Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me curate and manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog.
The blog name refers to the mythical pact between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the epic narrative, the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House, now part of Reading Is Fundamental, and still miraculously in print.
Posts on this site reflect personal opinion and commentary protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Guest Post: Adi Rule on Ghost Chickens: Omelet from the Other Side
Florence Fortescue is an aspiring journalist. She’s also ten years old, that marvellous age of awareness when a kid lands at last in the double digits and the world is opening up but there are those pesky adults trying to hold you back in your bid to make a trail, strike a note, make a mark all your own. She’s also wonderfully bossy, with a dizzying faith in her own competence combined with solid reliance on plain old good luck.
Florence’s parents have insisted on moving her to the country and her best friend has been left behind and if that isn’t bad enough, there are ghosts.
Adi Rule is a VCFA graduate from the program where I taught for sixteen years and this is her new middle grade we’re talking about, Ghosts Chickens: Omelet From the Other Side. It’s peopled with eccentrics of all ages and species. Songwriter Dad collects glass owls. Mom designs submarines. The ghost chickens appear after Florence eats a weirdly glowing green egg.
But I get ahead of myself. Back up a minute. The book starts here:
WARNING
If you ever find a mysterious, glowing egg
beneath the rotten floorboards
of an abandoned chicken coop
in the dead of night,
do not touch it.
I asked Adi to write about an element of this joyfully weird little book that helped bring the story to life for her.
Guest Post: Jenn Bailey on Writing Her Henry Series
Ever since my Book Uncle and Me turned into the Book Uncle trilogy, I’ve been paying extra attention to books that start out by standing alone and then take off on their own paths. Some characters seem to demand that their writers turn their lives, adventures, families, and communities into multiple books.
VCFA graduate Jenn Bailey’s wonderfully whimsical character Henry first caught my attention with A Friend for Henry. Henry is a wistful little character, a kid who notices stuff, who’s capable of gleaning insights from the classroom goldfish—a kid with an inner life of consequence. So I was thrilled to see Henry sequels appear: Henry, Like Always, Henry and the Something New, and Henry’s Picture-Perfect Day, with still more to come. Henry, I hasten to add, did not disappoint. Each book enriches and expands on its quirky young character and his lovingly drawn community.