The universe has jokes
Good Guys made She Does The City’s Most Anticipated Books of Early 2026 list! In it, they call my novel “an unputdownable thriller about the dark side of philanthropy.” Fun story about She Does The City…..
Mirror
“I couldn’t put this novel down. I ended up bingeing it in two days. You know that kind of book? It’s full of office politics that have terrible consequences. Many of the characters are flawed in the most delicious ways. It’s a satire, a send up, about a charity falling from grace—”
Blurbs
Recently, on CBC’s Commotion podcast. there was a dishy chat about blurbs. It’s worth a listen if you’re an aspiring author or have a first book deal or are curious about what it means to get a more established author or Barack Obama to say one nice word* that can be printed on your cover.
Most of us need blurbs and we all have a fraught relationship with them. It’s amazing to receive any sort of advance praise, especially when you’re deep in your feelings in that final stretch right before a new book comes out. But blurbs require hours of free labour. And the galling part is it’s impossible to do the (unpaid) job without toppling into cliche hell. To wit…
Cathedral
And then there's Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, a book with more than its fair share of plot, "a gothic cathedral of plot!" At 800+ pages, maybe plot, erected on such an intricately designed scale with flying buttresses and gargoyles and stained glass, is necessity more than extravagance.
Lost the plot
Tessa Hadley has perfected a magic trick. And I want to know her secret.
She writes these novels - the most recent one is the excellent The Past - that break the rules of plot. Specifically the main rule that plot should progress in an Aristotelian arc.