Recipe for Hate in Quill and Quire: “suspenseful page-turner”!

Quill and Quire has published, online and elsewhere, their review of Recipe For Hate.  Here’s what they have to say:

  • “Kinsella skilfully blends convincing depictions of both the punk scene and the racist underground…”
  • “The novel is a suspenseful page-turner that also gives considerable food for thought, anchored in realistically drawn characters and an eye for significant detail.”
  • “…its significance to contemporary life and social schisms is powerful and impossible to ignore.”
  • “…Kinsella captures the political underpinnings of the [punk] movement – a surprising reminder of hope in these dark days.”

You can get your copy of Recipe For Hate  here and here. Meanwhile, the book tour hits Montréal next month!


#MeToo, #cdnpoli and #questions – UPDATED TWICE

Timing is everything, in comedy and in politics.

Late on a Friday – just as Maclean’s was breaking a huge story about the Harper Conservatives knowing that they had a candidate accused of sexual assault, and let him run for them anyway – the government let slip that the Deputy Director of Operations in the Prime Minister’s Office was no longer employed there.

Rule of thumb: when (a) a government, any government, quietly releases something (b) on a Friday (c) in the evening, it is usually meaningful.

This Gagné fellow was pretty senior.  In any PMO, only the Chief of Staff, the Principal Secretary, the Director of Comms and the Director of Operations are more senior.  An Ops director will generally have more power than any ministerial Chief of Staff, or most members of cabinet.

Some of what there is to know about Monsieur Gagné, and his alleged behaviour, is starting to trickle out – as one brave woman is suggesting, here.

Many questions remain.  There’s no question, however, that #MeToo isn’t winding up on Parliament Hill.

As Friday’s late-breaking stories suggest, it’s just getting started.

UPDATE: Right after the above post went up, some anonymous person(s) started to email the pleadings in my divorce to Ottawa reporters.  Now, why do you think that is happening?  And which political team do you think might be doing it, eh?

Ottawa sure is a nice town.

UPDATE TWO: Oh look: now they have updated my Wikipedia page to say I abused and neglected my children. A Teksavvy customer in Ottawa did it. From a friend: “To reiterate, the edit came from a computer on a DSL network associated with TekSavvy customer assigned address 23-233-60-119.cpe.pppoe.ca at 7:01pm EST Saturday February 3 2018 in the World Exchange Plaza, likely at one of the lobby firms there.”


Apropos of nothing, I bring you iPolitics, Martin Patriquin’s platform of choice

I’m sure it’s all a great big coincidence.

I am told that Public Accounts show the government annually shovelled thousands at iPolitics for most of the past decade – more, even, than all of Postmedia got. Neither The Tyee nor Blacklock’s nor The Hill Times (where, coincidentally, I’m a long-time columnist, and where, coincidentally, the “affidavits” column first appeared) receive buckets of government boodle.

Most of iPolitics’s coverage of the sexual misconduct story has been CP wire copy.

As they say: just saying’.


New Dark Ages, now

I just returned from a major book fair at the Metro Convention Centre – and, whilst I was there signing copies of Recipe For Hate (Humblebrag Alert: we ran out of copies), I saw this for the first time, in Dundurn’s 2018 catalogue:

What’s it about? Well, it’s about to get me in a lot of trouble, I reckon. It’s the most controversial book I’ve ever written, I’d say. (And it’s the second instalment in the X Gang trilogy.)  Recipe For Hate has been well-received – as seen here and here and here – and I’m hoping New Dark Ageswill be, too.

Pumped.  Now, back to writing the final book in the series.


Revealed!

My new best friend.

Found this cool little guy in bathroom. Anyone know what he is? Will he make a good pet?