From the category archives:

Notes & Queries

Why fiction?

What’s the point of fiction? Why make things up? Throughout history, some people (and Plato was certainly one of them) have distrusted fiction. Periodically, and often when in the grip of a repressive government or ideology, a whole culture seems to go through a phase of feeling that way. If it didn’t really happen, the [...]

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Book Club

It was because of a woman I met while accompanying some guests on a sailboat tour that I became anxious about the local book club visit I’d agreed to. I started to think how the noun club has two meanings. A group, yes… but also a weapon. I’ll call her Jen: fiftyish, fit, designer spectacles, retired. [...]

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“It’s because of your book that I’m going in for surgery next week.”

I’m sitting in the shade of a Garry oak tree with a group of other parental units, as our children call us these days. Clare, the grandmother of one of my son’s friends, (one of those fresh-faced grandmothers who look five years younger than I do), looks up from her book and turns to me. [...]

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The Past Is a Foreign Country (but sometimes you get a visitor’s pass).

The Past Is a Foreign Country (but sometimes you get a visitor’s pass). First, an email via this website: I would like to send some material to Kathy Page. This material belongs to her and is something she would like to receive… The writer turns out to be a penfriend with whom I last communicated [...]

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Flight

Readers often ask about imagery: is it consciously or unconsciously created – and the answer is both. For example, the idea of flight, of leaving the ground and swimming in the air is a recurring one in The Find, and in writing the novel I was aware of it, but I was certainly not aware [...]

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Find Out

The Find is out! release (v.) c.1300, “to withdraw, revoke,” also “to liberate” (c.1300), from O.Fr. relaisser “to relinquish, quit, let go, leave behind,” variant of relacher “release, relax,” from L. relaxare (see relax). Meaning “relinquish, surrender” is recorded from late 14c. Of press reports, attested from 1904; of motion pictures, from 1912; of music [...]

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FAQ

The following FAQ are archived from an older version of this site. Feel free to use CONTACT (left menu) if you have a question about writing or about Kathy Page’s books. Q. Is Simon Austen based on a real person? I have met several people who were in some ways like him. But, like most [...]

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Living (Loving) Local

When you live in a vast country – and on a small island which you only leave once in a while – it is hard to tell whether or not your book has reached the bookstores. All I know is that The Find is in my nearest city, Victoria, turned outwards on the shelf, with [...]

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Third Person or First?

Extract from a notebook entry made during the writing of The Find Choices, choices: the writer’s life is full of them. Current example: do I stick with the third person, limited omniscient point of view which should ideally offer me some flexibility in telling the story, or, since I don’t seem to be actually using [...]

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Research, for Heaven’s Sake!

Research for my novel The Find included visits to clinics, hospitals, museums, and paleontological sites. I love research, but sometimes I hate it too. Here’s an extract from a notebook I kept during one of my trips to the Royal Tyrell Museum. Suspended forty thousand feet above the Rockies I absolutely knew that I would [...]

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