"Edson’s vivid portrayal of the urban area, as well as the working class and underclass, creates a vision of Saint John that highlights the discrepancy between the pre-modern idyllic notion of life in Atlantic Canada and the more complicated reality of the region."


-The New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia

Monday, May 23, 2022

RIVERBEND

Old houses talk. 

I've begun a new novel and am about 50 pages in. Part haunted house, part dark humour, part I don't know what. All I know is that the story works so far; the characters are alive and I'll let them take me wherever they go. The story takes place in the summer of 1975, in a huge Tudor-style house on Rothesay Road that looks onto the Kennebecasis River. A writer from Toronto, along with his wife and daughter, have rented the house for the year and right away they realize something isn't quite right. It should be a fun novel.


Characters so far include novelist Thomas Cooper, his wife Beth, and their daughter Lily. They have a dog, a black lab named Burt. There is also Hans Mueller, who owns the house. 
 

As with every first draft, I've no plan for a timetable or length of the manuscript, but if I'm guessing, I'm hoping for a completed first draft sometime either late 2022 or early 2023, at roughly 300-350 pages.

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