Public Lending Rights Chuff

Been struggling lately to feel like a writer, and to work on my stuff.  But last week, I received my annual payment from the Public Lending Rights Program from the Canada Council for the Arts, as my books Town & Train and Fear Itself (both Lethe Press) are available in Canadian libraries. It's a reminder that I'm still a writer.

Thank you, casual library users, avid bibliophiles, the Canada Council, The Writers' Union of Canada, all you readers out there and, of course, other writers carving out their craft. 

Work-in-progress: reviews, poetry, fiction

Currently reviewing Soundtrack, a Book*hug Press poetry collection by my pal Michael V. Smith. Each poem is titled after a popular 1970's, 1980's or 1990's pop song, his personal experience with that song, and growing up queer in our hometown of Cornwall, Ontario. 

Also trying to place a review of San Francisco-area writer Scott Terry's 2025 literary novel, The Gift (Torchwood Books), the story of both a single mother, Pansy, and her son William (aka Butch), a queer kid who embraces the cowboy lifestyle, growing up in a strict Jehovah's Witness household in the Siskiyou Mountains in the late 1950's to the late 1970's.

Then also continually organizing my poetry and editing my second short-story collection, which fab editor-writer Andrew Wilmot edited last year.

Catherine O'Hara, March 4, 1954 – January 30, 2026

 Oh, damn it to hell, to hear the news of Catherine O'Hara passing yesterday. Discovered her as a kid watching Toronto's SCTV at sleepovers, growing up  in the 'burbs. The film Beetlejuice cemented my enduring crush for her doing Harry Belafonte's "Day-O". Adored her pretentious Moira Rose (depicted) in Schitt's Creek. Last saw her as an alcoholic pothead shrink in the second season of The Last of Us. A delightfully irascible broken character.

You were terrific, Catherine O'Hara. Rest in humour & power. And please say "Hi" for me to your fellow SCTV alum John Candy.

Sal Buscema, Comic Book Artist, 1936-2026

This week has had noteable losses. 

Sal Buacema passed away January 24 at the age of 89. Buscema is the legendary comic-book artist who, among other many credentials, drew The Incredible Hulk monthly comic for a record ten years, defining Ol' Greenskin's iconic comic look of the time. Notable additions to the Green Goliath mythos include the treacherous fellow irradiated U-Foes and the Cold-War-era Soviet Super Soldiers. 

The slobbering mouth is all Buscema's touch, like the famous Kirby Cosmic Crackle. I grew up with that comic. For eight years, Buscema also penciled The Spectacular Spider-Man. 

I have a poem, '"Nomad", about Sal Buscema and the Jade Giant, that I am seeking a home for. 

Thank you for the high adventure, Sal. You were brilliant. 

Here is the Frank Miller cover, opening splash page, a Hulk-out splash page and a claustrophic sequence from The Incredible Hulk # 261, "Encounter on Easter Island". Hulk meets up with sociopath Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man. Fellow comic legend, mainstay Hulk writer Bill Mantlo, scripted the issue, during Old Jade Jaw's worldwide drifter years. This outre imagery, the entire Easter Island motif, captured my impressionable imagination. 

I allude to this outlandish issue # 267 in "Nomad".

https://www.marvel.com/articles/comics/sal-buscema-tribute