Category Archives: Work & Progress

Whatever it is, I’m in the middle of it

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In spring 2014, just before heading to Banff, I started a long story, one of my ‘man and woman and animals getting all confused together’ stories, with the idea that it would fill out (conclude, edify, rectify, flex hard or burnish) a themed collection entitled “Why Do Birds?”.  It goes like this: have a story collection but it’s too short (i.e. under 50,000 words) for publishers? Just end it with a long story. But on my way to writing a (not successful!!) grant request, that new story (“Mouth Human Must Die”) led to other ideas and soon a new collection was pulled out of thinning hair.  The writing of this new collection is going slowly, because I didn’t get the grant (these rejections actually affect the creation of the project, who would have guessed?) but the second story in the collection, “A Survivor’s Guide to Engine Failure at 35,000 Feet”, all 9500 words of it, will be in the marvelous online library at Numero Cinq this fall. There aren’t many publication venues for long stories, but online journals are ideal.

It’s been an odd spring/summer/life, what with the stresses of trying to make a living as a literary editor/book designer/translator/web designer/writer/beggar/impressario, so it’s nice to have some work accepted. I am a writer, dammit.

Damnit? Damn it?

Back to editing.

Upgathering of thought

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Oh, poor neglected blog that no one never reads, what ails thee? Time, time is the sickness… and also the cure. And furthermore, croaked the ravin’ mad lunatic.

What’s new over here? A long story has been started, about an aircrash, another in my Dr. Shabazz collection (a new project). An agent is reading my sheep novel (we think). I’ve read four consecutive books written by women  – Double-Blind (Michelle Butler Hallett), Hellgoing (Lynn Coady), The Town that Drowned (Riel Nason), Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel) – and am now reading Keith Ridgway’s Never Love a Gambler. Ridgway’s Hawthorn and Child was one of my favourite books last year. Tense, periscopic, and a kind of weirdness that had me smiling ear to toe.

I’ve seen the publication of a book I edited for Boularderie Island Press (Get More Power from Your Brain, Eileen Pease) and added a copy of Becoming Fierce to my publications bookshelf.

I am editing my 13th and 14th books of the year. One of those recently-edited books just became this.

There were two launches of the latest Breach House Anthology,  a writing group I’ve been deeply connected to since 2000. This was our third anthology. I also provided music at each launch, including a song based on one of the members’ lyrics (click here for that ditty).

I’ve edited, set-up, and now sent off for publication the revived Galleon.

I want to record another album soon. My reading series needs a new home. I continue to shed pounds (23 since July).

Lastly, it’s been a year since I had an underpaying overworking job, one I apparently left to focus on my writing career (insert raven laughter).  And how has that gone, you ask? The twitching has gone, I respond.

Apply yourself, young man

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I sent off an application to the Canada Council yesterday, a day before their creation grant deadline. This is my fifth time applying, with my first and the last three having been rejected. Last time it stung; I desperately needed the funds, which is the story of the past year.

Perhaps the story of my life.

But I did succeed once and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I’d been living in a house for sale for eight months, paying minimal ‘rent’ and living off donated food and biking everywhere. I was lean, making music for the first time in years, and writing. I’d even let my hair grow. A few months earlier I’d started developing, on a whim, an idea I dreamed up in France in 2003 (where I wrote the first page). Man in hell, talking fish as guide. Silly idea, but the characters worked and then something started to happen as I wrote chapter after chapter. When I sent the application in I was confident.

Months later, when the results were being announced, a friend called and said she was rejected, that all the rejections were in the mail today. So I called my mother, whose address I’d used, talked to my sister and asked if I had mail. I did. Crap. Canada Council, she said. Doublecrap. I wasn’t about to bike across town to get bad news so I said open it, save me the trouble. But she read “Dear Lee Thompson were are pleased to announce…” and I laughed, laughed and nearly cried.

The day prior the house had been sold and I, penniless, given less than a week to vacate.

I moved here, this neighborhood of kidnappings, where I’ve been for the past 7.5 years. A better ending would have the novel being published, but after a flirtation by Anansi, who admired it, it was then ridiculed by Gaspereau (‘from funny to inane in a hurry’), pondered by Coach House (‘wish we could publish everything we like’) and then accepted by Crossing Chaos, but then they more or less ceased operations. So.

So yes, yesterday another application sent. And even if nothing comes of it (I have a good feeling, though?), it led to me creating a new project out of a long story I’d written for another collection but which didn’t fit that collection well. I then drafted five new stories for the synopsis. Ideas I’d had floating around. Today, regardless of Canada Council decisions, I have an exciting collection in the works and for a writer that feels great. It’s like food in the fridge.

Speaking of which, next entry I’ll write more about the granting system.

Short Fiction at Numero Cinq!

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It’s up now:

http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2014/08/09/a-serpent-fiction-lee-d-thompson/

It’s only the second time I’ve had a story published online, because I rarely (only twice) submit to online journals. Can’t be denied though the readership is there, waiting, growing, and the story should be available for years to come.

Thanks to NC editor Douglas Glover for liking this story. Loopy, I think, was one of the words he used to describe it.

Fascinating, too, that it’s published on the birthday of the ex girlfriend who inspired Chiara.

Loopy, even.

Numero Cinq Preview

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Douglas Glover’s online oasis Numero Cinq will be publishing a story of mine in the upcoming August issue. I am thrilled. It’s a fine group of people to be with and “A Serpent” is one of my favourite stories (finished last year after returning from a vacation in Elba).

“… Lee D. Thompson pens a strange and charming story —”A Serpent” — about difficult love and a sea monster.”

http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2014/07/27/carved-in-stone-the-august-issue-preview/

This makes me feel writerly again. Banff did that too, but what a mess of work and other issues I’ve had since returning.

Must get a collection in print.

Banff: Three

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I could spend my days taking in the sights here, and by that I mean taking them into my camera. There was discussion yesterday about the camera robbing one of the experience of seeing (tourists flocking to a sunrise, 2000 cameras out), but I felt that wasn’t fair, at least not to all who wander with camera. A counter argument was made that the camera asks you to see, to stop and frame and focus. I agree with the latter, of course.

Bow River

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am here to write.  Do the images (does the landscape) help my writing?  Quite likely, but this isn’t an essay on seeing. Below this window is a story waiting words.  I did wonder, during yesterday’s discussion, what taking photographs and my desire to write have in common, what thing am I trying to achieve/attain/accomplish with each.  I like the ooh and the aah factor. A deeper part of me says, quietly, something about illuminating the nature of being. See the here while we’re here and see it in new ways.

DSC06660

 

 

 

 

 

 

One week left to take more pictures and try to write.  Photos are easier. Talking about writing, art, philosophy is easier. I’ve edited “One for the Master” (sheep novel), made minor changes throughout, and have passed it along to Dionne Brand. I will read from it on the 20th.

Banff Springs Hotel

Banff, Two

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At Banff I’ve been going over my sheep novel with Tamas Dobozy and this has been fruitful. The goal is to retain the spirit but to transfer the soul. Actually, the goal is to make it a little more reader friendly. Meanwhile, it is raining in the pines and snow is on the way (falling on cedars, right?).

Banff as seen from on high.

Banff from Tunnel Mountain.

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.

Boulardarie Island Press

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I’m pleased to be added to the editing roster of Boulardarie Island Press. The press, run by author Douglas Arthur Brown, falls into that evolving area between traditional publishing and self publishing, and could be described as “assisted, professional-quality self publishing” offering e-book conversion, editorial services, printing services, promotional advice. The preference is to work with authors who have already had a trade publication. Some of those authors, like myself, tire of waiting for the second or third book to be picked up, or have seen little financial benefit in traditional publishing.

The Boulardarie Island Press editing roster (drum roll… er, link roll….):

http://boularderieislandpress.com/our-editors/

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.