Reading with Amanda Earl & AJ Dolman at the Pump

Had a terrific reading with co-pilot AJ Dolman and Amanda Earl at the the Lieutenant's Pump in Ottawa this Sunday. Monsters abounded in our work—vampires, transphobic parents and shapeshifters, including my  longtime pal John Newman, whom I have had the pleasure to know since high school.

In "John Newman, you'll not catch me", he is pitted against a vile shapeshifter in a race through the forest to save the dreams of the residents of a sleepy small-town suburb. 

What an honour that Amanda made this happen.

Made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Writers' Union of Canada.

September 28 Ottawa reading with AJ Dolman & Amanda Earl

Very excited to share this forthcoming Sunday, Sept. 28 event in Ottawa with the magnificent AJ Dolman and Amanda Earl at the Lieutenant's Pump, 361 Elgin. Doors 1:30pm. 2pm reading.

You can order drinks and food and be merry while taking in poetry and spec fic. The Pump carries three ambers, which I support. The Ashton Brewing Company's amber remains one of top five in Ottawa.

(The Pump also does a mean Sunday roast that I have enjoyed in the past.)

Amanda says it's going to be a beautiful event, the second in her Throuple tour, and I believe her. I owe her a thanks for organizing the whole enchilada.

Bios!

AJ Dolman’s (they/she) debut poetry collection is Crazy / Mad (Gordon Hill Press, 2024). They previously authored Lost Enough: A collection of short stories (MRP, 2017), and three poetry chapbooks, and co-edited Motherhood in Precarious Times (Demeter Press, 2018). Dolman’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A bi/pan+ rights advocate and founder of Bi+ Canada, they live on unceded, unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, reviews, edits, publishes, facilitates workshops, organizes literary events on the unceded lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca, editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry and your editor if you’ll have her. Her poetry books include Beast Body Epic, Genesis, Trouble, and Kiki. Her creative missions are whimsy, exploration and connection with kindred misfits. She writes so that fellow misfits don’t feel alone. More info: AmandaEarl.com.

James K. Moran’s fiction collection Fear Itself and horror novel Town & Train were published by Lethe Press. Moran’s poetry and speculative fiction have appeared in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Burly Tales: Fairy Tales for the Hirsute and Hefty Gay Man, Bywords, Glitterwolf, On Spec, and elsewhere. He writes across the genres about grief, love, nomadic superheroes and drag-queen warlocks. Moran’s reviews appear in Arc Poetry Magazine, Plenitude and Strange Horizons.

Tom King's Black Canary: Best of the Best is the Best of Comics

 Should be laying off social media, but ... Tom King & Ryan Sook's six-issue Black Canary: Best of the Best series is so damn good. Masterful letterer Clayton Cowles Cowles is on the book, too.

Premise: Black Canary, aka Dinah Lance, has a widely publicized bout with undefeated and deadly Lady Shiva to determine who is the world's best fighter. The reader is treated to Dinah's humanizing backstory, her mother, the original BC, putting Dinah through gruelling trainng that would put Bruce Wayne to shame, Sook's gorgeous pencils, all the cameos King works in, King's punchy script, and the kick-ass choreography. My new favourite thing.

Summer of the Event wraps up

So, that's a wrap on a phenomenal  Ottawa Capital Pride, and on our Summer of the Event for AJ n' me.

We made the rounds. Im late June, I read at the pre-Ottawa Small Press Fair. And in good company! Mahaila Smith, Manahil Bandukwala, Jay Millar, Pearl Pirie, yours truly and MA|DE (Jade Wallace and Mark Laliberte). It was a Ottawa pre-small press fair reading on Friday to a packed Anina's Café, organized by pal rob mcLennan. The next day, with Christian Baines, we sold books at the Ottawa Small Press Fair. 

We also boothed at Pride Toronto with Christian Baines, me, organizer-writer Dorianne Emerton, AJ, and JM Freeman, and sold Stevie Mikayne's books in absentia. I read with the same fine bunch at Super Bargain Cocktail Bar.

And, lest this modicum of fame should go to my head, I grappled with insomnia at both events.

A few weeks later, I shared a fine July 24 reading at Winnipeg's fine Raven's End: The Horror Book Shop, a fine new business that opened last fall.

That's me, SM Beiko, Keith Cadieux, and fab thoughtful host Susie Moloney talking writing craft—new projects; pandemic fiction ideas, parental fear and having writin' ideas. I said some stuff, which was hopefully coherent and thought-provoking, being off my game at the outset from the uber dropping me at bookstore owner Chelsea's place instead of the readong venue and pulked away wotj my side bag.

SM's a terrifically prolific writer, Keith has a bunch of dishes on the stove and Susie treated us to.a scene from her horror novel-in-progress. Trigger warnings abounded (or should have?) regarding teeth and even moths.

Luckily, though, my co-pilot AJ Dolman lent me reading glasses, answered the returning uber driver's fall for me, and got the bag back. The full audience was terrific, also bought books. My colleagues are very talented and superb readers. As I said, I bet  on winning horses.

On August 21, we held our first Queer Indy Authors reading at T's All Welcoming Pub, hosted by Eden Moore. It featured AJ Dolman, Natalie Hanna, Chris Johnson, Stevie Mikayne and yours truly. 

For the Pride Street Festival, we had the first Bi+ Canada booth, Canada's national, not-for-profit first bi-rights organization, having incorporated a month ago. A stunning 110 folks signed up for the bi-monthly newsletter.

With Pride's end, we have reached the end of our summer road. 

Here are pics from Capital Pride. That's AJ Dolman talking to her first peep for the brand-new B Canada booth.

There I am with Pride pals Emilie and Wanda. 

Here are pics from Capital Pride, including before shots of Bank Street. 

The Queers for Palestine march forced the parade to cancel. Pride continues to be a feisty ground of protest and free expression, where its roots run deep.

Our first demonstrations were in 1971. Too many police raids on Toronto bathhouses in the early eighties also became the tipping point for many Canadian queers who had enough persecution.

Now that is September, I have dteams, and writing projects, to attend to and need time to reflect and set to work.

Monster in the St. Lawrence River?

Quite dug, with a grain of proverbial salt, this fun youtuber doc, Monster in the St. Lawrence River?

Admittedly, it uses too much re-hashed waterway footage about giant sea serpent sightings in the St. Lawrence, but the accounts are interesting, if a little repetitive. Many lack opposing arguments (for example, an elk in the water can appear bizarre, huge, and with horns and humps), with the exception of a  McGill university professor easily exposing a purported specimen as a hoax in 1895).

Still, there's a fine Indigenous storytelling connection to ground the whole works, the traditional Kahnawake Mohawk belief regarding the giant water snake of the St. Lawrence. The doc recounts lots of sightings near Saguenay and Gananoque, Quebec.
I grew up not far from the St. Lawrence. You can see it from Second Street, which runs somewhat east to west along the southern edge of my old neighbourhood. The idea of sea serpents in those waters and sea serpents as a concept fired up my imagination early on, when I was a grade school kid. I drew it. I might have dreamt about it. One of the stories in my book Fear Itself includes such a creature lurking that very river.

And I knew it! I recalled a sea serpent story I heard when I was  growing up. In this mini-doc, at about the 40-minute mark, there is a reference to a 1936 sighting of a sea serpent near the Long Sault Parkway, about 15 klicks from my hometown of Cornwall. The narrator mispronounces "Massena", but their (cryptozoological) heart is in the right place. Locals affectionately nicknamed the purported creature "Oscar". Oscar!

Some horned serpent sightings in the doc sound a lot like they could be elk. Before the Seaway was built, creatures could enter the river from oceanic waters. There's an early 1900's Mohawk story, the Legend of Sa’ronkwa’sen, about a kid, Kahnawake, who piggy-backed the serpent and was spotted later near Cornwall Island by Akwesasne Mohawks. I am more inclined to believe Lake Ontario has older creatures, being in the Monster Belt, the same latitude around the world where many witnesses have spotted purported sea serpents. It corresponds to roughly between 45 degrees and 60 degrees north latitude. 

That said, I still like the idea, however improbable,  of something being in the river, or that at least used to be.

Anyhow, I am courageous enough to admit it—I still adore sea serpents. I might dream about them, still. The Plesiosaurus is my favourite dinosaur, as an adult. Dinosaurs remain proof that monsters, great creatures, roamed this big blue marble for many, many moons before we appeared and for far longer. And I consider this discovery marvelous—synchronicity at its most startling.

Documentary text is here, too.
https://mysteriesofcanada.com/quebec/monsters-of-the-st-lawrence-river/

Queer Indie Authors at T's Pub

Queer Indie Authors at T's Pub
Featuring:
AJ Dolman
Natalie Hanna
Chris Johnson
Stevie Mikayne
James K. Moran
 
T's Pub or tspub.ca
Ottawa, Ontario.
Thurs., Aug. 21. 
Doors "open", 5:30. 
6:00pm start.
Free event.
Y'all are invited.

That's how the pros do it, true believers. We've got it all—poetry, horror and other speculative fiction, mystery and fab host Eden Moore, to boot! 

AJ Dolman’s (they/she) debut poetry collection is Crazy / Mad (Gordon Hill Press, 2024). They previously authored Lost Enough: A collection of short stories (MRP, 2017), and three poetry chapbooks, and co-edited Motherhood in Precarious Times (Demeter Press, 2018). Dolman’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. A bi/pan+ rights advocate and founder of Bi+ Canada, they live on unceded, unsurrendered Anishinaabe Algonquin territory.

Chris Johnson (he/him) was born in Scarborough, ON, and currently lives on unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. He is the Managing Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and Editorial Assistant at Nightwood Editions. Chris' latest chapbook is 320 lines of poetry (counting blank lines) (Anstruther Press, 2023).

natalie hanna is a queer Ottawa lawyer of Middle-Eastern descent, working with low income populations. She runs battleaxe press, and her poem “light conversation” received Honourable Mention for the 2019 Diana Brebner Prize. She is the author of thirteen poetry chapbooks, including titles with above/ground press and Baseline Press. Her 2021 chapbook, machine dreams (Collusion Books), co-authored with Liam Burke, was nominated for the 2022 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her first full-length collection, lisan al'asfour (ARP Books, 2022), was a finalist for the 2023 Ottawa Book Awards.

Stevie Mikayne is a queer writer of romantic mysteries. Her work is inspired by that time she was allowed to crash a Private Investigator School, coupled with her natural resistance to being told that she can't blend genres. She is a two-time Lambda Literary Award Finalist as well as a Golden Crown Literary Award Finalist. In her real life, she is a professor of creative writing at the University of Ottawa and a mum to a fabulous almost-teenager.

James K. Moran, a writer of many bi lines, has published speculative fiction and poetry in Burly Tales: Finally Fairy Tales for the Hirsute and Hefty Gay Man, Bywords, Glitterwolf, On Spec, and elsewhere. Moran’s collection Fear Itself and small-town Canada horror novel Town & Train were published by Lethe Press. For over 15 years, he was a freelance contributor for Xtra Magazine (née Capital Xtra!). He reviews for Arc Poetry Magazine, Plenitude: your queer literary magazine and Strange Horizons. Findable at jamestheballadeer.

Finally reading Peter Atkins' All our Hearts are Ghosts & Other Stories

Finally reading All our Hearts are Ghosts & Other Stories (Shadowridge Press, 2022) by my pal Algie (aka Peter Atkins). Here it is, in my Winnipeg hotel room. I was recently out west for a reading with local spec-fic writers SM Beiko, Keith Cadieux and host Susie Mohoney at Raven's End: The Horror Book Shop. They astonished me. I had ordered my elusive signed copy (at least in Ontario) late last year from the new bookstore. 

I thought the short-story collection would be good. But I must admit that instead, it is very, very good. 

Toured with Peter and Glen Hirshberg (Artie) as part of The Rolling Darkness Revue 2010: Curtain Call, a traveling roadshow of horror writers where the two scribes would travel with a contributer from that year's chapbook. 

I am happy to say I am still learning from Algie. What a gift Peter's short stories are—efficient, incisive, eminently readable, smart and so very, surprisingly, funny. Why did I wait so long to read it? Why?

The collection feartures ten stories in all, all strong or superb, as well as the script for a Marvel Hellraiser comic (without the artwork) and prose examining the backstories of three characters in the film Hellraiser: Hell On Earth, a project which Peter was attached to. The latter two are not my cup of literary tea, but as admittedly akin to  bonus material for a DVD, they are intriguing. Still, Peter's fantastical stories, though, are pithy, sometimes gorey, and always clever. 

The opener, a banger of a novelette, "The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of" is a compelling first-person pulpy prequel to "Intricate Green Figurines", a clever, engaging story  from his last collection Rumours of The Marvelous concerning the pursuit of emerald figurines of Lovecraftian creatures. As I recall, the piece was portentous with an underlyimg sense of menace.

So, naturally, when we recently tried the Greek version of the board game Horrified, in Winnipeg, at a faming café, this green Medusa figurine caught my attention. One must ask, is it one of your characters', Algie?

That aside, Atkins' clever use of intergenerational character I admire greatly. These  include Private Dick Steve Donnelly, protagonist of "The Stuff that Dreams Are Made Of" and his daughter Tabby in the charming "The Thing About Cats". His grandaughter Kitty appeared in stories in Rumours of The Marvelous. Such intergenerational connection adds a certain weight, texture and je ne sais quoi to reading the pieces. Peter's story notes are an enjoyable complement to each story as well, being both potty-mouthed and playful with the reader.

I remain grateful that I know Peter (aka Algie). Read him. It's terrific work, really, with each story revealing further delights, dread and disquietude.  

As well, I am thankful that Chelsea shipped this signed edition from Raven's End: The Horror Book Shop last December.