It’s official–DarkWinter Press, the brand new publishing arm of the DarkWinter group, which includes DarkWinter Literary Magazine and DarkWinter Designs, is open for business! I couldn’t be any more excited and I give tremendous thanks to everyone involved in its inception. When I started DarkWinter Literary Magazine over a year ago, I never dreamed it would be as successful as it’s become, and I can only hope the same for DarkWinter Press. We’ll be looking for the best in novellas, novel-length manuscripts, short story collections, and poetry collections to publish in both paperback and e-book, so get to work! The website has been revamped and you can see it and read the submission guidelines here!
First, I have very exciting news. After a lot of time spent and a lot of trial and error, I’ve finally published the test book for DarkWinter Press. It’s called What Any Normal Person Would Do, and it’s basically a compilation of some of my early humour posts. I found common themes, divided them into chapters and made the whole thing flow more cohesively. Then I had to figure out Kindle Direct Publishing, which I did with help from friends, watching a lot of YouTube videos, and calling their support line a couple of times. The cover was especially hard to do—I don’t have any of the “pro” versions of Canva, Photoshop, Gimp and so on, so I resorted to Microsoft Publisher and found an awesome walkthrough about how to use the KDP cover template in that program—you can see the result below.
(Note: this is not a children’s book. That’s me as a child with creepy demon Santa, the one who cursed me with a mind that never shuts off). I finally uploaded everything on Thursday, and on Friday I got notification that the paperback and Kindle e-book are now both live and available! So I’m super-excited because now I can launch DarkWinter Press and start to publish other people! So if you want to help me out and order either the paperback or the Kindle e-version, that would be awesome, and a lot easier for you than trying to read through all 489 posts starting from 2014 until now. Here are the links if you’re interested: Amazon.comand Amazon.ca. It’s also available on all the other Amazons.
Over the next few days, I’ll be meeting with my web developer to figure out how to incorporate DarkWinter Press and DarkWinter Lit, and then I’ll start accepting submissions. I can’t wait!!
In other news, this past week I once again had to pull out my McGyvering skills when Ken went to stay with his mom for a couple of nights, leaving me alone in a very large old house with a very nervous young dog. Things would have been all right if we weren’t also babysitting Kate’s cat, my beautiful Ilana, and it put the dog on high alert—or even higher alert than normal. The lock on our bedroom door was painted shut years ago and I kept asking Ken to fix it, but in the meantime, we’d installed one of those sneck hooks that kept the door somewhat secured BUT NOT COMPLETELY. So on Tuesday night, I finished snuggling Ilana then shut her in the back part of the house, and enticed the dog upstairs with cookies. And when he came, I hooked the door:
Atlas: But there are things I need to do downstairs. Me: It’s 11:00 pm. It’s time for sleep. Atlas: I’m going to stand by the door and boof it. Me: Stop sticking your nose in the gap. Get on the bed or no more cookies. Atlas: I AM feeling pretty sleepy. Where are those cookies again?
All was well and good until 5:30 am when I was awakened by Atlas losing his shit, standing on the bed, hackles raised, and barking and snarling at the three inch space between the door and the jamb. I was TERRIFIED. I couldn’t detect any movement in the hallway, or see any moving shadows in the hall light, and after a few minutes, I steeled myself. I grabbed the baseball bat that I keep by the bed and yelled, “Okay boy—get ‘em!” I opened the door and Atlas went charging out, me following close behind with the bat. We searched the whole house and nothing.
Atlas: Maybe it was a bad dream. Or a ghost. Me: You’re staying downstairs.
I finally fell back to sleep with the bat on my pillow, only to be awakened again by someone hammering on the door down the hall. This time, it was the cat, wanting to be fed. I’d had enough, and spent the next three hours reading because there was NO WAY I could get back to sleep after that. On Wednesday afternoon, in preparation for Ken being away again, I examined the lock. Our bedroom has its own bathroom, as well as a balcony that I could use in case I needed to escape—if I could only get the lock working, I could lock me and the dog in, and ghosts/intruders could have a f*cking field day but I’d be safe in my own little panic room. Using only a chisel, a hammer, and copious amounts of WD40, I managed to:
1) Chisel off the paint on the lock. 2) Chisel the edges of the lock. 3) Use the skeleton key to wiggle the lock. 4) Spray WD40 into the lock. 5) Hammer the lock until it finally pops free. 6) Realized that the lock plate is too small. 7) Use the chisel as a screwdriver and unscrew the lock plate. 8) Chisel out a larger hole so that the lock will fit. 9) Lock the door. 10) Yell “Haha!”
That night, after I’d snuggled the cat, Atlas and I retired to the bedroom, me with wine and him with cookies. I locked the door behind us, and we both slept soundly until morning. It’s what any normal person would do.
I love vitamins. I know that sounds weird, but you probably need to know that most of the vitamins I take are gummy vitamins, and it’s like starting your day with candy. Candy that’s GOOD FOR YOU. And yes, I’m a “past-middle-aged” woman (unless I’m going to live to be one hundred and fourteen) and I’m too old to care if you mock me, because they’re delicious. Every morning, I come downstairs and start my day with fruit-flavoured multi-vitamins, orange vitamin C, citrus-y Vitamin D, strawberry-vanilla Biotin, and multi-berry collagen. I take two of each, not because I have to but because I WANT to. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever cared about vitamins—even The Flintstones couldn’t tempt me to chew the grape sawdust that passed for a treat when I was a kid. Of course, I was an extremely picky child—you know how some parents puree vegetables into spaghetti sauce to disguise the taste? I wouldn’t even eat spaghetti sauce. Or pasta. In fact, the bulk of my diet was peanut butter on white bread and plain hamburgers. As an adult, I have a wide palate, and I’ll try, and eat, almost anything. I still draw the line at beets and peas, but everything else is fair game. Yet, like a child, I still need to have my vitamins disguised with copious amounts of sugar and gelatin. The only thing better than gummy vitamins would be if there was some kind of vitamin powder you could put into white wine, then I’d be the healthiest lush on the planet.
But despite my passion for vitamin candy, there IS one thing I hate about vitamins, and that’s shopping for them.
1) It doesn’t matter what time I go, or what store I go to, the vitamin aisle is always crowded by at least half a dozen people, all perusing the selection like they’ve never seen vitamins in their lives and are astounded that they exist. I’ve seen people take less time at art galleries or puppy parties than they do in the vitamin aisle. (Slight tangent—wouldn’t the world be a much better place if we could go to puppy parties once a week? How many puppies would we need? I’m thinking 6 minimum). Anyway, there I am, trying to find my vitamins, surrounded by people who are like f*cking ENTHRALLED by Magnesium. Even though most drug stores are now literally department stores, with electronics and groceries in addition to the actual “pharmacy section”, the vitamin aisle is still the most popular hangout in the place. The other day I went grocery shopping at a virtually deserted drug store, and SIX PEOPLE were in the vitamin aisle, blocking my way to delicious health. Seriously, go look at margarine. That’s where the really big decisions need to be made if my recent experience watching people scrutinize margarine tubs is any indication.
2) There are way more brands and types of vitamins than are necessary. The vitamin aisle at my drug store is over 50 feet long and four shelves high. You’d think it would be alphabetical but it’s not, at least in no way I can discern. Some places group them by brand, some places by purpose, some by colour, some by flavour…
Vitamin Shelf Stocker: Where should I put the Vitamin C?
Vitamin Overlord: Next to the Echinacea.
Vitamin Shelf Stocker: Why? Shouldn’t it go next to the B12…?
Vitamin Overlord: Echinacea and Vitamin C are both immune system boosters, and they both have the letter C in them. Put them on the bottom shelf where no one can find them because the letter C is stupid. Screw your immune system, Brad!
Vitamin Shelf Stocker: Who’s Brad?
Vitamin Overlord (mutters): No one important.
See, and this is why the vitamin aisle is always crowded, because no one can find anything thanks to Brad.
In other news, my new novel The Devil You Know has been released–well, at least I got MY COPIES. It’s the sequel to The Seventh Devil and I’m really happy with it–well, at least with MY WRITING. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon but apparently it’s not actually available until October 15 which doesn’t make any sense, but I’m planning to place a few copies in the vitamin aisle and create a buzz.
I ask this question only because I’ve been getting some very strange ads in my social media lately. I don’t mind the run-of-the-mill exhortations to buy hot tubs/swim spas, funny t-shirts, and retirement planning. I don’t even mean strange like Amazon recommending my own book to me, which happens all the time. No, I mean strange, like “I don’t have a f*cking clue what this thing is and I have no idea why you think I’d even want one!”
The other day, I saw this ad that was so bizarre I didn’t know what to make of it. It was “recommended for me”, and I did a double take:
The headline says “shop our selection of power a…” and the rest is cut off, I assume for decency purposes, and my immediate thought was that it was some kind of bondage gear. I examined it closely, trying to decide how, exactly, one would wear it and for what purpose. I was befuddled. I finally got up enough nerve to click on the description, worried that I’d be in for some pretty explicit content, only to discover that the item in question is, in fact, some kind of complicated tool belt, and I don’t mean that as a euphemism—I mean it’s actually for tools, like if you have a bad back and a lot of heavy hammers, you can use this device to relieve some of the stress on your spine because it distributes weight evenly. And then I was even more confused because why the hell would this be recommended for ME? In what world am I hammering drywall and looking for an ergonomic way to construct a small room? (Although if I WAS going to construct a small room, it would have a door that looked like a bookcase, and then when you pushed the bookcase, there would be this awesome room full of clocks, and it would be hidden so no one could bug me about having more clocks).
But as if this wasn’t bad enough, a couple of days ago, I got this ad in my feed from Canadian Tire, which apparently sells a LOT more than tires, and this was listed as a “Must-Have”…:
It’s called a Banzai Monster Munch Unde…and I’m assuming the rest of that word is “underwear”? because it looks like either the skeeziest pair of undies that one could imagine or it’s the strangest condom I’ve ever seen in my life. And I can understand a lot about this product, like it’s stretchy, it’s roomy, it’s designed for someone who’s fairly well-endowed…but I just don’t get the f*cking GOOGLY EYES!
In other news, we went to Kate’s graduation this week—she graduated with distinction from her Registered Veterinary Technician Program and we’re so incredibly proud of her.
In other, other news, I’ve been working hard on a Mydangblog novel so that I can work through the process of publishing something. If everything goes according to schedule, I’ll be launching DarkWinter Press in July and I’ll be looking for submissions. Keep me in mind!
Last week, I was out and about, having gone to one of the big box bookstores to see about doing a book signing in the fall. It was a strange experience because I hadn’t been in that particular bookstore since before covid, when I’d done a book signing for The Dome. The change was remarkable–there were very few actual books in the store and the vast majority were from ‘big’ corporate publishers, a lot of floor space was taken up by home décor, there was no local author section, and the terminals were all shut so if you wanted to look anything up you had to scan a QR code. I spoke to the manager—the earliest I could book anything was September, which actually suited me, but when she said, “People are just starting to come back—it’s been very slow,” I really wanted to say, “Maybe that’s because there isn’t much to come back FOR, unless you have a fetish for scented candles.” But I consoled myself because I was close to a large thrift store that I hadn’t visited for a while. I went in, not expecting much, but wouldn’t you know—they’d just had a huge donation of silver, and I scored a couple of beautiful silver candelabras for $5 each, as well as a few other great bargains, including a stained glass lamp for $15. I went to the check-out and the woman in front of me was trying to use her debit card but the machine was acting up. “Don’t worry,” the young cashier said, “it’s just being temperamental. Some days it works; some days it’s like an an immovable object meets an unstoppable force.” I laughed to myself and then called out, “You’ve got Schrodinger’s debit machine there, I think.”
The cashier’s eyes lit up and he said, “It’s simultaneously working and not working.”
I laughed again and felt like I’d finally met a kindred spirit. When I got to the counter, I put my items down and said, “You guys still have the 10% Senior’s Discount, right?
He nodded “We sure do.”
Me: Do you need to see ID with that? Cashier: No. I just need you to say it. Me: Say it? Cashier: Say it out loud for me. Come on. Me (rolls eyes): I’m a Senior. Cashier: Hahahaha! I made you say it.
Now before you think I was offended or something, I WASN’T. Because a) it was actually super-funny and I laughed my *ss off, and b) I got 10% off all the stuff I got so when I sell it, my profit margin will be even better. He also told me that he didn’t always make people say it, just the ones who looked like they’d be cool about it and think it was funny. And I did.
In other news, I am so happy because I just accepted the position of Summer Writer-In-Residence for a local library system. Starting in July, I’ll be running programming, mentoring writers, and participating in writing groups. And as an extra bonus, as if this wasn’t already awesome, they’ll be hosting the official book launch for my new book, the sequel to The Seventh Devil, called The Devil You Know, which is supposed to be out late June/early July.
Ivory Towers is one of Canada’s leading drag queens. With over 18 years experience she has won many titles including Miss Gay Toronto, Crews and Tangos drag race and many more. She has been featured in commercials with Sephora, Visa debit, Molson Canadian and Ikea.
Living life with a chronic illness is definitely not easy. But I do my best to push through all the barriers this illness puts in front of me! In my heart and mind, I believe maintaining a positive outlook on all situations in life will carry us through to much better times! I hope you find the information that I provide both helpful and inspirational!
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