Diana and I live in Chemainus, BC, on the Salish Sea side of Vancouver Island. We’ve adopted this small, friendly community as our hometown, and expect to continue living, working, and volunteering here for the rest of our lives.
Diana is an artist. You can see her works at DianaDurrand.com. We have often collaborated on books and projects, and give each other room to pursue our vocations in our latest home, a spacious townhouse with an exceptionally high ‘walkability’ score.
We have two sons: Ian, who lives with us and is employed as a welder, and Daniel, who operates a goat farm near Coldwater, Ontario. Daniel’s wife, Kristy, is a nurse. They have blessed us with four beautiful, intelligent, lively grandchildren.
The first inklings of my vocation as a writer tickled my fancy when I was in gradeschool. A teacher complimented a story I’d written in block letters on a lined, nine-by-five notebook. I blame her for everything that’s happened to me since. If there was anything I wanted to be praised for, creative writing was it. I am still driven by the desire to imagine and write stories.
Writing is a lifelong learning experience. That’s the thing about a vocation—it’s something you are, not something you do. I’ve written a post about that, Life from a writer’s POV. It pretty well sums up that aspect of my life and times:
A job is what you do; a vocation defines you.
A job is something you can change; a vocation changes you.
A job is done for pay; a vocation isn’t about the money.
A job takes time; a vocation fills it.
You can take time off work; there’s no vacation from a vocation…
So, what are the milestones of my literary journey so far:
- Fifteen years as a community journalist, a career I adopted because it engaged me as a writer and paid the bills.
- Another fifteen years as a communications manager for a large, urban school district, which broadened my technical and management skills, continued to engage me as a writer, and paid the bills better.
- Three novels and several children’s books in collaboration with Diana. Josh & the Magic Vial (2006) was nominated for a BC Book Prize in YA fiction; Einstein Dog (2009) was nominated for the Chocolate Lily Award of the BC Elementary School Teachers’ Association; The Boy From Under (written in 2010, self-published in 2023); Imagination River (2005) with funding from the Langley School District Foundation and others.
- Three post-retirement novels and more collaborations with Diana: Stained Glass (2024); The Mural Gazer (2024); Entrapments (2026, Draft); Flibber T. Gibbet (2022) with a grant from Chris Clement Construction.
- Launch of BooksUnbound.ca, an online initiative encouraging writers to share experiences and expertise adapting to and adopting digital and online technologies and strategies, ‘Bringing Literature to Minds.’
- As Director of the Literary Forum of the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society, looking for new ways to share and promote writing and writers in the region, including projects like Convergence: Images + Words, a collaboration between writers and visual artists.
Thank you for persevering to the end of this bio. If you want to keep up as I add to it in the future tense, please visit my ‘Connect‘ page.