Maybe I'll write a book and other threats I keep making...

I keep threatening to write a book. The skeleton of it exists, in years of essays and drawings and musings I’ve shared on my blog(s), in co-edited books, through thousands of tweets, and in my growing collection of personal journals criss-crossed with fountain pen scribbles.

But I also know that in order to actually write a book I need a little public accountability, because there will always be some garlic shoots to say hello to or some birds to watch and dogs to walk or myriad other things that will spirit away my attention.

Somehow I’ve made it this far in my career without writing a book. I have written quite a few articles, blog posts, chapters, policy briefs, grant applications, a 109,169 word thesis, and other wordy things, but the book just keeps slipping out of my hands like a wily prairie fish heading downstream.

A few weeks ago, however, I woke up and finally knew what my book will be. And this delights me, because after fifteen years of working in and moving from Edmonton to Aberdeen to Paulatuuq to Ottawa to New Haven to Errington to Nanoose Bay, I finally know what story I want to tell. And I am excited to bring these stories together across the spine of that journey.

I am not ready to fully give away what the book will be about, but it will have fish. And trains. And water and jokes and drawings and memories of growing up in the prairies and gratitude for living here on the west coast with my family. It will be about not giving up, about ghosts and dreams, my ancestors, and my deep abiding love for slow, quiet, small things (like freshwater fish) that are worthy of time, care, and attention.

(Deep inhale).

(Deep exhale).

Ok, so here goes nothing. <3