Benched

Sidelined, utterly benched, by a headcold all week, and feeling defeated, overwhelmed, reclusive. Wondering what the point if so many things is, and if my projects will see fruition. Withdrawn.

Spoilery thoughts on Stranger Things season five so far

Spoilery thoughts on the pop-culural  phenomenom of Stranger Things season five

The Janice Byers character finally gets to step up and do something. Oh, thamk gods...she's not just worrying anymore, but fighting!

The requisite ginger character, fan-favourite Max (Sadie Sink) gets to go full wild Irish, grow her hair out and talk with more of an Irish lilt. Big fan. Only so much Kate Bush we can hear as a refrain, though.

Turns out Will Byers' constant weeping in often-flabby season four is actually purposeful, as his role is clarified and developed beyond simple abductee. 

Supersweet dork Maya Hawke's character Robin gets to show her brainy superpower and have a Big Gay Team-up with Will Byers!  

Maya is a fascinating hybrid of her folks, Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman (just learned this). Quirky, awkward, she acts more like a teenager than the whole lot.

The main kids get to all hero up, as mentors, and even all the parents get a moment to show their courage. 

Many heroic moments, even for fat bully kids and newer characters. 

Full-tilt boogie horror at one plot point. Yowzer! 

The antagonist even gets fleshed out. Looks a little like an Alan Moore Swamp Thing, though.

Enjoyable! Bad hair, great action and fine character development. Expected blend of action, mystery, humour, horror. Tighter by far than season four. How about them suburban moms and dads staring down danger?  Features adults obviously too big to play kids, but hey—call it the Harry Potter Franchise Effect and move on? Still, quite dug it.

I have always had a complicated  relationship with this show, as it occurs in the early eighties and my first horror novel Town & Train is set in summer 1990 but has few nostalgic trappings, being at the end of that decade. 

I wrote (and rewrote) my novel long before Stranger Things became the reason to get a new entertainment platform called Netflix. 

There are similarities, for sure. Small-town horror. Kids researching microfiche at the library, and also a library with bannisters out front and old staircase leading to the entrance. A teenager lying to the parent of a kid they know won't be coming back. Bullies tormenting high-high school kids (although my bully Christian "Cutter" Hartley is a metalhead. The use of pop music to describe a character's state of mind. 

I am fairly certain that unless the Duff brothers read Town & Train, and found inspirations, that they also grew up in the suburbs, gobbled up Stephen King at formative stage, are about my age, and wanted to make some great horror about small-town life. What the show lacks that my novel does not lack is including Indigenous characters, Tommy Two Rivers and Bruck Naticoke,  from Akwesasne Reserve and minor Francophone characters and a characteristic Canadian feel to the idioms an attitudes of my characters.

Notes on the doc, A Flash of Beauty: Bigfoot Revealed

Almost embarrassingly enjoyable, the doc, A Flash of Beauty: Bigfoot Revealed. 

Interesting seemingly heartfelt accounts of sightings. Requisite expert talking-heads. Sweeping landscale cinemtography. Great use and mining of established Sasquatch lore.  Almost ... spiritual, really. In short—great fun.

Can-Con 2025 notes

In Mid-October, we tabled at Can-Con, Ottawa's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Convention at the Brook Street Hotel in Kanata with fab co-pilot AJ Dolman and fab Christian Baines, writer of urban queer paranormal novels, down from Toronto. Attending, tabling and sometimes paneling this con has been our little tradition for several years. We compare notes afterwards ovet supper, perhaps commiserating over a drink. Or four, depending on how things went.

I was selling my novel Town & Train and collection Fear Itself. Or, rather, trying to. Read on.

On the upside, we had some great chats. Looking atchoo', Christopher Shorewick, K. M. Greyburn, Derek Newman-Stille, Dwayne MacKinnon, of the Out Of The Basement Podcast, and the other James by our booth. Our table also talked to other writers and vendors and attended some interesting panels. Heck, I even chatted with a friendly spectacled attendee with the elfin ears at the giveaway table. She read an entire chapbook by Renaissance author R. Haven instead of taking it because it was the last copy. 

However, on the downside, book sales hit a record low, perhaps because of the con's move to Kanata, in Ottawa's far-flung west end.  Also, a noticeable absence was staple Can-Con shutterbug James Coughlan, a professional who volunteers his time each fall. 

As someone who pens hotror, fantasy, sci fi, lit, poetry and book reviews,  I find that the SFF set doesn't quite know how to handle talking with me beyond the niceties of attending a conference or quite what panels to invite me on, save the usual horror-themed and writers''group-themed ones. 

My usual trusty tactic, to redeem myself of the oil-and-water mix vibe of the con, is to pitch a particular publisher a project idea. Three times in a row (and two years running), I have successfully pitched projects. Not so, this time out. The publisher I usually talk to canceled its pitch sessions without explanation, save for a note on the sign-up sheet. I tried to sign up at the last minute with another publisher. However, the list was full. Although I added my name to the sign-up sheet in case of a cancellation, nobody cancelled. 

So, with my mood thus affected, the abysmal sales didn't help.  The lack of takers crushed the morale at the table, and our spirits. The lengthy daily commute was often over 30 minutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 417.

If the con returns to downtown, as has been the case for over a decade, we might reconsider attending. For now, though, our trio made the tough call afterwards. We will not be returning next fall. The cost of the booth, registering for the con (about $90 each for the weekend; panelists must, in fact, register), as well as gas and food expenses, all mean that attending this con, at least for us, has cons that far outweigh the pros. 

Hallowe'en 2025: Assorted Random Shots

Alas, last Friday night we saw the worst All Hallows' Eve turnout in years last Friday night, due to a combination of rainy and clammy weather for the trick-or-treaters and the Blue Jays' World Series game six airing at eight. Only 19 kids rang our gnarly-eyeball doorbell. 

Alleyway, downtown Ottawa. Approx. 5:10pm, Hallowe'en, 2025.

Last year, we had about 80 kids, finally recovering from the pandemic and the early canceled lockdown Halloween and seeing an upswing of young families on our block. 

I like a cteepy face in the tree of of our frontyard to greet trick-or treaters. We coninue, though, to be one of only a handful of houses that observes with a lit jack-o'-lantern.

The Tubular Bells vinyl I just scored from a goodhearted DJ colleague.

Some of my handiwork.

What I viddied later after some episodes of Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Fab seasonal pic of Ottawa writer AJ Dolman.

That's our 17 year old carving his first pumpkin. It's the jack-o'-lantern on the right. Tradition passed along! Pretty proud of him.

Captain James, or...Captain Moran.

James Aquilone's Classic Monsters Unleashed

October readin' and dreamin'. James Aquilone's Classic Monsters Unleashed, a who's-who of new stories about famous creatures, from some of the best horror voices in the business. 

Jonathan Maberry's "Höllenlegion", a riff on "The Island of Doctor Moreau", kicks off this delicious autumnal feast. The inimitable Joe R. Lansdale's gobsmackingly good "God of the Razor" caps it. 

Read Lansdale's piece first, I was so excited. Don't do that; it is unfair to all the other great creature stories. Over a year later, I am reading the rest, and enjoying each and every one, from Tim Waggoner's modern werewolf yarn "Blood Hunt" to Lisa Morton's fun "Hacking the Horseman's Code" à la Amazing Stories late 1980's TV incarnation.

Gorgeous cover art, and some stunningly macabre interior story art,  from Colton Worley.

Flattering post about my novel Town & Train

Winnipeg writer David Jón Fuller posted a very flattering comment about my debut 2014 horror novel, Town & Train (Lethe Press). I am quite appreciative of his shot of the railroad tracks, which puts me in a mind of the tracks in my hometown of Cornwall, which I fictionalized in the novel, as they skirted through the woods of my neighbourhood of Riverdale. I also included, for good measure, in my small city of Brandon, Ontario, the Seaway International Bridge, the Domtar Pulp and Paper Mill, and even Brookdale Mall, including Brookdale Cinemas.

Thank you kindly, David. I was having one of those stretches where these words landed just at the right time. And this photo may be new favourite thing to turn to during times of doubt.

It should be noted that Turnstone Press is publishing Fuller’s debut speculative fiction novel, Venue 13, in spring 2026 under the Ravenstone imprint.

Here's what David had to say: