James McCann recently spoke at Vancouver's Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival and I was there to catch him on video (and in turn was caught on film by kc: Summer Dream Redux)!

James speaks on the techniques he uses to create his stories drawing from his past and real world items to create new characters and landscapes. Most fascinating for me is how he "riffs" off occurrences in his daily life. Instead of getting pissed off that his cover artist used a $30,000 guitar his main character couldn't think of owning he was inspired to find a way of including it in the story.

If you have trouble viewing the video here, it's also available at http://blip.tv/file/1172683

James' SiWC Biography: http://www.siwc.ca/speaker/2008/james-mccann

James McCann was interviewed in The SiWC Soapbox - Episode 2