Featured in Quill & Quire

A bit more early buzz has arrived for my new novel, All the Animals on Earth. I was interviewed for this Quill & Quire article, Publishers question how best to promote novels that have unexpected real-world relevance during COVID-19 (paywall), by reviews editor Steven W. Beattie. You have to have a subscription to read the article online, but I've included a screen grab from the print edition here:

The article also talks to my publisher at Wolsak & Wynn, Noelle Allen, my fellow W&W author Anne Stone about her new novel, Girl Minus X, and author Saleema Nawaz and her editor at McClelland & Stewart, Anita Chong, about Nawaz's new post-apocalyptic novel, Songs for the End of the World, which has some creepily spot-on parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic. Anyway, it was great to be included here and chat up All the Animals on Earth.

Just a reminder that the book's new publication date is September 6. You can, of course, pre-order a copy from all the usual suspects, including Chapters-Indigo, Amazon.ca, or your favourite local independent bookstore, such as McNally Robinson in the Prairies, Another Story Bookshop here in Toronto, or the Bookmark in Halifax or Charlottetown.

Novel release delayed due to you know what

Hey gang: So today was supposed to be the official publication date for my new novel, All the Animals on Earth, but Wolsak & Wynn has wisely decided to hold off its release until September. It is absolutely for the best as we wait to see how the book retail landscape will shape up over the next few months of the pandemic.

For those who have already pre-ordered a copy - thank you so much! Sorry you'll have to wait a bit longer to have one in your hands. If you haven't yet but are thinking about it, this is still a good time to do so. Pre-orders really help publishers and bookstores out (and give a much-needed confidence boost to lowly writers scribbling away in isolation on the next thing). The book industry, like so many in these strange and troubled times, need as much support as you have to give.

As always, huge thanks to Noelle Allen, Paul Vermeersch, Ashley Hisson and the whole team at W&W for their continued awesomeness. Thanks to Emily Dockrill Jones, who did a corking-good job on the copy edit, and to Michel Vrana for that amazing cover design.

My Quill and Quire review of Where the Waters Meet, by Stéphanie Boulay ...

... is now up on the Q&Q website. This novel was one of the odder reads I've had so far this year. It's quite an elliptical treatise on identity, set in the wilds of rural Quebec. Translated from the French by Ghislaine LeFranc, this book will be an acquired taste for English readers, but if you like tales about young girls coming of age told in an opaque voice, this may just be the novel for you.

My review of The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel ....

is now available on the Canadian Writers Abroad website. This novel has been getting a lot of attention lately, and deservedly so. It's about many things, but it's primarily about a Bernie Madoff-esque Ponzi scheme and its impact on a multitude of characters, whose lives interlock in various ways throughout the story. It's definitely one of the best books I've read so far in 2020 and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Best New Reads for Spring!

Well, imagine my excitement this weekend when I woke to discover that my forthcoming novel, All the Animals on Earth, made the Globe and Mail's Books section's list of best new reads for the spring. This a really killer list of books by authors like Gil Adamson, Vivek Shraya, and Emma Straub, and I'm still walking on air that my weird little book has been included with them. Hazzah!

Interview re All the Animals on Earth

As we start to close in on the publication date for All the Animals on Earth, I've got another tidbit of media to share with you: this interview with me by Steven Buechler for his blog, The Library of Pacific Tranquility. Steve has been very supportive of my work over the years and has interviewed me a few times now about various books I've published. In this latest interview, I talk about the origins of All the Animals on Earth, discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted plans to promote it, and provide a sneak peek into I'm working on next. Enjoy!

My Quill & Quire review of Radiant Shards: Hoda's North End Poems, by Ruth Panofsky ...

... is now on the Q&Q website.  Radiant Shards is quite a strange little book, really - a poetic rendering of a fictional character from a Canadian novel, Adele Wiseman's Crackpot, published more than 45 years ago. This review was part of a series of reviews of poetry collections for April, which is poetry month. It was great to be back in the pages of Quill & Quire - it had been a while. Anyway, if you're a huge fan of Wiseman's novel, you should definitely check this collection out.