The Language of Secrets is due to be published in the UK very soon, and I thought I'd share the amazing job No Exit Press/Oldcastle Books does with the proofs for this series. Every time I see their brilliant design team at work, I'm taken aback that it's actually the same book that was published here in 2016. I love how the same work can inspire such different approaches. I also felt a little chill as though I was the one under INSET surveillance. That's how you know it's great work.
Secrets as a book is very much a tribute to my undergrad years when I was more focused on reading and writing poetry--the ability of poetry to communicate our fears and desires is one of the underlying themes of the book. Much of the poetry in Secrets, I discovered in the stacks of the University of Toronto's Robarts Library, sitting cross-legged on the floor, inhaling clouds of dust as I discovered names like Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, and Nazik al-Malaika for the first time. There's also a little nod to past history when I was an occasional contributor to my university's newspaper and contributed poems like 'Haifa Dream', and a passionate but uninformed op-ed on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Perhaps the thing that is dearest to me in the book is a scene where Esa is having a personal epiphany about his identity as a Muslim detective in and of the West. He thinks of this line: These Lebanese children are wreaths on bits of firebomb debris. This is the second line of a poem I wrote for a creative writing class in undergrad called 'Sestina of Lebanon'. We were asked to experiment with the form, which I got completely wrong, but the poem remains one of my favourites, opening with this pair of lines: Crimson coffee is the morning cup These Lebanese children are wreaths on bits of firebomb debris. Politics, poetry and secrets. These are the keys to this book. Gnu Books was undoubtedly the favourite book store of my teen years. I used to browse here all the time with my siblings, back when my sister and I collected X-Men comics, and my brothers a whole list of titles that included Alpha Flight and the Fantastic Four. My sister and I used to drive all around the greater Toronto area -- well, truthfully, she did the driving, and I did the scouting in those pre-Internet, pre-smart phone days -- in search of used bookstores where we could snatch up our favourite Harlequin authors, and where I also assembled an impressive collection of truly beat up Martha Grimes' paperbacks. The covers didn't matter, all that mattered was that I read and re-read those mysteries as desperately needing to know the identity of the murderer in question as the previous readers must have done. I'd also find Doctor Who novels, Star Trek novels, and a wide spectrum of fantasy on these quests. We'd check out old stores in Cobourg, Port Hope, Ajax, Whitby, Oshawa, Pickering, Scarborough (which had a treasure trove of used books), and less frequently the west end. Whenever we took a trip anywhere, the first thing we'd do is check the phone book for a used bookstore. Those outings were filled with episodes of the two of us getting lost, shouting directions at each other, taking buses to places we'd never been, sharing our money at Dairy Queens across the GTA, but always keeping the lion's share reserved for the books we wanted to buy. One of the nicest things about books for me is how closely I associate them with the best times I've ever had with my siblings. We traded books, talked books, copied books, learned to write our home-theatre plays and adventures from reading them--engaged, had we but known it, in some early iterations of fan fiction. When we moved into our our own homes down the years, we traded our X-Men and Star Trek novel collections back and forth, although somehow my sister has ended up with both, which reminds me that negotiations need to be re-opened again. Even after we all moved away, if we ever ended up in Ajax, we'd drop in on Gnu Books for old times' sake, and to snag another paperback we never knew we wanted. It's possible we spent more time at that 190 Harwood South location than we did anywhere else except school. Didn't hurt that the local arcade was in the same plaza. Kid brothers could be offloaded there without protest and met up with again in time to go home. Now the Ajax location has closed, but I'm glad to see Gnu Books is still thriving in Oshawa, where my Dad practiced medicine for thirty years. I hope that somewhere in their hearts they know how many hours of endless reading pleasure they gave to kids like us. And I'd be more thrilled than I can express if any of my books turn up on their shelves one day. Here's to you, Gnu Books.
I'm a week away from third anniversary of my debut novel's publication. By now, it's started to feel very real--as if Esa and Rachel are old and dear companions, along with the crew of friends and strangers who are drawn to them individually, as well as to the partnership they've formed. It's nice to know I can settle back into their lives, as if no time has been lost between meetings. But it's also nice to know that there are still storytelling possibilities that take me in new and unexpected directions. Working on the fifth book in the series, I'm thinking constantly of the first--which is not The Unquiet Dead, but a simpler story I told of the murder investigation where Esa and Rachel first work to solve a case together. Well, simpler in some ways but not in others. I've begun to think of that first book--Summer's Lease--and this fifth one as a pair of companion novels. Everything about them feels similar...the season, the atmosphere, the idea that something small and dark can lurk within our hearts unknown to us, until the darkness takes the shape of action and regret. I've been trying to name the themes of this fifth book to myself, and I think this might be it: how we make peace with the choices that we've made.
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