Frances Peck
Hi, and thanks for visiting my website. You may know me as a Vancouver-based editor, ghostwriter, and instructor. This website is about me as a creative writer.
My first novel, The Broken Places, came out in April 2022. To my delight (and relief), the book was well received. Readers and reviewers praised it, book clubs enjoyed it, the Globe and Mail named it a best book of 2022, and it was a finalist for the 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize.
My second novel, Uncontrolled Flight, hit the shelves September 1, 2023. Readers are calling it another literary page-turner, reviewers are enthusiastic, and 49th Shelf named it a best book of 2023. I hope that if you pick up a copy, the story will grab you too.
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About
I’ve always been a writer. I was nine when I got my first typewriter. A red-and-white model designed for kids, it was cheap and lightweight, mostly a toy. But it made my stories and poems look official. They looked like writing.
When the realities (and bills) of adulthood set in, I gave up my own stories and went to work on other people’s instead. As an editor, ghostwriter, and instructor, I helped thousands of writers, subject-matter experts, and students produce better material. I wrote a little under my own name, co-authoring the HyperGrammar website and writing Peck’s English Pointers, but mostly I stayed behind the scenes.
Much as I enjoyed helping other people with their words, my own were clamouring to get out. After a decades-long hiatus, I tried writing fiction again to see what would happen. Like that, time folded back on itself, and I was caught in the magic of making things up.
Now I have two novels, The Broken Places and Uncontrolled Flight, that are all mine: my characters, my ideas, my name on the cover. Going public still feels scary; it’s a lot more comfortable to stay in the background. But sometimes you need to do what scares you—to rush straight at it to feel alive. That’s one of the things my fiction is about.
Books
Uncontrolled Flight
A pilot crashes and dies while fighting wildfires in the BC Interior, leaving behind a traumatized colleague, a grieving widow, and an accident investigator with questionable motivations. In this “taut tale,” “at turns tense, sexy, and heartbreaking,” tragedy and mystery blend to produce a literary page-turner that is “totally impossible to put down.”
The Broken Places
A devastating earthquake tests the inner fault lines and strained relationships of a group of wildly different Vancouverites thrown together by the disaster. This “beautifully layered and compelling” novel with “nuanced, stunning characters” asks: when things fall apart, who will you become?
Scrapbook
New Brunswick book tour
Uncontrolled Flight lands in New Brunswick in May! I’m delighted to announce a tour through Moncton, Fredericton, and Oromocto.
Show, don’t tell: workshop
On Saturday, March 23, 1:00-2:30pm, I’m giving a workshop on “show, don’t tell,” one of the most common things writers are, ahem, told to do.
The fusion of fact and fiction
On March 13, 7:00–8:00pm, acclaimed author Tara McGuire and I will be at North Vancouver’s Lynn Valley Library to talk about the fusion of fact and fiction in our books.
Standouts of 2023
What a treat this week to learn that not one but both of my novels are on Consumed by Ink’s list of standout reads for 2023!
Uncontrolled Flight a best book of 2023 (fiction)
There’s no bookshelf I’d rather be on than 49th Shelf. Dedicated to helping readers discover Canadian books, this platform just released its 2023 Books of the Year (Fiction) list, and Uncontrolled Flight is on it!
North Shore Authors Collection + book fair
Uncontrolled Flight deals with universal themes (loss, love, grief, passion) but in its details it’s local. With luck, more local readers will discover the novel now that it’s part of the 2023–24 North Shore Authors Collection.
Contact
To drop me a line, or to invite me to your book club, writing group, or other event, email [email protected] or use the contact form. Or connect with me on Twitter (@FrancesLPeck) or Instagram (@franceslpeck).
For media and festival inquiries, please contact Carolina Ortiz: [email protected].
For information on rights, please contact CookeMcDermid: [email protected].