International Festival of Authors, Toronto

Turner Park Public Library, Hamilton

July continued to be busy with promotions for The Lost Souls of Angelkov.

Candace Fertile reviewed the novel in The Globe and Mail, and during my publicity tour in Winnipeg, Carolin Vesely wrote an article  for the Winnipeg Free Press. Justine Routhier interviewed me on her program “The Book Club” heard on CJOB 68 on Sunday, July 22, and I made an appearance on Shaw TV, hosted by Joanne Kelly. I was interviewed by Bruce Symaka for Uptown Arts and Entertainment Weekly for his article “Strange and Familiar”, which appeared August 2, and by Michael Elves of UMFM Radio and Ron Robinson of CKUW Radio.

August 2012

Back in Toronto, Justine Lewkowicz of Newstalk 1010 caught up with me for Justine’s Bookends Review. You can listen to a podcast of the interview about The Lost Souls of Angelkov, which aired in the Niagara region on August 3 and in Toronto August 5. Or you can read Justine’s review of the book.

More news out of my former Winnipeg home: I was honoured to have McNally Robinson choose me as their Author of the Month. As well, my 2003 historical novel, The Linnet Bird, was chosen for inclusion in the long list of twelve Manitoba authored books for the Manitoba Reads 2012 Battle of the Books competition.

I answered questions for Open Book Toronto this month. It’s a great site with lots of interesting information whether you’re a writer or a reader. Here’s what they say about themselves: [Open Book] Toronto celebrates and profiles Toronto’s nonstop literary scene, with a special focus on the books, authors and events coming out with Ontario’s independent, Canadian-owned publishers. Open Book is committed to showcasing the outstanding range and quality of contemporary Canadian writing and invites Torontonians to connect with their very own vibrant and cutting-edge book world. Read On Writing, with Linda Holeman.

49th Shelf is an on-line book community dedicated to Canadian books. In Off the Page, a blog on Canadian reading, writing, and everything in between, you can read my article Beyond Borders: Linda Holeman on Travel and Writing.

As well, a great review from Jennifer Ryan in the Winnipeg Free Press.

I went to Central America to meet my daughter Brenna in Belize, and we headed north to Orange Walk district and our final destination, Lamanai Outpost Lodge. Lamanai is reachable only by driving out of Belize City for over an hour along rough narrow roads, and then another hour by boat up New River, with its exotic bird life, into New River Lagoon. From home base in our thatched hut at the lodge, with resident geckos and other reptilian wildlife living in the roof – with an occasional drop onto our beds in the middle of the night – we experienced everything from ingesting Mayan jungle medicine to catching a (small) crocodile on a night journey into the lagoon by air boat to cooking tamales over an open fire in the tiny isolated village of Indian Church. But our quest was to explore the Mayan ruins of Lamanai, deep in the thick Belizian jungle. We climbed and trekked through the jungle in haunting stillness: nobody throughout the kilometres of ruins but the two of us and our guide Reynaldo. From high atop   the temples we shouted out lines of our favourite poems to hear them echo back from the strategically built structures which allowed Mayan rulers to have their voices amplified over the crowd below.  Our shouts disturbed a troop of howler monkeys slumbering in the treetops, and they joined in, creating a reverberating cacophony unlike anything I’ve ever heard. The howler, reported to be the loudest animal on earth, has a roar that can be heard for five kilometres.  John Lloyd Stephens, discovering Belize (as the former British Honduras) in the mid-nineteenth century, described the howler monkeys as “grave and solemn, as if officiating as the guardians of consecrated ground.” Such is the loudness and strength of this humble-looking monkey’s voice that it was digitally enhanced to create the dinosaur roars in the Jurassic Park films. And that’s precisely what our time in the Belize jungle felt like – as though we’d stepped back in time, perhaps not as far as prehistoric, but certainly eons away from what passes for our real-time life.

After Lamanai we weren’t ready to leave Belize, and so took a water voyage to the glorious northern island of Ambergris Caye with its sand roads and wonderful reef. After a brief respite, it was on to our next stop for more Mayan discoveries: Guatemala.

We travelled to tiny Flores, built on an island, and from there ventured through the Petén Basin in northern Guatemala into the Tikal ruins, which lie among tropical rainforests. The 10-12 km hike through these ruins was carried out amid the 40C, 85% humidity temperatures with its variety of biting ants and creepy-crawlies. We managed to climb all of the six Temples, apart from Temple I, closed due to deaths from tumbling down the treacherous steps! We of course obeyed the rules on that one…

At the top of Temple IV a movie buff taking in the view informed us that the very vista we looked out on – the eerie tops of ruined temples rising above the treetops – was filmed as the rebel base of the Massassi Outpost on the fourth Moon of Yavin in Star Wars. You never know what unexpected information you’ll learn on these expeditions…

And then it was out of the rainforest and down south of Guatemala City to other-worldly, crumbling, colonial Antigua, where Brenna is living and studying Spanish. The history of these places makes my writers’ soul come alive; in the stillness of dark nights, with only hushed footsteps on the ancient cobbled streets of that tiny town, surrounded by its three volcanoes, I felt the vibration of past lives, and the stories started…

While for now Central America will have to be placed in the queue – I’m working on a story set in another, distant country – I have little doubt that these amazing images will force their way into my thoughts again and again, and the voices that demand to be heard will only be quieted for so long.

France likes The Saffron Gate. As well as being purchased by the trade publisher Plon and its book club, Editions France Loisirs, who have already published the book as La Perle du Sud, it has also sold to Grand Livre du Mois.