Books

En route to perdition and divorce, retired journalist Buddy Hope takes a detour into Chemainus, B.C. and ends up as a ‘companion-handyman’, camped in the driveway of Bernice Sanderson and her husband Harry (AKA The Mural Gazer).
Join them on their weird and wonderful adventures inside the walls and on the streets of British Columbia’s Muraltown.

Victor Daly has it all: a penthouse suite with a view of Vancouver’s False Creek; a high flying career as a family court lawyer; recognition as an avant guard photo-artist; loving relationships – no strings attached; and his best friend TooBee, a Jack Russell terrier, to remind him how much he doesn’t want kids.

He also has a past that’s going to catch up with him on the evening news… The world as he knows it is about to bend and buckle ‘under the influence of an irrational new gravity.

When Kyle Welland inherits an antique tobacco tin, containing love letters from the Victorian era, he sets off on a biographical adventure in search of his great-great-grandparents, Christopher Newman and Anna Armstrong.
His investigations take him from his home in Vancouver, to the historic gold rush town of Barkerville in the fabled Cariboo, to Kingston Ontario, and Manchester England. What he discovers in his geneological quest is himself.

Flibber T. Gibbet is the most mischievous elf in all Chemainus. But when he coaxes Lincoln into the forest off the Hermit Trail, Lincoln tumbles into a trap set by the trolls Gristle and Gnash. His family and community mount a desperate search for him. Will they rescue Lincoln before dinner time?

Entrapments turns the expected progression of a mystery novel inside-out—from a who-done-it? into a why they done it? and the tangled cascade of consequences that follows on what they done. Lucinda MacDonald confesses in a journal entry at the outset of her story that, “By the time you read to the end of this document, you will have all the evidence you need to convict me of murder in the first degree.”

Josh Dempster, his friends Ian Lytle and Millie Epp—with help from a 19th century copper named Inspector Puddifant, and a witch named Endorathlil— are embroiled in a deadly encounter with Vortigen, the ruthless leader of the Kingdom of Syde. Vortigen seeks to restore the power of his underworld realm, loosing his hordes of minions through the power bottled inside a Magic Vial, which has come into Josh’s possession… Josh and the Magic Vial was nominated for a BC Book Prize when it was first published in 2006.

Follow the adventures of Harry Sanderson, a retired log truck driver, who enters the scenes depicted on his hometown walls, bringing to life the stories they have to tell.

This story, Clear Cut, was inspired by Mural #1 Steam Donkey At Work, created by Frank Lewis and Nancy Lagana in 1982. It can be viewed off Willow Street in Waterwheel Square on the Coast Capital Credit Union wall or online at MuralTown.ca.

Follow the adventures of Harry Sanderson, a retired log truck driver, who enters the scenes depicted on his hometown walls, bringing to life the stories they have to tell.

This story, Just For Kiks, was inspired by Mural #4, The Hong Hing’s General Store, created by Paul Marcano in 1982. It can be viewed on Esplanade Drive, near the BC Ferry Terminal, or online at MuralTown.ca

Bertrand Smith’s father thinks he’s making the world a better place by developing a breed of super intelligent canines. But when a global arms dealer ‘dognaps’ the experimental litter Bertrand, Ariel Krieger, and their four-legged friends Einstein and Genie find themselves drawn into a dangerous game, matching wits with the cunning corporate villain Hindquist. Einstein Dog was recommended for the Chocolate Lily award of the BC Elementary School Teachers’ Association.

Melvin Sommers dips his toe into the Pacific Ocean at Mile Zero on the Trans Canada Highway in Victoria, BC, and sets off on a long-planned trip to the East Coast. But he soon finds himself fully submerged in the bizarre flight of Angela Fantini, a young woman who claims to be on the run from unkown agents of the ‘Lizard Man.’ Is she enmeshed in a deluded thriller; or is she truly being tracked by secret-service bloodhounds? Either way, Melvin can’t abandon the ‘daughter’ he’s bonded to by an instant—and unappreciated —gravity of fatherly love.

Is there a form of gravity that pulls us up, into the sky; or are we always being drawn down, down into our fated oblivion? Do the gravities of love and compassion overcome our doubts about the one, and fear of the other alternative. The Feel of Gravity coalesces around those questions with short stories that provoke laughter, wonder, anger, and despair at the unanswerable conundrums raised by human consciousness. It will be a connecting thread of stories, all suggesting the centre of gravity is within, that it’s the heart and soul of who we are.

The Nicomekl River flows right by Shelly’s house. It goes round the bend, under two bridges, then out of sight, burbling on its way… Sometimes they see bubbles and ripples in the water, and the sleek shadows of fidh, making their way upstream…