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The nice thing about having no life is that you have lots of time to write. And I have just begun work on my fourth novel, The Redemption of Guilt.

I think of guilt in three ways: the criminal sense, whereby someone has broken the law; the ecclesiastical, whereby someone has sinned; and the innate, whereby someone feels remorse for a wrong they believe they have committed, without anyone having to tell them so.

This last sense of guilt is what spurred me to begin my latest literary effort. I want to tell stories of people and how they use the redemptive power of guilt to better their lives and the lives of others. For millennia the church has taught us to fear guilt, that it’s a source of shame, a one-way ticket to damnation.

I think it has a more restorative ability. And that’s the story I want to write.

Click here to read the first chapter from The Redemption of Guilt.

“[In] the digital age, not only is the physical book in decline, but the very idea of ‘difficult’ reading is being challenged.”

While I would tend to agree with this statement on most days, I’m not sure I would go so far as to say the medium is dead. Like dead-as-a-doornail dead.

However, Will Self has penned a thought-provoking piece for The Guardian, and one thing he had to say about the novel as we know it today is the following:

“The form should have been laid to rest at about the time of Finnegans Wake, but in fact it has continued to stalk the corridors of our minds for a further three-quarters of a century. Many fine novels have been written during this period, but I would contend that these were, taking the long view, zombie novels, instances of an undead art form that yet wouldn’t lie down.”

One has to wonder where the novel (or storytelling to be more precise) goes from here. On the one hand, there are fewer publishers, bookstores and literary critics. On the other, there are more people writing and – while the content is debatable – reading. More readers and writers should be a good thing for the future of literature, I would think.

Read the full article for yourself here.

Because titans of literature will always be remembered.

Before he died on 17 April 2014 at the age of 87, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia’s illustrious Nobel Laureate for literature, had declared his retirement from public life. He had terminal cancer and sent this letter of farewell to friends and lovers of literature

From the man himself, a love letter to readers…

If God, for a second, forgot what I have become and granted me a little bit more of life, I would use it to the best of my ability.

I wouldn’t, possibly, say everything that is in my mind, but I would be more thoughtful of all I say.

I would give merit to things not for what they are worth, but for what they mean to express.

I would sleep little, I would dream more, because I know that for every minute that we close our eyes, we waste 60 seconds of light.

I would walk while others stop; I would awake while others sleep.

If God would give me a little bit more of life, I would dress in a simple manner, I would place myself in front of the sun, leaving not only my body, but my soul naked at its mercy.

To all men, I would say how mistaken they are when they think that they stop falling in love when they grow old, without knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love.

I would give wings to children, but I would leave it to them to learn how to fly by themselves.

To old people I would say that death doesn’t arrive when they grow old, but with forgetfulness.

I have learned so much with you all, I have learned that everybody wants to live on top of the mountain, without knowing that true happiness is obtained in the journey taken and the form used to reach the top of the hill.

I have learned that when a new-born baby holds, with its little hand, his father’s finger, it has trapped him for the rest of his life.

I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.

Say always what you feel, not what you think. If I knew that today is the last time that I am going to see you asleep, I would hug you with all my strength and I would pray to the Lord to let me be the guardian angel of your soul.

If I knew that these are the last moments to see you, I would say “I love you.”

There is always tomorrow, and life gives us another opportunity to do things right, but in case I am wrong, and today is all that is left to me, I would love to tell you how much I love you & that I will never forget you.

Tomorrow is never guaranteed to anyone, young or old. Today could be the last time to see your loved ones, which is why you mustn’t wait; do it today, in case tomorrow never arrives. I am sure you will be sorry you wasted the opportunity today to give a smile, a hug, a kiss, and that you were too busy to grant them their last wish.

Keep your loved ones near you; tell them in their ears and to their faces how much you need them and love them. Love them and treat them well; take your time to tell them “I am sorry,” “forgive me, “please,” “thank you,” and all those loving words you know.

Nobody will know you for your secret thought. Ask the Lord for wisdom and strength to express them.

Show your friends and loved ones how important they are to you.

Send this letter to those you love. If you don’t do it today . . . tomorrow will be like yesterday, and if you never do it, it doesn’t matter either, the moment to do it is now.

For you, with much love,

Your Friend,

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

There are great writers. And then there is David Mitchell. To quote his American editor, David Ebershoff: “I remember David Mitchell’s first reading in New York almost fifteen years ago. There were maybe fifteen or twenty people in the audience but it was clear to all of us David was a talent unlike any we had ever encountered before. I have watched him go from unknown British import to cult-favorite to global phenomenon.”

On September 9, 2014, his latest literary effort, The Bone Clocks, will hit bookshelves.

At the turn of the last century, when David published his first novel, Ghostwritten, I came across it randomly on eBay one day while searching through a Murakami Haruki feed of all places! I bought the book on a whim and have never looked back.

I later had the distinct honour of getting to know David in his pre-Cloud Atlas jettison to world fame and spent time with he and his family at their home in Ireland. He is, unequivocally, the definition of class, humility and etiquette. He’s also a pretty cool guy to shoot the shit with about books. You know, ’cause he’s read a couple in his time.

As per the Random House site, this is what they have to say about Mitchell’s upcoming novel: “The Bone Clocks is a stunning epic that follows Holly Sykes, who runs away from her home in Southwest England in 1984 and 60 years later is raising her granddaughter on the coast of Ireland, as almost everything about her world has changed forever. In between Holly and the people who love her move between the Swiss alps in 1991, war-torn Baghdad in 2004, and New York a decade in the future, where she joins a band of vigilantes in a supernatural war between a predatory cult of immortal soul-stealers.  The novel is a monumental achievement that will thrill and entertain its readers while asking profound questions about mortality, legacy, and the future of the world.”

I couldn’t be happier for the acclaim he  has received. David is one of the few authors I’ve come across who genuinely deserves all the praise readers and critics alike heap on him.

So, while away in Chicago stuffing my face on pizza and red meat, I took some time to read a book which is hot off the press here in Canada, David Pilling’s Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival. To say the book is simply a well-written account of the days and months after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and subsequent nuclear meltdown at Fukushima (though authorities at the governing Tepco organization were loathe to use the word “meltdown,” perhaps because they were suffering meltdowns themselves), is a grave understatement. The Financial Times’ former Tokyo correspondent has accomplished so much more in this look at Japan and its ability to bounce back from horror while remaining resilient in the face of indescribable hardship.

The title of the book is a reference to a phrase he heard someone use once in reference to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima – wazawai wo tenjite fuku to nasu – which the author translates as “bend adversity and turn it into happiness.”

Pilling has written both an investigative journal on Japan and its uncanny ability to rebound from unspeakable tragedy as well as a personal account of certain Japanese people who are shaping their country’s future path as we speak.  Murakami Haruki (of wild sheep chasing bird chronicle fame) and Natsuo Kirino (whose novel Out is incredible) are among the numerous rock stars Pilling got together with and interviewed for the book.

For many reasons, I’ve long enjoyed reading fiction and non-fiction on and about Japan. For me, Pilling’s offering now joins the ranks of Herbert Bix’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan and Haruko Taya Cook & Theodore F. Cook’s Japan at War: An Oral History as seminal non-fiction works on the country.

K, not my strongest picture for a post. Keep in mind, however, they pay me the big bucks (i.e. less than minimum wage) to be a soldier on the pen, not a design guy who wears tight slacks and monogrammed eyewear.

Today, Quarter-Finalists were announced for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and A Father’s Son made the cut. Nice! Or as they say in Korean, 나이스! Obviously a big difference linguistically.

Amazon sends you this PDF file and as you scroll down to see if your name and title are there, it’s a little like being back in school and wondering what you got on that final exam you totally know you aced…but could very well have bombed. Exhilarating! Frustrating. Inspiring! Heartbreaking. Yes! Yes! Yes! Oh, my god, no. NO!!!!

But it’s all good. Onwards and upwards we roll from here.

On Wednesday, March 26, 2014, The Immortal Flower received a literary grant from The Canada Council for the Arts. This is, without a doubt, the highest honour bestowed upon any of my writing in the last 14 years. I have been working on this novel for 13 years in one form or another, and to see the five-century epic receive a nod from the country’s highest literary body is, well, humbling. As in, deeply, deeply humbling. I’m speechless.

If you’d like to read a sample from some of the completed parts of the story, click here.

My sincere and profound thanks to the CCA and to everyone who supports government funding for the arts, individual artists and artistic organizations. Good on ya, eh!

A Father’s Son has been longlisted for the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). The award, which is kind of a big deal for the obvious reasons, also comes with a $50,000 grand prize purse and four second-prize purses worth $15,000 each. Cha-ching.

A short list will be announced next month, with all of these stories getting space in an upcoming edition of Publishers Weekly to publish the novel’s 300-word blurb. That’s also kind of a hot issue.

Final winners are expected to be announced in July.

I have also submitted A Father’s Son for The Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Book Award, but they don’t announce their respective winners until the autumn.

You might be wondering why I included a picture of the NHL’s Calder Trophy with this post, but I think of the ABNA as the NHL Rookie of the Year Award (hockey is most definitely a good time). If that’s the case, I’ll nominate the following award correlations for all future fiction writers/hockey lovers:

Stanley Cup & Conn Smythe Award: Booker Prize

Hart Trophy: Giller Prize, Pulitzer Prize

Art Ross Trophy: Governor General’s Award, Pen/Faulkner Award, National Book Award

Norris Trophy: Commonwealth Book Prize

Vezina Trophy: Orange Award

NHL Foundation Player Award: Nobel Prize in Literature

Lady Byng Trophy: all other fiction awards (this makes more sense if you know what this trophy symbolizes)

When it comes to naming classics, there are a few no-brainers, at least in the Western canon of literature. Names like Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, Dumas, Bronte and Austen would seem to be shoo-ins for a place on the list.

But would you believe (or agree with) the fact that Cervantes, Hemingway, Faulkner, Patchett, Morrison, Ondaatje, Munro, Richler, Murakami, Bulgakov, Chekhov, Pushkin, and Greene did not make the BBC’s most recent list of 100 books we should read before we die? Perhaps more WTF is that The Da Vinci Code, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Harry Potter, The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Kite Runner made this list. As if that weren’t enough of a brain orgy, someone at the BBC was clearly drinking moonshine late into the night when they added The Five People You Meet in Heaven to this list.

Who the where the…why?

On the flip side, kudos to them for including Cloud Atlas, A Confederacy of Dunces, Watership Down and A Suitable Boy.

You can look over the books which did make the BBC’s list yourself and keep score. While they say you’ve likely read only 6 of these “classics,” the average Goodreads member has read 23 of them.

Click here to see the BBC list in its entirety.