From the Writer’s Desk
2023: A Good Year for Writing
January 19, 2024
Nearly one year ago, my short story “The Cartographer’s Daughter” was published in the Dragon Soul Press Reign of Fire anthology.
“The Cartographer’s Daughter” was the story that got me back into writing fiction. It was my first publication after a five year drought: my very first fiction short story was printed by a small Manitoba press in 2018, and I’d had no others accepted until “The Cartographer’s Daughter.”
This story was followed by “Eyes of Silver” in July (Pirate Gold), “Titus Rising” in August (A Death in the Night), “The Bookshop” in November (Magick & Mystery) and “Underneath the Tree” in December (A Winter Promise).
The 2023 Lac du Bonnet Living magazine came out in May, once again featuring many of my articles on Lac du Bonnet history, including a brand new article on the early history of Pointe du Bois.
On May 21, I attended my first book launch at the Winnipeg River Heritage Museum in St-Georges for People of the River, a companion book to their exhibit of the same name. I had researched and written the biographies for the book and the exhibit. A few weeks later, my year of researching and drafting exhibit panels finished with the WRHM’s grand reopening.
Over the Canada Day weekend, I spent two days in 30 degree heat at the Lac du Bonnet & District Historical Society’s Winnipeg River Rendezvous. Over 300 people came through to visit the reenactor’s tents and try the Voyageur Challenge. The event was definitely a success.
I ended 2023 with five fiction short stories printed in Dragon Soul Press anthologies and one historical non-fiction published through the WRHM. My local history series, Window on Our Past, continued with two articles in the Lac du Bonnet Clipper and one feature length article for the Lac du Bonnet Living magazine.
Thank you to Mark Buss, editor of the Lac du Bonnet Clipper, for the continued support.
I cannot thank everyone at Dragon Soul Press enough for giving me this opportunity. These anthologies feature authors from around the world, and I am proud to find my stories among them.
Four of the five most popular Dragon Soul Press anthologies for the year feature my stories: A Winter Promise, Reign of Fire, Pirate Gold and Magick & Mystery.
And I am listed at #3 in the Dragon Soul Press top five prolific authors.
Read their full Year in Review at https://dragonsoulpress.com/2024/01/07/2023-year-in-review/
2023 was a year of rediscovering myself as a fiction author after so much time away.
The stories I write (so far) cannot be confined to genre, or even to a certain style, but they are definitely all on the lighter side and have a happy ending.
With each fiction short story I wrote this year, I expanded my understanding of the kind of stories I want to write and I realized that I have the ability to write across themes and genres with relative ease.
2023 was a good year for writing, and I’m just getting started!