hit No. 16 on Amazon.ca’s Contemporary Fantasy list. That’s probably as high as it’s going to get. There’s no way I’m beating How (Not) to Kiss a Were-Bear. That book’s got crazy ratings! It’s free if you’re on Kindle Unlimited, too, so go and get it if you’ve ever fantasized about were-bears. Hey, I’m not judging.
B.C.’s bookish blades
I’ve published a piece called B.C.’s Bookish Blades over at the Province. It features three insanely talented writers from B.C. talking about their new books: CC Humphreys, Sebastien de Castell and Ian Weir. These are the writers who make other writers insane with jealousy because they have both the commercial chops and the literary language. Great stuff. Check out their books today!
Historical thrillers are nothing new. In fact, they’ve been around since we started recording history. What are The Odyssey and Beowulf if not their era’s version of Dan Brown or Andrew Pyper?
But a trio of B.C. authors are writing a new chapter for the historical thriller genre, and they’re turning to past masterpieces for inspiration. C.C. Humphreys, Sebastien de Castell and Ian Weir are also breaking down some of the walls between genre fiction and literary fiction to write perhaps the most literary thrillers yet.
You can still win The Dead Hamlets
Hi all. Just a reminder that you can still win a free copy of The Dead Hamlets through two giveaways. The Black Quill giveaway runs until the end of February. Just mention The Dead Hamlets in a social media post and tag me, and you’ll have a chance to win a copy of the book — and the mysterious Black Quill! What is the Black Quill? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out the answer to that dangerous question.
My Bookish Ways is also hosting a giveaway of The Dead Hamlets for U.S. citizens. Just four days left!
Good luck and good reading!
What I learned about writing from a church
Today I’m over at Kate Heartfield’s site as part of her Unlikely Influences on writing series. I reveal what I learned about writing from the Gaudi church. It’s one of my favourite places in the world and I can’t wait to go back there again.
The spirit of wild imagination and utter audacity of La Sagrada Familia, as well as its mashup of architectural traditions, gave me the imaginative framework for my book. The history of the church helped me to flesh out the character of Cross. The church has existed through several eras of history, just as he has. It’s been in a constant state of reinvention and evolution, just like he has. It combines different architectural styles, just as I do with literary styles in the book: noir, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, literary fiction, and probably some others I’ve forgotten.
Author writes zombie novel, gets brain tumour
Over at The Province I talk to Adam Lewis Schroeder, who discovered in the middle of writing his new zombie novel, All-Day Breakfast, that he had a brain tumour. Crazy story.
“Between the end of substantive edits and the start of copy edits, I found out I had a big tumour on my pituitary gland the size of a Rubik’s Cube,” Schroeder said. “It’s almost like the book prompted it.”
peter darbyshire 