Jake Macdonald’s latest may show teeth

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/04/2012 (5205 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fans of Winnipeg writer Jake Macdonald (Grizzlyville, The Houseboat Chronicles, Juliana and the Medicine Fish) know that wild places and fish often play key roles in his writing.

So news that he’s nearing completion of a new novel in a remote Mexican fishing village will come as a tempting enticement.

Macdonald writes from a tiny Baja village of encountering a group of local fishermen: “They had gone out fishing at five in the morning and caught 12 mako sharks and they were cutting them up to sell the meat. One of the sharks was still snapping its jaws even though its head was cut off. A big sea lion swam up and was waiting for them to finish so it could eat the leftovers.”

Readers who like their books outdoorsy will want to see how that influences the new novel.

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A new Sunday show on CJOB is putting the written word on the air with a series of author interviews and panel discussions.

The Book Club debuted April 14 with Dave Williamson discussing his comic novel Dating and returns tomorrow with New York-based Manitoban Susie Moloney and her latest horror hit The Thirteen.

Show producer Justine Routhier hopes to present a variety of genres, opinions from a roster of readers and a mix of local, national and international authors every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 11 am.

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With the film version of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games continuing to devour the box office, dark themes are undoubtedly hot in teen fiction. The Green-Eyed Queen of Suicide City, by Kevin Marc Fournier, continues the fascination with the dark side.

In the novel, from Winnipeg’s Great Plains Publications, a teenager hangs herself on the night before Halloween, leading her sister to follow her into a dark fantasy afterlife.

The novel is described as “a tender, disgusting and extraordinary story of loneliness and confusion, loyalty, love, friendship and death. But also life.”

The novel launches April 24 at 8 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

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A growing number of Manitoba teens are earning an additional distinction along with their high school diplomas. They’re becoming published authors.

Miles Macdonell, Garden City and Fort Richmond high schools publish book-form collections of student stories, poetry and art, with the Fort Richmond collection launching April 26 and Garden City on May 1, both at 8 p.m. at the Prairie Ink restaurant.

St. John’s Ravenscourt is taking a different tack, with an anthology of student-written historical fiction. The stories in The Beast: Stories of Colonization, Exploration and Determination were written by students in Matt Henderson’s Grade 11 Canadian history class. The collection is available at McNally Robinson and as an e-book from Blurb.com

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