Category Archives: Musselaneous

An Interview! And a bit of news.

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The good people at the Canada Reads American Style podcast recently asked me some questions on editing and writing and my process of becoming an editor and a writer (and a publisher), and I provided some mostly coherent answers for 30 minutes – except for becoming a publisher, which I neglected to answer. It was late, and we had some technical issues, and I’d already edited 15,000 words that day…. That’s here:

https://canadareadsamericanstyle.podbean.com/e/interview-lee-thompson-author-and-editor/

And the bit of news? Apastoral did win the NB Fiction Award for 2022. That was months ago. That was nice. And it has gone into a second printing. And something new by me should be out in the next six months.

Lastly, I finally launched Galleon Books! Jerrod Edson’s The Boulevard and Jake Swan’s Grantrepreneurs are getting great reviews and, well, modest sales. Go buy them!

Lee

Maybe we need a new title here…

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See, when I first started this blog in early 2014 the word “indistractable” brought up only a few Google hits, assuring me of its relative originality but disabusing me of any true clams on the word (“get your clams off me!”).  That was unlikely anyway – nothing much is truly new under planet Neologism’s sun. But now there’s a book entitled Indistractable, which would explain a surge of random (not fandom) hits the past year here.

Yeah, it deals with ADHD. And though I may harbour a few ADD dinghies myself, the reason why I called my blog Indistractable was because it was just a neat word I hoped I’d coined and I’m not, I’m very.  Neat? Nah, distractable.

Meanwhile, “Corvid-19” is nothing to crow about and  brings up nearly two million hits, several articles in respectable web-roosts, but typo or no (see here for an example from the Read Dear Advocate)  it’s hardly murderous error and no pandemonium has ensued.

And what’s a writer/editor to do in this viral hunkerdown but work on while others work on their works in progress. Stay safe everyone,  grow herbs in your window and watch the (non-corvid) starlings search the peeps of grass for signs of spring while snow falls softly around their feathered…

Oh, I seem to have gotten distracted.  Back to work…

Two Recent Reviews

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I’ve just had two reviews posted on the Atlantic Books Today website (following two longer reviews – of Kevin Major and Kerry-Lee Powell – in their recent print edition). A small caveat is that Atlantic Books Today is funded by publishers, but managing editor Chris Benjamin does want honest, well-written reviews, sees the value in that.

I hosted André Narbonne in October at the Attic Owl Reading Series, was impressed and later begged off attempting a review of another story collection (quite poorly written) and requested permission to send a review of Narbonne’s collection Twelve Miles to Midnight. It’s a great story collection. The review is here.

And some time this summer I was sent the PDF of David Doucette’s A Hard Old Love Amongst Scavengers, and promptly forgot about it. I spend all day at the PC or laptop editing writers’ words, don’t want to read more fiction on the screen. Anyway, when asked about the review’s status I said right, right, is there a hard copy? One was sent. One day I’ll make a list of my favourite Atlantic Canadian Fiction. It’ll have Doucette’s novel near the top*. What a welcome surprise. That review is here.

*Along with Steffler’s The Grey Islands (fiction? poetry?), Powell’s Willem De Kooning’s Paintbrush, Bursey’s Verbatim: A Novel, Gunn’s Amphibian, Butler Hallett’s Deluded Your Sailors, and work by Mark Anthony Jarman, Ian Colford, Narbonne, Coady…. Maybe that’s the next blog post.

Engine Failure @ Jerrod Edson

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There’s a nice review of my story “A Survivor’s Guide to Engine Failure at 35,000 Feet” on Jerrod Edson’s site right here. Jerrod is a fellow New Brunswick author temporarily banished to Ontario (but he’s NB through and through, don’t forget it). From his review:

“Warwick’s voice is manic, yet altogether alive and authentic (imagine a Hunter S. Thompson / Barney Panofsky offspring and you’re headed in the right direction). His memories of the crash are honest and raw, and utterly void of any writerly bullshit”

Edson has a new novel coming out this spring. Watch for “The Moon is Real” with Urban Farmhouse Press.

Interviewing Jeff Bursey

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As mentioned in the preface to the linked interview (see below), Jeff Bursey and I met through Joseph McElroy in 2010 when Jeff was looking to get word out about his first novel, Verbatim: A Novel. Jeff lived just two hours away but in terms of kindred interests, he was right next door. We have become good friends since. He’s the only person I’ve met (face to face) who has also read McElroy’s massive Women and Men.

The interview, focussing on Jeff’s second book, Mirrors on which dust has fallen, is up at The Winnipeg Review, another terrific resource (a la Numero Cinq) for all things literary.

Read it here.

The Litter I See

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thompsonA few months back I was sent (by Carin Makuz) a jpg of some random trash, all part of a project called The Litter I See (in support of Frontier College), and which promotes literacy and has, of course, an anti-trash objective as well. The image was of someone’s ‘new balance’ and the word ‘withdrawal’ was prominent.  So I wrote a poem, a kind of numb, flat poem about a decision on the cusp for years.

You can find it here (or click the image):

withdrawal

Not sure if I’ve had a poem published before. Don’t think so.

Editing Website

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After 18 months of knowing I needed one, I made one: a website for my editing services. Happy to have clients both big (publishers, corporations) and small (you, the Average Writing Human).  Is this an easy way to make a living? No. But it’s a satisfying one.  Check it out:

editing logo

click logo

Lee Thompson Editing +