Why I Write:

Because I can’t paint or compose. But I can speak and because also I like having words nicely in a row.
Like ducks. I feel that speaking is to writing what sketching is to oil painting, with books being something
like large murals, symphonies or maybe even grand operas.  Many years ago at a meeting of the national  
council of the Writers’ Union of Canada I heard Margaret Atwood say that it was far easier to write a bad
poem than a bad novel.  I know, because I have written both. I’ve also learned from it: when  fourteen years
old, I started to write a novel about a Czech missionary in Greenland during the sixteen hundreds. Never
having visited Greenland or lived during the 17th Century and at the time being a lukewarm Christian at
best, the terrible results were fairly predictable.  So  to the young writer just starting I would say  live a bit and
then wrap your experiences with layers of imagination as batter -- you’re likely to come up with a fairly tasty
samosa . On the other hand I know how difficult it is for an impatient young writer to accept advice, so that’s
as far as I’ll go.
For several years now  I have been writing one-page observations on life which I call glossas. I have almost
two hundred of them now and will publish a new one on this website each month



























BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Blackboard Odyssey (non-fiction, 1973)
Whatever Happened to Wenceslas? ((fiction 1975)
Melvin the Weather Moose (children’s 1976)
Report on the Death of Rosenkavalier (fiction 1977)
The Lister Legacy (fiction 1980)
The Statement (fiction 1982)
The Golden Revolution (non-fiction, 1989)
The Exotic Canadians (fiction, 1990)
I Luff You BC, (non-fiction, 2001)
Grungia (fiction 2012)
Vladimir Krajina - World War II Hero and Ecology Pioneer, (non- fiction 2012)
Thirteen (non-fiction, 2014)
Up to My Ears in America (non-fiction, 2014)

In Czech:

Listerovo dědictví (fiction 1980)
Náhle českým velvyslancem (fiction, 1997)
Po uši v postkomunismu (non-fiction, 2000)
Po uši v protektorátu (non-fiction, 2001)
Po uši v Americe (non-fiction 2003)
Hledání štěstí u cizáků (non-fiction, 2005)
Miluji Tě, Britská Kolumbie (non-fiction 2009)