Review of Daniel Allen Cox's I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witnes

My latest book review is up at Plenitude Magazine of Daniel Allen Cox's I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness. Link's here.

Particularly proud of the blood, sweat, tears-and life research-that went into this one.

Primal from Genndy Tartakovsky woos me

This show has wooed me. From Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of the cult-favourite Samurai Jack, comes Primal, in which there is no dialogue. Spear, a Neanderthal, and Claw, a female, adult, teal-colored Tyrannosaurus, navigate a savage Prehistoric landscape, banding together after predators kill their respective families. It is brutally Darwinian, not for the faint of heart, and deeply visceral. Primal plays for keeps. Good and bad characters can die at any time. The recurring theme, unsurprisingly, is the fragility of a species, and musings about mortality. Battles are often gory, wnd even gorier, be forewarned. The score soars. The animation is immersing. The colour palette is sweeping and transporting. Did I mention there's not a single word of dialogue? Primal remains a master example of visual storytelling. Very satisfied to finally watch the 2019 first season. 

Taking Stock and Summer Snapshots: Loss, Writing Projects & Covid

September always makes me take stock, turn inward, and try to move with that big ol' wheel turning from late summer to fall.

Summer was rough at the start, had a smooth middle, and then a rough finish. In late May, I got a phone call saying a dear friend took their own life. This crushed my spirits. Well, more than my spirits. I was bereft. Levelled. I knew he had been dealing with mental health issues (agoraphobia, PTSD, psychotic breaks) for a few years. The following weeks were a blur of cleaning out his apartment. Their immediate family, his sister, lives in Connecticut and had to come up here and sort out details while the lawyer handled the estate. 

On June 15, I spoke on a very smart panel, Celebrating Artists' Pride as part of Lanark Pride. The other queer artists included, from left to right: Lorrie Potvin, Arria Deepwater, a photographer I know from a ways back named Lori Taylor, Susan Wagner-White (absent) and moderated by Kathryn Baker-Reed (not in the shot). The event was a great opportunity to talk about my creative process and writing in general, and talk to readers, which I love doing. I am grateful that it helped me feel like a writer again, as I had not worked on anything since learning of my friend's passing.

My June 28 launch of my short-story collection Fear Itself raised my spirits, with a great crowd and great questions from my host, Dr. Sean Moreland. 

Performing my story "Carl and Monty's Prairie Wager" with my pal and co-conspirator Sean McKibbon was definitely a Rocky-Mountain-high sort of highlight, as we have known each other nearly as long as the grizzled cowboys in the story. Blogged about it previously here.

 Full moon—a Strawberry Moon, in fact—over
the St. Lawrence River. June 3, 2023. 9:26 pm.

July was an adjustment. I continued to parry the blow of my grief with both healthy coping mechanisms (staying busy, exercising, talking about it) and unhealthy ones and taking pictures of the good ol' moon, a coping mechanism I developed during the slow loss of my sister to lung cancer in fall 2021. 

Our teenaged son traveled out west to work at his aunt's store for six weeks while we learned to do things on our own here. Still, this mid-stretch was fairly good, between ending June with my launch of my short-story collection Fear Itself, reconnecting with founding members of my Little Workshop of Horrors group and trading stories again, reconnecting with an old friend (more below) and getting much done in the day-to-day details of our lives. My co-pilot and me managed to go to attend great friends' gatherings and got out for some a few fine-and-fun dinner dates and we also found adventures wherever we could, big or small.

In early August, we visited our son in BC. It was either that or driving about six hours to the National Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine (the other Portland), but seeing our kid again clinched the  decision. We went west instead of east. 

A positive rapid test for Covid can look like
this, with a single red line on top. 

A few days after returning, and having a two-hour delay of layover time at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, we tested positive with Covid. Yes; it's still out there. On the plane and the airport, only a handful of other people masked. We masked whenever we were in the air, in fact. There then followed the inevitable self-isolation period. Our neighbours had dropped off the rapid tests. For groceries, my best friend offered and he got us emergency staple items (ready-made chicken, hummus, milk, produce). In other words enough to get through a week. But still, we missed work time (I luckily had enough sick days, although there is no longer a Covid-sick-day category, but only regular sick days). This was frustrating and we just felt awful.

At least the symptoms were lighter than last time (a year ago, around the same time, after traveling to Toronto and Niagara On The Lake). I could focus long enough to read, too, which is fortunate. No fever or chills, agonizing aching hips, head cold, headache, and various flu symptoms. So, we lost a few weeks due to Covid. Time permitting, I will share pictures of my coping mechanisms. 

Grady Hendrix's heartful and entertaining My Best Friend's Exorcism I blogged about recently here last time. But, as well, I read Suzette Mayr's rather stunning The Sleeping Car Porter, Kate Beaton's literary and epic Ducks, J. W. Ocker's highly amusing The United States of Cryptids and writer-artist Steve Skroce and colourist Bryan Valenza's Clobberin' Time, a rollicking five-issue series with the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing getting into tight situations with characters including the Hulk, Doctor Doom and Dr. Strange in wildly imaginative and cosmic, senses shattering fights. 

It's wild and just my weird-speed.

Still trying to catch back up, from doing stuff around the house, the yard, and just getting it together for autumn. My writers' group need to meet to critique our stories in person (we have already done so in Track Changes for each piece, but meeting in person truly brings out the flashes of insight, in my experience). 

I am still finishing drafting a horror short story about Jehovah's Witnesses confronting their greatest fears (hint: it's based on an urban myth from the 1980's about the perils of JW's who either read the comic or watched the syndicated Saturday-morning cartoons about little blue guys and gals). The needle on the story is veering toward the novella territory of 7,500 to 17,500 words. 

As well, after weeks of delays, compounded because of my grief, I finally turned in my review of Daniel Allen Cox's I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness) with my editor at prestigious queer online literary magazine. Stay tuned for a publication date and further details.

Now with September here, I am turning to introspection and hopefully inspiration. I will need to be patient with myself as I make up for lost time, but I am also kind of excited about the prospects of my writing projects. Autumn, particularly October, was always Ray Bradbury's favourite time of year, as well as Jack Kerouac's whatever his flaws. It's also mine. I'm trying to see the things that matter more, and treasure them, while also understanding that I'm as flawed and imperfect as anyone else and being better aware of my effect on others.

So in addition to back-to-school miscellany, I need to get gunning on a secret project for a local and wonderful press; assembling my second short-story collection and lastly, second-novel revisions.

Welcome, September. Let's try to get along, shall we?

Story in Fear Itself collection dedicated to mentor

The big wheel turns this past weekend. September third marks the anniversary of the passing of Hugh DeCourcy, my beloved friend, mentor and kindred spirit back in '96.

Sometimes, if you're lucky, restless and growing up in a small city, you can meet someone who changes the course of your life and leaves a mark on you in a positive way. Hugh was that someone for me. He introduced me to the works of H.P. Lovecraft and showed me that I could pursue my passion no matter what anyone else thought. Hugh taught me that you can be a hobby guitarist, a keen chess player, an amateur painter, a cross-country runner, a close observer, and a writer of infinite passion and curiosity. God damn, but he was great.

I have mentioned him previously around this time of year. This September, though, I can proudly say how I have done right by him as a he features as a character in my short-story collection Fear Itself in the story “A Canadian Ghost In London” on page 169. The story concerns Sara Jasmine, a Canadian ex-pat spending evenings at the Astoria Nightclub in London, England in 1998, who becomes convinced that the ghost of her friend Hugh is pursuing her. The piece is rich with British references and reminiscences and moments, these flies in amber. I hope readers enjoy it. 

I know Hugh would be happy with it. This one's for you, Hugh.

Suzette Mayr 's masterful The Sleeping Car Porter

More Covid-recovery reading. Finally got to Suzette Mayr 's masterful The Sleeping Car Porter. It is about a queer black porter, Baxter, who aspires to be a dentist, working on a train cross-crossing Canada in 1929. 

This thing has so much going for it. There is her characterization reminiscent of Michael V. Smith 's closeted protagonist Earnest in the startling novel Cumberland; social commentary about racism and classism; allusions to exacting customer service; details about a ridiculous working climate; hallucinatory sleep deprivation description and concise landscape description. 

Aspiring writers take note-there"s much to learn, here. Mayr's descriptions of an ensemble cast would, in a less mature writer's hands, descend into caricature or pigeon-holing instead of layered complexity. 

All this, steeped in an increasingly powerful magical realism. Please note, Elliott Dunstan, if you read this. 

And my appreciation for this hypnotic and beguiling novel has no connection whatsoever to the fact I wrote Town & Train, a small-town Canadiana horror novel about ... a phantom steam engine. 

All aboard!

My Best Friend's Exorcism: Review notes from a recent case of Covid

Blogging from notes scribbled during our latest bout with Covid, acquired on a return trip with a two-hour delay at our layover at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. First up-my (non-spoilery) thoughts on Grady Hendrix's novel My Best Friend's Exorcism, both the novel and the film adaptation.

In my house, two weeks back, we were sick as dogs. with headcold symptoms (headache, fever at times, sinus infections, aching joints, exhaustion, hot and cold flashes and loss of focus at times).  

During my non-sleeping, bed-bound and deck moments, just to soak up Vitamim D and get some fresh air and space in self-isolation, I finished Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism. It's nostalgia-drenched (set in 1988), but pleasantly so. Grady's book has great summer horror-flick feel to it, with tons of heart, not to mention that the novel is plain fun.

Thank you kindly, Cole Lavergne, for recommending this yarn a ways back.

I feel an affinity for Hendrix's blend of horror, pithiness, humor and literary sensibilities. In my first novel Town & Train and my new short-story collection Fear Itself, there are often equal amounts humanity, horror ... and humor.

My Best Friend's Exorcism was also charming, as well as amusing. But I was so charmed that I almost didn't notice that Hendrix never explained the how? of the possession. Hendrix found a superb eerie setting in the blockhouse where Abby wanders, looking for Gretchen during an excellent failed-LSD-trip scene. But how the demon possessed Gretchen is never quite explained, nor where. I re-read sections, seeking answers to the where and how queries. Gretchen does explain that a man was waiting for her in the woods, "bigger than a person should be." And there  is a sort of sentient darkness in the blockhouse that Hendrix does not elaborate further on. I think that Hendrix missed an opportunity in exploring the history/mystery of the blockhouse, beyond allusions that dark rituals occurred there.

But other than that-what a superb novel. I was about the protagonists' ages in '88. There's a reason my Train book occurs in '90 (when I was seventeen).

Have you seen the film of MBFE? Ironically, in the adaptation on Prime, they expand on the blockhouse mythos, arguably improving this element of the novel, making it a derelict old house with a history.

 

Unfortunately for us readers, the screenplay stripmines much of the charm, tension, as well as set-up/build-up/payoff of the novel that Hendrix gleefully excels at, replacing this instead with a plot-by-numbers script that stumbles along with the bluntness of a two-by-four. 

Gone is Abby's Mickey Mouse ringtone, for example, or her tough-as-nails-shift-working mom or her down-on-his-luck dad, and all the great class warfare commentary about Abby's working-class family and the wealthy families of friend Margaret and, of course, Gretchen, whose parents admit they hoped the girls' friendship would raise Abby up. The luxurious homes remain set pieces only. There's some fine casting in the roles of Abby and Gretchen, but, alas, I still find myself unable to finish the flick in one sitting.

Smash-hit Fear Itself collection book launch

Had a smash-hit launch on June 28 for my Lethe Press short-story collection Fear Itself at Perfect Books in Ottawa.

Professor Sean Moreland was, as usual, a gracious, thoughtful host who asked incisive questions in the Q&A. My pal Sean McKibbon did a stellar job as Carl in our reading of "Carl and Monty's Prairie Wager". Thank you, Perfect Books manager Michael and other staff for making it all happen. 

Turnout was phenomenal, including, astonishingly, the original members of my Little Workshop of Horrors writers' group and many friends I hadn't seen in a dog's age and even work colleagues. I was often moved very close to tears at seeing everyone. I also got to answer a question about my sister Kim Moran MacIntosh, whom we lost November 17, 2021 and to whom Fear Itself is dedicated.

I discussed grief, loss and ghosts in my work; my mentor and friend Hugh DeCourcy; my influences of Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Clive Barker; notable queer spec-fic writers (Amber Dawn's Sodom Road Exit got a shout-out); the crucial role of queer protagonists baked into my work; the prevalence of Canadian wilderness in my work (the subconscious is the darndest thing ....); the impact of Peter Atkins and Glen Hirshberg on my vocation.

Been a long, hard road to get the book out, and way too much loss, so I am feeling very grateful for the support from everyone. Thank you so, so much.