Tag: Lost Girls

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Lost Girls Makes You Proud to be Canadian

Over at the CBC Books website, in honour of Canada Day, they’ve compiled a list of the all-time 100 Novels That Make You Proud To Be Canadian.  And guess what?  My first novel, Lost Girls is on it!

Aside from the terrific honour at having my book on the list with The Greats, I’m proud in a slightly different way.

It’s the feeling that my story – a made-up thing about ghosts and a cokehead lawyer and a monstrous Lady of the Lake who pulls swimmers down into a lake’s depths – has entered people’s consciousness in unexpected and reality-reshaping ways.  To think that something I’ve written has changed (however slightly) the way some might see a familiar thing – a northern lake, a neglected town – is rewarding beyond description.

CBC Books – 100 Novels That Make You Proud To Be Canadian

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Lost Girls an E-Book in the U.S.

Today’s the day that the e-book edition of Lost Girls, my first novel, becomes available as an electro-read in the U.S. for the first time.

First published back through the dimmest mists of time (that is, 1999), it’s a book that keeps on inventing new lives for itself.  And look at it now!  All shiny and digitized!

Lost Girls e-book

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Lost Girls a Scariest Book Ever Pick in USA TODAY

In this morning’s edition of USA TODAY, there is a panel discussion among romance authors about their picks for Scariest Novel Ever.  I was delighted to find there, amongst the less surprising appearances of The Exorcist, The Shining (and probably my fave) The Turn of the Screw, my own first novel, Lost Girls.  (Thank you, Molly O’Keefe!)

Yes, it was a pleasant kick to start the day.  But it triggered something more in me, a reflection on Lost Girls – a novel first published thirteen years ago now – and the interesting life it continues to lead.  People still come up to me (not in great numbers, but   with consistency) at readings or events to say what LG meant to them.  (Just this past weekend, at an IFOA panel which I moderated here in Toronto, a woman – hi Maggie! – came up to have her Lost Girls signed – her second Lost Girls, as she lost her first and insisted on having it replaced).

It’s a book that has inspired a song (by the Pacific Northwest’s Green Pajamas), an art installation piece, and alternative cover art send to me by readers.

Anyway, I’m pleased that LG continues to poke its head up from time to time (or, more appropriately, thrust its dead hand up out of cold waters…)  May you disturb sleep and discourage northern lake swims for years to come.

USA TODAY – Lost Girls Scariest Novel Ever Pick

 

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Good Things Come to Those Who Wait…and Wait…

Twelve years after its initial publication, the French translation of my first novel, Lost Girls (published by L’Archipel), has been given * * * 1/2 stars (out of four) in La Presse.

It’s quite unusual for a book to do anything after more than a decade other than show up in the FREE! box at somebody’s yard sale (if you’re lucky).  So I am enormously grateful to L’Archipel for bringing the novel to readers in France and Quebec alike.  I feel like I’ve been born again…though without all the bible thumping and swearing off booze.

LOST GIRLS reviewed in La Presse