With over 225 novels to her credit, Nora Roberts is a bestseller by any definition. Wikipedia says the books are all romance novels, so I’m not sure if that number includes the 47 mysteries in the In Death series. These sit on the light end of being science fiction and are clearly police procedurals, though …
Yukon-based writer Joanna Lilley has published her first novel, Worry Stones, after 17 years of working on it. “I wasn´t working on it every day, during that time. There were periods when I put it aside.” She wrote poems and short stories instead. During the past years, she published two collections of poetry and one …
The Wolves of Winter is Tyrell Johnson’s first published novel. It’s set in the Yukon, but he hadn’t actually been here until he came to Whitehorse for last month’s Yukon Writers’ Festival.
Marcelle Dubé has written the fifth novel of her Mendenhall Mystery Series titled The Forsaken Men. Her Mendenhall isn’t a subdivision of Whitehorse, but rather a fictive place in Manitoba.
“To most people, the pack ice looked like a cold, endless wasteland that spread across one’s entire field of vision. But, if one watched it more carefully, one could see it come to life.” — excerpt from No Time to Bury Them by Mark C. Eddy On the surface of national history, the Yukon is …
Once again I was about to die. Like every other literary artist before me I was about to die forgotten in a ditch at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway, beneath a blackened train trestle and a faded “dew worms for sale” sign, with a bullet in my brain. At least I didn’t have to …
Every summer, Rose and her family pack up and head to their cottage in Awago Beach. There, the long days melt into lake swims and beach fires, counting stars, five-cent candies, watching movies and running around with her summer-sister, Windy. It’s summertime, and the living is easy, right? But this year something feels off. In …
It was the summer he turned twelve, after his failed attempts to save the fox kits, that he began collecting bones, scouring the grass and pine duff for tracks and finding deer skulls, a pelvis, a sprocket-like vertebrae, the bones reassuringly solid in his hands. –excerpt from The Afterlife of Birds by Elizabeth Philips Henry …
“As Jack knelt in the bloody snow, he wondered if that was how a man held up his end of the bargain, by learning and taking into his heart this strange wilderness — guarded and naked, violent and meek, tremulous in its greatness.” –excerpt from The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey Often touted as a …
“Think of magic as a tree. The root of supernatural ability is simply the realization that all time exists simultaneously. Humans experience time as a progression of sequential events in much the same way we see the horizon as flat: our reality is shaped by our limitations.” –excerpt from Son of a Trickster by Eden …
Bestselling Canadian author Lawrence Hill pursues a lifelong interest in African diaspora narratives. As a part of the research for a book he’s writing about the contribution of African American soldiers to the construction of the Alaska Highway, Hill is travelling the Highway from northern B.C. through the Yukon. His first Yukon stop was in …
Jamie Bastedo is not new to the Yukon. He first came to the territory 35 years ago as a biology graduate student. “Think Never Cry Wolf,” he says. “My head full of book knowledge about northern landscapes and cultures.” The Yukon still means a lot to him and he is excited to be coming back. …
Do you or someone you know love books almost as much as their pet? These three books draw on the animals in our outer lives to illuminate the complexity of our inner lives. For the Dog Lover: Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls A boy and his two dogs become much more than …
You may know Irish Canadian author Emma Donoghue by the fame she has gained from her 2010 novel Room, and its film adaptation. I must admit, I have neither watched the film, nor read the book. However, when it came to reading Donoghue’s ninth novel, The Wonder, which was published this year, I had a …
The Wonder builds up slowly to a thrilling ending Read More »
“His mother used to say the soul was a bird that lived in the nape of the neck. At night it flew out of the mouth, and when you woke it returned; and when you died, it flew away forever. The world outside the glass that night seemed entirely an abstraction, a dream. Here, in …
Zhoh, the Clan of the Wolf: Fiction of the first humans to inhabit The Yukon. I knew Bob Hayes novel would be physically accurate.
“While a part of me was glad I wasn’t like my brother, no part of me wished to be more fortunate than my mother. To be luckier than her was to be different from her, it was to be apart from her, it was to have a life that would take me away from her. …
“That night I went through my reprimand sentence by sentence, word for word, and it got better each time.” “I put on a CD of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, but soon swapped it for one of Sting’s albums, only to switch to Dire Straits and then John Cougar Mellencamp. I didn’t really feel like …
About the same time as I was reading Elle Wild’s very entertaining mystery novel, Strange Things Done, I happened to watch a discussion between best selling novelists Stephen King and Lee Child. Part of the discussion was about settings, and Child noted that he had set one of his novels in New York, a city …
Do ghosts exist? For some they do. The main character in Marcelle Dubé´s novel, Shelter, moves into a haunted house in a small town in Ontario. Dubé started the story as a gothic novel and in the end it became a ghost story. Marcelle Dubé is well known in the Yukon and she usually publishes …
I am not one who likes to read dry historical tomes. I like to absorb my history through the sugar coated pill of historical fiction, written by an author whose research is meticulous. And in this genre, Louis de Bernieres is a master. His works include books such as Birds Without Wings and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. …
Though best known for his 15 collections of verse (a term he preferred to poetry in reference to his own work) Robert Service also wrote novels. Between 1909 and 1927, he produced some genre material: adventure, mystery, science fiction and horror. The first of these was The Trail of 98: a Northland Romance, written in his …
The Trail of 98 Shows Another Side of Robert W. Service Read More »
Inspired by the Yukon winter and the road closures that lead to a feeling of isolation, Elle Wild wrote her first crime novel and set it in Dawson City. The novel, called Strange Things Done, won the Arthur Ellis Award 2015 for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel from the Crime Writers of Canada. Based in …
Steve Pitt came to the Yukon in 1982 to attend his sister’s wedding. She was marrying Dal Fry, son of Art and Margie Fry. That’s part of how Art ended up as a character in Steve’s book, The Wail of the Wendigo. The book is a young adult adventure novel that brings two kids named …
I don’t mean to alarm you, but it’s almost Hallowe’en, which, as all Yukoners know, means winter will soon descend upon us with the stumbling, frozen fury of a zombie horde from The Walking Dead. If that’s not scary enough for you, here’s three creepy books you can read to get yourself in the mood …
The following excerpt is based on true events that took place around 1980. What’s Up Yukon’s editorial staff would like to remind you that there are laws in the Yukon against wasting meat. Part One was published in the Jan. 29, 2015 issue; Part Two in Feb. 26, 2015. It left the three French guys …
“Writing poetry makes me happy,” Joanna Lilley says. “I am somewhere else when I write poetry. I am an intuitive writer.” The Whitehorse based poet will be part of The Edmonton Poetry Festival from April 19 to 26. “Poetry Moves” is the theme, and Lilley is very excited to be part of it. It all …
Part One was published in the Jan. 29, 2015 issue. It left the three French guys heading out on a big hunting trip. Claude and Jacques want to bag a moose, while Marcel would rather not kill anything. Look for it in the “Literature” section. Claude was in good humour, and punching Marcel playfully in the …
Claude, Jacques and Marcel just finished their shifts at the copper mine outside of Whitehorse and decided to go for a beer in town. They couldn’t agree on which bar to go to, so they drew straws and ended up at the Edgewater. All three of them were healthy and robust looking and it could …
Writing a first draft of a novel is like the beginning of a romantic relationship: Everything is exciting, new, and there is a lot to explore. Your heart beats fast; you are in love with your characters and the world you creating. Every fiction author knows that feeling. Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, refers …
Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re related. That’s the reality for Maggie and Rose Feller, the central characters in the 2005 film In Her Shoes, a comedy-drama available on DVD at Whitehorse Public Library. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is a freewheeling party girl who doesn’t seem to ha ve much on her mind except men and clothes …
If you asked your spouse if you could take five years off work in order to devote your time to writing, what would they say? Jessica Simon’s husband not only said yes, he threw in another two years and gave her seven. His faith in her has paid off. It’s only Year 5 and she’s …
Young Adult (YA) readers love adventure, and a look at work by Northern authors Joanne Bell, Keith Halliday and Anita Daher shows why. YA stories can teach life skills and bush skills, as Dawson writer Joanne Bell demonstrates. Her first book, Breaking Trail (Groundwood Press), is the story of a young girl mushing her own …
Chasing trends is a tricky game for writers, says Selina McLemore, editor of Grand Central Publishing’s Forever romance line. “Some can use trends to their advantage, some buck them successfully,” she told delegates to the recent San Diego Writers’ Conference. The key is to understand the trend and what makes it work. She uses examples …
World of Words: “Bodice Rippers” Evolve to “Flak Jacket Rippers” Read More »
Whatever happened to that English guy in Australia who sold his life on eBay? He moved to the Yukon and wrote a book about it. In November, A Life Sold by Ian Usher went on sale via Amazon, and is now available on Kindle. It recounts Usher’s adventures to sell his life and achieve 100 …
Enthusiasts of outdoor stories, adventure and romance will find all three at the preview of Roy Ness’s first novel, Rutting Season, at the Parking Lot Reading on Friday, July 27. The self-published book is a stand-alone adventure with a liberal dose of romance. In a September storm in the Selwyn Mountains grizzly bear eco-warrior Hannah …
If you sat down to write the Great Canadian Novel, would it come out in a gush of first draft? Or are you one of the large number of “re-writers” who find the real story only comes to life after the editing process? “Whether writing or rewriting, at some point the word will be subjected …
World of Words: Guerrilla editing: Get what you want Read More »
Literature abounds with magic bookstores such as J.K. Rowling’s Obscurus Books where Hogwarts buy their texts, and Mr. Koreander’s shop where Michael Ende’s Bastian Bux steals The Neverending Story. But this column is about real bookstores where real magic happens. My own experience occurred in a Dutch bookstore where I found a German title on …
World of Words: Be enchanted at the Yukon’s magic bookstore Read More »
