Some authors, when starting a novel, imagine a place first. Others, a character starts taking shape in their head. I start with a hook, a situation, a 'what if.'

Facebook, from what I can tell, is the virtual equivalent of dropping into the homes of several million people, all of whom say at the same time: 'Hey! Let's set up the slide projector!'

I was born in Darien, Connecticut, but in 1959, when I was four, my parents moved to the suburbs of Toronto. Then, in the late 1960s, they bought a cottage in a resort/trailer park in the Kawarthas region of Ontario, and we moved up there. I wrote a book about it in 2000 called 'Last Resort: Coming of Age in Cottage Country.'

You think, if you’re dying a little each day, how does life manage to stretch out so long.

These days, my subjects are murder and mayhem and other terrible things that happen to people – things that are even worse than cutting yourself shaving. And these are not the sorts of things you feel the need to experience before you write about them.

When you leave the spoons to dry like this without turning them over, the water ends up leaving a mark,” he’d say to my mother, holding up one of the offensive items of cutlery.

She cried herself to sleep, and I held her until she stopped. I rolled over and pushed my face into the pillow. I figured if I could muffle my own crying, I would not wake her.

My life isn’t much different than when I worked full time as a journalist.

It occurred to me that with all of today’s technologies, there were now more ways than ever to know with abosolute certainty that no one wanted to get in touch with me.

Technology allowed us to share our photos with more people now than ever before, but where would these captured moments in time be in twenty years? On some outdated piece of hardware at the bottom of a landfill site? What happened to memories you couldn’t hold between your thumb and forefinger?