I am delighted to share some good news: my nephew, acclaimed journalist Stephen Maher of Postmedia, has added a new honour to his already long list. Please follow the link below. It is reassuring to see someone very, very deserving get this opportunity. Yes, he’s family, but no less deserving for that accident of birth. Steve is more than ready to take on a year at Harvard University and to broaden his focus to the entire English-speaking world.

http://canadiannieman.blogspot.ca/2015/05/winner-named-for-twenty-third-martin.html?m=1

Co-author Jesse Francis informs me that in today’s Guardian PEI Premier Wade MacLauchlan singles out our book on the Mi’kmaq for praise. How cool is that?

History is about evidence; novels are about life. Historical fiction aims to blend the two.

… or nearly so. One of the first projects Senior Historian Terry Maclean asked me to undertake when I arrived as a new historian at the Fortress of Louisbourg in 1977 was to conduct research into the three religious communities who served in the 18th-century town. Hard to believe that was almost forty years ago. I found religion to be a fascinating topic; it led in so many different directions. There were conflicts within the religious communities themselves—the Récollets, the Brothers of Charity and the Congregation of Notre-Dame; difficulties with the royal officials with whom they had to deal and with some parishioners; and there was morality of the time to explore. Ultimately what I produced on the topic became a book published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, originally entitled Religion in Life at Louisbourg, 1713-1758.

So how surprised was I when a few months ago I was asked to participate in a conference in Quebec City and to offer a paper on the Récollets. I did not say yes right away. I had to make sure my third novel was in good shape and the new book on Grand Pré was out. I figured I would have a bit of time in early May to write the paper, and so I then said yes. I’m glad I did. I do have the time right now and it’s been fun these past few days revisiting aspects of a topic I thought I had finished with a few decades ago. Déjà vu et déjà écrit, mais avec quelques nouvelles réflexions à offrir. Le cooloque porte le titre : Les Récollets en Amérique : Mémoire et traces.

Voici un lien à une nouvelle vidéo sur la Forteresse-de-Louisbourg. If you’ve not ever visited, maybe you want to add it to your list.

https://www.facebook.com/TourismCB/videos/824984920889977/

The past 30 days have been especially busy, a combination of a sprint and a marathon.

Cape Breton University Press has a slot on its Fall 2015 launch schedule set aside for my third Thomas Pichon Novel, tentatively called “Crossings.” Wanting to meet that timeline I sent off the completed manuscript in late February or early March, to see what Mike Hunter and CBUP thought of the story this third time out. I knew there would need to be adjustments because that is how books unfold. In late March I received the first feedback from my fiction editor, Kate Kennedy. I have the greatest respect for Kate’s opinions so when she thinks the story should have less of this and more of that, I take that seriously.

And so I began to go through the story from start to finish, addressing the observations and suggestions Kate put forth. As I said at the start, it was a month-long marathon, but because of the timeline I am aiming to respect, I had to maintain a pace more like a sprint. Every day started the same way, with me at a keyboard, and there I’d be again several times through each day.

Yesterday, a greatly revised — and much improved I think, thanks to Kate’s feedback — went back Mike and Kate. “Crossings” is still on track. If all goes well, there should be a third cover in a few months to join the two below.