The lineup for wrestling tournaments for the boys in the Cauliflower Ear Club It's a good thing that I'm a writer and not an artist, but I needed some visual aids to help sort out some of these characters. The problem is that I changed some names and still need to change a couple more. You see, I read Memoir by Margaret Atwood (wonderful, highly recommend it) and as one of the many asides and lessons in the book, she advised not to have two characters in the book with the sam

It was a thrill to attend author Terry Fallis' book launch last night. We are not friends, we had never met, yet I felt I knew him ever since ten books ago, when I laughed until I cried reading his first book The Best Laid Plans . Last week I picked up his latest and already best selling book The Marionette in Sault Ste. Marie, and although it was a departure from his others, it didn't disappoint. On the delayed flight home, I read the entire book in one sitting. It combines

A Wordcloud interpretation of The Cauliflower Ear Club tacked to my whiteboard   I thought that The Cauliflower Ear Club was as finished...

Hands tell a story, mapping our lives and battles   Our hands tell a story. Coming in all sizes, colours and shapes, they reveal our age,...

The shoulders of the coaches share the weight of the wrestler who then supports others, and so on and so on.   In so many ways our past...

I have been asked many times why I chose to write a novel about wrestling and I come up with a different reason each time. First of all,...

Now that the manuscript of The Cauliflower Ear Club is finished (for today at least), the next steps are daunting. How to decide if you...

My friend Shelley Yampolsky , artist and potter extraordinaire, generously designed this card to help me find an agent or publisher for...

I had fun sharing how our protagonist Holly got her name, but the others came much less organically, as there are so many of them. You...

The novel I am working on, The Cauliflower Ear Club, is about a season in the life of a university wrestling team and all those connected...

Just one of many scenes showing how strong the bonds are among wrestlers. John P. and Joe D. competed against one another and then beside...

Anyone who has ever lived with a high-level athlete has shared a piece of that rarified world, observing the demands, the intense...