Whenever I go anywhere, I like to take back country roads. But the more I do, the more there’s something I’ve noticed, something I’ve become painfully, jealously aware of:
Me: I want to move to the country. Ken: Why? Me: Because I want a camper and a boat. Ken: What? Me: Because when you move to the country, you automatically get a camper and a boat. Obviously. Apparently, it’s a rule. Ken: Whose rule? Me: The government, I assume. Like, it must be a government program or whatnot. When you move to the country, the government gives you a camper and a boat. It’s probably some kind of incentive—you know, to reduce congestion in the cities. Ken: You know that’s not true, right? Me: Not true? Look around, KEN. Every single place you drive by in the country has at least one of each. Bob has TWO campers—AND a horse! See, this is why I love socialism. Universal healthcare, social security, free campers and boats. It’s awesome. Ken: They’re NOT free! And you HATE camping. Me: I hate camping in a TENT. I’d totally go camping in our cool free government camper. Ken: And what about the boat? We aren’t anywhere near a lake. Me: No one EVER IS, KEN. But we have a trailer hitch. We can tow it places. Or, it just sits next to our barn. That’s what most people do with them, as far as I can tell. It’s ‘Farm Chic’. Ken: We’re not moving to the country. Me: You’re so mean! I want my boat and camper. It’s only fair—I pay my taxes! I want MY DUE! (starts scrolling through Realtor.ca for a cute country property) Ken: Sigh. Let me know if you find anything.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of a country property with a camper and a boat because the government doesn’t want people to know about it—it’s a state secret.
In other news, as an author and owner of DarkWinter Press and Literary Magazine, I often get asked what comes after the initial thrill of a book’s release. Here’s a fun little article I was asked to write by Women Writers, Women[s] Books about things you can do once your first book gets published to keep the momentum going! https://booksbywomen.org/so-your-first-novel-just-got-published-now-what/
Last Thursday marked an anniversary for me. But not one that should ever be celebrated; one that taught me an important lesson. A year ago, I opened my inbox and saw an email from Godaddy, a domain hosting service. The email said, “Your domain is about to renew.” And I said, “Nice try, ‘Godaddy’. How stupid do you think I am? I’m not falling for your scam!” I vaguely remembered looking into their services years ago when I was thinking of changing blog platforms, but how dare they try to pilfer money from me! Smug in my own competency, I went to Godaddy and cancelled my account with them as retribution for their fake “you owe us money” trick. They sent me a follow up email but I ignored it and put it in ‘trash’.
About half an hour later, it was time to set up the next day’s authors, so I clicked on the shortcut to the DarkWinter Press and Lit Mag website, which is a WIX website, and I got a message:
This page no longer exists.
I tried again, using a different link and got the same result. Then my blood ran cold. I messaged my neighbour, who set up the website and still does web management for me when I need it:
Me: Hey. Um. Do we use Godaddy for anything?
Neighbour: Yes, it’s the hosting platform for your website.
Me: But my website is on WIX…
Neighbour: Right, but you need Godaddy to find it, remember? We discussed this.
Me (panic rising): Oh, ok. So if I, for some bizarre reason, happened to cancel my Godaddy account…?
Neighbour: You would have deleted your website. You didn’t do that, did you?!
Me: OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE??!!
Over two years of content—poof, and it was all my stupid fault. I started to cry. The only thing to do, my neighbour suggested, was to call Godaddy and see if they could help. I had my doubts, given my “cancel my account now, muthafukka” attitude. It took a few minutes to get through, at which point I was full on sobbing. A woman finally answered, and I managed to explain between sobs what had happened. “Please help me, I’m so sorry, I’ll do anything,” I told her, expecting that it was irreversible. But no. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This happens more often than you think. We have the whole site archived. If you pay the renewal and an additional $25 for the retrieval, we can get it back up in a couple of hours.” And let me tell you, I would have paid a hell of a lot more than that. I’ve never been so relieved in my life. Ironically, the woman’s name was Angel. And sure enough, a couple of hours later, when I clicked my shortcut, DarkWinter immediately appeared like a beautiful beacon in the dim light of my office, just like an angel said it would.
Which is why, last Thursday when I saw the renewal notice, I smiled, nodded, and whispered, “You Godaddy.”
A couple of weeks ago, something really weird happened at the antique market where I work. And that’s saying a lot, because weird sh*t happens there all the time, as I’m sure you’ve realized based on my previous stories about it, like the guy who did a LOT of cocaine. For another example, see last month:
Me: So that’s six magazines at $4 each, plus tax. Your total is $27.12 Woman (volunteering this with no prompting): The Playboys are for my son. He’s 17. Me: How would you like to pay? Woman: He’ll be so excited. Me: I can only imagine. Have a great day.
So, yes, the clientele can be a little—quirky. But a week ago Monday, this one really took the cake. A man came in, short, twitchy, with a shock of bright orange hair under his ball cap. He smelled REALLY bad. He was interested in jewelry and one of the owners took a tray of rings out of the showcase and brought it to the counter so he could look at them all. My co-worker and I were behind the counter, and we also made a beeline for the rings because the vendor had just come in and restocked. The man kept going on about “his lady” and how great ‘his lady’ was, and how ‘his lady’ deserved only the best, ad nauseum, until he’d finally picked out several rings. Then he went to look around on the other floors, at which point, my co-worker said, “Oh my god, that was disgusting.”
And she wasn’t talking about ‘his lady’. Nope, she was talking about the horrifyingly swollen, cracked open, bloody, and black index finger that the guy kept pointing around with. I’d never seen anything like it before—I’d describe it even further but some of you may have weak stomachs.
Me: What the hell happened to him?! That’s unreal! Co-Worker: I know! I’m burning with curiosity! Boss: I’ll find out.
So when the guy came down to pay for his rings, the young boss asked him about it.
“Oh, that,” he said. “I was doing some carpentry, and I was about to hammer a nail into the floor when someone knocked on the door. It scared the crap out of me and I jumped and hammered my finger instead. But it’s okay—it doesn’t hurt. They gave me some antibiotics at the doctor’s but then we got into an argument, so I haven’t been back.” Then he left.
Co-worker: I can’t believe that doesn’t hurt—it looks insanely painful. Me: There’s a reason why it doesn’t hurt. Boss: Why? Me: It’s dead. He has gangrene. The next time we see him, he’ll be missing a finger. If he survives it. Boss: Gangrene? Seriously? How do you know?
How do I know?! Because I’m Gen X, obviously. When we were growing up, there were very few rules:
1) Look both ways before you cross the street. 2) Don’t talk to strangers. 3) Come in when the streetlights turn on. 4) Watch out for quicksand. 5) If you cut it, clean it. Otherwise, you’ll get gangrene and it’ll fall off.
Even as a late-middle-aged adult (because I plan to live past 100), I still abide by these rules. Except for number 2—because of my job, I’m literally forced to do this, and now, thanks to number 2, I’ve seen the physical evidence for number 5. Number 3 is, of course, my favourite, because I have no desire to be anywhere other than my bed with a glass of wine once the streetlights turn on.
So then I had to explain gangrene to some of my younger colleagues, whose collective reaction was “EWWW!!! No wonder he smelled so bad!”
And sure enough, guess who was back this past Tuesday? He was looking for more rings for ‘his lady’. My co-worker leaned forward over the counter a little and whispered, “He’s got it wrapped up…but it looks shorter…”
Yep. Sure enough, the finger was gone. When he came to pay, I’d been nominated to ask him about it:
Me: I remember you from last week. What happened with the…? Gangrene Man (waves hand with only four digits angrily): I went to the hospital, and they cut it off! Me: Uh, sorry to hear that. Gangrene Man: Stupid hospital. And then they were like, “You should have taken all the antibiotics.” Anyway, my lady is gonna love these rings. Nothing too good for her.
And then he was gone. Like that gangrenous finger.
In other news, I’ve just launched Baxter House Editions, the reprint division of DarkWinter Press. Here’s a little bit about how it came about, you can read the storyhere!
Well, it’s almost Christmas and you can tell because the ads on my social media are getting more and more weird. Case in point:
Is it me, or does that dude look a little too excited for his bath time, like maybe it’s also his “special man time”? And he looks almost too large for the bathtub—based on my knowledge of human proportions, where the hell are his legs?! At any rate, a one-person spa is absolutely perfect for me—I already take my own pillow whenever I travel, so now I could take my own bathtub with me. I looked up the translation of the company name and in English it means something like “glamorous water” and isn’t that what bathing is all about—being glamorous in the water? That guy in the ad sure thinks so.And the best part is the ad next to it, which is cut off, but that’s the beautiful irony of it–I looked up “glark” and it literally means “to figure something out from context”. So here’s the challenge: can you glark the glarks?
But I’ve had my ups and downs lately because I keep getting scammed online. First it was a purse company that seemed legitimate until I paid for it and immediately got a message telling me that my item wouldn’t ship until I sent a SCREENSHOT OF MY CREDIT CARD. After a lot of back and forth, they finally agreed to ship the item without the photographs and then sent me a fake invoice with a tracking number button that did nothing. So I contacted my bank and the rep in the Disputes department that I spoke to was very nice and he made me feel better about being so dumb:
Me: I can’t believe I fell for this. Rep: It happens all the time. If something’s too good to be true, it probably is. What was it that you bought? Me: A Louis Vuitton purse. I mean, I figured it was fake, but I should have known it was also a rip-off—it was way too cheap. Rep: No kidding. Those things cost a fortune. And the reason I know that brand is because just last week, I had to deal with a woman who got taken for over $1500 for a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes. Me: …They make shoes?
But I don’t need their shoes. I just want my fifty bucks back. And then, Ken and I decided that instead of moving, we’d turn one of our bedrooms into a secret library room and doesn’t every secret library room need a tufted leather loveseat? I found a perfect one on Facebook Marketplace and I contacted the seller. He told me it was available and when I asked if we could pick it up on the weekend, he said sure, but that he’d need a deposit to hold it, since he had “so many people interested in it”. And that kind of thing isn’t unusual, and he seemed legit, so I sent a small deposit. And that was the last I heard from him. (I even had a friend contact him pretending to want to buy the couch, and he pulled the same sh*t with her—he refused to give her an address for pick-up until she gave him money up front and when she wouldn’t, he ghosted her.) Again, I contacted the bank, but this time, because my e-transfer was auto-deposited, I couldn’t get it back. We actually called the police and filed a report, and the cop said the same thing, after lecturing me for a while about “overseas scams” and “fake IP addresses”. But the best part was that I (and my friend) reported him to Facebook, and they said they wouldn’t do anything because he hadn’t “violated their terms of service”. You learn your lessons the hard way, I guess. This was my face when I learned that I would be receiving neither a very cute handbag or a very stylish couch:
But never mind all of that. Christmas is almost here, and I have a lot to celebrate, including the fact that my publisher, DarkWinter Press, has submitted my humour book What Any Normal Person Would Do to the Stephen Leacock Medal for Literary Humour. My publisher can be a real pain in the ass and falls for a lot of scams but she’s very thoughtful so I forgive her. (It’s me. I’m the publisher.) Wish me luck!And if you want your own copy (which I just updated and filled with even more funny stuff) it’s available here:
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and all that great stuff to you and yours!
The other day I realized that we have approximately 547 pounds of Lego in the house. It’s in bins in the attic, bags in the guest room, totes in the closet…and why, I hear you ask, do you have so much goddamn Lego? Because not only is Ken obsessed with it, and has kept all the Lego ever created since he was a child, but Kate also accrued a sizable collection of Lego kits when she was younger. Even I, myself, although I hate to admit it, became a little fixated on Harry Potter Lego in the early 2000s. Wow, I also hear you say—isn’t all of that Lego worth a lot of money? Well, it would be, if it wasn’t all scattered around the house in bins, bags, and totes. I had a plan, a very clever plan I thought, to just put it all in ziplocks and sell it to one of the toy vendors at the market for a flat cost and then give the money to Kate since most of the Lego was either hers or bestowed up her as part of her inheritance to begin with, but when I broached the idea with my 23 year-old boss, he was horrified:
Boss: But you could make so much more money if you just put it together and sold the completed kits! Me: Do I look like I have twenty-three years to deal with this? Boss: But you said you had all the manuals—how hard can it be?
So I thought, what the heck—I’m pretty good at building stuff, and if I could make Kate a lot more cash by completing some of the models, then I’d give it a whirl. And you know what? It was almost f*cking impossible. Every bin I pulled down from the attic contained half a build, and I was running back and forth, trying to find the rest of the pieces, which had magically ended up in a number of completely different bins. Luckily, I had several bags of ‘extra’ parts—at least I hope they’re extra and not part of yet another Lego kit that I’ll never be able to finish. At one point, I spent a literal half hour looking for a long grey piece with 2 rows of 12 little knobs and I never did find it. 60 000 pieces of Lego and not a f*cking sign of it. And it’s not like the old days when I was a kid and the bricks were primary colours and 5 basic shapes—now most of the kits come with like a thousand unique accessory pieces in a variety of colours and if you don’t have them, you can’t substitute anything else to complete a set. Ultimately, I managed to finish a bunch of space alien-type Exoforce (?) kits, some cars and trucks, a few Star Wars spacecraft, and a couple of other things, and then I packed the rest of it up for another day, a day far into the future when Kate is rich and doesn’t need my Lego blood money.
And then there’s this ad for…well, is this what we’re calling them now? But I do love the use of quotation marks:
Mousetrap Update: I didn’t find it in any of the Lego bins. Also, I took apart the skirting around our kitchen island and looked under it, but the mousetrap wasn’t there either. Nor was it in the space between the stove and the counter. We have now looked in every conceivable spot that an errant mousetrap could find itself, and I’m stymied. Also peeved. Also a little freaked out, like did someone break into our house, see the mousetrap on the floor and steal it, along with my second favourite purse and a small makeup bag that were also in that kitchen and that I’m also missing?
One last update: As the Editor of DarkWinter Press, I’m thrilled to announce our release of Cecilia Kennedy’s new short story collection Twenty-Four-Hour Shift: Dark Tales from on and off the Clock! Here’s a synopsis—it’s now available on Amazon and you can purchase either the paperback or Kindle edition by clicking here!
“Punch in your time card 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.“
Every once in a while, we get a mouse in the house. Of course, it’s usually more than one—you know what they say: where there’s one mouse, there’s usually more. In the past, we’ve tried everything—live traps, sonic devices, a cat—and eventually, they stop coming around for a few months. We hadn’t seen any sign of a wee rodent since last winter, but a week and a half ago, Ken and I were standing in the kitchen talking and suddenly Ken interupted me with, “Look! A mouse just ran across the floor and disappeared under the cupboard!”
We have an old postmaster’s cupboard in the corner of the kitchen that we use for a variety of things, but in the bottom we store Atlas’s food in the right-hand side, and rice and a rice cooker on the left-hand side. Ken opened the left-hand door, which is where the mouse seemed to have disappeared into, and there was no sign of it. But the bags of rice had obviously been chewed into, and there was mouse sh*t on my rice cooker.
As you may remember, we gave up on live traps when it became obvious that the mice had figured out how to get the peanut butter without getting stuck in the trap, and as much as I hated to do it, we went out the next day and bought one of those snap traps. Ken slathered it with peanut butter, much to Atlas’s delight, because that meant he also got some peanut butter (Why? Because otherwise, he would pout and complain), and then Ken slid the trap very carefully under the rice/dog food cupboard with me all the while repeating, “Careful, careful!” in case it snapped his finger off. The next morning, we came downstairs and sure enough, there was a mouse in the trap. It was a late mouse and it made me sad. We repeated the same steps two more times and caught two more mice. But then…
On Thursday morning, I came down for breakfast.
Me: Did you check the mousetrap? Ken: Oh, not yet, I forgot. Hang on. (*gets down on hands and knees to peer under the cupboard*). Uh… Me: What’s wrong? Ken: The mousetrap is gone. Me: What are you talking about? How can it be gone? Ken: I don’t know, but it’s gone. Me: But…the whole mousetrap?! Ken: I know. Maybe the mouse’s tail got caught and it dragged it somewhere else? Me: I don’t hear any squeaking. Ken: Maybe it got free.
So we spent a lot of time on Friday searching for the trap to no avail. It has completely vanished. And I know there are a lot of places in any house where a mouse might disappear into, but a whole mousetrap??!! It’s kind of terrifying, to be honest, like where could it possibly have gone?! And now, I have no mousetrap, and potentially a mouse with magical powers, half a tail, and a thirst for revenge. Wish me luck.
In other news, I’m happy to announce on behalf of DarkWinter Press that our second publication, the novel The Dogcatcher by Sean Patrick Carlin, will be available for pre-sale starting tomorrow! It’s an awesome book if any of you are looking for a fun, spooky, and cleverly funny fall readand it’s available to order here!
On Thursday, I had to go to the dentist for a check-up. Like most people, it’s not something I enjoy, especially since my favourite hygienist, Harmony, only works Monday to Wednesday and our schedules don’t line up anymore. Two visits ago, my new hygienist claimed to be a former Olympic-level figure skater (I looked her up but couldn’t find her listed on any Canadian team at any point in time), and despite the fact that we had never met before, she insisted on spending the entire appointment regaling me with the tales of abuse that caused her to leave the sport and gave her PTSD. Then, at the end of the appointment, she told me that fluoride was poison, and she could recommend several “documentaries” that had uncovered the insidious and evil fluoride conspiracy. The next time I went, in February, I had a different hygienist who was only slightly better, in that she said ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to me throughout the entire appointment. But at the end she gave me extra floss, which was nice, and did NOT try to push any bizarre conspiracy theories about the world of dentistry. I showed up for my appointment on Thursday, fearing the worst and hoping for the best, when a familiar face came around the corner to call me in.
“Harmony!” I exclaimed, overjoyed. She had switched days last week for some reason and, lucky me, I would get to spend my time in the chair discussing new favourite shows to binge-watch because we have the exact same taste in TV, plus she has excellent timing when it comes to asking a question and then letting me answer without slicing open my gums with her pick. It was just like old times, and at the end of the appointment, I actually felt relaxed. And then I discovered we had another thing in common:
Me: I heard Dr. Morton is going to retire soon. Harmony: He’s getting there. Me: He’s been my dentist for a really long time. Can you tell from my chart how long? Harmony: Hang on…looks like your first appointment was in 2009. Me: Wow! So like 24 years? Harmony: Uh huh.
Then there was a long pause while I, and most likely you, dear reader, re-did the mental calculation that led to my pronouncement.
Me: Wait…no, I think that’s only 13 years. I’m so bad at math. Harmony: Me too. That’s why I just said Uh huh, and went along with you. But 13 sounds correct.
And yes, at some point after the conversation, while I was shopping for a new outfit for my book launch for The Devil You Know which was taking place later that night, I realized that 13 years was also completely wrong, and that Harmony was either being very nice to me, or she was indeed as bad at math as me. Regardless, she will always be my favourite hygienist.
The book launch went really well, by the way. Here’s a picture of me wearing my new outfit:
In other news, here’s the cover reveal for the DarkWinter Press inaugural publication, The basement on Biella: a poetry collection by Bill Garvey. Bill is a brilliant poet who divides his time between Toronto and Nova Scotia, and DarkWinter is so happy to be publishing this collection! I had a moment of nervous excitement right before I hit ‘publish’ and now it’s available for Kindle pre-order! The paperback will be released most likely the beginning of next week, but if you’re interested in the Kindle version, order now and it will land in your e-reader on Monday! Here’s the link and the front cover:
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!
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!)
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!)
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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