news – Page 2 – Poor Farm

May 29, 2021 / 0 Comments

Poor Farm Book Launch June 17th

Atlantic Books Today No. 93 (May 2021) – p. 46

Thanks to Atlantic Books Today for including details of Poor Farm in their latest issue. It is very exciting to see my book up there with other great fiction from around our region.

In other news: we are hoping to have a book launch on June 17th at The Old Triangle in Halifax! The details are yet to be finalized but, fingers crossed, we will have an in-person socially-distanced event on the Thursday night before Father’s day. I will make a donation from any books sold on the night to PLT: Playing and Learning Together – a non-profit Autism after-school support program I am on the board of.

Watch this blog for more details as they become available!

May 8, 2021 / 0 Comments

Irish Times Article

Photo of Ronan O’Driscoll [Credit: https://www.snickerdoodle.ca/]

I got the opportunity to write an article for the Irish Times about the stress of balancing life and work while under lockdown. I also talk a little about how the experience led to the writing of Poor Farm. I hope it will be of interest to readers of this blog. Here is the link to the the Irish Times Article.

March 2, 2021 / 0 Comments

First Copy

Author holding copy of Poor Farm — The first copy of Poor Farm

Look what I just got a hold of! That grinning idiot above is me holding the first proof copy of the novel. There’s a lot of hard work goes into a novel, so you have to savour actually getting your hands on the (almost final) product. This has always been a dream of mine and I can’t believe it is finally coming through. Thanks to Moose House Publications for believing in me and this story.

January 27, 2021 / 0 Comments

Looking For eliza

Katy Jean searches grave markers at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Digby. (Courtesy Halifax Examiner)

Suzanne Rent, a journalist with the Halifax Examiner, has an excellent piece today on one woman’s search for an ancestor who died at a Nova Scotia poor farm. You can read the full article here. I particularly appreciated Katy Jean’s reflection on how horribly Eliza was treated by her own relatives.

January 22, 2021 / 0 Comments

Abandoned

The image above is from a recent CBC news article on one man’s quest to preserve Nova Scotia’s abandoned cemeteries. Steve Skafte, a Bridgetown poet and photographer, has created an online map of the forgotten graveyards that dot the province. I felt the same impulse to record the history around one of these sites when out walking with my son and we stumbled upon the Poor Farm burial ground. This became the opening chapter of my novel, Poor Farm.

January 5, 2021 / 2 Comments

Hello

Poor Farm Cover — Working Cover for Upcoming Novel Poor Farm

Welcome to the Poor Farm blog! I will post updates about the novel here, along with longer background pieces. As outlined on the Welcome page: this novel is about an autistic character in nineteenth century Nova Scotia. Why? There are a lot of books on autism but few that imagine what it was like for people on the spectrum in previous times. That’s one reason. The bigger reason is I wrote it for my autistic son.