My mother died nine years ago today. Nine. A cancer diagnosis on May 5th. Surgery on May 16th to remove a mass from her abdomen. Intubated on May 21st because lungs weakened from tuberculosis (TB) were filling with fluid. Coming off the ventilator on May 23rd and rallying for my brother Steve’s birthday. Deteriorating throughout […]
Three writers get together to celebrate the impending marriage of one of them. This story isn’t quite a cliche, but it’s highly predictable: a lot of drinking, probably some debauchery, and an awful lot of existential talk about the future, regrets, and failed hopes. Writers are endlessly moody, and there’s no way they could pass […]
They haven’t fixed the bullet holes. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when I visited Centre Block yesterday. Indeed, I hadn’t even planned on being in the building. But I arrived at my hotel in Ottawa earlier than expected, so instead of joining a friend for a working dinner in a pub (where, admittedly, […]
You know trouble is coming when Wes Prewer and I start talking about warship designs. Admittedly, things went quiet on the Black Sun front some time ago –– another false start has come and gone, but in its wake there have been some very interesting developments… developments that I suspect will lead us where we […]
His Majesty’s New World only came together as a series when I realized it could include Newfoundlanders. It’s been a few years since I explained this, but it bears repeating: as an MA student, I’d done all sorts of research that helped inform the alternate history of the series. However, the intricacies of a world […]
Way back in 1980, when I was a 19-year-old Mathematics major at Memorial University of Newfoundland, I entered the Flare magazine $1000 Question essay contest. The question: Looking Good: Will it still matter in the liberated 80s? Apparently what I wrote resonated with the editors, because much to my surprise and delight, I won the […]
I am currently back in Waterloo. The reason for my visit isn’t a happy one –– Arthur Stephen, the person who brought me to this city and Wilfrid Laurier University in 1999 –– died suddenly last week. Boss, mentor and ultimately a fast friend, he is gone from us too suddenly and too soon, and […]
I am no musician. The only instrument I ever learned to play was the recorder (in elementary school) and that was terrible. I can’t sing worth a damn — as Jacqui once reported, I failed even to belt out “Old Man River” with Boba Fett when we were both guests at a convention. Music is […]
One of my favorite science fiction series is set over the five-year period from 2231 to 2235, and written in a fourth-wall-shattering first person perspective by retired Admiral the Lord Ken Barron, some 30 years after the events. This affinity will come as no surprise to some readers who are also Defense Command fans, but […]
I hate being late. I’m one of those guys who always prefers to turn up early, scope out the place, then decide on the best way to go in. Being early has many advantages… but sometimes circumstances demand you be late. For instance: we were supposed to release The Count last fall, but instead, we’ve […]
If anyone had asked me a year ago today what I’d be doing on December 31, 2014, I would have predicted that I’d be spending part of the day preparing graphs and charts for Iceberg’s annual planning meeting at Yummyaki restaurant in Waterloo, Ontario. We’d head there for about 6:00 p.m., and discuss both our […]
We’re back online. After roughly seven months of disruption — getting a company moved 3,500 kilometres across the second-largest country in the world takes a fair amount of work — we’re finally able to resume author notes with some regularity… and that’s good, because while we were in transit, plenty happened that warrants discussion. First […]
The Iceberg partners, as Kenneth mentioned in his last Author Note, have returned to the land that inspired the new world in the His Majesty’s New World and Champions series. New career opportunities –– the kind that surprise you but you can’t ignore –– inspired the shared decision to empty our home in Ontario, and […]
Mountains, foothills, and wide open prairies –– by now, readers of His Majesty’s New World and Champions are familiar with the landscape of the planet that Britain and the United States began colonizing in 1881. Whether it be the Royal Newfoundland Regiment marching into the unknown in 1919, Alex and Stephanie fighting Scourge in 1942, […]
The first thing you have to understand about Canada’s navy: it began with an obsolete cruiser named Rainbow. When the Royal Canadian Navy was first founded in 1910, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier found himself in a difficult position. At the time, Britain and Germany were engaged in a Mahanian naval race, building Dreadnoughts (and […]
Today –– August 8th –– is my father’s birthday. It’s been 20 years since he’s been with us on this occasion, and more than that since we celebrated with a special supper, my mother’s homemade chocolate cake, an enthusiastic rendition of Happy Birthday to You, and brightly wrapped presents. On his last birthday in 1994, […]
This past weekend, Peter, Kenneth and I arrived in Gros Morne, Newfoundland for what has become something of an annual retreat for the Iceberg partners. The first year we visited – 2011 – we were lured by the Newfoundland Tourism television commercials. As I explain to people who aren’t from this part of the world, […]
Khaki-clad soldiers spent Saturday, July 26 advancing up a dry, grassy hill called Talana, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Some 115 years ago, this hill had been the site of the first battle of the Second Boer War; this time, the soldiers were members of the Dundee Diehard historical re-enactment team, and their foes were neither […]
I’m home in Newfoundland this week –– in the community of Woody Point in Gros Morne National Park. This is the fourth straight summer that I’ve made the pilgrimage back to this place, to stay in the same suites over the same bay, and hike the same land. To people who haven’t been here, that […]
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a new Author Note, and I offer an apology to my regular readers for that. I’ve actually been writing a lot in the last couple of months –– a project that had been idling for quite some time is back in full swing, and that’s occupied any […]