The Story

With the contribution of eight hundred cows, the tiny village of Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada has not only produced the world’s largest block of cheese, it has also nurtured the epic poet who can rapturously sing its praises. Now, if only Queen Victoria can be persuaded to take a hearty bite and add her majestic voice to the poet’s ecstatic hymns of praise, the Mammoth Cheese will become the edible jewel in the crown of the globe-girdling British Empire. 

The Making of The Mammoth Cheese

This journal records the author’s reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning The Mammoth Cheese

During the writing of the novel, the author kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the twenty-eighth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download.