In my experience, the best thing about being a creative person is exactly that: experience. For a writer, there’s no such thing as a bad outcome, a wasted day, a pointless excursion. Everything, absolutely everything, is interesting—and usable. And in many cases, the worse the experience, the more useful it is, artistically. Spurred by that philosophy, I have, in my time, ventured up on stage at a professional comedy club in Toronto, taught English in Czechoslovakia shortly after the “Velvet Revolution”, celebrated my fortieth birthday on a remote South Pacific island, in a desolate Chinese restaurant with an unhappy Australian remittance man , endured innumerable disastrous blind-dates in a number of countries, and undergone some spectacularly catastrophic opening nights in the theatre—all under the heading of “research.”

In both my creative and personal life, I have always been fascinated with “what if?” What if a woman could seize the privileges normally reserved for men, simply by commandeering a packet of men’s-only hair colouring? What if animals, sitting on the sidelines of humanity, were able to size us up the same way we evaluate them? What if, empirical evidence to the contrary, it was possible to reverse one’s fortunes, turn over a new leaf, or relive the past? In short, what if tomorrow unfolded in a way not necessarily like today, or yesterday?

These days, I live mostly in Toronto but remain hopelessly in love with rural life. I am fascinated by upcoming trends in our society, but continue to embrace Canada’s historical past. I treasure the company of dogs, horses and even reptiles, but currently content myself with one intense, demanding, personal and idiosyncratic cat. I like nothing better than philosophizing about a wide range of male-female relationships, but feel myself fortunate to have found one singular, even heroic, man willing to put up with me.