Susan Calder

My short story “Freezer Breakdown” will be published in The Best of the Puerto Vallarta Writers Anthology 2012. The book is supposed to come out in time for the Puerto Vallarta Book and Authors’ Festival on Feb 24-26, 2012.  It’s nice to think of my story in that warm place, especially given the story’s title.  I joined [...]

My personal deadline for reaching the midpoint of my novel-in-progress was a trip to Toronto for Thanksgiving weekend followed by a week in Montreal and Kitchener. I made the writing deadline so tightly that I’ve only found time to blog about it now, after returning from the trip.  This first half of this book is [...]

Writing a novel is a daunting task. It becomes more manageable for me if I break the novel into quarters, with each quarter ending at a turning point. I start out with a fuzzy idea of what the first turning point will involve, but know it will be about 80 pages in. Writing toward page 80 [...]

Last weekend, I attended the innaugural When Words Collide conference in Calgary. This festival for readers and writers was organized by a committee of local science fiction and fantasy writers. Previously, this group had organized a Calgary science fiction conference CONnvergence. They felt last year’s CONvergence was too media focused and split to hold a writing conference that would include all [...]

I enjoyed this blog post on semi-colons because my editor was so into them. http://blog.carriemumford.com/2011/08/06/editing-and-my-love-for-the-semicolon/

I always find it hard to return to writing after a break.  This current break has been one of my longest. It began before Christmas and continued through the holidays, a one-month winter vacation, the release of Deadly Fall, my book promotion blitz, two shorter spring and summer trips and visits by relatives. During this time, all I’ve written are blog posts and [...]

Thursday, June 16th, Will and I set out our mini-book tour of southern Alberta – four stops in twenty-four hours, organized and co-ordinated by my sister, Lynn, who lives in Beaver Mines and works in Calgary.  First stop: Tumbleweed Coffee House in Nanton, a cafe that opened this March. Owner Leslie Elder invited me in for a signing between 3:00 [...]

Author Sharon Wildwind invited me to write a guest post for the blog site: Poe’s Deadly Daughters. Here it is: http://poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com/2011/06/canada-calling-susan-calder.html

For the trip home from Victoria, I organized one book promotion event: a presentation Tuesday evening, June 7th, at Hooked on Books, Main Street, Penticton, BC. As Will and I drove there, I thought how fortunate it was that we hadn’t scheduled this event for Monday or Wednesday, hockey playoff nights. All of British Columbia [...]

The Bloody Words conference ended today. Many thanks to the organizers, especially co-chairs Kay Stewart and Lou Allin, for putting on a terrific event. They even arranged for sunny, warm Victoria weather. From my room in the conference hotel, I had beautiful views of the ocean and snow-capped mountains in the Olympic Peninsula, USA. At [...]