Writing

DarkWinter Wednesdays: Special Announcement!

Well, it’s been a wild ride since we launched DarkWinter Press on June 28th this year. We’ve read through a huge stack of wonderful submissions, and now we’re thrilled to announce our upcoming catalogue for Fall 2023 and Spring 2024!

Coming This Fall 2023

The Dogcatcher by Sean Carlin

This occult horror/dark comedy in the spirit of Shaun of the Dead, Carlin’s debut novel, begins with a series of savage killings. Something monstrous lurks in the woods of Upstate New York, putting the idyllic Finger Lakes community of Cornault on edge.

Investigating the wildlife attacks is beleaguered Animal Control Officer Frank Antony. Misunderstood by his father, the mayor of Cornault, mistreated by his brother, chief of staff at City Hall, and mischaracterized as “the dogcatcher” by the newspaper’s op-ed columnist, Frank commands no one’s respect. Even his earnestly loyal sidekick, Animal Care Technician Steve “Waff” Pollywaffle, is too hopelessly irresponsible to ever be counted on when Frank truly needs him.

With the assistance of a world-weary forensic veterinarian at the university, Jessica Bartendale, Frank and Waff must deal with the deadly predator-at-large before it’s too late.

The basement on Biella by Bill Garvey

The basement on Biella is a poetry collection that emanates from a blue-collar town in Massachusetts,
travels to New Hampshire, the Midwest, Nova Scotia, and finally, Toronto. Bill Garvey’s poetry captures
moments which celebrate the wonder of familial relationships, find solace in death, and explore the
torment of mental illness. The basement on Biella is a chronicle of Garvey’s experiences that resonates
beyond his personal world.

Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock by Cecilia Kennedy

Punch in your timecard to begin the shift. The twenty-four dark tales of short fiction in this
collection explore the unsettling things that might linger on and off the clock. Here, you’ll find
short stories of work-related haunts and happenings, from the truly sinister (a human-vending
machine restaurant), to horror-comedy (a photo shoot with possessed bunnies). But in the hours
in between, it can’t be forgotten that the roles played as parents, co-workers, and friends are no
ordinary side hustle. That work never ends. And the work shift? Well, that’s the thing that makes
you peek over your shoulder and ask, “What just moved?” But you have to clock in to find out.

Coming this Spring 2024

The Roach Family and Other Stories by Cindy Matthews

Taking place in Canada, the deeply flawed characters in The Roach Family and Other Stories share one thing in common: they strive to fit in. A malingering mother pays an agonizing visit to her ex-husband, his boyfriend, the narrator, and a tank of hissing roaches. A first-time mother blunders upon self-doubt and finger-pointing after leaving her infant behind at a support group meeting. A previously voiceless child discovers he can communicate. Organizers of a writers’ festival determine that food allergies do matter. A
grieving mother uses unconventional means to appease her sorrow.

Where Sands Run Finest by Vikki C.

Where Sands Run Finest is a lyrical tribute to the liminal landscapes of time, memory, reveries, spirituality and the human condition. Foregrounding the author’s life experiences through an aesthetic and defamiliarized lens, the collection’s forty-eight poems serve as an artistic awakening to themes of identity, heritage, generational trauma, motherhood, love, loss and existential querying. From life’s transient halcyon moments through to the complexities of the metaphysical, the narrative captures the lexicon of time’s delicate rhythms within the human experience. Hence, the title ‘Where Sands Run Finest’ embodies both the “temporal hourglass” and an awareness of time in “otherworlds” born of cosmic, esoteric and subconscious realms.

Words On The Page by Zary Fekete

In the not-too-distant future, a malicious Artificial Intelligence bot has overrun its protocol and is flooding the web with malicious content. Dr. McCaffery, Director of Net Scour, has developed a revolutionary new web-scouring technology which uses the written literature of the world against the AI. The procedure? Reading books. Newly hired Net Scour agent Zach is trained to read, and the more he reads the more power he, and agents like him, can use to fight against the AI.

Dr. McCaffery also has a secret: his daughter, a young woman named Julie. She possesses a unique literary mind; she is the greatest threat against the AI and is the main bulwark of protection for the web. Because of her literary power, the AI has attacked her, and now she can only survive by living in a secure inner chamber in the center of the agency.

Zach and Julie’s fates are intertwined and the future of the web is dependent on the literary power which builds as they grow closer together. 

We hope you’re as excited as we are about these awesome authors and titles. There are a couple more still in the works with contracts about to be signed, so we’ll keep you posted, but stay tuned for cover reveals very soon!

Meet Me In Paris

I’m very sad right now, because last night I was surfing Facebook Marketplace in bed and I saw a Paris painting for sale for only $35. My heart leapt and I showed it to Ken. “Look!” I said. “It’s so beautiful!” and then under my breath I whispered, “I really just love it”, hoping beyond all hope that Ken would spring into action and offer to take me there in the morning to buy it. That didn’t happen mostly because Ken looked at it, kind of confused, and then went back to sleep. Which is probably a good thing, because I currently have very many many paintings of Paris. You may or may not know that for a long time, I’ve been obsessed with vintage paintings of Paris. You also may or may not have seen the type I’m referring to, the impressionistic ones that look really drippy and weird from up close, but from far away begin to resemble a street full of shops and cafes, with people strolling along, and the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe in the background. I adore them—they’re not expensive and whenever I’m feeling down, I look at one and imagine myself wandering down a rainy Paris rue, and it makes me feel better. The problem is, Ken hates them:

Me: Ooh, look! A Paris painting!
Ken: You already have 16 of the damn things. No more!
Me: But this one would be perfect for my bathroom…

So now, if I see one, I have to promise I’m only buying it to resell it. Which I’ve done a couple of times, but apparently there aren’t many other people as obsessed with Paris paintings as I am, because they tend to sit in my antiques booth for a while. But last weekend, I was in the midst of rearranging furniture in the hope of turning the alcove in our bedroom into a “reading nook”, when it suddenly occurred to me that a Paris painting was exactly what the nook needed, and I knew exactly where to find one. In fact, a painting of the perfect size had been languishing in my booth for several months and I was planning on going there last Sunday afternoon to put some fresh stock in. “This is perfect,” I thought to myself. “I’ll bring it home with me.”

When I arrived, my boss greeted me enthusiastically at the door. “Guess what!” he exclaimed jovially. “You just sold those two Paris paintings, you know, the ones that have been here for months. Literally half an hour ago—you just missed it!”

“No!” I gasped. He looked confused, both of us being in the “selling of things” business, so I had to explain my lack of excitement.

“Never mind,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find another one.”

The very next day, I did. And it broke my heart.

I was at Goodwill, a charity shop, after work on Monday to drop off some odds and ends from the alcove mentioned above. I was helping the girl unload my car, when suddenly a man sauntered past us through the parking lot. He was CARRYING A PARIS PAINTING. And it was a beautiful one, in an antique frame. I could see the Arc de Triomphe from where I stood, stunned and speechless, box of knick knacks in hand. I cannot accurately convey the sense of horror I felt as I watched him get in his car and drive away, knowing that if I’d been there half an hour earlier AGAIN, the painting would have been mine.

And because I’m a grown-ass woman, I didn’t cry, although I badly wanted to. No, I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken:

Me: The universe hates me! I just missed out on a gorgeous Paris painting by like half an hour!
Ken: Hahahahaha!
Me: Why are you laughing?!

I tell you all of this not to elicit sympathy—in fact, you’re probably thinking Ken was right to laugh, and I really don’t need another painting of a city I’ve never been to—but that’s not the point. The point is, in fact, that the universe is taunting me, and I don’t know why.

Here are some thoughts:

1. The universe hates me.
2. The universe hates Paris.
3. The universe agrees with Ken that I have enough paintings of Paris.
4. The universe doesn’t care about me at all, and things are just random.

But then, the next day, I happened to glance up and realized that in an obscure corner of my office, there was a small Paris painting hanging there, and wouldn’t it be better placed in the new reading nook than tucked away in a spot where Ken can’t see it? See, I’m nothing if not thoughtful, and maybe the universe loves me after all. And if Ken really loved me too, he’d take me to Paris–or at least take me to the city where that $35 Paris painting is waiting…

In other news, things have been incredibly busy around here, what with the Writer-In-Residence role and the launch of the new press. I’ve already signed six authors–3 for the fall and 3 for the spring–and I’ll be making an announcement about that on August 16 so stay tuned!

(Update: Ken read this and because he’s awesome, he immediately said, “If you want the painting so much, we can get it tomorrow.” So later today, it will be mine…mwah hah hah!)

From Every Angle

A while back, I took out a subscription to a particular country decorating magazine, mostly because they kept emailing me with better and better deals until it finally came out to about $3 an issue—and yes, I mean actual paper magazines, not the online kind. So they started coming in the mail a few months ago, and I’d forgotten how ubiquitous each one of these things can be: every issue features a young couple who hired a designer, a gay couple who didn’t need to hire a designer, recipes I will NEVER make, and the latest in weird decorating trends. I’ve made my peace with the all-white rooms and all-white furniture, the people who never wear shoes, and the copious overuse of figs, but this month’s issue made my skin crawl. Was it full of earwigs? (Fun Fact: When I was very young, my grandmother let me watch an episode of The Twilight Zone—the old black and white version—where a man had an earwig crawl into his ear and it ate through to his brain. I was terrified of earwigs for years, even after I discovered that they’re called earwigs NOT because they crawl into people’s ears, which they never do, but because they infest ears of corn. Still.)  Were all the recipes based on beets and peas? No. It was the newest trend alert: hanging all the artwork on your walls askew. Aside from being the stupidest trend I could possibly think of, even worse than the faux leather wall covering debacle of 2006, I was immediately overcome by intense panic at the mere sight of it. You may remember, particularly because I mention it often and it took up almost a whole chapter of my new book (shameless plug: it’s called What Any Normal Person Would Do, available on Amazon), I have something called Extreme Symmetry Disorder, which normally applies to rugs, but also, in this case, to the artwork on my walls. And while it might seem strange to you, I regularly patrol my house, straightening not only the rugs on my floors but also the artwork on my walls, because while Atlas manages to knock the rugs sideway several times a day, the vibrations of his bounding around also shift the frames of both paintings and photographs, which I am compelled to restore to their proper positions.

And then I had to read this magazine, which featured several different walls of artwork, two of them very much like my own photography-filled breakfast room wall, but instead of them being all delightfully level and perfectly perpendicular to each other, THESE PICTURES HAD BEEN DELIBERATELY KNOCKED ASKEW AS A FASHION STATEMENT.

Who DOES this?! I mean, I can’t be the only person who would go into a house where the pictures are all tilting off into oblivion and have an overwhelming desire to straighten them. Seriously—is this not scraping the bottom of the barrel of decorating trends or what? And what’s next? Should all our rugs be scattered haphazardly around our rooms? Should our objets d’art be randomly grouped in fours and sixes instead of the much more stress-relieving threes and fives? Should the cords on all our lamps face the front where we can SEE THEM?! AM I IN HELL?

At any rate, this issue, according to the latest email exhortation I received, is to be my last, since I have no interest in renewing a subscription to something so ludicrous. I will never cook with beets, I will never decorate in all white, and I especially will NEVER tiltshift my artwork. To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard, when he was yet again faced with the Borg: “The line must be drawn here!”

In other news, the new literary press is going very well. I have a lot of submissions and I’ve already signed three authors—don’t ask who, because it’s a surprise, at least until I’ve finished editing. But all three are awesome, and their books will be coming out under the DarkWinter Press imprint before the end of the fall. I’m currently in the process of reading more manuscripts to decide on the catalogue for Spring 2024, so if you want to be considered, I’d love to see your work—at least before the end of August, when submissions will be closed until January.

(And now I’m having a mild panic attack because I just realized that one of the candlesticks isn’t straight!)

Creative Wednesdays: DarkWinter Press Has Launched!

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!

What Any Normal Person Would Do

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.com and 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.

A Spoonful Of Sugar Helps The Vitamins Go Down

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.

What Kind Of Person Do You Think I Am?!

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!

Owning It

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.

It was worth it.

Reading Is Fun-da-Mental

A while back there was a call for readers at a particular online event celebrating a Canadian poet who had just released a new book. I’ve done these open mic things in the past and really enjoyed it, so I put my name forward and I was accepted for the reading last Thursday night. I was initially super-happy but then I realized that, rather than being able to choose what I was going to read from one of my short story collections, it was a POETRY reading. I don’t write a lot of poetry but I’ve been working on a few pieces recently, and I had one I was really proud of, so I thought, what the heck—this will be a safe space to try it out and maybe get some feedback. The poem I’d chosen to read was about narrowly missing hitting a deer with my car, and how the universal forces of time and karma came into play—I mean, there was more too it than that, but that was kind of the main thing. It was a pretty personal piece and I thought I’d just read that one and be done. The event started and the guest poet was amazing, reading some of her poetry and chatting about the things that informed her writing, particularly the deaths of her parents when she was younger. Her mother had passed away from cancer when she was in university and then her father had died suddenly and tragically a few years later AFTER HE SWERVED ON THE ROAD TO AVOID A DEER AND CRASHED HIS CAR. And I was like WTF am I supposed to do NOW?! Was I really going to read a poem about how I SURVIVED a potential deer/car incident when her dad DIED IN ONE? Obviously not—I’m not a MONSTER (unlike the woman at the last reading I was at, a Valentine’s Day event about “Love”, where we were specifically asked NOT to read anything that included violence, rape or incest. SHE read an essay about EXACTLY ALL OF THAT and it was so disturbing that no one knew what to say. And I was even more upset because I write a lot about death but I managed to find one of the few pieces I’ve written that didn’t involve someone dying, and I don’t think anyone even heard me because they were still in shock over such a flagrant violation of the Valentine’s Day Spirit, although if you think about it, the original Valentine was dragged around Rome, beaten to death and had his head cut off, so she may have had a point).

 At any rate, I was now left in the position of being shortly introduced and not having anything to read, so I was scrambling, flipping through docs and trying to find something I was equally proud of or was at least polished enough to read to a group of PROFESSIONAL POETS. So my turn came, and I read a couple of things, including a poem I wrote for my dog, and no one responded, not even in the chat, and then I just shut off my camera because I felt so dumb. But then the next reader started his presentation by saying really nice things about my literary magazine, DarkWinter Lit, where one of his first poems was published, and that made me feel a little less embarrassed.

Then yesterday, I was fortunate enough to do a live reading at a coffee shop/bookstore in a nearby town with a few other writers. It was a much better experience aside from a quirky microphone. One of the stories I read was one that I’d never read out loud to an audience before called “Twist of Faith” and I’d forgotten that at one point, there’s some very dark humour. When I got to that point, people in the audience started laughing, and then I started too, and could barely keep going–a combination of nerves and relief that other people thought it was funny too. But I finished and got some great feedback, as well as a complimentary swag bag that contained GROUND COFFEE, and if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know that I would have preferred wine.

Long story short, being a writer is hard.

In other news, I was very disappointed by this ad which is ostensibly for flooring but also for a fox? So I messaged the guy to find out more about the fox and he didn’t take it very well at all. 

Apparently the fox DOESN’T come with the carpeting, and personally I think this ad is extremely misleading because I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s more interested in the fox than the carpet it’s sitting on. The fox is very cute and looks equally confused as to why it’s featured in an ad for a FLOORING STORE NOT A PET STORE, and someone should tell this guy that his customer service is as sh*tty as his ad sense if he yells at people who come into the store to pet his fox the way he yelled at me for inquiring about his fox.

Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s the poem I wrote about my dog:

For Atlas

It’s 2 am and
My dog is whimpering
In the throes of a bad dream.
Does he miss his mother and
The way she would comfort him
When he was frightened?
Is he lonely for his brothers
And sisters,
For the warmth of their bodies
At night?

He cries and twitches
And I wonder what haunts him.
I am his pack now.
I shake him awake and tell him
Everything is
Just fine.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

Last week, the building where I work was visited by a couple of ghost hunters who have a Youtube channel. They did a walkthrough and pointed out several areas that they felt were haunted. For example, one of the women pointed to the freight elevator and claimed that it was haunted by a worker who had fallen down the shaft. Now, I’m no skeptic, but as someone who is terrified of elevators and who is forced, on occasion, to run the freight elevator, I did extensive research on whether or not this was actually possible, and it’s not. The elevator won’t move if any of the doors are open, and you can’t open any of the doors unless the elevator is right there. So sorry, ghostbusters—that one was just your imagination. They also claimed that a vase in a booth on the second floor was haunted—they speculated that the person who had owned the vase was super-pissed off because her possessions had been sold and left to languish in a dusty old factory, BUT…she was also thrilled to be noticed. I can’t prove that one wrong, except to say that if anything IS haunted in the building, it’s the life-sized animatronic Hallowe’en character Michael Myers who, when plugged in, swivels around in time to the movie’s music and slashes the arm carrying his knife up and down. But that’s not the scary part. Even when he’s not plugged in, his eyes follow you EVERYWHERE, and I regularly hang a pink handbag from his arm and put a Barbie tank top on him, but the next time I see him, THEY’RE GONE. And he looks even madder than when Laurie poked out his eye with a coat hanger, because he likes to be pretty in pink.

But the best part of the whole spooky ghost adventure was they claimed one of the most haunted spots was on the second floor, in a booth called Fox and Feather Vintage. And do you know why I believe THAT? Because that used to be MY booth before I moved downstairs to the main floor! And that explains why I never sold anything out of there—too many bad vibes, I guess. And the bad vibes have continued because I was talking to the vendor who rents it now and she said her sales have been terrible. Not surprising. But now that my suspicions have been confirmed, I want that booth back, if only to sell stuff like this that I found on Facebook Marketplace:

Haunted frame? Why not? In fact, my only question is why is there a brown Crayola marker next to it? Is it for scale? Or is there a more insidious reason, like that ghost lady enjoys arts and crafts? I know—arts and crafts are not necessarily insidious—depending on what exactly the ghost is drawing. And the condition–“Used-Fair”? Not “Used-Possibly Dangerous”? I really want to buy it just to find out whether or not it’s really haunted, because it seems like the person who owns it isn’t sure, like they’re hedging their bets with “possibly” haunted, instead of “goddamn right it’s haunted house down boots”.

In other news, I’ve decided to start my own press, as an extension of DarkWinter Literary Magazine. It’s going to be called DarkWinter Press. I won’t be publishing my own work, but as soon as I get it set up, I’ll be looking for some projects. First though—if anyone on here has some experience with how to format things for Kindle Direct Publishing (eg: what program to use, how to do covers and images etc.) I’d be happy to touch base. I already managed to set up my account thanks to D. Wallace Peach of Myths of the Mirror and her support, but I know there’s still a ton to learn. Regardless, I’m as excited as a ghost in a vase or Michael Myers in a Barbie t-shirt.

Also, I recently competed in The Evil Squirrel’s Nest Annual Contest of Whatever and the Squirrel has posted all the entries prior to the final judgement. You can read them here!

Also, also–Happy Easter to those who celebrate it!