Category Archives: Musselaneous

Shuffling off to Banffalo

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Yes, I am, in 36 hours, and how quickly I’m realizing four weeks is little time to work on anything.   The blog should blossom, and Galleon should see wind in its sails during that time. But I’ve plenty to work on:

The Slow Loris story – a long story, a work in progress.

My sheep novel, for which I’m there for (which forever needs a tweak or two).

My fish novel, the Council-funded once-contracted weirdo that needs to be in print years ago.

Multiple wanting short fictions, near misses that would raise the collection from damn to dayumn.

And a first foray into my northern novel, which exists in short form.

 

Meanwhile, I’ve had a story (A Serpent) accepted by Douglas Glover for his fine online venture Numero Cinq (which has published several of my favourite authors, including Joseph McElroy) and looming publication in an anthology to be released later this year.

More soon, mountain time.

Indiegogo west, young man

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Banff, the great artists’ colony of Banff is calling. I was accepted to the Writing Studio in January and hey what a thrill that was. A month to write? And when not writing to take photos or write songs? Hello?  And all that was swimming along perfectly until my first request from artsnb was turned down despite the jury recommending funding. Around that time the Canada Council supplied just enough cash for a return ticket. Great! So I tried the arts board one last time, thinking surely if it was recommended the first time… but no.  Thanks, guys. And now I have less than a month, a ticket purchased, and $2000 to raise.

Here’s the indiegogo link:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/banff-writing-studio-residency/x/6515282

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIGJFfZOvlo

 

Galleon: the hammering, the hot pitch

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Well, it’s just about ready to sail, though we need funds to make the winds blow. Calls have gone out. An Indiegogo campaign nears. Associate editors have been added and the website has frame and buoyancy.

Call for submissions will go out in April.

Galleon: Poetry and Fiction from Atlantic Canada

On not-plotting

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I have begun a new piece of short fiction that’s an exaggeration of what I taught recently: don’t overplot, sketch out your story loosely, invent. In my notes for this story, of which there are only five small points and one name, I wrote “needs to take surprising turns, write blindly”.  It takes a while to get to this point in story writing, though. It takes a while to trust your voice, your creative process. I have only the vaguest of ideas where this story is headed, but I’m excited to write it.  Were I to plot it, develop every nuance of the characters, I would not write it. In my mind, I guess, creation is superior to construction. Were I to build a house it would be a meandering maze of surprising spaces. This is why I love such oddball works as The Journal of Albion Moonlight, Maldoror, Tristram Shandy.

If this new story works out, it’ll be – I swear- the final piece in my collection. It might not work out, but that’s part of the risk and I’d rather, as Melville says, fail in originality than succeed in imitation.

 

Circadiana

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My good friend and former employer at the Attic Owl Bookshop, Ed Lemond, has created a fascinating poetry blog called Circadiana. Each day he grabs a line from a random book (always page 52 line 5) and starts from there. The poems are deceptively simple and appear daily (thus the title). Please check it out:

http://edlemond.com/

My mind, a list

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Like  a boat in bad seize, perhaps. Upon waking, we:

Worry about bills. Since leaving a job I held for five years which paid the bills but did not allow me to save much (nor afford the time to do extra work) (and what little I saved stayed in Elba, though I was never really able ere), I have been freelancing, sort of, mostly editing.  300,000 words of it.  I have also sold fiction, accumulated per diems, ran a workshop and done minor web work and proofing. Work for a communications company looms. I’m organizing an event, as well.

Ponder fiction new and old. My most recently written novel is with an agent who was recommended by a publisher who was alerted by a writer friend who took a liking at a reading. The agent is also waiting for an earlier manuscript which I need to clean up. I ear the agent throws great parties. The story collection has been alerted to imminent excursion. Then there’s the arctic novel, the dam novel, the ghost story and the slow loris story, all to be written. The first one scares me, the last one excites me.

Think about Banff. Think about Banff means worry about funding, which is not in my hands. Fate is like a ball thrown back and forth between strangers in lightless room.  Two months.

Think about songs. If you do not write them they will not come. Lyrics are truculent little trolls. I hate them.

This is not really a list, is it? It’s a capsizing.

Think about reviving Galleon, the boat that floated but has been drydocked for years. This region needs another journal like it needs a hole in its bulkhead. That’s not true; I’m just stuck in this metaphor with you.

Think about starting a small press. Why why why why?

Think about not wasting time in the morning, such as…

Montreal and Back

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You don’t expect water to suddenly go streaming up to the ceiling, a perfect rope of it. You don’t expect to see that two seats ahead of you on a plane. But it happens: the water jets up, blurps back down, the woman can’t believe what’s happened, the ceiling drips. The flight attendant catches it out the corner of his eye. His eye says hmm. My mind say uh huh, that’s not right. But it’s wiped and we fly on. Shouldn’t we be higher? What’s going on? No one notices. This isn’t 25,000 feet.  This is 5,000, maybe 7,000. And then we fall, dive down and the plane banks sharply to the right, turns, turns, turns into the sun we were leaving. A few passengers furrow their brows but most keep on chatting, reading, sleeping. I’d say something to the guy sitting next to me but he’s a ghost. I take my headphones off seconds before the announcement comes that unfortunately we are returning to Montreal due an issue with the aircraft’s ventilation system, i.e. cabin pressure. But we don’t drop from the sky, at least not in an unplanned (planed?) weigh.  We land. We board another. We get free drinks all the way home.

This was post-Forum. Post Montreal, McGill. The Canada Council had herded us, corralled us, milked us of ideas (no coming through slaughter) for two days. We obliged because free plane/food/hotel and we only feel whole around others like us unless they’re overly successful. But that rarely applies. They kept us together in tables and mine was Quill and Quire, Ricepaper, Canada Council, Cherie, LPG, Fetherling, ECW, Bernice, Theytus.  The pixelated head of  Richard Nash bobbed and weaved from a departure lounge in NYC. Outside the Forum was kindly Miss W., bringer of poetry and sustenance (and cute in a beret), and rude Asha on Valentine’s where a heart fell from the wall just missing the pakoras.

And it was cold. And I ate no bagels.

On fresh rejection

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This is just slipped in. I didn’t wring my hands before opening the email, didn’t hyperventilate, pace, pray or call a friend. I clicked it like it was no news at all.

Dear Lee Thompson,

 Many thanks for your submission of One for the Master. I enjoyed reading your manuscript for its mix of smart and crude humour, and for it attention to stylistic consistency. It has much going for it, especially in its controlled voicing, its verbal energy and its bodily preoccupations. However, there are always a lot of considerations at play in our decision-making, and we have determined that we cannot use it at this time.

That’s press number two. Number three may wait until I look at the manuscript again, which I’ll likely do while in Banff this spring. It’s a good book, timely, and someone will take it and never regret that they did.