wordfest: part deux

spent the entire afternoon holed up in a quiet corner of the Palliser Hotel's lounge, eating too much chocolate and interviewing some very interesting people: Jane Urquhart (A Map of Glass), Michael Crummey (The Wreckage) and Giles Blunt (Blackfly Season).

Jane Urquhart is thoughtful and witty and wants you to know that she is not the Janey Urquhart writing not-very-good erotica on the net. A Map of Glass is two parallel stories, one set in contemporary Toronto and Prince Edward County, the other in the 19th century on the northern shores of Lake Ontario.

Michael Crummey reaped a lot of critical acclaim in 2001 with the brooding novel, River Thieves. The Wreckage is pretty dark yet, while he was writing it, Crummey thought of it as his "funny book". That kind of contradiction is typical of this self-proclaimed "guy" who writes poetry.

The Palliser has a buffet to die for and, before my first interview, I had piled high a plate of desserts to share with the authors. Unfortunately that also meant that, by the time of my interview with Giles Blunt, I was crashing after the sugar high. It didn't last long though because Blunt is a most interesting man.

Blackfly Season is the third in the Det. John Cardinal series and has been called crime writing at its best. Blunt has written for Law and Order and we talked of forensic TV, living in New York and the art of writing crime.