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 Withdrawn.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:

Caution: Octoberly Work in progess

Trying to wrangle: my new short-story collection edits; transcribe/edit a fantastical October tale; pen a book review; file an e-interview about a promiinent queer Canuck poet; wrangle revising my second horror novel Monstrous; wotk up and organize and complete a suite of superhero-related pomes.

Also have two ready-to-print novelettes—one, "Congregation Haul", about an excommunicated queer Jehovah's Witness trying to save upstanding congregation members from their deepest fears made real; the other, "Sketchy", about an empath tracking a serial killer in Ottawa's gay village in 2002; a loveletter to bygone queer bars.

Jason Loo's Dazzler: World Tour

New comic I dug. Absolutely loved writer Jason Loo's Dazzler: World Tour with Rafael Loureiro & Alan Robinson & Terry & Rachel Dodson. 

She's a knockout. Very fun. Gorgeous art. The snappy script is surprisingly nuanced. Hm. Wonder if there's ny more Dazzler in this fellow Canuck writer's future?

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.