Beyond Words

I'd like to share my Kirkus review of Invisible by yours truly. Sorry for the self-indulgence. I don't do this often but the review means a lot to me. INVISIBLE          A young girl just shy of graduating high school acquires a new gift and a way to literally hide from the world. “Sometimes I disappear,” she explains. Lola, self-described as “fat” and “freakishly tall,” lives a lowly existence. Her parents, desperately clinging to their youth, barely acknowledge her; her sister belittles her; and she’s a target for bullies. She finds solace in her love of writing, her BFF Charlie (short for Charlene) and her maternal grandmother, affectionately called Gran. Any wish she had to become invisible in the eyes of cruel teenagers is suddenly a reality, as she vanishes from others’ sight and is neither seen nor heard. Lola soon realizes that she disappears during emotionally intense moments. Bannon’s debut novel adequately captures the life o...

Today, it is my honour to welcome Sheila Dalton, author of The Girl in the Box to my blog. Talking with My Characters Sheila Dalton A big part of writing a novel is imagining your characters and bringing them to life. Part of the process, for me, is talking to them in my head, and I thought I would share with you a “conversation” I had with Caitlin Shaughnessy, the journalist in my latest novel, The Girl in the Box . Caitlin’s lover, Dr. Jeremy Simpson, was killed by a traumatized young Mayan woman, Inez, whom he rescued from a hut in the Guatemalan jungle where she had been kept chained by her parents. Caitlin, how did you feel when Jerry told you about Inez? He phoned me from Guatemala, out of the blue, and told me he had discovered this young girl whose parents had chained her up and locked her in a dark shed. He told me he wanted to bring her back to Canada with him. My first reaction was shock, utter shock, and horror. I asked him why the girl was kept this way, and he told...

I'm excited to welcome Jeni Decker, author, mom and all 'round great lady to my blog today. Her latest book is a memoir, I Wish I were Engulfed in Flames: My Insane Life Raising Two Boys with Autism is truly a fabulous read. Please tell us a little about your memoir I Wish I were Engulfed in Flames: My Insane Life Raising Two Boys with Autism and why you wrote it. Well, the whole thing snuck up on me like the swine flu, the symptoms fairly banal until suddenly it felt like I was hooked up to life support with a priest administering last rites in the form of a cattle-prod shoved up my…                 …okay, so that lasted about fifteen minutes, relatively speaking. A friend once told me that I was lucky to have my life. “While you’re enjoying an eight course meal, most people are sitting down with a frozen dinner.” Boy, was she ever right. Profundity; you can’t find it in the frozen food section.   I...