Tag: personal info

Where’m I At?

Where have I been, you ask? Or maybe you don’t.

I’ll tell you anyway.

Two things: it’s summer. Ergo, lots of distractions. And it’s a summer in which we have been inundated with rain, unholy amounts of it, at least TWICE in quick succession, followed by the kind of damage that, when you drive around and look at the piles of ruined furniture, flooring, personal keepsakes and essential necessary things like furnaces and laundry appliances stacked at curbs, makes your jaw drop.

Image from CBC by Evan Mitsui on the Weather Network

Just Lucky

Was my writing haven in the basement touched? No, and I thank St. Catharines’s topography for that. And probably more that a smidgen of good luck – around the corner on Bunting and not very far away, there were piles at the curbs.

We’re due for another rain storm today. People are nervous. May the infrastructure hold this time.

Writer’s Cramp in My Future

The other reason I’ve been inactive here is that I’m working on the sequel to ‘The Cottages at the Cape – Margie’s Summer Getaway’. Roaring away at it to meet the release deadline (one I set myself, so I can’t bitch about it), which means it needs to be submitted even sooner to be evaluated by Amazon, which means the writing part has to be finished even SOONER, so I can edit and do necessary corrections and re-writes. That’s how it is when you self-publish.

I know, I know. My choice. I’ll shut up now.

Oh! Just one more thing. Remember seio nage from ‘The Cottages..’? Think tomo nage. Think feckless clueless Russian lunatic assassins. Think Kapow!!

A Book is Dropping!! Pick it Up.

This collection of short stories, based on imagined lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, drops May 1 (that’s tomorrow!)

I’ve lived in St. Catharines since summer of 2023, having left my beloved Halifax, Nova Scotia because my living situation there had become untenable and I simply could not afford the market-value rents of the few rental units available in the city. My sister came to my rescue and offered me a home in St. Catharines. I settled in and chose to learn my new city and to love it.

St. Catharines is a lovely city of trees, beautiful gardens and vibrant, engaged and active people. It has a well developed and varied domestic architecture infinitely pleasing to this former practitioner of that art/technology – who can’t, by the way, resist speculating about what might go on within those brick or stucco walls – and feels compelled to commit those speculations to print.

This book of stories (the first of several, I think) is based on a combination of observations and imaginings of the culture and inspired by people I’ve come to know and appreciate.

I hope you will enjoy them.

What the heck am I doing?

I have written a lot of stuff over the years, most of it academic and/or technical in nature. I wrote for school or I wrote for work. I entered fiction-writing a little late in the game, but I’m doing my best to make up for lost time! Since January 2025, I’ve written and published two novels, ‘The Cottages at the Cape – Margie’s Summer Getaway’ and ‘The Burin Girl’(submitted to a couple of competitions) and a novella, ‘La Veuve Michel’. I’ve written several short stories that feature my adopted home of St. Catharines, Ontario which are currently making the rounds of short fiction competitions, and will eventually be published as a collection, and I’ve started on a third novel which will be a sequel to The Cottages at the Cape.

What’s the rush, says you? I’m seventy-four, says I.

So what do you do when you are seventy-four and you suddenly decide you’re an author? Well, you can’t play the usual games, that’s for sure. You can’t woo agents and wait months to hear back from folks. What you become is an ‘Indie Author’ and you learn the hard way how to prepare a manuscript to become an ebook, and/or a paperback or, if you are truly narcissistic, a hard-cover to display coyly on your coffee table. (Yes, I just yesterday published ‘The Burin Girl’ in hardcover – how could I not?) Bless all the publishers who provide an outlet for us ‘Indies’.

The downside is that self-published writers don’t qualify to enter the biggest, juiciest, most lucrative and prestigious competitions. No false modesty here – I’m a fine writer and I think it’s a shame.

And I could use an editor. I’m still finding typos and silly-looking shit in my stuff.

Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let me tell you that this writing adventure? It’s one of the most exhilarating, challenging and enjoyable things I’ve done in decades and I’d recommend it to anyone who feels they have something to say or a story to tell. If you feel it, my friend, just go ahead and do it!